Angelina's Oak

by Jesse Reiss

Chapter 29

  Neil and Lee were gone off to work and school by the time Angelina and her mother awoke and made it upstairs. Angelina missed him already, wishing they could spend the day together again. Paula and she fixed a simple breakfast and flipped through the stations on TV with Tammy curled up next to them on the couch.

  The morning news shows (which were a standard of grey-haired men surrounded by coquettes and untouched coffee mugs, trying to make light of the grim news of the world) were abuzz about the girl saved by the owl. Each one was focusing on the recent crime spree in Los Angeles and the topic of the unknown girl, expressing synthetic empathy, which only made Angelina feel used and uncared for. When they began replaying clips that were posted on YouTube of Paula outside the Hollywood/Highland Mall Metro station, they had seen enough. Paula was aghast at the image of her crying and in anguish, shot by some no-name tourist and posted for the world to see. She turned off the TV and cursed several times.

  “Make sure we never watch the news ever again!” she told Angelina.

  “Damn right! How can these people possibly think they understand?”

  Paula’s phone rang. It was Jacqueline.

  “Paula! It’s crazy down here. You were right to stay away from this place. The media and photographers are camped outside the store and the phone is going off the hook with reporters, agents and well wishers trying to contact you. The website is exploding with messages. Oprah’s agency has called as well as the Today Show, Tyra Banks and Dr. Phil. Can you believe it?”

  “Don’t give any of these people my cell phone number or tell them where I am. The last thing I’ll be doing is showing up on Oprah’s couch with a cast on my arm for the world to give me sympathy. No thank you!”

  “That’s what I thought you’d say. You also have calls from several ambulance chasing lawyers and four different private security firms offering their services, most likely for exorbitant fees. I told them you would be the last people to allow some body guard follow you around and I didn’t think home security was an issue for you now.”

  “Right, I’m definitely not in the market for home security and I’ve got a man who’ll protect me.”

  Jacqueline giggled, reading something else in that statement. “Your insurance agency did call regarding the fire, as well as that guy from the Beverly Hills coin shop.”

  “What does he have to say?”

  “Let see…” She riffled through a stack of phone messages. “It says to please call him for final authorization on sale.”

  “Thanks. I’ll call him back.”

  “Some good news is tons of flowers have arrived from different customers, friends and vendors — about twenty bouquets in all. Some real big ones too.”

  “Ooh, that’s great! Why don’t you close the shop for the day and throw them all in your car and drive them up to the Stanley’s house where we are. We could use some flowers around here to give the place a feminine touch.”

  “That’s a great idea! The media hordes will probably disperse too.”

  “Make sure you aren’t followed.”

  “No problem.”

  Paula hung up the phone and relayed to Angelina what Jacqueline had told her. She called Samuel back at the coin shop, who enthusiastically said he had a buyer for three and a half million. She authorized the sale and increased his commission to 12%. He was thrilled.

  “That coin made us over three million dollars Baby!” She kissed Angelina on the forehead.

  “Wow!” Angelina shook her head.

  “While the rest of the world prays and sympathizes for us,” Paula said with some excitement, “I say we celebrate by cleaning this male dormitory we’re living in! I’ll spray, you wipe!” They started in the kitchen and began to clean the house from top to bottom.

  In the early afternoon Jacqueline arrived with her car stuffed with bouquets. “I couldn’t fit them all. These are the most significant ones. You’ve got some really pretty ones from the celebs.”

  They spent some time arranging them all over the house, bringing new life and color to the living room, kitchen, and study and as appreciation, the men’s rooms. Angelina brought some flowers into Neil’s room and placed them before the computer monitor where she went right up to and kissed the camera. With the multiple cleaning agents they used and the blossoms everywhere, the house was beginning to look and smell like the girls owned the place.

  Mid afternoon Angelina called Ken to check on Virginia. He said the place was now a zoo — literally. He skipped school to help out as there were requests by the dozen from media and animal enthusiasts to see the bird. He said it had gotten so out of control by noon the other animals were getting spooked by the numbers passing through that they closed the sanctuary down for the day and tomorrow might be charging entrance fees and limiting the traffic.

