“What's not to like?” my mother asked. “It's the same as all the others.”
“For one thing, you're too close to your neighbors.” By then Margot was crying. “Franny,” she said.
Margot couldn't really say more; she was sobbing, her voice so strangled she didn't even sound like herself. Margot dipped her head as though looking for cigarettes in her purse, but she kept making the most awful noise, as if she had something stuck in her throat and she couldn't get it out, no matter how hard she tried.
“Think of it this way,” my mother said. “This place may be crowded, but that just means it won't be as lonely.”
Margot snorted. “You think they're having parties?”
The falling rain didn't seem clear, the way rain usually does. It was pale blue, as if the sky itself was coming down. My mother had asked for so little; it seemed to me she'd never gotten anything she'd wanted. She was the sort of person who cried at sad stories in the newspaper and truly believed in kindness, who put her arm around your shoulders for comfort, even though she was the one who was dying.
“It's pretty here,” I said.
Margot gave me a look, as though I had betrayed her, but I didn't care.
“Really,” I told my mother. “It's pretty.”
There was a bird perched above us in a leafless tree, a little gray thing, a sparrow or a wren. We all looked up, hoping it would sing, but it was silent as stone. We had to laugh then, all three of us.
“Just our luck,” Margot said. “A mute.”
“Maybe it's resting,” my mother insisted. “Maybe it sang the most beautiful song in the world right before we got here.” The bird stared down at us from a wavering branch. “You never know.”
By then, the rain was falling harder, but none of us paid the least bit of attention. We didn't even blink.
“Exactly.” I had to agree. “You never can tell.”
The Boy Who Wrestled with Angels
The first time Jason Samuelson met up with his fate was in September, when the lilies were fading and the air had begun to grow chilly at dusk. Later, those who loved him looked back on that day and realized that Jason's downward spiral had been happening for some time. They simply hadn't noticed what was right there in front of them, the way some people manage to overlook the sand shifting beneath their feet until an earthquake actually strikes and reveals just how unreliable the whole world can be.
When Jason collapsed on the loading dock of the Food Star, the last thing he saw was the blue sky above him, a vision so cloudless and vast that even he, a careless young man who had managed to constantly receive without ever giving in return, felt helpless and small. Jason had shot heroin into his veins in the meat locker of the supermarket where he worked, and he'd known something was wrong right away: The peace which usually settled over his soul when he got high did not come to him. Instead, he felt filled to the brim with something slithery; it was as if black toads and newly hatched snakes had been trapped beneath his skin, and now they all struggled to break free in a horrible clawing fashion that took his breath away and left him sprawled upon the asphalt.
That was where his girlfriend, Terry LoPacca, found him when she checked out of fruits and vegetables. By then, Jason's pulse had slowed and his skin was ashen. He had no idea that Terry was on the ground beside him, weeping and calling for help, or that an ambulance from Franconia Hospital would soon be on its way. Unlike many people who experience a blast of welcoming white light when death is near, Jason was surrounded by empty space, as though he'd been swept right into the sky. He was enveloped in something far more powerful than himself, and he flailed out against it. He could feel the burning, endless grip of eternity snapping down on his wrists and shaking his soul; there was a syrupy poison engulfing his heart and lungs, but he wouldn't give in. There on the loading dock, Jason fought and he fought well. He lashed out and kicked, he growled like a dog; he was not ready to die on the asphalt, between crates of bananas and canned dog food.
Four attendants and the ambulance driver were needed to restrain him and carry him off the loading dock, and even then they had to tie him to the stretcher for fear he'd break his neck as he twisted and turned. When Jason regained consciousness, three hours later in a metal bed in the emergency room, he was surrounded by women. All he could hear was the low murmur of their voices. For an instant he thought he'd lost the battle and because of some celestial error, the angels were beside him now.
