Whenever You Call (18 page)

His foot grew still, except for the big toe twitching from time to time. I burst out laughing.

“So what do you say?” he asked.

“About what?”

“Getting married.”

Now that I knew Al had been married to someone famous, I felt myself falling in love with him. Terrible Rose Marley. Because someone else of value had found him valuable, now I, too, found him valuable?

“It’s way too early to talk about marriage,” I said, “plus, you know I have a terrible track record.”

“You’re afraid.”

“I’m right to be afraid.”

“Naw, it’s never right to be afraid.”

I stuck my legs out to catch more of the sun and hiked up my nightgown.

“You won’t marry me, yet you seduce me. Talk about morally reprehensible.”

I slid my nightgown higher. His hand snaked its way up my thigh. The hot sun, smelling of earth, heated my lap like I was an oven. I started to close my eyes, but just before the lids had completely descended I saw a figure standing in the garden, not more than ten feet away. I jumped. Eyes shot open. Al’s hand leapt away from my leg and he turned to look to where I was staring.

“What?” he said.

“There was a man standing right there.” My voice trembled.

We both gazed into the empty garden. Al gave me a quick look, his expression neutral. “What did he look like?”

Months later, I would remember his question, when I finally realized how extraordinary it had been. He didn’t say, There’s no man there, or, You must be hallucinating. Instead, he asked what this nonexistent man looked like.

I said, “A little scruffy, squat, bushy eyebrows.”

“Tall or short?”

“I think medium.” I swallowed. “Or maybe more short.”

We both stopped talking. I tried to conjure up the man in my imagination.

I whispered. “He had wings.”

“Really?” said Al.

“Dirty wings.”

“Holy mackerel.”

I turned my head slowly and looked at Al’s profile until he, too, swiveled his head in my direction.

“He was some kind of funny old angel.”

Al reached for my left hand and took it between the two of his. He massaged it gently, still not speaking.

“Maybe it’s because I’m not writing,” I said.

“You saw an angel because you’re not writing?”

“No, no.” I pulled away my hand and yanked the nightgown over my knees. “I must have thought of something very odd because my imagination is starved for a workout.”

“I gotta tell you,” Al said, “your reaction seemed real, not like it was a fantasy or a dream.”

I was reminded of that time when I fell out of the tree and I’d, briefly, flown upwards before plunging down. Even now, utterly rational and mature, I knew that I had actually flown. Although I was putting a good face on it for Al, I also knew that I hadn’t imagined what I’d seen. If a person had argued with me about this conviction, pointing out some scientific evidence for the way the mind can create convincing hallucinations in, for example, schizophrenics, I’d have agreed that this was an entirely plausible explanation. Because it was. But, at the same time, that didn’t mean it was true
in my case
. As far as I knew, I had zero symptoms of any mental illness. I had seen a very weird-looking angel. Period. End of discussion.

“Whatever.” I shrugged. “Nothing’s there now.”

Al stood up, placed both hands on the small of his back, and arched backwards, letting out a small groan. “I’m going to take a shower.”

I wondered when he planned on leaving and whether I’d have to give him a subtle hint. “Okay,” I said.

When I heard the sounds of the shower coming on through the second floor bathroom window, I thought of going inside to check my e-mail. But, at the same time, I felt nailed to the steps. I couldn’t resist staring at the place where the angel had stood.

And there he was. Deep baggy circles under swimmy green eyes. A wobbly grin. I could even see his chocolate-brown wings trembling. “I’m the one who’s supposed to be scared, not you.”

The wobbly grin grew bigger, though it still had a tentative quality. I looked him up and down, trying to grab all the details of his appearance. He wore dark blue jeans, with a stiff ironed pleat running down each leg. There didn’t seem to be any feet or shoes. Around his upper body, or chest, was a poncho-type garment made of squares of silk.

“You look kind of strange for an angel,” I said. To my amazement, his eyes filled with tears. A second later, he was transformed into a shimmering vision of white, the classic angel get-up, including glossy white wings, except that his head and face remained exactly the same, which was extremely incongruous. Not to mention, off-putting.

I said, “Can you talk?”

He shook his head, no.

