Web of Angels

by Lilian Nattel

  “Oh?” Sharon couldn’t think of anything else to say, not even thank you. Bram looked over at her in mock astonishment. A compliment from their mother-in-law!

  “The table is worth money. Turquoise you can find, but blue is rare,” Mimi said. “And that one came with the extra leaf and chrome crown on the chairs. Very rare. The trays hand-painted. I took good care of them. See how colours are still vivid? Young people don’t take care of things. They think a money tree grows in the backyard.”

  “A woman of valour is better than rubies,” Jake said. “It’s in the Bible. Mmmm. Sharon, this is good cake, bubbeleh.”

  “Since when do you read the Bible?” Dan asked.

  “Since never. Every Friday my father said it to my mother. She sees that her merchandise is good and her lamp never goes out at night.” Jake smiled at his wife, pleased that he’d managed to locate this magnificent nugget of memory for her, while she, better than jewels, took away his plate. Too much sugar!

  Sharon was watching her son and his girlfriend, now eating cake with gusto, bumping her hip against his to push him over and give her more room, till he finally slid off the ottoman altogether, laughing. When they finished, they excused themselves, or rather Josh said, “Excuse me,” as he burped into his hand and grinned at his girlfriend. He didn’t have to know that the polite Cathy was gone, replaced by someone else who thought burping was funny. Instinct told him. He had lived with his mother for fourteen years. “Can I be excused?”

  “Keep your door open,” Sharon said automatically.

  Later when Rick picked up Cathy, insisting that he come to get her and not put anyone out, Sharon watched him as he stood at the door, chatting with Dan, waiting for the kids to say their goodbyes. They didn’t talk about Families Against Guns or the mailing that was supposed to go out and hadn’t yet. It was all about war, economy, sports—things on a grand scale, things that involved teams, companies, countries. Rick’s hair was starting to grey. Because it was blonde, the grey wasn’t immediately noticeable. As he spoke, she watched his lips form words, his tongue scarcely visible as it moved behind his teeth. When he smiled only his upper teeth showed. The lines in his face were evenly distributed, except for one deeper gash between his brows. His right nostril was slightly more elongated than his left. He didn’t gesticulate, he didn’t point. He stood with his hands in his pockets, fingers tapping when the conversation lagged. He called upstairs, “Cathy! We need to get going.” His fingers were blunt at the tips. His wedding band was octagonal. His Adam’s apple appeared and retreated between his beard and his collar. That was all the skin that showed, everything else under the good leather of shoes and jacket, the twill of his trousers. His wallet was in his back pocket. He kept a lock of Heather’s hair in it, which he showed Dan now, golden hair in a plastic casing. Then the light over the stairs went on, and his other daughter walked down. The silk jacket left upstairs, her dress floated around her, steps inaudible on the runner. Rick cleared his throat. He took her coat from the stand and held it out for her. Sharon watched, wishing she could see inside his head, hoping that all she would see was a sad and aging dad. As he turned to say thanks and goodbye, his eyes were impenetrable and he shivered slightly. Perhaps it was caused by the north wind blowing in as he opened the door.

  After everyone was gone, Dan put the folding table back in the basement and stacked the dessert dishes and cups in the dishwasher. Sharon wiped the table and counters, swept the floor. They both pulled the ends of the blue table away from the leaf and rotated it below, pushing the table back together. It was nearly eleven when they headed up the stairs, brushed their teeth, got into their pajamas, picking up the remote as they settled into bed. The moon was waning, but still fat in the sky as it rose above the alley behind their house.

  The news (short for bad news) had its usual quota of disaster: car bombs and flooding, mad cow disease, a mountain lion that attacked a little boy, aid projects to Afghanistan suspended because it had become too dangerous. Dan was sitting up in bed, his back supported by a pile of velvety cushions, Sharon cross-legged in front of him. She swept her hair forward to expose her neck, turning her head as he worked on one side then the other, massaging the knots of muscle, his hands strong from playing handball. “Nice merchandise,” he said. She slapped his knee. On her night table was The Kite Runner. If she couldn’t sleep, she’d finish it tonight.

