On an evening in late June, Sean rode his bicycle past the Friendship School and sat awhile staring at its utter emptiness. Dusk crept up unexpectedly, and fireflies began to flash like thousands of stars across the playground. Along the edge of the woods, a chorus of peeper frogs and crickets filled the silence with their music, and he felt a kind of panic at getting home after dark. His mother would be angry with him, so against his instincts, he took the path that ran past the Quinns’ yard. Under a quarter moon, he stopped at the fence bordering their property. Next door, the lights were off at the Delarosas’; he had not dared to say a word to the flower shop man since the incident on the bridge. The grass had grown high and wild due to neglect, for nobody was buying houses around there any longer, nobody was moving in, only moving out or dying off. Looming like a black box, the house was more shadow than substance, but he could still picture Mrs. Quinn watching from the kitchen window and Norah hopping the split rails as nonchalant as a cat. He closed his eyes to better picture her, and in the instant he opened them again, he noticed a flicker from her window as if a shadow had crossed the room. No light had been on when he first pulled up, he was certain, but now the window shone like a star. Inching closer, he saw the luminous spill from the second story, the curtains flapping gently in an intermittent breeze. Lured farther, he parked his bicycle against the fence and waded through the grass to the back door. One unanswered knock proved empty and ridiculous. He turned the knob and found the door unlocked.
The kitchen was largely as he remembered. The pictures on the walls were gone, but everything else looked the same—the scarred oak table and chairs pushed back as though a family had just gotten up from a meal. Going room to room, he found himself in an abandoned museum. In Dr. Quinn's study, the medical books stood steadfast and a stethoscope curled like a snake on an old hat rack. A few personal effects were missing from the living room, but left behind were the old sofa covered in a faded afghan, the reading lamp silted with dust, and beneath the coffee table, their old Monopoly, Tip It, a magazine from the middle of March. For a brief moment, he expected Mrs. Quinn and her sister arriving home from a late dinner, but the idyll passed. Staleness hung in the air, an odor particularly strong and sharp at the bottom of the stairs, where he debated whether to investigate further the source of that mysterious light. Along the bottom edge of her bedroom's closed door, the faintest shimmering line appeared through the darkness. He called out her name.
Something stirred at the sound of his voice, a surprised cry and then a fluttering scurry. Sean took the steps, pausing at each riser to listen again, but he could not be sure if the noise emanated from above or came from inside his own pounding chest. On the top step, as he was about to reach the landing, he risked her name again. “Norah,” he whispered hoarsely, and the response was unmistakable: drumbeat of wings, dozens flapping in panic, a rush of wind pulling at the closed door.
Angels, he decided. Angels behind the door and Norah among them. Or the seven Angels of Destruction come to end time, led by the angel in the hat and overcoat he had summoned in his nightmare. The wingbeats grew furious and crashing. Just don't hurt me, he said to himself as he turned the knob.
The sudden opening sucked in the air and sent feathers undulating in the cross-breeze, as though he had just walked in upon a fleeting pillow fight. The bed was a mess, the brocaded covers and blankets ripped and unraveling at the seams. A lit lamp lay knocked over on its side, the shade brown where the bulb had scorched the cloth. White droppings coined the bookshelves. Colorful strands from the blankets were threaded into a nest atop the bureau. Birds, he realized. Gotten in through an open window. Knocked over the lamp and bumped the switch. No angels present. He laughed at his foolishness, laughed at how afraid he had let himself be. He picked up the lamp and set it back in place, and as he pushed down the sash, he saw in the glass the reflection of Norah. Soft as a wingtip, something brushed his shoulder, and he pivoted quickly expecting by some miracle to find her there, but just as quickly, the prayer vanished and he was alone in an empty room facing his own image in the black window.
26
Her mother began calling her Mary as soon as they had settled in New Mexico, as if Margaret herself chose the name for her new child. As a gift for Mother's Day, her first in a long time, Mary hand-colored the black-and-white photographs they had taken on their picnic in the woods. A little work to hang in Margaret's room. With soft pencils, she filled in the white and gray, changing her own blonde hair to brown, adding roses to her mother's cheeks. Aura of gold emanating around Maya. For Diane, tincture of green to brighten her eyes. Birds were added to the junipers and piñons, the clouds tinted with a blush of brown, and the endless sky made bluer than heaven. Each time she sat to work on her gift, she would recall their trip into the Carson National Forest and go back in time to the day of her full forgiveness.
