A Flight of Storks and Angels

by Robert Devereaux

  “Right, Clancy. Yes, I’m Luke, and it’s a pleasure,” he said, putting out his hand, then realizing he’d spoken and it had been the most natural thing in the world. “I can’t believe I’m taking this in stride. This is Clancy, by the way. I knew him as a child, but I haven’t a clue how I know I knew him.”

  She laughed. “This is Nemo,” she said, and she had to repeat her own name, it was so odd. Her hand tingled in his, and he held it longer than he had to, turning it over and marveling at it and kissing the white bony back of it. “Ooh, that feels nice,” she said.

  “Jesus, Petrakis, you don’t waste any time!” Maya crossed the street toward him, Butley and Wexler arrayed behind like a decimated V of geese. He waved them over, have-I-got-a-surprise-for-you in his eyes. “Watch out, boys,” Maya joked. “He’s got that glint again.”

  And then they were had, a righteous thing to witness. Denzel started to bolt, but they calmed him and talked him down out of his panic, confirming his visions and theirs, the beauty of them as well as the unsettling strangeness. Luke introduced Joydrop, feeling somehow as if she were an older friend than they. At times, Luke felt so centered, so at home with himself and his colleagues, he grew mildly pleasantly manic and gave them big bear hugs, grinning at their guardians all the while. But as charged with spunk and delight as they all felt, this was, Luke was pleased to find, no lotus-eating bewilderment they’d fallen into, no surrender of Apollo to Dionysus. After a lot of good-natured grumbling and an exacted promise that once they’d hit the motel and conferred with Clarence Dietz, the crew would have a chance to mingle before testing the link to Atlanta, Luke herded them toward the curb.

  “You’ll be here?” he asked Joy over his shoulder.

  “I ought to be heading home,” she replied. “I can’t say if I’ll be free or not.”

  He took her number, scrawling it on the back of his business card. Then he hugged her once quickly, feeling the fierce warmth and surprise there. “Don’t disappear. Don’t do that.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Let’s go, you guys. We’ve got some errands to run and then we’ve got some history to make!”

  *****

  Sarah Haskell asked for ice chips and Tom obliged her with a tiny spoonful, cool as mint lip balm with the right amount of crunch and moisture in her mouth. Contractions were holding steady at twenty minutes apart, but that last one, like fists clutching the muscles at the small of her back and tightening upward into her abdomen, had convinced her that events were about to pick up their pace.

  You’re doing beautifully, Sarah. Her guardian, fond of shifting shapes, had taken on the face and form of her favorite elementary school teacher, Miss Grondin, the one she’d hugged at the end of third grade, crying, reluctant to leave her.

  “What did she say?” Tom asked.

  “Said I’m doing beautifully.” It came out breathless as if the sheen of sweat on her face were god-glow and she were the sexiest vamp on the planet. At her request, Tom, angel a bald fat cherub at his back, bent to the stainless steel sink set into the wall and dampened a washcloth with which he wiped her face and neck.

  “So is she right?” he asked.

  She captured his hand, kissed it, cradled its curved warm back to her chin. “I’m doing fine.” She patted her belly beneath the hospital gown and looked about. “I love this room.”

  “Yeah, somebody did something right.”

  Subdued lighting, tasteful wallpaper, a wood-framed oval mirror, dark-stained wood everywhere in fact. Were it not for the breakaway bed and the strategically placed closets, tall and thin, that no doubt concealed emergency equipment, she might imagine she were in someone’s home.

  Tom’s softened, hasn’t he? Divine observation and true, her angelic words confided so close that Sarah’s ear warmed with fancied breath. Impossible to say, of course, how much of the change she’d seen in him could be credited to the baby’s imminent arrival, how much to the leavening effect of Tom’s guardian. No, that wasn’t so. Sarah had noticed how subdued her husband had been on Monday, coming home unexpectedly at noon to change into a clean suit and return to work. Been in a fight with his dad, he’d said, but something weird happened; and he’d said that in a way that closed off the conversation, not abrupt, but simply done, as if his mind were caught up in the contemplation of a vast and wonderful conundrum. Tuesday evening he’d gone about the house with a secret smile, telling her he was taking the next day off and they were going downtown, no, he wouldn’t say why, she’d know when they got there. And then yesterday morning, they’d arrived at the square, June Lockridge at the mike, and the miracle had happened, and Tom had relaxed into it and filled her in on what had occurred that first day, gawking about in hopes his father would show up, but he never did. And except for that and the near-tragedy perpetrated by Al DeSario (which almost flushed the munchkin out a day early), the next several hours were glorious and golden. Sheer refreshment of the soul for her; and for Tom, as far as she could gather, a lifting of fretful burdens.