  They discussed the bubble in the kitchen ceiling and calling the plasterer, which was on the list, but she had forgotten. Tomorrow for sure. They talked about Jake’s balance and whether he was shakier. The success of putting out “man’s strength” deodorant for Josh. Having the “talk” with him—soon. The window was open to let in the smell of spring. The wind was blowing from the north, chasing away clouds. It would be clear tomorrow.

  And Sharon’s head, unusually quiet, wasn’t entirely so, for all the while a small voice whispered, You are the mommy and he is the daddy. Tell him. It was worse than the tinnitus she’d had during an ear infection because the buzzing and ringing of tinnitus couldn’t speak through her own mouth and she was getting worried that this unceasing little voice might. So at last she spoke, not from bravery and not from conviction, but out of fear of embarrassment. “I noticed something tonight,” she said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “I saw Cathy switch,” she said tentatively.

  “Switch what?” He picked up the remote and was flicking the channels as if there might be better news on another one.

  “Switch. Someone else came forward.” Okay fine—she was the mom. Any child in her house was her child. Shh already. “Like me.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “The way her face changes. And her voice.”

  “Come on, Sharon. Everybody has moods.”

  “Moods don’t change like that. What do I look like?” She hated talking like this, as if she was admitting it. “You’ve seen me.”

  “I know.” He put the remote on the nightstand, measuring his words so he wouldn’t say the wrong thing. “But Cathy?”

  “I’ve seen her a lot more than you have. And I know what I’m seeing, Dan.”

  “Shit,” he said.

  “Yes. Exactly.”

  “So she’s had stuff happen to her.”

  She was listening to his mind work, his voice slow as he put the pieces together. “Yes. And likely by someone who was alone with her a lot when she was little. Probably a relative.”

  “Shit. Are you sure you saw her switch?”

  Sharon turned to look at him. He’d shaved before coming to bed because he was in the mood. But he’d left his watch on his wrist because he knew she wasn’t. These were the signs of their life together, the language of their marriage. People who shared a language ought to understand it, but his eyes, dark as the dark ale he favoured, were doubtful.

  “This isn’t fun for me,” she said. “Do you think I’d bring this up if I wasn’t?”

  “Then we should talk to her parents.”

  “What if they’re the abusers?” This was the impossible point. Their own neighbours. The people who had got funding for the arena and started the Committee for Youth. But if one in a hundred kids were multiple, as Brigitte said, then there was one in every grade in the junior school; there were two in every grade in high school. And they all had parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents who had made them so. They were all someone’s neighbours.

  “Not Rick,” Dan said.

  “You can’t tell from the outside,” she said.

  “It’s hard to believe.” Then, adding quickly because he didn’t want to start another fight, “Which doesn’t mean I don’t.” His eyes searched hers as if he, too, had the ability to see the many peeking out at him through the green of moss and bracken, of water, of jade. “Just that it’s hard to imagine Rick … I’ve known him a long time. I’ve worked with him. He’s sent clients my way.”

  “It might be someone else. Maybe it all happened when she was little and it’s been over fo
r years. But you can’t rule out Rick or Debra or that she might still be at risk.”

  “Debra?” That was even harder for Dan to conceive. All you had to do was look at any Mother’s Day card.

  “I’m just saying,” Sharon slid past the question. “Talking to her parents could make life harder for her. I don’t know what to do. You can’t call someplace and report a kid switching. I’m sure you have to witness the abuse or at least see a bruise or something.”

  “In that case,” he rolled over. “There’s nothing for us to do right now. Let’s get to sleep.”

  When the light was off and Dan was curled around her back, his arm over her, Sharon said, “Maybe it’s my fault that Josh likes her. He sees someone familiar in her.”

  “Well, aside from the obvious, you’re nothing like her.”

  “How do you mean?” Sharon propped herself up on an elbow.

  Hands behind his head, Dan gazed at the ceiling. “When you switch you look different and you sound different and you can do different things,” he said hesitantly, “but even so there is something that is the same. Like all of you are protective of kids. I don’t know much about Cathy but she strikes me as a girl who doesn’t take in stray kittens. She’s more of an achiever.” In the faint streetlight filtered by the curtains, Dan was yawning, rubbing his hand over his face. “Josh likes her because she’s a hot chick and she isn’t boring. That’s the only thing you have in common.”

