Earth Angel (35 page)

“How’d the library protest go?” I asked.

“It fizzled. Two girls showed up wearing T-shirts with the First Amendment printed on their chests. There were supposed to
be over fifty kids there, but the others chickened out. One of the girls gave a speech about the freedom of expression while
the other handed out a list of great books that have been banned. Everybody was very polite to them; the school officials
applauded the speech. Then the library pulled the book.”

“Well, at least they tried.”

“Did they?” He stretched out on the floor and stared up at the ceiling. “In nineteen ninety, when the Indian government announced
it was increasing job quotas to include more members of the lower castes, a bunch of students from upper castes, who had been
studying specifically for those jobs and now felt they were going to get shut out, protested by setting themselves on fire.
About one hundred of those students died and another hundred twenty-six were hospitalized with severe burns. A mother of one
of the victims praised her son, saying that at least some good might flow out of his sacrifice. She was right. A few weeks
later the decree was dismissed.”

“What are you saying, these kids should have torched themselves?”

“No. They should have done just what they did do. But I’m not going to drop to my knees and kiss their rings just because
they put forth a little effort. It’s not their fault that that’s the extent of commitment we teach in our culture: writing
letters to the editor of
People
magazine because they dissed Tom Cruise in a review.”

“Oh, so you read my little letter.”

He didn’t smile. He went over to the bookshelf and pulled down a book. He thumbed through it, back and forth, until he found
a passage. “This is an excerpt from a letter from Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Zen monk, to Martin Luther King explaining
why monks set themselves on fire to protest injustice: ‘To burn oneself by fire is to prove that what one is saying is of
the utmost importance. There is nothing more painful than burning oneself. To say something while experiencing this kind of
pain is to say it with the utmost courage, frankness, determination, and sincerity…. The Vietnamese monk, by burning himself,
says with all his strength and determination that he can endure the greatest of suffering to protect his people. But why does
he have to burn himself to death? The difference between burning oneself to and burning oneself to
death is only a difference in degree, not in nature. A man who burns himself too much must die. The important thing is not
to take one’s life, but to burn…. To communicate one’s feelings by burning oneself therefore is not to commit an act of destruction
but to perform an act of construction—that is, to suffer and die for the sake of one’s people. This is not suicide.’”

There was something in his voice, a thickness that arose from deep within, solidified by passion and thought. As if this feeling
had been circulating throughout his body for years, unexpressed. Was it because his ex-wife had killed herself? Was he looking
for meaning in that, some way not to blame himself the same way I blamed myself for Tim’s death? I wouldn’t mind believing
Tim had done what he had as a means to save me. In essence that was the result, wasn’t it? I had left my profession, my friends,
my life like a nun on a holy pilgrimage. Now I was trying to help other people. All because of Tim’s sacrifice. Of course,
that would be easier to believe if he hadn’t blown away five other people in the process.

“I guess I’m not following you, David. Are you saying the rest of us don’t live up to your moral standards?”

He sighed. “You’re mad at me.”

“No I’m not. Maybe a little. You’re sounding awfully holier-than-thou.”

He sprayed a whipped-cream cross on his piece of cheesecake, picked up the whole slice in his hand, and bit off half of it.
He gave it four quick chews and swallowed.

“For God’s sake, chew your food. You’re going to get sick.”

“Good, you’ll nurse me and stop hating me.”

I smiled. “I don’t hate you. I just don’t have such lofty expectations of people as you.”

He licked the whipped cream off the other half of the cheesecake and set it back down on his plate. “Do you want to have children,
Grace?”

“Jesus, where’d that come from?”

He opened his mouth to reveal saliva-laced gobs of whipped cream. “It came from here.”

I grabbed the Reddi Wip can and sprayed a dab into his open mouth. He closed his mouth and got a white mustache, which he
licked clean.

“You’re avoiding the question.”

“Do I want to have children? Yes, sometimes. Sometimes, no.”

“Never?”

