The Smile of an Angel

by Peggy Webb

  “Whatever happened to it?”

  “We never knew. Mom was in the habit of opening his door every morning because she couldn’t stand to see a thing caged. Usually the bird would fly around the porch, swoop down into the gardenia bushes, then fly right back into his cage. But one morning he didn’t. He flew past the magnolia tree and just kept on going. Seeking freedom, I guess.”

  “Or adventure.” Jake smiled at her. “Like our Gwendolyn.”

  “I miss her.”

  “She’ll probably come back, if nothing else, to show off her children.”

  Emily was laughing, then all of a sudden she was crying, in spite of her fierce determination not to. She tried to pretend she was merely sniffing, but Jake caught on to her.

  “Hey, no tears. I’ll be back before you know it.”

  “It’s not that. Honestly, it’s not.”

  He cupped her face in the tenderest way imaginable and bent close. “What’s wrong, Em?”

  “I don’t know.”

  And she didn’t. Not really. She just had this feeling. The kind you get when you’re headed to the airport, but you know you’ve already missed your plane.

  Jake kissed her, started to go, then leaned down and kissed her again.

  “Em, promise me you’ll take care of yourself while I’m gone.”

  “Of course. I always do.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Well, so am I. What do you think I’m going to do? Throw myself in front of a truck or something?”

  She made herself laugh to show that she was just kidding and that she had nothing to cry about and that all this was a silly misunderstanding, which wasn’t how she wanted to say goodbye to Jake. Not at all.

  “I’m sorry, Jake. That came out wrong…. Excuse me.” She ended up having to go into the bathroom and blow her nose on toilet paper, of all things. The indignity of it. And when she went back into the bedroom, Jake was smiling.

  “I’m going to get six boxes of tissue and put them in strategic places so my girl will always have one handy.”

  “You don’t mind that I’m the original weeping willow?”

  “If anybody ever said such a thing about you, you’d box his ears. At the very least.” He pulled her close. “You’re not a weeping willow, Emily Westmoreland. You’re just like your father. Tough as nails.”

  “Okay, then. Good. I like that.”

  “So do I. Very much.” He kissed her on the cheek, then on the lips. For a long, long time. “Bye, Em.”

  “Till we meet again, Jake.”

  She watched until he was out the door and for a long time afterward. For some reason she wanted to close her eyes and not open them until he got back. Like a little child. Shutting out the world. Keeping everything safe.

  “Be safe,” she whispered.

  Then she picked up the phone to call her mom.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  August 30, 2001

  I’ve started sleeping in Michael’s shirts. Every one of them. One after the other.

  Here’s what I do: I leave him at the hospital still sleeping as peacefully as a child, then go home, open his closet and press my face into his shirts, all hanging useless now. I take deep breaths, hoping to catch the familiar scent of him, but it has been so long since he’s worn them that all I can smell is starch.

  Then I strip and wrap one of his shirts around me like arms. Holding me close. I climb into bed and curl up in a ball, tucking as much of my body as possible inside Michael’s shirt. Then I cry. For fear that he will never wear them again.

  It has been so long! Summer is almost gone. He missed the gardenias and the roses, the lilies and the asters, the night-blooming moon vine and the sweetly scented dianthus.

  I picked them all and carried them to the hospital, hoping the scents would arouse him. But of course, it didn’t work, and now the dreadful heat of August combined with an awful season of drought has taken its toll, and the garden is stripped of bloom. Browning and barren.

  It looks the way I feel.

  Daniel was alarmed when he came last weekend and saw me. He said, “We must not lose faith.”

  And oh, I know he’s right. I know. Still I have to search very hard inside myself to find a little leftover hope.

  Even the doctors are losing hope. I can tell.

  And yet…and yet, Michael still looks healthy. With regular therapy, he is fairly fit and toned. Thanks to his naturally olive skin and many hours burning in the sun and snow, he doesn’t have the pallor of a sick man but the swarthy look of a man who might have just come in from the garden and stretched out to take a nap.

  Hannah is still in Yellowstone on assignment, but Emily is here for a few days. Glowing, I might add. Thank goodness.

  Jake’s in the Himalayas once more, and she carries a letter from him around in her purse. I asked her to read it to Michael, the parts that deal with his latest climb. I told her he doesn’t hear enough about the mountains. I said, “Maybe that’s what he needs to get through the darkness that still holds him prisoner.”

  Emily sat by Michael’s bed and held his hand, and before she started to read, this is what she said to him:

  “Now, Dad, I want you to pay close attention because you’re the expert, and if Jake’s not doing something right, I want to know about it. I want you tell me so we can correct the situation. I’m in love with him, you know, and I want him to always come back to me. The way you always come back to Mom.”

  Well, I had a hard time holding back tears when she said that. Thank goodness I was standing behind her and she didn’t see me wiping my face. She’d have understood, though. Emily’s like me in that respect. Emotional.

  Michael used to call tears my safety valve. He’d say, “Releasing those tears keeps you from exploding, my love.”

