River Angel

by A. Manette Ansay

  “How did it go?”

  “Pretty well.” She was trying to be nonchalant. “I got one of the leads.”

  “Congratulations!” Anna Grey said. Her voice rose with emotion, the way Milly and Bill both hated. “Why didn’t you tell me? Mercy, Milly, I can’t believe it!”

  “Don’t have a heart attack, Ma,” Milly said, but she was smiling. “I can’t believe it, either, OK?”

  The ground beef sizzled and popped. Too late, Anna Grey pulled it off the burner. A cloud of smoke enveloped them both before she could turn on the fan. “It’s all right,” Anna Grey said, turning her head so she wouldn’t cough into the meat. “It’s just a little singed. Tell me about your play.”

  The musical was The Music Man, and Milly told Anna Grey all about it as they spooned the burned bits out of the ground beef. “Rehearsals start this Saturday,” she said. “We’re just going to do a read-through first: That means everybody sits in a circle and says their lines so we all get a sense of the characters. I’m the young teacher the music man falls in love with, and—”

  The kitchen was open to the living room, and suddenly Bill appeared in the doorway.

  “Could you keep it down in here?” he said. He fanned his hand through the air. “Good grief, what’s going on?”

  Before Anna Grey could say anything, Milly jumped up as if she’d been slapped. “We were talking—what’s so bad about talking?” she screamed. “All—we—were—doing—was—talking!” Then she ran down the hall to her room and slammed the door. Anna Grey stared at the familiar lines of Bill’s face: the soft chin with its velvet stubble, the shaving scar on his left cheek, the eyes that could be green or gray or blue, depending on what he was wearing, held in place by crow’s-feet neat as fancy-sewn pleats. She stared at his sloping shoulders, the way his worn jeans hung low on his hips beneath the bulk of his belly. His hair, which was still full and curly in the front. That streak of gray. The devil’s kiss. His feet were long and slender, graceful; as always, they pointed slightly out. She removed his shirt, his undershirt, his jeans and socks and Jockeys. She removed the silver four-leaf clover that had hung from his neck since he’d turned sixteen, a gift from his mother. She turned him around, spun him over and over like a piece of meat on a giant spit, and still—the thought came to her with the rush of a sparrow fluttering in through a window accidentally left ajar—she knew nothing about this man. And she wondered if it was truly possible to know anyone in the world.

  “What?” Bill said to her, clearly bewildered. “All I did was ask a question.” And then he sniffed at the air near her forehead. “You’ve been smoking, haven’t you?” he said.

  That night, she went to bed early, and when she lay down in the double bed that had once belonged to her grandmother, she imagined having all that space to herself for the rest of her life. She opened her arms, spread her legs, until her hands and heels hung over the edges. As a child, she’d always worried that something might come up out of the darkness and sink its teeth into her dangling limbs. She’d slept with her arms at her sides, her legs tucked against her stomach, and even as she dreamed, some part of her stayed alert, watching with a parent’s eye, keeping her aligned in the center of the bed. Now, try as she might, Anna Grey could not close her eyes until she’d pulled her arms and legs back in and turned on her right side, facing the place where Bill should have been. She dreamed she was walking along an unfamiliar highway. In the distance, she could see the figure of a man; it was the hitchhiker, the real hitchhiker, the one with the harelip. “What do you want?” she asked, and he said, “One small act of kindness will appease me.” But she knew one kindness would lead to another, and then another, and it would never, ever be enough. And then she saw he held the semiautomatic in his hand.

  The alarm woke her. She felt confused, cotton-headed, as if she hadn’t slept. Bill had already come and gone, and when she went downstairs to fix breakfast, she saw he hadn’t even bothered to close the cover of the cereal box, let alone clear his dirty bowl and coffee cup from the table. She fixed two more bowls of cereal, buttered toast, poured orange juice, hoping routine would salvage the day. When Milly came into the kitchen, she gave her a cheery “Good morning!” But Milly had retreated into her usual silent shell.

  “How late will your rehearsal run on Saturday?” Anna Grey asked.

  Milly shrugged, sipped her juice.

  “Are you nervous?”