“Sometimes I think never.” It was only at that moment I realized that mixed in with the gnawing sense of loss at my miscarriage
was also the warm feeling of relief. Relief that little Emily had disappeared before I could screw up her life with a hundred
baby books and expert advice from
Parenting
magazine. Before I could stab her with all the needles of “what is best for you.” I was off the hook for a lifetime of being
judged an unworthy parent, with a living being walking around as evidence of my failure. Until now I had never admitted that
Emily was probably better off. Suddenly I felt exhausted and wanted to go to bed. I needed to sleep.

As if sensing my exhaustion, David began gathering the plates to clear the table. But then he stopped, sat on the sofa with
a thoughtful expression. “I love Josh and Rachel but I don’t want them to grow up afraid. You know what I mean?”

I nodded, too tired to admit I didn’t.

“When I was at the high school today, there was another kid handing out flyers for one of those mass celibacy pledges. It’s
the latest craze. Two thousand sexually confused teenagers in an auditorium promising not to get laid until marriage. Boy,
are they in for some serious surprises down the road. Unfortunately, they’ll have two kids and a fat mortgage before they
figure it out.”

“What about Rachel? How would you feel if she took the pledge to be celibate until marriage?”

“Disappointed. I don’t want her to live in fear of sex.”

“But there are consequences, David, emotional and physical.”

“Christ, Grace, you’re not going to be a hypocrite here, are you? I mean, we’re not exactly married or celibate.”

“I’m thirty. Rachel is fifteen.”

“You make it sound as if I’ve encouraged her to sleep around. I haven’t. You know how often I told her it’s best to wait until
you really care for somebody and to be sure they care for you. Believe me, I’d rather she stayed celibate until she was thirty.”
He made a face and shivered. “I don’t even want to think about guys who come sniffing around for her. Fortunately, Rachel
barely dates. She gets asked out all the time but she doesn’t seem interested, especially since this Jewish thing started.
Josh on the other hand, he could be operating his own brothel for all I know.”

We looked at each other for a long moment. Finally, I said, “It’s none of my business, really. You’ve been doing just fine
so far without me butting in.”

“Have I?” He shrugged. “I’ve tried to teach them a few things I learned about life. Things I learned from the various people
I’ve lived with.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, like when you get to the end of each day to ask yourself, Have I caused more happiness than pain in other people? In
this country we are taught to ask, Have I
experienced
more pleasure than pain? I’ve tried to teach Rachel and Josh the difference.” He pressed a finger against some cheesecake
crumbs and licked them off, as Rachel had done earlier with the salt. “Maybe I’m better at thinking about children as a whole
than I am at dealing with actual, living children. I can discuss anthropological and sociological
aspects of children within dozens of cultures. But how do I know what’s in Rachel or Josh’s heart?”

“Did your parents ever know what was in your heart?”

“I’m not sure. I always hoped they didn’t, but assumed they secretly were witches and could see my thoughts in their bedroom
mirror. Once I wrapped aluminum foil around my head trying to block their thought-sucking.”

“Did it work?”

“They still caught me masturbating.”

I stood up and held out my hand. He took it and I pulled him to his feet. We walked up the stairs, arms around each other,
choosing to climb the steps in an awkward hug rather than release our hold on each other. It was sweet and tender and made
me feel happier than I had been in months. I admitted it: since even before Tim’s death.

That’s why I decided I would leave Santa Barbara tomorrow and never see him again.

I sneaked out of bed about two in the morning and crept down the stairs and out the front door. I fetched the Thomas Bros.
map guide to Santa Barbara from my car. Although I was clothed in David’s shorts and shirt, I tiptoed quickly back and forth
from the car like a cartoon burglar, afraid I might be creating some kind of neighborhood scandal. Back inside, I grabbed
the Yellow Pages from the kitchen and sat on the living-room sofa with both books open on the coffee table among the dirty
dishes we’d never quite managed to bus to the kitchen. Several scout ants circled the rim of one plate.