  “I’m hot? Still?”

  “Yes.” He closed his eyes.

  The moon hung in the east, shining on the back of curtains the colour of russet apples. She’d sewn those curtains in the dining room where a meal hadn’t been eaten since they’d moved in. But many things had been made there: all the cushion covers, costumes for Halloween and school plays, tiny outfits for Heather’s baby, a sweater for her, given to Goodwill instead. The kids’ knitting was in a basket on top of the sideboard. The work of women’s hands, but she was not a woman of valour, her merchandise of little value. She watched her husband as sleep descended. He was wrong, she thought. Other boys might have been confused when Cathy switched. They might have thought her too moody. Not her son.

  Dan’s eyes opened. “I’m here with you,” he said, rolling onto his side. One of his arms lay across her pillow, and his hand caressed the crown of her head. They fell asleep, curled together.

  CHAPTER

  NINETEEN

  In the month after Easter, the locust trees bloomed, infusing the neighbourhood with their honey scent. The leaves of maple trees came out, reddish bronze in the sun, then the lilacs in bursts of purple and white. The sky was a lucid blue, unmarred by smog. Sharon watched her son’s girlfriend, waiting for an opportunity to talk, unsure of what to do or say. Meanwhile she baked a gluten-free cake for her niece’s birthday party. The bubble in the kitchen ceiling was peeled away, the injured surface plastered and painted. Cathy finished the scarf she’d been knitting and Josh wore it while playing hockey at the arena. Cathy studied with him, she watched movies with his family, she cleared the table without being asked. She was unremarkable, good-girl classic, noteworthy only for her bland constancy. Even Josh was puzzled, wondering why she didn’t want to arm-wrestle anymore, why she was squeamish about horror movies.

  In the middle of May, Sharon woke up before the alarm clock went off, thinking it was the sun that had awakened her. She pulled her pillow over her head, half-waking Dan, who rolled over, punching his own pillow and settling back to sleep. She had an urge to search the dining room. It needled her. It itched her like an unscratchable itch in her nipple or deep inside her ear. It felt like something grey. A bland colour, the colour of lampposts, and cold, like brushed aluminum appliances that showed every smudge. She rolled to one side, turned over again. Sighing, she flung back her side of the comforter and got up.

  Taking the broom from the pantry, she figured she might as well get the threads and dust bunnies out from under the dining room table, though Franky wouldn’t thank her for it. As she swept, he jumped in and out of the dustpan, batting a dust bunny, trying to stand on his hind legs as it floated. Then he caught another on his claw and as he shook it, something hard skittered across the room, hitting the oak cabinet. He chased it. Squatting on her heels, Sharon pushed the kitty away from his prize and picked it up. A grey flash drive. She was sure it didn’t belong to anyone in this house, but a normal, sane person would first ask her husband and son if it was theirs, so she went upstairs to do so. The pipes squealed. Dan was having his shower.

  It was her day at the animal clinic, which shared the block on Crookshank’s Lane with a dry cleaner, Berliner’s Hardware and the Korean pharmacy, ivy growing up the bricks topped by a grey canopy that still had SAMUEL GOODCHILD DRUGGIST and BROMO SELTZER FOR HEADACHES printed on it. The maple tree out front had been planted when the streetcar lines were laid down a hundred and seventeen years earlier, ending at the railroad tracks. Back then the trains passed at street level, and Grossman’s Surgical Supply, on the other side of the tracks, had gotten its start supplying prosthetic feet and legs to unfortunate pedestrians. Now there was an overpass for the train, and the maple tree shaded a homeless man who slept in the deep entrance of the Korean pharmacy.

