The Miracles of Ordinary Men (17 page)

She has chocolate and cigarettes in her purse, and a change of clothes in the overnight bag Roberta gave her years ago. Another sweater, another scarf. In the bathroom, just before the ferry docks, she pats concealer over her neck and ignores the other woman, a mother with two girls who pretends not to look at her bruises. Outside, she pays for her rental car and glides out of the parking lot, her hands steady on the wheel. She turns on the radio — Emmanuel does not have music when he drives — and flicks through the stations until something fits. Mahler,
Symphony No. 5.
Chopin when that is over, Schumann, and then Debussy, the notes long and soft. She smokes out the window for the entire drive, and throws her last cigarette out into the bushes that lie by the side of Roberta's lawn.

Her mother does not open the front door, just as she never says goodbye. Lilah walks into the house and puts her shoes at the door. “Mom?”

“Here,” comes Roberta's voice. The kitchen. Lilah flicks on the hallway light as she pads into the house. The first thing she notices is that all of the plants are dying.

Roberta sits at the kitchen table, leafing through photos. A cigarette dangles between her fingers. Her hair is the darkest red it's ever been. She has lost weight, and skin sags in folds around her neck.

“Since when did you start smoking?” Lilah asks.

“I don't know. A month ago?” Roberta does not get up. “It can't possibly make much difference now.”

“Don't talk like that,” Lilah says automatically. She wraps a towel around her hand and opens the oven, pulls out a tray covered in foil.

“Chicken stuffed with feta,” Roberta says. “And olives. Your favourite, if I remember.”

“Yes,” Lilah says. “Thank you.”

Roberta waves her hand in the air and weaves trails through the smoke. “It's not like I had anything else to do.” She taps ash into a tray and watches Lilah spoon the chicken onto a plate. “Do you want more? I have extra in the fridge. I didn't feel like eating.”

“I'm fine,” Lilah says. She takes a bite. The chicken is soft, juicy, delicious.

“I can turn the heat up,” Roberta says, nodding to Lilah's scarf and long sleeves. “If you're cold.”

“I'm fine,” she says again. She pulls out her own cigarettes and dumps the chocolate on the table. “I brought you this. It's Timothy's favourite.”

“Chocolate,” Roberta says. She picks the bar up between thumb and forefinger, as though it's covered in mud. “Please tell me you're feeding him other things. Did you give him the toothbrush?”

“Yes, I gave him the toothbrush. And yes, I'm feeding him other things.” Hope. Despair. Fear like gut rot in her stomach, always there, always moving.

“Good.” Roberta breathes out smoke. “Maybe I can bribe him the next time I'm in Vancouver.”

Lilah laughs. She finishes the chicken quickly, surprised at how hungry she is. Then she goes back to the fridge after all. “Maybe. He's not much into bribes right now.”

“Isn't he,” Roberta says. She rubs her free hand against her hip. “But he's all right. He's alive.”

“Yes. He's alive.” Lilah slides her second plate into the microwave, presses the button, and taps her fingers against the counter. This is where Timothy made her hot chocolate, all those years ago.
He's such a strange little boy.

“Well. That's something, I guess.” Roberta nods to Lilah's scarf again. “Are you sure
you're not cold?”

“Really. I'm okay.” The microwave beeps. Lilah takes her plate out and sits back down at the table. The words come out of her mouth and hang in the air. “I'm seeing somebody.”

“Joel.” Roberta's voice dips. “You told me about Joel. The one who doesn't have a job.”

“He has a job,” Lilah says automatically. “But no, it's not Joel. I'm not seeing Joel anymore.”

“Oh. So who is it, then?”

“Someone I work with. He's from Mexico.”

“Does he speak English?”

“Of course he speaks English. What a stupid question.”

Roberta shrugs and stubs out her cigarette. “So what does he do, then?”

“He's in
HR
. In management.” She stops, suddenly aware that there's not much else she can say.

“Mmhm.” Roberta fingers another cigarette but does not light it. “And you're happy? Things are okay?”

Happy. Happy? “Things are . . . okay,” she echoes. “As much as they can be.”

“Mmhm,” Roberta says again. “My therapist says that Timmy has abandonment issues.”

“Wow. Some therapist.”

“He
says
,” Roberta continues, frowning, “that everything goes back to your father. Do you think so?”

