by Ann Crawford
“When that gets overwhelming, just fade it out,” Penelope whispers to David. “Choose whatever you want to see.”
The angels disappear and the lawn just radiates as David makes his choice. He looks off in the distance to a neighbor’s yard, an eyesore of brown grass and bare patches.
“They’re there, too,” Penelope says.
As he makes a new choice, David notices the angels over that lawn, too, whispering to the dead grass. He fades them out.
“Lifting the different veils can get too much for us angels, too,” Penelope warns. “All the fairies flittering about. All the dead people wandering around. Even the bugs have bug angels. Just make the choice of what you want to see.”
David turns his attention back to the house. What a darling place! The two levels make it seem like an overgrown cottage. The screened-in porch around it looks almost like arms reaching out and hugging the little home. Red geraniums sit in a terra-cotta pot on each step leading up to the front door. A flower garden surrounds the house, and along the garden pathway there’s even a little archway bedecked with morning glories. Queen Anne’s lace covers almost the entire lawn. And a white picket fence—of course—surrounds the whole storybook picture.
David and Penelope float into the house, where they find Emily cooking breakfast. David does a double take. How could this precious home belong to someone who is so, so, so......sad? For she is so very, deep down, seemingly irrevocably sad. Just looking at her makes David want to cry—if he could cry, that is.
“Meet Emily and her husband Sam,” Penelope says.
Sam slumps at the kitchen table, hiding behind the paper. David looks back at Emily. Oh, but she’s a beauty. Or she could be. Her enormous blue eyes seem to be pleading for something from the world. Her long, chestnut-brown hair is braided in one thick plait. Her tight jeans and t-shirt reveal a thin frame. Willowy is the word invented to describe Emily, but willowy with some strong sap running through its limbs. Strong, but unused at present.
Now Sam, on the other hand, might have been a good-looking, strapping man not that long ago, but now he’s something else. His sap has gone and gotten itself sticky, stale, and stiff. Sawdust covers him from his baseball cap to his work boots. His blue jeans are, well, not so very blue. The pepper of his slightly longish hair is still in the race, but the salt will be taking the lead soon. He looks like he’s seen his share of decades come and go, perhaps one more than Emily has.
David notices the two angel committees surrounding their human assignments. The computer geek for Emily’s angel team smiles at him. “Stephanie’s the name.”
“David.”
“I know.” Stephanie pushes her thick glasses back up to the bridge of her nose and turns back to the kaleidoscope of charts on her laptop. She’s not unfriendly, really; it’s just that, like some people, she prefers to stay on task and keep any extraneous frivolities to a minimum. Expeditious would be a good word to describe her. And the thick glasses? A fun prop.
A bubbly, heavyset, middle-aged-looking woman holds her hand out to David. “Angela,” she announces. “Jolly good to meet you.” She speaks in what you would consider an accent from the British Isles. After shaking her hand, David watches a boyish, almost adolescent-looking angel whisper in Emily’s ear. “And that’s Jasper,” Angela says.
“You are so dear,” Jasper whispers. “You are such a blessing. Thank you for all that you do.”
“Excellent job on breakfast this morning, Emily,” Angela chimes in. “And you were a wonderful friend, too, when Beth’s call came in. But there’s so much more awaiting you.”
Stephanie consults a newly emerging chart. “Emily, you could be a really savvy businesswoman if you wanted. Just look at how amazing you are with numbers, when you want to be.”
“There’s far more for you to do, my dear,” Angela states. “When would you like to begin? How about today? Wouldn’t that be a good idea?”
David looks across the room to Sam’s angel team. He tries to hide his surprise when he spots an angel who appears to be a fat, lazy slob on the team. Could there be fat, lazy slob angels? Well, sure there could—in appearances.
“They won’t be too friendly to you,” Penelope whispers. “They know you’re here to help advance Emily, which means that pretty soon she’ll be too much for Sam to handle, which means they’ll have more work on their hands. Just having her in Sam’s life deflects a lot of work for them.”
