The Belief in Angels (14 page)

He yells, and as he attempts to push his bowl away he dumps it across the table, where the grubs from his bowl lie wiggling between the dinnerware.

It’s really funny, but no one laughs.

Paulina begins a new round of screams, and Moses and I begin the excavation of our own bowls for grub family members. We find them easily. They are the (now-identifiable) small white vegetables I was wondering about.

“What’s the matter with you? Are you some kind of a moron?” my father snarls.

Paulina stops screaming and makes a small moaning sound, holding her face in her hands as she leans over and clutches the table.

David sits still in his chair, the wiggling grub in his fingers.

“Didn’t you wash these before you served them? How could you miss bugs crawling around in a salad? Clean up this mess, you idiot.”

Any pretense of polite behavior toward his new wife disappears. We scan Paulina for a reaction. She casts a dejected look downward. “Yeah, I guess I forgot to wash the lettuce.”

He snorts.

When he rages, he makes me think of an angry moose. His nostrils flare and his head goes down as though he’s ready to charge. We all wait, adrenaline
pumping, to see what direction he’s headed. He stomps out, grabbing his keys and jacket on the way.

“I’m going out to dinner for a good meal. Maybe you’ll think about how to be a better cook while I’m gone.”

Instead of arguing, like Wendy would have, Paulina nods. “I’ll do better next time.”

“Good!” he shouts and slams the door.

After a few moments of silence, David yells, “Call Freddy!”

Moses and I laugh. Paulina sits there, confused.

We’re all relieved and thankful for his exit. This is an improvement from his behavior with Wendy. My brothers and I stare at one another, a bit shocked. We aren’t shocked at the shouting; we’re shocked Paulina didn’t get beaten. Our father’s verbal violence usually escalates. His previous exits usually followed a physical attack.

Paulina notices our shocked expressions. “He’s mad because I don’t know how to cook real good,” she says. “He’s been real patient with me. I’m still bad at it, though.”

Where all of my father’s traditional expectations for his wife to prepare well-made meals came from has always been a bit of a mystery. His sister, Doreen, is a great cook, but I’ve heard many times that his own mother wasn’t. She was a working mother and had no time to prepare meals. Doreen was the one who cooked for the family and took care of my father. Perhaps it fulfilled a fantasy for him—maybe he was trying to create the mother he never had out of his wives.

“Last night’s meal tasted good,” Moses says sweetly. David and I agree.

Paulina hangs her head.

Moses remains unfazed by the grubs.

David jumps up to clear the plates. “I’ll throw this all in the trash in the garage.”

Paulina heads into the kitchen. Before David leaves the table I whisper to my brothers, “Did Paulina say anything to you guys about Mom?”

“You mean that she might die?” David says casually.

Moses’s head snaps up. “What? Mom might die?”

“No sir. I don’t think it’s true,” I say, more for Moses than anything.

“No, I don’t think so either,” David adds, realizing the way his words are hitting Moses.

Moses’s eyes fill with tears and he pans from one to the other of us and shakes his head, not knowing what to believe.

I push back my chair and stand up from the table. I meet David’s eyes and roll
mine at him. He rolls his back at me then gathers all our grubby salads and leaves for the trash.

“Don’t worry, Moses. She’ll live. We’re gonna call after dinner and talk to her.”

He lays his arms on the table and puts his head down. He needs dinner.

I follow Paulina into the kitchen to see what else she’s prepared. Something that smells like spicy bacon saturates the air and I’m hungry. I’m also certain I’ll eat about anything as long as it isn’t moving on my plate. I talk Paulina into serving us the rest of the dinner.

The four of us go back to the table, where Paulina tells us her family is part Polish and she’s cooked us a traditional Polish dinner. She calls it “boiled dinner with red cabbage”: thick-cut potatoes and a speckled, chopped meat called
kielbasa.
“Polish sausage,” she explains. It tastes spicy and exotic. We all love it.

Sometime later, my brothers and I try to phone Wendy in the hospital. Paulina sits on the couch beside me. A nurse tells me she’s checked out, the details of which remain a mystery until I phone Jack, who’s been staying with his mother again, for information. Jack tells me Wendy has been moved to Mass General Hospital, where there are specialists for her type of spinal injury. My brothers listen on the other extensions when I ask him about Wendy’s chances for recovery.

