The Angel of Losses (9 page)

“Okay,” I said again. “I’m leaving now. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, Marjorie,” he said.

I decided that I liked hearing him say my name, after all.

GRANDPA WAITS FOR ME AT THE SAME TABLE, HIS HANDS FOLDED
on top of a book. I sit across from him. He knows I’m there but doesn’t look up. His knuckles, pale walnut shells, worry against one another as he fidgets. All around us fingertips murmur against paper. Readers sit in patched armchairs, plastic-covered couches, at laminate tables with foldout legs, their faces angled to the pages or moving in sudden flares of light, invisible.

The baby, he says.

The light shifts, and for an instant I feel the world has tipped. I look up, shielding my eyes against the light emanating from the ceiling, which is lost in a golden haze. A buzzer sounds, then static, a loudspeaker with no voice at the microphone.

The old man will tell you only he can help Holly’s boy, Grandpa says, taking my hands.

Help him how? I asked.

Grandpa shakes his head, and his grip tightens. Don’t listen to him. He can only trap you.

His hands, and mine in them, tremble.

There is so much you didn’t tell us, I say.

Yes, he says. I had a purpose.

I WOKE WITH THE SHEETS TWISTED AROUND MY LEGS, MY FOREHEAD
damp. The night floated in beneath the half-drawn shades, sulfurous streetlights and neon signs glowing in the windows of twenty-four-hour delis. The digital clock on my nightstand glared at me, an eternally open eye. Just past midnight.

I pulled on a sweatshirt and went out onto Amsterdam Avenue. The air was cool, gusts of it lifting my hair in the wakes of passing cars rushing down the hill. A few smokers lingered outside the bars. Taillights dashed the glass storefronts and disappeared in the heavy darkness around the cathedral. I crossed to the traffic island and sat on the lone bench. Moments later, he appeared, traveling slowly up the hill, dressed in the same winter coat and flat cap, shadowless in the night.

He sat beside me on the bench.

I wasn’t frightened this time—I couldn’t afford to be. Whether the old man’s mind truly drifted or he just liked to keep me off guard, I had to speak carefully if I was to learn anything from him.

“Hello again,” I said.

“Good evening.”

“Can’t sleep?” I asked. The old man was silent for an instant, and then sighed, a long, relaxed exhale, as if I wasn’t even there. I wanted to grab his lapels, stare straight into his pale eyes, but I couldn’t—he might vanish in a puff of smoke. Pretend you’ve been expecting him. Pretend you have all the time in the world.

“I can’t sleep either,” I offered.

“Bad sleepers,” he said. “It’s a curse. As much a curse as anything. Yes?”

“Yes,” I agreed.

“I can’t sleep,” he continued. “So here I am. Wandering at midnight.”

“Like one of the Penitents,” I suggested. My heartbeat sped up, waiting for his reply, waiting for him to acknowledge this strange thing that was happening at the edge of my understanding.

He nodded. “The angel is one of them too. One of us, the exiled. But I don’t pity him,” the old man said.

“The Angel of Losses?” I asked.

“Yes. Angels are half fire and half water,” he said. “But they look like you and me.” He eyed me. “Well, not like you.”

“He’s the guardian of the River of Stones,” I said.

“Is that what Eli told you?”

“No,” I said, and my voice was bitter. Grandpa had told me nothing. I confronted that fact again and again. In my work, I wrote about the repetition compulsion—reliving a traumatic event over and over, in reality or dreams or hallucinations. He told me nothing. He told me nothing. He told me nothing.

“He was cast out,” the old man said. “The angel cannot cross that river any more than you or I can.”

“Why not? What did he do?”

He scratched at his left shoulder absently, and his attention drifted away. I felt a small twitch of fear, the same as in my dreams of Grandpa, the anxiety of time running out before all had been said that needed to be said.

“I’ve been dreaming of Eli,” I told him.

“A dream uninterpreted is like a letter unread,” he replied. His voice was low and rich. Certain and unhurried. “Do you know who said that?” He paused but I had no answer.

“Waiting, waiting, waiting,” he sang, waving his hand before him. “I’ve kept the angel waiting so long.”

“Waiting for what?” I whispered. I was afraid.

“For another chance,” he said. “Another chance to go home.” He paused. “You’ve heard him calling, then? Calling for his people to rise?”

The angel on Simon’s map was a metaphor, a fairy tale, but the old man’s angel was here, speaking, if only I’d listen. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

The old man put his hand on my knee, and I was surprised by its warmth and weight. He was no figment, no ghost, either. “None of us can help him. No one can. Remember that.”