  Late afternoon, in the middle of the two cooking dinner, Neil arrived home. He walked in the door and Angelina felt her pulse race and face redden. She was busy preparing a salad and kept at her work, not wanting to make a scene in front of her mom, who was stirring broth over the stove.

  “Wow! What have you guys done to this place?” He walked around, admiring the bouquets and orderliness. “You guys have officially moved in, haven’t you?”

  Paula explained they were gifts of sympathy from customers and friends brought to her workplace.

  He entered the kitchen and lightly stroked his hand down Angelina’s back, sending quivers down her spine and putting a large smile on her face. She longed to turn around and kiss him, but restrained herself. She caught her mother’s teasing smile and shot her a stern look that said, “Don’t you even dare open your mouth”.

  Lee arrived home as dinner was being served. He too was amazed at the changes in the house with the cleaning that had been done and the flowers placed everywhere. He thanked them profusely and he sat at the table, still in his uniform, with an intense face. Paula and Angelina could tell something was happening. “I made it out to come here to check on you all and eat, and then I’ve got to go back to work.”

  “What’s happening?” Neil asked between bites.

  “We think we’ve tracked Malcolm down and there’s going to be a bust tonight. A prostitute he has often used turned herself in saying she got a call to go to a house tonight and she is sure it is him she will be seeing.”

  “That’s gross,” Angelina said.

  “That isn’t even half of it. I’ll ruin your dinner if I told you what else she said that she knows about the guy. Anyway, we’re going in on the place tonight and hopefully we get him and this will all be over.”

  Dread came over Paula’s face. Angelina could tell what she was thinking — she feared for Lee’s safety. Paula had been wondering what it would be like to be emotionally tied to or even married to a city police officer that was always in harm’s way. The anxiety that must exist every day in their wives’ and girlfriends’ minds when they are out there on the streets interacting with the society’s dregs, pulling people over, making arrests, finding drugs and contraband and withholding the easy temptations to be bribed or succumb to these vices themselves. She assumed they must get used to it and it becomes a fact of life.

  Paula spoke quietly, “When we will know what happened?”

  “I will call you the moment it’s over.”

  They ate the rest of dinner with minimal small talk; their minds resting nervously on the possible danger Lee was facing that evening. Near the end of the meal Lee’s Blackberry buzzed and moments after looking at the message he got up. “If you’ll all please excuse me, I’ve got to go now.” Paula got up with him out of instinct, not knowing why she did, but she followed him to the garage where his patrol car was parked.

  She was jittery and unsure what she should say, but knew she had to say something. The fear that this would be the last time she would see him tore at her. This feeling of dread that had come over her this evening made it startlingly clear to her that this was the man she was looking for to
replace her husband. She had been toying with the idea in her head and doubting her emotions, but now thrust into this position, she knew they were real. She had to communicate this for fear that she would regret the rest of her days if this was the last time they saw each other.

  “Lee, I just…”

  He turned around and she looked down at her cast and fidgeted with the shoulder strap, hiding her eyes from his, should they betray how torn up inside she was. “Lee…I…don’t know how to express this…you’ve been so nice to my daughter and me, and you didn’t have to do it, but you did. I feel…like if something were to happen…I realize now that…if something happened…” She tried to say more but her voice choked up.

  He stepped forward and gave her a long hug. He leaned back and took her face in his hands and kissed her on the forehead. He carefully wiped the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs and tilted her face up ever so slightly so he was looking into her large brown eyes. “I’ll be back, I promise. This is routine and done very safely. Nothing like you watch on TV, okay?”

  She nodded and composed herself. “Just be careful, all right?”


  “I will.” He kissed her again on the forehead and got into his car. Paula stood there and watched as the garage opened and he pulled away. She remained standing there, staring out, even after the garage door had closed and he was gone.

