A Flight of Storks and Angels

by Robert Devereaux

  Hold to the truth, June. Hold to your own truth.

  Yes, she would. She shook her head, trying to clear it, both hands covering her face, then away: a flash of Jeannie’s drawn loving look; the carnal proximity of her parents, the barbs, the pleas, the threats and promises; and inside, the tight nausea of resistance and the words battling for preeminence. June extricated herself from between them, feeling audacious for daring to do so, an easy slither to make, yet a first-ever denial of their power to position her where they would. “I need to be alone for a while,” she blurted, surprised at how tight her throat felt. She rounded out of the L of the couch, continuing the curve into the hallway, past the low CD shelves buttressed against the couch back.

  “George?” Her mother, pleading.

  “Come back here, young lady,” he said, a startle in his voice. “We’re not finished with you.” He was pushing to his feet, ready to go after her.

  June had intended her room, but the vestibule came up on her right, the front door resting open against the wall and the screen door’s silver mesh laden with golden light. And her father was moving now. And she sensed, as sure as she knew the contours of her own face, that if she gave up this one chance, she would lose everything.

  Yes, her companion whispered where she floated beside her. Then with more urgency: Go. Find Ward.

  She angled sharply right, off the carpet, picking up speed, cream tiles slapping underfoot, hitting unerringly the latch and spilling the door open, a sproingy leftward protest from its spring as the welcome mat and the unswept concrete passed by underfoot. Fresh air breezed past her face, congratulatory, applauding her daring, the knots of parental strife easing even now in her belly. Her father shouted something from the house, but surprise was still hers and she jackrabbited across the lawn and shot along the sidewalk, Jeannie urging her on. When, glancing over her shoulder, she saw her father, distant, calling out to her, June zagged into the empty street, gained the facing sidewalk, and cut across the shared yard space between two houses to attain Sacramento Street behind.

  Be cagey. You’ve got some notoriety now.

  I will, June thought; back streets, no predictable byways, no place near downtown or the business district, nowhere my father or the police will think to look. And yet she had to get to Ward quickly. She had to hold him and talk to him, to comfort him and be comforted. But as she moved, the thought nagged at her—despite her angel’s attempts to soothe—that events might be moving too fast for them, that danger might overtake Ward and his grampa before she could reach them and that she might never ever see her boyfriend again.

  *****

  Harold Porter, passing an open jar of marmalade under his nose and blocking out the noise outside, recalled with what abruptness his wife had reverted the day before.

  One moment Thea had been idly diddling his spent cock on the couch, her legs playfully entwined with his as they waited for the news to hit the airwaves, their companions woozy and happy above them. The next, as the wry sarcasm of the fat-lipped announcer led into the blue-blurred clip of him and Thea enjoying one another, Harold saw her angel disappear—not on the screen but above them then—like the pointillistic dispersement of a gas. He felt her teasing hand drain of tease and die on the vine and then withdraw, and, looking away from the screen, took in the horror and shock planed across her face. He’d been about to express his incredulity at the newsman’s blindness, one usually so percipient and one Thea especially trusted for an unbiased look at the world. Instead, he stammered as she untangled her legs, shrinking back and staring down at her nakedness and up into what was clearly, for her, empty air. “What? Why are we . . ?” she’d said, lost. “Harold?”

  Other channels? Caroline had rallied quicker than he did. He caught her urgency.

  “Poor man’s having an off day. Let’s go with one of the networks.” But wherever he remoted, the story was the same—more sarcasm, more abuse, Thea’s name and title bled below the blur, above which emerged the top of her bobbing head, her eyes, her nose but never its tip.

  That had been yesterday. She had wandered about the house like a half-awakened statue, deep in shock. She put on a jogging outfit and worn tennies, deflecting his every attempt to solace her. He fielded her phone calls—asking if he should, then doing so anyway when Thea ignored him. They were invasive and nasty, the outside ones, and those from the townsfolk were little better, bewilderment, rage, and abuse coming across the line in roughly equal measure. When it got to be too much, he unclipped the phones. She ignored him that night in bed, except to shy away when he tentatively touched her, wanting to love away her pain.

