The Belief in Angels (3 page)

I can barely hear them. I see their mouths moving, but the sound is muffled like they’ve got pillows over their mouths or something. Everything around their heads looks swimmy and my eyes narrow down to just them. Like a camera’s eye, only all blurry like on
Star Trek
when they use the transporter.

I’m feeling awfully dizzy.

The only thing I see is the wooden woman. I’m lying on the floor behind the bar right under her. She turns her head and stares right at me and says,

Think of me as an angel. Everything will be all right. You are loved and I’ll always be with you.

I wake up in an ambulance, my father lying on a bench on the other side of the truck.

“Is—is my father dead?” I ask the ambulance guy, who sits on my bench and wraps up my arm where he stuck a needle in. “Did he get shot too?”

The ambulance guy smiles down at me. “Nobody got shot, hon. Your dad passed out is all. I guess he don’t like the sight of blood much.”

“I didn’t get shot?”

“Nope. You got a piece of glass cuttin’ your neck, though. We’re taking you in so’s the doc can take a peek at you.”

“Am I gonna die?”

“Nope. A few stitches is what you’ll need. You’re gonna be fine.”

I wonder how long my father will be asleep and if he’ll be mad at me when he wakes up.

The ambulance guy sticks a plastic cup on my face and tells me it will help me breathe easier. It smells like new Barbies.

“Did you clean her up?” my father asks from his bench across from me.

I look over at him. He has his head turned away from me.

“Hi Dad.”

“Is she wrapped up?”

The ambulance guy winks at me and says, “We have a bandage on her wound, Mr. Finn. How’s your dizzy?”

My father turns his head to me. He smiles. I figure he’s not mad at me.

“It wasn’t a bullet, Dad. Just glass.”

He smiles a weak smile at me, frowns at my neck and down at my arm where the needle is. He makes a long sigh, “Oooooohhhhh.”

“You doin’ all right, Mr. Finn? Don’t you be passin’ out on us again.”

“I don’t think I’m gonna pass out. I think I’m gonna be sick.”

“Here you go.” The ambulance guy hands him a plastic bowl. He holds it on his stomach until we get to the hospital.

At the hospital they take me to a chilly room and give me stitches, which hurt a lot. They put a big bandage on my neck. They wrap up the piece of glass that got stuck in my neck in a wad of gauze and give it to me as a souvenir.

While the doctor stitches me up my father sits in a chair across the room. He won’t look at the stitches ’cause they make him sick to his stomach. When the doctor asks me what happened, my father tells him that someone threw a rock at the mirror behind the bar and that’s how it got broken and hurt me. I guess he doesn’t want to tell the truth about the gun.

The nurse asks if I’m hungry and brings me a bowl of Sugar Pops, which is neat because we never get good cereal at our house. My mother only lets us eat Wheaties. She says the other stuff rots your teeth.

“Okay, time to go home,” my father says as the doctor leaves, pushing through the double doors of my hospital room. He seems better and doesn’t look the same sick greenish color he looked in the ambulance.

“Can you bring her another blouse?” he asks the nurse.

I try to wolf down the Sugar Pops.

She gives him a glare and says, “I’m sorry, we don’t store clothing here. If you like we can send her home in a gown?”

“Whatever.”

The nurse grabs a peach-colored thingy. Way big for me. She pins and ties it so I can walk around in it. She gives me my bloody blouse in a paper bag that says Children’s Hospital. I didn’t know they took me to a hospital just for children. No wonder they had the Sugar Pops.

When I jump in the car my father tells me I shouldn’t have been hiding behind the bar and it serves me right I got cut. I’m mad he doesn’t see he could’ve gotten killed from a gun. I probably saved his life better than Mighty Mouse.

“Are you gonna lose the bar?” I ask.

“None of your business. It’s not polite to eavesdrop on other people’s conversations.”

“You were swearing. Everybody could hear you,” I say, not meaning to be sassy.

He raises his fist and I flinch over against the door.

“Do you need a smack? Because I’d be happy to smack you if you do. This ER visit is gonna cost us. You better hope your grandfather will pay for it.”

My father looks at me with the dead eyes. Sometimes his eyes go dead like the cat we found in the shed, and I know I better not say anything else or I’ll get a beating.

I don’t say one word the whole way back.

I remember the wooden woman at the bar and how she spoke to me and how it made me real peaceful inside.

But I worry. If someone else ran the bar they might take the woman away. Where would she end up if they did? Would she still be able to protect me?

Jules, 6 years | Late August, 1967

THE HOUSE AT 18 ALETHEA ROAD

“I’VE BEEN TALKING with a developer and he says we can earn a fortune for the land. His company is planning more building in this neighborhood. We could sell the land around the house to pay it off.”

I hear my father say this to my grandfather in his oily voice. He always uses this voice when he talks to my grandfather and the neighbors.

My father and I got back from the hospital about an hour ago and I got sent up to my room. I’m supposed to be resting, but I’m not tired. I’m sitting on my floor by the heat register, painting watercolors with the new Paint Rite set I got for my birthday. I’m listening to my father and my grandfather downstairs in the den. The den is filled with turquoise Naugahyde furniture. My father always takes people there to talk private. I can eavesdrop ’cause the sound comes up real clear through the holes in my radiator.

