Contract with an Angel

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “But you probably wonder why I stay with you if I dislike you so much.”

  “That thought does occur to me.”

  The moon slipped over the lake side of the garden, a great orange ball, as fresh and alive as the promise of human love. Like an alchemist’s miracle in reverse, it replaced the sun’s golden sheen with a pale, alluring silver.

  “Sometimes twelve-year-old boys can be attractive; perhaps it’s their conceited vulnerability.”

  A spear into his stomach.

  “Besides, when you make love, you become a grown-up. I don’t know why, but you’re gentle and tender and sensitive and concerned about me, as well as demanding. Unlike some of the feminist women, I like demanding men more than wimps. That’s more than a lot of women can say about their men. And you’re usually thoughtful for a while afterwards, like you are now. Sometimes even as much as another day, sometimes only an hour or two and you’re back on your computer planning more tricks for your little-boy games.”

  “I see,” he said, choking on the words.

  “You asked me … . Do you want me to go on?”

  “Certainly.”

  “You’re not the worst of husbands. You’re not a drunk; you don’t beat me, not that you’d get away with it a second time; you don’t fool around, or if you do, you’ll never get caught; you let me live my own life; as I say, when you notice I’m around, you’re a wonderful lover; and you’re not all that bad looking—big, handsome, strong, silver-haired, red-faced Irishman. I had no illusions about you when I married you. I’m a lot better off than most women.”

  She shrugged. Then she rose from her lawn chair and refilled both his wineglass and hers. Her robe slipped open as she poured the wine. She touched his face affectionately before she tightened the belt on her robe and returned to her chair.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “You never asked. If I had tried to tell you, you wouldn’t have heard what I said, you wouldn’t even have listened to the words.”

  Her denunciation, in a calm, dispassionate voice innocent of rancor, hit him just as hard as had Donna’s announcement that she wanted a divorce. Anna Maria’s assault was all the more devastating because it was so rational, so disciplined, so controlled. He had failed at this marriage too, and for the same reasons presumably that he had failed in the previous one.

  “So you don’t love me at all?” he asked sadly, realizing that his words were the plaintive cry of a twelve-year-old boy.

  “Did I say that I didn’t love you?” she demanded impatiently.

  “No … but you sort of implied it.”

  “I did no such thing! Why is it so hard for you men to realize that logic doesn’t apply to emotions. I said I hated you sometimes and disliked you a lot of the time, didn’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  “So I didn’t say that I didn’t love you. I never said that. I would never say it. If I did, it wouldn’t be true.”

  “Oh,” he gulped.

  “I’m hopelessly in love with you. I have been since the first day I met you, more so probably now. You don’t think I’d go through that little romp we had unless I worshiped the ground you walk on, do you?”

  “I guess I’m confused.”

  “Something is happening to you that you won’t tell me about, not now, maybe not ever. So far it seems to be for the good … . The little romp was wonderful, by the way. Never better.”

  “We waltzed naked on the top of vanilla ice cream clouds,” he murmured.

  In the fading light he saw her blush. “Is that what we did?”

  “Something like that anyway.”

  “It isn’t a bad metaphor.”

  “What would yours be?”

  “I’ll have to think for a moment,” she said, her voice amused and playful.

  “Well,” she continued after a pause, “we were swimming in a crimson ocean filled with beautiful flowers and overwhelming fragrances … and you were a gorgeous companion who helped me to swim in places I was afraid to go.”

  “If I’m as bad a person—”

  “I didn’t say you were a bad person,” she said, displeased again. “I certainly did not say you were a bad person.”

  “OK … . Let me try again. A person that it was easy to dislike?”

  “That’s better.”

  “Then why didn’t you try to change me?”

  “No one changes anyone else unless the other person wants to be changed. I pray for you, which is about all I can do. It’s a shame because, like I said, you’re not a bad man and you deserve a lot more happiness than you permit yourself to enjoy.”