Lilah pushes her last piece of chicken around. Timothy, who was four when it happened, has never mentioned their father. Not once. “I don't know.”

“Do you
feel abandoned?” Roberta presses. The word sounds strange in her mother's mouth. “Does it bother you?”

Lilah shrugs. “Why bother feeling bad about an asshole?”

Roberta stares at the table. “I keep thinking,” she says, “that maybe I was wrong. Maybe I should have followed him, or tried to keep him closer, so that he could see the two of you. If there had been a man in Timmy's life, maybe this wouldn't have happened.”

“Carl thought Timothy was strange,” Lilah points out. This is what she remembers most. “I don't see how keeping him around could have helped anything.”

“He didn't,” Roberta says faintly. “He didn't think he was
strange
— he just didn't understand.”

“He called Timothy a fucking spastic
.
That's the kind of role model you want for your kid? Really?”

“Well, if you're so sure, Lilah, then what was it? What happened?”

So this is what she thinks about, their mother, alone in this house with her dying plants. “For God's sake — I
don't know. Doesn't your therapist tell you not to dwell on shit like this?”

“Don't swear,” Roberta says irritably. “My God — you always look so beautiful until you open your mouth.”

“Thanks.”

“You're welcome.” This time Roberta stubs out her cigarette half-finished. “I'm tired,” she announces. “I think I might go to bed. You know where to find everything, don't you?”

“Yes.” Lilah stands up and carries her plate to the sink. She watches out of the corner of her eye as Roberta gets up, her hands clasped against the table. She moves like a woman twice her age. “Do you need help?”

“No,” Roberta says. “I'm tired
.
That's all.” She puts a hand against the doorframe. “Will you want breakfast? I don't have that much food — we might need to go shopping, depending on what you want.”

“I'm fine,” Lilah says for the hundredth time. “If I want something, I'll go and get it. No big deal.”

Roberta nods. “All right. Well — I'll see you in the morning.” She shuffles into the hall.

Lilah watches her go, then dumps her plate in the sink and walks through to the back room, where the glass doors look out over a dark, overgrown yard. She pads out onto the deck and sits on the step, listening to the wind. Victoria is quieter than Vancouver — quiet and polite, its secrets buried deep beneath the ground. The church Roberta goes to is only a few blocks away. Secrets are buried there too.

She sits for hours, trembling with cold, until even the faint sound of downtown revellers has faded away. Timothy will be shivering on some sidewalk, alone. Israel Riviera will be sleeping, or thinking about children, also alone. And Roberta, who sleeps behind her in the house, will perhaps be dreaming of those days before Carl left, when their paths were laid like flagstones, ordered and precise.

When she can't take it anymore Lilah goes back into the house, where memories drift slowly through the air, and she goes to bed in the room of her childhood, where the old macramé from Roberta sits on the wall like a guardian.

—

Roberta has to check in to the hospital late Wednesday afternoon. She was right; there's hardly any food left in the house, so they go for breakfast at the neighbourhood café. It's the same café Lilah worked in all those years ago, before she left for Toronto, and nothing has changed. The paint still peels in the corners, and the muffins are still delicious. Lilah almost sneaks one into her bag just because.

Roberta doesn't eat anything. Instead, she drinks tea and watches Lilah finish a giant helping of scrambled eggs and potatoes. “You have your father's metabolism,” she says. “I always envied that.” In the daylight she looks more gaunt than she did in the kitchen; gaunt and smaller and old. “Timothy had it too. God's gift to both of you, I suppose.”

“Right. Because God's been big on the gifts in this family.”

“You're so bitter,” Roberta says. But her anger has no force,
no conviction. “It's not God's
fault, Lilah.”

“How can you say that? Look
at you. Look at — if you could see Timothy, you wouldn't say that.”

“Maybe,” says her mother. “But Delilah, I can't help it. You can't possibly understand.”

She hears the echo of Timothy even as Roberta speaks the words. “I guess not.” Potatoes done, Lilah drops her fork onto her plate and nods to the waitress. “We'd better go.”

They don't speak during the drive to the hospital. They park in front of the cancer centre and Lilah, laden with bags, follows Roberta through to the admissions desk. The triage nurse checks them in faster than any hotel receptionist.

“Room
304
,” she says. “They'll have gowns there for you.”

