The Third Angel (29 page)

“It's Michael Macklin, of course,” Dorey said. She had never actually seen the face of the ghostly presence, but anyone could figure out who the most wounded party was. “It must be the moment when that car hit him. Ten-thirty.”

Lucy shook her head. “I think it was ten-thirty when I went to their room. He must have died later.”

Lucy looked shaken.

“Maybe you shouldn't think about that,” Dorey said. She took Lucy into the restaurant where her boyfriend, who was still the cook, fixed the child some food.

“Look what he gave me,” Dorey said of the cook. She waved her left hand in front of Lucy's face. She had on a diamond ring. “After the incident we both figured life was short and there was no point waiting around for things you really wanted.”

A group was checking in, so Dorey gave Lucy a hug and went back to work. Lucy sat in one of the booths with her used books on the table. The restaurant looked completely the same. It was very strange being at the Lion Park. She felt as though she'd spent most of her life there, as though Westchester and everything that came before didn't even mean anything.

The waitress brought a steaming bowl of soup with bits of celery and potato and a tall glass of ginger ale with cherry juice added so that it had turned pink. Lucy realized she didn't have enough money to pay. She was embarrassed, but the waitress told her there was no problem.

“Dorey's treat,” the waitress said. “Eat up.”

Teddy Healy came in at about eight. Lucy had finished her dinner. When she saw him she felt more shivery than ever. Teddy Healy didn't look the same. He looked run-down and skinny. He started drinking right away. His poison of choice was whisky.

“Slow down,” Lucy heard the barman say to him. “You've got hours to go, man.”

Lucy started reading her book. She really had to concentrate, but eventually the story won her over. She liked the way Alice spoke her mind and didn't hold things back; she admired that. The world dropped away when you went inside Wonderland. Before Lucy knew it, it was ten, and then a quarter past. At this late hour, her father was probably worried sick, but Lucy couldn't back away now. She just wouldn't think about that. She'd explain herself. She had to come to the Lion Park one last time. Surely her father would understand that.

When Teddy Healy paid his tab and set out to leave, Lucy gathered her books together. He took the lift, so she took the stairs. Her legs felt heavy, almost as if they wanted to slow her down, but Lucy made herself hurry. She could see the lift rising on the wires the rabbit had once tried to chew through; the brass on the doors had recently been polished and shone like a mirror. Lucy let Mr. Healy get a little ahead of her and then she followed him. The hallway felt freezing cold.

Teddy Healy stopped, so Lucy did, too. She prayed that she would see Michael Macklin, that he would make his presence known. All she wanted was to ask for his forgiveness. I dropped the letter, that's what she intended to say. I never meant to, but I did. It's all my fault.

There was a footstep where there was no person. Lucy felt so cold she thought her lungs might freeze; they were still damaged, after all. Teddy Healy said “No” out loud. And then Lucy saw it, the thing everyone thought was the ghost. But it wasn't Michael Macklin. She would have recognized him, the most handsome man she would ever in her life see. The figure in the hallway was Teddy Healy the way he was that day, furious and in a rage, shouting at the open door. It was the part of him that had split off and been lost; the soul, some people might call it.

Lucy could feel her legs giving out. They felt as though they were made of string. She couldn't breathe either; she had that wheezing thing that took hold of her lungs and made it so difficult for her to take in any air. She made a noise and then she dropped to the floor. She saw the thing that wasn't Teddy Healy and the thing that was, which turned to her when she crashed down. She hit her head, hard, on the wall, and then she thought she heard someone yelling, although it was probably in her dreams, nothing more than that.

Lucy wasn't punished because of the circumstances, even though she refused to discuss what on earth she was doing halfway across town. She had a severe concussion and her asthma was considered to be a serious health risk. She had to stay overnight in the hospital again, under the plastic tent, until she could catch her breath. Ben Green was truly worried now. Perhaps he'd done everything wrong. He was a parent alone, a fool most probably, a man who'd surely made mistakes. When Lucy was released from the hospital, Ben telephoned Rebecca, and she came over and sat with Lucy while he went out to have her prescriptions filled.