  But before she could ask for confirmation, her body seized up again, learning its shifting pattern, traveling more swiftly along it this time. He was there beside her, a loving if mostly ineffectual guide to the breathing she sought refuge in during the tightening below. And when it finally eased up, Tom recorded the time on his yellow pad, announcing that her contractions were now sixteen minutes apart. Once more he gave her ice.

  Doctor Keeshan entered, Topsy riding behind. “How are we doing?” she asked.

  Sarah said fine, and Tom dittoed her and read off the vital stats, and then Sarah had to laugh. “Sorry, Doctor. Every so often it strikes me how odd, and yet how natural, our angels are. And funnier still is how quickly everyone seems to be adapting to them.”

  “Yes, it’s been an interesting few days at the clinic and here, I can tell you. Some colleagues and parents-to-be I’m strong enough to bloom myself, but most I can’t. A few others have either been bloomed downtown or have known someone who has. It tickles me to be in a mixed crowd but I like it best when everyone’s in the know and can comment freely. I like Tom’s angel a lot. So cuddly and so wise. And so contrary to expectation!”

  “Dumb would have been truer to form, I suppose,” Tom joked.

  “No, it’s just that you’ve always been so somber and grown up during appointments. So it’s surprising to find a cherub at the core, and yet it’s absolutely, inevitably right once it’s revealed. Same way with Sarah’s, who, I see, has turned a new side out.”

  “My third grade teacher,” said Sarah, feeling proud.

  “Beautiful,” said the doctor. Then she examined her, a firm gentle probe, and said she was near six centimeters dilated, that at this rate the baby could be anywhere from forty-five minutes to three or four hours away from birth. “Which means, I guess, that it’s time to let you know what to expect at eight centimeters, once your contractions are one or two minutes apart, because it’s at that point that, shall we say, another presence makes itself known.”

  “You mean the baby’s—?”

  “Yes but the best part is how its guardian appears!” And she told them, detailing the theme and variations at the three births she’d observed the phenomenon at so far, and Sarah thrilled to it and laughed, and Tom too took his delight, saying, “Thus do medical science and folk wisdom converge,” the put-on tone refreshingly uncharacteristic. But then the muscles bunched at the small of her back and it was roller-coaster time again, Doctor Keeshan’s steady hand on Sarah’s belly, Tom anchoring her to her breathing, and the trio of guardians reminding her of crèche figures bent over a manger.

  *****

  His first thought was of the treehouse, how splendid it would be to love her there, the sounds and stillness of nature all about. But Nora walked with him down the lawn, the treehouse looming beautifully overhead, and it was not possible without ropes and pulleys and a hot-air balloon basket—she was simply too frail for the ladder. So they returned to the house, to their bed of s
o many years ago, and he kissed her clothes off, remembering her movements, her sounds, the feel of her hand on his penis, all of it coming back as if years had not intervened. And then he covered her and crushed her and felt her womanhood close about him, clasping and caressing as he moved inside her and gazed his love into her beautiful open sentient eyes and kissed her thin radiant lips. Beside them, spilling off into the air, Esme interlocked with Nora’s guardian, eyes on each other and on them, and it was good and right so to be seen. “Tansy guided me out of it,” Nora said as they lay there after he had come, still joined below and content to stay that way. “I was trapped inside and she appeared and took my hand and led me through the looking glass of my face, if that makes any sense.”

  “God bless Tansy,” he said. “And God bless you, dear sweet Nora.” Elbowing up a bit to take most of his weight off her, he kissed her wan cheeks, her temple, an earlobe. Then he eased out of her, Nora protesting wordlessly; but he cuddled beside her, his bare front measuring the length of her body, one arm comfortingly possessing her about the waist. He told her how much he had missed her, how lovely she was, kissing her ear as he whispered these things, her burnt-almond eyes gazing at him from the pillow.

  “Reminds me,” she said, “of the lovely time we had at Ken and Eve’s cabin in the Catskills, just the two of us.”