  Not much time left for the happiness, he thought ruefully.

  “You said that I pay more attention to you when we have made love?”

  “Some of the time … . Well, most of the time. I seem to distract you for a few hours or even a whole day from your little-boy games. As I seem to have now.”

  “So the solution might be for me to make love with you every day?”

  She considered him shrewdly, her face illumined by the spreading moonlight.

  “It would be an interesting experience,” she said slowly. “But I don’t think you’re quite man enough to cope with a woman like me at that pace. And you’d lose interest as soon as some new game came along.”

  Not man enough!

  Well, maybe she was right.

  “You’re willing to try me?”

  Again she pondered. “I don’t know why not.”

  “Then I accept the challenge … . And I promise that I won’t turn it into a twelve-year-old’s game.”

  “That’s a twelve-year-old promise. You should promise that you will try not to turn it into a macho game.”

  “All right. I promise that I will try not to turn your challenge into a twelve-year-old’s macho game.”

  “You realize,” she said, shifting in her chair, “that this puts the whole relationship into play.”

  “To use an expression that is one of my favorites.”

  She chuckled. “Right!”

  “You want to play golf tomorrow, I mean after we go to Mass?”

  “Raymond, is there something wrong? What’s happened to you?”

  In the silver glow of the moon, her face had twisted in a worried frown.

  He groped for an answer. He should have had one ready. “It was a very scary plane flight.”

  “It certainly must have been.”

  It was his turn to pour the wine. He emptied the bottle, half in her goblet, half in his.

  “Do you want some chocolate-chip ice cream?” she asked. “Of course you do. Silly of me to ask. Why not enjoy all the pleasures possible on this warm autumn night?”

  She bounded off into the house, peach robe trailing behind, like a jet’s trail on a blue sky.

  He noticed that the angelic choristers were humming again.

  “Not bad,” Michael whispered. “You’re showing nice progress.”

  “I’m out of control.”

  “That’s not all bad.”

  “I suppose that her indictment is the same one that Donna would level.”

  “Pretty much, with one exception.”

  “That is?”

  “Donna never really loved you. Maybe you could have won her love, but you never tried because, as your woman would put it, you were too busy acting like a twelve-year-old.”

  “Do your, ah, companions tell you the same thing?”

  “The equivalent, I suppose.”

  “Are you an extraterrestrial?”

  “Should E.T. phone home?”

  “You know what I mean: Are you from another planet?”

  “Let’s say we’re from another world and leave it at that, shall we?”

  “So you leave your home world when you are working one of your jobs for the Other, as you call him?”

  “Her more often than not. No, not exactly. As I remarked, we move only slightly less rapidly than the speed of thought … . Don’t worry abou
t it.”

  Anna Maria bounded back, her robe in becoming and doubtless deliberate disarray.

  She stopped for a moment in midflight.

  “Did I hear voices, Raymond?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Maybe I’m the one who is losing my mind … . Anyway, is this too much ice cream?”

  “There is no such thing as too much ice cream.”

  She kissed him on the forehead as she gave him the treat, perhaps to make sure that his twelve-year-old ego was not too badly bruised. This time she did not try to tighten the belt on her robe.

  “Two treats for the price of one,” he said. “Or maybe three.”

  “Do you really want to play golf tomorrow?” she said, tucking her feet under her on the lawn chair. “They predicted sixty percent chance of rain.”

  “I have a more accurate weather service at my disposal. It will be another perfect late-summer day.”

  “I’ll beat you.”

  “Probably. When I get my golf game back in shape, it might be a different story.”

  “It won’t bother you to lose to your wife?”

  “It will bother the hell out of me. I don’t like to lose to anyone. Wife doesn’t add much humiliation to it. Maybe a little. But then I can brag to the other fat cats up there that my wife is a great golfer. As well as great at some other things.”

  “That would be a terrible twelve-year-old thing to say,” she said, then began demolishing her ice cream, which consisted of only two scoops as opposed to the four she had given him.