  Today she’d gotten up as strong and closed-minded and pinch-voiced as he’d ever seen her. Her shower had lulled him back to sleep and then she was leaning over him in her robe, poking him awake, and pointing a finger in his face. “You will wear clothing today.” And that had been that. Until of course she had started to open the drapes in the family room and glimpsed the hordes of media hounds camped on the front lawn. Harold, hunched over toast and coffee, watched her reconnect the kitchen phone, which rang almost immediately; but she hung up and punched in a number, jabs that carried mayoral determination. Caroline, drifting in beauty by the fridge, ventured a guess, and he discreetly nodded. “Joe,” said Thea, “there are reporters besieging our house.” One of them rapped now on their door as if to confirm her words. “I want them arrested. What charge? Trespass, disturbing the peace, I don’t care. They’re at the police station too? This is ridiculous. Listen, tell them I’ll hold a press conference at City Hall ten o’clock sharp. Yes, announce it. Oh, and Joe? Don’t move on him yet, but I want you to reserve your best cell for Jameson. Oh, we’ll come up with something suitable. There’s got to be a law against what he did. Are you clear in your head? Good. Yes, sharper than ever.” Thea glanced over at him. “Well, you can never tell with Harold. At least he’s got his fat behind covered today and I promise you it’s going to stay that way.” She wrapped up and rang off, but the phone jangled again and she disconnected it.

  The guy outside stopped knocking. Harold sniffed the rich steam of his coffee, Columbian plantations rioting in his nostrils. When he opened his eyes, Thea was standing over him scoping him out. “Harold?”

  “Yes, hon?”

  “Do you see any angels today?”

  He winked at her. “Only you, dear.” And Caroline, he thought; and, in my mind’s eye, Dawn Fleischer, naked as the dawn itself.

  Vans started up outside and drove off.

  “Be sure about that, Harold. Be sure. In a little while, we’re going to be in the spotlight again, and the last thing I need is you messing up again.”

  “This is marvelous coffee.”

  “If any reporter asks you a question, you will defer to me. Don’t say a word out there. Understood?”

  Tell her yes.

  “That sounds like a fine plan, sweet Thea.”

  Again her finger in his face. “Watch that sweet-Thea stuff, Harold. I’m having none of it. I’m reclaiming my life this morning and you will do nothing to screw it up, is that clear? Is it?”

  *****

  Goldie and Angelina hovered above them, entranced, as he and Mindy peered through the glass at the newborns, not knowing which one was Sarah’s little Amy. For the moment, it didn’t much matter, for they too were enthralled by the new life before them and by the cut-crystal clarity of the neonatal angels. Of the three nurses tending the infants, only the eldest sported an angel of her own, a benevolent banshee fluid as melted emeralds, and that nurse, glancing at their guardians, gave them a conspiratorial nod.

  “Need some help?” A pleasant young man in hospital blue stood beside them.

  Carver said, “We’re, um, looking for Sarah Haskell’s little girl.”

  “Are you the grandfather?”

  “Yes, I am.” Felt good to say so.

  “Sarah and her husband have been wondering where you were,” said the young man. “Come with me.”


  “Which baby—?” Mindy gestured toward the window.

  “Amy’s not here. She’s with her mother.”

  They followed him out the lounge door, Mindy engaging him in conversation and Carver too preoccupied to join in. He hadn’t seen or spoken to his son since the blooming of their angels had ended Monday’s shameful fight on the town square, and he wondered whether Tom really wanted him here or if Sarah was just putting the best face on things.

  Sniff the air, then. The metallic rustle of Goldie’s voice delighted him anew.

  “Yes, I will,” he said.

  “I’m sorry?” said the orderly.

  “Oh, nothing. Just talking to myself.”

  The young man nodded. “Here she be,” he said, a hand toward the door on their right. “Enjoy your visit.”

