Heaven or Hell (16 page)

After a while, he spoke. “I can’t hide out here forever. In fact, it’d be nice to hide from all the stuff that’s happening down there. But I’ve got this feeling I’m needed back in my body so I can die. Sounds funny, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it does.” Angel laughed, though within moments the seriousness of the matter occurred to her. “Are we real? Is this really happening? Are you going to die and leave me in this cloud?”

Then she panicked. “I don’t want to stay up here and forget who I am … Okay, forget who you say I am since I can’t really remember who I am … I don’t want another decade to go by while I’m stuck here doing nothing … Well, I’m actually not doing nothing, but it’s close.”

The man who was her dad sat still in the cloud. “Relax. Everything is going to turn out how it’s supposed to turn out.” He slowly moved to a standing position with Belle in his arms.

“Careful …” said Angel.

“I have this. Everyone relax.” Her dad held Belle’s small body in his left hand. He put his right hand on the pup’s head and spoke directly to Belle. “I’ll take care of you, no matter what happens. I promise.”

Angel was shocked to see Belle relax at his touch. “What can you tell me that I can remember about my life in the flesh?”

“In the flesh? Is that what it’s called?” he asked.

“Well, I don’t know. I suppose I could call it being human, but I still feel human. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yes, I do. I still feel human.”

“Because you are, right?” Angel asked.

“Yes, but technically I’m not in the flesh right now. So, I think that saying works.”

“What about my life?”

“Okay, okay. Where did we leave off?” he asked.

“I asked you where you’ve been all these years and you changed the subject.”

“Ah ha. And you wanted some sort of confirmation, too.” He touched his chin and remained standing. “I need to tell you, I was messed up for all those years. I had no way to communicate with you. I didn’t know for sure you were up here until I actually came here. And I still don’t know how I happen to be here.”

Angel nodded.

“I think it has to do with the coma and the sickness.” He paused and placed Belle gently on the cloud. “When I first got sick I had a dark experience that really terrified me. Something I can’t talk about, but it pretty much scared me straight. I haven’t been tempted to drink since I had that … vision.

“After that, I really got into helping the hardcore cases like I was. It’s how I ended up out at Skid Row—often helping the guys that society considers ‘throwaways.’ The police, fire department, social services, and any other government employee want nothing to do with such pitiful people.” He shook his head and continued, “I threw myself into my work. Dedicated every waking moment of my life to fixing these folks who seemed beyond repair. In retrospect, I think I was trying to fix myself because I didn’t want to leave anyone behind. And when some of the guys would mess up, I never gave up on them. I was a diehard.”

Her dad took a deep breath and cautiously sat down in the middle of the cloud, crossing his legs. “I’m trying to tell you, when I sobered up it was so easy to get real busy with my new addiction of helping people. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get here and be with you. I’m sorry.” He put his head in his hands.

Angel sat with Kail in her lap and listened, which she was used to doing. She rarely had opportunity to interact with people, so out of habit, she sat and quietly listened.

“I started helping people and I couldn’t stop. My personal penance became my saving grace, and maybe it worked—because I’ve lived longer than I was supposed to. Now, I’m ready to say good-bye to that tired old body and take my daughter home to her mother.”

“How do I know for sure I’m Angela? Why can’t I remember?” Angel asked.

“My Angel, relax, it will come. My best guess would be to follow your gut. Does it feel right?”

“Yes, at this moment it does.”

“You know my mother, your grandmother, gave all of her kids names that start with the letter ‘J.’ It seemed to be a family tradition. I was named after my Uncle Joe, and I think JJ was named after him too. Marion didn’t want to follow that naming convention. She was a strong woman, your mother. She said she knew the names of her daughters before both of you were born.” Her dad looked out at some distant place.

“Why the name Juan? And why use it now?”

“It’s my name. It was Uncle Joe’s name too. Juan Joseph Torres. I go by both Joe and Juan.”

“When did I become Angel?”

