Angels Unaware

by Lisa Deangelis

  If I’d had any feeling for the reverend’s widow, Gale, I might have felt sorry for her. People paid their respects at the funeral, at least most people did, but then everybody in Galen pretty much shunned her. People don’t much like being around widows, especially not new widows because in their hearts, they believe widowhood is contagious. And all people avoid the grieving as they can, lest something inside them be similarly stirred to grieving. At least, that’s what I’ve observed.

  I didn’t have much time to brood on all this though because it seemed no sooner was the reverend in the ground than preparations began for the Christmas Dance, the very same dance to which Caroline would accompany Luca. As it happened, a boy named Tom had asked Jolene; so the four of them were going together. Caroline wore blue—to match her eyes, of course, because she believed the secret to a well-lived life was to match one’s eyes with one’s clothing as much as possible. Jolene’s dress was white. I wasn’t the best seamstress in the world, but I’d cut the patterns and sewn the seams, and between me and Jewel, we hadn’t done a bad job of it. The girls looked pretty, and as we stood on the porch and waved goodbye, I felt proud and proprietary. We watched them walk all the way up the road, until it turned, and we couldn’t see them anymore. Then we went back inside, and I made coffee, while Jewel rolled herself a cigarette. The Camels had come to taste bland to her and she had taken to blending her own tobacco. I thought the smell of tobacco foul, but at least Jewel didn’t chew, like most men, women, and children in Galen.

  “Sit a minute, Darcy,” she said to me. “We haven’t talked together for the longest time.”

  “What’s on your mind?” I put a cup of coffee, thick as mud, just the way she liked it before her. “Things aren’t so bad,” I told her, assuming she wanted to talk business. “Four rooms are let. The guy who rode in on a horse drinks, but he pays; the couple in the back room fight, but never after nine o’clock. So I suppose—”

  “I don’t want to know if the inn is all right. I want to know if you are all right.”

  I considered this question pointless, which was why I never asked it and didn’t consider it worth answering. If I wasn’t all right, there would be nothing Jewel could do about it, and if Jewel wasn’t all right, there would be nothing I could do about it. So why inquire? I waved her away. “Fine, fine, right as rain.”

  She sighed. “Yes, I guess you are. People like you always come out all right in the end.”

  Jewel was trying to sound deep and philosophical and it annoyed me. “What do you mean, ‘people like me’?”

  Jewel always got nervous when she thought she was being pinned down for an answer and she shifted in her chair, clearly hoping that would redirect the conversation. “I don’t know quite what I mean.”

  “That’s not unusual.”

  Jewel leaned forward earnestly. “Wait. I do know what I mean. You were never like Jolene and Caroline as a baby, Darcy. You never let me hold you or comfort you. Even when you were little and you fell down and hurt yourself, you’d go off like an old cur dog to lick your wounds…” Or to find a place to die like a deer, I thought. “…And I knew that things would never come easy for you, that everything would be a struggle. And yet no matter how scared I felt for you, I always had the feeling that in the end, somehow, you’d be able to walk away, and everything would be all right. I don’t know. Maybe if I’d known who your father was—”

  “Oh, please,” I said, disgusted. “You’re not going to start that again. What difference could it make now?” I’d long since lost whatever curiosity I’d had about my paternity.

  “A lot of difference maybe. I should have lied to you. I should have said that your father died but he loved you very much.”

  “I’d have known you were lying. You can’t lie, at least not in a way that anybody would believe.”

  “I guess you’re right,” she admitted. “And it’s not because I don’t want to lie about some things or that I’m above lying. I just don’t know how to do it right. That’s why it’s a good thing you talked to the sheriff that day instead of me. I’d have spilled the beans about Jesse for sure if—”

  “You promised never to talk about that again.”

  “I know I did,” she said gently. “But life’s going to be very lonely for you if you never tell anyone what you’re thinking, or what makes you happy, or the things that keep you awake at night.”

  Old Sam came in then and put his head in my lap to have his ears scratched.

  “What are you thinking, Darcy?” Jewel persisted. “What goes through your mind when you’re sitting out on the porch stroking that old dog?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You must be thinking something when you’re so quiet like that.”

  “I’m not Jolene,” I snapped. “I don’t think about things twenty-four hours in a day just to give my brain exercise.”

  “Are you thinking that life’s been unfair making your sister shine so in school when you’re not even going to graduate? Are you thinking how come is it that boys flock to Caroline when you’ve never even been asked?”

  “No.”

  “Then what are you thinking?”

  I looked up at her. “I was thinking that Old Sam’s got a big blood-gorged tick in his ear and I should pull it out now before it falls off on the furniture.” I rose up in my chair to do just that. “You’re always thinking I’m thinking something lofty and important and you’re always disappointed to know I just think ordinary things.”

  “You’ve got qualities too, Darcy, even if they’re not as obvious as your sisters’. You know that you’ve always been my favorite. God knows, I love your sisters, but you’re special.”

  I laughed a little. “What a wily piece of baggage you are, Jewel Willickers. I’ve heard you tell the very same thing to Caroline and Jolene at different times when you thought I couldn’t hear.”

