by Amanda Leduc
For my family, who never stopped believing in this story.
And is it not true in this instance also that one
whom God blesses he curses in the same breath?
SØREN KIERKEGAARD
Ten
Sunday
Sam’s cat crumpled like paper under the truck’s wheel. He knelt down to touch her and then something like heat, some sudden shock of air, surged through his hands.
Suddenly she was breathing, blinking up at him through a mass of matted fur. Dead, and then not-dead, and his were the hands that had done it.
A car door slammed; he cradled the cat, heard footsteps. When he looked up he saw a boy, standing white and terrified in the same spot where the truck had crushed the cat against the curb. Moments ago, only just. The boy’s mother stood close to the truck, her eyes large and dark with guilt.
“It’s fine,” he said, when he could speak. He avoided the mother and spoke instead to the boy, his hands around Chickenhead, his fingers throbbing with alien power. The wings ached in the chill of the early evening air. “I know it didn’t look like it, but she’s fine.”
“I saw . . . blood,” said the boy. He had stubborn hair. He looked like the kind of boy who would grow up to argue with Sam in one of his classes. One day, if he was still teaching.
“It was a mistake.” He couldn’t think of any other way to say it. “I thought so too, but look.” He let Chickenhead go and clenched his hands to stop the shaking. The cat dropped lightly to the ground and sauntered over to the boy. Sam could hear her purr from five feet away.
“She’s okay,” said the boy. Like Sam, he sounded as though he couldn’t quite believe it. When he knelt and held out his hand, the cat rubbed against his fingers. “What’s her name?”
“Chickenhead,” said Sam. The mother laughed — a high laugh, edged with hysteria — and the boy made a face.
“Chickenhead?” he repeated. If he could see the wings, he wasn’t letting on. “What kind of a name is that?”
“I don’t know,” Sam said, perfectly honest. “I was — ” he almost said high, and then thought better of it. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
The boy’s mother rolled her eyes. “Aidan,” she said, “we should go.”
The boy nodded, but he didn’t get up. “What’re those rips in your shirt for?”
“Those?” Sam shrugged and pointed a lazy hand, careful not to touch the wings. There was his answer, right there. “It’s just an old shirt.”
“Aidan,” his mother said again. “You’re going to be late.”
He was tempted to ask what the boy would be late for, just to keep the two of them there and talking. Instead he whistled, and Chickenhead jumped out of the boy’s arms and sauntered back to him. Aidan gave a small wave and climbed into the truck. And off they went — piano lessons, karate, soccer practice, whatever.
Still clutching the cat, he leaned forward and vomited into the gutter. There was blood on the asphalt. A few clumps of dark fur. The wind flapped against the holes in the back of his shirt.
“Well,” he said. “What happens now?”
Chickenhead, bathed in light, began to purr. She turned on her back and stretched her legs so that her claws caught the wings, which were white now, the feathers long and soft. Sam stood at the end of his drive and let them unfurl — six feet across, maybe more. When he flexed his shoulders, they beat hard against air. He rocked slowly on the balls of his feet and watched the clouds. The sky waited above him. It was almost night. The air was cold. The only light on the street came from him.
Saturday
In the morning he gave in, finally, and cut holes in all of his shirts. Chickenhead watched from the bed as he moved the scissors through the blue plaid shirt from Julie and the cream silk one he’d bought at the overpriced suit store on Robson. The rugby shirts and V-neck sweaters were next — he’d had some of his students pick these out, his finger no longer quite on the pulse of the fashion world. A system that had suited them all — his cash, their amusement. Wasted now, with every thrust of his scissors.
He stopped when he got to the linen shirt that would have seen him through the wedding. Time for coffee, maybe even a morning stroll.
No one used the garden this early on a Saturday, so he took Chickenhead out with him and watched her stalk bugs in the grass. The wings were long enough to touch the ground and bounced softly in the air with each step of his slippered feet. He walked around the pond and watched them unfurl in his reflection. A gift, the priest had said. A gift, and it wasn’t even Christmas.
When he got back inside he picked up the phone and dialed Julie, even though he wasn’t drunk. He moved to hang up when a male voice answered the phone, but then he coughed and his anonymity was gone.
“Sam,” said the voice on the phone.
“Derek. Can I talk to Julie?”
“It’s pretty early,” he said, as though Sam didn’t know. “She’s still sleeping. I can give her a message, if you want.”
“Sure.” He thought for a moment. “Tell her the church still smells the same.”
“Okay.” If Derek found this strange, he didn’t let on. “You have a good day, Sam.” Then he hung up the phone.
Sam was supposed to be the one hanging up. Sam, in point of fact, was supposed to be the one sleeping beside Julie. He listened to the air for a moment. Chickenhead, who had adjusted quite happily to the tuna juice — he was now the only person in this household losing weight — glared at him from where she sat, concentrated on her food.
“I am trying,” he told her, and he shook the phone for emphasis. But his threats, as they both knew well, were laughable at best. She remained impassive, bored, infinitely superior. She licked a paw as Sam watched. Her eyes said pussy, as plain as day.
