Angels of Destruction

by Keith Donohue

  Margaret thought of her husband and the secret he tried to keep from her all those years.

  “Atoms and angels, reason and faith,” he went on. “One without the other is less than half as strong and can be a danger to our vitality. Reason is subject to the tests of logic and observable, demonstrable phenomena. Faith is tested by our desire and will. One cannot see faith, just as one cannot pour out hope or love from a beaker. Self-sacrifice and devotion escape the strongest microscope, but such qualities of spirit can be shown and known by us all, my dear. And so with God's messengers, more believed than seen, more felt than touched, our angels exist in open hearts, if we have but faith.”

  Dead silence followed, too many measures without a note.

  He cleared his throat. “The question is: does the child believe what she says she is? And do you think she is a messenger of the Lord?”

  In the next room, Norah slept without a sound. Margaret had checked earlier to make sure before readying herself for bed. They had spoken briefly of the incident at the school and the calls from her teacher and the principal, but she had not pressed the child for explanation. Truth be told, she did not want to know, but hoped instead that the notion would pass in time, that the girl would settle into the role Margaret desired.

  “You lied to protect her, protect yourself. Lied to everyone, your sister. Thought you could keep her. What will you do for this perfect stranger?”

  He held his gaze, and she looked into his eyes, expecting her reflection on the black pupils, but there was nothing but misery. Margaret snapped off the light, covered her ear with the pillow, and drew the blanket to her forehead to banish him from sight. Pain snuggled against her spine and shared an intimate hour wrestling in the darkness.

  2

  Watching the roseate clouds darken as the morning crept in from the east, Sean stood waiting for her in the yard, half expecting the bathroom window to part at the sash and Norah to fly through with white wings unfurled and land at his side. The winds had shifted from the southwest in the early hours, pushing warmer air over the Alleghenies, teasing at springtime. Sean opened his overcoat, unwound his scarf, wondering how much of this warmth could be attributed to the rising temperature and how much to his state of anticipation. Ever since he had heard her confession to the entire class, he had five hundred questions he longed to ask her. All night, from supper to bedtime and in his dreams, he carried on an imagined conversation with Norah, supplying both sides of the dialogue and providing the answers to all that plagued his mind. He stamped his feet in the snow, begging her to hurry, and his sudden motion startled a gang of crows, shouting alarms from a bare oak as they hopped and scattered to safer branches. From their new perches, they scrutinized the stranger in their midst.

  Frightened by the birds, Sean did not notice how she arrived—magically, perhaps—red-cheeked from her exertions. Norah welcomed him with a wide grin, her face framed by the gray hood of her coat, her glasses fogged. She appeared no different than any other morning, though he felt they were meeting for the first time.

  “Did you remember to do your math homework?” she asked him, and the spell was broken. He shrugged out of his backpack, unzipped the opening, and looked inside, hoping that some overnight miracle had occurred. “You might have time before the first bell, if we hurry.” Looking back over her shoulder, she waved at Margaret and Diane watching from the window. He raised his hand, but they were already gone, the curtains closing like windblown ghosts. Norah pulled at his coat sleeve and they tramped off

  In the winter woods, the bark of the trees thawed and crackled, and water trickled where the ice had thinned and melted. Rags of bare earth revealed the brown leaves and rot beneath the snow, and the bike path was little more than a worn depression, slick with packed footprints. They moved as quickly as they could manage over the ruts, speechless as they picked their way out of the forest and into the sunshine. She threw a shadow across the road, the shape bold in relief and bisecting the lines cast by tree trunks and networks of bare branches splintering like tributaries off a river. The morning light banked and bestowed its energy, and he soaked in the radiance, felt a vertiginous happiness at the heart's core compounded by her presence. Other children struggled on their way, the adventurous daring to parade in the plowed streets alongside the heaps of dirty snow, and the rest hewing to the familiar path through the slush and muck. She had hastened a few steps ahead, so he jogged to catch her. He asked, “Are you afraid of what might happen today?”

