Web of Angels (6 page)

“And you’re doing something useful, not just talking. What do you shoot with?”

“Remington rifle for deer, shotgun for birds.” She laughed. “I never imagined that a mother of three, here in granola land, would have any interest in hunting.”

“Yeah. Well. You don’t know someone till you do.”

Ingrid took a deep drag on her cigarette, then flicked it into the yard, lighting another. “It was my gun. The kid appropriated it. But it was mine.”

She stood under the porch light, sucking down the nicotine as fast as she could get it into her lungs.

“Feels like you did it?” he asked.

“If we hadn’t rented the house … But our apartment was too small for the dogs.”

He looked over the yard. His eyes were used to making out shapes in the darkness, discriminating between monsters and, say, that ash tree or the tarp thrown over Eleanor’s gas barbecue. “She was the one who took it. And the one who used it.”

“But I was right next door and didn’t give any thought to my gun cabinet except to make sure it met the legal requirements. Anyone could have broken in. I’d just got back from the observatory. I didn’t want to wake up Amy, so I went upstairs to my office.” She glanced at him. “You live that close to someone’s house, you hear things. It can’t be avoided.” She moved her hand as if to stub out the cigarette and say something else, but instead she took another drag, smoking it down to the filter. The backyard faced the railroad tracks a block north, but the track was hidden by trees. “Whatever. There are too many houses jammed together. I don’t know how people can breathe.”

“I like it out here. It’s quiet. Bet it’s a lot quieter when you go hunting.”

“Deer and moose season aren’t till fall. But turkey’s coming up. Can you shoot?”

He was actually a very good shot. But he was here to protect the life, not live it. Everyone inside had to make things look normal. And Sharon hated guns. “I haven’t for a long time,” he said.

Ingrid was taking a pen from her pocket, writing on a
scrap of paper. “I’ve really got to go home and let the dogs out. Here’s my e-mail address. If you want to come with me to the shooting range, let me know.”

Alec shoved the piece of paper in his pocket. What else could he do with it? Someone like him didn’t have friends. He did his job. That was all.

A
lec parked the minivan in front of Rick and Debra’s house, wheels on the sidewalk, hazard lights blinking. Then he stacked the cartons and carried them, two at a time, to the porch before ringing the bell.

“Hi Mrs. Lewis,” Cathy said as she opened the front door.

“I’ve got some stuff here for you,” Alec said. “Did Eleanor phone about it?”

“Oh. We haven’t been answering the phone. Mom!” Cathy called over her shoulder. “Mrs. Lewis is here.” Her parents had raised her with an old-fashioned politeness: never call adults by their first names and other rules that she generally obeyed and her sister had not.

“Tell her to come in.”

“No thanks,” Alec said. “I’d better …”

But Cathy’s mom was at the door, looking with bewilderment at the cartons on her porch as if she didn’t know what to do with them.

“I’ll just bring these in then, okay?” he asked. “Kitchen?”

“Yes. Please,” Debra said—always Debra, never Debbie or Deb, and in her pediatric office, Dr. Dawson. She looked like her daughters, both of them, the one who’d survived and the one who was gone, slender and blonde, though Heather had countered the resemblance by chopping her hair short, sometimes wearing clothes that swallowed her up, leaving her formless, or at other times showing everything she could legally show. Debra dressed tastefully even in grief. As she often told her daughters, People who do well, do well. She worked here in the neighbourhood, her practice on Hammond Street above Magee’s. Parents felt reassured by her assuredness, for she always ordered lots of tests, and they’d heard that in an emergency, someone could even bring a sick kid to her house in the middle of the night.

All of this Alec knew though he drew no conclusions from it. He’d been back out in the life for the last two years, observing how it had changed, watching kids in the neighbourhood play, fight, fall out of trees, get soothed, yammer for ice cream when the ice cream truck drove by the playground with its hypnotically cheerful song. And while he was watching he found things to do.

Last summer Heather had come over one day when he was in the backyard, stripping paint off a table top he’d picked up at a yard sale. She was going door to door, selling raffle tickets for one of her parents’ charities. She was practically bald then; her head looked like a grey stone covered with golden fuzz. People said her parents had had her head shaven because of lice. They said she’d shaven her own head out of spite.