“Yo, Sam,” Sam’s angel team leader says, “we’ll talk to you when you put that paper down, bud. Any day now.” David can tell that the leader is talking mostly by rote; it’s not that angels stop believing in their human projects, but even angels get weary.
“You are so dear,” Sam’s whisperer whispers, mostly to herself. “You are such a blessing. Thank you for all that you do.” She stops as Sam becomes more engrossed in an ad. David notices that it’s not even a newspaper—it’s a paper of classified ads.
“Can’t we talk to them while they’re reading?” David asks Penelope. “Or even through the paper itself?”
“Sometimes,” Penelope answers. “Depends on the person. Apparently not this one.”
Sam’s angelic whisperer straps on a pair of roller skates and skates around the kitchen. Oh sure, she could fly around the room if she wanted to, but angels like to do other things, too, at times. Don’t laugh—stranger things have happened. You’ve seen stranger things happen, on more than just a couple of occasions. Okay, laugh.
Emily’s kitchen is spotless, even in the midst of her breakfast-making. Shiny, copper-bottomed pots dangle from a rack over the stove, bright hand-woven potholders hang on nearby hooks, and the stove gleams. The fruit bowl overflows with apricots, peaches, nectarines, and plums. The spices sit on a special rack, alphabetized. You could tell that many an apple pie has cooled in that open window with the sunshine-yellow eyelet curtains—which match the tablecloth—fluttering in the soft, summertime breeze. Even ardent non-cooks might want to test out a new recipe, or twelve, in this particular kitchen.
Emily arranges the food—just...so—as if the plates were designed to hold noted works of art, even more noted than her pesto scrambled eggs, chicken sausages with sun-dried tomatoes and feta, and homemade blueberry muffins. She sets the plates on the table, sits, and gently places a yellow cloth napkin in her lap.
“How’s the remodeling job going?”
“Fine,” comes the answer from behind the paper.
Emily quietly eats her breakfast.
David glances into the living room and spots photographs of a younger Emily and Sam in happier, more vibrant days—which don’t appear to be all that long ago. A few years, perhaps. His brows come together, practically forming one line across his angelic face.
“Don’t ever let it get to you,” Penelope says. “Otherwise you’re of no good to them at all.”
“He’s clearly not the life of her love.”
“Love of her life,” Penelope corrects him. But then she thinks for a moment. “Actually, I like it better your way.”
David glances over at Sam and then at Emily again. “So they don’t listen much, huh?”
“More and more humans do, overall. The sad thing is they think things are getting worse and worse. But they’re not. There are more and more people on the planet with less and less trouble. But the media feels it’s their job to report all the horrific things to and from every corner of the globe. And humans just become addicted to this macabre thrill.”
Two calico cats skitter across the scrubbed-to-a-sheen tiles on the kitchen floor. They roll up into a ball together, a ball of fur and paws and tails, as they play. Emily’s face relaxes into a serene smile as she watches them. David notices a glow starting to radiate from her eyes.
A grunt from Sam causes the smile and the glow to disappear in an instant. Sam smashes the classifieds into one fist, inhales his meal, and then, after semi-unwrinkling the paper, quickly returns to hiding behind it again.
If he were
n’t an angel, David would swear that the cats winked at him.
“They did,” Angela says. “And no swearing.”
Not much privacy on this job! David winks back at the cats and then commences another serious study of Emily. “So, this is my assignment, huh?” He’s mostly just talking out loud rather than really asking the question.
“Up close and personal,” Penelope answers.
“How hard can it be?”
“Oh, watch out. These humans—especially the ones who look easy—can surprise you.”
Emily washes the dishes. As she stares out the window over the sink, her face relaxes into a soft, peaceful repose. David follows her gaze—out past her gardens to fields of wildflowers and mountains in the distance. Sam burps and a tautness returns to Emily’s features. David feels his heart expand toward this captivating woman who has obviously set her light meter to less than a quarter of its full potential, her power meter to even less than that.
