River Angel

by A. Manette Ansay

  “Gabriel’s always good,” Shawn said, and the boy smiled at him gratefully. Robert John sulked back into the room, his feet crammed into unlaced boots. His coat was unzipped. His clip-on tie was crooked. He shot Pete a clean, cold look of hate.

  Pete said, “Hey, this’ll cheer you up! Gabriel’s coming with you.”

  Robert John mumbled, “Will he fit in a pew?”

  Fred said sharply, “That’s enough of that.”

  “Take your cousin out to the car,” Bethany told Robert John, and as soon as the younger boys had left the room, she plucked the cigar from Pete’s shirt pocket. “If you’re going to be treated like a man,” she said curtly, “you’d better start learning to act like one. I expect you to set an example for both your brother and your cousin.” She flipped the cigar at Fred and walked out to the foyer. To her surprise, he followed; he even helped her on with her coat. “Aw, don’t be mad,” he said. “He’d just sleep through the service anyway.” He was cuddling up behind her, his beard tickly against her neck. “Dad,” he said, and he leaned his chin on her shoulder. “Did you hear him say it, Bethie?” His hands locked over her stomach like the buckle of a belt. And Bethany forgave him, leaned back against him—just for a moment—before unbuckling his hands, kissing each rough palm, and hurrying after the boys.

  Robert John had claimed the front seat; Gabriel sat in back. The angel in the big bay window winked and blinked as they drove away, dwindling down to the small, still light of a distant star. Bethany thought of Pete, alone with the men, their whiskey, their ways. The fact was that both her boys were growing up. She hoped Fred’s example would keep them from being like their fathers and her own, the walk-away types, the sort of men she didn’t even pretend to understand. As she turned north, following County C along the river, she wondered how it could be that Pa wasn’t even the least bit curious to see how she and Rose turned out. Ma, for all her dislike of them, wouldn’t have left them any more than she would have left behind an arm or a leg. Maybe, Bethany thought, that was why she’d treated them so mean. Because she couldn’t leave. Because they’d been a part of her once and her body still remembered them, claimed them, the way Bethany’s body claimed her boys somewhere just below the breastbone.

  “Is that the river where the angel lives?” Gabriel asked in his clear, child’s voice.

  “Angel?” Bethany said. It had started to snow, a light sparkling haze that shattered the moonlight into millions of pieces and skipped them across the narrow strip of water still untouched by ice.

  “My dad said there was an angel,” Gabriel said, and his voice was less hopeful now.

  “That’s just an old wives’ tale,” Bethany said.

  “No it’s not,” Robert John said. “This kid at school? Davey Otto? Some other kids dared him to jump off the Killsnake Dam and he did it? And he—”

  “Nearly drowned,” Bethany said.

  “His mom says the angel saved his life.”

  “I don’t ever want to hear about you playing at the dam.”

  “Pops saw it once. By the highway bridge,” Robert John said. “He says it jumped out of the water like a fish!”

  “Have you ever seen it?” Gabriel said.

  Robert John twisted in his seat to stare at him. “Maybe,” he said mysteriously.

  They were coming into Ambient. All the houses were outlined with lights, and some were capped by glowing reindeer, sleighs and snowmen, Santa Clauses wired to the chimneys. That afternoon, there’d been a living crèche in front of the railroad museum, and all the props were still in place: the manger with its cradle, the shepherds’ staffs, the post where the Farbs’ pet pony had been tied. Downtown, every other parking meter boasted a red-ribboned wreath, and the tall pine tree in front of the courthouse was decorated so beautifully, its star shining so brightly, that a stranger might barely have noticed the empty storefronts: the boarded-over windows of the Sew Pretty House of Fabric, the close-out sale banner at Fohr’s Family Furniture, the old brick bank where first a bridal shop and then a shoe store had started up and failed. The pharmacy was gone, and so was the five-and-dime. But there were a couple of new gift shops that catered to the millpond people—weekenders and summer vacationers who thought nothing of buying a perfectly fine little bungalow overlooking the Killsnake Dam, then ripping it down and putting a great big house up in its place. Cheddarheads sold cow T-shirts and German dolls and cheese; The River Stop sold cards and books, expensive kitchenware. And some of the old businesses were doing just fine—Roland Schmitt’s real estate company, Kimmeldorf’s Family Café, the bowling alley around the corner and, of course, Jeep’s Tavern. The sad thing was, if you wanted a can of paint or a new blouse, a slice of liverwurst or a refill on your prescription, you had to drive to Solomon, which, just a few years earlier, had been no more than a couple-three hundred houses upwind from the fertilizer plant, a dance bar called the Hodag and, down the road a mile or so, the Badger State Mall.