They trudge down the hall until they find it — a small room with a single bed, a thin couch against the wall and one
TV
bolted to the ceiling. The walls are light purple. Mauve. The air smells of disinfectant and bleach. But there is a window that looks out onto green. Victoria is still green, even into these middle days of November.

“Home sweet home,” says Roberta. She drops her purse on the bed and looks away from Lilah, out the window.

Lilah's mouth tastes like dust. “I'm just — I'm just going to go to the bathroom,” she says. She ducks into the ensuite, locks the door, and turns on the fan so that Roberta can't hear her throwing up. The scrambled eggs and potatoes go straight into the toilet. Her ribs hurt when she's finished.

She washes her hands slowly, the fan still on, and then flushes. She shoves a stick of peppermint gum into her mouth. She can hear laughter now, over the fan. Laughter, a faint male voice. Roberta, flirting with the nurses already.

But when she steps back into the room, it's not a nurse at all.

“Delilah!” Roberta says. She hasn't changed into her hospital gown. She is smiling now. “You didn't tell me he was
lovely
.”

There, sitting on the bed, is Israel Riviera. Looking completely at home against the purple of the walls, and talking to Roberta as though he's known her all his life.

“Well,” he says. He winks — at Roberta, at both of them. “Delilah likes to keep secrets. But they are not hard to figure out, I think.”

“No,” Lilah says. She puts her hand up against the doorframe. The world shifts and rearranges itself right beneath her feet. “I suppose not.”

Five

In his dreams, he crept down corridors of stone, stood on a windswept beach, and found himself fumbling for words in the dark. He walked, barefoot, and listened to the shuffle of his wings.

Awake, he walked the streets of Vancouver and made his way through a world filled with auras. He wore gloves to hide his hands. Colours were sharpened, everything around him crisp and saturated. He could smell the damp even when the sun was shining, and hear children laughing hundreds of feet away. He often found himself out of breath, as though he'd been running. Walking was the only thing that kept him calm.

Some mornings, he crept into the cathedral and watched, hunched in a pew at the back, as Father Jim said Mass. How well he remembered this — the uneven hush of the cathedral floor, the terrible quiet in the air. The priest at once commanding and unobtrusive, calm.
Amen
,
he said.
Go in peace
,
to love and serve the Lord.

Father Mario, who seemed happy to sit back for these sessions, often sat with him in the pew. This other priest, whose part in the story no one could quite figure out.

“It is good to see you here, Samuel,” he said once. “Are you well?”

“No,” Sam said, his voice low. In front of them, Father Jim read the Gospel. A story about a son who returned to his household after a long time away.

“You should not be afraid, Samuel. God would not want you to be afraid.”

“Really?” he said. In these moments with his head above the water, why was it that the rage and the sarcasm came so easily? “But surely if I feel fear, it comes from God Himself. Surely He wants
me to feel this way. Otherwise, why bother with the wings at all?”

“You mistake fear for cowardice,” said the priest. “Fear that turns one immobile does no one any good. But fear that draws you out of yourself is a different thing entirely.”

“I don't want to lose myself,” he said. He thought of Julie, Emma, and Bryan. All these parts of his life, falling away. “I don't want to disappear.”

“Every man is destined to disappear in the face of God,” said the priest. “How could someone maintain their individual nature in the face of the Almighty? It is just not possible. But God will give you strength.”

“God has not given me anything.”

“Many people say this. But the truth is merely that God has not given them what they want.”

It went like this often, which is why he walked instead. He traversed the streets of his neighbourhood so frequently people stopped registering his face — no more Sam,
just another body in the grey. He walked, and he thought. About his mother, scattered in tiny pieces over the water. About the wings. About Emma, who had started, he could see, to be afraid. And he thought about Julie.

Julie had left three messages on the machine since he'd seen her last.
Sam. Sam
,
I need to talk to you. Please call me back.

Two weeks after she'd left the first message, and he still hadn't picked up the phone.

“Are you going to leave those on the machine forever?” asked Father Jim. They sat in the kitchen and drank coffee, as they had begun to do in the mornings. “They take up space, you know. Someone else might be trying to get through.”

“Stacey,” he said. He watched Chickenhead bat dust balls in the corner of the room. “Or Emma. That's all, really.” Bryan was still out of the country — there was another face he found himself forgetting.

“Sam,” Father Jim said again. “I think you should call her.”

“I'm going to call,” he said. “I've been busy.”

