Before There Were Angels

by Sarah Mathews

  Chapter 14

  I won’t describe the next few weeks. I’m not sure that I can even remember them in detail. I only remember the infinite pall over our lives, the funeral, the endless discussions of ‘How could this have happened?’ inside what was left of our family - and with friends and other family - Belle’s depressed listlessness and Stevie’s wide-eyed, unreachable devastation.

  Belle returned to her religion - Catholicism - attending Mass every day, huddled up against God in the National Shrine of St. Francis in North Beach while I attempted to steer Stevie back into the course of his life where he could do no more than stumble along. He had not so much lost a half of himself with the death of Zack as lost his sense of himself entirely.

  Belle decided that she was being punished - punished for leaving Robert, punished for marrying me, punished for whatever sins she had committed during childhood, punished for her recent happiness and becoming distracted from her relationship with God.

  I was the only living person left in the house. Callous as it may appear, and deeply upset as I was at the empty chasm Zack left behind for every second we carried on living, Zack was not my child and I had only known him for a short time. So, much as I liked him, much as I loved him easily, his death did not unhinge me, it merely saddened and challenged me.

  How would we ever move on from here? Was there to be any sense of purpose in the everlasting absence of Zack?

  The cops had checked over the whole house and could find no evidence of there ever having been an intruder, or a struggle, or of any outside presence whatsoever beyond the voice on the cell phone message which the coroner decided might have come from the TV. The official party line was that Zack had decided to commit suicide while the balance of his mind was disturbed and that his ‘Help!’ message, and his subsequent hanging of himself, was maybe a plea for just that, help. We had never realized the depth of despair Zack was in until after he was dead.

  I didn’t buy it. Stevie was literally dumbstruck most of the time, Belle blamed her sins, and Robert, his father, blamed us with a level of viciousness that was understandable, if hard to hear.

  Luiz Martinez, on the other hand, was tenacious. He was convinced that Zack did not commit suicide. He couldn’t put his finger on what had actually happened but he was sure Zack had not laid hands on himself.

  “Let’s look at this,” he said. “You were out for Black Friday. Zack was at home. There was no break in, so either the person doing this had a key or was let into the house by Zack. Martha DeGamo probably had a key. Who would Zack have let into the house - his dad? Your wife did not have a key and may not even have been in the country, but if Zack had opened the door, she could have forced her way in. Where does that get us?”

  “Nowhere.”

  “Yep, you are right. Nowhere. But there is an explanation for this and we have to find it, and I don’t think it has anything to do with ghosts, although I can maybe buy that you think you’ve seen one. Jess and Dan DeGamo were victims, not violent criminals.”

  “So what do we do from here?”

  “We’ve checked all the records for people entering the country, and there’s no record of your ex-wife - Rafaella Parsons - arriving in the US. She could have entered the country under a different name, of course …”

  “That seems to leave either Martha DeGamo or Robert.”

  “We have questioned Robert through the Phoenix police and he has an alibi, although that alibi has not been verified as of yet and God knows where Martha DeGamo is.”

  “Why would Martha DeGamo kill Zack?”

  “Probably because she’s insane and she’s a killer, or so we believe. We are renewing our efforts to find her but she knows how to keep herself hidden, that is for sure. She might even be in the city and that is where we are concentrating our search.”

  “Thank you so much for your help, Officer Martinez.”

  “It’ll be my pleasure when we find her.”

  * * *

  Amid all this brutal turmoil, the house came alive again. They say that upsets in a house disturb ghosts. I really don’t know but I was suddenly hearing loud bangs, shrieks and groans everywhere. One night there was a coughing, choking, gasping sound coming from the bottom of the stairs where we had found Zack hanging. That sound tore me apart, the thought of Zack swinging there, his legs dancing, trying to breathe, trying to escape, trying eventually to die.

  Only I could hear these noises. Maybe Stevie did too but he was communicating very few of his observations on the world at the time. I am more or less sure Belle was oblivious.

  Which raised the issue of whether I was imagining them, and even whether I was becoming schizophrenic. I was hearing voices too, voices that seemed to be announcing themselves inside my head in loud, echoing scattershot bursts. I couldn’t understand what they were saying. They were clearly words, even sentences, but they came too fast and I could never replay them, and because they came only occasionally, I was never ready for them.

  If these were indeed supernatural events it only goes to show that Christian crosses are absolutely no use in countering metaphysical forces. By this time Belle had pretty much covered the walls of the house with crosses in various sizes, spending over $500 on them in the National Shrine of St. Francis gift shop. Every room had a cross. I was also forever coming across Belle praying, making extravagant crosses of her own with her body as she splayed herself in front of her Lord.

  The sound disturbances continued.

  One night I woke up to the sound of breathing in my ear, and maybe even to lips brushing my ear, so close was the source. Belle was spooned in front of me, so it wasn’t her.

  I slowly turned my head to find nobody and nothing there. The breathing had stopped.

