by Ramy Vance
“No,” I said. “Stop this. Now!”
“I cannot.”
Desperate not to suffer like that again, I grasped for the only straw I saw before me: an unfulfilled promise.
“You owe me,” I said. “You owe me an explanation of my past. Tell me about my father.”
Keeping Secrets Secret
I used to be afraid of Penemue. Well, that wasn’t exactly true … I used to be afraid of his thing.
And no, not that thing.
As is true of all angels, Penemue has a thing, and his is knowing everything that has ever been written … on paper, in stone and on the human soul. That means he knew just about everything there was to know about you—before the gods left, that is.
And given that I was essentially an orphan whose mother died at birth, taking the identity of my father with her, the one person living on this Earth who could tell me about my past was Penemue.
He knew everything there was to know about my mom, including who she was after she met my father—whoever he was—and everything else about her. I wasn’t really a let’s-rehash-the-past kind of guy and I never wanted to know about my dad. I really didn’t. It would open wounds that scarred over long ago, and why complicate my already over-complicated life?
But Penemue was a drunk. Which meant that, at any moment during one of his drunken stupors (and he was inebriated more often than he wasn’t), he could blurt something about my father. So I did what one always does when facing a problem with an Other … I made him promise.
That was the thing about Others: their word was their bond, and that bond was made not of oak, but a substance more powerful than Wolverine’s adamantium. So, one evening as I watched Penemue prepare for yet another bender, I grabbed the bottle out of his hand and said, “You know who my father is, do you not?”
The angel nodded.
“And you could tell me just about everything I’ve ever want to know about him, right?”
Another nod as he reached out for the bottle. “What do you wish to know?”
I held the bottle out of reach. “Nothing.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. I wish to know nothing about him. Absolutely nothing.” Then, precariously holding his Drambuie between forefinger and thumb, said, “Promise me that you will never tell me anything about him. Promise me.”
Penemue gave me a curious look before pursing his lips. “Ahh, I see,” he said. “You do not wish me to accidently divulge information about his whereabouts or something more. You wish to—how do you humans put it?—snooker me into silence.”
“Snooker?”
“Outplay, trap, force … snooker,” he said by way of explanation.
“I haven’t heard any humans put it that way—”
“It’s a British expression.”
“Whatever. And yes, I want to ‘snooker’ you into silence. And if this dysfunctional friendship is to continue, then I need to ‘snooker’ you into silence.”
“Even if there are things about your past—and, more specifically, your father—I believe you should know?”
I gave the angel a curious look. Something he believed I should know? What the hell did that mean? Then again, Penemue was an angel, and who knew what angels thought was important? It could be something as simple as my father’s side of the family having a history of bowel cancer, all the way up to my dad being Satan himself. Or something in between.
Wherever the little tidbit Penemue thought I should know about my father lay, I figured I didn’t want to know. Family medical histories and devilish dads were best left buried and gone.
Then again, Penemue could just be drunk, and the thing he believed I should know was that I was part Cherokee or something.
I shook my head. “I don’t care. Whatever it is, I don’t want to know it.”
“Very well, but my honor will not allow me to take that oath.”
I threw my hands up in exasperation.
Penemue lifted a Patience, please finger. “I’m afraid your way is not the best way to go about things, my friend.” He pulled out another bottle from only the GoneGods knew where. “I will not promise never to speak of your father.”
So much for being patient.
Enraged, my mind went through all sorts of threats I could use to get that damn promise out of him, but before I could start down the long litany of “You owe me,” and “I’ll kick you out of the hotel,” Penemue cocked an arrogant smile. “I will, however, promise to never speak of your father lest you ask. That is my solemn oath to you.”
“Unless I ask?”
“Mum’s the word.” He mimed locking his lips with a key, then handed me the key. “And thus I entrust the key to such secrets to you.”
And that was the day I stopped fearing Penemue.
Home Is Where the Heart Is … Even When It’s Not Your Own Home
Penemue lifted a finger and tapped empty air like he was pushing some invisible button. He might have done exactly that, because as soon as his finger moved for a third time, the rumbling stopped. I looked around to see what was happening.
Bella was still there, her expression downgraded from terrified to just plain scared. And as for EightBall’s family, they were still there. His mother standing by the window watching him play, his father still at the table, gnawing on the T-bone of his steak as he vacuumed up the last scraps of flesh on the bone.
Turning back to the twice-fallen angel, I gave him an expression he must have seen painted on my face a thousand times before: confusion.
Through tear-soaked eyes, he said, “I shall fulfill my oath to you and tell you about your father. But know this: once that is done, we will return to this hell.”
I nodded. “It’s not a hell either Bella or I deserve.”
“Humph,” the angel mused. “So few who have wallowed in Hell’s fiery pits deserved their fate. Even I, when first cast down, knew I did not deserve to be here. This time around, however”—he pointed at the frozen family—“I absolutely deserve to suffer.”