“Mmm,” said the priest. He nodded, suddenly, to Sam's hands. “What's with the gloves? You can't possibly be cold.”

Sam took the gloves off and spread his hands. They seemed strangely effeminate now, without nails. It had become difficult to pick things up if he dropped anything — he wore the gloves for this purpose now as much as any other.

“Ah.” Father Jim didn't flinch. “I wondered.”

“They just came off. In the sink. It just . . . happened.”

Father Jim shrugged. “Maybe it's just stress, Sam. Maybe they'll grow back.”

“Maybe,” he echoed. Then he tried to make a joke of it. “Or maybe I'm just evolving. You know — onto the next stage. No more ass scratching or fumbling in the dirt for me.”

The words were hollow, bereft of humour. Father Jim reached over and squeezed his hand. But he didn't say anything, and after a while Sam put the gloves back on.

—

He called Julie at work, finally, and she left her office to see him. They went to the coffee shop she loved — the one on Denman, so close to the shores of English Bay.

“How are you?” she said. “I've been so worried. You look
terrible
.”

That made him laugh. “Well. I've had better days.” Weeks. Months. Years.

“I heard that you left your job,” she said.

“How?”

“Stacey told me.”

“
Stacey
?”

“She's a client.” Julie waved her hand. “It doesn't matter. But she said that she asked you to stay. That you're not returning her calls.”

“I don't work there anymore,” he said. A lifetime ago, that's what that was. “I don't have to call her.”

“She's worried about you.”

He stared at her. “Should you even be telling me these kinds of things?” The wings curled around the metal backing of the chair. “Besides — I'm hardly any of Stacey's business.”

Her eyebrow went up. How well he remembered that, another lifetime away. “Just like you're hardly any of that student's business? Ella?”

“Emma,” he said instantly.

She held his gaze for a moment and then flushed. “It's just — you always have these women. All the time.”

“So you phoned me,” he said, slowly, “again and again, and left messages, just to meet with me and tell me about my ‘women'?”

She tapped her fingernails against her mug. The sound echoed. “I just want to know how you are.”

“I'm surviving.” What a strange word. “I just — it's hard, Julie.”

“I know.” Unexpectedly, she reached across the table and took his hand. His new hand, hidden and safe within the glove. “You know I'm here for you, Sam.”

“Sure,” he said. “You look good, by the way.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

He coughed. “How's Buddhism class?”

“Sam.”

“Seriously.”

She shrugged. “It's all right. Derek's really into it.”

“You know,” because he couldn't help himself, “studies have shown that Tibetan Buddhism has a large part to play in the prostitution problem in Thailand.”

“Really.” She let go of his hand.

“Yes.” He dragged his coffee cup in small circles around the table. “Tibetan Buddhists believe in reincarnation. You'll know this, obviously.”

“Yes,” she said, her voice going thin.

“So they teach that prostitutes are on the streets paying for the sins of a past life. I think it's a funny doctrine.”

“It's not a class in Tibetan Buddhism.”

“Oh.
Well
then. I guess that's fine.”

“We were having a nice time,” she said. “Just now.”

“We had a lot of nice times,” he said. “But in the end that didn't seem to matter, did it.”

“What's with
you?” she muttered. “You've got all of these people around you — Father Jim, me, Bryan, that student. All of these people, and you're just — this isn't you. This isn't the Sam I remember.”

“That's astute. Did you not hear me, five minutes ago, when I said I was having a hard time?”

“I know
you're having a hard time.” Her own hands were rigid against her mug. “But people die, Sam. It's horrible, but it happens. You have to keep going.”

“Bryan, by the way, says that he's sorry for being a dick. He's in Italy. He's not exactly around right now.”

Her mouth hung open just the tiniest bit — that lip, that red lip that he loved. “What is wrong with you?”

He laughed. “Nothing. Never mind.” He lifted the coffee cup to his mouth. It was empty, but he pretended to drink from it anyway. “What else did Stacey have to say?”

“I think you should see somebody,” she said. “A doctor. A—”

“Priest?” He bit down on the sudden urge to laugh again. “I have a priest living with me now. He even cooks. He makes fantastic pancakes.” He talked faster to hide the panic. Her lips were too
red, her coat too green, the pulse of veins beneath her cheeks visible when he should have seen nothing at all.

“That's good,” she said. “I'm glad you're not alone.”

