Bereavements (22 page)

They were too far away for him to see the ornate and mysterious keyless photo-and-audio-electric door that opened (he was eventually to learn from Dori) to a word and a gesture, but the heavy bars on the windows puzzled him.

This she was willing to explain. “They’re probably not needed, but provide protection against vandalism and desecration. The whole estate is fenced; a very high wall. You saw it, and the iron gate, as we drove in. But children—boys from the town—sometimes climb over. I don’t know how. I suppose they must make ladders of something or bring rope. Many times we’ve had to chase them, and once I called the sheriff. One boy, a little one, was deserted by the others and got lost; it took two hours to find him.”

Her voice, slow and low-pitched, had acquired such a lifeless quality, he was sorry he had asked about the tomb.

“The water was fun,” he said, grinning, his voice a lilt. “I never
seen
such a big pool; man, is that big! An’ all them dead leaves ticklin’ you when you swim!”

The knitting dropped from Mrs. Evan’s fingers and her hands fell into her lap. She turned her face, as if to warm it, to the sun, but really to take it away from Angel’s sight, because tears had gathered and begun to overflow.

An’
that’s
where he is, not buried in the groun’ like everyone else?

And suddenly this child, this strange wild boy with his atrocious grammar and primitive sensibilities became useless and intolerable; repulsive . . .

How different he’d seemed when first they’d met! In their “quiet time” together, when she’d asked him not to speak, just to “be” with her, and she herself became lost to the sensible world, her experience of him had been uncanny. For a moment she felt that the boy
was
Jamie: Angel transfigured, the quintessential spirit of bodies transposed, with even the delicate scent of honey in the air, as if her son, arising from his tomb, had effected
through her
and the growing preternatural monument of her desire, a miraculous transubstantiation . . .

I’ll find a way!

Had it been a poem after all? More of her “morbid” poetry of death? Transfiguration! The boy couldn’t leave the slums where she’d found him; he brought the slums with him. He was impure, dense, corrupt, impervious to the clarity, the transcendance of loving spirit she’d sought to create and share with him.

Im lost. Please fine me.

How could she
fine
him, cleanse him, free him of his wilderness of self, if he wouldn’t confess where, how and in what manner he was lost?

Not a word about his mother, ever; her death, what had happened, when, why, the manner, the extent of his suffering—or about his father. When they spoke of
him,
the boy’s eyes closed, or half-disappeared in his head, while the tic returned in full force, chin jerking out. If she persisted, and once she did, the jerk became a constant, a continual, virtually orgasmic shuddering, until she held him firmly, hands pressed to either side of his head, to make him stop.

“Are you crying?” he asked shyly, discovering the trick of her turning her head away? “Did
I
make you cry?”

So sweet, so concerned, so completely disarming.
That
was the paradox! If she’d had a heart left to break, it would now have broken and scattered itself in fragments.

She took off her glasses and turned back her face, letting him see her tears. Why not?

“No, you didn’t, Angel,” she said softly, thinking to reassure him. “Not you . . . Not you . . .”

Then she was deeply sorry and angry at herself; because he wanted, so clearly
wanted
to have made her cry the way she cried for Jamie, his secret shy expression mingling disappointment, sadness and rage.

After luncheon—the chicken and the artichoke—dessert had been two double servings of homemade, butter-rich vanilla ice cream covered with shaved curls of semi-sweet chocolate.

Then, just before they left to drive back home, there was a big blue-and-white cup of velvety hot cocoa waiting for him with a scoop of whipped cream springled with chocolate “ants” and a few tiny silver seed “pearls” which were candy, too. He drained the last drop and ate all fourteen of the small, flat pink-frosted vanilla-cream cookies that came with this final treat.

So it should surprise no one at all that half-way back to New York, when Angel turned in agony to look at Mrs. Evans, she saw a face drained of color, the forehead glistening with sweat.

Dori stopped the car and, the boy’s hand in hers, she led him, staggering, knee-deep into the wet leaves at the side of the road. There, as she had done a few times with Jamie, she bent him over, and herself over him, like two dogs screwing, one hand on his stomach, the other holding his wet forehead while he heaved and gasped for breath, struggled, panicked, against the vast indignity of his tolerable urge, then surrendered, vomiting a river of chocolate and chicken and pink-frosted vanilla-cream cookies . . .