  A hand lightly rested on her shoulder. It was Angelina and she was handing her a tissue. “Neil is doing the dishes. Let’s go inside and I’ll make you some tea.”

  ◊

  That evening they sat around the living room talking, with their cell phones and the house phone arranged on the coffee table before them. Neil and Angelina sat together and made no effort to conceal their romance from her mother. Paula was fidgety, taking an extra pain pill and trying to think of something more meaningful to talk about than TV shows and politics, to take her mind off Lee. They played Scrabble for an hour and shared stories, Angelina telling all about her two weeks at Mammoth Mountain snowboarding and Neil describing his trip as a youngster in Elementary school to Washington D.C., where he camped out in the Air and Space museum.

  “Neil,” Paula said with emphasis to show she wanted to really know something, “explain to us newbie’s — in blonde terms that is — what this ‘metaphysics’ is about. If physics is the study of energy, space and time, what the hell is ‘metaphysics’?”

  “Sure!” he said, nervously looking at Angelina for any disapproval in the topic of discussion. “It is more a philosophy that means ‘after physics’ or ‘beyond physics’.” They looked at him blankly and shook their heads. “All right,” he said, releasing Angelina’s hand and sitting forward on the sofa. He reached back for a bobby pin in her hair, “May I?” She smiled and nodded.

  “This,” he said, holding it up, “is made of metal coated with plastic, right?” They nodded. “And the metal is made of atoms, which are made of protons, electrons and neutrons, right?”

  “Right. And from that point on, my physics in High School went blank,” Paula responded with a smile.


  “Totally fine. And you could ask the question, what are the particles that make up protons or electrons made up of? And, what are those particles made up of? And so on and physicists have answers to those questions. But they reach a point far too small to tell and they know there can’t be infinity of particles that make up the particles that are all matter. There must be an end somewhere where it can’t break down any further. And that end appears, from all evidence, to be simply…nothing.” He paused for effect. “That’s right, all you see in the physical world is possibly made up of what comes down to basically nothing.”

  “But aren’t our bodies all made of atoms?”


  “Yes, trillions upon trillions.”

  “You are basically saying that if you break it all down, we — us sitting here in this room — are made of nothing.”

  “Well, sort of. Obviously you see and experience and are interacting with something. But, close your eyes for a second and think of yourself slamming your hand down on something hard.” They closed their eyes and nodded. “You get the feeling of that hard thing you slammed your hand down on?” They nodded. “Does your hand sting a little?” They laughed and nodded. “Good. Well, how is that any different from actually slamming your hand down hard on something like this coffee table?”

  “One is real and one is imagined,” Angelina said, opening her eyes.

  “Right. But, while the imagination we only agree isn’t real, you have proven we can experience the same thing occurring in our minds as if it were real. From this experiment we could argue that all reality is mental experience and there is possibly no actual difference between the two.”

  “Totally lost me there,” Paula said.

  “Okay, that’s fine. You don’t have to understand that. Here’s another datum you already have probably heard of. You know that all material objects are composed almost entirely of empty space, right?” They shook their heads again. “Okay, atoms are like a bare room. A room is composed of walls and empty space, right?” They nodded. “And factually there is so much space in an atom — that is, between the center of the atom and the electrons that spin around the center — that if we removed all the space from the atoms in your body, your body would fit easily like a spec of dust on the end of this bobby pin.” He held it up for them to see. “But your body on the end of this pin would weigh the same as you do now.”

  “No way!” Angelina exclaimed, her eyes widening.

  “Yes,” he said smiling; pleased he had created an effect on her. “So when you ask what are all those tiny particles that are left on this bobby pin made of and physicists break it down to where they can’t seem to break it down any further, the most accepted theory is string-like vibrations in space that really themselves aren’t a thing. And the more they experiment and discover, the weirder it gets. They find particles that pop in and out of existence from seemingly nothing and stable laws of the physical universe suddenly don’t apply or start contradicting each other. And here is where they cross over from doing purely physics and into metaphysics, which is defined as” — and he slowly said each word — “‘the philosophical study of the nature of reality’. Here now we begin to ask questions like: What is reality? What is experience? And what is consciousness? And is there a God? These are the sorts of questions metaphysics tries to answer.”

