Angels of Destruction

by Keith Donohue

  She did not answer. Unlike the rest, who stared at the empty building, she looked toward the faculty parking lot and seemed to be counting softly to herself, the numbers trailing down, seven-six-five, barely perceptible on her moving lips. Sean watched the countdown, three-two, his gaze shifting from her mouth to the object of her attention as she neared the end. At zero, a loud metallic explosion caught the crowd's attention in time to see the beginning of smoke curling from the front of a white sports car, and then with another bang, the flames forced open the hood.

  “My baby!” Mr. Taylor shouted. He took two steps toward the beloved Mustang and then halted. The fire roared to life, and near the heart of the flames, a bird rose like a phoenix, a huge crow beating its broad wings and cawing madly as it escaped into the sky. Each of the disciples searched for fellow believers, exchanging looks that touched upon the central mystery of their nascent faith. When the firetrucks rolled up their hoses and the drama of fire and water ended, a dozen children encircled Norah, curious to affirm her role in the blaze.

  “How did you do it?” Mark asked.

  “There's no way,” Matt said. “You were miles from the car like the rest of us.”

  Dori broke the ranks. “Funny way of getting out of having to go to the principal's.”

  The children pressed closer, and Norah waved them back, creating an invisible boundary around her body. “Best not tick off an angel,” she said, with a wink and a grin.

  “I don't believe you had anything to do with that fire,” Lucas said. “My mother says there's no such thing as angels and that you are a crackpot or some religious nut—”

  “Don't you remember how I saved you? I see the hesitation in all your hearts, and so I will show you once more.” She lifted her eyes to the glassy sky, warm and foreshadowing spring. The others took notice too of the fine day, the greening of the grass and budding in the trees. “The wrath of angels falls upon a doubt-filled world.”

  As the firemen cleaned up the mess, the teachers and students filed back into the building and did their best to restore normalcy to a Friday afternoon. During the final class of the day, the windows began to vibrate and hum. The wind began to blow and the tall trees outside swayed and bowed their crowns. Rolling clouds blackened the sky and cast shadows across the classroom. Bits of debris flew by—forgotten dry leaves, napkins, wrappers, lost homework, and mislaid notes. A jump rope skipped by like a downed telephone line. Returning to her desk from a stint at the blackboard, Sharon Hopper laid her palm against the window and withdrew when it burned, and then tentatively touched the glass again, stunned by its fragile coldness. Bigger objects lumbered about the grounds—trashcan lids, a soccer ball spinning madly, a lunchroom tray, a shattered maple branch. They expected a flying cow, a spinning farmhouse come to rest upon the striped feet of a witch. The hour darkened, near pitch, and in the windows, the children saw their worried reflections.

  Stepping outside after dismissal, the children squealed and screamed when the cold wind hit them. Few were prepared for the fallen temperature, and jackets billowed, sweaters made tails as stiff as those of mockingbirds. They wrapped their arms across their chests, bent their heads against the gales, and struggled homeward. Those with the wind at their backs felt they could be airborne at any moment. A bird beat its wings against the rage, made no progress, and then pinwheeled back to a secure haven. Over the wind-whipped roar, the children hollered their goodbyes. Norahs followers clumped at the edge of the sidewalk, freezing, mystified, and afraid. Tendrils of hair swirled around Norahs face, and the air fogged her glasses, but she alone seemed oblivious to the storm. A handful of children walked with her like a band of explorers braving the open tundra as the wind howled in their faces.

  The trees at the edge of the bike path home formed a break, and it was calmer, but the shush of branches and the restless waters of the creek denied any normal level of discussion. As she reached the fork, Norah stopped to confront them all. “So do you believe now?” she shouted.

  Dori's black eyes were wet with tears. The boys sniffed runny noses and stared at the ground. At her side, Sean tugged her arm and shouted back, “Make it stop.”

  “Meet me tomorrow,” she said above the wind. “At three o'clock, and I will show you even greater wonders.”

