Paper Angels Read online

  “Yes, exactly. The traffic. Not that I think there’s any danger around here, mind you. But Mary’s…adventurous.”

  I had to chuckle at that. Calling Mary adventurous was like calling Grace Kelly cute.

  “She wants to start playing in the front yard now,” he continued. “She says backyards are for little kids.”

  I took a sip of my Coke and wondered just how honest I was going to be with my neighbor from across the road. Like I said, Stephen was a good guy. But you never know how a parent will take words about his child, whether criticism or praise. I decided to play it safe and said, “Well, I’d say Mary’s a little kid.”

  “She is at that, Andy. Kids are in such a hurry to grow up. But she’s adamant. She really wants to do this.”

  “And what do you say?” I asked.

  He took another sip of wine. “I don’t know. It’s not such a big deal, really. Right?”

  “Sounds like it is to you,” I told him.

  “Having kids just magnifies your fear. Everything seems scary, even the little stuff. But she has responsibilities. She has to keep her room clean and help with the dishes. Why not this? Why not something fun?”

  “So when’d you give Mary the good news?” I asked.

  Stephen grinned and said, “Just a little bit ago. I made her promise she wouldn’t go into the road, and she swore she wouldn’t even think about it. Four times.”

  I said nothing. A man doesn’t have to be a father to know that parenting is all about trying to make sure the good things about yourself were passed on and the bad things were not.

  Stephen straightened his tie. “I was wondering if you’d just keep an eye on her this week. Barbara will be around, but she has so much to do and it’s easy for her to get sidetracked. I’m not making it a priority or anything. I’m sure Mary will be fine.”

  I nodded and tapped my plain Coke against his fancy wine. The sound of plastic meeting glass made a tiny whup. “I’ll be happy to, Stephen,” I said.

  He finished his glass and said his good-bye, thanking me again on the way across the road. The chair beside me began to creak back and forth as I watched him go.

  “Guess I’ll have to start keepin’ an eye on that youngun,” I said.

  “Somebody’s gotta,” the Old Man answered.

  *

  Shortly after I began putting the first strokes of paint on the garage the next morning, Mary bounded out the front door across the street to usher her father off to work. Stephen opened the door of his SUV, tossed his briefcase inside, and then bent down to offer one final warning that was punctuated by a wagging finger.

  Mary nodded and flung her arms around his neck, squeezing him so tight that I could hear him cough, and then made a cross-my-heart motion with a finger of her own. The two exchanged waves as Stephen pulled away. Mary watched him all the way to the corner, where he turned and disappeared into the world.

  Barbara poked her head out the door and smiled at her daughter. “I’ll be right inside,” she said. She offered me a quick wave before vanishing.

  Mary had reached the edge of the driveway before her mother had shut the door.

  “Might as well try to tie down the wind,” I muttered to myself. Then louder, to her: “Hey there, Miss Mary.” I raised my paintbrush and waved, just to make sure she saw me seeing her.

  “Hey, Mr. Andy!” she said. She offered one of those floppily spastic little-girl waves back.

  “What’cha doing?”

  “Nothin’,” she said. “I can play in the front now.”

  “So I see. Reckon you’d better mind the road. Plenty of grass to play in. Grass is always better than pavement, sure enough.”

  “Sure enough,” she agreed.

  Mary eyed the pavement. Quick glances at first, as if the road was some celestial event and staring at it too long would burn her eyes. Then longer looks. She peeked back toward the living room window. All clear.

  There were no cars. Mary looked down the road to the right, then to the left, then back toward the house again. Then she raised her right leg, leaned back, and gently touched the tip of her pink tennis shoe onto the dark asphalt.

  It was her first taste of blatant defiance. And it looked to me like it tasted just fine.

  Mary spun and raced back up the driveway to the safety of the house, where she scanned left and right again and then peeked at the front door. Nothing. I could see her quick breaths from across the road. Her smile, too.