  Yet, as I fell asleep, there it was again, this time incorporating harsh rhythmic whispering.

  I didn’t think I was going insane. I had never been insane and there had been enough inexplicable events in the house to suggest to me that something was indeed taking place outside of myself, but you are never quite sure. How does an insane person recognize that they are insane?

  As the whispering grew in volume, I turned suddenly to catch a glimpse of a shadow darting backwards and dissipating. There really had been something there, I concluded. Never mind the DeGamos - was our house built on the site of past demonic rituals, was it sucking dark forces from the ether, or was it me?

  For the moment I was more intrigued than afraid.

  That would be a short moment.

  Chapter 15

  Belle gave notice at her job. She hadn’t been back to work since Zack had died. Her company had been totally sympathetic about her devastating loss, putting no pressure on her whatsoever to return until she was ready to do so. But Belle thought it was unfair on them for her to take indefinite leave since she felt as though she might never be fit to work again, or at least that is how she saw it at the time. If, one day, she felt competent enough to return without freaking everyone out with her sobbing and emotional breakdowns, could she reapply? Of course she could, they assured her eagerly, and they would certainly find a place for her.

  Towards Stevie and me she was disconcertingly and distractedly calm while continually insisting that she loved us deeply and that she would be back to her old self eventually. In the meantime she had her religion, her church, and Father Greg to console her and to reach places in need of healing that no secular soul, however adoring and well-meaning, could reach.

  Sometimes I would hear her suppressed crying, almost like the mewing of a kitten, in secluded places around the house but she was never tearful to our faces and she never sobbed loudly, as I had known Rafaella to do weekly when I was married to her, over far less, and often over nothing at all.

  “I love you so much,” she told me. “None of this is your fault, however it happened, you know that. I just need time. I am so sad and I miss Zack so much. I cannot lose the image of him hanging there all alone. I carry it around with me. Everywhere I look, I s
ee it. He died alone. I can’t stand that. And he was afraid. When I find out who killed him, I’ll kill them, I swear I will. I’ll have to go to prison, and that will be hard on both you and Stevie, I know that, but I am going to kill them, even if it means that I have to take on a six hundred pound wife called Bertha in some state pen.”

  I didn’t argue with her. Maybe she would, maybe she wouldn’t, but it wasn’t worth discussing at that moment.

  “And I’ll always make love to you whenever you like, you know that, don’t you, Luke? I’ll never deny you anything, unless I am in the prison, and in California you can have regular conjugal visits anyway.” She laughed shakily and so did I.

  So our sex life continued, and it remained an extraordinarily good sex life. We always slept naked together and I would spoon her and stroke her, then she would spoon me and hold me across the chest.

  “Make love to me,” she would say. “I need you inside me.”

  Apart from the stroking, Belle didn’t like foreplay, so there were no additional preliminaries. In the good times, she would have her first orgasm within less than twenty seconds, although in her grief she took longer. Then she would come again. Our bodies had been synched to each other naturally from the first time we ever made love. We were just like that - we were always in tune with each other in every way over everything, no effort or thought required.

  “I’m yours forever,” she would declare as she came for the third time. “You’re everything to me. And you are so big. I love your cock. Nobody is as good at this as you are.”

  Belle had a personal creed of encouraging people at every opportunity - of hyperbole - so I never knew whether she literally meant it or not, but it made me happy and proud to hear it, and it probably made me better in bed too.

  Belle claimed that although she had made love to many other men before, she had never experienced multiple orgasms before, so maybe I really was good and really was big inside her, although Rafaella had never suggested that I was either. She only said that having sex with me was painful to her and made her sad for all the intimacy we had otherwise lost.

  With my orgasm, Belle would come again extra-hard. She said that she could see lights trailing from her fingers. She would then insist that I stay on top of her as long as possible so that the sensation would linger.

  Making love seemed to be another consolation to her alongside her religion, so we religiously continued to make love every two days, after I had first removed her knife from under her pillow each time. I had inadvertently cut myself across the knuckles once as I eased myself on top of her, and that wasn’t going to happen again.

  The one who worried me most was Stevie. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be one half of a twin where the other half is suddenly, violently and permanently severed from you. Stevie and Zack were always together, always tumbling over each other, always up to games and companionship, even when they were cussing each other out and swinging punches at each other. Now Stevie would look at himself in the mirror of his brother and there would be no reflection there.

  They say that if one twin gets hurt, the other feels the pain. That happened between Belle and me too, so I can easily believe that. As Belle suffered during those months, my chest ached as if I were going cold turkey from a drug addiction, not that I have ever taken drugs nor ever needed to go cold turkey. Stevie was baffled that he had not felt either Zack’s fear or pain that night of Black Friday. Why was he separated from Zack in such a traumatic series of moments?

  Belle and my theory was that Zack had forcibly shielded Stevie from his pain, determined to protect him, thinking about his brother’s welfare even in extremis. Our family really was a family built on love, a love neither splintered nor shattered, even when subjected to the kind of adversity we were facing now.