  “Well, every child should believe she’s her mother’s favorite. But with you, Darcy, I really mean it.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “It’s no use.”

  “Trouble with you, Darcy, is you see things too direct. Sometimes you need to soften the edges a bit. That’s why clever people are never cheerful. They see everything at angles.”

  “Nonsense. Jolene’s the smart one.”

  “I said ‘clever,’ not smart. And poor Jolene’s so smart, she’s dumb. And Caroline? I can only wonder what’ll come of her. She’s plenty in demand now. Why wouldn’t she be? Underneath that face is nothing but clay, just waiting to be told what form to take. What man could resist that opportunity? It’s like Pyg… that Greek man. But afterwards, when she marries, as girls like her always do, what then? What happens when her husband finds out that instead of a wife, all he’s got is an ornament to hang on his Christmas tree?”

  “Are you saying I’m lucky to have been born with qualities that aren’t as obvious?” I asked sarcastically. I can’t deny that I enjoyed seeing her get herself into knots of deception and then try to wriggle out of them.

  “Did I hurt you when I said that, Darcy? I didn’t mean to.”

  “Nothing hurts me,” I answered.

  “How could it when nothing touches you?”

  It wasn’t really a question and so it didn’t require an answer and after a while, Jewel fell asleep with a cigarette still burning in the ashtray. I woke her up to tell her to go to bed before she lit the house on fire.

  I stayed awake to wait up for the girls, wanting to get another look at their dresses and moreover to admire my own handiwork. It was after midnight when they came home, and Caroline burst in the door crying. Her dress was all muddy, like she’d been rolling around in dirt. Luca’s vest was torn, and blood streaked his white shirt front. “What the—?”

  “Luca got in a fight,” Caroline blurted out, collapsing into a chair, while Jolene calmly said goodnight to her date and kissed him dispassionatel
y on the cheek. Jolene never upset herself over things that did not directly affect her. Luca muttered foreign words I figured were curses. Blood trickled from his nose and I went into the kitchen to get a towel, wondering how Mr. Popularity could wind up a bloodied mess. I pressed the towel to his face, but he pushed me away. It was clear that his beautiful nose was broken and wasn’t ever going to be perfectly straight again. I knew I’d never get a good report from Luca, so I left him to bleed on the carpet and went to Caroline.

  “What happened?” I demanded. “I could take a strap to you for getting your dress dirty after all my sewing.”

  “Oh, Darcy, it was awful,” Caroline began. “When Aaron punched Luca in the nose, he fell into me and I fell into a big puddle.”

  “Aaron?” I felt the blood leave my face. “Aaron Hamilton?”

  “None other. Turns out he wasn’t away. He came back a while ago and was hiding at home, not going to school or seeing anybody. They say he’s the one who found his father swinging from the roof. And tonight— Oh, Darcy, I told Luca to stay out of it.”

  “Stay out of what?”

  She swallowed hard. “You know Clary, the millworker’s daughter?”

  “Some.”

  “Well, before he took off, Aaron and her were keeping company. She’s loose and wild. Everybody knows that, and she’s certainly not worth getting in a fight over.” She paused to give Luca a poisonous look. “We were coming out of the dance and we heard somebody yelling at Clary. She was crying and I told Luca we should move on and mind our own business. But Luca had to be a newsy Esther and he hung back to hear what they were fighting about. Well, it was Aaron and he was all liquored up, calling Clary a whore, and if you ask me, he’s right. Then he smacked her across the face with the back of his hand, and that’s when Luca stepped in and swung at him.” She gave him another poisonous look. “Missed him by a mile and Aaron swung back and knocked Luca unconscious. It took us five minutes to revive him, and by that time, Aaron and Clary were gone.”

  Hearing Caroline repeat what had happened, and now knowing nobody’d died, I laughed out loud. Luca was a comic sight to behold. All afternoon, he’d been preening in front of the mirror admiring himself. But even as I laughed, I was afraid for him. He was foreign and too naive to appreciate the enemy he had made that night, an enemy who would be exquisitely patient, and all the more dangerous for it. I was afraid for myself, too, given the circumstances in which I’d last seen Aaron. But this was my big chance to torture Luca, and I wasn’t about to let it slip away.

  “If you’d only minded your own damn business, like Caroline told you, none of this would have happened, you know. Now I might be willing to go everywhere with you and protect you—for a fee. A pantywaist like yourself needs—”

  Luca glared at me, eyes burning with all the passion of insulted manhood, and for once I shut up.

  We didn’t speak to each other for a week after that, and might never have spoken another word to each other ever again, if not for Luca’s getting so sick and almost dying on us.

  At first, I thought his coming down with measles was hysterical, it being a little kid’s disease. But when his fever started to climb and he became delirious, I started to get scared that he really might die. As far as could be told, he had not come from hearty stock—his father having dropped dead without much provocation. What if Luca up and followed suit? I worried. That possibility kept me vigilant and sometimes, when he was too quiet, I’d stick a hand mirror under his nose to make sure he was still breathing.

