Angel Fire (12 page)

She was angry at Jeffrey for wanting to see Morrow alone. On an intellectual level, she recognized that he was right. Jeffrey had a bad history with Morrow, too; but Jeffrey hadn’t created a national scandal by writing an article in
Vanity Fair
that had
exposed Morrow as the alcoholic, chauvinistic incompetent that he was. Jeffrey going alone was probably the best bet they had to get Morrow to let them in. He probably wouldn’t even
see
Lydia if she were to show up there. But she had called Jeffrey for his help and for his support, not so that he could take over. Sometimes she felt like he was Superman and she was just Lois Lane. He was leaping tall buildings and deflecting bullets and she was just hanging on for the ride, then writing up the story when it was done. She knew it was irrational but it still made her angry. Plus his closeness was so unsettling now. They hadn’t slept under the same roof since he was recovering from being shot. And it felt so good, so safe to have him in her space. The restlessness she dreaded had subsided. She had what she needed, the real thing. She didn’t need to go looking for cheap imitations at the Eldorado.

She had meant to avoid the church today. But in spite of herself she saw it rising before her and she felt powerless to turn around or veer off in another direction. She was drawn to it, drawn to Juno.

“Your mother would be glad to know you have come home to God.”

On the day her mother had been murdered, Lydia had known she was in trouble. The principal had caught Lydia smoking in the bathroom and had punished her with a detention. The principal also had called her mother at work to let her know of Lydia’s infraction. On top of that, she had missed the school bus and had to walk more than a mile and a half home.

It was September 5, a brisk and clear fall day. The leaves were changing and the air was clean and smelled like cut grass. Lydia sniffled as she walked home carrying her heavy bag. She could envision the scene that awaited her as if it were already a memory. Her mother would be waiting for her at the kitchen table. She would ask Lydia calmly, “How was your day?” Then: “Do you have something
to tell me?” Then there would be an unbearably long lecture that would last at least an hour and maybe the whole evening, depending on how angry her mother was and how much energy she had. Then Marion would be distant and silent, and speak to Lydia only when she absolutely had to, with politely cold directions. “Please do the dishes,” or, “Make sure you’re in bed before ten.”

It would be better if her mother yelled. Then Lydia could yell back. Instead she would have to eat her own guilt, feel ashamed and sorry. She would have to wait for forgiveness.

Lydia would always remember what she had been wearing that day: a red plaid, pleated skirt; white tights and black loafers; a white cotton shirt and black suede vest—her favorite outfit.

She hadn’t even entered the house before she knew something was wrong. She stood at the end of the driveway for a moment and stared at her mother’s car. The door was open. She walked to the blue Chevy and saw her mother’s purse sitting on the passenger’s seat. She could hear music sounding loudly from inside the house.

Her mother was a precise woman, with predictable habits. She was orderly, nothing ever out of place, no action ever spontaneous. Even if she had heard the phone ringing in the house, she never would have left the car unlocked, never mind with the door wide open and her purse sitting there. Even though they lived in a safe, small town, Lydia’s mother had been raised in Brooklyn. She had let Lydia know that the world held dangers she could not yet imagine. No ground-floor window was ever left unlocked at night. When Lydia let herself in on most afternoons, she was to lock the door behind her and not open it for anyone except the police or the neighbors. Her mother was quite strict on these points.

Lydia took her mother’s purse and closed the car door. She
walked slowly to the front door of the house and found that ajar as well.

“If you ever come home and find the doors open or a window broken, don’t even go inside. Just run to the neighbor’s, call the police, and then call me at work.”

“Yeah, okay, Mom. God.”

“Mom?” she called from the front steps. “Mom?”

She was not sure how long she stood there debating what to do next. Finally, she pushed the door open and walked inside, dropping her schoolbag and her mother’s purse on the floor. She left the door wide open, the outside seeming safer than the inside at that moment.