  She was safe. And more than that, she had gotten away with it.

  I kept one eye on the paintbrush and the other on her for the next few hours. Both managed to stay between the lines. Mary never strayed down to the road, never even beyond the little dip in the front yard that led to it. When I took a break around lunchtime, she was playing hopscotch on the sidewalk by the door.

  Twenty minutes later I had sat down to some leftover chicken from Timmy’s Texaco and watching some poor old lady doing her utmost to win a new Chevy from Bob Barker. I was doing my part by hollering out the price when the Old Man sprinted out of the kitchen.

  “Come on come on come on!” he shouted, tearing past me and disappearing through the living room wall.

  I lurched out of my recliner and ran for the door, but I was too late. Halfway there I heard the sound of brakes meeting rubber meeting pavement, followed by a bellowing horn.

  I flung the front door open, half expecting to see a pint-sized pancake in the middle of the road. Instead, Mary was jumping up and down by the edge of the grass and waving to the back of the blue Toyota Camry that had almost hit her. The driver had her hand to her chest and her mouth wide open, no doubt pondering both the brevity of life and the ramifications of vehicular manslaughter. Barbara raced out the front door, gobbled up her little girl in her arms, and whisked her inside.

  That was the end of the great front yard experiment. From then on, it was the backyard or nothing. Mary protested. And whined and begged and promised to run away. But Stephen and Barbara would not yield. Under no circumstances would Mary be allowed outside the fence. Constant monitoring was initiated and boundaries were set, along with the threat of the severest punishment possible—whatever that meant—if said rules were broken.

  It was the perfect plan. Foolproof.

  Not, however, childproof. Because in the end a fence is just a fence, and Mary missed the front yard.

  One hour after her father left for work the next day, there came another screech, another horn, and another wave. Which was followed by another jumping little girl, another frantic mother, and another hasty trip inside.

  From that point on, Mary was confined indoors. Which was kind of good for me, since I could finally get my painting done. But it was bad for Mary, I suppose. It never feels good to have your wings clipped.

  * * *

  Mary was paroled that Friday evening just long enough to walk across the street with her father and see how the garage had turned out. The three of us sat beneath the evergreen on the side of my house and caught up on neighborhood news. Not surprisingly, our talk eventually came around to Mary’s grand adventure. That was most all the news there had been.

  “I just don’t understand it,” Stephen said. He patted his daughter on the head. “She knows better.”

  Mary looked up to her father and smiled, and Stephen nearly drowned in it. It’s an amazing thing, what a child does to a parent. A beautiful thing. But as beautiful as it was, I had to look away. Children weren’t something the Good Lord chose to bless me with, mostly because having one involved having a spouse.

  I excused myself to clean the brushes and found the Old Man waiting next to the garden hose. He was dressed in overalls that looked like he’d taken off a rack and rolled them in the dirt before putting them on. A painter’s cap sat cockeyed on his head. His feet were bare. The Old Man always said toes were made for feeling more than socks and shoes. That was my philosophy exactly.

  “You should have some help with that,” he said. “Messy job, c
leaning paintbrushes.”

  “Ain’t nothing I’ve never done before,” I told him.

  “Bet Mary’d pitch in.”

  I looked over my shoulder at my neighbors, still beneath my evergreen. Stephen appeared to have forgotten about the trouble his daughter had caused and was holding her like the blessing she was.

  “Are you serious?” I whispered. “She’s liable to start painting herself and then me. And then burn the house down and do a happy dance.”

  “Still,” he said, “might not be a bad idea.”

  “But I don’t want to.”

  “Okay, fine,” he said, raising his hands in mock surrender. “I mean, it’s not like I know what I’m doing or anything.”

  “You’re seriously trying to guilt me?” I asked.

  “Is it working?”

  I didn’t say anything. I did nod, though.

  “Hey Mary,” I called. “Wanna help me with these brushes?”

