The Miracles of Ordinary Men (25 page)

Sam shook his head. “It's Tolstoy. From
War and Peace.
”

Father Jim shrugged. “No matter,” he said. “I think God would approve.” He took the bottle and upended it over his glass. He poured Sam another glass, and another. They sat like this, silent, and drank the whiskey until it was gone.

—

He lay in bed and thought of what he'd seen. A mother, a child. And that other face that had come to him, just for an instant — deep grey eyes, another sharp nose, a mouth twisted in sorrow.

Then the face dissolved, and in its place came nausea so violent, so overwhelming that he wondered for an instant if he'd also disappeared, become nothing more than roiling dark. When he opened his eyes, his fingers were clenched so hard around his sheets they looked like translucent, blue-streaked bone. Something else here that he was missing — God, elusive, teasing, so far beyond him as to be laughable. Uneasy rumble in the stomach.

Time was ticking forward now, so fast and yet so slow. The cat stood wary guard by the door. Against him, for him, who knew. Only God, and God wasn't telling.

—

At some point in the early hours of that last Saturday morning, his dick disappeared. He woke up and shuffled into the bathroom, dropped his pants and there it
wasn't.
A network of blue veins that arced upwards across his pelvis, spreading out from his groin like some kind of cobalt snowflake. That was it.

He shouted into the bathroom air. Just as he had those few weeks ago — months, years, ages
ago — when the wings had first appeared. This time, after Chickenhead ambled into the bathroom, there was a sudden thump on the door.

“Sam? Are you all right?”

He leaned against the bathroom counter and tried to breathe. Couldn't. Dots swam in front of his eyes. Orange dots, red dots. Purple. The world spun. The snowflake did not go away.

“I'm — I'm all right,” he said weakly. “Sorry. I'm okay.”

He could feel the priest's hesitation on the other side of the door. “Are you sure?”

“I'm sure. I had a — bad dream.”

Pause. “All right. If you need anything, I'm — ”

“Across the hall,” he said, sharper than he meant. “I know.”

Another pause, then footsteps moving away.

He didn't have to turn on the light but did it anyway, and slumped against the counter, pants pooled at his ankles. He reached down and touched the snowflake. Touched soft skin stretched tight over veins, a shimmer of blue stretching up to his abdomen.

When he looked into the mirror, everything else looked the same. That was his nose. Those were his ears, his eyes. His teeth. Or were they chipped, the teeth, slightly pointed, slightly not quite the same
?
Were those really his irises — had his eyes always
been that dark? He sucked in a breath and grasped the counter. Pressure locked in his knuckles.

His knuckles. The angel's knuckles. Him. It.

He opened the bathroom door and slipped across the hall, back to his room. He shut the door and spread his palms, so that the light arced above his head and shone out through the window like a flare from the sun. The bedroom was a gallery of dark, muffled shapes, the lattice on the window stark and clear and confining. He closed his eyes and searched
for it — the noise, that feeling he'd had when speaking to the boy in the kitchen. The light was Infinite and cold. Timothy was gone now. He was alone.

It. Could he be a man now? Why was it that he couldn't see Julie's face at all, couldn't see his mother but in shadow, felt his thoughts flicker out to the other man in the house with mild curiosity, as though he didn't actually know who he was? Of course he knew. Father Jim.

“Fa-ther Jim,” he said. He left the room. He walked to the back, and into the garden, and held the door open out of habit, even though Chickenhead wasn't there. He let the door slide shut and stepped barefoot onto the grass. The sun was a faint grey line on the horizon. Frost touched everything — the footprints he left were deep and green. He flexed his toes and felt the soil cold beneath his feet, and then an answering hum from the ground travelled up his legs and connected with the hum in his centre. It was all he could hear. A hum, a pulse of life.

He walked out from the garden to the street. The angel walks the street and all is blue and green and red. The angel leaves bright footprints on the sidewalk. Even the air shimmers.
Light flows like water from doorways.

The angel is a doorway — this much it knows, this much it remembers. But to what?

—

“Sam.
Sam
.”
The priest held him, one hand around his head.

He was falling. Sliding away from all he knew, all he remembered.
Is this what it feels like
,
death?

“Take care of Chickenhead,” he said. “If . . . just if.”

“Sam.” Father Jim's voice was sharp. “You're not
dying
.”