  * * *

  And it got worse.

  One morning when the mail arrived there were two letters from the INS - immigration services - one for each of us. Mine said:

  Application Denied.

  You may not appeal this decision.

  You must leave the country within thirty days.

  Belle’s said much the same thing, except that she had a right of appeal at a cost of $110.

  We were expecting me to receive my Green Card at any time. Everything had looked hopeful, even a formality. But it turned out that Rafaella had belatedly challenged her and my divorce, saying that she had never had sight of the divorce papers, alleging therefore that Belle and I were bigamously married and a blatant marriage of convenience for immigration purposes. If only an INS official had spent time in our bedroom. Rafaella had also claimed that I had been convicted of physical assault on her and that I had a criminal record.

  Belle went into complete shock. Not only did this news threaten our chances of living together amidst the greatest tragedy of her life, but it also alleged bigamy which, according to the doctrines of her Church, meant that she should cease to live with me on that ground alone.

  My reaction was different - we were going to deal with this; Rafaella was not going to win so long as Belle held firm and so long as we were determined to stay together.

  “Luke, you know that we will never be parted, even if we have to live the other side of the world. Do you feel the same way?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “We’re a real love story, Luke. Our love is perfect. I’ll follow you anywhere because there’s no life for me without you, do you know that?”

  “I do, and I feel the same.”

  Her expression hardened from intimacy to resolution. “I am going to make some calls,” which was optimistic as it was a Saturday.

  Nevertheless, Belle got straight through to a renowned immigration specialist who declared that there was no hope for me because I had come into the country on a visa waiver. Why, only last week he had seen a client seized by the police before his very eyes, in his office, and instantly deported.

  The second immigration lawyer said that our best bet was to go on the run, to simply not be found, until I had divorced and we had remarried, but the criminal conviction would inevitably add to our woes and make my obtaining a Green Card very unlikely.

  We couldn’t get hold of any other lawyer that day and Belle was pacing the room in her anxiety.

  “Don’t worry, there will be a way around this,” I told her earnestly, but what did I know about it?”

  Instead we went for a long walk around the city, up to the Golden Gate Park and then across to Market Street. Belle always felt better after long walks but we both went to bed uncharacteristically early at eight o’clock and slept through the night.

  Sunday, we felt no better, so we went for another long walk down to the Bay, cursing Rafella with every step, leaving Stevie to watch TV and wonder what was going on.

  On the Monday we discovered a third immigration attorney, Thip Ark. Belle burst into tears over the phone as she explained our plight and how we could not be parted. Thip did not really have an opening to see us for three weeks, but Belle sounded so distressed that she insisted that we come to her office that afternoon so that she could assure us that there was nothing to worry about, that we had plenty of time, and that the last thing I should do was to leave the country.

  As far as she could tell, the divorce was perfectly legal and valid but, if not, I had been resident in California long enough to obtain a US divorce.

  First she said she would appeal the INS’ decision, claiming that I was indeed legally divorced. If that did not work, she would appeal it on the ground that I was in the process of obtaining an American divorce and intended to remarry Belle at the first possible opportunity.

  The criminal conviction could be more problematic. What was the background to that?

  I confessed myself baffled. I was not aware of any criminal conviction and I had never assaulted Rafaella.

  “So you think that this is a completely false claim?” Thip asked me.

  “Yes. I have no knowledge of any criminal conviction
whatsoever.”

  “OK, so we’ll challenge that too.”

  “What happens next?” I asked. “Could they come and pick me up and throw me out of the country?”

  “Very unlikely,” Thip replied. “They only do that if there is a criminal conviction, and a minor assault charge in a foreign country is very unlikely to set off that response, especially if they cannot trace any actual criminal record. We will make the appeal. That should buy us between six months and a year. If that fails, we can file a second appeal, which will give us another six months to a year. Just continue as you have been, go on living your lives.”

  Next we visited a divorce lawyer, Carol Jasinski. She confirmed that I was eligible to be divorced in the United States and that it would take six months from the serving of the divorce petition on Rafaella.

  “Because these will be divorce proceedings across national boundaries, we will need to serve the papers on your wife, or ex-wife, according to the Hague Convention. Once we have done that, we are in the clear. There may be one or two delays, but the divorce will happen. Where does your wife, or ex-wife, live? Do you have the address?”

  Now that was going to be a problem. In the same way as Rafaella did not know my current address, nor did I know hers. She might even be living in the US by now, just down the road, delivering threats by hand through our letter slot. It was going to cost a lot of money to track her down.

  “Tell me about the divorce you thought you had,” suggested Carol.

  “Well, after I left Rafaella, I went to live in Mexico for eight months, in the Baja California region. I instigated divorce proceedings from there using a Mexican lawyer. Rafaella was invited to participate in the proceedings by a court summons but she never replied. We had no children, so the court said I had to make suitable financial reparation, without specifying what that was, and within a week we were pronounced divorced.”