Friday
School ended in a one-on-one conference, Sam on one side of the desk, Emma on the other.
“You’re not going to tell anybody?” she said.
“There’s nothing to tell. No one will believe me.” He paused. “Are you going to tell anybody?”
This made her laugh. “What makes you think anyone will believe me if they’re not going to believe you?” She ran her fingers over the faded wood of his desk. Her face held a deference he didn’t like. “Are you going to leave?”
“I’m thinking about it,” he said. Which was a lie; he hadn’t thought about anything until right then. “Maybe I’ll go on a road trip.” Suddenly the idea shone in his mind. Sam and Chickenhead and the dying Jetta, Joni Mitchell on the open road. “A pilgrimage.”
“Where would you go?”
“I have no idea.” The word pilgrimage made him think of two things: Mecca and Memphis. Hot sun and fervour and praying five times a day — and Elvis. But he didn’t have the cash for Saudi Arabia, and he wasn’t really a Graceland kind of guy. Besides, a road trip along the Sunshine Coast? With his cat? Taking God’s gift for a spin, that’s all it would be. “You shouldn’t be here,” he said. “You’re always staying after class. I’m getting looks.”
“I have something for you,” Emma said. She reached into her bag and pulled out a twisted loop of metal. There was a circle of string around one end. “It’s an infinity puzzle,” she said. “You’re supposed to get the string off.”
“Thank you.” His hands went automatically to the string and started working it through. “Is this supposed to drive me completely over the edge?”
She laughed. “I was hoping it would save you, actually.”
“Too late,” and his tone was light, even though the words were not. “I don
’t think I have that much further to go.”
Thursday
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”
Like riding a bike, the old cliché. The church felt the same, which shouldn’t have surprised him but did — it had been two years, only that, and somehow it felt as though he’d been gone forever. Worn floorboards and the same threadbare cushions in every pew.
But it wasn’t the same, not really, because Father Jim wasn’t there. Instead, a small dark-haired man shook Sam’s hand and directed him into a pew. His name, he said, was Father Mario. His voice was also small — Sam had to still himself completely to hear him, which was probably the point.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” he repeated. Though he hadn’t come to confess and didn’t believe in sin anyway. But there — that was how he started.
“How long has it been since your last confession?” The priest’s accent was soft and unobtrusive. Filipino, maybe — a roly-poly young boy who’d grown up with the light of God in his eyes.
“I don’t know,” and he shifted in his pew. He’d eschewed the anonymity of the confessional on the chance that Father Mario might have noticed the wings, like Emma, but so far he hadn’t said anything. “I’m not a fan of confession, actually.”
The priest smiled. “Most people aren’t.”
“I’m,” he felt restless now, “not here to confess. I need . . . some advice?”
Father Mario smiled again. “Most people do.”
If this were Father Jim, he would have taken Sam into the rectory and offered him a glass of Scotch. Father Jim, who went way back. He’d taught catechism until Sam switched schools and was famous in the diocese for going sober at Lent. Once upon a time, he was going to marry them, with Bryan there to act as best man and Julie’s mother ready to outdo the town florist on dahlias.
Today, there was only Father Mario, small and stooped in a pew before the altar. He raised a hand and patted the cross at his neck. “What do you need?”
“I’m afraid,” said Sam.
“Afraid of what?”
What, indeed. “I think I’m . . . changing.”
“Change isn’t always bad,” the priest said instantly. “Especially when it draws you out of yourself.”
Sam snickered before he could help it. “I suppose it’s doing that, yes.”
“Not all change seems natural, either,” said the priest. “It is natural, for example, for a man to doubt. The growth to believing is what is so hard.”
Jesus. They actually still said these kinds of things. Sam longed, suddenly, for Father Jim and the Scotch. Advice? Julie probably doled out crap like this to her patients. He stified another snicker, then ruffled his wings and stood. He offered Father Mario an apologetic smile, even though he wasn’t sorry. “Thank you. I’ll try to remember.” There was, he reflected, a bottle of Scotch at home in the cupboard.
The priest stood with him. Before they exited the pew, Father Mario reached out a hand and patted the right wing. When he drew his hand away, there was down on his fingers.
“No one can know what His gifts are for,” the priest said. He grinned, suddenly boyish in the dark light of the church. “I am a man of God,” he said. “Nothing surprises me anymore.”
Wednesday
He decided to skip school again, and drove to Julie’s studio. This time he managed to tuck the wings in so that they didn’t block the rear-view mirror. He parked the Jetta in the old spot, the corner by the rhododendron bush, and walked into the studio with a mat rolled under his arm. Just another patient, that’s all. The receptionist was new, and fell for it. He smiled at his luck and watched her blush. She couldn’t see the wings, obviously — otherwise, there’d be no welcoming grin. The thought took his own smile away, even as the blush deepened down her neck and spread across her collarbones like a flush of poison ivy.
Once upon a time, he might have asked for her number. Asked in spite of Julie. Asked because of Julie, just to make her mad. But once upon a time was long ago. Back when wings weren’t sprouting out of him, back when the world made sense.
