The Miracles of Ordinary Men (12 page)

“Well.” Father Jim moved his boots against the wall. “It's done now. There's nothing more to do.”

“No.” They had taken the ashes down to the ravine that morning and sprinkled them among the dirt and water. “I suppose there isn't.”

They moved to the kitchen, and the priest went to the refrigerator, pulled out potatoes, carrots. “Stew?”

Sam wasn't hungry. Had he been hungry, at all, since the day the wings had arrived? “That's fine.”

Father Jim took out a knife and began to chop the carrots. “I spoke with Julie for a while,” he said. “Back at the house, while you were asleep.”

“And?”

He shrugged. “There's a sadness there that I don't remember.”

It was two years ago. It had only been two years. “It was a sad time.”

“What happened, Sam?”

“She was pregnant, and the baby died.” He coughed. “A few months before the wedding.” And then what? A mistake, a fumble into another woman's apartment late one Saturday night. And then another mistake, and another. “She was too sad,” he said, hating the words, hating himself. How to explain? How to make it believable,
and understandable, that feeling of not knowing what to do, what came next? “I couldn't — I didn't know what to do. I wanted to be there for her, and I ended up being there
for other people. Other women.”

“I see,” the priest said. Was that contempt? Was he imagining it? “So she was the one who called off the wedding.”

“Yes.” Sam rested his forehead against his hands. The wings slid forward so that feathers tickled the back of his neck. “She moved out, and met Derek.” Derek the professor. Derek the would-be Buddhist. “And now, here we are.”

Father Jim shook his head as he diced an onion. His fingers were squat and strong around the knife. “There's something unfinished there. Between you two.”

“It doesn't matter,” Sam said. “Not now. Whatever I did to make this happen — it's done. She's done.”

“And who else is there, then? In your life?”

He shrugged. “No one. I've been busy, with teaching. And now, with this.”

“And other friends? Other people?”

“There's not much else.” The job. The cat.

“Time was, Sam, that would have been different.”

“I know.” He shrugged. Time was,
he'd been surrounded by people. “They were Julie's friends. They sided with Julie. Who could blame them?”

“There's no one else?”

He thought of Emma. “Not really.”

“That's not good.”

“This from the man who lives with trees for ten months of the year.”

“You think I'm not involved?” said the priest. “You think I don't do things, see people?”

“I'm involved,” Sam protested. But already he could feel the argument thinning, becoming tired. He was not close with his kids anymore. He skulked the halls — had done so, truth be told, even before the wings. There was Bryan, whom he'd seen more in the past two weeks than he had in months. Janet, Doug — they would disappear now, eventually. There
was
no one else.

“It's not good for man to be alone,” Father Jim said softly.

Sam snorted. How many classes had he taught, how many times had he argued and tried to make them see
how words could structure things, make the world new from one syllable to the next? “Maybe I'm not a man anymore.”

The priest sat unfazed. But then, he was someone whose path had not changed, whose life had not become something other. “I think,” and Sam had the impression that the priest was choosing his words very carefully, “that I'm going to stay here for a while. With you.”

“I'm not an invalid,” Sam snapped. Then he was ashamed, and sorry, and he turned to hide it. “Everything's been taken care of. It's fine.”

“It's not fine,” Father Jim said. “But that's all right.”

“Don't you have — ” and he waved his hand “ — duties? Classes, retreat issues, that kind of thing? What on earth
will the brothers do without you?”

Father Jim ignored the jab. “I think you need me here. That's all.”

“That's . . . that's . . . ”
Pathetic
,
he wanted to say. But the word would not come out.

The priest shrugged. “Call it whatever you like. But you'll need someone here, Sam, before all this is through.”

He waited until Father Jim had finished with the onion. “What do you think you'll have to do?”

“We bear witness,” said the priest. “It might be useful, Sam. Someone to believe.”

He laughed. “In me? Or in God?”

Father Jim shrugged. “In you, or in God,” he said, echoing those words that Sam's mother might have voiced, given the chance. “Or both. Does it matter?”

—

Later that night he woke in the dark, in his own room, Chickenhead a rumbling mass at his feet. For a moment he couldn't remember why he'd awoken, and then he moved his shoulder and felt it, that sharp spike of pain. Deep breath. He turned his head slowly and saw that the left wing had somehow become tangled in the sheets, in the space between the bed and the nightstand. He twisted around and a muscle in his back popped, then popped again. He reached his hand over and pulled the wing out of the gap, unwound the sheets. The material was damp, as though he'd been tossing in fear.