  He was right, of course. During the whole course of our marriage I never once raised my voice to him. Not once. Nor he to me. I always told him if anything bothered me, and he always listened. And when I cried, he held me close and dried my tears with the tips of his fingers and told me, “You go ahead and cry, angel. I’m here, holding on to you.”

  My Michael is so wise, so compassionate.

  Well, anyway, back to Jake’s letter.

  He told about the people in his latest expedition, about how he’d always screened them carefully. About how he was growing suspicious that one of the women in his group had lied about her climbing credentials, particularly since she didn’t seem to know an ice ax from a butter knife.

  Jake made light of the whole thing in his letter, of course, and had both of us laughing, but lack of experience is a serious matter on an unforgiving mountain. I didn’t say that to Emily, though. I didn’t want to worry her.

  And she’s so giddy right now with her love I don’t think she thought of it. Or maybe she just doesn’t know.

  You see, when Michael climbed, I didn’t talk about the dangers to my children. I wanted them to think of their father as merely being off on the job, the way a CPA goes to his office or a farmer goes to his fields.

  The main thing is that Emily is happy. All my children have settled back into their lives. That doesn’t mean they’re not worried about Michael, of course, or that they love him any less.

  Life goes on, that’s all. I’ve told them that many times, and if he could talk that’s what he’d tell them, too.

  Nobody knows how long this thing will go on, nor when it will be over.

  The thing is, I’m prepared for the long haul. Or at least I think I am.

  There are all these tricks I have to keep myself going. One of them is to listen to Michael’s voice on the answering machine. “Hello, you’ve reached Michael and Anne Westmoreland. Leave a message and we’ll get back to you.”

  I play that over and over. I hear his dear voice and think of the thousand messages I’ve left him since he’s been in the hospital. The thousand things I’ve said to try to bring him back.

  “I love you, Michael,” that’s what I al
ways say. Then I say, “Do you hear me? If you do, why don’t you get back to me? Why don’t you answer me? Wake up, Michael. Please, please wake up.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Jake and his party had only been on the mountain four days before the inexperience of one of the climbers became obvious. Rosalee Edmunds, who had presented herself as a “veteran of the world’s most challenging peaks, including Everest,” had neither the stamina nor the strength and expertise to reach the summit of Dapsang.

  Rather than make a scene, Jake decided to have a private talk with her at the end of the day’s climb. While the rest of his crew and clients were resting, he asked Rosalee to join him in his tent.

  She was so exhausted when she sat down he thought she was going to fall right to sleep. There were two ways Jake could approach her: soft pedal or get straight to the point.

  He chose the latter.

  “Mrs. Edmunds,” he said, “it’s clear to me that you’re not going to be able to make it to the summit.”

  “Oh, but I will. I promise you.”

  “I’m not looking for promises here. I’m dealing with reality. The fact is, you’re slowing down this climb, and that puts the rest of my party in danger. I’m going to send you back down the mountain with Jamal Tongay.”

  “I’m not going.”

  “He’s my right-hand man, Mrs. Edmunds, one of the best natural climbers I’ve ever seen. You’ll be perfectly safe with him. You’ll be safe at base camp until we pick you up on our return trip.”

  “You don’t understand, Mr. Bean. It’s not my safety I’m concerned about. Nor yours, either, for that matter. I paid money for you to get me to the top of this damned mountain, and that’s where I’m going.”

  “There’s a storm brewing, Mrs. Edmunds. Already our window of opportunity is narrowing. With you in the climb, the party has no hope of gaining the summit.”

  “That’s not my problem, Mr. Bean. That’s yours.”

  “Exactly. That’s why I’m sending you back.”

  “Oh, but you’re not. That is, unless you want to have a lawsuit on your hands that will tie you up in court for so long you might never see the summit of another mountain.”

  Her threat was not an idle one. She was married to one of the most powerful lawyers in Georgia. Obviously she was on the climb for one reason and one only. Bragging rights.

  He’d heard other guides talking about it, the society matrons they’d dragged to the tops of mountains. Men, too. People who had no business on a mountain in the first place.

  He’d prided himself on never taking one of them in his party, and now he had only himself to blame. He usually screened more carefully. Lately, though, he’d been so preoccupied he hadn’t done his usual thorough job. He should have double-checked Rosalee Edmunds.

  “Threats don’t work with me, Mrs. Edmunds.”

  “Mr. Bean, the only way I’m going back down this mountain is kicking and screaming all the way. Now, unless you want that kind of scene on your hands, unless you want to add assault to the list of charges I’ll bring against you, I suggest we all get some sleep so we’ll be ready to start fresh in the morning.”

  Rosalee Edmunds got up and walked out.

  That was why, the next morning, she was still in the climbing party. With Jamal Tongay as her personal guide.

  “I’ll carry her up the mountain on my back if necessary,” he’d told Jake. “If we drop behind, you and the rest of the party push on. That way you have a chance of reaching the summit and Mrs. Edmunds is placated.”

  Jake had agreed, but against his better judgment. Then he’d put his second-best Sherpa climber in Jamal’s place and resumed his push to the top.

  The sixth day out, Jamal and Rosalee had dropped so far behind they were out of sight. The winds had picked up speed. Jake studied the situation, briefly considered turning and heading back down the mountain, then decided to continue.

