When we got home, I presumed that the worst was over. Given my parents' relationship, there was absolutely no reason to make that assumption. But I did. Amanda went directly to her room, and I went to the den to see if there was anything at all on television other than the Yule log: essentially a televised fireplace with Christmas carols in the background. My mother sat down with me on the couch and tried to wrap her arm around my shoulders, but that night I was resistant to her embraces. She tried to win me over with a remark about how only a year or two earlier I might have been putting out cookies for Santa and then racing upstairs to bed so I would be asleep when he arrived with his reindeer. But I was in no mood to try to add a patina to what had always been a childhood of Christmas Eves marked by my parents' verbal and, on occasion, physical brawls. Quickly my mother sensed my frame of mind, and even though she was still very drunk, she left. She kissed me on the forehead and stumbled to her feet on shaky legs. She had kicked off her boots as soon as she had walked in the door, but even in her stocking feet she was having trouble negotiating the plush living-room carpet. And then, all alone, I clicked back and forth among the four or five television stations we had.
It was perhaps fifteen minutes later that my parents began to argue. I will never know precisely what triggered that one, but it really doesn't matter. What matters is that soon after they started, I heard the sound of a great amount of glass shattering, and I knew it was the beveled mirror that was suspended by two oak arms above my mother's dresser--a Victorian piece that I know now was well over one hundred years old. Then my father emerged from the bedroom and stomped toward the top of the stairs, where he paused for a moment at the balcony that ran perhaps fifteen feet along the corridor, his hands in fists at his sides as he surveyed the first floor. I gazed up at him, but our eyes never met and I wasn't altogether sure that he had registered I was there on the living-room couch. He was still in the clothes he had worn that evening, though his shirt was untucked and the top three or four buttons were open. His T-shirt was the color of a peach. His wonderful, creosote-black hair, which had been slicked back at the party, looked now as if he had teased it with spaghetti tongs.
My mother appeared behind him in only her panties and blouse, barefoot, and her own hair--a great flaxen mane--was also in disarray. Her lipstick was smeared like a clown's, and her mascara was dripping in rivulets down the right side of her face. (It's possible, I imagine, that it was running from her left eye as well, but I recall noticing at the time that for some reason only her right cheek was streaked with makeup.) She was sobbing and she was furious and she threw herself at him, pounding her fists into his back and shoulders with such force that it looked for a split second as if he would hurtle over the side of the balustrade and fall either one flight into the living room or--worse--a full two flights if he tumbled over the section of balcony that was above the stairs that linked the living room with the finished basement.
"Stop it!" he yelled, grabbing her fists in his hands. "Settle the fuck down! You nearly fucking killed me!"
"You stop it, just stop everything!" she screamed back, a demand that, as unreasonable as it was, might have accomplished its intent if she hadn't added, "You are pathetic. You are just the most pathetic loser."
"Pathetic? I'm not so fucking drunk I--"
"'Fucking'? Why don't you swear some more in front of your children? Why don't you tell them what you just called me? Heather, do you want to know what your father just called me?" I hadn't any idea how to respond to this appeal, and so I murmured--not loud enough for them to hear over the din of the television and their own verbal pyrotechnics--"Don't fight. Please. Don't fight." In my mind I see myself curled up on the couch in the red Christmas skirt from Saks Fifth Avenue and the turtleneck dotted with silver snowflakes I had worn that evening, a throw pillow clutched in my arms as if it were a stuffed animal. I'm sure I was crying, too.
"You're a drunk, you know that?" my father told her, and he released her fingers as if they were a fish he was tossing with two hands into a lake, his arms upraised when the movement was done. "You're a fucking drunk and the poorest fucking excuse for a mother I've ever seen. You're a shrew and--"
He never finished the sentence, because my mother, her hands newly freed, slapped him, and the stinging thwap was so loud that his ears must have been ringing. He brought his palm to his cheek and held it there for a moment. And then he slapped her back, so hard that she toppled backward and landed on the carpet near the top step of the stairway, one of her legs beneath her and the other splayed out as if she were a dancer trying and failing to perform a split. Her panties, I saw, were soaked through with her blood, and for a second I was terrified she was badly hurt. But then I remembered: My older sister had just started menstruating and our mother had hoped to demystify the notion of a monthly cycle for both of her girls by telling us that she, too, was in the midst of her period. That night she was so profoundly inebriated that when she had removed her tampon when we'd gotten home, she had forgotten to put in a fresh one.
"You're drunk," my father scolded her.
"You're drunk!" she shouted back. "And you're a drunk, too! You're a wretched and feeble excuse for a man! Your own father knows it, your mother knows it, your daughters know it. They know. They know."
She pushed off against the wall and stood to face him. "They know," she mocked him one more time, and she glanced down at me for the merest of seconds. And so my father smacked her again, but this time she was prepared for the blow and remained on her feet, though her body fell hard against the wall, her head bouncing like a basketball off the Sheetrock and causing the small framed print of a rosebush near her to quiver.
