Men and Angels (20 page)

Laura took her pants and sweater off. Her flesh was white and loose. Veins in the back of her legs showed blue. She pulled the green wool tights up on her legs, up past her stomach. Which was white and loose. Standing in front of the mirror, she forgot that the flesh meant nothing, that her round stomach, white legs, blue veins, all meant nothing. She pulled the dress over her head.

It seemed alive to her. It shone. It lit her face, her hair, which people said was pretty. Standing, looking at herself, she was pleased. Anne had bought her a beautiful dress. Not to make fun of her or to test her. To make her happy. Anne loved her. She would put on the shoes Anne had given her to please her. She walked down the stairs happy, fingering her beautiful dress.

Anne wasn’t happy. She looked at Laura in the dress and said, “Fine,” but she wasn’t pleased. Just like her parents. Whatever she did, they weren’t pleased.

She had told the children that she had no parents. That was a mistake. They were talking about her birthday. “Are you sad that you won’t see your parents?”

Quickly the words came out before she thought. Like sparks jumping, the words came, like crackling flames. “I have no parents.”

It was true. She had no parents. But in Matthew she had read, “Brother will deliver up brother to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death.” She understood those words. Jesus had said them, meaning blood ties were nothing, meaning leave behind those you were born into. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands “will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved.”

Still, she should not have said that to the children. She knew the children loved her. And Anne loved her. Now they were her family. She didn’t need her parents or her sister. She smiled, thinking they didn’t know where she was, could never trace her. Her father probably worried. Did they call the police when they found she was gone? No one could find her. She had nothing to connect her to the world. Nor copper, nor shoes. No numbers—insurance, Social Security, license plates. All those numbers meaning flesh, food and attachments. They could never find her. She was not attached to flesh.

She liked to think how jealous they would be of her. What would her mother say, her sister, if they saw the party that Anne made for her? Made because she wanted to, she didn’t have to. And the presents, she knew how much the dress cost. She had seen it in the window of that store. Seventy dollars. They would never pay that much. On sale they might have bought it, waiting, waiting, waiting till they saw no one else wanted it. But Anne saw it and bought it, saw it shining in the window. Full of love for Laura, Anne went in and paid them all that money. At first Laura had been afraid. Of course, it was so beautiful. The green, the flowers. She had never had such a beautiful dress.

And her room. What would her mother say to her room? The house Anne lived in Laura’s mother dreamed of, read about in magazines, but never entered.

All the furniture was old and strong. The furniture would never fail here. The legs would not come off the couch, the stuffing would not break through chairs and fall onto the rug and stay there. In her mother’s house the surfaces were made to be shiny, but her mother let them get dull, let rings from glasses set like faces, let the slipcovers bunch up, let Kleenex fall behind the cushions, let cigarettes, bobby pins, shoes lie under chairs, and let the can of hair spray sit on the table. Everything in Anne’s house was valuable. She polished things until they shone. The feel of cloth was never stiff, it did not smell of paste or oil. The colors did not shout like her mother’s colors. Even when her mother tried to keep the colors in the house from shouting, they would not hold still.

Here things were deep. They did not fly up, fly off, strike the eyes with anger. Her room was a hollow, a valley, a light field. The floors were light and wooden. The small rug beside her bed lay quiet at her feet. The curtains lay in folds. In the morning, sun came to her room, settled on her tables, chairs, her dresser, never glaring. Her sister would be jealous of her room.

And what would they think of the party Anne had made for her? They would never be able to meet anyone like the people who sat around that table, singing to her, honoring her, giving her presents. Three professors, two professors’ wives. One professor was Adrian. Her mother would never get to meet anyone like Adrian. Maybe if she took a job at the dry cleaner’s, she would get to hand him his shirts. But he would never talk to her. He would never give her flowers.

She knew Adrian really liked her. He said she was a good listener. He was the handsomest man she had ever seen, with his thick gray curly hair, his open shirts, his shoulders. When he came to speak to Anne, she said that Anne was busy, Anne was working, she didn’t want to disturb her. But really she wanted to be in the room with him without Anne there. With Anne in the room, it would be Anne that he would talk to. If she went on and listened to Adrian, looked into his eyes when he told her things, praised whatever he said, he would someday like her more than he liked Anne.

