The Miracles of Ordinary Men (16 page)

“I know,” Sam said. So many lives were ending. “You do what needs to be done for Doug. I'll take care of the house.”

“Thank you, Sam.” She hung up.

Three days later the edges of the conversation had blurred, faded away. The next day he woke up and couldn't remember Janet's face, no longer found it strange that he hadn't heard from Doug at all. Instead, it felt inevitable and somehow proper. Appropriate
.
Who had room for family — almost-family, reluctant family, mildly disliked family — in the midst of metamorphosis?

On Sunday he gave in and took a razor to his scalp. He looked strange without hair — younger, more vulnerable. The hollows in his cheeks were dark, and his eyes seemed a more vivid blue. He stood in his bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror. Hair littered the sink. The wings stood firm on either side — his protectors, his companions. Carrying him who knew where.

Chickenhead, his other companion, jumped up on the counter and swatted at a stray piece of hair as it drifted down to the tile.

“You're not supposed to be on the sink,” he said out of habit. But he put the razor down and picked up the cat, rested his forehead against her fur. The world was falling away. He could feel it: the ground becoming softer beneath his feet, the air beginning to whisper where before it had said nothing at all. He put Chickenhead down softly, and gripped the countertop as energy ran through his veins. God. The universe. Something
.

Then it was gone, just like that, and he took the cat and went to bed.

—

The next day, he opened the door and there was Emma. For a moment he stood there, the door ajar. Then, “How did you find this address?”

“You're in the phone book.” She looked nervous, unsure. Determined. “And I called yesterday. Father Jim said I should come.”

It is not good for man to be alone. “Oh. Well — I'm fine. I just need some time.”

“You left,” she said. “Did you think you could just disappear? Do you — don't you think people might worry? That they might have a right to know?”

“Know what?” The wings perked up behind him, like ears. “People take bereavement leave all the time.”

“You're not on leave,” she said flatly. She shuffled on the step. “So — are you going to let me in, or what?”

“I can't let you in,” he said. “It's . . . inappropriate.”

“For fuck's sake,” she spat. “
Inappropriate
is hardly what matters here. Besides,” and she flung her hand out to stress the point, “it's not like you're my teacher now, is it?”

Sam laughed. He took a step back and held the door so that she brushed past him, against the wings. He closed his eyes. Then, because he couldn't help it, “You should be in class right now.”

“
I'm
going to be valedictorian,” she said, with a hauteur most un-Emma. “I don't have to do anything anymore. I already got into McGill.”

“What's that they say about pride and falling?”

She shot him a glance and snorted. He shut the front door. In the hallway she looked smaller somehow, and once more unsure. She glanced from the wings to the door and back.

“You didn't think beyond getting through the door, did you?”

Emma lifted her shoulders and then let them drop. “Not really.”

He sighed. “Of course not. Do you want coffee?”

Another shrug. “Why not?” She followed him into the kitchen.

He pulled the mugs from the cupboard, measured the espresso into the grinder and counted to himself — one steamboat, two — as the beans were whittled down to dust. He heard Emma slip into a chair behind him, the soft slide of her jeans against the seat, the thump of her bag on the floor. He tipped the coffee grounds into the espresso maker and turned on the burner, watched the flame lick the sides of the little pot.

“I like your house,” she said, finally. “It's very you.”

“That's funny. Most of this — pretty much all of it, actually — came from Julie.”

“Julie,” she echoed. “She was at the funeral. The one with the dark hair.”

“Yes.” When the milk had heated he let it froth extra long, the way he liked it.

“Still. It suits you, the house. It's very quiet and calm and . . . good.”

“Good.”

“Are you going to repeat everything I say?”

He waited until the coffee had finished bubbling, and poured the milk before he answered. He turned back to her, a mug in each hand. “Do you take sugar?”

“No.”

“Just as well.” He slid the mug across the counter. “I don't think we have any.” He sat on the opposite stool and faced her across the granite counter. “So.”

“So.”

“Why are you here?”

“I wanted to see how you are,” she said. “At school — they just said you left. They didn't say why.”

“They can't say why. It's hardly professional.”

