CoffeeHouse Angel

by Suzanne Selfors

  "Grandma?" I went into the kitchen. "Did you see the late fees on these bills? They add up to hundreds of dollars."

  She waved me away. "Not now, Katrina. I'm not feeling well. I'm going to lie down."

  She gripped the handrail and slowly pulled herself up the stairs. Going to bed at 4:30

  in the afternoon wouldn't solve our money problems, but sometimes, crawling under the covers is the only thing a person can think to do.

  I started to wipe down the counters, when Irmgaard opened her purse and took out her wallet. She held out two twenty-dollar bills.

  "Oh, thanks, Irmgaard, but I'm sure things aren't that bad," I said. "We'll work it out."

  She frowned and put the money on the counter.

  "You know Grandma won't accept that." I picked up the bills and tucked them back into her purse. Irmgaard didn't have money to give away. No customers meant no tips.

  I changed the radio station. Irmgaard never seemed to mind. Getting lost in the music always made cleanup go faster. As I hummed, the image of Malcolm with his eyes closed kept popping into my head. Did he know how perfect his face was? Did he know that even with those ragged clothes he was gorgeous? Watching him standing there, I had wanted to lean forward and kiss his lips. I didn't even know him and I had wanted to kiss him.

  A sudden tap on my shoulder nearly gave me a heart attack. Irmgaard stood next to me, her coat and hat on. "Closing time already?" I asked.

  She bit her lower lip and looked away, uncertain about something.

  "What's wrong?" I turned down the radio.

  She pulled a small book from her coat's pocket--one of those little gift books that you find near a cash register. The gold foiled title was Angels Among Us. She waved it at me. "Is it for me?" Irmgaard had given me tons of gifts over the years, remembering every birthday and every holiday. On Easter she always brought a basket of chocolate eggs, on Valentine's Day she brought a bottle of drugstore perfume. She didn't have kids of her own, so I always figured I was sort of her surrogate kid.

  She pointed to the image on the cover, one of those religious paintings from the Middle Ages. The person in the painting was robed, with large wings on his back and a golden halo radiating from his head. I took the book. "It's an angel," I said. She nodded eagerly, then motioned me toward the front door. She opened the door, then motioned again.

  We stood outside the shop and Irmgaard pointed up the sidewalk. Then she pointed to her skirt. I was clueless. She tugged at her skirt. "I don't get it," I said.

  We went through this all time. It was a game called What is Irmgaard trying to say?

  Vows of silence can be really annoying. Certainly they can create an aura of mystery and even reverence, for any kind of vow takes dedication, but if you're going to be silent, then you'd better develop a keen ability to play charades, or you'll drive everyone crazy.

  She pointed--sidewalk, skirt, sidewalk, skirt.

  "I still don't get it."

  She sighed, walked up the sidewalk, then stopped. She held out her hand, palm up, as if balancing something. She pointed to her hand, then to her skirt, then to the sidewalk. Over and over and over.

  Oh. "Do you mean the guy who was standing right here on the sidewalk, holding the sample cup? The guy wearing the kilt?"

  She nodded, then took the book and opened it to the first chapter.

  It was called "The Messenger."

  Fourteen

  I ate some of Irmgaard's clam chowder at our upstairs table. Why would she think that Malcolm was an angel? She was deeply religious, no doubt about that. She silently prayed before eating anything. I'd often seen her kiss the cross that hung around her neck, and she kept a travel Bible in her purse. But angels didn't stand around on sidewalks, talking to people. Or wear kilts or sleep in alleys. Did they? Unfortunately, I didn't have time to look through Irmgaard's gift book. I barely had time to squeeze in my geometry homework before Elizabeth came by at seven to take me to her art class.

  "I called the teacher. There's an extra easel for you. This will be fun."

  "Don't get your hopes up." I knew that I'd massacre whatever I painted. But at least the class would be something to add to the all-important checklist.

  Grandma Anna lay on her bed, her radio tuned to a book discussion on NPR. "Can I get you anything?" I asked.

  "No thanks, sweetheart," she said quietly. "I'm just worn out. You go and have fun."