He stood and surveyed the red-glowing cars sailing down the hill. I wanted to ask him why Grandpa was coming to me in my dreams, and why the old man was coming to me in their aftermath; why Holly was painting faceless men in a maddening paradise; why Nathan was afraid of our books.

But before I could speak, he did: “The necklace. Remember, you’re just holding it. For Eli.”

“Eli’s gone,” I said.

“Eli,” he answered, “will be here soon.”

Five

H
olly went into labor three weeks early. The baby was small but healthy. He lay splayed out in a fiberglass crib, a fierce pink color, dwarfed by his diaper and hat. His eyes were a striking blue, pale but electric, like the morning sky caught in glass. She had a boy, just like Grandpa had told me in my dream. And just like the old man had predicted, they named him Eli.

If I felt any ache at the sight of the baby—any tug deep inside me—I pushed it away. He would grow up to be like Nathan. I didn’t want to love another person just to lose him to that man.

After a few days everyone came home from the hospital. Cars lined the block and crammed the driveway. My parents and I stood in the foyer for a moment, collecting ourselves. My father was stoic. My mother blinked repeatedly. Nathan’s sister-in-law Yael appeared to greet us. “Chava’s resting upstairs,” she said.

Holly was in bed, alone, so pale her lips seemed powdered white. It was still warm outside, barely autumn, but the blankets were piled on top of her, and she looked like a child.

I sat at the edge of her bed. “How are you feeling?”

“I hurt,” she said. No brave grin.

“I guess I shouldn’t ask what hurts,” I joked. She didn’t smile.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’m so tired.”

“Don’t apologize, Holl,” Mom said.

“Can you bring him back?”

“Let Nathan keep him for a few minutes. You have to get some rest.” Mom put her hand on my back, right over my nearly healed tattoo. I hadn’t told her about it yet. “Come on,” she said to me.

“I brought you something,” I said quickly, and reached into my pocket for the necklace.

“Oh, it’s one of those evil-eye charms,” Mom said, holding it up for Holly to see. The pendant spun slowly, winking blue circles.

Holly stared at it blankly for a moment and then pushed herself off the pillow. “Put it on,” she said. Mom fastened it around her neck, and Holly sank back down into the bed.

I thought about the old man’s insistence that it wasn’t a gift but something on loan from Eli. It didn’t make sense to give, or return, a charm necklace to a newborn, but still, when the clasp shut against Holly’s skin, I felt like I had made a mistake.

“Thanks,” she said. She had closed her eyes. Then, “Mom, can you bring me some ice?”

Mom kissed her forehead and gestured for me to follow her out the door, but I stayed, sitting on the bed with Holly. Just the two of us.

“Do you love him more than anything in the world?” I asked, ashamed that I only knew how to speak about such things in clichés.

But she considered my question, her brow furrowed. “It’s different than anything else,” she said. “When he cries . . . I feel it. I feel itchy. Like I’m trapped in my body and I have to get out. To him.” She looked me in the eyes, and for an instant I felt the sensation she had just described: unsettled from deep within.

“Do I sound crazy?” she asked, a half smile on her face.

“No.”

“Don’t tell anyone.”

Her plea cut through the chill that usually made our words clumsy and numb. “I won’t,” I said. “I promise.”

Heavy footsteps sounded down the hall. Nathan pushed into the room, bringing our moment to an end. He kneeled bedside in front of Holly, ignoring me completely. He radiated tension, but he laid a hand on Holly’s cheek so gently. His nails were bitten, his cuticles inflamed.

“Where is he?” she mumbled.

“Sleeping,” Nathan said. “Get some rest.” His voice was low, its natural authority muted—not bossy but reassuring—and Holly closed her eyes.

Neither acknowledged me as I stood up to leave the room. I paused in the doorway. The day had finally quit, just an orange glow around the curtains. Nathan was murmuring softly, his forehead against Holly’s, his eyes closed too.

I found my father in the backyard. “It’s like I’m an intruder in my own house,” he said.

“To be fair,” I said, “you
did
give them the house.” If my mother and I made a game of calling each other to worry about Holly, my father and I had a different habit: taking turns being alternately forgiving of and spiteful about Nathan’s family. He didn’t respond.

“She doesn’t seem well,” I said.

“She’s exhausted.”

“I know. That’s not what I mean.” My father stayed silent, concentrating on the horizon. “She doesn’t seem happy,” I continued. And hadn’t I wished this on her a thousand times? To realize she was unhappy with her choices, as I believed any sane person in her position must?