  “No, it wouldn’t, not if it is sufficiently, ah, allusive.”

  She considered that possibility. “No, I suppose it wouldn’t.”

  They were silent as he finished his ice cream. The choir was humming softly.

  He lifted his wineglass in a toast. “To the challenge of our future, now that it’s in play.”

  She nodded. “And to more dangerous plane flights, though not too dangerous.”

  “And to the best possible of guardian angels.”

  For a moment he was shy about the next step, not that he was not aroused, but that it would probably alter their relationship so that there would be no turning back.

  What the hell, he had only a few months to live anyway.

  He put the wineglass back on the table, stood up, walked to her chair, took her hands, and lifted her up.

  “Raymond,” she said dubiously, “it’s really too cold out here.”

  He pulled the robe off her shoulders. She clutched it at her waist and drew her usual deep breath, deeper than usual this time, he thought.

  “No, it’s not. I loved you earlier in the warm glow of the afternoon sun. Now I propose to love you in the soft shimmer of the moon.”

  He discarded her robe.

  She shivered and huddled behind her arms. “We don’t have to do it outside twice in the same day. The moon shines through my bedroom window too.”

  “Not the same.” He lifted her into his arms.

  “I suppose not,” she sighed.

  As he carried her to the chaise, he said, “Anna Maria, you are the most interesting woman I have ever known.”

  The choristers really liked that line. They went into their celebration songs again, softly however, so as not to waken sleeping children or to disturb young lovers, no matter how old the lovers might be.

  “I love you, Raymond,” she said, clinging closely to him. “I’ll always love you.”

  Afterward he carried her up to the second floor of the house. She was exhausted and passive in his arms, mostly asleep.

  “I think I left my robe and my book in the garden,” she murmured. “What if it rains?”

  “It won’t rain. I told you, I have solid guarantees.”

  Yet when he entered her room, the book was on the nightstand and the robe neatly folded on a chair.

  “Show-offs,” he murmured to whatever elements of the angelic hosts were lurking about.

  After he had deposited her in her bedroom and returned to his room, Michael appeared, now in jeans and a crimson sport shirt, sitting comfortably by Neenan’s computer station.

  “You learn quickly.”

  “I try … . Why the change of clothes?”

  “We have our own lives to live,” the seraph replied enigmatically. “She spoke truth when she said the whole relationship is now in play.”

  “I understand that.”

  “It won’t always be as easy as today.”

  “I didn’t think it would be.”

  “Just so long as you understand that.” Michael jabbed a finger at Neenan. “We will not take kindly to your breaking her heart.”

  “Neither would I … . What did you mean when you said that Donna never loved me?”

  “All you can expect at the beginning of a youthful marriage is the beginnings of love. Donna, poor woman, was in love with the image of herself as a bride and as a suburban homemaker. You didn’t help very much. Still you have to try to reconcile with her.”

  “No!”

  The seraph reached into his hip pocket and pulled out the contract, which he waved at Neenan.

  “Yes!” he said firmly.

  “What’s the point in my paying any attention to you, since you tell me there isn’t any such thing as hell?”

  “I didn’t say that at all. I said we didn’t use that metaphor too much anymore because it had been so distorted. You still face the risk of loss.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Don’t blow it now.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Have you ever been as happy in all your life as you are now?”

  Neenan pondered. “I suppose I haven’t.”

  “Like I say, don’t blow it.”

  “I don’t want to lose her when I die.”

  “None of us wants to lose those we love. Not to worry, you won’t lose her. Not then anyway. It’s now that counts.”

  7

  “Iwant to tell you a story,” said the weary-looking, middle-aged priest, “about Patricia the Penny Planter. It’s one of John Shea’s stories. The kingdom of heaven, you see, is like Patricia the Penny Planter.”

  That’s all I need, Neenan thought, struggling to find a comfortable position in the pew, a story about a penny planter, whatever that might be.