  “I’ve lost touch with them, with lots of our friends. We ought to look them up sometime, see if we might go back there again.”

  “Yes, let’s,” she said. Then, changing tack: “Ward and June are beautiful.”

  “They are. And wait till you see Laura. She’ll be home tonight, so you can . . . but maybe I should call her now.”

  Nora stopped him. “Time enough,” she said. But her hand tightened on his arm and he saw something in her eyes he’d seen before and Esme said Be brave and then came the replay of her seizure of fifteen years before, the elderly body repeating the writhings of the middle-aged, the hair whiter, the wrinkles deeper and more numerous—but there was no mistaking the same accursed pattern of movement, no action he could take to root it out. He held her. At her ear, he spoke soothing panicked words, wanting to go call for help, but not wanting to leave her alone. Why had he been so foolish as to send Joydrop away? But there was no time for self-recrimination, no time for thought, just the rising panic, and the need to be there beside her, and the urgent hope that she would weather the storm and that the ambulance would arrive in time and that the doctor chosen to treat her would do so swiftly and competently.

  Dark slivers opened in her pupils. He caught an edge of her guardian, then his eyes turned fully to its shift, and the sand seeped out of him. It had been . . . she had been white and soft, but now there was a hard darkness, a neutering, coming from within. From pine to driftwood to unbuffed ebony turned its flesh, a short span and nothing hurried. It was speaking to her, placing a dark hand upon her brow, and Ted wanted to hear it and stop it and watch it all at once. In his arms, Nora lunged for breath, her eyes turning from him to her guardian. She tightened up, a ratchet, a notch. Then the divine creature brought its obsidian lips, its hands, to Nora’s mouth. Lightly, so as to cast doubt upon the contact, it kissed her. And there slid into its hands, as it withdrew, the head and then the body of an infant, riding on Nora’s last exhalation. Ted glimpsed its face before it was swaddled up in dark folds and lifted away, and it was the face fixed in memory from his wife’s scrapbook, the beaming goggle-eyed amazement of her baby head lifting from a gray carpet in some black-and-white room.

  I’m taking this well, he thought. Not the last touch and vanishment of Nora’s angel, which seemed as natural as a sunset, but the loss of his beloved. Should be tearing into me with grief, he thought; I ought to be sobbing and carrying on like a bereaved husband.

  That will come in time. Esme made no judgments, had no extra solicitude in her eyes. Nora’s head had fallen back against his arm where he cradled it, a heavy bowling ball in a net sack. He lowered her to the pillow, closing her eyes as he smoothed her hair. Naked he knelt next to her, breath just sufficient, her hand cooling between his hands as clouds silently dimmed and undimmed the heat lamp of the sun. Towels, Esme suggested, and he went without question to the hall closet, took down the top towels and some washcloths, laid the towels, three-ply deep, beneath her buttocks down to the backs of her knees, her skin now like marble just below room temperature. The urine sighed out first, a last braid of liquid, its finality fixing him in its twist. Then Nora’s bowels relaxed and that was all right, it was like Laura on the changing table by the back window in their old apartment, three-year-old Laura poised between diapers and potty, willfully choosing to let Daddy wipe her clean and pin her into fresh. Now he dampened a washcloth and wiped his wife, cleaned her up, dropped the towels in a garbage bag, put on old clothes that had been hanging for years in the closet, brought the covers up to just below her shoulders, pale arms outside them and hands in an approximate fold at her waist. He sat there on the bed, exploring the cooling sculpture of her fingers, full of the fact of her death, unaware of time or the minutiae of bird-sound and light-shift.

  When Joydrop touched Ted’s arm and he looked over at her face through Nemo’s solicitous glitter and he heard a question come again from her lips, he said, “I don’t know, a while ago.” He nodded at her suggestions; it was not in his power to register them, but he trusted her, and as she lifted the receiver, he left it all to her, went into the hallway and through the TV room and past the kitchen table and out the sliding door, imagining he must be headed for his treehouse but not in the least surprised when he went right past the oak and into the forest. Something waited for him in here, something he’d neglected all his life, a dream deferred. Fresh empty breezes painted the treetops, tossed from one to the next. They waved him onward, Esme towering behind and his disembodied legs drifting him in.

  No mind, no matter.