  Mary was more than willing. And despite my misgivings, she was the picture of ladylike demeanor. She was polite and talkative, discussing the garden hose at her house and how her father used it to wash their car and how their car smelled like cherries inside and she didn’t like cherries that much.

  The Old Man knelt down beside us and nodded at Mary’s profundity. He turned to look at me and said, “You should ask her.”

  I shook my head.

  “Seriously, ask her. It’s important.”

  Mary finished her soliloquy by saying that she liked cherries but only when they were in ice cream. I glanced over at Stephen to make sure we were out of earshot—in my experience, kids were honest to a fault except when a parent was around. He was still sitting in the grass, leaning back on his hands and staring across the road at his home, no doubt thinking that moving to the country was pretty much the best decision he’d ever made other than marrying Barbara.

  “Mary,” I asked, “you kinda got into a little trouble for going out into the road, didn’t you?”

  She shrugged. The Old Man smiled.

  “Because your mom and dad were pretty scared,” I added.

  Another shrug.

  “You really do know better, don’t you?”

  “Yeah,” she said. She handed me a brush still caked with white. I ran it under the hose and then shook it, sending a white mist into the grass.

  “Then why’d you do it?” I asked her.

  Mary thought. Then she let out a small giggle and leaned toward me so her father wouldn’t hear.

  “I did it,” she said, “because I wasn’t supposed to.”

  It wasn’t the answer I expected to hear, but it was an honest one. I looked from Mary to the Old Man.

  “Profound, huh?” he said.

  I nodded.

  The Old Man bent lower and lifted up his cap to gaze into Mary’s eyes. “Remember this face, Andy,” he said to me. “Look at this little girl and burn her image in your mind, because she is you and you are her. Every day you both stand at the edge of should and should not, torn between what you know you’re not supposed to do and the overwhelming desire to do it anyway. That’s why the world’s in such a mess. Why people do bad things. They just can’t help it. Everyone’s fighting their own darkness and waging their own war, and sooner or later it all spills out onto someone else. That’s why you always have to forgive, Andy. Always. No matter what the harm might be. Because in the end people are born broken and spend their lives trying to put the pieces together. Your job is to help them find the pieces. You remember that, Andy. And you take that brush she just gave you and put it in your box so you will.”

  I nodded again.

  “I guess I should try to be better anyway,” Mary told me.

  “I guess we all should,” I said.

  7

  The World’s a Hard Place, Andy

  Outside my hospital room window the vague noises of civilization waned. Specks of headlights on the highway were fewer, the thump-thumps of teenagers and their stereos lessened. The world was nodding off without me. There was little wonder why I was so awake; I’d been sleeping off and on for three days. But I still longed for rest, though I suspected it was the sort of rest sleep couldn’t provide.

  Elizabeth smiled and said, “So do you think that’s true, Andy?”

  “What’s true?” I asked.

  Elizabeth’s chin was in her hand, which was propped up by an elbow that rested on the top of my box. For a moment I almost asked her not to do that, to stop touching what was mine and give it a little respect (though I didn’t know how much respect a box of junk deserved). Then I decided against it.

  “Helping others pick up their pieces. Do you think that’s your job?”

  I shrugged and said, “I guess. I think that’s everyone’s job, don’t you?”

  She ignored my question and asked another: “Do you agree with the Old Man that everyone’s basically bad?”

  “Speaking from personal experience, yes. Like I told you, we’re all children. Every single one of us.”

  “And does that make it easier to forgive someone?”

  “I guess it should, though that’s harder to do than believe. The Old Man said we’re all fighting our own darkness and waging our own war. Not to say there shouldn’t be judgment or consequences, because there should. But there should also come a forgiveness and a moving on.”

  “Is that so?” she asked. Her chin was out of her hand then, her head cocked a bit to the side.

  “Yes.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes moved from mine to the bandages on my face and head.

  “In all cases?”

