Paper Angels Read online

  “That’s none of your business,” I said. “I appreciate you stopping by, Elizabeth, but I don’t want you here. I don’t want me here. All I want to do is be left alone until someone tells me I can leave.”

  “Well, see, that’s the thing.” Elizabeth straightened herself and crossed her legs again. “Turns out I have a lot of say in how long you stay here. Those invisible wounds can be pesky.”

  “That’s bull,” I said.

  “You really think so?” Elizabeth smiled again, teasing me. “Try me. I’ll keep you here until the Rapture if I have to.”

  I started to offer the sort of bullish grunt men are famous for, the kind that saves them the trouble of actually having to say Who do you think you’re talking to? But at that moment Elizabeth took hold of my hand again and squeezed, and the snort I was about to offer lodged itself halfway up my throat and refused to budge. A mild panic began to build. Half of me saw her as just someone else to keep at arm’s length. The other half, the half that not only let her take my hand again but keep it this time, whispered that her presence could be all that was keeping me tethered to whatever hope was left in my life.

  Then I considered what had happened and whose fault it was. His—the Old Man’s. And God’s by proxy. But I decided that I shared much of that fault, not through my actions but through my trust. For letting Eric inside.

  I turned away from her and looked at the wall in front of me. For the next hour neither of us spoke. Elizabeth returned to her paper and scissors. I was tired and angry and hurt. Elizabeth didn’t need to be a counselor to see that. What she didn’t see, what she couldn’t, was why. When I finally spoke, it was more out of surrender than acceptance.

  “We talk about only what I want to,” I said without looking at her. “And if you tick me off or try to ask me stuff that’s none of your business, I’ll throw you out of here myself. I wasn’t much of a sharer before, and I ain’t one now. Especially to strangers. I’ll do what I have to just to get back home and away from here. But I’d rather stay mad because I have good reason to be mad, and I’d rather feel guilty because I should feel guilty. Those are my choices to make.”

  Elizabeth shrugged. “Deal.”

  Silence again. More staring and cutting.

  “What now?” I asked.

  Elizabeth set her scissors and paper aside and pointed to the box on the table. “How about that?” she asked. “Seems pretty special. Might be a good idea to start with what you think really matters before we go talking about what you think doesn’t.”

  I looked at her and shook my head. “No offense, but that’s one of those things that ain’t your business. It wouldn’t make much sense to you.”

  “It doesn’t have to make much sense to me, it just has to make sense to you.”

  I was about to refuse again but then heard a noise from down the hallway, a small echo that both mixed with and stood out from the calm commotion of chatter and ringing phones. Someone was whistling. I thought at first it was my imagination, a consequence of returning to the world. But it persisted, grew louder as it approached.

  “Do you hear that?” I asked her.

  “Hear what?”

  The melody was both oddly familiar and not, like a memory that had yet to occur. I knew that song. No, I thought, not song. Hymn. One I’d last heard sung by my grandmother nearly fifty years ago—

  Shall we meet beyond the river,

  In the clime where angels dwell?

  Shall we meet where friendship never

  Saddest tales of sorrow tell?

  The whistling stopped and morphed into a shadow that loomed just outside the doorway. For a moment I thought Death itself had come for me. “Mercydeath” is what came into my head, though I had no idea what that meant. But the face that peeked around the corner was not Death. It was worse.

  The Old Man walked through the door and leaned against the foot of my bed, then let out a slow and painful exhale. His faded hospital gown was just one prop among the many I’d known. I supposed he had designed that one in order to offer me some sense of unity, like the people I once saw on television who had shaved their heads in support of their cancer-stricken loved ones. He dragged an IV line behind him, though the pole it should have been connected to and the solution bag that should have hung from it were missing. A visitor name tag was stuck to the gown in the middle of his chest. OLD MAN had been written on it in blue crayon.

  “Hiya, Andy,” he said.

  Fury that had wedged in a dark place inside me for three days kindled then sparked.

