The Miracles of Ordinary Men (7 page)

“Debbie,” Israel taps his glass before he continues, “is an exemplary worker. This is what Penny tells me.”

“So — what? I'm not? Do I need a fucking degree to organize your desk?”"

“I was a good son,” he says idly. “Once upon a time, I
was
exemplary. But there is more to this world, Delilah, than following the rules. The Debbies of the world, exemplary or not — they will not matter. Is that what you want? Do you not want a future that reaches higher than an annual bonus?”

Five days ago, she knew nothing about this man apart from his taste for coffee. Five days ago, he was only The Boss. “What could I do that would make things any different? I make barely enough to pay my own bills.”

The waiter brings them tea. Lilah crumples her napkin onto the plate and watches it unfold, slowly, like a flower. This is what she's learned, from years of travelling and searching and needing something else: that there isn't
something else, that some people will forever look at the world and see broken things that they can't change. One moment of clarity, fuelled by opium and mountain rain — it's an illusion, nothing more.

“Opportunity is not about money,” Israel says. “God does not mete out miracles only to the rich.”

“I haven't seen much evidence of God in the last few years,” she says. God
.
Why is it that her life always leads her here?

“Perhaps,” Israel shrugs. “Or perhaps God has just been . . . waiting.”

“Waiting for what?”

He reaches across the table and takes her wrist, then turns her palm up so that the veins are illuminated in the light. “Who knows? God is very patient.”

She stares at his hand, transfixed, and shivers as his thumb traces a circle at the base of her palm. She pulls away. “Well. Whatever.” Suddenly desire is a hard knot in her stomach. She can't speak, she's so surprised.

Israel smiles again. “Yes,” he says. “I know.”

—

He gets the bill and leaves a fifty-dollar tip on the table as they ready themselves to go.

“It wasn't that
great,” she says as they leave the restaurant. “The service. Did you really think so?”

“The service was mediocre,” he says. He places a hand on her back and guides her to one of the cars parked by the side of the street. “But they will remember the tip, and next time, the service will be better.”

A bald man sits behind the wheel of the car they approach. He reads a book by the light of a dashboard lamp, and looks up as they draw near. He opens his door, slides out, and nods to them both. “Mr. Riviera. Madam.”

“Emmanuel,” says Israel. His hand moves in circles across the small of Lilah's back. The sudden soft rhythm in his voice says that these men speak Spanish all the time. Lilah wonders how far back they go, how much Emmanuel knows. Maybe Israel is a promised land of mystery to everyone. A man of shadows, a man who fades into the world just like her brother. “We are ready to go now.”

“Of course, of course,” says the driver. He opens the door and helps Lilah in. She slides across the seat. The car smells of leather and wealth. Israel climbs in beside her and lays a hand on her knee.

“Home,” she says, and she tells them her address. She thinks of Timothy, hunkered down by a grate somewhere in the city.

They seem to drift down the street, and every hunched figure on the sidewalk has Timothy's face, Timothy's hands. Lilah closes her eyes, dizzy from the wine, or the man beside her, or both. She wants to go home and crawl into bed, or sink back into the city and look for her brother. Timothy Timothy Timothy, soft in her head like a song.

She almost falls asleep, lulled by the hum and Israel's hand against her neck, but when the car stops, she realizes that they're in a different part of town and blinks, suddenly unsure. “I thought we were finished.”

“Did you?” Israel smiles. “But that would hardly make me a gentleman.” He opens the door, pushes one foot outside. “Surely, Delilah, you can stop for one more glass of wine.” He pauses and shrugs. “But of course, Emmanuel can drive you home. It is up to you.”

Lilah bristles. “Fine.” She follows him out of the car and steps onto the pavement. She does not wobble.

“Emmanuel,” he says. “I will call for you.” Here they are, the two of them, in front of one of the most expensive apartment buildings in the city. “Delilah.” He takes her hand. “Come inside.”

They walk through the lobby and into the elevator without speaking. This elevator is gleaming and sleek and rises soundlessly into the building. Lilah watches the two of them in the polished surface of the elevator mirror. She looks calm, composed. Classy. Her cheeks are flushed from the wine and the almost-sleep in the car. Israel is busy punching numbers into his phone.

