Flights of Angels

by Ellen Gilchrist

  By the time I got to the youth center, the story of the capture of the fugitive had been on the five o’clock and the six o’clock news. My boyfriend, Dan, was jealous. Nothing like that ever happens to him. He’s in drywall construction. All he’s doing all day is fighting his allergies and lifting things. When his back goes out that will be the end and he knows it. He’s only twenty-five. “Stop drinking beer and go back to school,” I tell him when he bitches.

  Anyway, he was a really good athlete in high school and he can shoot and he was really hot Friday night. We beat the McElroy Bank about sixty-two to twelve. I’m a McElroy but not the ones that used to own the bank. The Waltons own it now like they do half the stuff in town. We never did own it so it’s nothing to me. My dad was a carpenter until he drank himself to death.

  Back to Dan and me and Sergeant Hadley Townsend trying to show off for me. After the game we all went down to George’s to hear the Cate Brothers play.

  “So what happened?” everyone is asking me. “He really had a gun?”

  “No, he didn’t have a gun. I just thought he had a gun. He told Dale he was going to kill him if the plane didn’t take off, so I called nine-one-one.”

  “We got there in six and a half minutes,” Hadley puts in. “I was way out by the university when I got the call. We had two squad cars there in less than seven minutes.”

  “I saw the cars going there,” a girl kept saying. “I was on my way to the beauty parlor when I saw the police cars with their sirens on.”

  “So are you going home with me or not?” Dan whispered in my ear and I said yes, and the rest is secret. I will say this: If it takes a fugitive showing up in town to make Dan Fairly get that interested in me, I’d like to have one come by every day.

  About two in the morning he asked me to marry him. I told him I’d think about it.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said. “If I decide I want some kids, I will.”

  “I want them,” he said. “I want us to have a baby.”

  “You always think that when we’re making love,” I answered. “But you don’t know how much it costs to keep them. People with kids don’t have a thing but kids. They get trapped by them. I’ve seen it all around me. I don’t know if I want to be in that trap. I don’t even know if I want to stay in Fayetteville.”

  I don’t know why I was so philosophical when I had just had a proposal of marriage from the best-looking guy I had ever dated. As I say, it’s been a long winter and I’ve been reading too many books.

  Maybe it was because Hadley had put his arm around my waist and told me to call him. Maybe it was because I read this book about how men have only one purpose and that is to have as many children as they can by a lot of women and get their DNA passed down. According to this book, the only reason they even try to be faithful to us is so they can protect the children.

  Maybe we are only on the earth to breed. That might be it. But I’m only twenty-two. I don’t have to believe that yet. I don’t have to marry the first guy who asks me and stick my feet in the concrete and watch it harden. I want to try out for a dance class next semester. I want to set up a studio for my photography and make something happen. I want to get on one of the Saab Turbo Props and go somewhere.

  “We’ll have three or four boys and maybe a girl,” Dan was saying as he went to sleep. “Hell, I’ll have a basketball team. I’ll build them a full-size court in the backyard. It’s easy to do. All you have to do is pour concrete.”

  “Go to sleep,” I told him. “I haven’t even said I’ll marry you yet.” And I might not.

  A Lady with Pearls

  We were on our way to the Vermeer exhibition when I realized I didn’t love Duval anymore. We were on the plane, high up above the state of Mississippi, when I knew our love was through. All those years, children, friends, houses, all gone down the drain. He was a boring, depressed man and I was still young at heart and happy to be here, on the planet earth, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and ninety-six.

  “What do you have to be unhappy about?” I told him. “Here we are, on our way to see an exhibition that thousands of people worked for years to create. On our way to look into the heart of genius. We have a Carey limousine coming to meet us at the airport. The snow has melted. You are a rich man in reasonably good health. If you don’t know what you are about to see, that’s okay with me. When you see the paintings you will know. I wish I hadn’t brought you with me. You are ruining my dream come true.” I sat back in the seat. We were on our way to see twenty-six of the thirty-one extant paintings of one of my favorite painters. I had to appreciate that. Even if I did have this depressed sixty-two-year-old man by my side.