Nathan’s relatives moved behind the bright windows of our house like characters on a sitcom, telegraphing their ease with one another. And here we were, lurking at the edge of the light seeping from their tableaux, literally outside the home that had once been ours.

THE NIGHT BEFORE ELI’S CIRCUMCISION, THE HOUSE WAS
spotless—the carpets smelled fresh; the furniture was at right angles; the old table by the front door was bare of mail and shining as if freshly polished. “It’s your dad,” Yael explained when I arrived. My mom had insisted I stay over the night before to help prepare for the sixty guests and to save them the chore of picking me up from the train in the morning.

“I think he’s going stir-crazy,” Yael continued. She usually wore a wig, but now I could see her hair was blond and cropped in a pixie cut. From the neck up, she looked almost trendy. “If he’s not on his phone in the backyard, he’s vacuuming.”

I came into the kitchen to find Mom rushing around, while Holly slouched at the table, her chin in her hand. “Not that cabinet,” Holly said sharply, and I was surprised she could summon the verve; her complexion was so sallow, her eyes so tired. “Those are the dairy plates, remember?” My mother sighed—it was the sigh she gave when she was restraining herself.

I backed into the adjoining living room and found Eli nestled inside a carrier, pale fabric piled up to his chest. His little eyes were soft pouches, slit with that bright, impossible blue, his tissue-thin skin dark with the veins beneath, only the faintest wisps of hair on his head. He waved his arms around, his tiny fingers curled into his palms.

“Would you like to hold him?” Nathan asked. I jumped. He was standing right behind me.

“Yes,” I said.

“Wash your hands first,” Holly called.

I returned to the kitchen, where Holly and my mom were still banging dishes wordlessly, and did as she asked. Nathan was holding the baby now, one hand beneath his back, another beneath his head, his little legs against Nathan’s chest. Nathan smiled down at him, maneuvering through the room as if the baby were a compass or divining rod. Nathan seemed totally comfortable, exuding none of Holly’s edginess. He lowered Eli into my arms expertly—Nathan’s sleeve didn’t even brush mine.

The baby’s head lolled in the crook of my elbow, his body resting in my lap. Eli was impossibly light, lighter than a textbook. He made slight mewling sounds, his wrinkly lips opening and closing over his gums. “Be careful of his belly button,” Nathan said, sitting beside me. “It hasn’t fallen off yet.” I had never seen him like this—relaxed, warm. The aura of bad humor that always encircled him like a cloud, charged and about to burst, was gone. “Eli, this is your aunt.” He touched the baby’s chest. “Say hi. Say hi.” Eli waved his fists, each the size of a chestnut. I was silent, but for once I wasn’t biting my tongue. I didn’t know what I thought. I didn’t know what to say.

“By the way,” Nathan said. “How did you find the amulet?”

I opened my palm to the baby, and he tapped his hands against mine, no more than the weight of a kitten’s tail. “What amulet?”

“The one you brought for Chava. It’s too bad she went into labor before you could give it to her.”

I was studying the tracery of capillaries on Eli’s cheeks. His skin was so delicate. I remembered that he needed another month or so inside. He was too fragile to be out here in this world. And his eyes. I had never seen such brilliantly blue eyes.

“I’m sorry, what were you saying?” I asked.

“The protection amulet. For a mother giving birth. The one you gave to Chava.”

“I thought it was against the evil eye.”

“Yes, yes,” Nathan said. “But the word on it—Zariel. Micah said it’s a name of Lilith.” He had this way, which my sister had picked up, of dropping names with no explanation. I didn’t know who was a neighbor’s cousin, who was a minor biblical hero.

“Lilith, the demon,” he continued. “She comes for babies. That’s why Moishe and Yossi and Aaron are coming over. It’s the Night of Watching. Eli’s vulnerable. We’ll keep him safe.”

Eli sighed all the air from his lungs, a tiny puff. I stared down at him, looking for Holly in his face, for Dad, for Grandpa. But already he looked like his own person.

“Have you found the books you were looking for?” Nathan asked. I didn’t respond, didn’t move, didn’t blink. “The notebooks,” he clarified.

I looked at him then but could read nothing in his expression.

“Not yet,” I said. “They haven’t turned up, I guess?”

He pursed his lips and shook his head slowly, once to the right, once to the left. Then he extended his arms, and I returned the baby to him.

