River Angel (8 page)

“That's not what I meant,” Marty said. “I mean, we're still friends, aren't we, Anna? Is there anything I can do?”

“Anna
Grey
,” Anna Grey said. “My name is Anna
Grey
.” And then she grabbed her purse from her desk, lifted her coat from its hook, and ran down the hallway toward the parking lot, hating the hard, frantic sound of her heels on the tiled floors. Outside, the air was thick with the odor of the fertilizer plant, but it smelled worse than usual: oilier, sharper. She thought of the smoke boiling up from the fires in the Gulf, the pale sky opening to receive it, and at that moment she felt the bump forming at the edge of her lower lip. In the car, she flipped down the vanity mirror, stared at her reflection. Nothing. Yet she could
feel
something with her tongue. The most terrifying things were the ones you couldn't see, the ones you harbored inside yourself. She remembered how, after Chernobyl, she'd listened to reports that said the cloud of radiation would reach America in four days, then two days, then one. That day, nothing had seemed different on the surface, but in the middle of the afternoon, a faint shadow passed over the sun and she felt the radiation settling into her bones, sparkling like diamonds, waiting for a chance to make the right cell blossom.

CURIOUS ABOUT US
? We'd love to meet you! The Circle of Faith holds open meetings the first Saturday of every month. Healing Prayers, Practical Advice, and some Good Laughs too. For women of all ages—nonjudgmental, supportive. Stay for a spaghetti supper with garlic bread, green beans, and choice of dessert. Fair Mile Crossroads, 4
P.M
. Free child care provided by Cherish Mader and Lisa Marie Kirsch
.

—
From the
Ambient Weekly

February 1991

Circle of Faith
meetings were held at the Fair Mile Crossroads in a building that had once been a Pump and Go, and seasoned members still talked about the work it had taken to conquer the odor of gasoline and mildew. But Janey Fields had joined only last year, and it was hard for her to imagine the Faith house as anything other than the cozy place it was, with comfy castoff couches and homemade curtains, card tables, a refrigerator, and an interpretive mural of the Resurrection, which Ruthie's daughter, Cherish, had been working on under Maya Paluski's supervision. Jesus' body was complete, but he still had no face or feet or hands. Cherish said she'd finish them as soon as she'd done more preliminary sketches. In the meantime, Maya had started painting angels all around him, ordinary-looking women dressed in business suits, lab coats, aprons, maternity dresses. One was holding an artist's palette; Maya said that was for Cherish. She said that Cherish Mader was the most talented art student she'd ever had. Cherish wasn't a member of the Circle—she was only seventeen—but she often helped out around the Faith house. To
day she'd made the coffee and set out cups and saucers before heading back home to work on a paper for school.

Beyond the wide display windows, the razor lines of the plowed county highways sliced the snowy fields into precise geometric shapes.
Like ice cream sandwiches
, Janey thought. Snow had been falling steadily since morning, but nine Faith members had shown up for the Saturday meeting in spite of the weather: Ruthie Mader, of course, and Janey; Margaret Kirsch, whose daughter Lisa Marie was Cherish's best friend; Maya Paluski; Lorna Pranke; Jolena Carp; Shelley Beuchel; Tabby and Mary Smoot, who were sisters; and finally the newest member, Anna Graf—no, they were to call her Anna
Grey
. Last week's meeting had been a spaghetti supper, open to any woman who wanted to come, more of a social event than anything. But today's meeting was closed, which meant that only full members could attend. Anna Grey had just been initiated; she kept reaching for her gold Faith cross as if she were afraid she might have lost it. Her eyes were puffy and red, and when Ruthie asked, she said she'd had a fight with her husband. He didn't like the idea of her joining a women-only prayer group, and everyone smiled sympathetically when she told them that.

“My husband was the same way,” Shelley assured her, “until he started seeing the difference in me.” Shelley had just finished her last round of chemo; her head was wrapped in a pretty floral scarf the Circle had given her to celebrate.

Anna Grey said, “I'm sure I could set myself on fire and Bill wouldn't see any difference in
me
.” You could tell she was trying to be funny, but her smile was more like the wince of someone who'd just stepped on something sharp.

“Look at it this way,” Ruthie said. “He's noticed
this
change in you, hasn't he? You decide to take some time for yourself, just once a week, just to pray with friends, and suddenly you're on his mind. It's a start, really, if you think of it that way.”