“Ten dollars each,” she’d said sullenly. He hadn’t known she was pregnant. She wasn’t showing yet. “Your chances of winning are one in five.”

“That sounds like high odds.”

“It is.” She’d suddenly grinned. One of her eyeteeth was chipped. “I lied.”

“Okay, but move. You shouldn’t be standing so close to the chemicals. It’s bad for you.”

She’d put a hand on her belly as she peered at him suspiciously. “Did my sister say something to Josh?”

“It’s bad for kids, that’s all. I don’t let them in the yard when I’m using paint stripper.”

He’d gone into the house to get some money for the raffle tickets, figuring that was expected. When he came back, Heather was still outside, sitting in the girls’ sandbox, overalls rolled up, drawing with a stick. There were no clues in the drawings, just random shapes, triangles, spirals. When she saw Alec, she scratched a tic-tac-toe board into the sand, putting an
X
in the middle. Obligingly, he made an
O
though he had no chance of winning with the
X
placed there. “I’m going for a draw,” he’d said. “Why’d you shave your head?”

“It’s the antidepressants,” she’d said. “They make me so hot.” She’d laughed then.

“I get it,” Alec said. “Very funny. But I thought that antidepressants, you know, shut that down.”

“I guess I won’t make it as a hooker.” And then she’d laughed even harder. She’d stayed in the sandbox, making a tower of sand while Alec went back to working on the table. Now and then he glanced over at her. Once she looked back
at him, with eyes as lucid as bright moons. “My sister has sold a lot of tickets. She always does, so, like they wouldn’t put her on pills. You know what I mean? No matter what, she’ll be okay. Thanks for letting me stay here for a while.”

“No problem.” He’d paused, shaking off bits and pieces of thought from others inside, wanting to see just what was in front of him. It was late afternoon, a half moon rising over the yard, and the wind couldn’t make up its mind, coming from the north, then turning south and west, clouds moving in and out. The girl stood there in her rolled-up overalls, ankles bare and mosquito bitten, new sneakers pristine, her chest already starting to swell, not that he would have noticed that then. What he saw was that her overalls had a lot of pockets and that there were things hidden in them, as if she didn’t trust them as far away as the bag she carried. There was something he wanted to say to this kid. To tell her he’d run off at her age, too, and had driven up to his uncle’s. Only he’d come back because he had a little sister at home. Then he’d ask her where she’d run and why she’d come back. But while he hesitated, unsure of himself in this mom’s life, she’d said goodbye, ducking her head as if the sky was too low.

On the porch of Heather’s house, Alec bent to pick up two cartons of food, straightened up and walked in. The kitchen was at the back, as in most houses, the front door leading first to what was on display—a living room with pale carpeting and dark furniture built to maximize utility in a small space. Past the living room was the den, more casual, with cushiony
pieces, a thick rug, a framed family portrait on the wall and photographs of the sisters in their reindeer costumes, dancing in
The Nutcracker
. Finally the kitchen, efficient and gleaming in brushed aluminum marred only by take-out containers of Chinese food. He put the cartons beside them.

Heather’s dad, Rick, was sitting at the table, stirring sugar into his tea. His hobby was digital photography, but he was a professor of business ethics. Nothing important happened in the neighbourhood without his assistance. The arena had been renovated through a corporate sponsorship he’d arranged, the after-school program Learn About the World was his brainchild and had become a model for intercultural programs. He sat on the boards of numerous charities, some of which raised money through the sale of raffle tickets. He was blond, like his wife, and wiry. They could have been brother and sister. But he wore his grief more obviously, his eyes bloodshot, his clothing rumpled.

Alec returned with two more cartons and Debra was asking, “Couldn’t you have some tea?” Without waiting for a reply, she poured it for him and pulled out a chair.

Cathy was leaning against the wall, staring at the blank fridge. There were no photographs or lists on it, the shiny front undisrupted.

“We had a lock on the medicine cabinet,” Rick said, putting more sugar in his tea as if he’d forgotten that he’d already sweetened it while Debra sat down in the chair beside his.