After dinner Holly took the baby upstairs to feed him, and I helped Yael clean the kitchen. When we were done washing the dishes, she tore a trash bag in two and laid it on the floor, then placed one of the kitchen chairs on top. “Come,” she said. “I’ll cut your hair.”

I put my hands to the bundle of curls against my neck. “What?”

“It’s tradition,” she said.

“Are you doing theirs?” I asked, gesturing to the other room, where Nathan sat with his friends, shouting cheerfully in Yiddish.

She followed my gaze and then looked at the ceiling, biting back her judgment. “No, only family.” She paused. “Just a little,” she prodded, the edge slipping from her voice. “Just to say we did it.”

I liked Yael. She was always nice to me. I didn’t want her to think I was uncooperative—and when I was uncooperative, at least she could defend me by saying I had gone along with this. I took the tie out of my hair and pulled it smooth, sat before her.

She tugged slightly at the ends, which fell to the top edge of my tattoo. It was healed now, the scabs fallen away, the black less brilliant and more organic. I heard the slice of the scissors, a whisper, and felt the slight pull of the blades. “You should wear it down more,” Yael said. “So beautiful. So different from Chava’s.” Holly’s hair was dark and straight like Dad’s, mine strawberry blond and curly like Grandpa’s.

Another snip. “It’s sad that Nathan’s father’s not here,” she said. He had passed away years ago. I thought of my own father, on the phone in the backyard, running to the store for things we didn’t need, dusting and sweeping while the rest of us passed the baby around.

The day that Grandpa had returned from his wandering the beach, his lost weekend, Holly and I stayed with him after our father left—after Grandpa dismissed him. At the end of the afternoon, saying good-bye at his apartment, he told us, “Tell your father I love him.” Quickly, turning away from us even as he said it. When I repeated the message to my dad on the phone, there was just silence on the other end. Later, at the funeral, my father spoke only briefly. Eli was a devoted grandfather. He loved his girls.

“It’s sad,” I agreed. “I wish my grandfather could be here too.”

“Oh, the one Eli’s named for.” And just like that, the baby claimed his name, and Grandpa receded a little more.

Soon my mother declared it was time for everyone to go to bed. Holly sat on the couch, the baby pressed into her chest, tears shining on her cheeks. She didn’t want to let Eli out of her sight, even for the hour or two before his next feeding. She seemed unprepared for the reality of him being outside of her body, separate. My mother wanted her to sleep, and Nathan wanted to pray over his son, and they sat on either side of her, trying to coax Eli out of her arms. They spoke in quiet, sympathetic tones, like she was a child, overtired and irrational.

Just let her hold her baby, I wanted to say. Don’t you see she’s afraid? But I had privately sworn to be quiet and helpful, not to remind anyone that Holly and I could barely stand each other, and no one noticed when I slipped upstairs. I just need to get through tomorrow, I thought. And then I can leave.

I HAD TO GET THROUGH THE NIGHT TOO. I LAY ON THE FLOOR
of the nursery, unable to sleep. There were a few stacks of diapers against the wall, a narrow changing table, and the old rocking chair, but otherwise the room was empty. I watched the curtains billow around the half-open window, thinking about my grandfather, about all of the things I didn’t know about him, and about Nathan’s question about the notebooks. He hadn’t taken my search seriously that day, and he had never spoken to me with such seriousness, and respect even, as he did tonight.

It was the necklace, I realized. He was treating me differently because of the necklace.

A bit of melody rose up through the window. Nathan and his friends, singing something, chanting. I went downstairs, through the laundry room, and found the back door open, several pairs of dress shoes on the mat. Outside, the sky was a muggy darkness, just a handful of pinpoint stars and a weak sliver of moon. Four black figures knelt on the grass, bending their bodies down, straightening again, their arms stretched skyward, dirt falling from between their fingers. Behind them, ignored, the baby carrier, its handle raised.

I burst through the doorway. Three of the men started, turning toward me. Only Nathan remained undisturbed in his chanting. Eli squirmed in his blankets, his hands waving, his cries lost in the wind.

“Your son is crying!” I shouted. I reached in to tuck his blanket around him and found he was snug inside, his chest warm but his cheeks cold with the first September chill.

“You scared him,” Nathan said, still on his knees, crawling toward us. There was dirt on his face. “He was fine.” He reached for the baby, and I yanked the carrier away. Eli wailed.

“Look at you. What’s the matter with you?” I shouted, struggling to wrap my arms around the bulky plastic. The other men, their faces also shadowed with dirt, were careful not to look at me.