Instead he asked for Julie. The receptionist was instantly all business.
“She’s just finishing a class,” she said, and she ushered Sam into the office. “She shouldn’t be long.”
Julie was over twenty minutes. Sam walked around the office and looked at the pictures on her desk — Julie and Derek at the Capilano Bridge, Julie in her gear, doing yoga on the beach. The dogs. The big, slobbering German shepherd—Max, how original — and Einstein, the tiny, slobbering Shih Tzu. They had to be leashed all the time, or God knew what would happen.
Chickenhead had no trouble walking alongside him, even without a leash.
He peeked through the files on her desk because he was bored, because he wanted to make her angry but didn’t know why. The top file was red tab, which meant a hard case, a lot of work. Thirty-four-year-old female with advanced scoliosis and mild cerebral palsy, significant depression, significant suicidal tendencies. Significant. Was that even doctor-speak?
“Sam.”
He looked up and put down the files in one fluid motion. Julie pulled the office door closed and went to the other side of the desk. She took the file and placed her arms around it, a dare, her anger evident in the thrust of her chin, the stiff angle of her legs and feet. Her hair was darker than he remembered.
“Nosing around, I see. Should I be surprised?”
“I was waiting,” he said. “I didn’t make an appointment.”
She had pit stains, which annoyed him. Great gaping circles of dark blue beneath each arm. “I have another class in five minutes.”
“I won’t stay long.”
“Fine,” she said. “What do you want?”
Sam retreated, gripped the back of the patient’s chair, the wings enormous and white and still. “I wanted to ask you something.”
Julie swept an arm out and then back as if to say she had all the time in the world.
“Do you still go to the cathedral?”
She blinked and shook her head. “No.”
“Just that church? Or any others?”
“I haven’t been,” she said, and she flushed. He knew, then, that she hadn’t said anything to her mother. “Derek and I are taking a Buddhism class.”
“I didn’t know they had classes for that type of thing.”
This, of all things, made her angry. “They have catechism — why not this?”
He shrugged. The wings ruffled against his back. They were heavy. Why hadn’t he noticed that before? “I just wondered. I was thinking about Father Jim. Thought I might go and see him, and I wondered if you knew whether he was still at the church. That’s all.”
“Oh.” She shook her head. “No. I don’t know. I could ask my mother, if you want.”
“Don’t bother.” He could ask Carol, but that would get her excited. Not as excited as she would be to find out that her son was sprouting the wings of seraphim — if, indeed, she could see them at all — but there were plenty of things that his mother didn’t need to know.
“Is that really all?” Julie asked.
He fought the urge to snap. If anyone has a right to be edgy here, it’s me. Instead he picked up his mat and ignored the rolling eyes this earned him. “Thanks for letting me stop by.”
“No problem.” Her voice was dry and hesitant at the same time. “Any time.”
He nodded, then turned and took three steps to the door.
“Sam?”
“Hmm?” The sudden thumping of his heart, the clammy slick of his hands. Rocks, his best friend had said. And still, here he was, hoping for the confession, the terrible mistake.
“Are you all right? You look . . . not well.”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Just tired.”
She nodded. “All right. If you see Father Ji
m, tell him I said hello.”
Tuesday
He called in sick, and went to see the doctor. Chickenhead, who hadn’t been eating, came with him in the car — they could stop at the vet on the way home, make it a family affair.
The wings made driving difficult; they were larger than yesterday and pushed against the roof of the car. The brightness of the feathers sent beams of reflected light into his eyes whenever he glanced in the rear-view mirror. Twice, he almost ran into oncoming traffic. Chickenhead and her claws were the only thing that saved him.
In the doctor’s office, he sat quietly in a corner and leafed through a stack of trashy magazines. The wings draped over each side of his chair, terribly unmistakable, terribly invisible. No one glanced his way or said anything. But people avoided the chairs beside him all the same. He sat and turned the pages and wondered what the doctor would say.
But when the doctor called his name, she said nothing. He put down the magazine and followed her through to the examination room, ducking slightly to fit the wings under the door. That, oddly enough, got him a look. But she covered it quickly and ushered him into the third room on the left. He ducked under the doorframe again and turned to face her. She couldn’t see the wings, he was sure of it.
The doctor was short and very pretty. She wore a yellow shirt under her lab coat and her hair was brown, like Julie’s. “Mr. Connor,” she said. Her voice, if it had a colour, would be yellow too. “What can we help you with today?”
Help. No one could help him here. “I have a growth,” he said lamely. “It’s hard to explain.”
“All right,” she said. “Where is it?”
“On my back.” He choked back a bout of hysterical laughter. Five feet of wingspan, lady.
The doctor nodded, made a note in her file — psych consult wouldn’t surprise him — and asked him to remove his shirt. He wiggled each wing through the haphazard holes he’d torn in the back and then, when it was off, folded the shirt so that the rips weren’t showing. Here he was, in front of a pretty doctor in all of his soft, greyish glory. He turned his back to her eye and stified a shout when her hand went right through the wing and pressed against his skin.