  Mindy widened her eyes at him and pushed in, Angelina throwing him back a similarly bemused smile as she drifted naked through the heavy wooden door.

  Now or never, rippled Goldie.

  “Right,” he said, taking a deep breath and following close behind Mindy.

  Sarah had the bed nearest to the door. A curtain on ceiling runners curved about on one side to give her some privacy, though the other bed was empty. Flowers bloomed on the table beside her. He saw them, and he saw Sarah’s angel, whom she’d described over the phone but whom he’d never seen before, and then there was Sarah shifting her eyes from Mindy to him and saying, “Hi, Dad,” and there, coming into view on the near side of the bed was his son Tom, standing there, cradling his baby in his arms. The Merlinesque figure Sarah had mentioned glowed close by, a stunning idiot-savant sort of look on his face; he melted a kiss of blessing into Carver’s eyes and then turned his attention again fully to his charge. “Beautiful,” Carver said.

  “Isn’t she gorgeous?” asked Tom, and Carver rushed in to marvel at his granddaughter, his anxiety up in smoke.

  “A peach,” he said. “The apple of her daddy’s eye.” She gave a silent rosebud yawn, her twig fingers wrapped around Tom’s thumb. “A plum, a kiwi, a kumquat.”

  Tom looked at him strangely. “Sure, Dad.” To Sarah, broadly: “I thought you said he was on the wagon.”

  Carver laughed. “I am,” he assured, “thanks to Mindy here.” He introduced them, noting as he did so, that what Sarah had told him on the phone was true: Tom’s guardian, the fat cherub who recalled so vividly the infant Tom had been, was nowhere to be seen. He gave his daughter-in-law a glance as Mindy spoke to Tom, and volumes passed between them: unspoken alienation, resignation on her part, and a plea that Carver too suppress all talk of angels.

  From the look on the face of his daughter-in-law’s companion and the sung phrases she dropped, it was clear that Sarah was of two minds. But he reached for her hand, squeezed it, and nodded his acquiescence.

  “You want to hold her, Dad?”

  He begged off but Tom insisted, and the insubstantial bundle gentled down into his arms, Tom’s and his own legs buckling for the passoff as if she were primed to explode if too greatly jarred. Carver cooed, and Goldie marveled; he caressed one rough-whorled fingertip along the wondrous softness of her cheek. Merlin was close and kind, and he wanted so much to acknowledge Amy’s angel with more than a glance. Instead, he passed Amy on to her mother, telling Sarah how beautiful both she and the baby were.

  When he straightened, there was Tom. He stood closer than he needed to be and tears brimmed in his eyes. “Tom, are you—?”

  Strong arms came around him. He returned his son’s hug. “I’m sorry, Tom,” he said.

  “No, Dad. It’s me who should be sorry.” Tom looked at him. “And I am.” He renewed the embrace, not quite so frantic now, but Tom’s big hand lay warm and comforting at the back of Carver’s neck. “But I’m going to stand up for you from here on out, help you back on your feet.”

  He broke from him, kissed Tom’s hands, placed his own on top of them. “I’m there already, and I have Mindy and my Gold—” he caught himself “—my own good sense to thank for it. And I intend to stay on my feet.”

  “It’s been a rough time,” said Tom. “Rough for this family and rough for the city. It’s all I can do to keep a civil tongue when Doctor Keeshan comes in the check on Sarah and the baby. She’s Jameson’s daughter, you know.”

  “Yes, we know,” said Mindy.

  “Must carry some of that pixie dust in with her from home,” he said archly. “We saw the old man in the square Wednesday, and that was bad enough; but, as grateful as I am to her for delivering Amy, I feel plenty of bitterness too: She had us seeing storks and wizards in the birthing room, if you can believe it. Far as I’m concerned, she’s sullied the memories I should have had of Amy’s birth.”

  “Please, Tom, don’t be too hard.”