  Sometimes Bethany couldn’t believe how fast everything had changed, even since she and Fred were married. But she had no problem with the newcomers, the way some people did. You couldn’t blame others for moving in from the cities. Who wouldn’t want to live somewhere like Ambient? At the town square, Cradle Park was as lovely as any picture postcard she had ever seen, especially now that the Onion River had finally begun to freeze over, the ice beneath the bridge glistening like spilled cream. You could forget all about how crowded it was in summer, how the trash cans spilled over, drawing flies, how several women had had their purses snatched in broad daylight last July. There was talk of the city buying land on the outskirts of town for a larger park, setting up a boat ramp, dumping sand for a beach. Bethany didn’t care what they did, as long as it didn’t raise her taxes.

  Saint Fridolin’s parking lot was full, so she parked illegally—on Christmas Eve you could. Inside, she took off her gloves and swatted the snow from the boys’ hair and shoulders; she straightened Robert John’s tie, mopped Gabriel’s nose with her handkerchief. Joe Kimmeldorf, wearing an usher’s red carnation, was handing out thin white candles. He gave one to Bethany—ignoring the boys’ longing looks—then led her to a side pew at the back of the church, as she’d known he would. But the moment he was gone, she got up and dragged them toward the front. What was the point in coming to church if all you could see was a wall of backsides?

  “Ma,” Robert John whispered, his head hung low with embarrassment, for the choir had begun to sing and people were turning their heads to stare. Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht. In the pews, men let their knees fall open and women set their purses beside them, daring her to crowd in. From the corner of her eye, Bethany saw Joe Kimmeldorf coming back down the aisle. Then she heard someone whisper her name—Ruthie Mader, her neighbor to the west. “Over here,” Ruthie said, and she motioned for her daughter, Cherish, to scoot over. Cherish Mader was a high school senior and more beautiful than any fashion model. Everybody said she took after her grandmother Gwendolyn, who’d run off to New York in the 1940s and come home with a wicked tongue and a toddling baby—Ruth. But Cherish wasn’t wild like her grandmother had been. You never saw Cherish Mader stray very far from her mother’s side.

  “Thanks,” Bethany said, pulling the boys in after her. She ignored the pop-eyed looks of parishioners crushed in the middle of the pew. Wasn’t that what being a Christian was supposed to mean—doing unto others, even if that meant inconveniencing yourself just a little? Ruthie Mader was a Christian in the best sense of that word. Only days after Bethany’s marriage, she’d stopped by with a plate of brownies and an invitation to join the Circle of Faith, the prayer group she’d started after her husband’s death. “It’s a social club, mostly,” Ruthie said. “A way to get to know other women.” Lorna Pranke was a member, and she had only good things to say about it. Of course, Bethany had no time for that sort of thing. Still, it had been nice to be asked, and she thought of Ruthie every time she passed the small white cross on County O that marked the spot
where Tom Mader had been killed by a hit-and-run driver. Seven years had passed, but Ruthie had never remarried. She still wore her wedding ring. Sunday afternoons, you’d see her with Cherish in the cemetery, pulling the weeds from around his grave.

  The choir finished “Stille Nacht,” launched into “Die Kinderlein Kommen,” and Bethany settled back to enjoy the sound of the choir, the stained-glass colors, the various perfumes that rose from the coats of the women around her. Ruthie wasn’t the type to hold it against someone if she didn’t join prayer circles or go to church each week. Others were more particular. No doubt Father Oberling would remark on what he called “Christmas Christians,” trying to make people like Bethany feel bad because they didn’t come more often—it had been the same at her old church in Dodgeville, where she’d lived before she and Fred were married. But over the years, Bethany had trained herself to ignore that part and concentrate on what was good. And what was good was when the priest first came in at the back of the church with his candle and everybody rose. And he touched his flame to someone’s candle, and that person lit someone else’s, on and on, until the light spread over everyone like sunrise. What was good was the story of Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, the wise men bearing gifts, the story of Baby Jesus in the manger with the cows and donkeys and sheep. Not my will but Thine be done, Mary had said, and of her own free will. Now she was forever blessed.