The foursome had piled into Maya's jeep that weekend at the beginning of spring, a spontaneous jaunt north to show Diane another part of New Mexico before she would be heading home for good and to quench Margaret's restlessness at the upheaval in her life. Her aches and pains had gone into remission; the reappearance of her daughter made her feel whole and healthy again. They spent the night in Taos, shopping with the tourists, snapping shots of San Francisco de Asis, made famous by O'Keeffe, and wandering the pueblos north of town proper. Skiers had abandoned the Sangre de Cristos a week earlier, but the snow still clung to the mountain face, and after the sun set, the cold air put them all in mind of winter. They woke on Sunday invigorated and, at Maya's suggestion, bought provisions for lunch and drove into the Carson National Forest for a noonday hike.
Bundled in sweaters and jackets, they took a novice trail through the evergreen forest, the jagged firs pointing to the morning sun hiding behind a veil of high clouds. Maya led the way, wielding a hawthorn walking stick, and in single file followed Mary, her mother, and her aunt. Despite the cool temperatures, the brush and wildflowers, spurred by the lengthening days, had begun to bud and sprout. Songbirds announced their mating melodies, and once, a tawny jackrabbit flinched against the stony background, hopping away at the women's shouts of joy. They rested often in deference to Margaret's age and condition, though she protested, having not felt so good in years.
A black wave rolled over the mountain with alarming speed, and when a snit of hail and snow began to fall, the foursome dashed for cover. Maya and Mary hid under an outcropping of rock fifty yards ahead of Margaret and Diane, who sheltered beneath a juniper, laughing like schoolgirls.
“I wish you didn't have to go,” Margaret told her. “I'll miss you.”
For the first time in their lives together, Diane lifted her hand and stroked her sister's cheek. A gesture so brief that both sisters nearly misunderstood its meaning.
“Thank you,” Margaret said. “For bringing my daughter back to me. For being so strong and brave.”
“I would do anything for you.”
“After I was such a horrid big sister? Picking on you, blaming you for everything when I got in trouble.”
“You aren't so bad,” Diane shouted over the clack of hail. “You could have trusted me more. Let me inside.”
Margaret raised her hand to her sister's face, repeated the gesture she had been taught. Gathering her sister in her arms, she felt the sigh of ages escape. “You're right. No more secrets.”
“And I'm sorry about the little girl.” She bent her head to Margaret's shoulder.
“Norah? I know, I know,” and she patted her back as if soothing a small child.
As quickly as the storm gathered, the clouds blew on to the next mountain, and the air cleared, the sun reappeared. An hour's march later, they stopped, spread the blanket on a flat rock, and shared a cold picnic. By magic, a bottle of wine appeared, was opened and divided into four plastic cups.
“It's so beautiful here,” Diane said.
Mary said, “I wanted to show you why I love it here before you head home.”
Str
etching out her legs, Margaret leaned back into the bright air. “I could stay here forever. Puts me in mind of Emerson. ‘In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life … which nature cannot repair.’”
“How is it you remember stuff like that, Mom?”
“I went to college once upon a time, young lady, filled my head with poetry and philosophy and art. Saw the hand of God in everything. Where do you think you got your natural talent?”
Whether from the wine or the fresh air that flushed her cheeks, Maya brightened, as if lit from within. “A transcendentalist,” she said. “And a theologian. What do you make of the angels sent your way? Mary told me all about your otherworldly visitor.”
“Oh, I've thought about her every day since we left, and worry about her too. I can't find a rational explanation for Norah. Or for the other one.”
Diane sat up, alert. “There was more than one?”