For the first time, Anna Grey looked directly at Ruthie, and Janey remembered how it had been when she herself, new to the group, first looked into Ruthie's deep-set eyes. Ruthie wasn't exactly what you'd call pretty, but there was something about the way she gave you her full attention when she spoke, and the plain, old-fashioned way she pulled back her hair—she didn't have a permanent, like the others—and the loose dresses she always wore, which seemed to change direction about a quarter second after she did…it was hard for anyone to explain. You just had to see her, and once you did, you were forever changed. When Ruthie took your hand during a Circle of Prayer, it was like nothing you'd ever felt before. It was leaving the misery of the body. It was going out beyond yourself so you saw all sides to everything. It was loving what you saw and carrying that love back with you so that, when you opened your eyes again, people glowed with a fresh, whole light.

Lorna put her hand over her mouth, the way she always did when she wanted to speak. “Stan looks forward to my meetings,” she said, “because he gets the house to himself. We never realized how rarely that happened all those years, with him working and me at home. Now he plays around in the kitchen, invents sandwich combinations. He calls them his
Stanleys
.” Lorna laughed. “He offered to make us a dozen for today. I put him off this time, but, ladies, you've been warned.”

Everybody was laughing now, if a little ruefully. These days, they were all praying for the chief, whose mind simply wasn't what it used to be. They were praying for Lorna, whose health had been poor ever since her hysterectomy. They were praying for Shelley's cancer cells to melt away. They were praying for Jolena Carp's retarded son, Lovey, who was twenty-two years old and unable to speak; for Tabby and Mary's ailing dog, Buster; for Maya Paluski's diabetes; for various troubled marriages, lost jobs, problems with alcohol. They prayed that Ruthie would find a way
to pay the back taxes on her farm so she wouldn't have to sell out to Big Roly, as so many others had done. Technically, Big Roly owned the Faith house; he'd let Ruthie fix it up and use it for next to nothing, hoping to soften her up. But all of them knew that try as he might, Big Roly would never get Ruthie's land. For when they joined hands in that comfortable room, a constellation of gold crosses shining at their throats, no one could doubt that her prayers would be answered.

Ask and ye shall receive; seek and ye shall find; knock and the door shall be opened to you
. These were the words Faith members lived by, and one only had to look at Shelley, now in a second remission against every medical prediction, to know that God was listening. Jolena Carp's Lovey, still unable to speak, had started to crayon beautiful pictures; Maya was managing her diabetes through diet and exercise. Last fall, when it looked as though Ruthie wouldn't come up with her minimum tax payment, the Circle met at night to join hands, and the next day, she won nine hundred dollars at bingo, the largest pot in Saint Fridolin's history. Sometimes it seemed to Janey as if everyone's prayers except her own were being answered. But it was wrong to think that way, for God revealed His glory in His own good time. Infertility might have left her devastated, cost her a marriage, shaken her to the core; still, she had to believe that this, like all things, was a part of God's plan. If she only had faith the size of a mustard seed, He would focus His healing power upon her.

Now they began the meeting by asking for God's blessing. Today's topic was the story of the Good Samaritan, and after Ruthie had finished reading from the Bible, she invited them to share encounters with Good Samaritans they had known. Anna Grey talked about Maya's persistent concern over her unhappiness at work; Shelley told about a woman from her church who'd brought supper to Shelley's family for two weeks while Shelley was in the hospital. Tabby and Mary talked about the time their
car broke down coming back from Madison and a man and his two young boys had stopped to help. While he fixed their car, the boys sang a duet they had been practicing for a play at school. “There we were on the interstate,” Tabby said, “all these semi trucks roaring by and the boys just singing away. We tried to pay their father, but he wouldn't take our money. Wouldn't even let us give those boys a dollar.”

“Though we slipped them a little something while his back was turned,” Mary said.

And so it went, and as the women talked, they found themselves recalling times they'd tried to help someone and been rebuffed, or needed help themselves and had not received it, or themselves walked on past another soul in need. They talked about their children, their husbands, parents and siblings and friends. They talked about their jobs, books they had read, places they had visited or hoped someday to go. They gave advice, laughed, and listened. And then, as the meeting drew to a close, they all joined hands to form a Circle of Prayer for Good Samaritans everywhere. Angels, Ruthie called them. Though it was rare to encounter a spirit angel, there were many human angels in the world, ordinary people just like any one of them. One person
could
make a difference. One person had the
power
to change the way things were, to transform the events of daily life into multiple blessings. The meeting ended with each woman in turn reaffirming her Vow of Silence, a vow which assured that whatever had been said within Faith walls would remain there.