  “I’m sorry it had to be like this,” he said, “but I’m not sorry that it had to be. Do you understand?”

  “No,” I muttered. “No…I…don’t.”

  “Andy?” asked Elizabeth. “Are you okay?”

  Her words were mere echoes in my mind, another voice from the other side of the door. The Old Man looked at her and then to me.

  “I know you’re mad,” he said, “and I know you’re hurt.”

  “Andy?” came the echo.

  “I need you to trust me one more time. I’ve never given you cause to doubt me before, have I?”

  “Andy, who are you talking to?”

  “Everything I’ve shown you from then until now, every little thing, comes down to this.”

  “—Andy,” I heard Elizabeth say, “I need you to—”

  “—listen to me,” the Old Man finished. “I need you to let this lady—”

  “—help you,” said Elizabeth. “Whatever’s happened, you still have—”

  “—now. That’s what matters. God sent her.”

  “Stop it,” I moaned. “Please just stop.”

  Elizabeth took her hand from mine and muttered an echoless “I’m sorry.”

  “No,” I told Elizabeth, then I reached out for her hand without realizing I had done so. “Not you. Not…it’s him.” I pointed a trembling finger of my bandaged hand toward the end of my bed. “You did this,” I shouted to him. “This is your fault. Where were you?”

  Elizabeth returned her hand. “Andy,” she said, “please try to relax. You’ll bring Kim back in here, and I need you to stay with me. Okay?”

  The Old Man said nothing, and in that silence was an absence of more than mere words. His presence seemed gone as well—the humor, the lightness, the sometimes unbearable ease. Instead I saw in his eyes a satisfied weariness, the sort that would come by traveling a long road and finding a peace in the walking. This, I considered, was his final lesson to me—that life was not as much one beautiful lesson after another as it was a succession of hard places that must be endured. What beauty and ease we searched for in this world would be found not in open fields or along peaceful shores, but in the crags and crevices of the mountains we climbed.

  “It’s time for me to go, Andy,” he said, “but don’t worry. This isn’t good-bye. You’ll see me soon.”

  The Old Man turned away and continued his stroll down the hallway, among the living and the dead and the both.

  “Come back here,” I pleaded, but all I could manage was a whisper that could carry no farther than Elizabeth’s ears.

  I covered my face with my hand and sobbed. Elizabeth took my head in her free hand and guided me into her shoulder.

  “Andy,” she whispered, “tell me who was there.”

  “I can’t,” I whispered.

  “Yes, you can.”

  You still have now. That’s what matters.

  No. Nothing mattered. Not now.

  Trust me one more time.

  Never again.

  God sent her.

  God.

  I felt Elizabeth’s warmth, the soft touch that somehow held me tight. It had been years since I’d last felt a touch like that. Not since Caroline. Lovely Caroline. She was gone now, there but gone, close and yet worlds away. Like everyone else. After all that time, I thought I had accepted that. I thought it was good and I was fine, but it wasn’t and I wasn’t. What I once had had now been taken away. All tha
t was left was the warm embrace of a woman who reminded me of what could have been but never was.

  “Tell me,” Elizabeth tried again.

  It was then, my soul broken, that I shared my secret. Finally and fully after all those years. Told to neither confidant nor friend, but to a stranger who held my brokenness against herself.

  “My angel,” I said.

  3

  The Box

  I sunk my head deeper into Elizabeth’s shoulder, shocked at my own confession. I could only hope that somehow the words had come out muffled against her shoulder, that just as I’d spoken them the phone had rung or the air had kicked on and she hadn’t heard me. That way, she would ask me to repeat it, and I could say something else. Anything else. But Elizabeth had heard me. She’d heard me clear.

  “Oh,” she said, “is that all?”

  She chuckled at her own wit and gently patted my head. The sensation was not unlike being hit with a sledgehammer. Evidently all the tape and gauze served more as a barrier for germs than any real sort of protection. But I neither flinched nor uttered a word of protest. I would have endured that pain for eternity and a day if it meant I could stay right where I was.