What would her parents think if she married Adrian? If she drove up with him to the house in his Volkswagen Rabbit, not having told them anything, not having seen them in two years. If she married him in Anne’s house with the house all full of flowers from the garden. It was winter now, but in spring the garden would be full of lilacs, Anne said. White and purple with dark green leaves. At her wedding, they would fill the house.

If she married Adrian, she could always live near Anne. Live in Selby in a house like Anne’s, near her, right on the street. She would teach the people all about the Spirit. Teach them that their lives were not important. She would be living their lives but not living them. They would love her but she would not love back as much. Because she still would have the Spirit. They would have to stay but she might leave at any time because she knew that attachments mean nothing. And leaving, she would teach them that.

Still, she would have to be careful. Careful that she did not start to need, careful to remember that it all was nothing, all the flowers and the dresses, all the candles and singing and gifts, the cool and flowered flesh of Anne, the warm, heavy flesh of Adrian. She would never love them back. Not in that way, but in the Spirit, freely, unattached. Then she would leave them. And then they would know.

But she would have to be careful. She would go on saying nothing of the Spirit. She would offer to mend Adrian’s clothes, to do his laundry. She would wear the things Anne liked. She would think of projects for the children. In her midst there were enemies. First among them the woman Jane.

“Those who are my foes without cause are mighty, and many are those who hate me wrongfully. Those who render me evil for good are my adversaries because I follow after good.”

The Scripture always spoke to her, gave always what she needed. That woman Jane could have no reason to wish evil for her. But she did. Wished her to be separated from Anne out of envy. Wished to have Anne to herself. And envied Laura for the Spirit, which she wanted for herself but did not have. Oh, you could tell by looking at her; she was hungry for the Spirit. But the Spirit did not enter that house.

Anne and Jane loved paintings as they should have loved the Spirit. The paintings they talked about and looked at the way Anne looked at the children when they walked ahead of her or slept. When they could not look back at her and ask her why she looked that way. Laura knew what those looks meant. Attachment and desire. But there was nothing to hold on to, nothing to look that way about. They looked at these things—children, paintings, because they were their treasure. But that was error; it would bring them death. Jesus said, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasure on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Saint James went further. “Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire.” Jane would lead Anne to the fire. She was proud. Proud of her house, her paintings, her hair. Proud of her beauty though now she was old. Anne was not proud, but Jane could lead her to the fire. Anne must learn to give up her attachments. She must learn her children were no more to her than strangers. Loving them as she did, she could not fly up to the Spirit. Fly up from the flames. Anne needed Laura to keep back the flame. To keep her from the woman and her treasure.

Saint James knew about people like Jane. “You have lived on the earth in luxury and pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned, you have killed the righteous man; he does not resist you.”

Jane condemned Laura; she could feel it. But Laura would resist her. And then Jane would see that Laura was abiding in the Spirit and that she, Jane, drowned in flesh. She could see the pictures burning and Anne burning in the flame. But she could save Anne from the flame.

Jane wished to harm her from the envy of the Spirit. When Laura helped her with the dishes on Thanksgiving, Jane asked, “What will you do when your work with Anne is over?” It will never be over, I will be with her always, Laura thought, but said, “I take the next thing that comes along. Something always turns up.” “And have you education?” Jane said. “High school, but there’s nothing I want to learn in college.” “What do you want to do with your life, then?” Jane said. Laura smiled, knowing her work, the work of the Spirit. “I just do the next thing that comes along. I like working with kids, but I don’t care much what I do. I travel light, so I just go wherever something turns up.” “But what is it you want from life?” Jane asked. Laura could feel the woman’s back go tight; she was getting angry. “I don’t want things; I don’t need things to make me happy.” “Surely you want things,” the woman said, “friends, love, food, clothing, shelter.” Laura smiled, knowing she was the chosen of the Lord. “I don’t need a whole lot to get by,” she said.