Penemue was right—in a sense. Angel hierarchy and morality were very different than anything humans understood. But I had been around the winged humanoid creatures enough that I knew this much: Penemue had defied God (as in, capital-G God). He had sinned by going directly against his creator—a creator he knew intimately, had met, spoken to, loved—and in doing so, he was condemned to Hell. Given the rules that angels play by, he deserved Hell.
But it went beyond that, because even though Penemue accepted his lot in Hell, I don’t think he ever believed he deserved it. Accepting your fate and deserving it are two different things, and Penemue knew damn well what would happen to him if he got caught teaching humankind how to read and write.
He did it anyway, because he believed what he did was right.
He did it because he chose to love humans over his own kind. And I don’t think he ever regretted it. But love comes with a price. And Penemue’s ability to know everything written on a human’s soul meant that what he felt for us was beyond love. It was something else—something more.
Something that had evolved beyond love.
Keep evolving, I mused. Penemue was always on about how we needed to keep evolving if we had any chance of surviving. Perhaps that was what he had done. His love for us had evolved and now he stood on a branch of the Tree of Life that he had created, alone and praying that others would, in time, join him.
And when that never happened and then the gods left, expelling him from Hell in such a way that he killed several humans he cared for with emotions beyond love … Well, his fault or not, that was something he could never forgive.
As a human—no, that’s not right … As an unevolved human, I would never understand that. I couldn’t, because I hadn’t evolved. He was operating under another set of rules that, no matter how ridiculous I found them, were his own.
Still, I needed to save my friend. Desperately searching for the right words, I stammered, “But you didn’t—”
Penemue touched the gem at his neck before rubbing his hands together in that vigorous way sumo wrestlers do before a match. Opening his palms, I saw a pile of dust that was either the result of the most vigorous case of exfoliation ever … or magic.
He blew the dust, which flowed over Bella and me like a sandstorm. We were transported out of EightBall’s childhood apartment and into a typical suburban street.
So magic, then.
I stared around the somewhat familiar place until it finally dawned on me where we were: the street my mother used to live on before she, well … died having me.
This was her childhood home, the place where PopPop had raised her. But when she died, PopPop couldn’t stand being in that house anymore. And given he was once again raising a little one, he moved us to a smaller house closer to the city. The kind of place where the teenage hell-raiser I became could walk home after a night of fake-ID bar-hopping.
Good ol’ PopPop, always planning ahead.
“Over there,” I said, pointing at the old RoadRunner that I’d eventually inherit from my grandfather. “Do you remember that car?”
Bella came in close. “Yeah.” Her voice sounded dreamy as she recalled the same memories I was. We had both lost our maidenhood on the back seat of that car. Well, Bella lost her maidenhood. I lost my—my … what’s the equivalent of maidenhood for a guy? Knighthood? Misterhood?
Virginityhood. I lost my virginityhood there.
But despite all the familiarity of the scene, there was something not quite right about this place. I had seen a bunch of pictures of this street, and my PopPop had driven by that house a million times as a kid, pointing to the front lawn or window or porch and telling me about some memory of Mom.
Hell, on more than one occasion, we even rang the doorbell and went inside for a tour, where he’d regale me with stories of the mischief my mother got up to. I’m not sure the new owners loved us occasionally barging in, but they never said no. And despite never living there myself, I knew the insides of that place in intimate detail.
But I knew it as the place my mother grew up in. The memories I had of it were hers, not mine.
And yet, standing there, I felt as though I knew the place as if those memories were my own. I felt connected to that house in a way I never had the dozens and dozens of times I’d seen it.
This wasn’t my mother’s house—it was mine.
Mine. But how could that be? I’d never lived here, and despite my PopPop being a great storyteller, he could never imbue me with the sense that it was mine. Not like this.
“What’s going on here?” I asked as the uncanny familiarity washed over me.
Penemue must have known exactly what I was feeling, because he shook his head with a sigh that betrayed a heavy and uncompromising burden. “Do you know what it feels like to read a soul? It is not like reading a book or even watching a movie. To read a soul is to know it. And the only way you can truly know something is to experience it as if it is your own. You are reading this place, feeling it with the same intimacy your mother once felt.”
The impact of what he’d just said washed over me. I wasn’t looking at this house with some detached amusement—I was feeling this place with all the emotional intensity my mother felt. More so, because she had a lifetime to feel this way, and in that lifetime her emotions for this house must have evolved. Changed. Emotions that ebbed and flowed through her until they became a part of who she was. And because they were such a part of her, she probably didn’t even notice them most of the time, the emotions playing in the background like a beating heart.
You know it’s there. You know it beats inside you. But you rarely acknowledge it fully.
But for me—for us—this was new, like suddenly growing a second heart. You couldn’t help but feel it beating inside you at all moments.
“Is this how you feel everything?” I asked.