“Not the same as Norah, more like a bad dream, an annoying hallucination. A man in a fedora and camel hair coat used to appear to me over the years. Sounds crazy, doesn't it? But a kind of presence to compensate for absence. Someone to talk to, so I wouldn't talk to myself.” She finished her wine, closed her eyes, and raised her chin toward the sun. Mirroring her gesture, the others turned their faces skyward. To any wayward pilgrim, they would have seemed penitent, at prayer, worshipping something felt but not seen.
“The bodhisattva,” Maya said, “a holy being about to enter nirvana, refrains from so doing out of compassion for others. In order to save others. There are angels everywhere, strange angels, and every faith accounts for intermediaries of the lost. A little girl, an old man, a stranger on the road, your friend. Best to be safe, always, and assume anyone may be.”
One by one they opened their eyes to the bright spring day. Lightheaded from the wine, they packed the empty bottle, stowed the trash, and headed back, leaving no sign of having passed this way. Except for a few photographs.
Mary finished coloring the last of them, her favorite; the hues brought out the currents circulating through them both. Just Mom and Me. Into a frame, then wrapped and beribboned. Switching off the studio lights, she left to surprise her mother.
EPILOGUE
June 2005
Heartbroken when the young woman he loved told him she was soon to be engaged to someone else, Sean asked his boss for two weeks’ time off and headed southwest. He longed to circle back to his childhood dreams when he had helped an extraordinary little girl re-create out of modern myths—books and postcards and bits of television shows—a place neither one had ever seen. A Land of Enchantment, with its cartoon canyons, wind-carved stone arches, and the mesas with anvil-shaped boulders balancing on precipices. New Mexico meant the insouciant road-runner and the hapless coyote and schemes bought COD from ACME Co. He remembered the name of the ghost town—Madrid—that he and Norah had resurrected from a pinhole on a map and knew that once it had been home to a woman that he and the girl had restored from the past. Mary Gavin lived there.
He found her easily, unlike the searchers years before who lost her somewhere in America, unlike her mother's emissary who did not know which name to call out. The path was certain. In Albuquerque, he rented a car and drove into the hills, following the signs to the Turquoise Trail. The sun glowed like a blinding eye, and when he parked and got out of the car, he felt the brain-boiling heat of three in the afternoon. People kept to the dark and cool spots, and even the stray dogs would not budge from their patches of shade. A string of shops in a long adobe gallery afforded him the chance to query several clerks and owners, but he had no luck.
He went into a small café where two customers had laid out a winding path of dominoes. As if they had been at it forever, the men lingered over each placement, calculating the odds, their tiles arranged in front of their coffees like picket fences. The older of the two, a graying mustache hiding his mouth, noticed Sean at the door and with a nod invited him to their table.
“Sit down, brother. Have something.”
The younger man showed him a dazzling smile, bright as sunshine.
“I'm looking for someone.”
Pot in hand, a waitress appeared and poured him a cup of coffee. Sean offered to treat the gents to something, and the younger ordered a poppyseed cake.
“We're all looking for someone,” the mustachioed man said. “Tell me, if I'm not too forward, is it someone who's broken your heart?”
His friend leaned over his black fortress. “Forgive him. He's a romantic and thinks he can spot a fellow heart-on-your-sleeve.”
Sean thought of the girl he had left behind but shook his head. “This is someone I know from my childhood. Who lives in Madrid.”
Leaning back in his chair, the older man paused to consider his next move. “My mistake, though I'm a pretty good judge of the soul. A man's desires stir just below his words. Who are you looking for, amigo?”
“Do you know an artist named Mary Gavin?”
The poppyseed cake arrived and the younger man stuffed a bite in his mouth.
“Peregrino, “the man said to his young friend. “Busca la verdad sobre los ángeles.”
His teeth peppered with seeds, his friend answered. “Show him the way.”
They gave him directions and on the face of a napkin a hand-drawn map to her house. “Strangers kinda spook those monsters she's got up there,” the young one said. “Two wolfhounds, big as tigers, and they'll sniff out the difference between friend and foe.”
“I'm a friend,” Sean answered. “From way back when.”
“Don't listen to him, they're pussycats. Mi hijo has spent too much time staring at the sun. He is blind and crazy.”