  "You sure? I don't have to go." She did seem more pale than the normal Norwegian pale.

  "Go on."

  Elizabeth and I ate the last of the krumkakes on the way to the community center. She had changed into her painting pants--an expensive pair of jeans with paint dribbled all over them. Sometime after school she had added a red streak to her hair. I slid into the passenger seat in my usual jeans and sweatshirt. Elizabeth talked about Face the whole way. She'd seen him in the grocery store buying a bag of potato chips, which gave her hope because she liked potato chips too. "Do you think I should sign up for golf lessons? Doesn't that just seem like the most boring game in the entire world?"

  The parking lot was mostly full. The fat brick building that housed the community center used to be an elementary school. Flyers and notices wallpapered the hallway.

  "That's where the alcoholics meet," Elizabeth said as we passed a room with a donut-and cookie-covered table. She darted in and grabbed us a couple of pink iced donuts.

  "A bunch of divorced men meet over there," she said, continuing the tour. "They cry a lot."

  In room 105, we collected two stools and two paint-splattered easels. Elizabeth gave me a piece of watercolor paper and some paints. All the other painters looked much older. They carried nice cases for their supplies. "You have to be sixteen to take this class," Elizabeth said, handing me a brush. Then she introduced me to the teacher, an anorexic-looking woman named Edna who must have had all the bones in her hand removed, because I'd never shook a hand that limp.

  "What are we going to paint?" I asked as Elizabeth settled onto her stool.

  A fat guy walked in, dressed in only a bathrobe. Elizabeth smiled wickedly. "This is Life Drawing."

  "Huh?"

  "Don't giggle," she said. "This is serious. The human body is a serious subject." She tied her hair back with a pink bandanna. "All the renowned masters painted nudes."

  "Nudes?"

  Fat Guy dropped his bathrobe.

  They call it Life Drawing, but they should just call it Buck-Naked People Drawing or Let It All Hang Out Drawing. What's wrong with painting a bowl of apples or a vase of flowers? Look, I admit it. I'm just not mature enough to sit on a stool and paint real, naked people. It's beyond me. Especially naked guys.

  I don't have brothers. Girls who have brothers are way ahead of those of us who don't.

  The only male in my house had been my grandfather, and he never walked around in anything skimpier than a pair of long red pajamas with baseballs on them.

  The teacher and Fat Guy talked about his pose. The contrast between the two was shocking, her twiglike arms flying around as she explained her vision, his behemoth gut sagging as he listened. She kept talking, as if it was the most natural thing on earth to talk to a completely naked guy. He said that his back was acting up, so she suggested a reclining position. And then he reclined, in all his glory.

  Elizabeth scooted her easel until it touched mine, creating a screen to hide behind because she was...giggling. Ms. Sophisticated Artist was losing it. She cupped her hands over her mouth. "Oh...my...God..." She almost knocked over her water jar. "Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha."

  "What's the matter with you? I thought you did this all the time," I whispered.

  "That's my dad's caterer."

  I peeked over the top of my easel. Fat Guy was plugged into his own music, his pink feet tapping merrily. No way was I going to paint his private parts. Forget about that.

  Elizabeth dabbed her eyes with her sleeve and finally got it together. We kept our easels side by side so we could talk, which di
dn't seem to bother anyone, since everyone was plugged into their own world.

  With a few strokes, Elizabeth outlined Fat Guy, the proportions perfect. I tried to copy her painting, but his feet ended up looking like blocks of wood, and his head was way too big. Elizabeth dipped a brush in magenta. Magenta? I didn't see any magenta on our model. I mixed white and red into a sickening shade of pink.

  "I'm going to ask Face to the Solstice Festival. I'm just going to do it."

  "Really?"

  "Yes. I'm making myself sick with all this nervous crap. I'm acting so meek. I'm not meek."

  "No, you're definitely not meek," I told her.

  "Being meek never got anyone anywhere."

  "Aren't the meek supposed to inherit the earth?"

  "I hope not. Can you imagine how boring that would be?" She scowled at my puddle of paint. "What are you doing?"

  "Making skin color."