There were no lights on inside. And when she turned off the blaring stereo, the silence of an empty house greeted her.

“Mom?”

She walked from room to room downstairs, seeing nothing. Then she climbed the stairs. Her mother’s room was dark, the shades pulled down sloppily below the sill in a way her mother never would have done. When she flipped the light on she saw her mother, a sight she had tried to bury deep inside herself but which she had never forgotten. Bound to the headboard, her dead eyes were rolled up in her head, her mouth parted in a silent scream. Lydia ran to her mother, began shaking her, screaming at her.

Then she backed away, stunned and bloodied. It was impossible for her mind to process what she had seen and she was reduced to an organism reacting to horror. She ran to her neighbor’s door and pounded with both fists, unable to accept that there was no one home to answer her cries. Her mind was racing as she willed herself to wake up from her nightmare. A neighbor across the street finally heard her and called the police. They arrived within minutes.
Lydia had exhausted herself by then, sat breathing heavily on her front stoop, staring blankly as shock set in.

She could remember refusing to be moved from the front stoop of her house. A female officer sat beside her, trying to convince her to move into the house out of the cold. But Lydia wouldn’t, thinking inanely that she should be there to stop her grandparents from seeing what she had seen when they arrived from Brooklyn. She sat there, shivering, wrapped in a blanket, trying to imagine how this wrong could be righted.

It was while she was sitting on that stoop that she first saw Jeffrey. He pulled up with another man in a black car. He walked toward her, his eyes on her the whole time. He looked strong and important to her, like someone who would have rescued her mother if he could have. He knelt before her and asked the female officer to leave.

“Hi, Lydia,” he said softly. “I’m Agent Mark. I know you’re really scared and sad right now, but maybe you can help me find the person who did this to your mother.”

He put a gentle, sympathetic hand on her shoulder and she nodded, then started to cry. He gave her his hand, helped her stand up from the stoop, and led her inside.

L
ydia slowed to a halt in front of the church and stretched out her back. She wiped the sweat from her face with the bottom of her shirt. The church looked like it was waiting for her. Even in the throes of the restlessness that beset her as her mother’s anniversary approached, she had never reflected on the details of the day she found her mother’s body.
Why has this come back to you now? Why is the pain so fresh?

Her head was so crowded with thoughts and memories, she could barely hear her own voice through the cacophony. It reminded her of something a meditation teacher had said to her once: “Your mind is like a roomful of monkeys. You can barely quiet one before another starts shrieking. You must breathe to quiet your monkeys. Only then will you find inner peace.” Lydia had been as big a failure at meditation as she had been at therapy. She walked in a circle with her hands on her hips now, catching her breath before she went inside.

She knew she had come to see Juno.
Do you really think he’s going to heal you, Lydia?

She walked up the steps and pushed open the heavy wooden door. A mass was in progress; the priest stood at his pulpit, about twelve people in the pews before him. She slipped in quietly, unnoticed, she hoped, staying to the back of the church. She dipped her right fingers into the holy water by the door and crossed herself, more out of a reflexive respect than anything.

She discreetly reached for the three quarters she had placed in her bra and dried the sweat off them on her shorts. Placing them in the box provided, she lit three votive candles.

“Let us pray,” she heard the priest say.

The silence was so heavy it was almost sound. She sat in the backmost pew, then knelt as the others did. She wondered what they were praying for. Wondered what she should pray for. Ridiculously, she began to wonder, if she found a genie’s lamp on some deserted beach and was granted three wishes, what they would be. Right now, a cigarette would do.

When she opened her eyes and sat back, she saw Juno at the altar. He began to play his guitar. The acoustics of the church carried the music on the air and filled the room. His fingers were
sure and every note was perfect. But it was him and not his music that captivated her. She had to know if he was truly what he was said to be.