  Bethany glanced at the boys and saw that Robert John was sleeping, his head rising and falling with each deep breath. But Gabriel was wide awake, hands folded high on his chest like a child in a First Communion picture. Candlelight danced off his thick glasses. His mouth was open, a perfect plump O.

  “Who’s Robert John’s little friend?” Ruthie whispered, and Bethany said, “Fred’s brother Shawn’s boy.”

  “Devout little one,” Ruthie said, nudging Cherish, and when it was time for the Sign of Peace, they both leaned across Bethany to offer Gabriel their hands. Gabriel smiled, bewildered but pleased, and Bethany seized his hand too. For suddenly she loved him, loved even his handsome, wayward father, loved everyone in the church and the whole wide world beyond. She approached the altar for Communion with such joy she couldn’t help smiling at Father Oberling, who did not smile back but glanced at her uncertainly, as if trying to recall just who she was. But it didn’t matter. She loved him too. And she left the church feeling as if God was guiding her home, the same way that she guided Robert John and Gabriel, an arm around each of their shoulders.

  Yes, God was her chauffeur. It must have been so, for the car started without complaint, and she weaved her way out of the parking lot and through the downtown just ahead of the crowd. In the country, beyond the lights of Ambient, He stretched out His mighty hand, and she found that she could love even the cold, black waters of the Onion River, the silent fields with their chilly fringe of weeds, the quiet blossom of light that marked each distant house. Nowadays, there were people who said the star shining over Bethlehem was nothing but a comet, but who was to say it couldn’t have meant something else as well? Perhaps it became whatever you believed. Perhaps you controlled the thing that it was, the way you controlled your own destiny. She recalled the first time she came to Ambient for the summer festival, how Fred had followed her all around Cradle Park on that hot Fourth of July. If she bought a diet Coke, he bought a diet Coke; if she rode the Hammer, he rode the Hammer. Later, he introduced himself and bought her and the boys each a fish fry, which they ate standing up in the polka tent, next to the gazebo. The accordion players cheered as the dancers skipped and spun so close that Bethany caught her breath. “They look like they’re going to crash into each other,” she said.

  “Don’t you polka?” Fred said, and when she shook her head, he said, “I’ll show you, it’s easy,” and it was, especially when she closed her eyes and stiffened her spine and let him swing her around and around.

  She recalled the times he drove all the way to Dodgeville to court her, and how she’d always sent him home at sundown, no matter how tired he claimed to be. She recalled the time she thought he’d left for good, taking his ring, and his return three months later on a Sunday morning in fall. “Let’s go for a drive,” he’d said, “all four of us, Beth, what do you say?” It didn’t take long before she saw they were headed for Ambient. Halfway there, Robert John had to relieve himself. There was nothing but fields for miles, and Bethany told him, “You’re just going to have to hold it.” But Fred pulled over to the side of the road and said, “Looks like a good spot to me.”

  It was a sunflower field. By that time in the season they’d all turned brown, their faces shriveled up. They looked like the walking dead, all facing the same direction, and you could see how there might be some privacy a few rows in, but not much. Not to mention it was trespassing.

  “Here?” Robert John protested, and Bethany was pleased. After all, he hadn’t been raised to go beside the road like a dog. But both he and Pete followed Fred out of the car and into that raggedy field. She had time to think while she was looking in the other direction, and her thought was that Fred had made up his mind to break things off, and he wanted one last spat to make it permanent. Right there, she decided he would not get it. No matter what, she’d turn her smooth cheek, and later on its memory would light up his nights like a moon, like a sweet ripe peach. So when he and the boys got back into the car, she just looked out the window, admiring the scenery. The boys seemed awfully fidgety, and when she turned around she caught them grinning. Fred was grinning too, though he was trying to hide it. She was mad as a yellow jacket, them laughing at her just because they’d flashed their peckers in the weak autumn sunshine.