"They know their mother's a shrew!" he yelled. "That's what they know! She's a fucking, bleeding, harpy shrew who can't even keep her goddamn underwear clean!"
She dropped her hands to her sides in a posture of absolute submissiveness and hissed, "Hit me again, you drunken fool! Hit me again."
And so he did.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Initially Stephen didn't tell me why the deputy state's attorney or those state troopers from Vermont seemed to suspect him of some involvement in that tragic murder and suicide in his community. He had shared with me a very great deal about Alice our first days together in Manhattan, but somehow he had missed that one small detail that they'd been lovers. He had had many opportunities when it would have made sense to tell me, beginning with the day we met right up until the day that we left Statler--especially when we reached the highway on our way back to New York City and he discovered that his cell phone had a series of messages from the Vermont State Police. Weeks later his defense would be that I would have misconstrued what had happened in those months and who he was as a person. Likewise, he said, I wouldn't understand what had really occurred that July night in Haverill and why it had ended so horribly.
The reality is that had he told me at any point in those first days we were together, I wouldn't have felt the need later on to withdraw. He could have told me in Haverill, and he could have told me in Manhattan. He could have told me in the hours and hours we spent in the car driving to and from the Adirondacks. He could have told me on our hikes in the mountains or after we had made love in the woods, in those moments of postcoital intimacy when we shared so much of our personal histories. We spoke of so many of our lovers, I wouldn't have minded. I would have understood. I had felt that the angels were with us those days.
I was, quite obviously, mistaken. I had allowed my mortal judgment to cloud my celestial instincts.
FOR YEARS I had worn a small gold cross around my neck. It really wasn't much bigger than a thumbnail. It was a gift I had been given by my aunt when I was born, with the assumption that I would grow into it. When my mother finally shared it with me, I must have been seven, and I had little regard for it. It sat in the bottom of my elementary-school jewelry box, along with plastic hoops and clip-on seashell earrings and pretend pearl necklaces. And this was fine with my mother
. The cross wasn't costly, and the church played virtually no role in our household (which, looking back, might have been precisely why my aunt gave me that piece of jewelry).
Years later, when my parents were dead and I was sifting through the rubble that remained of my childhood, I found the cross and brought it with me to college. But I only started wearing it after my angel saved me from death in the dormitory basement. It was never in my mind an amulet, but its aura was numinous and its presence was comforting. I have been told that I touch it on occasion when I seem to be lost in thought.
An indication of how quickly and how deeply I was beguiled by Stephen is this: Of all the gifts I have been given by lovers over the years, the only time I replaced that cross around my neck was when Stephen gave me a gold chain with a gold angel. He found it in the estate case of a jewelry store in the Village when he was walking alone on the day before we would leave for my sister's in Statler. It was an art nouveau design and perhaps twice as large as the cross--which meant it was still rather delicate. The angel was female and typically eroticized for the period. Her hair was a long and luscious waterfall, her breasts were exposed, and her wings had been tapered more for seduction than flight. She was absolutely beautiful, and it was clear that when she moved, she moved like a ballerina. She was gazing up at a pigeon's blood ruby balanced at the end of her fingers.
It was a striking piece with an aura that was as alluring as it was inspiriting, and as long as Stephen and I were together, I wore it and cherished it. I have it even now. The fact that it was given to me by Stephen affects the associations but not the aura that was a part of the angel before she came into my life and will be an element of the angel when she is a part of someone else's. I keep it because it reminds me both of the wonder and the wistfulness of being bewitched. But I can't bear to wear it.
IT SEEMED TO matter greatly to the state troopers from Vermont whose idea it had been to go to Statler the week after Stephen Drew had arrived at my home. I told them that I had been planning to visit Amanda for a while. The truth is that Amanda and I see each other at least every other month, either because I venture to Statler or she is in Manhattan meeting with galleries. I am confident that on one of these visits my angel will reach hers and my wounded but no less remarkable sister will begin to heal. Ah, but whose idea had it been for Stephen to come along with me, the troopers kept asking? I could see how pleased they were when I admitted that it had been Stephen's. I had proffered the invitation, I said, but he had been hinting. He had been fascinated by Norman's osprey when he'd been at my loft in Manhattan; he had wondered about how Amanda had handled the deaths of our parents. He had remarked on the beauty of the Adirondacks and how--despite his proximity--he rarely seemed to visit those rugged mountains. He even told me how he could go for a Michigan, a Plattsburgh, New York-based concoction consisting of a steamed hot dog on a steamed bun smothered in meat sauce and onions. And so I suggested that he join me, and he agreed without hesitation. He didn't offer even token resistance, not a single "Oh, I couldn't," just to be polite.
And I was thrilled. It was important to me that we were together. His aura was in total disrepair, and he needed to be in a world that was wholly new to him--a place where his aura might be free of memory and association and thus could heal. Moreover, our bodies were absolute canyons of want that week. Certainly the aura hungers, but so does the flesh. I used to dance; I know the pleasure the body can offer. And so yes, I wanted Stephen Drew with me.