He looked away, across the asphalt. The sun shone a pale ivory over the trees. “I'm not dying,” he agreed. But the boy was gone now, and with him, an anchor that Sam hadn't even realized was there. What was that he'd said?
There's no reason to stay.
He pushed his hands into the dirt and focused. The hum from the ground became the hum in his head.

“I saw you,” said the priest. With his voice, another anchor, a hand to pull him from the dark. “You walked out onto the lawn and collapsed.” He held Sam's shoulder hard. “Would you like me to stay here with you?”

“I'll be fine,” he said. “It was just a spell.”

“You shouldn't be alone right now.”

Is the angel alone? Or is everyone else alone, and lost? “I have — the cat. Chickenhead.”

“I don't know.” Father Jim frowned. He was doing a visit today, down at a neighbouring church. “I think I should cancel.”

“Go,” Sam said, forcing the words out. “You shouldn't stay because of me.” Then a joke, a weak one, just to show that he could still do it, that he was still
Sam.
“Think of all the souls that will be lost without you.”

The priest snorted, and helped him up. “Or the souls that will lose their way when I arrive.”

“That's
cynical,” Sam said, and gasped. He closed his eyes and let the world reverberate in colour beyond him. “Even for you.”

“God loves a cynic,” the priest said, but his tone was unconvincing. “There's just no greater challenge.”

Sam laughed. He wanted to say thank you. To weep. “He's met his match in me, then, I suppose.”

“Yes.” Father Jim smiled. “But then, you've made great work of the Almighty, Sam. God will be thankful, I am sure.”

—

After the priest had gone, Sam walked through the house, touching everything. The photos, the pillows, the clothes that had belonged to Timothy, the clothes they still hadn't moved from the floor. The connection to Father Jim grew fainter. He went outside so that he wouldn't be there when the priest came back. So that he wouldn't disappear
and leave the priest alone.

He walked as far from his old life as he could, and found that his footsteps had taken him to the front of the old cathedral, where he had said goodbye to his mother only weeks ago. This cathedral. Yes. He spread his wings and stepped inside. The air smelled of stone and earth and sorrow.

He saw the priest at the far end of the building — the small priest, the one with the dark hair — and walked toward him. The priest, hearing his footsteps on the stone, turned to Sam and spread his hands.

“Welcome,” he called.

“Fa-ther,” he said. Moving his mouth slow around the words. “Fa-ther Mar-io.”

“Yes.” But the priest frowned. “I am sorry. I forget your name.”

Name. He blinked, and remembered. “Sam. It's Sam.”

“Sam . . .” The priest frowned again. “No. I don't remember a Sam. Perhaps we haven't been introduced?”

He held out his hand, and unfurled the wings so that they spanned the centre aisle. White wings, the tips of the feathers becoming darker now as he watched. He was himself, just for a moment. “Are you sure, Father? I remember you.”

“No,” and the priest took his hand. He smiled. “I always remember a face.”

“Do you remember Carol?” he asked. “Carol Connor?”

“Ah, yes.” The smile disappeared. “So tragic, that. I see her husband almost every day.”

“And her son?”

The priest frowned. “Son? They had no children. They were alone.”

Alone. He nodded, took one step back. “I see.”

“Were you a friend of Carol's?” the priest asked. His own eyes were blurred now, unaware. A miracle come down to touch him, there and then gone. “I do not remember seeing you at the funeral.”

“Yes,” he said softly. “Yes, I was.” He took another step backward, shook his head. “Forgive me, Father.” Fa-ther. “I didn't mean to bother you.” Then he turned on his heel and began to walk back to the entrance.

“Sam?” But he didn't look back, didn't answer. Stepped beyond the door and into the grey light of the day and it was there now,
the noise
,
everywhere. He thought of Father Jim, who might forget him now. Timothy. Julie. Bryan. His mother. An ordinary life, an extraordinary life. He thought of Emma and was sad. Then he turned into the alleyway behind the church and let the light spill onto the ground, up into the trees.

“
Mraiou
.”
The cat. His cat. She stepped out from behind the tree and came to him, stood by his feet. He looked and could not quite believe. His cat. Chickenhead.

“This is just the beginning,” he said. The word rumbled in his mouth, rumbled the ground beneath his feet.

He let everything go.

The cat stood watching him, and did not say a word.

—

The cat walks up to the angel, mewling. The cat winds itself around the angel's feet.
Mraiou. Mraiou.

“Go,” says the angel. The cat stares. It is upset, anxious. The angel hooks its foot under the cat and pushes it away. It hisses, howls, stops. It is only a cat.