  Norah stopped to address him. “Afraid? Is that how to start the day? I am not the least bit worried about what others might say. If you mean am I anxious about how people might treat me now that they know the truth, the answer is no.”

  They walked on, and he labored to keep pace. More children joined the stream toward the building. “But why did you tell them that you are an angel?”

  “Suppose you dip your big toe in a pool, there's no way to stop the ripple, or suppose you pluck a string on a guitar, the vibration has already begun. Everything is in motion.”

  “But why did you come here? Why now?”

  “Sean, if I knew where the motion will take us, my job would be done. Hurry up if you are going to finish your homework on time. You know how long it takes to multiply and divide.”

  Judging by the stares and whispers, every child in every grade and every member of the faculty and staff at the Friendship School already knew of the incident in Mrs. Patterson's class on Valentine's Day. A few intrepid souls walked right up to them, said hello. One girl curtsied in a self-conscious way, cutting the gesture short. Their classmates stopped chattering when the pair entered the room, all eyes watching and waiting for another sign. Sharon Hopper looked for wings as Norah passed by her desk. Mark Bellagio snorted at Sean, wheeled around in his seat to sock him on the meaty part of his arm. Earlier that morning, Mrs. Patterson had taken down the cardboard hearts and cupids and lace, and in their place, flat cartoon drawings of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Reagan stared down from the walls. Pretending not to notice the commotion, the teacher fiddled with her attendance roster, checked off their names, and tried to gauge the climate of the classroom. She surveyed her charges: the Fallon boy scratched at an equation with a pencil stub. A pair in the back row whispered intimately. Gail Watts mumbled to herself, a recitation or a prayer. The rest of the children were poised for the morning bell, anticipating the beginning of the day and what might be said about the prior afternoon's outburst.

  Mrs. Patterson could feel Norah Quinn watching with a leopard's unrelenting stealth and had to fight an overwhelming urge to flee, to leap from her post and sprint through the halls to the teachers’ lounge and pour herself another coffee, smoke another cigarette. Muttering a curse beneath her breath, she began with her good mornings and the calling of the roll. “And I just want to say one thing about yesterday's episode after the Valentine's cards. There will be no more incidents, no more disruptions, and we will not be talking about angels or other matters inappropriate for classroom discussion. This is a public school. I have spoken with Mr. Taylor, and he has spoken with Mrs. Quinn, and we have all reached an understanding.”

  Norah's arm rose like a flag. Snickers from a few desks threatened the whole day.

  “And, just a minute, and we have work to do, and we need team spirit, and do you know that teams are only as strong as the teammates and our respect for one another and our differences—”

  Norah waved her fingers. “Mrs. Patterson? Mrs. Patterson? I have something to say to everyone.”

  “Not now, Norah. That's enough.”

  “I feel I need to say—”

  “No apologies are necessary. Your grandmother apologized for you. You've been under a lot of stress—”

  “—to tell the truth—”

  “—the difficulty of starting a new school, new friends, feeling like an outsider—”

  “—not to say I'm sorry, but to let everyone know—”

  “Norah, please. Be
quiet.”

  “—that no harm shall come to them.”

  Sean Fallon put down his pencil, gave up the futile attempt to solve his problems in time, and laid his head across his folded arms atop his desk. He waited for the room to stop spinning, for the bolt of pain behind his eyes to go away. Inside his head, their voices began as a low hum, white static as the dial rolled to the next station on the radio, and then the words came overlaid, bits and pieces distinguishable from the cacophony: Sharon's thoughts, Mark's, Dori's. The wandering mind of Lucas Ford. Gail Watts practicing an étude in her imagination. Mrs. Patterson, please just make them stop. All the children wondering, doubting, believing—until the sound of their ideas and feelings coalesced into a wall of music, measured and cadenced, like a symphony between his ears, and the music did not stop until Mrs. Patterson, straight-backed as a conductor, tapped a ruler on the desk and invited them to begin their consideration of the first subject of the day, history.