Wearing a broad-brimmed slouch hat he purchased on a whim from the next-door haberdashery, Sean hiked the trail to the Gavin place, past the shops painted lilac and butterscotch, their wares baking in the sun, past the old and faded Spanish church, into the tattered hills, anxious with each step. He had allowed himself the illusion that they had lied to him as a child, and pictured the three of them in the hacienda: Mrs. Quinn, her daughter, and Norah. The heat radiating from the bare ground bent the air in waves, and the hounds sprinting toward him seemed at first a mirage, some trick of the harsh light and his imagination. The pair closed fast, split, and circled round him like hands on a clock, taking his measure. Sean stood perfectly still and waited.
“Boys,” a woman called, and they pricked up their ears and returned to her side. From the brush, she emerged in a white cotton dress that nearly touched the ground, one hand shielding her eyes against the sun. “Sorry, mister,” she called out. “Are you lost?”
He did not recognize her at first, forgetting that she, too, had aged, but there was no mistaking the resemblance to the person he remembered. The spiky blonde hair had grown out to its natural brown, but in every other aspect, she remained the picture in his memory. He yelled back to her. “Mary? Mary Gavin?”
The woman in white stepped toward him, the dogs flanking each side. “Do I know you?”
He took off his hat and raised his chin. “I know you. I know your mother—”
“My mother?”
“Margaret Quinn. From back home, Pennsylvania. When I was a kid, I knew your mother. And Norah. Do you remember her?”
She strained against the light and shadows to recognize his face. “I can't—”
“Sean Fallon.” He lifted his arm to shake her hand, but she was upon him in a firm embrace, surprising in its intensity.
“Norah,” she whispered in his ear. The dogs whined and nuzzled between them to separate. “Look at you, Sean, all grown up. What's it been, twenty years?”
“I came to see you—”
“Come out of this sun. I can't believe it.”
Two young children straightened their posture and lifted their gaze when she ushered him inside, pausing from their game of blocks arranged like a faraway imaginary city on the cool stone floor. Sean squatted to inspect
their architectural engineering as introductions were made. “This is my boy Cole, he's six. And this Miss Josie here likes to be called Jo.” The four-year-old girl stood and clung behind her mother's protective leg. “And this here is Mr. Sean Fallon, who has come all the way from Pennsylvania to meet you guys. Wait in the parlor, won't you, and I'll get us something to drink.”
The boy quickly scanned the stranger's face, then went back to constructing a ramp for his toy cars. The girl tried climbing up to her mother's arms and hid her face from the stranger. With a sheepish grin, Sean stood and straightened the pleats of his pants, allowing her to lead him to the next room, a dark parlor, crowded with art and the exotica of her years in the West. The requisite longhorn skull beaded in a mosaic of lapis and green turquoise. Landscapes of mountains and unending sky. A framed baseball jersey, “Madrid Miners,” hung next to a painting of a holstered nude woman brandishing two revolvers. Roped around the mantel, a chain of feathers, and resting against the wall an infrared photograph of a pueblo, Indian dogs glowing white in the bare yard. On a table next to shelves crammed with books were pictures of the children and their father, he presumed, a man clearly happy in the company of his kids. There was a hand-colored photograph of a woman thin as a reed and wreathed in a corona of wild gray hair, two dogs at her side echoing the two beasts resting on the mosaic tiles fronting an adobe hearth. Next to this portrait, the familiar face of Margaret Quinn, radiant in the light, cheek to cheek with her smiling daughter under the limbs of a juniper. He was staring at their faces when Mary returned with two tall glasses.
“Your mother? Is she living with you?”
“Yes, that's my mother. That's up north, beyond Taos in Carson National Forest. We took a trip in the springtime, the year she came to live with me. Aunt Diane was here too. And my friend Maya. Some trip. She was a big-time hiker, did you know, my mother? Loved to be in the outdoors, while she could still get around. Said it renewed her sense of wonder. Up in the high country with nothing but evergreen and hills and sky stretching as far as the eye can see. Mom loved it there.” Mary handed a glass to him and they sat across from one another, a beatific grin pasted on her face.
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