“I always called you Angel. Your mom wanted you to go by your name. She’d get so mad at me when I called you Angel.” He raised his voice to a shrill tone, “Her name is Angela.”

Angel felt a tiny tickle inside her belly, like butterfly wings beginning to wreak havoc on her insides.

“Angela, you’d be in your thirties right now if you were in the flesh, and I’m a granddad. It’s amazing—where did the time in between go?”

The question bothered her though she couldn’t say where in her being she felt thrown off balance. “Instead of being thirty, I’ve been trapped for all these years. Don’t get me wrong, I love the girls and being with them, but for a long, long time, I’ve known that I’ve missed out by not moving forward. Maybe wherever my mom is there’s another life for me.” Her body deflated a little.

“When you were ten you were teased by the kids at school because you insisted Santa Claus was real. Remember how I created a boot print going up the chimney, and you set out milk and cookies? Every year I ate the cookies and kept the mystery alive. Oh gosh, that part was fun.”

Angel shook her head to signal no.

“When you were twelve, you graduated from elementary school. The whole family showed up, including Uncle Joe. You graduated with straight As, and we celebrated with a huge barbecue at home. Teresa and your mother put a big banner up on the garage. In fact, years later, I think the idea for the bumper sticker came from that banner. Remember, the sign said: ‘Our Angela is an honor student!’ The whole thing was a huge surprise to you, and, Angel, you were so shocked and happy that day.”

“No. I don’t remember,” Angel said. She felt strange—both herself and not herself.

“Okay, the day of the accident. You were upset. Some girls were messing with you at school. Your mother was sick and you were trying to get by without asking for help. Your sister was busy getting ready to graduate from high school. Your clothes were wrinkled and not looking so good. It was Teresa’s idea …”

“Okay, okay. Those mean girls, Sara and Nancy, made fun of my hair and my clothes. Oh no, Dad, they were awful.” Angel put her hand to her mouth and frowned. “It started as whispers and eventually it seemed like the whole school was in on it.”

Angel felt a familiar pain in the pit of her stomach. She sensed this emotion was something she’d avoided for at least decades. Her head felt foggy, as if a dark cloud were putting pressure around her ears and on top of her skull. Oh gosh, it was so familiar, and now it was making her feel sick, but she hadn’t felt this way in years. The darkness was about those cruel, cruel girls and that time in her life as Angela.

She’d overslept that day and had forgotten she didn’t have any clean clothes. In a hurry to get to school, Angela pulled some wrinkled clothes out of the hamper and ran a cold iron over them. To make matters worse her hair was in tangles and needed to be cut and styled. She was a mess, and she hadn’t been shopping for new clothes since the previous school year. Her mother’s illness had changed things around the house, and her father hadn’t spent much time with them. Angela had come home crying—as much as she tried to hold it back, she couldn’t.

Her dad nodded and for several minutes they sat and stared at each other. “And now, my daughter, we’re going to get all of you out of here.”

CHAPTER 16
 

JESSIE HAD SAT QUIETLY AT HER brother’s bedside for quite some time before she decided to pull out his journal and finish reading his crazy story. It seemed as if all of his life the man tried to be normal, but everything he touched was extraordinary—for better or for worse. Joe had a zest for life, but the pendulum rested on the far side of good or the far side of bad, with little balance in between. The man knew nothing about moderation.

She flipped through the book to find her place and continued reading.

Something or someone was making me face my demons. And yet I felt some pleasure from moving in silence and being with myself, facing my inner desperation. Later, I slept again and when I awoke I thought I was in the light. It was light, all right, the light in the hospital. And I was in a world of hurt—but I was grateful to be back, no longer in that other horrific and disorienting realm.

I made a lot of deals on my walk through Hell—all the things I’d do if I got out. The deal I felt the most committed to was helping the helpless, the folks who were as bad off as me—with no hope and no one at all to reach out to them. For years I had been completely and totally hopeless in that way, adrift.