My grandfather’s upset because of the stitches and stuff that happened at the bar and because my mother’s not here and my father won’t say where she is. She’s probably at her friend Natasha’s place. My father doesn’t like Natasha. He says she’s a bad
influencer
and calls her a bitch. My mother smokes smelly herb cigarettes when she hangs out at Natasha’s. I like to go there because I like to play the drum set in the garage and my brothers don’t know about it yet.

“You should count your blessings the
kind
will heal from this. Almost killed
by a crazy man with a gun. Still you want to ask me for more money. This home is my wedding gift.”

“If it’s a gift why don’t you transfer the title to us? It should be ours to do whatever we want with.”

“This way it never becomes lost in maybe a poker game.”

My father doesn’t say anything, but I’m thinking he’s real mad. He doesn’t like it when he doesn’t get his way. I imagine my grandfather sitting in the den. He probably thinks it looks silly because my father lets the people who come to visit him write their names on the walls with black magic markers, even though we’re not allowed. Plus there’s a moose head stuck over the TV and he put a pair of sunglasses on its eyes so it looks like Miles Davis. That’s my father’s favorite singer.

“We could make more money on the land than you paid for the entire house. It’s a temporary situation though. This man could change his mind about where he wants to build and pay someone else if we wait too long,” my father finally says.

“Yes. There’s always a time limit with these golden opportunities. I give you the money to start businesses before this. The ad business, the fish and chips store. All have failed. After you purchased the bar, you told me you needed more money to expand. But, I see no expansion. The one thing that has expanded, as far as I can tell, is your wallet for brief times. I saw the
beyz
man who came into your bar to collect his money. I don’t know what kind of trouble you found, but this kind of trouble doesn’t go away when you throw money at it. Maybe you should call police.”

“I’m not going to call the police. You don’t understand, old man. The police can’t do anything. I borrowed money and I have to pay it back.”

“You borrowed? You lost bets? Which is? Borrow or lose? Never mind with the answer. You receive no more money.”

My father says, “They might try to hurt Wendy or the kids. To teach me a lesson. You don’t want anything bad to happen to them, do you?”

“Now you threaten with the
kinder?.
I know you’re mixed up in
meshugener
business. Money buys everything but good sense, my brother Oizer says. He warned me not to give more money to you, but I wanted you to succeed for the
kinder’s
sake, for Wendy’s sake. I thought you would make a good husband. Now I see you’re a criminal. You’re going to drag my daughter and the
kinder
into it. Maybe it’s good they kill you.”

I suck my breath in. I’ve never heard my grandfather talk like that to anyone. My father gets mad when anyone talks back to him, and I worry he might try to hit my grandfather.

“Why don’t you ask your family? Maybe your sister will help this time?”

“Listen. I can’t ask my sister. She’s got too many expenses. My family doesn’t have the money, or I’d ask them.”

“Maybe you ask too many times to them? Maybe they decide like I do. Enough is enough.”

My father doesn’t answer. I can hear him moving the big bottles on the bar, opening the small refrigerator in the den, then the tinkle of ice cubes in a glass.

“Chivas?” he asks my grandfather.

“No. No thank you.”

The only thing I’ve ever seen my grandfather drink is the berry-colored wine at holidays, the
man-of-chivas
wine my mother hates.

“You have no money for paying your debts, but I see you still have money for alcohol and expensive furniture and televisions.”

My grandfather sounds really angry now. His voice shakes and he’s shouting.

“All the money. All the money I give to you. You waste on these things instead of making a good future for Wendy, for the
kinder
—your family. Wasteful things. All bought with my money. Never again.”

“Calm down, old man. Sit down.”

“I won’t sit in this home; I won’t talk
with
you again until you pay me back. Every cent of what you waste. Pay me back and pay your
shyster
friends back. I want nothing to do you with you. I am wrong to try to help you. I see now this
vas
not good, not best for Wendy or for you. This
vas
a mistake in the beginning. I will transfer the deed into Wendy’s name. She can decide what to do with the home and the land. I’ll not be involved in your business any longer. You are children when you started together, but you are adults now. No more money from me. Find your own money.”

I hear my grandfather’s steps already climbing the den stairs.

I’m afraid he’s going to leave without coming upstairs to see me. I run out of my room and down the long hallway to the landing on the living room stairwell to try and catch him.

He’s not coming to the front door. I run the rest of the way down the stairs to the living room. I can see him standing in the kitchen. He’s staring around the room at everything.

“Hi Grandpa.”

“Hello, Chavalah.”

My grandfather calls me by my Hebrew name.

“Are you going now, Grandpa?”

“Yes, Chavalah, I’m going home now. Is your neck feeling better?”

“Yes.”

My grandfather looks around the kitchen again and says, “You know, when I am a young boy we had a home that had two stories. Our entire home
vas
as big as this kitchen on the bottom and half this size on the top.”

“Like in
Little Women?
Wow. That’s a tiny house.”

“It didn’t seem tiny to me.” He smiles.

We walk out to the living room and he walks over to the two big pictures of my great-grandparents that hang on the wall. They don’t smile in the pictures, and whenever I notice it I want to behave better because it seems like they might be happier if I do.

“Grandpa, how come they’re not smiling? Are they mad?”

“
Oy, oy
,” my grandfather says and shakes his head. He does this all the time when he’s playing with us. “They should be.”