  The veterinary clinic had a large glass storefront, a reception area with chairs on three sides where an assortment of people sat. Carriers were on the floor and inside them pets shed fur, peeing in their anxiety. The receptionist’s counter was to the rear on the left. Sharon sat beside shelves stocked with vet-recommended pet food: diets for fat cats and elderly dogs, for male cats with crystals in their urinary tract, dogs that were diabetic, desultory kittens, runty puppies. A weight-sensitive switch under the doormat triggered the first few notes of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” whenever someone came in or out, which was every five minutes on a Saturday. The office was behind the reception area, a small room about the size of the bathroom that was directly opposite. When Sharon absolutely had to use the toilet, she closed the office door so the smell wouldn’t penetrate and dashed across the hall, eyes averted from the surgery. Behind it were the kennels and the keening animals incarcerated there. Even in the office, she could hear dogs and cats and the occasional guinea pig voicing their unhappiness while she entered invoices and payments, receipts and inventory.

  “I’ve got a puppy for you,” Amy said. Her lab coat had paw marks on the chest where one of her favourite patients, a Great Dane, had greeted her with enthusiasm. Standing at a filing cabinet, she pulled out a drawer, removing a file to check a patient’s previous test results. Her practice still wasn’t fully computerized.

  “We don’t need a puppy,” Sharon said, ignoring the inside ruckus of we do, we do. She’d been arguing with Dan about getting their cat fixed. Males spray, he’d said. She knew he was right and that she’d have to give in eventually. But she just couldn’t stand the thought of Franky in the vet’s back room, waking up from surgery, scared, hurting, with things done to him that he couldn’t remember. Cheque number 517. Sunnycare Rehab, where Amy’s brother was installed. Account: shareholder’s loan. When money changes hands, there are no secrets from the bookkeeper.

  “I didn’t say you need one—but I have one.” Amy’s head was bent over the file, the sun burnishing her hair red like the new maple leaves, making her cousin to Sharon but only when she stood in the light from the window.

  “We just got a kitten.”

  “Oh, it’ll be a couple of weeks yet.” Replacing the file, Amy took out another, leaning with her elbow on the filing cabinet as she perused it. “The puppies are still with their mom. She’s a yellow Lab. When she was in heat a neighbourhood dog broke through the fence and the owner doesn’t want the puppies. One of them has your name on it, Sharon. She’s the smallest but very alert. I don’t think she’s going to grow up small. She’s got big paws and big ears.”

  From inside, yes yes yes yes yes. “We’ll see,” Sharon said. “For now I’ll just get on with the bookkeeping, shall I?” It wa
s an odd word for something that had no relationship to books or keeping them anymore, but Sharon still remembered the heft of specially lined paper bound in heavy ledgers.

  Her mother had kept the books, and so the privacy, of the family business. There were two sets: one was for the law firm downtown; the other was for other things, and locked away in a fireproof cabinet. She’d taught Sharon to keep accounts. Debit cash three hundred dollars. Credit revenue. The numbers had to balance. The adding machine was old and heavy and as the paper tape unfurled from it, numbers blue and red cancelled each other out, amounting to zero. If they didn’t, Sharon had to check every page, looking for the error or her mother would have something to say about it. She worked in pen. That was mandatory. When she made a mistake, she crossed out the number, using a ruler to keep the line straight, and wrote the correct amount above. Film, cameraman’s fee, straps. She didn’t remember the purpose and she wasn’t allowed to ask. Credit cash, debit expenses. There were many numbers crossed out, sometimes towers of them one above the other, and her mother’s mouth would tighten at her daughter’s ineptitude. Sharon began to write in pencil, then overwrite it in pen, carefully erasing the pencil, blowing the shavings into her cupped hand, disposing of them in the garden where eraser shavings blended with mulch.

  Her cellphone rang. “Hi Josh. What’s going on? Uh huh. Uh huh. No problem,” she said. “Can I talk to Dad?” When Dan picked up, she said, “There’s a pan of lasagna in the freezer. Go ahead. I’m not hungry. Yes, I will. I’m sure I won’t be long.”

  She missed her mother. That was what the others inside didn’t understand. She remembered going to Flo’s Kitchen for lunch, just the two of them, her mother in a halter top, long flowered skirt and canvas espadrilles laced up her calves. Sharon wore a short plaid jumper with a ruffled blouse under it. She had a hand on her mum’s bare arm, feeling the softness of the underskin as they were led to a table. Sharon ordered a milkshake, a hamburger well done. Her mother had steak and salad. They shared a plate of fries, Mum dipping hers in mayonnaise. It broke Sharon’s heart to stay away.