  “I think we are going to lose Allen,” he said. “He’s lost, Callilly. We have to admit he’s lost.”

  “He is not lost. He’s living on a sailboat in the Virgin Islands. He has an adventure every day. He toils not. Neither does he spin. How can you feel sorry for him? He doesn’t have children. Why should he care?”

  “He’s thirty-five years old. It’s too late now. He’ll never have a home. Never marry. It breaks my heart. I’m sorry I can’t get excited about your paintings but I can’t think of anything but Allen.”

  Our son, Allen, had showed up the day before. We live in Pass Christian, on the beach, in a house that was Duval’s summer home when he was a child. At one time his family owned two newspapers and half the land in the Delta. Now the fortune has dwindled to a small pile of money in the bank. Duval’s sister drank up a lot of it. His brother gambled away the rest. Then they died. There is nothing left of the family but us. Duval is a good and sober man. He is a lay reader in the Episcopal church and he talks to stockbrokers on the phone and does good deeds.

  “Okay,” I said. “Our kids didn’t turn out well. It’s not our fault. We are still on our way to see the Vermeer exhibition in Washington, D.C., even if Allen is staying in our house and will probably have a party and ruin the carpets while we’re gone. I told you not to let him have the house but you did it anyway. Brighten up. Are you hungry? You didn’t eat a bite this morning.”

  “Sally lives in an apartment with a cat. Allen lives on a boat. No one achieves a thing. I can’t take it anymore, Callilly. What are we doing on this airplane?”

  “Okay. That’s it.” I got up and went to the back of the airplane and sat alone near the bored stewardesses. I got out a book I was trying to read. The Best Poems of 1994. It was bleak. There were elegies, laments, sadness. I think I’ll go to Mexico, I decided. I’ll go feed the children on the streets.

  I put down the book and took a magazine from a rack beside the stewardesses’ station. It was Mademoiselle, the January issue. Are You Having Orgasms? the cover asked. No, I answered. I guess I forgot about that. I turned to the article. I read it. I got up and went back to my seat by Duval and sat down beside him and put my hand on his dick. “What are you doing, Callilly?” he asked. “What’s this about?”

  On the limousine ride into town I stroked his arm and leg. This is my life and I’m taking charge of it, I decided. As soon as we got to the Four Seasons Hotel, I took off my blouse and brassiere and followed Duval around until I got him into the bed. It was four in the afternoon. We made love like there was no tomorrow. We made love like we hadn’t made love in months, maybe years. It was nasty and bad and fabulously fulfilling. Afterward, we fell asleep. We ordered dinner in our room. We drank wine and ate filet mignon and had dessert. Then we watched a movie on television and then we fooled around some more and then we went back to sleep.

  “We are already under the spell of Jan Vermeer,” I told him that night. “He had ten children and died young. Tomorrow we are going to view the record he left behind. I’m already starting to want to paint. As soon as we get home I’m going to paint.”

  The skies are very beautiful over the beaches of the Mississippi Sound, which runs into the Gulf of Mexico. Every moment they change. All day long the sky and sea make paintings of such intensity and wonder a mor
tal human cannot hope to capture a millionth of that beauty. That should free us to paint but it has always made me afraid and shy. After this, I won’t be afraid, I decided. What do I have to lose, at age sixty-two?

  When we woke in the morning Duval called Allen to see if he had destroyed our house yet. “Don’t call him,” I warned. “Don’t spoil this happiness. Get back in bed. Let me make love to you again.”

  He called him anyway. It was eight in the morning in Pass Christian and Allen was up and dressed and on his way out to try to find a small house to buy. “I want a place to come to so I won’t always have to stay with you,” he told Duval. “I’ll fix it up and rent it when I’m not here.”

  “How will you pay for it?” Allen asked.

  “I have some money. I’ve been working in the islands. You never listen when I tell you that.”

  “Don’t start thinking Allen is going to be all right,” I told him at breakfast. “One sober morning does not a break-through make.”