I closed my eyes tight.
You have an illness. You will go to see a professional, who will prescribe powerful anti-psychotics. They might have unpleasant side-effects, but you will have to deal with them bravely because, otherwise, you will start to hallucinate even stranger visions than this one, which will be scary and disturbing. So, Rose Marley, get a fucking grip on yourself.

Then I burst into tears.

H
OW LONG HAS IT been since you’ve come to see me?” Dr. Patel said.

I screwed up my face, trying to remember. Then I couldn’t imagine how I’d forgotten. “When Isaac and I split up.”

“Right.” He nodded, his face blank.

I was pretty sure that therapists now used Botox to achieve their poker faces. Maybe even poker players used Botox, come to think of it. “So that’s almost three years.” I smiled at him, eager to keep the subject away from my real reason for the appointment. “I was celibate for a really long time—”

“Was that okay for you?”

“Much better than I would’ve predicted.”

I let my gaze wander around his familiar office. Even the film of dust seemed to be exactly the same. I was sure that a dead spider, curled by the leg of Dr. Patel’s chair, had been there many moons ago. It made me nostalgic and sad. I talked for twenty minutes, catching him up on all the changed circumstances in my life. When I told him I was no longer writing and, instead, had become a bartender, his still face actually moved, albeit briefly. I’d surprised Dr. Patel more than I’d surprised myself.

“Is it going well? The bar tending, I mean,” he said.

I nodded.

Silence.

“Seems like everything’s quite,—” he paused, searching for the right word, “—comfortable.”

“Something unusual
has
happened.” I could feel tears massing in my chest, climbing up my throat, eager and hot. I saw Dr. Patel’s right hand move. He’d almost reached to hand me the box of tissues before I’d actually started to cry.

The tears burst out with the words, so it was all garbled and indistinct. “I saw an angel.”

Dr. Patel leaned forward in his chair. “Excuse me, I’m so sorry, but I couldn’t understand you.”

Naturally that made me cry even harder. I’d said it, and I really didn’t want to say it again. So I cried for as long as I could.

Dr. Patel didn’t seem so much impatient as curious. I suspected that he
thought
he’d heard me correctly, and he was simply dying to know.
Had she really said that?
The words every shrink must secretly dread and, yet, crave. Okay, I was probably doing a terrible disservice to the mental illness profession. My excuse? I wasn’t in my right mind.

I sniffed dramatically. The thought ‘Oh fuck it,’ drifted through my head. This time, I almost yelled. “I—saw—an—angel.”

I had to admit that I expected to be hauled off to the looney bin right away. I most definitely didn’t expect the whisper of a smile to dance across Dr. Patel’s lips. I must have been hallucinating
again
.

Dr. Patel said, “How did you know it was an angel?”

“Wings.”

He nodded, then waited.

I continued, “Otherwise, at first, he wasn’t at all like any angel I’ve heard about.”

“Have you heard about many angels?”

“Just the usual.” I looked at him and, assuming that he might not be Christian, I decided I ought to elaborate. “Like the angel Gabriel who came to Mary to tell her she would be giving birth to the son of God.”

He nodded again.

“I guess
you’ve
heard about that one,” I said.

Then we laughed. Yup, we laughed out loud. I’d been in therapy with Dr. Patel for a total of twenty-three months, eleven days. Never seen him laugh before. Never. He looked like a different person, so different that I didn’t think I’d have recognized him. Or, better way to put it; he was transformed. Which, of course, had an impression on me.

I told him everything. After about fifteen minutes of nonstop talking, I suddenly felt my inner alarm clock go off. “Isn’t my hour over?”

He checked his watch. “True, but I don’t have another appointment right now. Would you like to have a double session?”

Wow. I’d never heard of a
double
session. I grinned. “Yeah, great.”

He grinned back. It was like we’d catapulted out of some dull dusty therapist’s office into a friendly neighborhood bar. There we were, perched on our stools, saying more than we should because it was dark and we’d been drinking. Now that I knew I had a second hour, I backtracked and filled him in on Mr. Rabbitfish.

Dr. Patel asked, “Do you think Rabbitfish connects with the angel?”

“Yes.” The word flew out of my mouth.

“In what way?”

“I haven’t a clue.”

“Umm,” he murmured.

“Am I crazy?” I said.

He looked at me with a calm gaze, yet, assessing. Finally, he said, “What do you think?”