  Another shrug.

  “Maybe I could come watch you rehearse sometime,” Anna Grey said, and Milly said, softly, angrily, “Ma, it’s no big deal, OK? It’s just a stupid play.”

  Still, when the bus came, Anna Grey waved from the doorway as if nothing whatsoever were wrong. Then she threw Bill’s coffee cup across the kitchen and into the sink, enjoying the splash of broken china, the crisp, charred, ringing sound.

  At school, the children sensed her mood, stayed on their best behavior. Midmorning, she set them back to work on their ecosystems and stepped out to reserve a movie to carry them through the afternoon. So far so good, she thought. I can handle this day. But at lunchtime she remembered she’d been scheduled for recess duty weeks earlier, and no sooner did she get outside than she saw Robert John and his gang backing Gabriel up against the school wall. How she hated Gabriel for his weakness, that passive acceptance of all that befell him, so much like her own. She hated him fully and purely, in a way she would not have dreamed possible. She blew her whistle and marched over to where the boys had assumed postures of fearful defiance, gloved hands wedged into their pockets. Gabriel stood with his head down, waiting for whatever was going to happen next to happen. He didn’t even seem to notice when Anna Grey grabbed the shoulder of his coat.

  “I don’t have the patience for this,” she screamed at the boys. “If you’re still here in three seconds, I’ll slap your goddamn little punk faces bloody, do you understand English?”

  They did. After they’d dispersed, she spun Gabriel around and slammed him hard against the wall. He didn’t even blink. “What’s wrong with you,” she shouted, “that you don’t stand up for yourself? Do you want to live this way all your life? Is that what you want?”

  Gabriel didn’t answer. What child could answer stupid questions like that?

  She kept her hand on his shoulder, took a few deep breaths. She could feel the bones in his shoulder all the way through his coat, through his fat: the V of his clavicle, the flat patch of scapula. For all his bulk, he was a very small boy. If she squeezed hard enough, she could crush everything in her fist like a handful of potato chips.

  “Trouble?” someone said. It was Marty Klepner. Without saying anything, Anna Grey let go of Gabriel and walked back to her classroom, leaving her section of playground unattended. She opened the coat closet, and her red eyes fixed on the mess of toys and games and random supplies that were always threatening to spill out onto the floor. By the time the kids came in from recess, she had everything stacked in piles along the wall and was wiping down the shelves.

  “Spring cleaning!” she announced. “Everybody empty out your desks!”

  It was barely February, but what else could they do? Even Gabriel lifted the lid of his desk and began scooping the contents onto his seat. They scoured every surface with Comet. They washed every window, soaped every blackboard, organized the bulletin boards. They finished just as the librarian arrived with the antiquated film projector, and Anna Grey let The World of Volcanoes carry them right up to the three o’clock bell, when the kids—Gabriel included—flew out of there like buckshot.

  She didn’t know how much time passed before she heard a knock at the door. “Come in,” she said. Of course it was Marty, the last person in the world she wanted to see. She started packing up the projector so she wouldn’t have to look at him.

  “What’s going on?” Marty said.

  Anna Grey tucked the film into its box, held it out to Marty. “The World of Volcanoes,” she told him.

  “Can I help with anything?”
r />   “Oh, you could return this to the library, if you’re headed that way,” she said airily.

  “That’s not what I meant,” Marty said. “I mean, we’re still friends, aren’t we, Anna? Is there anything I can do?”

  “Anna Grey,” Anna Grey said. “My name is Anna Grey.” And then she grabbed her purse from her desk, lifted her coat from its hook, and ran down the hallway toward the parking lot, hating the hard, frantic sound of her heels on the tiled floors. Outside, the air was thick with the odor of the fertilizer plant, but it smelled worse than usual: oilier, sharper. She thought of the smoke boiling up from the fires in the Gulf, the pale sky opening to receive it, and at that moment she felt the bump forming at the edge of her lower lip. In the car, she flipped down the vanity mirror, stared at her reflection. Nothing. Yet she could feel something with her tongue. The most terrifying things were the ones you couldn’t see, the ones you harbored inside yourself. She remembered how, after Chernobyl, she’d listened to reports that said the cloud of radiation would reach America in four days, then two days, then one. That day, nothing had seemed different on the surface, but in the middle of the afternoon, a faint shadow passed over the sun and she felt the radiation settling into her bones, sparkling like diamonds, waiting for a chance to make the right cell blossom.