They ride to the top floor. The elevator opens directly into his apartment, and the first thing Lilah notices are the doilies, which are everywhere. Lace on the hall table, lace on the
TV
stand, a garish purple mess that hangs on the back of the door. The lampshade over the hall light is an inconceivable shade of orange.

“Does your mother live here?” she blurts before she can stop herself. Israel looks confused, and then follows her eyes to the lampshade.

“Ah. No, no, my mother died some years ago. But she made these. They are lovely, no?” He fingers the doily on the table. “A woman is not a woman until she can create works of art like this.”

Lilah snorts and then hurriedly coughs. “I don't crochet.”

He shrugs. “Yes, well. North American women — they are different in many ways.”

“Such as?”

“You have forgotten your place here,” he says. “Women. You expect too much. You need to learn.” He smiles. “But that's why you're here, Delilah. This is what I will teach you.” And that's when he hits her. He smacks her mouth with the back of his hand and her head snaps back. The world is blurred. He pushes her against the wall and her head cracks against the door. She focuses long enough to see Israel above her like some ancient god, lightning pulsing in his fist. He hits her again and pain blossoms along her cheekbone. She tastes blood at the corner of her mouth, hard and metallic, like fear.

Eight

He drove.

Chickenhead had glared at him for the first five minutes, then curled up on the passenger seat and ignored him. The sun rose slowly as he made his way across the bridge. He drove past his mother's cul-de-sac and thought about stopping to check on the plants, then decided against it
and wound the window down instead. The air smelled of spruce and rain and earth. He drove, and Joni Mitchell sang of strangers and trembling bones.

The summer he turned twenty, he'd loaded the old Jeep with books and had driven across the country, just because. The cassettes thrown over the passenger seat soon outnumbered the books. He listened to The Eagles. He beat the steering wheel in time to Jethro Tull. He bought a second-hand guitar at a dilapidated music store in Kelowna and knew “House of the Rising Sun” before he was through the Rockies. By the time he got to Winnipeg he was sick of it, and stashed the guitar in the back.

He'd forgotten — maybe he'd never known — how big the country was; how seamless and yet different the landscape, sliding from mountains to flat and back again as he climbed the rocky Ontario roads. Further east, in Trois-Pistoles (a history stemming from three coins lost in the river — he stopped because he liked the name), a grizzled old boutique
owner pushed
Hejira
into his hands.

“The road,” he said. His name was Remy. He had a clubfoot and a burn scar that stretched all the way down the left side of his face. “The road,
oui
.”
He wouldn't let Sam speak French, though his English was passable at best.

“You listen,” he said. “
Écoutez —
you like.”

He accepted the tape — the old man was a keen disciple, because he gave it away for free — and listened to two songs, then took it out and went back to Jethro Tull.

But he didn't throw it away, and when he got back to Vancouver he kept it because it reminded him of Remy. Gradually, it began to remind him of the entire trip — mountains and lakes and hot sun over the prairies.
Hejira
hadn't been meant for the prairies, of course — Joni had written it with the road from Maine to
LA
in mind — but it worked. Snow and pinewood trees and Benny Goodman — he'd had sunshine and cedar and seventies psychedelia, yet somehow it was all the same.

Now here he was, again, listening to Joni sing as he wound the car down to the water.

“Am I missing something?” he said. To the air, to Chickenhead. The only answer came from Joni. Wax and rolling tears — couldn't help him any.

Chickenhead spared him a glance and then went back to her catnip, holding it soft between her paws and then snapping it between small white teeth. Lately she'd taken to looking at him with a renewed glint of interest, the same look she reserved for mice and other objects of play. Not surprising, really — he was, after all, turning into a giant bird.

Scars
,
the doctor had said. Traumatic scars, extensive stitching. What did that mean? He couldn't begin to guess.

—

On the ferry, he sat outside on the floor, in an alcove made by a sleek silver lifeboat bin and a blank stretch of wall. He willed himself smaller, invisible. It had started to rain; hardly anyone came outside and when they did, they walked past him or away in the opposite direction, avoiding him like those in the doctor's office. The Gulf Islands passed in shifting hues of green and grey.

He went downstairs as soon as they began to near the island, and crammed into the Jetta — no one around to question the adjusting, the crazy shuffle as he settled the wings around the seat. Chickenhead, curled into a fat dark ball, woke up, blinked at him, and then turned her head and went back to sleep. A few minutes later, the opening door and the calm brown shores of Departure Bay.