  3

  The eyes of Our Lady of Guadalupe betrayed an all-too-human emotion. Instead of looking upward to the heavens or downward in mercy to the earth, she focused on some object to the left of the frame of the retablo, and the wayward gaze made her appear contemplative, almost sad, mourning the viewer, or remembering her son, heartbroken over his early death. A mother pained for her child, full of despair over her powerlessness against fate and the child's stronger will. The primitive style of composition and brushstroke could not hide the merciless intelligence of the painter, who had captured in a single gesture the pathos of motherhood. Six other folk paintings hung on the walls of the café: Matthew, the scribe; Mark, the lion; Luke, the winged bull; John, the eagle; San Pascual, the patron of cooks; and one labeled Angel de la Guardia. In niches hollowed into the adobe, santos perched like puppets awaiting the breath of life or the master's hand, and by the cash register, bultos of the holy family stood like refugees from a Christmas crèche.

  Diane sipped a coffee laced with piñon and stirred a bowl of blue corn atole. The time change between Washington and Albuquerque had thrown her, and she had risen earlier than the local hour, the late-winter light slipping over the city as she wandered past the closed storefronts and restaurants, searching for breakfast in Old Town. The Café de Santeros had the only open door, and for a time, she was alone with the beautiful young girl who had served her and then went back to idly sketching flowers in a spiral-bound notebook. After circling the room, taking in each of the paintings done by the same hand, Diane sat with her coffee and thought of her sister and the strange child she had left behind the week before. Protests were declared, but she had been forgiven for leaving as soon as she had promised to return. She told Margaret nothing of her travel plans. After a few days to take care of things at home in Washington, Diane had packed for New Mexico, armed with an old photograph of Erica, a child's implausible claim, and an X on a map.

  Norahs outburst at the school had compelled Diane to go, not so much for the girl's welfare, but for her sister's sake. She had seen what loss could do to Margaret—the stunning silences, how she seemed to shrink with each blow until diminishing to nothing more than a whisper, a feather, a sigh. As the only children, they had grown up as close as twins, just two years apart; each reflected the best and worst of the other. While the indeterminacies of fate pulled them apart as young women, sending Diane off to travel around the world with her husband while Margaret settled in with the doctor in their hometown, they remained committed to the idea of sisterhood. Summer family vacations together at the shore, long-distance calls, letters, consoling as no other could at the passing of Daddy, and three years later their mother. When Erica had vanished, Margaret had phoned her first, even before the police, and Diane watched her sister drown month by month and then float back to a kind of half-life. She could save her now by finding her missing girl. Or at least uncover the truth about Norah.

  On the sidewalk outside the café, a flock of pigeons took flight en masse, wheeling to formation in synchronicity The front door creaked open and in came two young men, dressed snug against the cold. Behind the counter, the girl laid down her pencil, waved hello, and braced to receive their orders. They appeared to be regulars, smiling back in a familiar fashion and not bothering to read the slate chalked with today's menu.

  “Qué pasa, Lupita?” the one with the sweeping black mustache said. “Anything fresh today? Besides you?”

  Lupita rolled her eyes in mock annoyance, but her smile gave away her pleasure.

  “Dos cappuccinos. And mi hijo wants something to eat. His old lady kicks him out every morning with no breakfast ‘cause he snores all night.”

  His friend bent to scan the baked goods in the glass display case and, rising, asked for a poppyseed cake. When the girl shifted to the espresso machine, the two men pivoted on their heels, mirroring each other, away from the counter to scan the room. Even as they arced their shoulders and swung their hips toward her, Diane wanted them to do it over in slow motion, for she was entranced by the unthinking grace of their bodies. In the dim light, the brightness of their faces disarmed her. She blushed over the look the men gave her and cast her gaze to her hands folded on the tabletop, to the slick on the surface of her coffee.