“
Go
,”
the angel says again. The angel has a message to deliver. It opens a hand and lets light stream out from its fingertips. Then it turns and begins to walk away. The cat runs beside the angel for a moment, mewing. The angel stops one last time. And one thing flickers at the edge of the angel's mind. A memory.

“Chickenhead,” it says softly. “
Go
.”
This time the cat sits, and when the angel walks away it does not follow. The cat. The animal. The thing with fur.

When the angel reaches the corner, it looks back and sees the animal sitting there, waiting. Fear dribbles from the animal onto the ground. Fear and something else — something darker, deeper, more alone. The angel keeps walking and does not understand. The street becomes a tunnel, the tunnel becomes a corridor, and the corridor moulds beneath the angel's feet until it bears the groove and the dull shimmer of stone.

The angel walks. There is no memory. There is only God.

Finally, at the end of the corridor, a doorway wreathed in shadow. On the other side of the door, a woman. A woman with blonde hair, and despair deep within her soul. The angel walks through the doorway and dissolves into the air.

There is a message to deliver. There is no time for sadness.

I

Sunday

She dreams of wings of her own that burst from her back like light, like a migraine given form. They split her skin and push from her shoulder blades like children. She feels it all — the stretch of cartilage and sinew, the growth of each tiny feather. She stumbles out of her bed and watches in the mirror as they grow, lengthen out into the room. White wings, so bright they reflect light back into her eyes.

Suddenly her bones feel lighter than air. She stands at the edge of her bed and leaps out of the window, and the wings stretch into the air as though she's done this all her life. The currents carry her like a lover. People scurry far beneath her like the tiny ants they are — this way, then that. Meetings and family and money and fights. She looks for her brother and does not find him. She is flying above, beyond the world.

She wakes in Israel's bed, sore and alone. He leaves no note. She dresses quickly and runs away from the house, into the rain.

Monday

The day passes slowly. Israel comes in late and then leaves the office at lunch hour — without speaking to her, without speaking to anyone. Lilah counts her times tables as her hands move over the keyboard. Minutes. Typing. Penny's watchful eye. One times one is one, one times two is two.

He comes back an hour later, frowning, and stops by her desk before continuing to his office.

“Delilah.” He smells of the cold and the ocean.

“Did you have a nice walk?” She keeps typing and doesn't look up. “A nice beachside stroll?”

Israel chuckles. “I did.” Then he frowns. “You left, yesterday. You did not say goodbye.”

Two times two is four. Two times five is ten. “I might say the same for you.”

“I do not need to explain myself to you,” he says.

She still doesn't look up. “And I do?”

For a moment he is silent, the power of his gaze unmistakable even from where she sits, her eyes cast low. She hears him shrug. “No matter. I merely wanted to remind you — we're having dinner again, on Thursday. The Indian restaurant.”

Lilah nods. Her fingers keep moving. “Fine. I'll be there.”

“Of course you will.” He turns to go to his office.

“Israel.” Now she looks up. Across the desk, Debbie is staring at the both of them, transfixed.

“Yes?”

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Ah,” he says. “No, Delilah, I did not.” He smiles faintly. “But this does not surprise you, no?”

She shrugs — the relief is so immediate and strong, she can't say anything. The phone rings, and Debbie picks it up.

“Hello?” Pause. “Yes it is . . . Yes, she's right here.” She puts the phone on hold and nods to Lilah. “It's for you.”

Lilah picks up the receiver and switches the call to her line. “Hello?”

“Delilah?” says a voice. “Delilah Greene?”

“Yes.”

“Delilah, this is Dr. Sand.” Dr. Sand, of the hesitant smile. He's not smiling now — she can tell even over the phone. “I'm afraid I have some bad news.”

Israel has not moved. “Yes?”

“Your mother,” he says. “I'm afraid she passed away a few minutes ago. There was nothing we could do.”

“I see.” She stares at Israel, at the quiet dark of his eyes. He is smiling.

“I'm very sorry,” Dr. Sand says. “But we'll need you to come in to sign some papers and inform us as to what needs to be done with the body. Did your mother leave any instructions?”

Roberta is a body now, only that. “I don't know.” If she is buried, the worms will eat her. If they burn her, the priests will hesitate to guide her soul.

“We have people here,” he says again. Now that it has happened, Dr. Sand is calm and assured. “People who can talk to you. When can you come in?”

“I can be there tomorrow.”