“Whadya mean?” Jack asks.

“I heard she might, she might … die,” I say, unsure about my brothers’ reactions to this.

Jack remains silent for a moment. “Who told you that?” he mumbles. His usual vocal response.

I can tell he’s genuinely surprised, but he hasn’t answered my question. I persist, “Is sh-sh-she going to die, Jack?” Besides the stuttering, my voice rises into a trembling, high-pitched tone.

Jack must sense my panic, and he somehow manages to come up with calming news.

“No,” he says, “don’t even think that way. I don’t know what you heard, but your mother is fine—much better today. She still needs the doctors to take care of her, but she’s going to be better and come back home soon.”

I’m certain Jack’s telling the truth. It’s Paulina who lied.

In this one moment, I’ve got a mix of emotions: Surprise at Jack’s niceness and how he’s talking in complete sentences, and happiness to hear that Wendy will recover. The third emotion is fury at Paulina, who clearly invented her story about Wendy.

My emotions jumble into one single, overwhelming sense of relief. I thank
Jack, sign off the phone, and repeat Jack’s words to Paulina, whose expression I watch carefully as I tell her about Wendy’s positive prognosis. She seems embarrassed, but offers no explanation for her earlier tragic warnings.

I don’t know your particular brand of crazy, but I know crazy

when I see it.

Although I’m certain my father and Paulina will be banished when Wendy comes back, I’m more determined than ever to make sure they’re gone as soon as possible.

I’ll put my plan into action tonight.

I wait until later, long after my father pulls into the driveway, walks in, and follows Paulina, who has been waiting for him, to Wendy’s bedroom.

I remember an old daily racing form from his horse racing days that’s tucked into one of Wendy’s family photo albums. When I find it, I don’t bother to consider the almost cryptic importance of her having kept this particular racing form, considering her incredible anger at the financial losses he incurred at the track over the years. I think it might be an old memento of
his
that had been left and overlooked.

I put the racing form into the band of my pants. Next, I creep through my window and out onto the ledge, down the trellis, and around to the backyard, where I buried the fish.

After locating the flounder—a difficult task in the darkness of the backyard—I wrap it up inside the racing form and carry it back to where the trellis is nailed to the wood shingles. I have no choice but to stuff the bundle in the back of my pants and hope that the slimy, muddy fish stays contained within the racing form.

After making it back to my room, I prepare for my next mission. I leave the wrapped flounder on my floor and creep downstairs to the kitchen, where I get a knife from the drawer. As I pass the front door, I unlock and open it. I carefully cut a hole in the screen, directly in front of the front door’s lock and deadbolt. I leave it ajar, so it looks like a break-in, and put the knife back in the kitchen drawer.

Next comes the final and most dangerous element of the plan.

I creep back upstairs, carefully cradling the smelly flounder, and edge my way down the dark hall toward Wendy’s room, where my father and Paulina sleep.

The door is closed, which is a surprise.

Wendy keeps it open, even—to our strong embarrassment—when she’s enjoying “private moments.” I’ve never discussed the things I hear coming from there or the things I’ve seen with my brothers, but I’m sure they’ve gotten an earful and an eyeful as well. Wendy has a problem with boundaries.

In front of the closed door, I start to panic and try to think of a different method to achieve my goal. I stall there, trying to drum up alternatives, but come to the conclusion that there is only one way to complete my mission. I hope I don’t wake either of them. I hear a faint snoring coming from inside. My mouth tastes like iron.

Wait for him to snore again.

During the next rumble I turn the handle. Magically, the door makes no sound as I open it. I creep inside in the darkness, across the floor, until I find the foot of the bed, where I deposit the wrapped fish. I wait until his next snore to make my escape. I see no reason to close the door behind me. I sprint back down the hallway, scramble into my pajamas, and stuff my clothing into my hamper with the clothes I wore to go fishing. They stink. I drag the hamper down into the basement, which is creepy at night—this is practically the hardest part of the whole scheme—and throw everything into the washer. I know it won’t be heard upstairs. I start the cycle.

When I sneak back upstairs I jump into bed, amazed I’ve managed to do what I did. My plan went smoothly. I’m nervous and it takes me quite a while to fall asleep—but tomorrow is Saturday. I think I’ll be able to sleep in a bit.