I straightened in my chair and took a huge breath into my lungs. “No, I don’t think I’m crazy.”

Dr. Patel’s expression had reverted to his familiar blank look. Still, in the way that one knows one’s therapist, I
knew
he didn’t think I was crazy, either. I stretched my neck backwards and stared at the ceiling. Anger had rushed in and surprised me. I didn’t like to
be
angry or to have anyone angry
at
me. I, therefore, rarely expressed it except by creeping into my subterranean study and hiding out for awhile. I swallowed.

“What’s the matter?” Dr. Patel said.

My head snapped down and I glared at him. “I saw a god-damned angel! I need
more
from you. If you don’t think I’m crazy, then
say
so!”

“Wonderful,” he said. “And, by the way, there’s not a doubt in my mind that you’re completely sane.”

Apparently, when you saw an angel, you did a lot of crying.

Dr. Patel said quietly, “I think, if you can manage it, that two sessions a week would be a good idea for now.”

“Yeah.” I blew my nose. “I can handle that.”

We agreed to meet three days later. As I left his office, I had a sense that he was about to say something else, so I turned around abruptly just before closing the door. He was sitting very still, with his eyes closed. It looked like he was praying.

Out on the street, the sky was shuttered, turning Cambridge into an abandoned, derelict house. It smelled dark, too. A distant roar of thunder, then the darkness exploded with crackles of light. A spring storm would arrive soon. I was a twenty-minute walk away from my house, or I could take refuge in a bookstore. Another low rumble. I started to trot toward the Grolier Poetry Book Shop on Plympton Street. Despite my aversion to poets, I certainly cared about poetry itself, but, more importantly, Grolier was the closest to me, and I didn’t have an umbrella. I made it inside the door, except for my left foot, which received a splatter of cold drops. I moved into the store a few feet, then turned to watch the rain through the window.

The water fell straight and thick, like someone had dumped a bucket from the second floor window with a great swooshing motion. Except, instead of the water quickly dwindling, this downpour continued. Mesmerized, I watched the water’s white fluffy gleam. Behind me, in the bowels of the shop, came a sensation of complete emptiness. If a shopkeeper was back there, he or she was asleep or dead.

I knew it was coming this time. My head got heavy and my eyes froze into a staring trance. In fact, my entire body grew so heavy and still that it felt like gravity had abruptly doubled.

The dancing blue light jumped through the rain, almost comical with its little hoop-dee-doo leaps. I giggled. That made it go nuts. It jumped three feet into the air, seemed to pirouette on its ballerina toes, ending with a graceful slide into home plate. Very cute, I said in my head. My angel appeared in all his dismal glory, right smack in the middle of the pouring rain. He possessed neither a visible nor an invisible umbrella. His wings, back to their original brown color, instantly dripped and drooped with water, and two small tributaries ran from the pools under his eyes, down his cheeks, and into the corners of his lips where he seemed to suck them into his mouth. He wore a plain brown smock ending at his knees, or what would have been knees if he’d had any. He was also missing arms. None of which looked particularly odd. He was an angel, after all.

We stared at each other. He was a little less ugly this time. Maybe it was because he looked happier. He fluttered his wings and I could see the water scatter sideways. Then he grinned. Now, normally, a grin is a grin is a grin, with the expected result that anyone seeing the grin would want to grin back. Except, I’d begun to feel ever so slightly troubled. My number one presumption was that this was, somehow,
my
angel. I could be wrong, of course, but from everything I’d ever read about angels, it seemed likely.

And, well, I was a tad bit insulted.

Besides being rather un-angelic looking, he also seemed stupid. The grin was what really clued me in. I mean, he just had this dense expression. His mouth hung open, and the grin went on and on, without stopping or any change of expression.

I wasn’t sure that I’d received the highest caliber angel, to be honest.

And thinking that made me feel guilty. So I turned away from the window and stared unseeing at the closest shelf of books. Then, unable to control myself, I peeked over my shoulder. The angel was still there, and still grinning. Well, I thought, maybe this is just a happy angel. So I waved at him.

One large brown wing waved back.

I reminded myself that Dr. Patel had gone to Harvard Medical School and trained at the MGH. No slouch. Exactly what you needed when you were seeing an angel waving a furry wet wing at you. If Dr. Patel doesn’t think you’re crazy, then you’re
not
.