“Well, whatever. I wouldn't have done anything — I wanted to, but I wouldn't have. And then Father Jim called. He said you might need some company, so. Here I am.”

“Father Jim,” Sam said. “He gets around.”

“Is he here?” she asked. “He said he was staying with you.”

“He's at Mass.” He watched her study the wings. “He goes to the cathedral in the mornings now.”

“Oh.” She sipped her latté. “That's nice. That you have someone around, I mean.” She put down her mug. “I brought you something. It made me think of you.”

He wondered if she was changing her mind about the house. If she was regretting, now, those steps that had brought her to his door. “Another puzzle?”

She blushed. “No.” She reached down into her bag and pulled out a book. A grey, scuffed book with torn edges.

“
Fear and Trembling
,” he read aloud.

Emma put the book down and looked away. “I thought it might help somehow. To know — to know that other people have felt the same. That other people have struggled.”

“I don't think that Kierkegaard felt quite
the same.” The wings were a dark mass behind his shoulders, radiating pain and quiet discontent. “Kierkegaard didn't have wings. Or maybe you didn't realize that?”

“I
know
that,” and now there was a shake in her voice, and he hated himself. “I'm just — I'm just trying to understand. To help.”

“You can't help,” he said. “No one
can.”

“Fine,” she snapped. She slapped the book on the counter and stood, pulled the bag over her shoulder. “Forget it. Thanks for the coffee.”

He sighed. “Emma — wait.”

She turned back to him. “What?”

“I'm sorry.”

She fiddled with her bag. “Do you want me to go?”

Sam thought of Father Jim. “Yes. And no.”

Another pause. When she spoke, she sounded completely unlike the Emma he knew. “I think you could be better, Sam. You taught all of us that we could be better.”

“This is different,” he said.

“It's not.” She dropped her bag against the counter again and sat across from him. She opened her mouth — he braced himself for another lecture, but Emma just shrugged. “Can I see them? The wings?”

“You already see them.”

“I mean,
really
see them.”

“Oh.” He watched her from across the countertop and wondered. He thought of Julie, somewhere in the city with Derek. Of Father Jim, at the cathedral, the benevolent puppetmaster of his new life. Then he slid off his chair and began to unbutton his shirt. His fingers were calm and steady, and the non-voice of God did not speak in his ear. There was only Emma, silent on the other side of the counter. And the cat, who knew everything anyway.

He let the shirt drop to the floor and stood before her, his palms raised upward, the wings stretching out behind him so that they obscured most of the kitchen, so spectacular now that they were almost ordinary. Emma swallowed and stepped off her chair. Chickenhead jumped to the ground, came to him, and wound herself between his feet.

Emma stopped inches from him, her eyes trained on the left wing, on a spot over his shoulder. “What do they feel like?” she said, her voice soft. “They look — they look wonderful.”

“They hurt,” he said bluntly. “All the time.”

“That seems sad,” she said. She held her hand in the air by his shoulder, not quite touching anything. “That doesn't — that doesn't make sense.” Then she stepped to the side so that she was almost behind him, and this time her outstretched hand touched shoulder, then ribcage, then that first bit of cartilage that lengthened into web. She spread her fingers through the feathers as though combing it all into place.

“They're real,” she said. “I can't believe they're real.”

“Welcome to the club.”

She ran a hand through the other wing. “I knew,” she said. “But feeling it — this is different. I can't explain it.”

“Try waking up
and feeling it, just like that.”

“Do they work? Can you fly?”

“I don't know. I haven't tried.”

“Are you going to try?”

“No.” He closed his eyes. “What's the point? If this is all part of some grand plan, flying will be the smallest thing I do.”

Emma stopped and pulled away. He turned to look at her and was surprised to find her sad.

“I dreamed of miracles,” she said. “When I was little. My sister died and I dreamed for weeks about bringing her back, about being strong enough to change the world.”

He hadn't known that. “I'm sorry.”

“It's fine,” she said. Then she raised a hand and touched his cheek, softly, and he felt the warmth from his own skin reach out to the tips of her fingers. “You even smell different.”

He would have laughed, except that it wasn't funny. “I hope that's not a bad thing.”

“It's not,” she said. “You smell like water. You smell like the sea.”