  The men came over to her, the pale blue cups like toys in their hands, and stood patiently just beyond the edge waiting for her to look up, and as soon as she did, they took it as an invitation to sit and join her, though she had said nothing. No new customers had wandered in. The younger man took a big bite of his poppyseed cake and savored the crunch and grit against his teeth. The one with the mustache wrapped his long fingers around his cup, warming his hands. “Good morning,” he said when Diane granted her notice with a wan smile. “I hope you don't mind us joining you. It just seems strange for you to be all alone and for us to be alone when there is no one else here.”

  “Not a bit. You're welcome.”

  The man eating the cake had poppyseeds stuck between his teeth.

  “When you are alone, small company can often change the meaning of the whole day. Of course, there are times when you want to be by yourself, shut off with your thoughts.” He spoke in a laconic tone, reluctant to part with each word. “Sometimes you just want another person to shoot the breeze with, shorten the burden of moving from A to B.”

  The poppyseed man blew on his cappuccino and took a hot swallow, leaving a milky brown stain above his upper lip.

  “I just came in last night and don't know a soul.” Laughing politely, she set down her cup. “My first time in New Mexico.”

  “Welcome, then. What brings you here, business or pleasure?”

  With a laugh, Diane set down her cup. “I have no business. I'm here to … see my daughter.” The white lie popped out to her immediate regret. She opened her purse and found the high school photograph. “Erica. She lives in a place called Madrid. Do you know the way?”

  “A ghost town,” the younger man said. “They call it MAD-rid, by the way, not muh-DRID. Not like the one in Spain. Used to be a coalmining town, but the mine was shut down thirty years ago when all the Santa Fe trains switched over to diesel. Everybody used to go there for the Christmas lights. They say you could be flying overhead at night and see them from hundreds of miles, like candles in the dark middle of nowhere. But they're all gone, the people. Just a bunch of ancient shacks. Some dude even put an ad in the newspaper: whole town for sale.”

  “Where you been, hijo? When's the last time you been up the trail? Fifteen years ago, yourself? There's plenty people in Madrid. Back in the Seventies all these hippies and artists came in and took over. What do you call it? Squatters? Homesteaders.”

  “Like trying to find a ghost.” He was pressing his thumb against the plate, picking up black dots.

  The other set down his cappuccino with an empty ring. “Don't listen to my friend, señora. His brain is fried.”

  “Más loco que una cabra. “

  “Chiflado. You look like you've been eating bugs.”

 
“Te falta un tornillo. “He ran his tongue over his teeth.

  “Boys,” Diane said, “I guess I'll have to see for myself.”

  “Drive east on old 66, and you'll see the signs. We'd show you the way, but we're heading up north to work.”

  “Where are you going?”

  The man with the poppyseed grin leaned over and spoke in a low voice. “Los Alamos.”

  “That's why he is so crazy. Plutonium head.” She thought of her conversation with Norah in the graveyard, the talk of the atom bomb and the destroyer of worlds. He stood and bowed slightly, and his friend repeated the gesture. “Good luck on your trip. I hope you find what you're looking for.”

  For a moment, she could not remember why she had come.

  “Your daughter.”

  “One more thing,” she said. “Tell me why all the icons on the walls?”

  “Santos,” the younger man said. “To remind us. The santeros carve or paint them on retablos and sell them where they can. The makers of saints.”

  “Thank you for having breakfast with me.”

  The man with the mustache buttoned his shearling coat. “ ‘Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it.’ Book of Hebrews. You'll find her.”

  “Adios,” his friend said, shaking his head.

  “He's loco, there's no such thing as ghosts.”

  4

  The song came from above, a tuneless air that rode the vocal register in erratic fits. Margaret had heard such improvised singing years earlier, and she crept up the stairs, paw-soft on each step to prevent the telltale squeak, and then she carefully placed her ear against the bathroom door to hear Norah in the tub, happily composing the events of her day in syncopated rhythm. The discordant music filled Margaret with unexpected joy, remembering how Erica sang in the bathroom. And how, as little girls, Margaret and her sister used to harmonize in a cloud of soap bubbles, or late at night in the stillness of their darkened bedroom, or traipsing through the fairy-filled woods, or out on the sand with the roaring surf nearly drowning all human sound. Carefree summer songs at the shore.