  “Give me a specific example?” Paula said, interested now, but feeling a little lost and still undistracted fully from her thoughts on Lee.

  “Okay. There is an obvious question you might have thought of. Is there only one universe — the one the Milky Way is in? And we know now that this universe is 13.75 billion years old, so what came before it? And if the answer — as religion would have us believe — is that a Creator put it here, then how did the Creator get there?”

  “Logical question,” Paula said, nodding her head.

  “One answer is there isn’t just one universe, but maybe several universes and that one gave birth to this one or maybe an infinite quantity of universes.”

  “You mean scientists actually think that is the case?” Paula asked.

  “Oh, yes,” he said with emphasis. “There are many scientists at work right now building mathematical models to prove the existence of multiple dimensions and multiple universes to try to explain thus far unexplainable phenomena in this universe.”

  Angelina sat up fully, interested in what Neil was saying. “How likely is it to be in one universe and go into another?” she asked.

  “Well, it’s all theory really. Nothing proven. It is even a plausible scenario that each one of us, possibly as spiritual beings, has his own universe of which the senses and the brain is a switchboard we use to interact with the material universe.”

  “You mean living things could possibly have their own universe?” Angelina asked slowly.

  “There are theories that say that, yes. There are also theories that say consciousness,
emotions and imagination are chemical reactions in the brain and that all existence is material, but I find that unbelievable.”

  “Hold on,” she said, putting up her hand. “So there is the possibility that all living things, like Tammy here and the trees outside could have their own universe where their own experiences and consciousness are kept?”

  “It isn’t out of the realm of the possible,” Neil said with some enthusiasm, excited that he had sparked an interest in the girls.

  “Okay…take for example my Mom and me,” she said looking at Paula, who seemed puzzled by Angelina’s sudden interest in this subject. “We sometimes have so much understanding between each other, I can tell what she is thinking and she can tell what I am thinking without us even having to say a word. I mean, sometimes it is downright spooky how well we can read each other’s minds. You ever experience that?”

  “Yeah,” he said with some hesitation, “my Dad and I can get like that.”

  “Exactly. How would you explain that?”

  “Sounds like a psychologist could give you a better theory, but in the idea of metaphysics and multiple universes, we could theorize that the wavelength of thought between the two of you has become so similar in your experiences that you are able to pick up what is going on in the other’s universe without any bodily expression in this material universe.”

  Angelina nodded, smiling at her Mom, feeling like something was making sense to her. “So, based on that idea, if Mom and I were able to utterly duplicate each other’s ‘wavelength of thought’,” she said, putting mock quotations in the air, “we could occupy the same universe, possibly different from this material one?”

  Neil shook his head and smiled. “I love this discussion, but really I can’t do anymore than add to the theory you are putting out there and allow you to decide for yourself. I read recently that love and affinity could be defined as the willingness to be near something and occupy the same space as it. The more you love someone or something, the more you want that person or thing to occupy your space. So on that theory, the admiration between you and your mother would account for the ability of the two of you to pick up on what each other is thinking without having to say a thing.”

  Paula looked back and forth, watching them talking and realized how they understood each other, even if she didn’t. Angelina, with her bend toward anthropology and Neil with his bend towards metaphysics — she would have thought two people like that could never be on the same page, yet here they were like two rivers connecting and merging into one. She watched to her surprise as a giddy Angelina roughly grabbed Neil’s face and kissed him hard on the cheek.

  “You make so much sense to me!” she exclaimed.

  He blushed deeply, surprised at her reaction. “Wow! I was truly terrified of ever discussing details of this subject with you, fearing I would bore you to death in a second.”

  “Never! You could never bore me!”

  Paula’s cell phone rang and they all jumped. She looked at the LCD screen.

  It was Lee.