—

The next morning, in the bathroom, he washed his hands and watched his fingernails flake into the sink, brittle and old, like skin that had dried in the night. He stood before the sink and shook. The veins in his hands grew darker, more pronounced. They travelled up his arms, across his torso, wove around his ribcage. Like spiderwebs, or calligraphy in a language he couldn't understand.

He stumbled to the shower, switched it on, and let the water pummel his face. Then he put a hand — a nail-less, blue-veined hand — up against the shower tile and leaned into it, and as he did so he imagined other veins stretching from his pelvis, outward, down across his legs. The wings fell forward against his neck. Calming. Cool. There.

He let the water run over him, and when he was finished he stepped out of the shower and drew the wings around himself, like a blanket. They were long and white and beautiful. They were the only part of him, now, that had not changed.

VI

Later, she'll discover that Catherine of Siena liked blood. That Saint Simeon the Stylite tortured himself to death for love of pain, that Teresa of Avila spent a life chasing that sharp, excessive sweetness. That the mystic Christina of Retters burned her own vagina with a glowing piece of wood, and called the pain her doorway to God. She will read about Hindu mystics who stand on their feet twenty-four hours a day, and sleep with their heads resting on vertical poles. Men who walk across fire, and say they do not feel it.

Pain is the alchemy that renovates — where is indifference when pain intervenes?
Alone in her apartment, Timothy sharp in her heart and the taste of Israel Riviera soft on her tongue, she'll recognize the beat, the rhythm, the way that something in her heart opens just for this.

This is one theory: that Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, Joan of Arc — these powerful women, these figures whose lives Roberta has written on the back of her hand — were nothing more than children, beaten and abused. Beaten so badly that they couldn't help but see God, children who became the adults chasing that sweetness into heaven and beyond. Sexualized self-sacrifice, says the research she finds. Lashes. Haircloth. Burns. Finding God, creating God, out of childhood trauma.

Another time, she might have found this silly, ridiculous. But now she is here, touching something
.
God above her and below her, the lash steady in his hand. She is being beaten clean. She will become a child again, like her brother. She will save him — and this time she will know what to say.

—

“I have waited a long time for you,” Israel says.

He lies beside her and strokes her hair. “For me?” The world seems hazy when they're not fighting, when there's no blue-white aura around them to illuminate the way. Lying here, in the dark, it is easy to believe that her world has shrunk to this fuzz of not-knowing. “Why?”

“You are fearless,” he says, and his hand comes round to rest against her cheek. “So fearless, so angry. So perfect.”

“I'm not perfect.” As she says it, the realities of the world — Timothy, Roberta, the terror of her dead-end job — come rushing in. “Plenty of things frighten me.”

His hands are so warm. “But you seek them out anyway. You spent years looking for those things that might terrify or change who you are. Your brother frightens you, and yet nothing could turn you away from him. I
frighten you, and yet here you are. It is,” he says again, “perfect. It is exactly what I need.”

“What are you talking about?”

“What if you had no family?” he says again. “What if Timothy disappears, and your mother wastes away, Delilah? What will you live for then?”

“They're not gone,” she says for what feels like the trillionth time. “I don't know why you — ”

“Wouldn't you want your own
family? Imagine,” and his voice is soft, silky, low, “a child of your own. A child that would not run away or disappoint you. A child that could make you into the mother you always wanted.”

She sits up so quickly her vision blurs — she pulls her hand away and looks at him in the dark. “I don't want a baby.”

“No?” He does not seem surprised. “But you would be a wonderful mother. A woman who would protect and love her child to the end of the world, even as it broke her heart. Even then.”

“I don't want a baby,” she says again. The room comes sharp into focus. “I won't have children. I won't.”

His eyebrows go up. “Really?”

“I'd be a bad mother. I'm sure of it.” She clenches the sheet in her fist. “And the child could end up like Timothy, and taking care of him is hard enough. I wouldn't wish that on any human being. Even though I love him.”

“Indeed,” Israel says. Then he shrugs. “Well. We can discuss this again later.”

“No.” She shakes her head so vehemently that the world spins again. “No more discussions. I won't have a child — not with you, not with anybody else.”