“At bottom, everything is a choice,” Penelope tells him. “Absolutely everything.”
Chapter 2
As the angel teams for Jack, Lacey, and Ben perform their tasks (watching, whispering, consulting the laptop), Brooke and Henry watch Jack, as well.
By the way, speaking of laptops, you humans have not had them all that long; angels have had them since the Dog Star was a pup. So, you might ask, what exactly are Christopher and Stephanie—and all angels assigned to this particular task—watching on their laptops? Oh, all kinds of things. Intent. Karma. Consciousness. Forgiveness. Increases in awareness. Decreases in awareness. Heart openings. Heart closings. You might also ask why the angels don’t already have all the answers and see exactly what’s going to happen. Well, as we mentioned a little earlier, the future is always in motion. It can go in any direction at any time. So what the chart-watcher angels are watching for is the most likely outcome given all the factors forthcoming in any given moment. But any factor can change—seven billion times over—in any second. That makes for a lot of possibilities! Far too many to track in the mind, even an angel’s mind.
Jack and Ben are still hard at work on their dinosaur while Lacey is still hard at work becoming one with the couch.
“The mall is open, but nobody’s shopping,” Henry whispers to Brooke, referring to Lacey. Brooke is about to respond when an infant cries in another room.
Ben jumps up, causing the dinosaur to fall apart. “Let me go see Chelsea. I want to be alone with her.” He runs from the room.
Lacey grunts and starts to lift herself off the couch, completely disgusted at being interrupted in her television staring—we can’t even say in all honesty that she was watching it; she was just staring blankly in its direction. After all, if audiences slip into a trance, they’re more susceptible, more subject to suggestion, and more prone to filling their overstuffed homes with even more things they don’t need. That keeps the advertisers very happy.
“Why is he so insistent on that?” Lacey barks. “He’s been like that ever since she was born.”
Jack shrugs. “Maybe we should finally let him be with her, but watch him from the hallway.”
Jack and Lacey tiptoe down the hallway and peer into the baby’s room, where they find Ben leaning his head against the slats of his sister’s crib. She has quieted down and is looking intently at her brother. Her three angels are performing their routine: whispering, computing, watching.
In what looks to her parents like the typical baby’s head-jerking look-about, Chelsea looks at her angels, at Ben’s angels, and then back at her brother. Her room is void of the otherwise ubiquitous piles of who-knows-what and is the cleanest room in the house. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs parade across one of her bright, peach-colored walls—the painted characters a gift from an artistic coworker of Jack’s.
Ben turns to his parents. “I want to talk to her— without you here. Please let me talk to her.”
“Okay, big guy,” Jack encourages him, “go ahead. You talk to her.” Jack pulls a chair over to the crib for Ben to climb onto.
“You can’t stay,” Ben tells him.
“Okay, we’re going.”
Jack and Lacey leave, but they stand right outside Chelsea’s room, listening.
Ben climbs up on the chair and looks down at his sister. “Can you see them? Can you tell me if they’re still here? Please? I don’t see them any more.”
Tears spring into Jack’s eyes, and for a moment he’s too stunned to move. Lacey is stunned, too, but for a different reason. She bursts into the nursery.
“Ben, you get down from there. What nonsense are you talking about?” She pushes Ben out of the room and picks up the baby, who was perfectly happy with her brother beside her, but lets out a huge yowl at the rude disruption.
As Ben runs by, tears streaming, Jack grabs him and holds him in a long, close hug. Both of their sets of angels are very moved, very touched by the scene, and they clasp hands with each other.
Henry smiles at Brooke. “So you can see why you’ve been chosen to be his fourth. He’s ready. Are you ready?”
Brooke nods.
Henry points to Ben. “And you can see that he will probably need his fourth angel soon. And perhaps even the baby, too. If a parent is getting it, the children can get it even faster.”
Brooke smiles. “That’s wonderful.”
“Very well,” Henry says. “Check in whenever you want to. And not to worry—you really can’t get it wrong. Nothing is ever a failure. Nothing is ever, ever a wasted experience for them. Besides, you’re in good hands.”