  "You need to add less red and more yellow."

  Despite the addition of yellow, my nude looked like a Pepto-Bismol explosion. Edna, the art teacher, strolled by. Through tight lips, she pointed out that my perspective was all wrong, that my subject lacked emotion, and that I needed to add more yellow to my skin tone. "Thanks," I said. And then, so she wouldn't think I actually cared, I added, "I'm just doing this because my guidance counselor wanted me to."

  "How are you going to ask him?" I asked after Edna had praised Elizabeth's work and moved on.

  "In person. Face-to-face."

  I was awed by her courage, but I always felt that way about Elizabeth. It's something my two best friends had in common--once they knew what they wanted, they went for it. A perfectly simple philosophy. I understood the concept but could never quite put it into motion. Like swimming four lengths of the Nordby pool. I knew what it took to do it, I just couldn't quite manage it.

  "He gave me another bean," I said.

  Elizabeth nearly poked her eye out with her brush. "No way! Let me have it this time.

  Please."

  "You don't even know what I wished for."

  "Oh. What?"

  "Fame."

  She sat up straight. "Why did you wish for fame? You don't want to be famous." She peered around the side of her easel. Closing one eye, she held out her brush the way artists do, measuring something. "I'm the one who wants to be famous. If I were famous, then my gallery would be the most popular gallery in New York City." I added more pink to his gut. "Maybe I do want to be famous."

  "No way. You hate it when people stare at you, and that's what happens to famous people. They stare at you, they follow you everywhere. I'd love it."

  "What do you think I should have wished for?"

  "Well, it was supposed to be what you most desire, right?"

  "Yeah."

  She tapped her brush against her knee. "Um. I don't know. You don't really have any interests." She shrugged. "Maybe your biggest desire is to have your parents back."

  Why hadn't I thought of that? Of all the things I could have thought of, why hadn't that popped right into my head? Not that it mattered, because you can't bring people back from the dead, but shouldn't that have been what I most desired? It's just that my parents were like a dream, long faded from my memory, just two faces in a photo near my bed. I missed the idea of them, but an idea is not the same thing as an actual memory. It lacks emotion. So I didn't spend my days longing for two people I couldn't remember. Of course, my grandmother's grief was an entity unto itself.

  "If you don't eat the bean, will you let me eat it?"

  "It's at home." It wasn't. It was melting in my jeans pocket, but for some reason I didn't feel like sharing. Elizabeth was so good at getting her way, whether it was help with math homework or choosing what kind of soda we'd split at the movies. I knew that if I showed her the bean, I'd never see it again. "Want to hear something really weird?"

  "Yeah."

  "Irmgaard thinks that Malcolm's an angel."

  Elizabeth just about fell off her stool. "NO WAY!"

  We got into trouble after that outburst and Edna separated us. I had to struggle with my skin tones alone. More yellow made things worse. He looked like he was made out of Play-Doh. Then those stupid watercolors ran down the page, so it looked like he was leaking. The teacher wasn't impressed.

  The end result of the Life Drawing class had nothing to do with technique but had everything to do with attitude, which illustrates the core difference between the way Elizabeth deals with the world and the way I deal with it. She painted Fat Guy in his entirety, even his private parts, and added all sorts of decorative elements, like a climbing vine and a Grecian urn and splashes of magenta and turquoise. I painted a lump of flesh and avoided all the... details. I never even considered adding my own touches. It never crossed my mind that we would be allowed to do that.

  "What about the bean?" Elizabeth asked as we walked down the hall. "Please?"

  I wished I hadn't told her. She'd never give up. "Fine. Let's grind it up and drink it tomorrow morning."

  "Tomorrow's not good. I'm going to be gone all day. Mom's taking me to this special dermatologist in Seattle. It takes a year to get an appointment with her."

  "Okay. Then we'll do it Friday morning?"

  "Definitely."

  "Hey, when are you going to ask Face?"

  "Friday. At lunch. Don't let me chicken out, okay?"

  "Okay."

  "I mean it, Katrina. I'm going to do it. I'm going to walk right up to him. Because being meek doesn't get a person anywhere."