Afterward, there was always punch and cookies, a little bit of sweet wine. So it was late in the afternoon by the time Janey finally headed home on County O, passing Tom Mader's memorial cross, its crisp plastic necklace of roses. Behind it, the Neumillers' Holsteins were confined to a single icy pasture, and it seemed to Janey there was wistfulness in the way they stared past the electric fence at the unspoiled whiteness of fields. She re
membered making snow angels with her brothers, how they'd visit friends in the country and spend an afternoon making a chain of angels stretching as far as the eye could see. It was a happy memory, and Janey gave thanks for this small gift. She always felt good after Faith meetings. Perhaps, when she got back to her parents' house, she'd do some more work on her résumé. Tabby Smoot managed a Pizza Hut, and though she had no job openings at present, she'd encouraged Janey to apply in case something came available. There was also a job at the Badger State Mall, which Ruthie had seen in the
Ambient Weekly
. It had been a year since Janey had moved home from Green Bay, and all the Faith members said she'd feel better once she was earning money again, getting out of her parents' house.

The snow had let up, and now the sky cracked and bled, releasing its pale yolk of sun. Farther up the road, the fields were spotted with new ranch houses, crisscrossed by snowmobile tracks as savage as welts left by a whip. Something in the distance caught Janey's eye—three snowmobiles making lazy buzzard circles not twenty yards from the edge of the highway. As she approached, she saw they were circling someone. The figure floundered in the deep snow as the snowmobiles went round and round. At times, they cut so close that he disappeared in a powdery plume—she could tell it was a boy; they were all boys—but when the snow settled, Janey saw he was still there.

She slowed reluctantly. All she wanted to do was keep on driving until she reached her parents' house, go up to her room, turn on the little typewriter that Mary and Tabby had loaned her. Perhaps she could finish the résumé today, have it ready to mail out on Monday—a small step, but more than she'd felt able to accomplish in months. The boy probably lived nearby anyway, in one of those ugly ranches that were going up left and right. Developers like Big Roly bought the old farmsteads for nothing, subdivided them into residential lots, and sold them to people
nobody knew. Or maybe the boy's own snowmobile had broken down somewhere, and the others were going to help him fix it. Or perhaps this
was
a spat between kids. In that case, what right did Janey have to meddle? All of these thoughts were going through her mind when, beneath her thick wool scarf, she felt the weight of her Faith cross tapping lightly against her collarbone. Once, she would have overlooked the significance of such a thing, but Ruthie had taught her to recognize God's nudge, His whisper in her ear.

She pulled up alongside the shoulder, as close as she could without getting stuck. It took a while before the boys noticed her; when they did, they darted a few yards farther into the field and waited, engines idling. The boy they'd been tormenting stared at the ground. She could see his shoulders moving, as if he were breathing hard, or crying. “You want a ride?” she called, stepping off the shoulder. The snow was deeper than she'd realized, and she promptly sank to her knees. One of the boys cut his engine, motioned the others to do the same. “C'mon,” he hollered. “We'll take you there this time.”

“Yeah, we promise,” another boy said.

“Let me give you a ride,” Janey called again, and when the boy turned his face toward the sound of her voice, she saw the blood on his chin. Who knew what might have happened to him had she hardened her heart and driven on by? The boy hesitated briefly, looked back at the others. They all were younger than Janey first thought—twelve, maybe thirteen, tops. Too young to be playing on snowmobiles unsupervised. When the boy began trudging toward her, they started their engines again, hooted and jeered. Janey couldn't hear what they were saying. It was probably just as well.

“Where did you want to go?” Janey said, leading him back to her mother's Buick. “I can take you there.” She wasn't sure if she should drive him to the hospital or what. Maybe he needed
stitches. Or a tetanus shot. As they pulled away, the boys rode off into the fields, shrank to dim specks, vanished like demons.

“Are you lost?” Janey said. “Where do you live, near the Crossroads?”

“Do you have anything to eat?” the boy asked.

“No,” Janey said. It was an odd question, though reassuring. If he was hungry, he couldn't be badly hurt.

“Oh,” the boy said. “What about gum?”

“Gum isn't good for you. It rots your teeth.”

“Not sugar-free gum.”

“That's bad for your kidneys,” Janey said—she remembered reading that somewhere. Or maybe her father had told her. At any rate, the boy certainly didn't
look
like he needed something to eat. In fact, he carried quite a bit of extra weight. But thoughts like that were judgmental, wrong. She tried to think of what Ruthie would do in a situation like this. She tried to see the boy through Ruthie's eyes, to open her mouth and let God move her tongue, which Ruthie said was just a matter of having faith that all the right words would be there.

“What's your name?” she said. “What were you doing in the field?” But the boy simply repeated that he was hungry, using his coat sleeve to wipe at his chin. Janey's father was a retired GP. Perhaps the best thing was to take him home, let Dad check him out.