  CURIOUS ABOUT US? We’d love to meet you! The Circle of Faith holds open meetings the first Saturday of every month. Healing Prayers, Practical Advice, and some Good Laughs too. For women of all ages—nonjudgmental, supportive. Stay for a spaghetti supper with garlic bread, green beans, and choice of dessert. Fair Mile Crossroads, 4 P.M. Free child care provided by Cherish Mader and Lisa Marie Kirsch.

  —From the Ambient Weekly

  February 1991

  four

  Circle of Faith meetings were held at the Fair Mile Crossroads in a building that had once been a Pump and Go, and seasoned members still talked about the work it had taken to conquer the odor of gasoline and mildew. But Janey Fields had joined only last year, and it was hard for her to imagine the Faith house as anything other than the cozy place it was, with comfy castoff couches and homemade curtains, card tables, a refrigerator, and an interpretive mural of the Resurrection, which Ruthie’s daughter, Cherish, had been working on under Maya Paluski’s supervision. Jesus’ body was complete, but he still had no face or feet or hands. Cherish said she’d finish them as soon as she’d done more preliminary sketches. In the meantime, Maya had started painting angels all around him, ordinary-looking women dressed in business suits, lab coats, aprons, maternity dresses. One was holding an artist’s palette; Maya said that was for Cherish. She said that Cherish Mader was the most talented art student she’d ever had. Cherish wasn’t a member of the Circle—she was only seventeen—but she often helped out around the Faith house. Today she’d made the coffee and set out cups and saucers before heading back home to work on a paper for school.

  Beyond the wide display windows, the razor lines of the plowed county highways sliced the snowy fields into precise geometric shapes. Like ice cream sandwiches, Janey thought. Snow had been falling steadily since morning, but nine Faith members had shown up for the Saturday meeting in spite of the weather: Ruthie Mader, of course, and Janey; Margaret Kirsch, whose daughter Lisa Marie was Cherish’s best friend; Maya Paluski; Lorna Pranke; Jolena Carp; Shelley Beuchel; Tabby and Mary Smoot, who were sisters; and finally the newest member, Anna Graf—no, they were to call her Anna Grey. Last week’s meeting had been a spaghetti supper, open to any woman who wanted to come, more of a social event than anything. But today’s meeting was closed, which meant that only full members could attend. Anna Grey had just been initiated; she kept reaching for her gold Faith cross as if she were afraid she might have lost it. Her eyes were puffy and red, and when Ruthie asked, she said she’d had a fight with her husband. He didn’t like the idea of her joining a women-only prayer group, and everyone smiled sympathetically when she told them that.

  “My husband was the same way,” Shelley assured her, “until he started seeing the difference in me.” Shelley had just finished her last round of chemo; her head was wrapped in a pretty floral scarf the Circle had given her to celebrate.

  Anna Grey said, “I’m sure I could set myself on fire and Bill wouldn’t see any difference in me.” You could tell she was trying to be funny, but her smile was more like the wince of someone who’d just stepped on something sharp.

  “Look at it this way,” Ruthie said. “He’s noticed this change in you, hasn’t he? You decide to take some time for yourself, just once a week, just to pray with friends, and suddenly you’re on his mind. It’s a start, really, if you think of it that way.”

  For the first time, Anna Grey looked directly at Ruthie, and Janey remembered how it had been when she herself, new to the group, first looked into Ruthie’s deep-set eyes. Ruthie wasn’t exactly what you’d call pretty, but there was something about the way she gave you her full attention when she spoke, and the plain, old-fashioned way she pulled back her hair—she didn’t have a permanent, like the others—and the loose dresses she always wore, which seemed to change direction about a quarter second after she did…it was hard for anyone to explain. You just had to see her, and once you did, you were forever changed. When Ruthie took your hand during a Circle of Prayer, it was like nothing you’d ever felt before. It was leaving the misery of the body. It was going out beyond yourself so you saw all sides to everything. It was loving what you saw and carrying that love back with you so that, when you opened your eyes again, people glowed with a fresh, whole light.