  I crumpled up my painting and threw it into the trash.

  If the meek do inherit the earth, at least they'll have something impressive to put on their college applications.

  Fifteen

  Thursday morning came and Grandma Anna still felt sick. "It's my stomach," she said, refusing a plate of toast.

  "Do you have the flu?"

  "I don't think so." She pushed back the quilt and sat at the edge of her bed. "It feels like indigestion. I must have eaten something bad."

  "Maybe it's because you're so worried," I said, sitting next to her. "Why won't you let me help with the bills?"

  "It's my job to worry about the bills." She patted my hand. "Your job is to go to school."

  "But I think I should stay home and take care of you."

  "Irmgaard will take care of me." She stepped into some slippers. "You go to school.

  Get good grades, go to a good college."

  My grandmother used to be so strong. But age had crept up, and like Lars she didn't want to be treated differently just because her body was slowing down. Anna Svensen had her pride and she believed that her problems were no one's business. Like my grandfather's alcoholism.

  No one knew that he used to drink himself to sleep every night. Lucky for us he'd been a peaceful drunk, but she never told a soul.

  I ate the toast, then did my morning chores. I turned on the yellow light and peered out the back window. The alley was empty. Why would Irmgaard think that Malcolm was an angel? He worked as a messenger and had come to Nordby to deliver a message--so he said. Could be he was homeschooled. Could be he'd been partying that night and had ended up in the alley after getting real drunk. Weekend binge drinking was popular with a lot of students at Nordby High. He was probably no different.

  So, if I thought about it enough, I could explain his sudden appearance, but how to explain his odd behavior? Crazy had already occurred to me, but if he wasn't crazy, then why would he be making up such a weird story about needing to reward my good deed? Why would he be following me around?

  Could he be interested in me? What a concept.

  Thursday was a total bore. Elizabeth wasn't at school and I didn't see Vincent because he spent the entire day off campus doing a morning talk show and then an afternoon talk show. I kept thinking about Malcolm, working it over and over in my mind.

  Could he possibly like me? What did it matter? He had said good-bye and I was back to my normal routine.

  On
Friday morning Vincent showed up extra early. He peeled off his coat and hat and sat at the counter. "Why-are you dressed up?" I asked. He never wore button-down shirts.

  "I've got that interview with People magazine today."

  "Oh. Right." I sliced some pumpernickel and dropped it into the toaster. "You look nice." He did. He rested his chin in his hand and closed his eyes. He had spent most of his life since seventh grade exhausted. Swim practice every morning and afternoon, late nights keeping his A average. He helped his dad with the domestic stuff too. No one knew where Vincent's mom had gone. She had left ages ago, with a married man, and hadn't been back to Nordby. He never wanted to talk about her. Though his dad had given away all her belongings, Vincent had kept a few hidden in his room--a blouse at the very back of his closet and a necklace tucked in his bedside drawer. We had each lost a huge part of our lives, but in a way, his situation was worse. My mom hadn't purposely abandoned me. That had to hurt beyond words.

  He yawned.

  "You could stop swimming," I said.

  He opened his eyes. "What do you mean?"

  "You don't have to earn a swimming scholarship now."

  "I don't want to stop swimming." The toaster popped. "No one from the Suquamish tribe has ever medaled at the Olympics. No one's even competed at the Olympics. I want to be the first." As always, he practiced that simple philosophy--if you want to do something, go for it.

  Elizabeth burst in, her hair pulled into a conservative ponytail. She wore a tan trench coat and plain jeans. My two friends looked as if they'd become Young Republicans overnight. "What are you wearing?"

  "I don't want to freak Face out," she said. "I thought I should turn down the volume."

  "Who's Face?" Vincent asked.

  "This guy that I like, if you must know." Her unlined eyes looked half their regular size. "I'm going to ask him to go to the Solstice Festival with me."

  "Oh, great." Vincent cleared his throat. "Uh, by the way, this is probably a good time to tell you that I'm also going to the festival."

  "Huh?" I stopped buttering the toast.

  He forced a smile. "Heidi Darling asked me."