"THAT'S AN OSPREY," Norman was mumbling, and I looked up from my tea at the picnic table that served as my sister and brother-in-law's dining-room table in their log cabin. Stephen was staring at Norman's shelves of ospreys with angel wings and the way the morning sun gave them an elysian glaze as it poured in through the wide, eastern-facing windows. Stephen had recognized right away the similarities to the raptor I had insisted on buying from my brother-in-law for my loft in the city.
"It's very good," he said to Norman. The two men were standing together. Stephen's hands were folded behind him, and Norman's were jammed into the pockets of his ragged blue jeans. "Heather explained to me about the wings, how you allowed yourself to imagine what an angel's wings might look like. It's haunting. Very creative." I don't believe he had meant to sound condescending, but he had. And I knew instantly what was coming.
"I didn't have to imagine the wings," Norman said, his voice low and curt. Then, his body hunched over, he stalked from the log cabin, and I knew he was going to find Amanda in the vegetable garden, where she was weeding.
Stephen turned to me, trying to gauge either my reaction or the magnitude of his offense. He sat down beside me, his legs straddling the bench.
"What was that about?" he asked.
I slid my mug of tea toward him and offered him a sip. A little grudgingly he took one. "You came across a bit patronizing," I said.
"I didn't mean to. Last night he seemed fragile to me, but not especially temperamental."
"Oh, I think you diagnosed that right. He is fragile. And I can tell he's worried about Amanda. But he also takes his work seriously," I said. I took back the mug and placed it on the picnic table and then wrapped his fingers in mine. "And he really didn't need to imagine the wings," I explained.
"I do hope you're going to tell me he had a beautiful painting as a model," he said. "Something from the Renaissance, maybe." By then he knew of my first face-to-face experience with an angel in the basement of my dormitory at college. He knew of the other times I had been blessed with encounters with angels as well. He was skeptical but patient.
"Nope."
"If Norman has seen an angel, too, then why is he so ... "
"Damaged?"
"That's a good word."
"We're all mortal. We're all damaged. We still need to be able to welcome the angel into our realm. We must be hospitable. We need to return the angel's love and be willing to live our lives accordingly. He's not there yet. He's still too guarded. Too solitary. Angels are sociable. They rather like showboats."
"Where was he?"
"When he saw the angel?"
"Uh-huh."
"In Ray Brook."
"The correctional facility?"
"That's right. It's about sixty miles from here. He was in for robbery. He needed money for drugs, and over the course of five days he hit a half dozen liquor stores and convenience stores in Albany. It was quite a visible rampage, and I still find it appalling that it took nearly a week before he was rounded up. He didn't hurt anyone. He's not the type who wants to hurt anyone. Nevertheless, he had a pretty violent method, and it could have ended very badly for someone behind those counters--or for Norman or a police officer. He would go in and smash a bottle on the counter in front of the kid at the register. That would be his weapon. It was, I gather, extremely intimidating, especially since it was evident that Norman was seriously strung out."
In the trees that bordered the yard, I saw a chickadee light on a branch and I watched a brown creeper spiraling up the side of a maple. I had told Stephen before we left Manhattan that Norman was bipolar, which was why as a younger man he had wound up on illegal drugs. There had been no one to diagnose and treat him and so he had treated himself in the only way he could imagine. Now, however, he was properly medicated.
"And he saw this angel in prison?" Stephen was asking me.
"Uh-huh. He came to his cell while the other prisoner was sound asleep. Lights were out, but still the small room grew brighter by far than it ever did during the day. I gather the one window they had was very small. And Norman saw perfectly the rows of feathers on the angel's wings, as well as their shape."
"What did the angel say to him?"
I thought for a long moment before answering. "In all of the things I have shared with you about angels, have I ever described a verbal exchange with one?"
"I guess not."
"We can no more hear the voice of an angel--at least in a literal way--than we can see the face of God."
"Ah, but the angels spoke in the Bible. Think of Gabriel's comforting words to Mary in Luke."
"Mary shared Gabriel's visitation with the disciples many years later. I have no doubts that an angel came to her when she was a very young woman. But it has always seemed more likely to me either that Mary remembered the comforting presence in a fashion that grew more conventional as she grew older or that the men who wrote the Gospel put words into the angel's mouth."
"There are a lot of Christians in this world who would seriously question that interpretation."
"And there are a lot of Christians in this world who nonetheless buy my books," I told him, and he chuckled loudly. I hadn't meant this as a joke, and I hadn't meant to convey with it the sort of edge that he would tell me later he had heard in the remark and had caused him to laugh. I had simply meant that the historiography of Christianity is a subject worth discussing and there is a continuum of belief among Christians. I tried to rein in his smirk by reminding him that Baptists think very differently from Episcopalians and more people in this country believe in angels than in evolution.
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