  Elizabeth released me and returned to her seat, careful to keep her hand on mine. There was nothing flirtatious in that small act, no hint of romance or desire. But it was magic just the same.

  “You gonna take me to the rubber room now?” I asked.

  “Sorry, no. It’s occupied at the moment by a guy who thinks he sees the Tooth Fairy.”

  The heaviness between us was shooed away by laughter. It was the one thing I needed and the one thing I didn’t expect.

  “All the same,” I said, “maybe you should reserve some space.”

  “Why’s that? Do you think that’s where you belong?”

  I shrugged. “You’re the counselor. I can guess you don’t hear a lot of folks saying they see imaginary people.”

  Elizabeth raised her eyebrows and asked, “Is that what he is to you? Imaginary?”

  “I know it ain’t normal.”

  “Normal?” Elizabeth followed the word with a soft laugh. “Well, I guess that depends on who you are. Some people would think you’d had your brain baked along with your head. Others would give you a clap on the back and ask what took you so long to share the obvious. It’s all about what you believe.”

  “Didn’t know what I believed was important,” I said.

  “What a person believes is the only thing that’s important.”

  “Then what do you believe?”

  Her eyes widened. It was a question I don’t think Elizabeth had anticipated. With her free hand she stroked the wrinkle that had appeared in her khakis. “That’s a question you can ask if I’m ever in that bed and you’re ever in this chair.”

  “Ah,” I said. “Gotcha. Me patient, you doctor.”

  Elizabeth nodded.

  “Well, Doc,” I said, finally comfortable enough to settle back into my bed, “congratulations. You’ve managed to get something out of me no one ever has.”

  “I think there’s more than one thing no one’s managed to get out of you,” she said. “But for now, let’s concentrate on this one thing. So this ‘angel’ has been around for a while?”

  I let out a very long and very slow exhale. “Yes,” I said. I was determined to keep my answers short as long as I could, testing to see if this new ground I was walking upon was solid or quicksand.

  “When did you first see…it?”

  “Him,” I corrected.

  “Right, sorry. When did you first see him?”

  There was a part of me that still begged for quietness. Enough had been said already, more would only lead to trouble. Elizabeth must have sensed my wariness, because at that moment she said, “It takes a lot of courage to open some of the doors in life, Andy. It takes even more courage to walk through them.”

  Maybe that was true and maybe not, but I was pretty sure I wasn’t in much shape at the moment to either open or walk through a door. I had been beaten and burned, poked and prodded. I had been educated. Not just in the nastiness of the world, but in the suddenness of it. I’d lived most of my years in a town where nothing much ever changed, and yet in the span of five minutes everything had. The Andy Sommerville who went to work three days ago and had nothing to worry about except a loose nozzle on the gas pump was gone. I didn’t know who or what had replaced him, and I didn’t know how to find out.

  I need you to listen to me. I need you to let this lady help you.

  The Old Man had said that. The same Old Man who had said so many other things over the years. Who had kept me as much company as I’d ever known and encouraged me and made sure I kept to…well, maybe not the straight and narrow, but the closest thing to it. And though at that moment I despised him with a hatred only the Devil himself could appreciate, he had never been wrong. Not once.

  “My parents died when I was ten,” I told her. “It was my daddy’s fault. He was a drunk, and a mean one at that. I remember hiding behind the couch while he beat my mama with his belt because she’d taken his drinking money to buy me clothes. I hated him. He was the worst man I’ve ever known.

  “One day he comes home from work and starts drinkin’ like usual, and he runs out of beer. Says he’s driving to the store. Mama says, ‘No you’re not, you’re too drunk.’ So he makes her drive him. I wanted to go, too. The thought of being alone made me scared. But Mama said no, that they’d be right back.” I paused, not sure how to finish the rest, and then decided to go ahead and say it. “Guess she didn’t do a good enough job driving, because when they left the store he was behind the wheel. He ran a red light and got T-boned by a beer truck. Can you imagine that? My drunk dad gets hit by a beer truck.”