“You idiot,” Jason's sister said to him. Gretel was so relieved to see his eyes open that she nearly passed out herself; her face was chalky with concern. She had always looked up to her brother, but current circumstances had required her to look down and she didn't like what she saw. Didn't anyone else notice that the boy who had once had everything was quickly becoming a man who could be neither trusted nor satisfied? Terry LoPacca, always so grateful for a snippet of Jason's attention, was fawning over him, kissing his hands and his eyes, pledging her love. Gretel's mother and their cousin Margot were already considering a lawsuit against the hospital attendants, whose rough treatment had left their sweet boy with bruises on his arms and legs. Did they fail to see how much weight Jason had recently lost? Had they never realized that all the good silverware in the house had slowly been disappearing, sold for a meager profit, then displayed in a case at the pawnshop behind the shopping center? Devotion had kept them from recognizing who he had become, and even now they cooed as they tenderly untied Jason's ankles and wrists from their restraints. Even now they blamed everyone else for the troubles he'd seen. He was their darling after all, their one and only boy.
That night, Gretel sat out in their backyard and stared at the sky. She recognized Pegasus in the southern sky and for some reason this made her cry. Most of the girls she knew had gotten jobs or gone off to college, but not Gretel. She went with her mother to doctors' appointments and folded laundry. She was a girl with a forlorn nature who desperately wanted to believe in something, but so far the most she had managed to believe in was bad luck. This evening, she couldn't find her way past the black despair that wraps around those who love a person who cannot be saved. Jason came out of the house in a clean white shirt and baggy jeans; he sat down beside Gretel and lit a cigarette. In spite of everything he'd done to himself, he was still incredibly handsome. Women on the street often stopped to stare, unable to collect themselves for hours after he'd walked by; they dreamed about him for weeks if he bothered to give them a second look or a smile. He was Gretel's brother, the same flesh and blood, but every day he was more of a stranger. He'd always taken risks, but the level of danger had increased. He'd walk right into the center of anything perilousâany fight, any drug, any chance he could take. He'd do it just for the hell of it, even if the odds were so set against him anyone could tell he'd never win.
“Are you trying to kill yourself?” Gretel asked.
Jason blew out smoke. He also spied the square of Pegasus, but he paid the constellations no mind. When he tallied his reasons to live, all he could come up with were ways to numb himself.
“You are so stupid,” Gretel told her brother. She hadn't expected him to respond, but that didn't mean she didn't know the answer.
“Really?” Jason stubbed out his cigarette in the flower bed where their mother had tried to grow tulips for years. Not a single one had managed to bloom. “What's the speed of light, missy?” Jason asked. “What's the square root of a hundred and forty-four?” After all he'd been through, his smile was still worth seeing. “Who's stupid now?”
“You're going to actually do it if you're not careful,” Gretel warned. “Then I'll be furious.”
“Gretel, if I wanted to die, I'd already be dead.”
After they had both thought this over, Gretel took her brother's hand in hers, the hand that had so often bought heroin and methamphetamine up on the turnpike, the hand that had stolen from his own mother and reached for all the most beautiful girls in town, and she bit him, hard.
Jason let out a yelp and got to his feet. He looked at the teeth marks his sister had left as if he couldn't quite believe what had happened.
“I guess you're right,” Gretel said. “You are still alive.”
Later that night Jason almost corrected the situation when the car he was driving on a dark road through the woods spun out of control. He was behind the wheel of Terry's red Trans Amâthe one she'd been given as a graduation presentâintent on forcing the speedometer to its highest level, when he noticed that the stars had shifted in the sky. The reason for this, he soon realized, was that the car was on its side in a ditch. Terry was screaming, but all Jason could attend to was the burning in his chest; it was as if some blazing creature were now astride him, pinning back his arms, holding a staff of fire to his lungs, heart, and spine.
He fought back with a strength no one would have predicted. Another man might have given up, but Jason threw that fiery monster off his chest with such force that sparks streamed into the woods. By the time he got himself and Terry out of the wrecked car, the tall grass along the road was on fire and they had to run all the way to the parkway to flag down a passing car for help.