  “What is it?” she said, keeping her voice steady.

  “Nice day, ain’t it?” Fred said.

  “Yes, it certainly is,” she said, and the boys snorted and choked, kicking the back of the seat, but she just closed her eyes and kept them closed, as if she were resting, as if she hadn’t a care in the world, until they finally turned onto the J road, crossing the railroad tracks with a jaw-popping bump. Bethany pretended to study the billboards all along the highway: SCHMITT REAL ESTATE; KIMMELDORF’S FAMILY CAFÉ; SOLOMON INDUSTRIAL PARK; RIVEREDGE MALL; and the newest one: MCDONALD’S, 2 MILES AHEAD!

  “Home sweet home,” Fred said as they turned into the driveway, spraying gravel and dust. They passed rusted-out cars and farm equipment, an old washing machine and hand wringer, a tireless bicycle, a low pyramid of busted TVs, the gangly remains of a patio umbrella—every kind of waste you’d care to think of. The boys were cutting up again, and as she turned to give them a look, she saw the spanking new ranch house across the courtyard from the farmhouse. Fred angled toward it and parked by the corncrib, where a neat concrete sidewalk led right up to the front door. Everything was mud all around it, but leveled. A tiny staked tree shivered in the middle of where the yard would go. “Open the glove compartment,” Fred told her, and there was both a key and a wedding band on a yellow smiley-face key ring that said Property of Bethany Carpenter.

  “Surprise, Ma, it’s ours,” the boys screamed, both at once. “Can we go in?”

  “It’s a double-wide,” Fred said. “Two bedrooms, one and a half baths. I ordered it stone empty so you can fix it up however you want.”

  She let the boys run ahead. The house was the same cheery yellow as the key ring, and she knew it would be beautiful even before she went inside. Ever since she was a bitty girl, she’d wanted a house of her own, where no Mr. Shuckel could come in and say, Do this, Don’t you dare do that, Get out. In high school, when they got evicted, they’d moved to another duplex, south of town. Ma cut hair in the kitchen, and you’d find clumps of it everywhere—blond and red and black—hair you knew was not your own, and when you’d sweat, you could smell the stink of perm solution oozing out of your pores. Bethany shared a bedroom with Rose, and while Rose let every piece of clothing lay where it fell, Bethany kept her side shiny as a licked-out pot. She filled up a scrapbook with decorating
ideas; she had it to this day. Ma made fun of it every chance she got. “Miss Fancy,” she called Bethany. “Miss La-di-da.”

  Now, as Bethany turned off the J road and started up the drive, she recalled how she’d clung to those keys and wept, and she gave thanks to God for His goodness. Home sweet home. She parked in her usual spot by the corncrib, listened to the boys’ quiet breathing, for Gabriel, too, had fallen asleep, slumped across the backseat. The Christmas tree lights winked and blinked in the front window, but the house lights were out, which surprised her. Fred and Pete must have gone to bed, left Pops and Shawn to stumble back to the farmhouse, following the round yellow stepping-stones cast by the old man’s flashlight. Robert John stirred, sensing the sudden stillness. Gabriel sat up. Yet Bethany waited, steeped in warm feeling, reluctant to disturb the mood.

  “We’re home,” she finally said. “Let’s get you both to bed.”

  “Where am I going to sleep?” Gabriel said.

  “With your father,” Bethany said, eyeing the dark farmhouse. “I’ll walk you over. He’s probably waiting up.” But she couldn’t see the slightest glow of a candle or kerosene lantern, and then Robert John said, “How come his car is gone?”

  Bethany stared at the empty line of sky above the snow fence. She got out of the car. Gabriel came around to stand beside her, and she felt her peace of mind torn away like a beautiful scarf caught in a cold snap of wind. It wasn’t so much a feeling of shock as it was the feeling that she’d been deceived. That she should have known better. That all the beautiful candlelight services in the world were of no use whatsoever when it came to the practical logic of living. This, then, was what Shawn Carpenter had wanted from her. She did not have to go over to the farmhouse to understand that he was truly gone.