She watched him carefully, considered moving closer, but not wanting to call attention to herself, remained seated. He did not look like other congenitally blind people she had seen. She had always thought that the signs of blindness could be seen in a physical deformity of some kind: sunken eyes, an especially large brow, eyes without pupils. Juno looked like someone who had been sighted once, but had lost his vision through some cruel twist of fate. He was peaceful, rapt, moved by this music written for God. She stared at him shamelessly, taking advantage of his blindness, and that all but the priest had their backs turned to her. When his song had finished, the priest said some parting words and the parishioners filed out. They all looked at Lydia in turn, curious, perhaps, at her inappropriate attire. The priest said a few words to Juno and then disappeared behind a doorway. Juno remained, putting his guitar in the case.

She walked toward him, making noise on purpose by clearing her throat.

He looked up. “Hello?”

“It’s Lydia,” she answered.

He smiled. “Lydia, how are you?”

“Curious.”

“About?”

“About what you said the last time I was here.” She was speaking softly because his demeanor, his church, demanded it. But she was feeling like herself again, not afraid, not ashamed like an intruder. She was angry. She felt tough, aggressive. And she felt familiar with him, like she had known him for years.

“We talked of many things.”

“You know what I mean. You said my mother would be happy to know I had come home to God.”

“It’s true, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is. But how did you know to say that? I mean, what do you know about me? What do you know about my mother?”

“Perhaps we should sit down. You’re upset.”

She preferred to stand away but sat beside him in spite of herself. “Just tell me what you meant.”

“Lydia, you have conducted a number of interviews on National Public Radio where you were quite candid about the death of your mother and how it affected you. I could sense when you came to see me that she was very much on your mind and the church had some strong connection to that. I was only trying to help you. I didn’t mean to cause you any more pain.”

She scanned her mind for what she had said in interviews on the air. Would she have mentioned that her mother was a religious person and that she was not? Any moron could have made the inference he made from a statement like that. But she couldn’t remember.

Juno had his head cocked to the side and a questioning look on his face as he waited for her to respond.

Why are you here?
She asked herself not for the first time.

“I dreamt of you,” she found herself confessing. She revealed the details of her dream to him.

“Others have claimed to dream of me and a loved one. Some claim that I help them communicate with people on the ‘other side.’ I can’t explain that. But maybe your mother is trying to tell you something.”

This answer annoyed her because it managed to be vague and presumptuous at the same time.

“What do you think she is trying to tell me, Juno? And what do you have to do with it?” She knew that she sounded belligerent.

“Maybe she is trying to tell you to let go of the past,” he said, calmly, not even responding to her angry tone.

“I
have
let go of the past.”

“Running away from the past and letting go of it, moving forward, are two different things.”

His words were sincere, and they touched her because she knew he was really trying to help her. He was not trying to manipulate her, but she felt invaded, felt herself edging away from him inside, bringing down walls to protect her truth. She wasn’t responding any better to this “psychic healer” than she had to any of her shrinks.
Go figure
.

What do your dead parents tell you, you smug bastard?
The words were poison darts, waiting to be thrown. But she held her tongue, knowing they were vicious, designed to hurt deeply.

“You don’t know me,” she said weakly.

“That’s true … in a way. But then why have you come here?” he asked calmly, unflappable.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know,” she answered. She honestly didn’t know. She had planned to avoid the church, yet she had carried quarters to light the votive candles. Instead of turning away from the church, she ran right to it. Was it something outside herself or inside her that had led her back here?

She rose to leave. “I’m sorry,” she said again.

“Please don’t be sorry, Lydia. I understand you.” They were simple words, easy to say. But he meant them and they touched her, even if she wasn’t sure they were true.

“When you’re ready, you’ll be back,” he said. He rose also, and finished putting his guitar away as if their conversation had never interrupted him.

She paused and looked at him. He looked so normal, so earthly now. He no longer seemed angelic to her, as he had while
he was playing his guitar during mass. He was flesh and blood, like she was. How could he exert so much power over her emotions?

“When I’m ready for what?”