  “I can hope,” he answered. “Without hope, we’re really lost.”

  The paintings were divine, that’s all there is to that. The Geographer is the image that killed Duval. He couldn’t stop looking at it. “These paintings prove how depressed women were in the past,” I told him. “Of all the portraits, only the geographer looks really happy, really engaged. Of course the women look satisfied, with their satin dresses and their maids and their pearls. But only the geographer looks like he’s in charge of what he’s doing. Maybe we underestimate Allen. Maybe we just don’t understand what he’s doing. He’s a geographer, Duval. He has sailed across the Atlantic Ocean. Why do we keep thinking he’s a failure?”

  “He doesn’t have a home. He doesn’t have a family. What will become of him when he’s my age?”

  “He has us. We’ll probably never die. And he’s buying a house. This very morning he’s out looking for a house.”

  “He’ll want me to co-sign the note.”

  “So what? The house we live in was given to us. Left to us in a will. Where would we be if we hadn’t inherited money? Allen’s okay. I’ve decided to believe he’s okay.”

  “He’s drinking. He’ll never settle down as long as he drinks. No one in our family can drink. He will die like my sister and my father.”

  “Duval.” I pulled him over to a corner of the gallery and reached under his coat and put my hand on his dick.

  “Oh, God,” he said. “Not that again.”

  We returned to the exhibition the next day. It was still terribly crowded but this time we knew what to do to make our way into the center of the circles around the paintings. I was concentrating on looking at the musical instruments and Duval was caught up in the idea of camera obscura. I think we both forgot about Allen until after lunch.

  “Let’s go home and see him and help him out,” Duval said. “I’ve had enough of Washington, D.C. I want to go home and talk to my son.”

  “Nothing will come of it. You’ll just end up getting mad. He’ll stomp out like he always does.”

  “Maybe not. Maybe I’ll sit down with him and get him to show me on the map where he’s sailed. Hell, maybe I’ll go back to the islands with him for a week. We have to keep on trying, Callilly. Have to keep on believing something good will come of something that we did.”

  He hung his head. I could see the trip sliding away, all the good I had achieved going back to sadness.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s go pack up. Let’s go home and see about our child.”

  And so we did. It was, you might say, as T. S. Eliot did, referring to the journey of the Magi, satisfactory. Allen was getting better. He was growing up. He might live and thrive and flourish. We might get to have some pleasure from him and not end up going to his funeral. I guess that’s hope. If it isn’t, I guess I can always paint or take a walk.

  Excitement in Audubon Park

  (Some events that took place after the Frenchman almost broke up our friendship and before we took up tennis)

  After the Frenchman fell through, Abby and I decided to give up on men for a while and concentrate on our bodies. We bought some new running shoes and started meeting every morning at Exposition Boulevard to run in the park. All the professional runners were out that time of day. Just because we were giving up on men didn’t mean we were going to stop flirting with them. I had this yellow silk scarf I kept tying around my waist or head or neck. It was my signature for running. White shorts and shirt and this yellow scarf tied in a different place every day.

  A federal judge we admired who had been forced to slow his pace due to age was letting us run with him for the first two weeks. The editor of the newspaper was his usual running buddy and he got jealous when the judge let us come along. He called us “the housewives” behind our backs.

  “Are the housewives coming today?” the judge said he’d asked. “Are we going to have to listen to their nonsense? I tell you, Fred, you are going to have to choose between me and them.”

  It really made Abby mad when she heard he’d said that and we decided to pay him back by getting this very incredibly gorgeous swimmer we knew to start riding over on her bicycle and joining us. She was so beautiful that any man who saw her forgot everything else he knew as long as she was within sight. I mean, she was so beautiful it was dangerous. Her name was May Garth and she was a dancer with three children, who had moved to New Orleans to try to revive her career. No one can return to ballet when they are twenty-eight years old, but May Garth was giving it a try. Abby and I had met her at a dance class we were taking over on Maple Street just to give us something to do in the afternoons, when it was too hot to run or go shopping.