“I don't know what to do to turn this around,” Ben said to Rebecca before he left for the chemist's. “I'm out of ideas.”

Rebecca brought a glass of milk and some cookies into the bedroom. She said hello, but Lucy didn't answer. Lucy lay in bed. She felt limp and used up. Now her short hair made her seem like a little girl. She had a big lump on her head that throbbed. She kept her eyes closed most of the time, even when Rebecca read to her from the Alice books in silly voices that might otherwise have made her laugh. Rebecca put the book down. Books wouldn't fix what was wrong.

“Are you very unhappy?” Rebecca asked.

“I don't see the point of things,” Lucy said.

After that Lucy stopped talking. She liked Rebecca but there was nothing to say; not that day, not ever. If her father or the doctor who came to visit asked her a question, Lucy wouldn't even shrug. They'd tricked her before, but now she was done. It was as if she had forgotten how to form words, as if language was a mystery to her now. She was polite, but she did not speak.

“Just tell me what I can do for you,” her father said. “Anything.”

But because there was nothing she could think of, Lucy didn't answer.

Rebecca thought perhaps Ben should take Lucy on a trip, outside London, somewhere quiet and new and beautiful. She believed that travel was good for the soul, and that sometimes a person had to go away in order to recover from sorrow. She suggested Edinburgh, a city she loved. When Ben agreed, she made the arrangements. He asked her to go, but Rebecca said no. She said this was a trip for the two of them, father and daughter, and if he wanted to take her somewhere some other time, perhaps when he wasn't married, she might consider his offer.

They packed lightly, only one suitcase for the two of them, and they took the train at King's Cross Station. Lucy was relieved that her father didn't expect her to talk anymore. Once, he took her hand and she felt like crying, but she stopped herself. She wanted to make certain she didn't start crying again; once she started doing that there'd be no hope for her whatsoever.

There were smokestacks and the train windows became sooty, but once they were beyond the city the landscape was beautiful. Lucy looked outside and felt as though she could drown in all the gold and green and purple. She hadn't expected such a wild landscape. She fell in love with the colors, the yellow fields, the green alfalfa. She liked the rhythm of the wheels on the track reverberating inside her head. They blocked out what she was thinking, terrible thoughts she didn't guess anyone in the world had, except for Teddy Healy. He might want to block things out as well.

There weren't many people on the train, but in the last row there was a boy who was writing like mad. He hadn't looked out the window once. He had a large book on his knees.

“Looks like a reader,” Ben Green said. “Just your type.”

But Lucy's father had no idea what or who her type might be. Lucy gazed out the window. In time, she closed her eyes and fell asleep. In her dream she was on the train with a very large rabbit that was seated across from her. She expected the rabbit to say something, but it was silent. She thought there might be tears in its eyes.

The train shifted and Lucy woke up. Her father had gone to the dining car to have a drink. Lucy raised her eyes and saw that the boy in the rear of the car was looking at her. He waved, so Lucy waved back. It was only to be polite. Then the boy signaled her over. When she tried to ignore him, he waved again so Lucy got up and walked down the aisle, holding on to the backs of the seats. She was curious, after all. She still felt dreamy. She might as well have been a million miles from home.

“Looks like we're the only two interesting people on the train. I saw you reading the Alice books. My favorites.”

Lucy sat across from the boy. He was working on something called “Anthology,” which had a coat of arms on the cover—it was a notebook filled with pen and watercolor and colored pencil.

“It's a project for school. I'm illustrating my favorite poems. Stuff like Robin Hood. Alice being the most favorite.” He looked up. “You don't talk? Do you speak English? Are you deaf and dumb?”

“No,” Lucy said. She felt tricked; he'd gotten her to talk. She hadn't done so for days. “Not deaf at any rate.”

The boy laughed. “Ah. You're an American. So I was right. You don't speak English. You speak American.” He was working on the coat of arms.

“Are you royalty?” Lucy asked.

“No. Not one bit. I'm a writer. And an artist. And a musician. I'm everything. And you?”

“A reader.”