Freed, the wing bounced softly in the air just above his ear, the feathers crumpled and bent. He raised both hands and pulled the wing between them, smoothing down the feathers. Chickenhead, oblivious, slept on.

The wing slid through his fingers like water. It was soft, and yet not-soft — the wispy down of each single feather a mask for the ribbed cartilage that lay beneath. He lay still and listened to Chickenhead, snoring faintly at the end of the bed. Perhaps he could fly now, if he wanted. If he gathered the courage to try. The world both above and below, and people spread beneath him like children, so completely unaware of how their lives could change.

VII

On Wednesday, Lilah and Debbie have a dinner date, so instead of scouring the evening streets for Timothy, Lilah finds herself in a West End café, eating scrambled eggs out of an avocado. Debbie is in yellow and has flowers in her hair.

“Tell me everything,” she says. She eats wholegrain pasta and orders a cup of herbal infusion, what the junior manager, Colin, calls
lesbian tea.
“You've been too quiet this whole week. How did it go?”

Lilah pours hot sauce onto her spoon and licks it straight. “It was . . . interesting.” Israel, above her. Israel, around her, inside of her, everywhere. She taps the spoon against her teacup. “We went to the Indian restaurant, the one on Eleventh.”

“Yes,” says Debbie. “The one that everyone talks about. Did he pay?”

For some strange reason, this makes her laugh. “Of course he paid. And he had his chauffeur
drive me home.”

“Lifestyles of the rich and famous.” Unbelievably, there's a note of envy in Debbie's voice. “And?”

“And what?”

“And then what happened?”

“And — nothing.” Lilah shrugs, suddenly thrumming with fear. How much of this is she going to tell? Once upon a time she'd have had a gaggle of girlfriends to regale. Now there is only Debbie, eager on the other side of the table. What would she say if she knew?

“Come
on
,
Lilah. You went on a date with Israel Riviera! The entire office is talking.”

“Sure they are.”

“I'm serious.” Debbie pours more tea. “You aren't in those meetings. You don't see the way that Penny looks at him. Like she wants to kiss him and squish him beneath her shoe all at once.
Everyone's
scared of him, and
everyone
adores him, in a weird, worshipping kind of way, and last Saturday he went out with you
.
And now you're going around the office and sitting in front of your computer like it's no big deal.” Debbie picks up the spoon and stirs her cup of tea, her nonchalance so studied it's almost comical. “That mark there, on your lip — did you fall?”

“My brother,” Lilah says, her hand going automatically to her face. Luckily the Timothy story makes sense. She told Debbie about Timothy some weeks ago. This is the other thing they share in their sterile, stupid office — stories of a boy, lost and wandering on grey city streets.

“Oh.” Debbie relaxes. “Is he okay?”

“He's fine,” she says, because Timothy is as fine as Timothy can be. Lying over a grate somewhere or shivering in some alleyway or stealing food from a restaurant garbage bin. She pulls concealer from her purse and dabs more of it over her lip.

“So?” Debbie asks. “Come on, Lilah. How was the date?”

“The date was fine.”

“Does Joel know?”

“I don't think,” Lilah snaps the concealer case shut, “that Joel will be around much anymore.”

“Ah.” Debbie, bless her, lets her keep this, lets Lilah turn back to her meal. “Are you going to go on another date?”

She thinks of Timothy, somewhere on the streets. The crack of Israel's hand. “There are — there's so much other stuff
going on, Debbie. I don't know.”

“Of course. I'm sorry.” Debbie is an only child and has been in one relationship forever. “I just — it's exciting. He's quite striking, Israel. I've always thought that.”

“He's very . . . intense.”

“I'd expect so.” Debbie says, her voice firm with the confidence of the young. “A man can't have hands like that and be wishy-washy. It just doesn't mix.”

Lilah laughs in spite of herself. She wonders what Timothy's hands say about him. “He has these crocheted doilies all over his apartment. Apparently his mother made them, and she's been dead for years. Don't you find that creepy?”