  No one was allowed in the sick room but me. The girls had had the chicken pox but not measles, and Jewel and I couldn’t remember if she’d had them or not. I had never had measles or chicken pox or anything else but my strange imperviousness to any kind of illness was just one more of my virtues that wasn’t obvious,so I nursed him by myself. That was the way I wanted it. I couldn’t have stood for anyone else to take care of him.

  Often, when he was out of his head with fever, he would call for his dead mother. It made me uncomfortable to hear a boy nearly full grown to a man calling, “Mama, Mama!” just like a child, and I squirmed whenever I heard it and was embarrassed for him.

  Maybe he thought I was his mother because once he reached out and grabbed a hold of my skirt. At first, I tried to shake him off, but it seemed to calm him to have a hold of it, and when I’d satisfied myself that he truly was out of his head, I let his hand stay and didn’t even flinch when his arms reached out to encircle my waist. I was never sure how, but sometimes my own arms reached out to touch his hair. It was nice hair, dark and thick as rope. Then my fingers strayed down to his neck. His skin was warm to my touch, warm with fever, and smooth and golden. The sun had tanned him, and the color had not faded with fall. I felt my own skin grow warmer, felt the blood in my face come to the surface. It was a strange sensation for me, and I wondered if I could possibly be getting measles too.

  It was then he started rambling again and I wished he could be delirious in English so I could understand. What was he thinking in his feverish brain? Certainly not of me. Of Caroline maybe. Or Jolene or Cathleen Haddock. But never of me.

  His long black lashes cast shadows on his cheekbones. The hard work he had done around the inn had left his shoulders broad and his arms heavily muscled. I stared at the veins in his forearms, thinking how vulnerable a man could look when you focused on his veins.

  In sleep, his lips were slightly parted, revealing very white teeth. I stared at his hands, long fingered and fine. Mine were calloused, the nails broken, and the knuckles knobby. It seemed that something was changing between us as he slept and I kept watch over him, but I had no frame of reference then to reason what it could possibly be.

  On a morning days later, he was strangely still, with none of the earlier thrashing and moaning. The delirium had left him, and I was afraid that life was going with it. Looking down at him, hoping for a sign, I was taken aback when his eyes opened suddenly.

  He smiled weakly, dark circles rimming his eyes, the bones of his face more prominent for the weight he’d lost, and when he spoke, his words were labored. “You are worried,” he whispered.

  I turned my back to him quickly, dunking a cloth in the basin by the bureau. “So you’re back,” I said, returning to his bedside to slap the cool rag on his forehead.

  “Why are you worried, Darcy? Were you afraid that I would die?” he said with a bashful kind of sweetness.

  “Sure, I was. Do you think I wanted to have to go to the expense of burying you? Having to help with your father’s funeral was bad enough.”

  His eyes closed, so I didn’t have to turn away this time. There was no need. Things were back to the way they had been before. “Don’t go back to sleep just yet. I’ve got to wash you first.”

  “Wash me?” His eyes widened.

  “Yessir. I’ve been washing you all week.”

  The expression on his face told me that it was the first time he realized that underneath the covers, he was naked. He drew the sheet up over his bare chest.

  “Oh, don’t be silly. I’ve seen every inch of you, and I didn’t find anything unusual.”

  He clutched the sheet, and as if to turn the tables on me, he began to look at my chest. “Why don’t you or the girls wear—the thing?” He drew his hand across his own chest to show what he meant.

  “You mean binders?” I asked bluntly. He nodded. “Jewel doesn’t believe in binders. She says they keep you from breathing right. Now go back to sleep. I’ll just sit here and read my book.” I opened my Rubaiyat and pretended to read.

  He was quiet for a long time after that and I thought he’d fallen back asleep. But then in the middle of the verse, And this I know: whether the one true light, kindle to love, or wrath consume me quite, his voice broke into my thoughts.

  “Where will you go when you go away, Darcy?” he asked.

  I put the book do
wn and looked at him. His eyes were on the ceiling. “Lots of places.”

  “Where first?” he persisted.

  “Are you just asking so as you can laugh at me and get me back for laughing at you?”

  “No,” he said. “I am not like you. When I ask, it is only because I want to know.”

  “All right then. Kathmandu. That’s where I want to go first.”

  “Yes, Kathmandu,” he said, as if it was familiar to him. “The capital city of Nepal, population: two hundred thousand; form of government: a kingdom, with Hinduism and Buddhism the major religions; climate: from tropical to Arctic, depending on altitude; currency: the rupee, with one hundred paisas in a rupee; language: Nepali, with English taught in some schools…”

  I was dumbfounded, but not for long. Soon my amazement turned to anger. Why, somehow, he’d snuck into my room that I kept locked at all times and read my K volume of the Encyclopedia. “Where’d you find out all that?” I demanded.

  He folded his hands behind his head and continued to stare at the ceiling. “I looked it up in school.”

  “But why?”

  He hesitated. “The first day I came here, you asked me if Italy was near Kathmandu.”

  I waited. “Well? What reason is that?”

  He started to speak and closed his mouth again. “Maybe someday you will go to Italy.”

  “What would I want to go there for?”

  “To see the Colosseum perhaps.”

  “I don’t want to look at old buildings. We got plenty of old buildings right here in Galen.”

  “Or the Vatican.”