“My sister’s flying in tomorrow,” she said, pouring tea for herself. “Rick’s cousin lives in the city, which makes things easier, but his brother couldn’t get a flight this morning. He’ll
be here later tonight. We’re going to have her cremated.” Alec didn’t flinch, though others inside did. “I don’t want anyone trying to put her back together and make her look pretty. It wasn’t pretty.”

Alec sat with his feet planted flat on the floor, knees apart. In his hand the china teacup, rose patterned, held a dainty quantity of tea. It wasn’t bad. Milky and sweet. “That took a lot of guts what you did,” he said.

“I couldn’t be a mother right then. In a crisis one has to focus.” As a doctor, she said, she knew there was only one thing left to do: extract the fetus quickly. The body would incubate it for five minutes to eight at most. There was no thought of whose body.

Alec did what he knew how to do, listen rather than speak, taking in whatever strangeness was before him until action was required.

When she fell silent, Alec asked, “How’s the baby?”

“She’s in the neonatal ICU,” Debra replied. “I’ll go back to the hospital tomorrow, but there’s no reason to think she shouldn’t do well.”

“I thought Heather would do better at home,” Rick said in the same whispery way he’d spoken about the medicine cabinet, as if his daughter’s death had left him transparent, his organs barely held in by skin. “There was no reason to make her go away.”

“You’d never let her,” Cathy said. And then bitterly, “Even though she never did what you wanted.”

“She was still our daughter. Regardless.” Rick put more sugar in his tea. He hadn’t drunk any of it yet. “But if we had
sent her away, then maybe she’d be alive. If only we’d left the other side of the house vacant. We were thinking that we would renovate before we rented it out again.”

“Without the gun, she’d have done something else,” Debra said. “The baby would have died if she’d thrown herself off a bridge. Look, I’m not going to sugar-coat this. Thank God she was close enough to term. Think of the silver lining. We still have our baby and we’ll be able to bring her home soon. Heather didn’t take her away, too.” She turned to Alec. “Thank you for having Cathy over yesterday.”

“She can come over anytime she wants. You don’t need an invitation, Cathy.”

He noticed then that Cathy’s feet were bare, her legs were bare, her skirt short even though the house was cold, conserving energy. Her top was thin, you could see the outline of her bra through it. When she felt Alec’s glance on her, she moved her shoulders back, making the most of what little she had as if it was automatic, sensing that a guy sat at her parents’ table, whatever the outward appearance. “I can help babysit.” She flicked her hair, head slightly tilted. “Or whatever.”

“There’s always place for you at our house, kiddo. No payback.”

Cathy didn’t answer; she was looking at her dad stir his tea. Forming words had become too hard for both of them.

After a pause, her mother said, “Thank you. As long as she keeps up with her school work.”

“I guess the kids can study together,” Alec said. “Josh is a good kid. He’s doing all right.”

“One can’t let grades slip. People who do well do well.”

Cathy nodded, the familiar phrase a steel rod along her spine, allowing her to shift away from the wall as though she could now stay vertical without it holding her up, moving to stand beside her father’s chair.

“Thank God I still have you.” Rick looked up at his daughter.

“You always have me, Daddy.” She leaned toward him and his arm went around her waist. He put his cup to his lips, took a swallow, then grimaced. “Too sweet.”

“I’ll be heading out unless there’s something else I can do here,” Alec said. It had been a long day and even he was tired, the headache getting worse. As soon as he got the car back to Eleanor’s, someone else would have to come forward.

“We’re fine. Thank you for everything,” Debra said.

Cathy was washing the cup in the sink as Alec said goodbye, her hair twisted up and out of the way, held in a knot with a wooden chopstick. Her back was straight, her feet turned out, her elbows oddly bruised.

It was dark and the inside children cried from the cold, but the Overseer was deaf to their whining and indifferent to the chill. The sub-basement was big enough to contain them and the basement just as big, though it felt too small for him as he paced in the darkness. He wasn’t afraid. Only someone weak would be afraid of his enemy or his last resort. People
averted their eyes from death, believing they knew how it had come when they had barely perceived its outline. How could they appreciate its power, its drive and its cunning? The girl who died had stolen herself from her parents. She could not endure; that showed weakness. She had used a weapon, which took strength. But if she was strong, why did she desert her family? Family is all, it is everything, the one place where you have a place.