Now he sits up and faces her. “Perhaps,” he says, still in that soft voice, “that is not entirely up to you.” He runs his hand along her thigh. “Isn't this the kind of danger you've been chasing for years? All of these men, Delilah — all of these mediocre souls, and not one child from any of them. Haven't you been waiting, on some level, for the day when you stop all of the games?”

She swallows, then swings her legs around to the side of the bed. “If this is what we're talking about, I'm leaving.”

He nods. “I will call Emmanuel.” He reaches for the bedside table and picks up his phone. “I will give you time to think on it, and reconsider.”

She pulls her dress from the floor, hands shaking, furious. “There's nothing to reconsider.”

Israel taps out a text message and then shrugs. He stands up on the other side of the bed, naked, and flicks on the bedside lamp. He is lean and hard and beautiful, completely unconcerned. “You'll change your mind. Eventually.”

“Actually,
no
,
I will not.” She yanks the dress over her head and glares at him.

He strides around to where she stands and pulls her close against him, hard enough to make it hurt. “I wish only,” he says, his voice so lovely in her ear, “to make you see. To help you understand that there is nothing like the feel of a human life between your hands. That potential, that power. It is — Delilah, it is very great indeed.”

“My brother's life is in my hands,” she says. The words are muffled against his chest. “And mine in his. It's all the life I can hold.”

“Yes, well.” His hand is hard against the back of her neck, his heart a steady beat against her forehead. “Even that can change.”

—

On Sunday, when Roberta calls, her voice is tighter than usual.

“Delilah,” she says. “The doctors have found another lump.”

“A lump.” Lilah thinks back to Israel, her flippant words.
She's fine
.

“Delilah,” Roberta says, “I don't have breasts anymore. So tell me, exactly — how is it that they've found a lump?”

“I don't know,” Lilah says. She thinks of her own breasts, bruised and quiet. She thinks of Israel, who bit her nipple until it bled. And then she pulls out her calendar and counts the days. “When are you going for treatment? I can come over. Make you dinner.”

“You can't cook,” Roberta says.

“Look, I'm offering.”

“Don't bother.” Roberta is all business now.
Medicine. Treatment. Thought you should know.
“I was just keeping you informed.” She'll get off the phone and rake her garden — Lilah can see it even miles away. “Have you heard from your brother?”

And for one insane moment she wants to lie, to tell her that Timothy is at home with her, in the shower, scrubbing the grime from his cheeks. To give her this one gift.

“No,” she says.

“Oh. Well — maybe you can tell Timothy, if you see him.”

“Of course I'll tell him.” Three months ago he might have cared about news like this. She doubts he'll say anything about it now — he has no room for anything else, anything aside from these endless hours on the street. “Anyway,” she lies, “I was going to go to Victoria this week, to visit a friend. I'll stop by.”

Roberta sniffs. “Well, you do whatever you want, Delilah. I can check in to the hospital myself. I'll be fine.”

“Of course.” Lilah, Roberta, Timothy — they're all fine. They say good night and hang up at the same time, and miles away she imagines that Roberta folds her right hand in the crook of her left elbow, just as Lilah is doing right now.

—

“Listen to this,” Timothy says. He presses down on the pages of a book and ignores the food Lilah spreads out on the grass. More apples, more sandwiches, more chocolate. Fruit Roll-Ups
.
Juice boxes, and plastic pointy straws. A careful picnic. “Rilke. ‘Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.'”

“
Where did the book come from?”

He looks away from her, hurt. He is so thin. “The library. I got it at the library.”

“You don't have a library card.”

He won't meet her eyes. “I go there, sometimes, and sit. The librarian gave it to me because I look at it all the time.”

She takes a juice box and struggles to manoeuver the straw out of its plastic. Her fingers are stiff and cold. “So. Infinite distances.”

He nods. “It made me think of you.”

“Why?”

“You,” he says again. “You and me.”

She stabs the juice box with her straw. “I'm right here.”

“I know.” He closes the book and puts it down. “But — you're not, at the same time. You never were.” He breathes hard, and his hands shake like those of an old man. “You understand, Lilah, don't you?”

“No,” she says, even though it isn't true. “No, I do not fucking understand.”

“Don't swear,” he says.