“My mother made doilies,” Debbie says. She plunges her tea bag in and out of the cup, clears her throat.
So you went to his apartment.
“She won't do it now because they've gone out of fashion, but when I was little we had them all over the house. Didn't your mother do things like that?”

“I suppose.” Roberta was into macramé, when she wasn't raging against men or praying at the church. She made Lilah a hideous green wall hanging that had pockets for her books; whenever Lilah had friends over, she took it off the wall and crumpled it under the bed. Eventually, though, the macramé stopped. By the time Lilah moved out, Roberta was too occupied with Timothy to do anything other than pray. But perhaps she's begun again now, these years on. From what Lilah hears of her during their strained hours on the phone, there isn't much more for Roberta to do.

“Anyway,” Debbie says, “that's kind of sweet. He must have loved his mother.”

She moves her hand up to her jaw and traces the skin. “I guess.”

Debbie's eyes narrow. “Lilah. Come on.”

“It's nothing.” Debbie has been living with her partner for most of her young adult life. They go to the cheap two-for-one movie showings every Sunday and are planning to buy a condo next year. It hurts, knowing that for some people there is this much happiness in the world. “It's just different from anything else I've ever done. I don't really know how I feel about it.”

“You can't know how you feel about someone on your first date,” Debbie says, her voice solid with authority. “Maybe you just need to give it time.”

“Maybe.” Lilah bites into her avocado and lets it slide around on her tongue.

Debbie crunches into her sandwich. “Or maybe it's just weird because it's a work thing. I'd sure feel weird if my boss started whisking me away to dinner. At least at first.”

She winces. “Yeah. Sorry about that.”

“Why be sorry?” Debbie shrugs. How funny, that she can be so romantic and yet so practical all at once. “He's interested in you. You're interested in him. He's the boss — why not take advantage?
I
would.”

“I don't believe you.”

Debbie laughs. “True. But then, this isn't happening to me. Although I'll admit that it's nice to sit at my desk and watch Penny go white and terrible with rage.”

“I'm going to lose my job.” Lilah covers her face with her hands. “This could be a disaster.”

“Maybe,” Debbie says cheerfully. “I mean, I can't imagine it would be comfortable if things were to go wrong. Think what it would be like at the office, even if you didn't lose the job!”

“Thanks.”

“Just see it through, Lilah. Who knows what could happen? Maybe you'll fall madly in love.” Debbie claps a hand over her heart. “With the
Hass Avocado
. How romantic.”

Inexplicably, this thought fills her with terror. “I think it's a little early to be talking love.”

“Love is best when it happens early,” Debbie says, earnest. “You never know, Lilah. This could change your life.”

“Maybe,” Lilah says. She finishes the rest of her meal and thinks about Roberta, ensconced in her house on the other side of the Strait. Timothy, making his way down some street in the city. And Israel, who is also there now, who has his own little spot in her mind, his voice and his smile inside of her, pulsing with energy. How much potential heartbreak is it possible for one person to hold?

“Well,” Debbie takes a sip of her lesbian tea, “
are
you going to go out with him again?”

Or perhaps it's not the heartbreak that scares her, but the possibility. The possibility of a heart more than whole, or a life that reaches so far beyond what's expected that you can't see where it ends and forever begins. “Friday,” she says. “He's cooking.”

“Good.” Debbie claps her hands like a child. “Make sure you tell me everything.”

—

Timothy went to the video store, those months ago, and did not come back — that's what happened. Twenty-four hours later Roberta issued a missing person's report; forty-eight hours after that someone found him across the water, crouched in a Vancouver alleyway, dirty and disheveled but very much alive. He wouldn't leave. He sat hunched on the ground, shivering, and when Lilah tried to touch him he shied away.

They went to the station, but the police were no help. “He's old enough,” they said. They meant age of majority; Roberta heard it literally.

“How can someone be old enough
to live on the streets?” she raged, back in Lilah's kitchen. “That's ridiculous. That's
inhuman
,
Delilah.”

“It's his choice,” Lilah said. The words felt like dust in her mouth. She drank cheap Earl Grey and thought of her brother, the fever in his hands. “He'll come home if he wants to.”

“I haven't been a bad mother,” Roberta said, looking at her. “Have I?”

“No.” Mediocre.
Not enough.
“No, you haven't.”

“He doesn't have his medication,” Roberta said. “I don't know what he'll do.”