  The apostles raised their hands farewell, nodded their assent. Norah and Sean split off from the others, traversing the path through the forest to the Quinns’ house. By the time they reached the fence, Sean noticed the winds had subsided, and when he finally made it to his own home, he realized that they had all but died.

  17

  Mother. Mom. Mommy. Mum. Ma. Margaret. My mother. On the drive from Washington, D.C., to Pennsylvania, Erica chanted to herself in time with the wheels upon the highway, the air whistling through the opened window, the on-and-off radio, the bites of conversation with her aunt. My mother, my mother, my mother. Such memories that jostled for dominance were confined largely to that last year of enmity, the discovery of her father's wartime past and the emotional wall surrounding each of them. She tried to remember them in earlier and more pleasant times. A chase over the dune to be the first to catch the long-anticipated expanse of summer ocean. The unexpected wit, fringed with sarcasm, which stunned the dinner table. Her hope welling in the moment before her gifts were unwrapped. But mostly, her mother listening patiently to some worry or woe, offering up the solace of prayer or a cliché of received advice. “All part of the plan,” she was fond of saying by way of consolation. But Erica knew there was no plan, only accidents and deceit, and such bromides lost force. By adolescence, she could no longer talk to her without departing emptied of emotion, but perhaps homilies were all that Margaret could say when letting go. There is no proper goodbye between daughter and mother.

  “She's older now, of course,” Diane said. “When you disappeared, she aged all at once and just seemed to skip the middle part altogether. One day the big sister I remember got up and walked away, leaving behind a hollow shell. Until Norah came along—”

  My mother, mine.

  WHEN ASKED WHERE he was hurrying to that Saturday afternoon, Sean shouted “Out” as he raced past the living room and “Bye, Mum” as the stormdoor slammed behind him. Perhaps if she had been less weary Eve would not have hesitated, but by the time she stepped out onto the porch he was nowhere to be seen. She looked both ways along the street, but he had flown away.

  “WHAT DO YOU know of this child, really?” the watcher asked, hat in hand, his face and hands now translucent. “All the talk around town of her strange behavior and the innuendo of a holy delusion. Caution, your mother would say. Safety first.”

  Margaret spoke in a soft tone. “My mother was all about propriety. The worst sin of all was that the neighbors would talk.”

  “She disapproved of your wildness. Your choices in men. Jackson—” “Please don't talk to me about love. It is a disappointing thing.” “This child is not your daughter. You may not have this angel Norah.” He was slipping away, breaking apart like a broadcast charged with static.

  “What would you have me do? Wake up every morning not knowing what happened to my child? Miss her every day till I die?” She addressed the space he had occupied, empty of all but the atomic shadow of memory. He was gone for good, and she began to worry what his disappearance meant in terms of the other who had entered her life.

  Luminous in the afternoon sun, Norah appeared before her in the living room, stepping between Margaret and her shadow. “I've done all my chores,” she said, “and don't want to be late. Can I go now?”

  18

  She led them to the bridge, to the river.

  Passersby thought nothing of the pilgrimage of a half dozen children on their way to a Saturday matinee, or to play some game in the park, or wandering aimlessly on a sunny afternoon. Norah, Sean, Sharon, and Dori walked while Mark and Lucas trailed in lazy circles on their bicycles. No one stopped them. No one inquired as to their destination. The children moved invisibly among
the men and women busy with their quotidian cares, mired in the Steel City blues.

  The boys parked their bicycles at the corner, and the group stepped single file onto the bridge, Norah on point and Sean bringing up the rear. At the apex of the span the apostles stopped and leaned their arms against the railing to stare out at the river rolling underfoot. Birds on a wire, they perched and waited. In the distance a coal barge looked like a toy boat pushing dirty trays downstream. A station wagon slowed, the driver staring their way before moving on. Limber as a spider monkey, Norah lifted her body until she was seated on the rail and facing the others, her feet dangling in the air, her fingers wrapped around the bar for balance. Blind to the open sky, the fall behind her, the river at her back. A breeze caught her hair and sent it spilling across her eyes, and she let go with one hand to push the stray locks behind her ears. “If you have existed,” she said, “since the beginning and shall be forever, then the cares of this life are little more than a sigh in time. And yet, we worry over every problem large and small. Instead of trusting our troubles will pass as we will continue.”