He drove.

—

The island felt at once like an extension of his city and an entirely different world. The mountains that followed the road were softer here, their tips blue-green and grey and fading into clouds that hung low in the air. Farther north, they grew sharp again, were hostile, unapproachable. Four summers ago he'd hiked part of the northern park with Julie. Middle of August and they'd shivered over a nighttime bonfire, surrounded on all sides by peaks that were black against the dark of the sky.

“It's like being surrounded by giant witches' hats,” she'd said. They'd laughed because it was silly, but also because it was possible, in the dark, to believe that it might just be true. In the utter blackness of a night in Strathcona Park, he could see a million things rising up to finish them — fire, water, acts of God.

But nothing had happened, and now Julie was with Derek, and Sam had woken up in his own bed with wings sprouting hard from his back.
If you're destined for trouble
,
his mother would have said,
it will find you anyway
.

—

He did not believe in destiny — or he hadn't, until just over a week ago. How many times had they argued, he and his mother, squared off on either side of the debate?

“We make our own destiny,” he'd said. “Anything else is shirking responsibility.”

Carol had laughed at him. “Shirking responsibility, just because I think that some things are out of my control?”

“It's a crutch,” he said. “A cushion. People can't face reality, so they make up stories and cling to belief.”

“But everyone does that,” she pointed out. “Some people kneel to a cross and some people get mired in quantum physics. In the end, it's all the same.”

“Quantum physics is all about chance,” he'd argued, aware, as ever, that she was serene and intractable. “
That
makes sense — you have to pull yourself above the chaos. But destiny? Some people are meant for greatness and others — what? They're just filler?”

He might even have argued the line on Tuesday, had he gone to the house, had he been in time. He might not have argued it well,
especially if she'd been able to see the wings, but he'd have argued, all the same.
This thing
,
happening to me — it's nothing special. It's like a disease. I have a different set of cards now
,
that's all
.

Outside Parksville, just past the provincial park, he stopped the car and almost turned back. What was he doing? Why wasn't he home, helping Doug, making arrangements, seeing to it that the plants were taken care of? What could he possibly expect? He'd stopped not far from the ocean — the old highway ran for miles along the water. There was a smattering of trees to his immediate right, and beyond them, winking bits of blue and tan.
Miracle Beach
,
the map reminded him.

He got back on the highway, and kept going. He rolled down his window and let the air rush in. The trees melted by in blurs of green and brown. The mountains began to sharpen. He drove, and when he saw the sign for the Tofino–Ucluelet junction, he took the right.

—

The retreat house, according to his map, was actually just outside of Tofino, a little farther down the highway that led to Ucluelet and the beaches of the national park. It was new, as retreat centres went, and fairly low key. The place didn't even have a webpage. Maybe it didn't have running water, either. Maybe — his sudden gasp of laughter made Chickenhead startle in her seat — the fathers marched down to a neighbouring stream two by two, yoked under heavy wooden pails. In tune with God, with nature, with Greenpeace. How very twenty-first century.

Then, all of a sudden, he was there. A nondescript brown driveway, an etched sign on a sturdy iron post. He turned into the drive and followed the path through the woods. It ended at a white house that stood in the middle of the trees like a cheerful child. When he got out of the house he noticed that it was weathered — the paint cracked, the roof missing tiles — but the path to the front door was meticulous. He walked softly up to the house and knocked, and wondered what would happen when someone answered the door.

It opened, and the answer was immediate: nothing. The man who greeted him was small and bald and no one Sam had seen before.

“Hello,” he said, in the same business-like voice that had sounded so strange over the phone. “You must be Samuel. I am Brother Thomas. Come in.”

It was a house that didn't deceive: tired and plain, the walls white, the floorboards scuffed and worn. But the light increased as they walked to the back, and he saw that the south wall of the house was made entirely of glass and interlocking wooden beams, and the kitchen opened up onto a patio. The patio door was open and there were grey tree stumps sprinkled on the grass.

“Father Jim is just finishing his rotation,” said the man. “If you'd like to wait here, he will be by in a few minutes.” He pointed to a chair and Sam sat down. “Can I get you anything? Something to drink? Eat?”