Cool, depleted, peaceful, unburdened, he lay stretched out on the back seat, his head on Mrs. Evan’s lap, while gently, with practiced thoughtless love, her fingers stroked his forehead, carressed his tangled hair; finally—tired, idle, dreaming—she became still, one hand resting against his chest.

She seemed asleep but wasn’t at all when the car reached the mid-town tunnel; and as it whooshed into its great open mouth, lights streaking by like popping flash cubes, Angel’s hand stole up and warmly, rather damply, curved over hers.

What happened next seemed her due, not “reward”—simply payment in kind for excellent work rendered.

Hadn’t she battered heaven’s doors, peered into every black hole she hoped might be hell—ever exposed, ever ready to pay
any
price to achieve what she desired, her principle being one of total,
unlimited
liability?

I’ll find a way!

And she had; desire finally becoming faith. So, heaven answered, as it had to. And hell, too, as it must. Or—what is probably closer to the truth,
both
—since they are one, anyway.

Whatever—the hand that stole over hers, damply, warmly, as the long black limousine sped toward the heart of the city, wasn’t Angel’s at all. It was Jamie’s.

There was nothing unusual to see, but calmly, without a single extra heartbeat, or even a fraction’s widening of the eye, Mrs. Evans reached—not for Angel’s “glass-cutting ruby”—but for the initialed ring her son loved so well and which had been interred with him. She did this quickly, not knowing how long the phenomenon would last.

Cool fingers—the blind reading braille—she traced out the message:
Jde VR,
on the ring, before it vanished.

Dori’s eyes left his driving for a quick puzzled glance back, something having disturbed him. Evidently the scent of honey had filled the front of the car, too.

Book IV

A
FTER MAILING
his thank-you card to Mrs. Evans, Bruno waited for what he desired to be a discreet lapse of time before he telephoned. Four days, five if he could last, would be sufficient. Above all, he didn’t want to appear over-anxious or pushy. But at the end of a mere 48 hours he was almost unable to stay away from the phone.

The delay had also made him nervous and ill-tempered, even slightly disoriented and careless at work. He made any number of mistakes, and was so preoccupied he sometimes didn’t answer when spoken to.

Where, where was his mind?

Where but in his divine lady’s small, smooth, perfectly-shaped, exquisitely-manicured, ultra-feminine hands?

If he closed his eyes, strained his senses to evoke it, he could still
feel
the touch of those beautiful hands, those kind and loving arms, lifting him like a cherished child, from the books on the antique chair.

He couldn’t remember a woman, any woman, any girl, all his life, not since the early days with his bewildered, uncertain mother, not even the nurses at the hospital when his appendix had to come out, ever touching him that way: willingly, deliberately, with such gentleness, tenderness and care.

Oh, but he was wrong. Yes. There’d been Lily, astonishing Lily of his highschool days, and for a moment his mind went back to recapture the event: a few words exchanged, a simple gesture that, to the girl had been only a daring interlude, a minute’s freaked-out fun at the senior prom, but to him could have meant the end of his life. Afterward, he remembered, he wanted to kill himself, and almost did.

He hadn’t wanted to attend the graduation party, but Mr. Kravitz, the gym instructor, thought the unhappy boy might enjoy watching the festivities from the balcony of the auditorium—the latter having been cleared of most of its seats as a dancing area for the event.

Also, if he watched, he could indeed do everyone “a big favor.” At ten o’clock sharp, he was to pull a string, releasing 300 multicolored balloons from their clustered nest on the ceiling.

This he did, precisely on time, and sat watching them drift gracefully down, mingling with the ecstatic “oh’s” and “ah’s” of the dancers below.

However, behind the balcony, at the top of the stairs, was a lavatory for women, and just as he was about to leave, a girl from one of his classes, Lily Thompson, came out. She spotted him instantly, and her steady gaze held his as she continued, shamelessly, or quite as if no one was there, to adjust her underclothes below the white-sequined tulle of her ballet-style dress, held well above her waist. This done, she came directly and slowly down the stairs.