  Lorna put her hand over her mouth, the way she always did when she wanted to speak. “Stan looks forward to my meetings,” she said, “because he gets the house to himself. We never realized how rarely that happened all those years, with him working and me at home. Now he plays around in the kitchen, invents sandwich combinations. He calls them his Stanleys.” Lorna laughed. “He offered to make us a dozen for today. I put him off this time, but, ladies, you’ve been warned.”

  Everybody was laughing now, if a little ruefully. These days, they were all praying for the chief, whose mind simply wasn’t what it used to be. They were praying for Lorna, whose health had been poor ever since her hysterectomy. They were praying for Shelley’s cancer cells to melt away. They were praying for Jolena Carp’s retarded son, Lovey, who was twenty-two years old and unable to speak; for Tabby and Mary’s ailing dog, Buster; for Maya Paluski’s diabetes; for various troubled marriages, lost jobs, problems with alcohol. They prayed that Ruthie would find a way to pay the back taxes on her farm so she wouldn’t have to sell out to Big Roly, as so many others had done. Technically, Big Roly owned the Faith house; he’d let Ruthie fix it up and use it for next to nothing, hoping to soften her up. But all of them knew that try as he might, Big Roly would never get Ruthie’s land. For when they joined hands in that comfortable room, a constellation of gold crosses shining at their throats, no one could doubt that her prayers would be answered.

  Ask and ye shall receive; seek and ye shall find; knock and the door shall be opened to you. These were the words Faith members lived by, and one only had to look at Shelley, now in a second remission against every medical prediction, to know that God was listening. Jolena Carp’s Lovey, still unable to speak, had started to crayon beautiful pictures; Maya was managing her diabetes through diet and exercise. Last fall, when it looked as though Ruthie wouldn’t come up with her minimum tax payment, the Circle met at night to join hands, and the next day, she won nine hundred dollars at bingo, the largest pot in Saint Fridolin’s history. Sometimes it seemed to Janey as if everyone’s prayers except her own were being answered. But it was wrong to think that way, for God revealed His glory in His own good time. Infertility might have left her devastated, cost her a marriage, shaken her to the core; still, she had to believe that this, like all things, was a part of God’s plan. If she only had faith the size of a mustard seed, He would focus His healing power upon her.

  Now the
y began the meeting by asking for God’s blessing. Today’s topic was the story of the Good Samaritan, and after Ruthie had finished reading from the Bible, she invited them to share encounters with Good Samaritans they had known. Anna Grey talked about Maya’s persistent concern over her unhappiness at work; Shelley told about a woman from her church who’d brought supper to Shelley’s family for two weeks while Shelley was in the hospital. Tabby and Mary talked about the time their car broke down coming back from Madison and a man and his two young boys had stopped to help. While he fixed their car, the boys sang a duet they had been practicing for a play at school. “There we were on the interstate,” Tabby said, “all these semi trucks roaring by and the boys just singing away. We tried to pay their father, but he wouldn’t take our money. Wouldn’t even let us give those boys a dollar.”

  “Though we slipped them a little something while his back was turned,” Mary said.

  And so it went, and as the women talked, they found themselves recalling times they’d tried to help someone and been rebuffed, or needed help themselves and had not received it, or themselves walked on past another soul in need. They talked about their children, their husbands, parents and siblings and friends. They talked about their jobs, books they had read, places they had visited or hoped someday to go. They gave advice, laughed, and listened. And then, as the meeting drew to a close, they all joined hands to form a Circle of Prayer for Good Samaritans everywhere. Angels, Ruthie called them. Though it was rare to encounter a spirit angel, there were many human angels in the world, ordinary people just like any one of them. One person could make a difference. One person had the power to change the way things were, to transform the events of daily life into multiple blessings. The meeting ended with each woman in turn reaffirming her Vow of Silence, a vow which assured that whatever had been said within Faith walls would remain there.