I’d come to a decision: I had to leave Santa Barbara. I had corrupted my mission of mercy by becoming involved with the man
I’d come to help. There is no redemption in helping someone you’re romantically entangled with. Helping them is a given. It’s
expected. You have to help people you don’t know, don’t care about, maybe even
don’t like. To make amends for Tim and myself, a certain protocol had to be adhered to. I hadn’t.

I’d tried to talk myself out of it. I’d played each angle over and over in my mind, trying to find some justification to stay.
Why not grab the guy, tell him the truth, and make a stab at happily ever after? Why the hell not?! Because I’d been there,
done that. I’d had a first-class window seat on the jumbo jet to domestic bliss and it had crashed because I’d failed to notice
the pilot had slumped over dead from food poisoning. And there was no one in the tower to talk me down. Why should I believe
that this would turn out any differently than before—not necessarily with David spraying bullets all over the place—but with
me completely misunderstanding the situation, the man, his children. Families were like a hallucinogenic drug, the members
staggering around in a stupor of virtual reality. Look at David, he was one of the most intelligent and rational people I
knew and he’d not known about Josh’s crime spree for getaway money, nor did he have any idea that Rachel was sexually active,
let alone pregnant. How could people live that way?

That’s why I had come up with a new plan. I would leave Santa Barbara all right, but not until I had helped catch the kidnapper.
I still had a responsibility to make amends, but I didn’t have to travel around the country saving all those different people
to fulfill it. All I had to do was save the young girls of Santa Barbara by putting away this man who was terrorizing them.

The kidnapper’s pattern so far had been to release a victim and issue his note about the next kidnapping on the same day.
The actual kidnapping always took place three days after a new note was received. Which meant tomorrow night—or tonight since
it was already two in the morning—the next girl would be taken. I just had to figure out where it would take place according
to the clues
he left, then I would simply hide in the shadows and watch the cops arrest him. I would look into his face and know that this
time I had read the signs of madness, and done something to stop the violence. I would have made the world—at least this small
town—a little safer. Or as David had said earlier, I would have caused more happiness than pain.

I worked hard over the next couple of hours, making lists of all the names involved in
Miss Firecracker
and crosschecking them against streets, avenues, roads, lanes, valleys, rivers, or anything else that might signify a location.
I traced each named street in red pen through the maps, like arteries in search of a heart. I made lists. I drew arrows. Stuck
for twenty minutes, I covered a full page in question marks of various sizes.

About four o’clock I stood up and stretched. My knees crackled, my neck was stiff. I looked down at my notes, the marked-up
map in the book, the address I’d circled in the Yellow Pages. I knew where the kidnapper would strike in a few hours.

It all made sense now, but the process had given me a stomach ache and piercing pains behind my eyes. There was a Hunter Drive
and a Henley Street, but I’d had trouble figuring which was the target. I tried pet stores, thinking maybe Robbins was a reference
to birds. Nothing matched. I tried tailor shops, dress makers, comic-book stores (Pop-eye). More nothing. Then I remembered
something I’d told Lt. Trump; the movie was based on an off-Broadway play. I found Broadway on the Santa Barbara map. Henley
Street was a block “off” Broadway. But where on Henley Street would he strike? It was several miles long, too long for the
cops to stake out the whole street.

Holly Hunter. Holly. Hunter. Hunter: I looked up hunting stores, gun shops, sporting goods stores. Nothing on either Henley
or Broadway. Holly: I looked up plant stores, flower shops. Zip.

I was ready to quit, go back to bed. I stared at the dirty plates, watched the three ants wander around amidst the cheesecake
and whipped cream leftovers. Absently, I picked up a fork to crush them. “Kill the scouts,” my mother always said. “That sends
a message to the others not to follow.” “How do the others get that message?” I’d asked. “I think they emit some kind of sonic
scream that only other ants can hear.”

I set the fork down. Three more lives I’d given more pleasure than pain to today.

Holly Hunter. When does one hunt holly? Christmas. The twenty-fifth day of the twelfth month. 1225 Henley Street. That had
to be it. It was too damn clever not to be. I couldn’t tell from the map if the 1200 block was residential or business. I
would have to drive by myself and check it out.