  Elizabeth said nothing.

  “Both of ’em died right off. Least I got that. They didn’t hurt. That was all saved up for me, I guess.”

  “What happened to you?”

  “We were living up in Richmond then. I loved that city. So big and bustling. It swallowed me up, and I liked that feeling. But I couldn’t stay after that. The only kin I had left were my grandparents on Mama’s side who lived here in Mattingly. They came for the funeral and then brought me back here with them. Been here ever since.”

  “I’m sorry,” Elizabeth said, and she said nothing more. That alone endeared her to me. Life was full of tragedy and there was no reasoning with it. Sometimes I’m sorry is all you can say because it’s all you should say. That was when I thought my new ground was solid.

  “It was tough,” I told her. “Real tough. I got settled well enough on the outside—got to school and made friends and all that—but on the inside I was broken.

  “I turned eleven about a month after I got here. My grandparents decided to go all out to try and make me feel better. Like I was a part of something, you know? They wanted to make their family and their town my own, so they threw a party and invited all my friends. That was a great day, it really was. But deep down I knew I couldn’t be given more than what had been taken away, and I think everyone else knew that, too.”

  “Nice of them to try,” she said.

  I nodded. “It was, and I loved them for it. But all it did was prove to me that I’d lost everything. I was in bed that night staring up at the ceiling, and I got an idea. I figured that Daddy took my mama away from me, but God must have allowed it. I didn’t deserve that to happen to me. So I figured by all rights God should send me someone else. Not someone to replace Mama—no one could do that—but someone who could help me just the same. Someone who could understand. So I got out of bed, went to the window, and looked up at the Big Dipper.”

  “The Big Dipper?”

  “Mama always said the second star from the end of the handle was the door to heaven. ‘That’s where the answers to our prayers come from,’ she’d say. To this day I don’t know where she got that, but I was willing to give it a shot. I think I’d have tried anything at that point. It was hanging r
ight there in the sky, right for me. I stood there and looked at that star for the longest time. Then I prayed. Prayed like I’d never prayed before. And when I said my amen…”

  “What?” Elizabeth asked.

  I cleared my throat. “When I said my amen, that star…winked. I swear it did. It was there like normal one second, and then all of a sudden it sorta puffed up and shined and then shrank right back down again. I thought it was my eyes playing tricks on me. I don’t know. Maybe that’s exactly what it was. I was hurtin’. Sometimes when you’re hurtin’ you see things that aren’t so.”

  Elizabeth looked down and smiled at the wrinkle she was smoothing out. The way she did it, so calm and smooth, enchanted me. “And how long did you have to wait for your answer?” she asked.

  “Not long. I woke up later that night and rolled over, and he was just standing there by the window staring at me.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Just normal, I guess. Old. No wings or halo or anything like that. He said, ‘Hiya, Andy.’ He just stood there for a bit, and he was gone. I thought I was dreaming until I saw him again the next day. He started his thing right after that.”

  “His thing?”

  “Yeah,” I said with a shrug. “Don’t really know how else to put it. He just kinda…shows up. From time to time.”

  “Why?” Elizabeth asked. “Is there a reason?”

  “I don’t know. He tells me stuff. Tells me to pay attention to something or gives me advice. Sometimes it’s a warning.” I said those words and trailed off, thinking of the one warning he never bothered to offer. “He seems to get a kick out of it. No one can see him, but sometimes he’ll be dressed different or doing something to try and blend in. Sometimes it’s a costume or a suit, sometimes not. He always wears a bracelet on his wrist, though. Always. Thin and black. Silk, I think. It’s nothing fancy. Actually looks pretty cheap to me, but I can tell it means a lot to him. I’ll catch him rubbing it sometimes, especially when he doesn’t think I’m looking. It’s crazy.”

  “That’s interesting,” Elizabeth said.