  The five faces below her twisted with uncertainty. Sharon winked into the sunshine, and the others shielded their eyes against the blinding light with salutes. Below, the river darkened like spilled ink. The wheels on another passing car clipped a pothole and made a sound like the pop from a gun. “It's a perfect day,” Norah said. “For flying.”

  In the first vision, Sean saw the others join her, steady themselves like tightrope walkers on the rail, arms twirling; and balanced in a line, heads cocked to the middle, they listened to her instructions. Backlit, the five silhouettes stood stark against the whiteness, and at her command, every child leapt out into the void, hovering momentarily as the wind pushed against their outstretched limbs and bowed chests, still and perfect and beautiful for one moment before plummeting, silent and swift as stones, into the water, striking the surface with knifing explosions, sinking to the bottom, slowing, bobbing, coming to rest in the silt, a look of disbelief written in their eyes, their bodies borne by the cold undercurrent. In the second vision, they lined up again like fledglings, spread their arms, and glided up, full of bliss and surprise, spiraling into the deep blue sky until, like the angels, they disappeared into the heavens and were gone forever. In both cases, he stayed behind on the bridge, watched them sink or swim the sky, powerless to join them and fixed to the spot by his doubts and fears.

  Like a swimmer crouched to dive into a race, she had brought her feet to the rail and was holding on by her fingers and toes. The other children on the walkway were poised to rescue her, but no one moved. A delivery van with a rose painted on the door squealed to a halt, and Norah turned her head toward the sound. Sean reached for her, grabbed her arms. Blood pulsed through her veins, the echo of her frightened heart. “Stop,” he said. “Just stop and come down. I believe you—”

  She cried out and let herself collapse to the walkway, her wrists cuffed in his fingers. The driver of the stopped van had opened the door and stuck his bald head above the window, too stunned to abandon his seat. He knew these children, his neighbor's granddaughter and the boy. “Are you crazy?” Delarosa yelled. “You kids get the hell off this bridge. What are you doing up here anyway?”

  “We're learning how to fly, mister!” Mark yelled.

  “From an angel,” Sharon added.

  “Get offa here before one of you breaks your neck or falls off.”

  After Sean let go of her wrists, his grip left a red welt against her skin where she had been bound and now was unchained. Pat Delarosa waited until the group, following Sean's lead, made it to the corner, and he opened the back door, releasing the perfume of bouquets just as the red and blue police lights began to flash against the steel framework of the bridge. Without complaint, they surrendered.

  19

  They ate dinner in silence, eying each other between bites. After the police brought Norah home and explained what had happened on the bridge, Margaret was so distracted that she nearly forgot to cook anything at all. For the first time, she was frightened by the girl and her dangerous stories, wary of asking too much and of the truth that might spill out. Late in the evening, they sat down to table, avoiding a single wrong word. She scrambled some eggs, burnt some toast, and laid out two jars of preserves. There had been a scene at first, a confrontation immediately after the uniforms departed, a lecture on the need to stay out of trouble. The Delarosas called, traces of panic in the voices on the wire, spouting some nonsense about a stranger who had visited their store asking about Norah, but Margaret dismissed the connection as superstitious paranoia. She gave Norah a warning on the dangers of high places, an admonition against the telling of stories, and a plea to drop once and for all this talk of angels. Norah refused to engage and promised only to be good and careful. “The time is at hand,” she replied to a question of why, and for the first time, Margaret was impatient with the cryptic nature of her foundling. Food served as their temporary truce. She resolved to speak to the girl again in the morning, but at dinner she was more grateful that no harm had come. The child was safe, licking the peaches off a jelly spoon.

  Three big knocks at the door were pursued by the creak of the hinges, and a familiar voice called out hello. “Aunt Diane,” Norah shouted, and raced from her chair, nearly slamming into her full force in the foyer. Throwing wide her arms, she nestled her head against Diane's chest and hugged her tightly. “I knew you would come.”