  While he had gone to bed the night before with every good intention of attending Mass with his wife and then risking his twelve-year-old male ego on the golf course, he had forgotten to set the alarm.

  Not to worry. At seven o’clock, the angel singers had intervened with bright and cheerful wake-up music. Before he opened his eyes, he wondered how large the chorus was. It sounded bigger than the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. On the other hand, a few angels could presumably make a lot of noise.

  He had opened his eyes. The sun was shining brightly over the Lake. Why was he so tired? Why did he have to get up? Why did he feel so complacent and yet frightened?

  Then it all came back. A black person who claimed to be an angel had pronounced his death sentence, but then beat him over the head with a couple of ecstatic experiences and the best sex of his life. Twice.

  It had all been a dream, a nightmare, the result of one too many vodkas. Hadn’t it?

  Either he was still in a dream or it had all happened. The choir was singing loudly. They had started their caterwauling on the plane when the dream began. The only sensible way to deal with a dream was to go back to sleep.

  He had closed his eyes contentedly. The choir, however, refused to accept that decision. It sang more loudly and more insistently.

  “Damn,” he had said, struggling out of bed and lumbering toward the shower. “Maybe it isn’t a dream.”

  When he emerged from the shower, he found a cup of coffee and a cinnamon roll on his nightstand.

  She had never done that before.

  “Patricia was ten years old. She lived in a suburban neighborhood where there were only a few children her age, including Morgan, an eleven-year-old boy wh
o was nice but only for a very limited amount of time. Summer was generally a very boring period in her life. There were just so many hours a day that you could listen to rock tapes. So she decided to create a treasure hunt.

  “How could a ten-year-old girl create a treasure hunt?

  “You ask that question only because you don’t know Patricia.

  “You have to understand, first of all, that right at the corner of her street there was a bus stop to which many, many people came early in the morning to get on a bus, which took them to the train, which took them to the city and their jobs. They were all well-dressed—even on casual Friday—and carried expensive leather briefcases and serious and worried frowns. Then at the end of the day, they came back looking frazzled and wilted and with heavier briefcases and heavier frowns. None of them ever looked up.

  “So the first day of her treasure hunt, when it was very hot and no one was on the street, Patricia sneaked out of her house with a large supply of chalk. Looking carefully up and down the street, to make sure the police wouldn’t see and arrest her for defacing public property, she scrawled in large red block letters right at the bus stop, TREASURE NEAR!→

  “Then at strategic intervals along the street, she scrawled other notes:

  “THIS WAY TO TREASURE!→

  “YOU’RE GETTING CLOSER!→→

  “DON’T QUIT NOW!→→

  “YOU ALMOST HAVE IT!→→→

  “LOOK IN THE TREE!→→→→

  “GO FOR IT!→→→→

  “Then Patricia found a very bright penny in her large collection of almost a thousand pennies and slipped it into an old notch in the bark of a beautiful oak tree in front of her house. To give her treasure hunters a last bit of reassurance, she wrote on the tree trunk:

  “TREASURE HERE!

  “Well, at first no one paid any attention to Patricia’s signs and the arrows that went with them. You see, while they never looked up when they walked down the street to the bus because their eyes were always downcast, they never paid any attention to what was on the sidewalk. Then the second day it rained and wiped out all her carefully drawn signs.

  “This time, she said to herself, I’ll do it right!

  “So she replaced all her signs, and this time, she did them in psychedelic colors. Sure enough, that night, some people began to notice the signs. Most of them ignored the promise of treasure, but a young woman with an especially heavy briefcase looked at the first sign and her already heavy frown got heavier. Then she saw the second sign and laughed at it, not altogether pleasantly. The third sign caught her attention. Then, when she came to the sign that said, ‘Go for it!’ she looked both ways to make sure no one was watching her. Then, with a crafty expression, she crept up on the tree, took out the penny, and grinned happily. She put the penny back into the tree for the next customer and strode away with the grin still on her face.