  I didn’t know if I had fallen into a cleverly disguised trap or an inevitable turn in our conversation, but I was leaning toward the former. I had forgotten Elizabeth was there for more than mere listening. She was supposed to be making me feel better, too. That was her job. Her…focus. That meant asking a few questions that were bound to hurt. Even though I knew all of that to be true, I don’t mind saying that in that moment my heart cracked. Not because of what Elizabeth had said, but because it was all business.

  “Nice try, counselor,” I said.

  “Just thought I’d throw that out there,” she said. “Do you think Mary came to realize the choice to disobey was really hers?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know if a lot of people ever realize that. They’ll blame God or the Devil or genes or parents for their screwups before they ever blame themselves.”

  “Because it’s not their fault,” she said.

  “Exactly.”

  “But it is their fault, at least in your opinion.”

  “You can’t hit all the curveballs life throws at you,” I told her, “but that doesn’t mean you can’t at least foul a few off. There are a lot of things out there beyond our control. Lot of things that aren’t, too. See? I know a little about the human condition myself.”

  “You are quite the nice surprise, Andy Sommerville,” Elizabeth said.

  Despite myself, I said, “I gotta say you are too, Elizabeth.”

  The two of us allowed that mutual admission to sink in. I almost said more and didn’t but hoped she would. At the time I thought it was the freedom of openness that had captured me, that it wouldn’t have mattered who had been sitting there beside me listening, I would have felt that same feeling of release and trust, that same euphoric sense of sharing. Maybe that’s true. But looking back I think that was because it was Elizabeth rather than anyone else.

  “And how’s Mary now?” she asked.

  “I’ll see her in the gas station from time to time,” I said. “She’s sixteen now. Still a kid.”

  “I’m guessing she’s allowed to play in the front yard now,” Elizabeth said.

  “She is,” I said with a smile. “But she’s still Mary. She’ll learn like we all do. She’ll grow and experience and fail and hurt. She’ll gather regrets that will haunt her and joys that will sustain her. And when the time comes, she’ll vow too that her children won’t
suffer through the same mistakes she’s made. But I can see her one day telling her own child not to play in the road. And I can see a few minutes later another small shoe tiptoeing the edge of should and should not and then stepping into the world of the forbidden.”

  “Because we can’t help it?” she asked.

  “Because we can’t help it.”

  Elizabeth’s head cocked to the other side and allowed her ponytail to swish. “That worldview doesn’t really sound like a recipe for happiness.”

  “Happiness?” I asked. “Please.”

  “Come on, Andy. You want to be happy, don’t you? That’s what everyone wants out of life. A lot of people would say it is the definition of true success—not your measure of wealth, but your measure of gladness. So let me ask you this: are you happy?”

  “Not at the moment,” I said, then regretted saying it. “You know, with my condition and all.”

  “How about before your condition?”

  “I wasn’t doing cartwheels or anything, but I was okay.”

  Elizabeth wasn’t looking at me but through me—into me—trying to find what I wasn’t ready to show her. I was familiar with that look. It was the Old Man’s and my grandmother’s look. A look that said I know the truth, even if you don’t want to tell me.

  “Stop it,” I said.

  “Stop what?”

  “Stop analyzing me. Do you have any idea how tough it is being able to see things no one else can? Or thinking you see things no one else can? Whatever. It’s like a wall between me and everyone else. It doesn’t matter how much education you have or how many people you’ve talked to, you can’t possibly understand how that feels. So no, I’m not Mr. Sunshine. But I guess you could say I’m as happy as I can be.”

  I’m not sure if that comment took her aback or not, but I was pretty sure it stung. I hadn’t meant to do that. But the old adage of the truth hurting was an old adage because it was exactly right.

  “That sounds awful, Andy.”

  “Awful?” I asked her. “No. It is what it is, Elizabeth. I’ve had a good life up to this point. Don’t you sit there and pity me.”