Penemue nodded. “More so, Human Jean-Luc. You are but a guest here. I have little choice when reading another’s soul. I only need something to happen to take my mind to that person and I am … here.” He gestured to the house.
“So every time you think of EightBall—I mean Newton—you are taken to the moment of his parents’ death.”
A single tear of light rolled down the twice-fallen’s cheek. “Again, more so, because I don’t just feel that moment. I feel all moments, from his birth to the day my connection with the human soul was severed. And … and I also read his parents’ souls and feel their joy and love and … pain. I read it all, simultaneously and constantly. Again and again and again.”
Now the tears flowed freely from him. Seeing my friend’s immense pain, I went to him and gave him a hug. Well, I tried to. He was eight feet tall and built like one of those Engineer Goliaths in the Aliens movies, so my arms didn’t cover much of him.
Luckily, Bella was there to complete the circle.
So this was it was like to be the angel who could read everything. He also felt it. And given that I was almost floored by reading—feeling—my mother’s emotions toward her childhood home, feeling EightBall and his parents’ life all at once must have been awe-inspiring and overwhelming. How the angel managed to do anything when he was so connected to everything, I will never understand. I would go insane.
And suddenly I understood why he was driven to drink. The inebriation must dull this connection.
“You are the strongest being I can imagine,” I said, not so much to comfort him, but because I truly believed it. Believe it.
“Hell is now,” Penemue said. I wasn’t sure exactly what he meant by that. I could only assume he was referring to the repetition of his hell. How the same few minutes seemed to repeat themselves over and over again. Then again, he might have meant something else—not that I would ask. Now I was learning who my father was, and in doing so, I’d hopefully find a way to break Penemue from his hell.
In other words, I needed to find a way to stop now from happening again.
Now May Be Forever, But Forever Isn’t Now
Without another word, Penemue walked up to the house and opened the door, only pausing for a brief moment before walking through the threshold.
Bella and I followed. As soon as we got to the door, a wave of emotion hit me with all the force of a hurricane. So that was why Penemue paused. Walking in wasn’t as simple as taking a step—you needed to steel yourself against the emotional impact of this place.
My mother loved this house. No, that wasn’t quite right. She did love this place, but she also hated it, sought comfort here, got into fights with PopPop, cried, laughed … lived, in all the meaning of the word.
And walking in, feeling what she felt for the first time and all at once, was overwhelming.
And beautiful.
And terrifying.
At first I didn’t think I could walk through that door. It was just too much. But Bella—my beautiful, empathetic Bella with a heart the size of the Titanic—took my hand and led me in. She must have felt everything I did, but being who she was, adjusted far more quickly than I could. I guess some people were emotional warriors and, if that’s true, then my Bella was the Queen Sheba of Feelings.
Inside, we walked into a living room with all the furniture I’d grown up with, just in another layout. I knew the house and knew that my mother would be the last door on the right, down a narrow hallway.
At first I didn’t think anyone was home. But then we heard some laughter and, following Penemue’s lead,
we walked to the back where I smelled … what was that? Pot?
Looking through the door, I saw my mom wearing a Guns N’ Roses T-shirt and nothing else—argh!—in her bed, lying next to a man … No, he was too young to be a man. She was lying next to a boy who looked uncannily like me. They were sweating, breathing hard as they puffed on their wacky tabacky-filled smokes. They giggled in that post-lovemaking way young lovers do.
I don’t know what hit me first: that my mom was smoking pot (kind of cool), or that she was in bed with a guy who looked like me. A Freudian nightmare combined with the scarring sight of your mom half-naked in bed. Or that the man she was with was my father.
OK, that’s a lie … I know exactly what hit me first: naked Mom. I guess there’s no age limit on being scarred for life by the sight of that.
They were cuddling as they smoked and giggled, and I felt something that genuinely made me happy.
She loved him. She loved my father.
He wasn’t some one-night stand like my PopPop had always told me. Here was a man whom my mother completely, sincerely, totally loved.
And they were happy.
Penemue put a hand on my shoulder. In a voice imbued with respect (hard to manage, given we were the ghostly equivalent of peeping Toms) he said, “They were happy—and to be married. Much like your story with Bella, they were waiting until they were of legal age to elope. Your father had just gotten a job at Mama’s bakery. You know the one?”
I nodded. Bella and I went to Mama’s all the time for chocolate and macadamia nut cookies.
“He was saving up for a wedding ring and the first three months’ rent on a one-bedroom apartment that—”
But before Penemue could finish, we heard screeching tires as a car pulled into the driveway.
The next thing I felt was fear as my mother yelled, “Shit, Dad’s home early. Get out of here. Go … go!”
She frantically waved her hands around as she sprayed the room with air freshener. My father, obviously terrified of PopPop, sprang out of bed. In that classic 1980s movie cliché, he scooped up all his clothing and, with one sock on, threw his clothes out the window before he tumbled out into the night.