A splash of holy water, perhaps? Sam was seized by a sudden, sinking fear. Suppose Father Jim saw a man limp with grief, nothing more? “No,” he said. “But thank you.”

Brother Thomas nodded and disappeared down the hall, and Sam was once again alone. He thought of Chickenhead, picking at catnip in the car. He thought of his mother. And then, as always, he thought of Julie, who still didn't know. When they got back to Vancouver, he'd have to tell her the news.

Behind him, the wings lay soft and still. They were warm with the light from the windows, a warmth altogether different from the heat that they'd given off in his mother's house — a green warmth, the long, slow heat of trees. He lifted the left wing and curled it out so that a greenish-yellow light dappled through the feathers. A sudden, strange comfort, knowing they were there.

“
Holy shit
,” said a voice.

He turned and curled the wing in all at once. “Hello, Father.”

There he was, six-foot-four, with his winking white collar. His beard had more grey in it now, but his hands were tanned and he still looked more like a lumberjack than a priest. He came to the table, sat across from Sam, and hooked his fingers around one knee. His eyes were shrewd and blue, and they weren't looking at the Sam that everyone else in the world could see. “I think,” he said, “you have some interesting things to tell me.”

—

The little white house in the woods had a surprising number of rooms. Sam's faced the woods, the lone window scratched and blurred. It held a single bed and dresser, and a mirror that hung lopsided on the back of the door. The floorboards were bone white beneath his feet.

That next morning, he woke with a headache, and remembered the edges of a strange dream. A view of the sea from the edge of a red-brown cliff, the waves rising to the level of his feet and then receding, slowly, under the guidance of his hand. The power in his fingertips softer than that which had woken the cat but still there — humming, unmistakable. Gone, now that he was awake. The room felt hushed and sweet. He could hear the brothers shuffling about in the rest of the house. Even the faint trickle of water from the bathroom tap sounded like a song.

He climbed out of the bed — he'd slept face down on the mattress, the wings spread over bed and floor — then stood in front of the mirror and spread his arms. The wings arched out from his shoulders. They had stopped growing, at least for the time being,
which was good. He ran his index finger along the left wing, tracing from under his armpit out as far as it could go. Suddenly he was dizzy. He put a hand out to the mirror and leaned into it, the glass cool against his palm. The wings came up and whispered against the mirror. All was dark. Calm. He was and was not himself.

—

“Did you sleep well?” Father Jim asked, over breakfast. The dining hall had four tables, and wooden floors like the boards in Sam's room. It was still early, but there was no one else around. Everyone else, the priest said, had eaten and gone about the day.

“No,” Sam said. “I mean — yes.” He'd slept,
after all. And dreams were just that. The ocean was not going to rise to the touch of his hand.

“Ah,” said the priest. He shot Sam an odd look over his cup of tea, and resumed drinking.

“What was that look for?” How silly — here he was, eleven years old again, a sudden cheeky imp in his voice.

“Nothing.” Father Jim waved the question away. His eyes narrowed, sharpened. “What are
those
for?”

“Beats me.” They'd talked until the dark hours of the morning, tossing out a million things.
Sleep on it
,
Father Jim had said, finally. As though that would do anything at all. He thought back to the night he rescued Chickenhead, standing alone on the drive and rocking on the balls of his feet. The empty sky above him. “They don't even work.”

“The interesting thing about wings,” and now the priest's voice was idly conversational, “is that they're completely unnecessary. At least from an angelic perspective.”

“What?”

“The seraphim, the cherubim, the classically angelic — they're powerful messengers of God. They appear and disappear at will. Why fly somewhere to mete out the judgment of the Most High when you can appear instantly anywhere in the world? Wings — a human concept. That's all.”

“So I have wings because people assume that angels have wings.”

“That would be one guess.”

“That still doesn't explain why they're here.”

Father Jim shrugged. “In my experience, God isn't heavy on explaining.”

“When people get stressed, they get hives. They don't grow feathers.”

The priest chuckled. “At least you haven't lost your sense of humour.” He stacked the teacups and saucers and stood. “Does anyone else know?”

Sam shrugged and heard feathers slide against the floor. “No.” Emma. “Yes.”

“Yes?”

“One of my students.” How strange that sounded. “And Father Mario, back at the cathedral.”