  “Behave yourself, child,” Diane said, patting her head. “Where is my sister?”

  At that moment, Margaret turned the corner to find her lost daughter standing before her.

  “I should have called first,” Diane said, “but I wasn't sure until right now that she would actually go through—”

  “Mom.” Erica brought her hands to her mouth and wept.

  “And I wanted to see your face when I brought her home. Maggie?”

  Norah stepped into the shadows.

  Stunned, Margaret could not move, though every muscle twitched with reflexive energy. A ghost not six feet away, her baby. “Erica?”

  Her daughter swept past Diane and embraced her, held on so tightly that when they finally parted to look again, kiss, and embrace again, she left a sore spot on Maggie's cheek where bone met bone. They did not speak for a long time, content to cry and touch, to prove that the other was real.

  “Is it you?” Margaret asked. Her daughter was a stranger, though closer to her than anyone in her life. She had willed her return for so long that she was stunned by the answer to her desire, and it was as if Erica had left to spend the night with Joyce Green and returned the next morning. Had fallen down the rabbit hole and popped up like a groundhog, shadowless. She was seven years old the night before and twenty-eight the next day. She was a crocus in the snow. The summer of cicadas. Here and gone and here again. Changed, but still the baby in the cradle, brave child diving into a pressing tide, teenager laughing at a lucky draw at cards. She had blown away and come back after the wind had circled the globe. Erica was hers once more.

  “I'm so, so sorry about Daddy. I was afraid I'd never see you again.” Erica glanced once at the child, but held in her mother's arms, she could think of nothing but their reunion. Aunt Diane was right; her mother looked older than her years. Careworn, time-trodden. The fine lines of sun and worry, gray hair at the temples, the slackening of her skin. Margaret was crushed and beaten. Mangled by worry. Tried by a deep pain coursing in the bones. Slow to realize the fact of her daughter's presence. Yet she was ineffably her mother, had cheated the grave. She was steadfast as sorrow. She was forgiveness.

  Allowing mother and daughter some privacy, Diane led Norah into the kitchen. They, too, did not speak to one another for some time but stared at each other in deep regard. “Surprised to see your mother again?” Diane asked. “Or should I say, for the first time.”

  “How did you find her?”

  “You should know. I went to New Mexico, like you
said. The question is how did you know she would be there?”

  “Gramma,” she began, and thought better. “Mrs. Quinn had an old letter but never went to get her. I couldn't go because nobody asked. I knew you would go if shown the way. You are brave.”

  “Lionhearted.”

  Norah capped the jelly jars and set the dirty plates in the sink. “I knew you would go the moment we met.”

  “And just how did you know that? Another one of your heavenly powers?”

  “No. You are her sister, and you were the only one left.”

  ALONE AT THE kitchen table, Norah drew intricate scenes of hunting cats, leopards in the shadows, tigers pouncing, a pride of lionesses gang-tackling a zebra. Filtered through the walls, the adult conversation flowed like the murmur of a faraway stream, and she listened to the music of their voices in three parts, daughter echoing mother, sisters in counterpart, bursts of laughter in harmony. Once, in her solitude, she thought she heard someone at the back door, but when she pressed her nose against the glass, sheer darkness prevented her from seeing beyond the panes. Whatever had been was no longer there. The symphony of voices changed measures and tone. Every so often the word “Norah” floated from the living room, but nothing would tempt her to eavesdrop. They would have to remember eventually that they had left her alone.

  At half past nine, Erica came into the kitchen, filled the teakettle, all the while sneaking glances at Norah, who kept her pencil moving, intent on her drawing. “What have we here?” Erica asked, and took the chair across from her to consider the pictures one by one. “Those are really good.”

  “Thank you.” She continued her line till the end and then laid down the pencil.

  “Pleased to meet you, Norah. I'm Erica, but you already know that. You must call me Mary. Especially in front of your friends. Do you think you can pretend that I'm Mary Gavin? Here for a visit. It will keep us all out of trouble.”