No one would ever have to know she'd spoken a few sentences to him. She could stop talking again any time she wanted.

“I'm John,” the boy said.

“Lucy.”

“I'm from Liverpool. I was just in London for a visit. I usually go to Scotland in the summer to visit my aunt, but I'm going up for a couple of days now. My mother's left.”

“Mine's dead. And I saw two people die in London.”

John didn't seem the least surprised. “Blood and guts?”

Lucy nodded. “It was over love.”

“It's always over love,” John said.

They both thought about that.

Ben Green came back from the dining car and waved.

“My father,” Lucy said.

John waved hello. “Reader?” he asked.

“Major reader.” Lucy bowed her head so her father wouldn't see that she was talking. “I wish I believed in something,” she said.

“How about reincarnation? You'd come back again and again. You'd be a moth and a dog and a soldier.”

“What if I came back as a pig or an ant or a walrus?”

They both laughed now.

John showed her his drawing illustrating Alice. It was the walrus and the carpenter. “The walrus always has the carpenter,” he said. “The pig's got his sty. The ant's got ten thousand other ants that think exactly the same thoughts he does.”

They looked out at the fields.

“A dog wouldn't be bad,” John ventured.

“I'd better go,” Lucy said. Talking so much probably wasn't a good idea. Her chest felt weird.

“Good-bye, Lucy from America. Keep reading.”

“Good-bye, John. Keep doing everything.”

Lucy went back to her seat. Her father had brought her a sandwich and an apple.

“Did you have a nice talk?” Ben asked.

With her hair cut short, Lucy looked so much like the woman she would grow up to be it was startling. Now that she was out of bed and stronger, she didn't seem like a little girl. Ben had the feeling they were starting from scratch, as though everything were new, even the words they used.

“Maybe I shouldn't be questioning you,” he said. “You don't have to talk to me if you don't want to, Lucy.”

After talking with John, it had gotten a bit easier for Lucy to speak. “Thank you for taking this trip with me,” she said to her father. “It's beautiful here.”

“It
is
beautiful here,” Ben said, relieved to be granted a single sentence, let alone two. For the first time in years and years he wasn't in a rush. He wasn't thinking about Nixon or the
New York Times
or Charlotte's phone calls that he hadn't returned. He was actually thinking of the day Lucy was born. The truth was, he hadn't wanted children. He'd been irritated with Leah for talking him into it. He wanted their life together to go on and on as it had been, and then there she was, pregnant, and he was annoyed. All through the pregnancy he'd worried he'd be a terrible father. Leah had insisted that once he saw the baby everything would be different. But when he saw her she just seemed like a wrinkled little alien who took up Leah's attention. He didn't feel anything at all until the day they took Lucy home. A car had cut them off as they were pulling out of the hospital parking lot and Leah had been propelled forward, the baby in her arms. For a moment Ben had been utterly panicked. What if I lost them? he had thought. How could I ever survive?

When they got to Edinburgh it was dinnertime. Lucy saw the boy from the train meeting his aunt; they waved at each other. She thought that some people were like stories rather than whole books—at least the ones you never saw again. With people like that, you never knew what the real ending was.

Lucy and her father took a cab to Hotel Andrews, where they had adjoining rooms. It was run by a woman named Mrs. Jones who looked like she must be someone's perfect grandmother. There were two photographs, one of a boy, the other of a girl about Lucy's age, hung above the mantel near the registration desk, but the photos looked old, from another place and time. Lucy thanked Mrs. Jones when the landlady gave her a peppermint candy, but she didn't ask about the children.

Lucy and her father went out to dinner; they wanted to get the lay of the land. They walked past the castle, which was so amazing that Lucy had to stop and stare. She wondered if she was crazy or if anyone else had ever seen something like the apparition she had seen at the hotel. Maybe because the castle was so old people were trapped inside forevermore; maybe they'd turned into the sort of thing Lucy had come across in the hall. Lucy hadn't told the whole truth to that boy on the train. She did believe in one thing, something so vast and deep she couldn't bring herself to tell John, even though it was probably safe to confide in someone she would never see again.