  Tom gestured to her. “She’s still got my wife half-believing that guardian-angel crap. Went whole hog for it until I talked some sense into her.”

  Resist the urge. He’ll come around.

  “You know how Mindy and I look at it, Tom?” Carver said, giving his love a quick complicitous look. “No one was more taken in than we were. We lay naked for hours near the gazebo yesterday, and we saw our own and others’ guardians, and we believed as fiercely as anyone in that crowd believed. Sure, we were hoodwinked.” He wrinkled one eye at Mindy. “But while it lasted, it was glorious, and it helped me, placebo or no; it helped me through the DT’s, and it fixed my blurred sight on what was important and what I could let fall by the wayside. It brought me Mindy Rutherford here,” he reached over and gave Mindy a sidelong embrace, “and it brought me to this moment with you and Sarah and magical Amy. And I say Amen to it and Thanks be to Ted Jameson and those two kids for getting that particular ball rolling.”

  May have gone too far.

  Goldie, sweets, he thought, a man’s got to tell at least part of the truth, especially to his own son.

  “If that’s the way you see it, Dad, then so be it,” said Tom. “I’m glad, more than I can say, that you pulled out of your tailspin. But I’m also glad—not glad so much as it just satisfies my sense of justice—that Ted Jameson is going to get his comeuppance. You can’t make fools of an entire town and expect to walk away scot-free. Radio on the way over here this morning said the mayor’s going to hold a press conference at ten. Assuming she survives yesterday’s scandal, I think we’ll see one famous writer’s head roll down Main Street before the day is out.”

  Mindy said, “We ought to do something.”

  She’s right, Carver.

  Tom countered, “Staying out of the steamroller’s way strikes me as a better idea.”

  There’s much to be said for that position too.

  Great. Lots of guidance there. “And Amy, my girl. What do you advise?” He reached over and folded back the blue blanket his grandchild was wrapped in. But her fists were idle upon her chest, her eyelids were closed, and the dots of her nostrils constricted and dilated with the easy rhythm of her breathing.

  *****

  Thea was coming to the conclusion of her statement, a simple mea culpa she’d typed into her computer and printed out but had not let him see, a plea for forgiveness by her citizens and by all Americans as morally outraged by what had taken place yesterday as she was in hindsight and with her vision unclouded by chicanery. Her threats toward the perpetrators were veiled but unmistakable, a diamond edge to her voice in those passages. Above him in the crowded conference room, Caroline floated intrigued but unworried. Her uncanny resemblance to his wife in her thinner, long-haired days at Berkeley made Harold wonder what influence angels, especially invisible ones, might have on romantic entanglements in the general populace. On the other hand, he mused, she didn’t look one bit like Dawn Fleischer.

  Thea was wrapping up. She was a trained politician, a compelling speaker, and the reporters in the room, just as trained in hearing statements of this sort, sensed her conclusion nearing and shifted audibly in anticipation of their attack. A number of faces he recognized from years of eavesdropping
on C-SPAN, and their presence confirmed—as if the blanket of TV and radio coverage hadn’t already done so—that in a lean week, the undoing of Luke Petrakis and his hometown had captivated the nation’s attention as nothing since Anita Hill went to Washington. One reporter in a bow-tie and with his knobby knees shining through his crossed pant legs looked especially voracious, and his arm shot up like a salute, thin white wrist, clawed fist with a pen poking up out of it. But Thea’s ears were drawn to the yowling chorus of questioners on her left. Her steely eyes chose one of them—a young woman who looked prim and innocent to Harold’s eyes—and she gestured decisively in the young woman’s direction.

  “Mayor Cosgrove,” she said, her painted lips opening wider than Harold would have expected, “how well did you know Luke Petrakis as a boy and do you have any animosity toward him for what happened yesterday?” In the rich stew of sweat that assaulted Harold’s nose, this pretty woman’s natural aroma captivated him for the moment. He imagined kissing that lovely mouth which hinged so wide at the jaw and asserted itself with such confidence.