She would have to be wise. Her saving Anne would not be as easy as it would if Jane were not among them. The strong enemy. The chosen of the Lord were harshly treated. “Remember O Lord how the enemy scoffs and an impious people reviles thy name. Do not deliver the soul of thy dove to the wild beast.”

She, Laura, was the dove, she knew. She loved and wished to shelter. With her soft wings she would cover Anne. She had no hard thoughts. She prayed for Jane, her enemy. That she would see the Spirit. Now Jane was the beast that would devour. Devour the soul of the dove. Her breath was hot, her eyes glowed red. She wanted to run at Laura with her strong thick body. She would tear, if she could, the dove’s flesh with her teeth.

And yet she would not conquer. Laura knew herself wise and powerful; she knew now she would triumph. Now she knew Anne loved her, Laura would save Anne from the flame.

C
OMING DOWNSTAIRS FOR LUNCH
, Anne saw Adrian in the kitchen. “What a nice surprise,” she said. “Is this our day for lunch?”

“No, Laura’s invited me out.”

“Oh, fine,” Anne said.

There was no justice in what she was feeling. Laura had a perfect right to take whomever she wanted out for lunch. Of course a young woman would think Adrian a prize; why wouldn’t she try for his attentions? Really, the fault was with Adrian if it was with anybody: he should have known that he would turn the head of a girl like Laura. He should stop things before they had a chance to get started.

But suppose he didn’t want to? Suppose he enjoyed her company? Suppose he found her attractive? She herself had thought that in a lover’s eyes Laura could seem voluptuous. And certainly Adrian knew how to look with a lover’s eye: she had always been surprised and rather touched by the catholicity of his taste in women—a diner waitress with varicose veins, a librarian in her sixties. And it would be good for Laura to have as a lover someone experienced and patient. She was so unhappy. Maybe it wasn’t familial love that she needed, after all, which was why Anne’s dealings with her had been so baffled. Perhaps it was a lover that she needed.

But she begrudged Laura Adrian. She hadn’t thought herself possessive of him, but here it was now, the truth, she had to see it. She hadn’t minded Adrian’s women; she had looked at his sexual life with a mixture of amusement and disapproval, but nothing he had ever done had struck her as this had. Perhaps it was that the women she knew him to be involved with seemed always to be one or another kind of prize. They were beautiful, accomplished, sexy, witty, or at least exotic. She could feel herself valued in his valuing of them. If he thought her attractive, and he thought them attractive, there had to be some commonality. The thought of commonality with Laura disturbed her. Simply, she felt that Adrian’s being attracted to Laura took away from her own worth.

Laura appeared at the door. She was wearing the dress Anne had bought her. When she walked into the kitchen, Anne recognized the scent of her own perfume, Fleurs de Rocaille. For Christmas, the year before, Michael had given her an ounce of it. Of course, it was possible that Laura had her own. She might, for example, have bought it at the duty-free shop at Heathrow before she got on the plane, choosing it randomly, because of the name, perhaps. She looked up at Laura, trying to smile. Something else was different about her: she was wearing eye shadow. It was green, the same color as Anne’s. But the shadow was common, it could be bought in any drugstore; she hadn’t necessarily borrowed Anne’s. And Anne would never finally know, for she would never be able to ask Laura. Adrian was holding Laura’s sweater, and she was smiling over her shoulder at him.

Why did Laura have such power in her life? She had only to smile over her shoulder at Adrian, to wear green eye shadow, and Anne felt her skin harden over like a rind. But she wasn’t the only one to feel Laura’s power. It had been a great relief to her to overhear an exchange between Laura and Ianthe. Ianthe had come to the house. She wanted to see Anne. Laura said she couldn’t, Anne was working. And Ianthe, who could stand up to cardinals in the Vatican Museum, salespeople at Bergdorf’s or Mark Cross, nurses of Park Avenue specialists, hadn’t been able to get around Laura. Anne had seen Ianthe contemplating simply pushing past Laura. But she checked herself. It was like a rapier trying to get through a bolster; possibly it could be accomplished, but not with a single, simple thrust, and even Ianthe was able to calculate the carnage. So Laura had prevailed.