Two nights ago he
had
woken up on Grouse Mountain, halfway up a tree. Where would he be tomorrow? Would he wake up in
the air this time, floating over that beach, then crash to the ground and pierce his wings on the rocks that sat below? “I have the cat,” he said. It was all he could say. Even his own voice was too loud.

“Sam?” Her voice was worried now. “Sam — are you sick?”

“Yes,” he gasped. He could not stop shaking. Just before his head hit the table he prayed that he would not disappear, that he wouldn't wake up in the ocean, soaking and afraid.

—

He woke up in his own room. Julie sat in a chair beside the bed, Chickenhead in her lap.

“Hi,” she said softly, when he registered that she was there.

“She's in your lap,” he said. The wings were bunched around his head and draped halfway over his face, and the gloves were still on his hands. He was so hot. The room swam in colour, floated in stale air.

“I know,” and she ran a hand through the cat's fur, as though she couldn't quite believe it herself. “She's been here since I sat down.”

“How long have you
been here?” The migraine, or whatever it was, had receded. He felt wrung out, limp.

She shrugged. “A few hours? I'm not sure.”

He tried to sit up, and shook the wings out so that they stretched over either side of the bed. “You didn't have to stay.”

“I know,” she said. She looked calm and regal, composed. “I wanted to make sure you were all right.”

“How did I get home?”

“I called your house,” she said. “Father Jim came right away. And I called an ambulance. They were ready to take you to the hospital, but Father Jim said you'd be all right. He said you were probably just tired. That you haven't been sleeping.”

“That's true.”

“He said you've been sleepwalking,
Sam.”

So he knew. “That's also true.”

“You've never sleepwalked.”

His mouth tasted of decay. “Not that I remember, no.”

“What's wrong? It's not just your mother.” Not so calm now, not so composed. “That day, when you came to see me at work. You asked about Father Jim. Something was wrong then — I knew it. Are you in trouble? Do you need money?”

He laughed, it was so absurd. “No. I don't need money. There's the house, remember?”

“Then what?”
She bit her lip. “I need to know, Sam. I think about you all of the time. I can't sleep. Even Derek's noticed.”

She wouldn't believe him. He knew she wouldn't believe him. Yet he was struck, all the same, by a rush to let her know, to have someone else believe. “I'm just . . . ”

“Yes?” she said, impatient. “You — what?”

“I have wings,” he said. “I woke up a few weeks ago, and they were there. I've had to cut my shirts, Julie. And then Chickenhead got hit by a car, in front of me. And I brought her back. From — wherever.”

Her hand hadn't stopped petting the cat. He stared at it and continued.

“And then Mom died, and I went to find Father Jim. He can see the wings, and so can Emma, and so can Father Mario. But you can't. You can't see them, and you think I'm crazy. Right now. And I'm dreaming strange things and waking up all over the city in the early hours of the morning, and I don't know how I'm getting there. I really don't.” She was still petting the cat. “Chickenhead can see them too, by the way.”

Julie nodded. “I see.”

He let his breath out in a rush. “That's why. That's why . . . everything.”

The line of her shoulders was set, firm. She stared at him until he began to fidget on the bed. “Sam, I think you need help.”

“You do think I'm crazy.”

“I don't think you're crazy,”
she said, hastily. “I just think — ”

“Talk to Father Jim,” he said. “Father Jim will tell you.”

She frowned. “I think that Father Jim is enabling you. He wouldn't even let me take off those silly gloves. Maybe he's doing it because your mother died — I don't know. But I think you're in serious trouble, Sam. You need help
.
Professional
help.”

“Father Jim is a professional.”

“You know what I mean,” she said.

He pulled off his shirt and tossed it to the floor. “You can't see anything.”

“See
what
?”
She let the cat down, then pushed herself off the chair and stood beside the bed, her hands clenched. “There's nothing to see, Sam.”

He closed his eyes against the nausea. “You should probably go.”

She blinked. “I'm trying to help
you.”

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

Julie cleared her throat. She was so close. “Well,” she said stiffly. “You know where I am if you — if you need me.”

“I know,” he said. “Thank you.”

“You're welcome.” She stood up from the chair and went out of the room without speaking. The door closed very quietly.

“She didn't believe me,” he said. To the air, to the cat. What kind of prophet could he be, when even those he loved could not see him, could not see what he was becoming?