  They were making good time now that Rosalee was not in the party. They might just make it.

  When Emily saw her mother coming up the sidewalk, she raced into the living room to make sure everything was in order, then turned on the stereo, adjusted her skirt and flung open the door.

  “Good grief!” Anne stepped back and stood under the porch light. “What’s going on?”

  “We’re going to Hawaii, that’s what.”

  “Well, of course, Michael and I will go when he…” She covered her mouth with her hand as if she could hold back the pain, and Emily grabbed her arm and pulled her into the house.

  “Here, put this on.”

  Emily thrust a grass skirt and coconut bra at her mother. Exactly like the one she was wearing. Hannah had brought them back from Hawaii four years ago when she was there on assignment. She’d also brought some CDs of Polynesian music, and that was what was playing now, “Maori Blue Eyes,” which the three of them had played one evening after supper while they attempted the hula. Their audience of two, Michael and Daniel, had doubled over laughing.

  Anne held the skirt at arm’s length. “I’d forgotten about these.”

  “Put it on.”

  At first Emily thought her mother was going to protest, then she said, “Why not?”

  “Great. Things need lightening up around here.”

  “Right.” Anne held the coconut bra in front of her blouse. “I’ve gained weight since I wore this last. I’ll probably spill out of it.”

  “Sexy. I’ll take a snapshot so Dad can see it.”

  She actually did take a picture when her mother came back looking better than any woman of fifty-something had a right to look.

  “I only hope I hold up as well as you,” Emily said.

  “Hush. You make me sound like an old fossil.”

  “Do you remember the steps, Mom?” Emily began to sway her hips to the music.

  “We made them up, with Hannah choreographing, so you know what that means.”

  What it meant was they might or might not have been doing the real hula. Give Hannah one shot at something, and she fancied herself an expert. That was how she was. Self-confident is what she called herself, but Emily sometimes called her bullheaded.

  “Who cares whether they’re right or not?” Emily picked up the plastic ukulele she’d found in the back of the closet in Hannah’s room. Another of her sister’s attempts at knowing everything. She plucked a sour note or two, then began swaying around the room.

  “Come on, Mom. Get with the program.”

  “We look ridiculous, you know.

  “Yeah, I know. That’s what makes it so much fun.”

  Her mother stood by the piano watching, while Emily made a fool of herself. She was beginning to think her plan to bring some fun back into her mother’s life was a total failure when all of a sudden Anne let out a whoop and started twirling around the room, hips rotating like Elvis and grass skirt going ninety to nothing.

  They danced until they were both too tired to move, then they collapsed onto the floor, holding on to each other and laughing.

  Emily wished Jake and her dad were there with them, but she caught herself right before she said so. There would be no sadness tonight. That was what she’d decided after she’d left her mother at the hospital. Nothing said to remind both of them of what they’d lost.

  “Lord, these coconut shells are pinching me,” Anne said. “If I don’t get out of them, I’m going to be two bra sizes smaller.”

  “Wait. Don’t take off your costume.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we’re going to a luau.”

  “Where?”

  “In the kitchen.”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve pit-roasted a whole pig in the kitchen?”

  “No, but I did bake ham with pineapple.”

  “For this I have to wear a coconut bra?”

  “Why not?”

  “Indeed, why not?”

  Anne linked arms with her daughter, and they hulaed all the way to the kitchen, hips keeping time to the music.r />
  All in all, Emily considered the evening a roaring success. She couldn’t wait until Jake came home so she could tell him about it.

  The storm struck as Jake and his party were going back down the mountain.

  Fortunately he’d climbed using the siege strategy, and they were not far from Camp II in the lee of a huge dome-shaped rock that would not be whited out unless the storm escalated. And if that happened, they were all doomed.

  All, that is, except Jamal and Rosalee. They had never caught up with Jake’s team. Knowing Jamal, he would have long since departed for the camp.

  That was Jake’s hope as he led his party through the storm. His hope and his prayer.

  “Everybody, stick close,” he yelled, though he wasn’t certain how much his clients heard over the howling wind.

  Still, he wasn’t overly concerned about them. Long before the full force of the storm stuck, he’d paired his clients with his Sherpa team, who knew the mountain like the back of their hand.

  Besides, Jake could already make out a huge shadow emerging through the storm. Dome rock. An enormous flagship wallowing through the waves of snow.

  He gained the last few hundred feet, then flung open the tent flap, calling, “Jamal!”

  The tent was empty. Jake went back outside, cupped his hands and screamed, “Jamal!” No beaming brown face emerged from any of the tents. No gold-toothed smile greeted him.

  Frantic, Jake did a tent-by-tent search. Jamal and Rosalee were nowhere to be found.

  As the rest of his party straggled in two-by-two, Jake called his four best Sherpas into his tent for a conference.

  “Has anybody had radio contact with Jamal?”

  They all shook their heads, and Jake’s spirits fell.

  Somewhere out in the storm were his best Sherpa guide and one of his clients. In all his years of guiding, he’d never lost anybody.

  It happened. He heard about it all the time from other guides, many of whom had more experience than he did. Excellent climbers. Responsible men.