The angel teams for Jack and Ben smile at Brooke as Henry leaves. All seven angels watch happily while Jack continues to hold Ben very close to him.
David and Penelope stand alongside Emily’s angel team, watching Emily clean her house. Stephanie computes, Jasper whispers, and Angela watches carefully. Actually, the house is already immaculate; what Emily’s doing could be called polishing her house—which could easily be photographed for a featured spread in a magazine dedicated to comfy, cozy, and classy high-country living. Two oversized, overstuffed sage-green sofas sit facing each other on either side of a large fireplace. Nubbly, handwoven, darker green throws are gently draped across the backs of both sofas. Between the sofas, a thick, large, round coffee table—a slab taken directly from the middle of an oak tree—commands the space. The table’s legs are hewn from the branches of that same tree. The whole array sits on a large green-and-white braided rag rug, which looks like it was made by somebody’s great-grandmother while she wiled away more than a few cold winter nights in her little house on the prairie. And that’s exactly who made it, and that’s exactly where she was.
“You are so loved,” Jasper whispers. “You are a blessing. You have so much to give the world. Thank you for all that you do.”
Emily looks over toward the group as if she hears something and then, somewhat perplexed, returns to her chores.
Joyfully puzzled, the angels look at each other as if to ask, “Did she just hear us?” They then return to their angelic assignments.
“Can any of them see us?” David asks Penelope.
“Some can. Depends on what they want to see. Almost all babies and old people near their final hours can see us. In both cases, you can see their eyes darting around the room. The veils are very thin at the start and end of life here.”
They watch Emily for a few moments. After she finishes dusting the two high-backed rocking chairs that face each other in front of a bay window, she puts her hand over her heart and stares out at her front garden. The soft peacefulness returns to her face.
“She’ll be getting it soon,” Penelope says. “And whenever one of them gets it, that makes it easier for others to get it, too. It’s like a cupful of popcorn in the skillet. There’s a pop over here, then another one over there. Pretty soon the whole shebang is popping.”
David smiles at the thought.
“Ready?” Penelope asks.
“Sure.”
Penelope points to the angel team. “They’ll take good care of you. And don’t worry. You can’t mess it up. Impossible.” She disappears.
Sam walks in the kitchen door, and Emily’s demeanor and energy instantly shift. Even her breathing turns shallow and panicky.
“Forgot something,” Sam mumbles. He disappears up the stairs and then reappears a moment later.
“Bye,” Emily says to the slammed door. She shuts her eyes; after a moment or so, her demeanor and energy start to return to something resembling deep and thoughtful. David looks at the other three angels in confusion.
“Why is she bothering with him, you ask?” Angela chuckles. “Every human is allowed a warm-up marriage. Maybe two.”
“The warm-up usually doesn’t go on for half a decade, however,” Stephanie states. “Or it shouldn’t, at any rate.”
Emily opens her eyes and suddenly lets out a long, huge wail. Remember Lucy Ricardo? This is even worse. David covers his ears and looks at the other angels in sheer shock.
Angela pats him on the back. “Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it.”
“I thought she’s a fairly advanced being,” David wheezes. “She’d have to be, to get a fourth angel.”
“She is. Doesn’t mean she’s always quiet about it.”
Emily wails even louder. She plops into one of the rocking chairs.
“The clashing of the worlds, high and low, can create turbulence in them,” Stephanie informs David. “Lots of it.”
“Makes for a very interesting, if bumpy, ride,” Angela smiles. “For all of us.”
“Great,” David grimaces.
The angels settle in around Emily as her wails subside. A calm seems to descend upon the room.
Stephanie nudges David. “Oh, no you don’t.”
“What?”
“Think it’s all calm and peaceful in there, too.” She pulls up a dial on her laptop. “This is her inner mind- chatter.” With her mouse, she clicks the on button. (The computer-watcher angels can use a finger on the screen, too—whichever method they prefer.)