“Well?” She throws a hand out for emphasis and the juice from the box dribbles onto the ground. Her scarf slips. “I come to find you. And you tell me the same goddamn thing every time. I need
something
,
Timmy. I'm not the one who's not trying.”

He ignores her. “What's that?”

“What?” Her hand goes to the scarf automatically, hiding the bruises beneath. “Nothing. It's nothing.”

“That's not nothing.”

“We're not talking about me.” She clears her throat. “Anyway, I have to tell you something. About Mom.”

Timothy nods. “There's a lump.”

She can't hide her shock. “You talked to her?”

He shakes his head. “I knew.” His voice sounds strange. “I just knew.”

Lilah pushes her unease away. “It's not good, Timmy.”

He still won't look at her. “Cancer's never good.”

“I mean, really not good. She's going into the hospital.” Roberta, alone in the house on the other side of the water. “She wants to see you.”

“I'm busy.”

“You're fucking kidding me.”

“Stop swearing!” and this time his voice goes up. “Anyway — I don't see you
over there.”

“I'm going over,” she says, and she can tell by the way his shoulders slump that he believes her. “Tomorrow.” Unbelievable but true — days off in the middle of the week for administrative sludge. Penny, who had initially said no to her request, backed down after Lilah played the cancer card. She'd considered playing the Israel card as well — fucking the boss, yes, and what are you going to do about it — but Israel, as it turned out, was not in the office. So she'd muddled through alone, apologized profusely, given Debbie the rest of her workload. Thankful, in some unapologetic part of her soul, for the fact that he'd been silent for the rest of the weekend, for the fact that he was not at work, sleek and powerful and troubling. “I thought — I don't know. I thought you could come with. And then you could come back here, if you wanted.”

“Why are you so concerned when you hate her so much?”

“I don't hate her.”

Timothy laughs, an ugly sound. “You can't stand her. I knew that when I was five.”

“That doesn't mean I hate
her.”

“Doesn't it, Lilah?” and now he swings around to face her, his eyes dark, his arms spread wide. He waves the book in his right hand — a preacher, a prophet of words and solitude. “You could have fooled me.”

She pulls her coat close and checks that the scarf is still in place. “So it's my fault, then. Everything.” No answer. “What do you want from me?” she says quietly. “What do you want me to say?”

“Never mind,” Timothy says. He tosses the book into her lap. “Here. You have it.” Then he grabs a chocolate bar and shoves it into the pocket of his ragged coat. “It's just more for me to carry, anyway.” He stands and starts walking away.

“Tim,” she calls. He doesn't turn around. “Timothy.” But nothing. She watches until he disappears out of the park, down the street, and then she gathers the juice boxes and the leftover sandwiches into a little pile. She leaves them there, on the bench, and as she walks away she hopes that rain won't come, that someone else will find the food and take it. She fingers the spine of the book and then opens it to the last page, where the stamp is faded and grey but still there.
Discard.
Left behind,
just like the food.

—

She calls Roberta on the ferry. “I'm late,” she says. “But I'll be there before seven.”

“I made dinner. I'll keep it in the oven for you.”

“Thanks.”

“Is Timothy — ”

“He's not here,” Lilah says, looking out over the water. “I couldn't find him.”

“But last you saw him, he was okay.”

“Yes.” She remembers the book. “He's been going to the library.”

“He was always reading,” Roberta says. “Maybe our lives would have been easier if he'd been into sports.”

“Maybe,” Lilah echoes, but she can't laugh, as much as Roberta wants her to. Timothy is scrabbling on the streets of Vancouver as they speak, ducking into libraries and avoiding them both. “Do you want me to bring you anything?”

“I'm fine,” says Roberta. “Be careful when you come in. They're calling for rain.”

“I'm sure I'll manage.” She tightens the scarf around her neck and checks, once again, that her sleeves cover everything. “I'll see you soon. Okay?”

“Okay.” Roberta hangs up. She always does this — no drawn out goodbyes from this mother, no hesitant words of farewell. Lilah closes her phone and once more looks out of the window, to where the setting sun glints over the waves. It hurts to sit down, but she's not moving. She tosses her phone lightly from hand to hand and thinks of her brother, scuttling in the streets.