I’m no saint, that’s for sure, and my intentions weren’t and aren’t altruistic. I made a deal, with my higher power I guess, and a deal is a deal. I got out alive, so I’ve helped as many people as I could.

When I was fully awake in that hospital bed, I was surprised to see Father Benjamin at my side. I shared with him parts of my experience in my own private hell, and he told me he’d been watching me on my journey. I was out for a few days after the surgery, where they’d removed my gallbladder and left me knocked out. The doctor put me in some type of induced coma to get me through the DTs as easy as possible. The priest said it was the worst he’d ever seen. Hell, I don’t know how, but soon Father Benjamin became my friend. Who would’ve thought I’d be chummy with a priest?

I didn’t share my whole life with the father, either. In my shame, I left out the family part. He didn’t know that my dead wife, Marion, was yelling in my ear, and that I had visions of my dead daughter, Angela, stuck in the clouds, haunting me. I conveniently left out the fact that I’d abandoned my only living child, Teresa, in the cold to fend for herself. He had no inkling that I had remaining family. Living the lie was easy, too. I was still out of it when he asked me, and I never confessed when I was able to. It never came up again and I wasn’t about to volunteer the information.

The father helped me through the program, and he got me a place to live. I was diligent at staying sober and fixing the world—in fact, manic is a better word. Father Benjamin worked hard at keeping up with me. I put in a lot of time repairing things around the church so he made me the handyman. It’s odd I was sober and didn’t experience a single trigger from anything around me. The pit in Hell surely woke me up. I really went to work at making amends by helping these guys out on Skid Row, and ignoring the rest of my life.

I learned quickly to go alone to the Row and find some helpless guys and bring them back to the church. If I brought one of my newfound friends home, well, sometimes it’d take an hour or a day, but they’d go back out. The drink, the streets were a pull to these folks who had known nothing else for so many years. And for the life of me, I can’t figure out why, because it stunk—really, really bad—with the odors of puke, alcohol, urine, and terrible hygiene. Who am I to judge, though? I lived in it for so long, too. Disgusting what we do to ourselves because of this evil disease.

So I pulled a few guys out, and the next day they’d go back to their haunts. I’d return to bring them in, and do this over and over again. Then one day, a guy stayed on. At last, the feel of success, so I kept at it, going through the same routine repeatedly until another one stayed off of the Row. For every ten I lost, I’d keep one. Juan Torres, the saint, they’d say. I’d just smile and tell myself, “A deal is a deal.”

The ultimate test came the day the old guy we called the General sobered up. He started talking smack about a hit and run he’d been involved in years ago. Well, it might not have been smack, but it pissed me off because in my mind it was Teresa and Angela’s accident. He went on and on about it during my meetings when I first became a counselor.

The General said he woke up after a night of drinking and his car was wrecked, but he couldn’t remember what had happened. Memories of an accident came to him over several weeks in small fragments. He didn’t know where it had happened or what other car was involved, but he knew he’d gotten in an accident and somehow he’d made it home—a place he couldn’t remember now.

I’ve always thought it strange that the General claimed to not know his own name but he could remember this accident. He insisted it was because this event drove him over the top, and the more time that went by, the greater the torment—though he continued to be too scared and too drunk to do anything about it. He drank to forget the accident, and instead he forgot everything else, including his name.

Of course, I obsessed over this guy, the General. I thought of the irony of him showing up at my program, and he’d be the one who killed Angela. I got everyone on the staff to try to find the General’s identity under the guise that this old guy’s family should take care of him. We all did a ton of research. My team is good at finding families and identifying people, but we found nothing on the General. As weeks turned into months, the old guy and I sort of became friends. I could relate to his experience, more than I wanted to.

To this day, we don’t know who the General really is and if he actually was involved in a hit and run. Eventually, I did confront him, and as a result he’s one of few people who has some knowledge of my past. When I heard about his accident and couldn’t find out a single thing, it was just too much for me to handle. So he and I had an ugly confrontation, which we eventually worked through.