  So Abby asked May Garth to come over to the park on her bicycle and see if the judge would choose the newspaper editor over us for running companions after that. I mean, she’s not just another beautiful girl. She’s like Candice Bergen or Ingrid Bergman and athletic. Not a runner though. She saves her feet for dancing.

  The next afternoon at dance class we cornered May Garth and told her what we’d planned. She was at the bar, stretching her already perfect legs, extending. Her arms alone are enough to make any human being fall into an attitude of worship.

  “This editor is the most stuck-up man running in the park,” Abby was explaining. “He wants to keep the judge all to himself so he can bore him to death with world affairs at seven in the morning. I know that’s early for you with the children, but we’ll pay for a baby-sitter. Just one morning ought to do it.”

  “I live right on the park.” She stretched farther down the bar. I pulled my stomach in. I extended my arms. My body turned into flight just from watching her. “So I could run over for a second on my bike, I suppose. My neighbor is right there and my oldest is ten years old.”

  “You couldn’t have a ten-year-old child.” I meant it.

  “I was eighteen and in love. Well, I’m glad I have her. Even if it did interrupt my dancing.”

  “Then you’ll come?”

  “Tomorrow morning. Be watching for me.” We giggled. We were transported. Something was going to happen in New Orleans. We weren’t going to be bored to death forever. “I like judges and newspaper editors,” May Garth added. “They have such interesting minds.”

  The next morning at seven o’clock I met Abby at Exposition Boulevard and we ran toward Magazine to meet the judge, who always ran around the other way from his home on Saint Charles Avenue. The editor was with him, looking serious and talking nonstop as they ran. I guess he was trying to get in as much world news as possible before we joined them. He hadn’t been the editor of the paper for very long and was still feeling his way into New Orleans. He still believed he could turn the Times-Picayune into the New York Times, a common failing of journalists when they first come to the South.

  “Hello,” he said, and barely nodded. We slowed our pace and turned and began to run along beside the judge. “I don’t care who is president,” he was saying. “The issue is who is on the Supreme Court. Douglas
can’t last much longer. Neither can Black. There will be at least three appointments in the next four years. It’s critical, Judge. You know that’s the issue.”

  “You’re looking mighty pretty this morning, Rhoda,” the judge said. “I see you have the scarf around your head again.”

  “It keeps my hair out of my eyes.”

  “I saw your wife at Langenstein’s yesterday,” Abby put in. “She said she’s so glad were running with you. I just love her so much. The work she’s doing at Loyola is exciting.”

  “We’re having a panel at the paper next month with some people from Washington I want you to meet,” the editor said loudly. “I’d give anything if you’d sit in on the panel. If you have time, of course.”

  I saw May Garth coming around the curve on the bike. She was wearing a bright pink shirt and little pale yellow shorts and pink socks and tennis shoes. Her long hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She drew near and we smiled and waved and kept on running.

  Fortunately, the road around the park was originally designed for cars so there was plenty of room for the four of us running abreast and May Garth’s bicycle beside us.

  “This is our friend, May Garth,” I panted. “She’s coming to meet us. The judge, May Garth, and Mr. Porter. He’s the new editor of the paper.”

  “I brought the radio in case you want to listen to some music while you run,” she said. She had a small portable radio hooked onto the handlebars of the bike. A black station was playing the Neville Brothers. It was a delicious sweet sound and I watched as the editor almost fainted at what had happened to him. He had started out the day to have a long serious run in the park in the company of an illustrious federal judge and now he was surrounded by women and ponytails and music pouring out of a radio ruining the peace of the morning.

  I guess it must have been about then that my scarf came off and drifted across the road onto a patch of fallen Spanish moss. I didn’t notice it was gone. I was having too much fun watching the men admire May Garth. It was really a wonderful thing to watch the effect she had on men. It was like a light had gone on in the world; it made you believe in Helen of Troy. It didn’t even make me jealous. No one can be jealous of perfection. It was enough just to be her friend and be glad that she existed.