“The police will keep an eye,” Lilah said. She had her doubts. But you had to have faith. You had to put it somewhere.

“I don't know what happened, Delilah,” Roberta said then. “I tried so hard.”

Lilah ignored this and waved her cigarette in the air, so that the smoke swirled between them like a veil.
Trying —
and
there.
Such a gulf in between. “Mom — he's eighteen. You can't make decisions for him forever.”

“I know that.” Roberta's hands twitched at the table
.
“But he's sick
.
How is he going to survive? How — who is he going to talk to, who's going to pray for him? Should I talk to the diocese here? Maybe we should ask them to talk to him. To take him in.”

“What, so he can suck some priest's dick just for a place to sleep at night? He's not going to get help from the diocese.”

Roberta slapped her so quickly it stunned them both. “You,” she said, breathing hard, “are a terrible human being.”

“
I'm
terrible?” Lilah snapped. “I'm not the one out there destroying children's lives. I'm not the one building wars for God, or going into sub-Saharan Africa and telling women that birth control could send them to hell.” Her own fury was brittle, yet familiar. “Why the fuck should Timothy listen to what a priest has to say when odds are they're just as fucked up as he is, if not more?”

“How is it possible,” said her mother, “that you've travelled and experienced so much and still have eyes that see so little?”

“Timothy's never left the province and he feels the same way.”

“How do you know?” Now Roberta was merciless, unforgiving. “You haven't been there.”

“You think that just because I wasn't there while you indoctrinated him means I don't know these things? He's not stupid.”

“He's a good boy,” Roberta said dully. “He's just — I need to believe, Delilah, that he'll be okay.”

“The world eats good people,” and as her mother's face crumpled Lilah pushed her own guilt away. “My
experience
taught me that. And no amount of praying will change it.”

“What did I do wrong?” Roberta whispered. “With Timothy, with you?”

“Jesus Christ. Will you stop that? He left school at fifteen, Mom. He didn't have any friends, and he didn't play outside, and when I was
home all we ever did was stay up late and drink hot chocolate. He read too much. He was too sensitive.” Dyspraxia, Asperger's, or maybe even autism.
Schizophrenic tendencies.
Doctor speak and fancy labels that in the end all meant the same thing. Strange little boy who became a strange young man. She would do anything for him, and destroy anyone else who ventured to say such a thing, but still, it was true. “That's not your fault. That just happened.”

“He hates crowds,” Roberta said. “How is he going to survive in this city?”

“Vancouver has plenty of places for people to disappear,” Lilah said. She stubbed out her cigarette, lit another. The urge to vomit was almost unbearable. She closed her eyes, and eventually it passed.

“You need to stop smoking.”

“I have stopped. I'm stressed. You stress me out.”

“Oh.” Roberta sniffed. She reached for her bag. “Fine. I'll go.”

“You know you can stay, if you want.”

“And stress you out?” Roberta threw on her coat. “I wouldn't dare.” She pulled out her wallet and tossed a few bills onto the table. “This is for Timothy. When you see him. Get him whatever he wants. Whatever he needs.” She strode to the door, opened it, and slammed it behind her.

She called Lilah later that night, once she was home. “Will you call me if you see him? Will you let me know he's okay?”

“Of course I will.” This family, her family, splintered like glass. She cradled the phone and did not say it, although they both knew it was true. Together they were broken; the three of them. So different, and so lost.

—

Israel is not in the office on Friday, but halfway through the day a message comes through to her desk. Emmanuel, wanting to know when he should pick her up.

“I'm fine,” Lilah says. “I'll take the bus.”

“Mr. Riviera specifically asked that I pick you up, madam.” His own accent is not as rich, not as exciting. But Emmanuel sees Israel every day, and some of the other man's power seeps through the phone. “It is not, as I understand it, a request.”

“Well,” Lilah says brightly, “you can tell him to go to hell, then.”

A pause. “Madam,” Emmanuel says. “That is . . . hardly appropriate.”

“Emmanuel. Tell Mr. Israel Riviera that I will be there, at seven, and that if I see your car downstairs before I leave I won't come out of my apartment. Is that clear?”

“Madam, I really would advise — ”

“I don't care what you'd advise,” she says, still in that cheerful tone. “You tell him that I'll be there, and that I won't be picked up like some hooker.”