“That's good.” He pauses. “I really am so sorry.”

“That's all right. I'll speak to you in the morning.” She hangs up. She hasn't taken her eyes from Israel.

“More time off?” His voice is calm, entirely unsurprised. “Delilah, this is getting to be a habit with you.”

“Just a few days.” The words are like marbles in her mouth. “My mother is . . . dead.”

Debbie gasps. “Oh, Lilah. I'm so sorry.”

“Indeed.” Israel nods to her. But he does not move. She could be telling him the date, or his own name. Something he's known for ages. “I am also sorry. Take all the time you need, Delilah.”

Three times four is twelve. Eight times eight is sixty-four. Her mother and brother are gone now, and she lives in Vancouver alone. “I might need lots of time,” she says slowly.

“I have all the time in the world for you,” he says, not conscious of Debbie, or not caring. “Surely, Delilah, you know that by now.”

Tuesday

She had planned to take the early ferry; instead, she goes downtown and looks for Timothy. She doesn't find him, which is not surprising. But she walks the daytime streets anyway, and when she asks, no one remembers who Timothy is, or knows where he might have gone. The people who recognized him such a short time ago — these nice people he found on the streets — no longer remember when they look at his picture. She doesn't understand.

“But you sat with him — with both
of us — right over there.” This to Nadia, the woman in the old mink coat who lives in the alleys of East Hastings. “How can you not remember? We ate olives. You said you loved olives.”

“I
do
love olives,” Nadia says, and she has that fuzzy smile that Lilah remembers from her travels years ago, when she was speaking a language that no one understood. “I'm sorry. I don't remember.”

Or this, from one of the bakery men in the West End. “Him? Nah. I'd remember a face like that. Eyes to break your heart.”

Or this, from the cupcake woman. “Poor soul.” She is warm and matronly and her hand on Lilah's shoulder is sympathetic, detached. The hand of a stranger. “I'll keep my eye out, dear, and let you know.” She asks for Lilah's number. Lilah scrawls it, helplessly, across the back of a cupcake napkin.

“You'll tell me if you find him,” Lilah says, echoing her mother. “You'll let me know that he's okay?”

“Of course.” The cupcake woman — her name tag says
BETH
— squeezes her hand. She has already turned back to her icing. “I'm sure he's fine, love. He'll turn up soon enough.”

Suddenly she's so angry she could spit — she leaves the bakery instead, and lets the rage carry her right to the office, and when she's through the front door she tells Penny she's leaving.

“I thought you were going to the hospital,” says Penny. “Mr. Riviera said you were on leave.”

“I
am
on leave,” Lilah says.
Mr. Riviera.
But of course — to the unsuspecting Pennys of the world, he will forever be only the boss. “I'm just not coming back.”

Penny blinks. And then, “Do you think he'll pay for everything?” Black-haired Penny. “Just because you let him fuck you?”

“This has nothing to do with him.” Lilah scowls back at her and wonders why it has taken her so long to let go. “I don't want to make coffee runs for the rest of my life. That's it.”

“Do you have something else lined up?” asks Debbie when Penny stalks out of the room.

“No.” There must be more to life than getting coffee, than staring at a screen. Something. She grips the edge of the desk and closes her eyes, overwhelmed by nausea.

“I know it's a shock,” Debbie says slowly, “with your mother, and Timothy, and — everything. But please be careful, Lilah. Don't make any rash decisions.”

Too late. Panic lodges in her throat. “I'm not, Debbie. Trust me.”

“What about your apartment?” Sweet Debbie. “Do you have any savings? What are you going to do?”

Lilah picks through the papers on her desk and takes her mementos — this pen she likes, this stone that Timothy brought her from the shore. Slowly, her composure comes back. Her fingers close around the pebble. It is hard and smooth. “I don't know. I'll figure it out.”

“Does Israel know?” Debbie asks. “Did he get you another job?”

“No.” She's not sure if this is lying.

Debbie's mouth turns down at the corners, but she nods. “I see.” Then, surprisingly, she leans forward and gives Lilah a hug. “I'll miss you,” she says. “But I'm sure you'll have a grand adventure. Good luck. Call me?”

“Thank you. And yes, I will.” This,
now — this is lying. Lilah hugs her back, and then walks out the door. She does not tell Debbie that Israel's number is safe in her phone, that she'll show up for dinner on Thursday, dressed appropriately and exactly on time. She does not admit that she could run away to Victoria and find him there anyway, that the energy between them is intoxicating even in the midst of her grief. Who would understand?