  III. Imperfections in a Glass Eye

  9. The Rest of the World Takes a Peek

  Maya had had time at the motel to phone Joanie, just a few minutes’ worth but enough to tell her she had to get her pretty butt over here, didn’t matter the drive was an ungodly number of hours, the pot o’ gold at the end of this rainbow was worth the trouble. The promised mingle-time had been short but intense, her senses heightened against the richness of each moment, each clustering of Auroville folks she forged into—like the magic weeks in her hetero days when she and a boyfriend had hitched through Britain, every ride its own universe, from the laconic lorry driver rumbling down the spine of Wales to the Dickensian rollick of jovial fat people that welcomed them into their van and dropped them off most reluctantly in Ripon.

  But speaking of Brits and vans, here she was, locked away from all that glory, headset hooking her to Atlanta, Clive Butley hunched over the panel and peering into the monitor. Lousy posture, the idiot squinted unnecessarily into his work; she’d castigated him before, to no avail. His guardian curved along his back like a stretched-out Siamese. “Sound check?” he requested of Luke.

  Archer Haslun nagged at her ear: “C’mon, Maya. Give me a hint. I won’t tell a soul.”

  Joy, joy. Mister Monopoly’s wide white eyes rolled where he hovered, near-bald head and Cupid’s-bow moustache giving him his moniker. Yeah no shit, she thought; men in my ear, men in my face, and now a male companion—sounded like a hired studbunny, “a male companion”—cute though he was. He felt out of place, cooped up in this van. So did she.

  As she told Arch to stuff his fucking hint and heard the appreciative chuckles of his co-workers ripple across the line, Luke protested into his handmike, “Clive, will you lay off the sound check? Six is plenty. The sound is golden.” He had an armful of Joydrop Heartline and kissed her a loud smack on the lips to demonstrate his point.

  Beautiful woman, Mister Monopoly mused.

  “Yeah, she’s okay, I guess,” countered Maya. “Not my type though. Too ditzy, too New Age.” Poor woman had had some problem at home, a little conflicted ab
out being here but she’d done what she could, handled the coroner, left a note for her boss who’d wandered off into the woods.

  “Fifteen seconds to logo . . . now. You talking to yourself again, Maya? Don’t lose it on me.”

  “Fifteen to logo,” she repeated, and Clive relayed it to Luke. Joy told Luke good luck, then smoothed a lick of his hair and kissed him and broke away out of the monitor. “You’ll find out soon enough, Arch old buddy.”

  “Ten . . . five . . . logo . . . now. Ten seconds to live feed.”

  “Luke in ten,” she said, counting down the seconds in tandem with Arch Haslun, Clive a hair behind her. Denzel had his camera tight in on Luke now, Clancy cropped out at the right, though if you knew what to look for, you could see part of an arm shifting behind Luke’s left shoulder.

  Clive, under her, hunching into the rhythm: “. . . three . . . two . . . one and . . . go.”

  “Good afternoon,” Luke said, looking and sounding as strong as she’d ever seen him. “It’s my privilege today to be coming to you from Auroville, California, the small town I grew up in. It’s been fifteen years since I last set foot in Auroville. In most respects, it seems not to have changed all that much. Same schools, same churches, every road a scrapbook of memories in my mind.”

  “That’s it, Luke,” said Arch Haslun. “Milk it, draw it out, you beautiful s.o.b.”

  “Cool it, Archer,” said Maya, thrilled to be watching Luke Petrakis embark the world on the most amazing journey it would ever take, and not wanting to miss a word.

  “But in one respect, in a few short days, this town has undergone a sea change, a marked transformation of so sweeping a nature that it is becoming not simply the best Auroville there could possibly be, but more significantly a forerunner of what I expect the world will be like in, I would venture to guess, a matter of months.”

  Maya had seen every one of Luke’s live documentaries and had participated in three now, counting this one, but she had never seen him turn on the charm like he was doing today. What was it, besides the obvious, that made this broadcast different? Positive news. That relaxed, subtle grin. He usually plunged into the fray of tragedy, moving with mike and cameraman through the ravages of disaster, a genuine thread of concern woven into the insightful probes he made, as victim and onlooker alike fell naturally under Luke’s purview. But today it was revelation time, time to give good news to the country and the world. And that, to judge from the look on his face, was a task he warmed to.