I squinted at the angel and said, silently in my head, “What’s your name?”

Badda-badda-boom. I got the answer. Or, perhaps I did.

Ralph.

Ralph?

Not exactly an awe-inspiring name. I mouthed
Ralph?
out the window, my head cocked to the side in what I hoped was a questioning pose. He waved the other wing happily. Ralph it was.

Abruptly, just like that, Ralph disappeared. I was grateful. The whole thing was utterly exhausting. I walked quickly through the bookstore, my flip-flops making rude noises on the old wooden floor. I knew that at the back of the first floor, I’d find a cozy wing chair in a corner. I sat down in the chair. There was a slim book on the small table. I picked it up and looked at the title,
Raphael.
I began to read and was, perforce, reminded that there was an famous archangel called Raphael.

Could Ralph be a shorter, hip version of Raphael?

In which case, my angel was actually an archangel, a big fucking deal. I felt mollified. Like I’d gotten into Harvard, early decision. Which made me think about Isaac, who
had
gotten into Harvard early decision. I dug into my purse and grabbed my cell phone. Isaac had given me the number of his monastery, in case I needed to reach him for some kind of emergency. I’d keyed the number in, out of politeness, never expecting to use it. I suspected that the Grolier had a no-cell phone policy, but I still couldn’t hear or sense anyone else in the place. Plus, it was raining with Biblical urgency, and I wanted to call a monk on a Biblical matter, so to speak.

A cultivated, low voice answered the phone. “Namaste,” he said.

Before seeing my own angel, Ralph, I would have, undoubtedly, rolled my eyes at such a greeting. Instead, I whispered, “Namaste.”

“May I help you?”

“I’m trying to reach Isaac Goldsmith—can he come to the phone right now?”

“Unfortunately, no. I can take a message.”

“This is sort of an emergency.”

“Sort of?”

I imagined a robed figure in a tiny, windowless room. A candled flickered, and a stick of incense burned in a thin spiral of smoke. Rather evocative. I’m sure that’s why I said what I said next.

“I’ve seen an angel. His name is Ralph, short for Raphael. I just came from my Harvard-trained shrink, who said I’m not in the least bit crazy. Isaac had a premonition that something like this might happen. Now it’s raining really, really hard, and I absolutely
must
talk to him.”

There was a slight pause. Then the voice said, “Why don’t you come here?”

I realized immediately that I had three days and two nights before I had my next stint at the Harvest.

He added, “We have modest guest rooms available—you pay whatever you can afford.”

“I guess it would be all right with Isaac.”

“I’m sure he would be delighted. If you go to our web site, you can find directions—would you be driving?”

“Yes.”

Just before hanging up, the monk said, “Ralph is welcome, too.”

“What?” I said, totally discombobulated.

He waited, without repeating himself, for me to process the words. Two seconds later, I laughed.

“Namaste,” the monk said, giggling.

I leapt up from the wing chair and rushed to the front of the store. Outside, the rain poured down. I thought of walking home, accepting that I’d be drenched. What was the big deal about getting wet, after all? I could take a hot bath, wash my hair, and throw together an appropriate outfit for visiting a monastery (big challenge). I looked at my leather shoulder bag, which contained such possibly non-waterproof items like a cell phone and the address book I’d bought twenty years earlier in Florence. I could imagine the ink smearing and the pages turning to mush.

Behind me, a voice said, “Well, as I live or die.”

Even without turning around, I knew it was my least favorite poet among all my least favorite poets.

“Hey.” I acknowledged him with a sidelong glance.

“Finding shelter from the rain?” He sidled closer.

I smiled as graciously as I could manage, wondering, at the same time, why I had such a viscerally negative reaction to him. I knew why I didn’t like poets. They thought they were prophets and, therefore, special. And it was probably relevant that my mother, as well as being a literature professor at Smith was also a  … poet. Not a very good one, either, though I always thought that made it worse. The subject of her poetry was equally unfortunate, from my point of view. She wrote about her kids, her crippled husband, as well as her own brothers, sisters, mother and father. That is, she was a poet of The Family.

I read my first poem of hers sometime during the week when I learned to read. I was five years old, and the poem, not inconsequentially, was about me learning to read.