At the hospital, Dr. Sand is all business, efficient and gentle and calm. Suddenly he seems much older. He puts Lilah in the care of Maria, a woman with warm brown eyes and ample breasts. She sits with Lilah in the hall, and moves down her clipboard.

“Did she ever speak about donation, your mother?” They are too late for organs, now, and so Maria is asking about
tissues.
Skin and bone and heart valves — in the end, this is all we leave to the world.

“No,” Lilah says. She has Roberta's clothes in her lap, her purse already open. There's no organ donor card. “But she might have wanted to. We didn't talk about things like that.”

“What do you think she would want?” Maria asks.

“I think,” Lilah says quietly, “she'd want to give. As much as she could.” She fights the urge to ask if it is possible to harvest Roberta's faith just like her eyes — if they could take her mother's anger and her will and set it loose in the Vancouver air for Timothy to find.

They tick through all the boxes. Then there are other forms to sign, and crematoriums to call. “We can help you make funeral arrangements,” Maria says. “It's a difficult time for everyone involved, we know.”

“There is no ‘everyone,'” Lilah says. “There's just me.” And the church friends — church friends who sent a card, who did not visit. She stares at the floor, at the turned-in peak of her toes. More shoes shuffle past them. More voices rise up and down through the hall. Meetings and family and money and fights — it happens here too. “I just want the ashes,” she says. She can sprinkle them in Roberta's garden, or across the water. Or maybe she can toss them out the window as she drives back to the ferry, and let Roberta ride the air, as if on wings.

“All right.” Maria stands up, her clipboard in hand. She has seen many faces of death — she's not at all surprised. “We'll call them now.”

Lilah signs the rest of the forms and then leaves the hospital. She picks her way slowly along the street. Before long, her footsteps bring her to Roberta's door. Another faded, peeling house in a neighbourhood of faded, peeling houses. She stops with her hand on the doorknob, suddenly afraid. Could Israel be waiting for her on the other side of the door?

She shakes her head and looks around. There is no black car on the street. No unmistakable Emmanuel shadow sitting calm behind the wheel. And the air — the air does not feel as heavy here as it does when Israel is around. No scent of cedar, no tremble of fear in her stomach. She rests her forehead against the wood and pauses anyway, just for a moment. Then she opens the door and walks into the front hall.

The house smells musty, as though it hasn't been opened in years. She drops her bags by the door and this time walks right to Timothy's room. Roberta kept it cleaner than the rest of the house — the bed is made and the clothes are hung neatly. Even his underwear are folded and pressed into place. Only the macramé crafts, which hang untouched on the wall, have begun to gather dust.

She stretches out on the bed and draws the duvet around her, then flips on her side and curls into a ball. The house is empty. The room is empty. The air through her lungs feels empty too.

Wednesday

The crematorium has Roberta's ashes prepared and ready for Lilah by early afternoon. She collects them at two, chooses a plain and practical
carrying container
(no ornate urn for Roberta, whose sole foray into excess ended in the macramé that terrorizes the walls), and heads back to the house.

She cleans for the rest of the afternoon, the music on Roberta's tinny old kitchen radio turned as high as it will go. Beethoven. Mozart. Rachmaninoff. She sweeps up dust from the corners. She scrubs the kitchen sink until it gleams. She heaves the living room furniture against one wall and forces the vacuum across the carpet — the floor was beige when Roberta bought the house all those years ago but now it is an ugly, mottled brown. She takes the plants outside and lines them up on the back porch, then deadheads the flowers until the porch is littered with rusted petals. Her thumbs are slick with grime.

In the bathroom, just about to wash her hands, she notices a line of green under her thumbnails. Chlorophyll. And a clear, sticky residue that has coated the inside of her palms. The plants, it would seem, still harbour secrets. In time they will unfurl, and show their green faces to the rain.

She looks into the mirror, and she is weeping.

—

She goes to bed, and when she wakes some hours later, the house is enveloped in the hesitant darkness that comes at three a.m. She stands up and drags the duvet with her, out of the bedroom and down the hall. The cover trails behind her.

She walks through the kitchen and lets herself out into the cold, and now she is once more on her mother's back porch, staring up at the stars.

“I hate you,” she says. Then she says it again, louder. When she breathes in, it's as though the universe falls all at once into her lungs — she is tiny, she is endless. “I
hate
you!”