Jason had only two broken ribs that time, but there was a mark on his chest that resembled a hand. In a few days the imprint faded to the puckered red shadow of any common burn; only a faint impression had been left behind. All the same, he broke up with Terry. She was bad luck when you came right down to it; in his opinion, most women were. They cried and they wanted things from you; they just wouldn't leave you alone. There were times when he sat in his very own house, with his mother and sister and cousin, and he wasn't able to understand them; they spoke a distinctly different language, one he couldn't even begin to fathom, one he certainly didn't want to hear.
That autumn, Jason took to staying away, for a night at first, then for days at a time. He crashed with friends, and when they'd had enough of him, he invited himself to stay with acquaintances. Finally, he had nowhere to go but the drug houses up beyond the turnpike, where anyone with a little cash and a taste for ruin was welcome. He stopped going to work because he didn't want to deal with Terry and all her needs. He could no longer face his mother, because she continued to gaze at him as though he were the same boy he once was. He wasn't that person anymore, not in any way, shape, or form; he could barely remember what he had once believed in or cared about. He dreamed of oblivion and angels, and he couldn't even bring himself to eat a decent breakfast. Weight fell off his frame and his gums began to bleed; people who'd known him since he was a child avoided him now, hurrying past any corner where he was stationed to beg for a loan or a little spare change. He never went home unless he needed money, and then only after dark, when no one would catch him rifling through drawers for jewelry and cash.
One cloudy November night he came upon Gretel in the kitchen, positioned near the door, as if she'd known he was on his way. He was so strung out he didn't have the sense to be embarrassed when he was discovered creeping around in the middle of the night, climbing in through the window above the sink, since he had long ago lost the key to the front door. Though the temperature was dropping and frost was on the lawns, Jason only wore jeans and a black T-shirt and he was shivering badly. He'd sold his leather coat for a quick fifty bucks, but the truth was, he hadn't even noticed that ice was collecting on the streets or that the palms of his hands had already turned blue.
That night Jason actually talked Gretel into giving him some cash; he was going straight, he told her, he was pulling his life together, but he could see she didn't believe a word. She stared at him as though she could see the faint outline of the burn on his chest, right through his shirt. She wanted to ask him why he was doing this to himself, but instead she bit her lip; he was clueless when it came to disaster and denial, and he always had been.
Gretel walked him out to the front porch. She felt she might never see her brother again, or if she did, she might not recognize him; she could pass him right by, as though the world he now inhabited existed on another plane, one entirely unseen by those who still lived their everyday lives of work and sleep, milk and butter, obligation and concern. The temperature was near freezing and a ring around the moon signaled snow before morning. Gretel considered giving her brother her own leather jacket, but she knew that if she did, it would only be a matter of hours before it was sold.
“It's going to happen,” she told Jason. “If you don't watch out.”
“Not to me,” Jason said. “You're such a worrywart, Gret.” As he leaned over to hug her, he had the strangest sensation, almost as though he had left his body to watch himself embrace his sister. “Nothing will happen to me,” he vowed. “You wait and see.”
But Gretel couldn't even see him once he'd walked down the driveway. Not that she was surprised. It was amazing how quickly someone could disappear into the night when he had a craving for destruction and a few dollars in his pocket. Since Jason didn't have money for his own car and no one with any common sense would lend him one, he walked three miles in order to score, even though snow had already begun to fall. Halfway there, he felt he was being followed, but when he turned, the street was empty. He went on, though the mark on his chest had begun to burn. As he neared the turnpike, the shirt he'd been wearing for days suddenly darkened, as though it had been singed, and then, without warning, the fabric ignited. There on the sidewalk in front of houses where families were safely asleep in their beds, Jason tore the shirt from his body. It burned down to ash on the asphalt and left nothing but fiery dust. By then, Jason was broiling and freezing at the very same time, and he felt true fear. Clearly, a warning had been tossed down before him on the dark and empty street. All the same, he stared up at Pegasus, which was now in the western corner of the sky.