by Rob Summers
Chapter 29 An Old Hellite Trick
At Grace House the special agent the Ambassador had spoken of was just arriving. When she stepped in the door and pushed back the hood of her gray cloak, Dignity, Truth, and Reason were pleased to recognize young Miss Prayer of the Heavenly Embassy. This black woman and her sister Thanks had often been visitors to the house.
Dignity wanted to offer her hospitality, but she said she was eager to begin her mission at once.
“That may require a little discussion first,” Dignity said to her, “because, other than that it has to do with Leasing House, I don’t know what your mission is supposed to be.”
“It’s up to you,” she said. “I want to go into Leasing House and work. By my nature I’m invisible to them, which as you must have guessed from your experiences, is virtually the only way to make headway. Grace considered sending in Argument, or perhaps Force, but finally settled on me. I’m ready to do them good.”
Reason looked to her cousin and rolled her dark eyes.
He grinned. “There’s some question here as to whether we want to do them good,” he said to Prayer. “Lately we’ve had nothing but rejection and slander from Leasing House.”
Prayer said nothing.
“So what’s the decision, Dignity?” Truth said. “I want to get on to the ball, so if you’re going to send Miss Prayer on her mission, you’ve got to make up your mind and then give her details of what to do.”
“Or not send her at all,” Reason added.
Dignity said, “I can’t help thinking that our friend Gentleness would say sending her is a wonderful idea. To him, exchanging Prayer for our little visit from Confusion and Prevarica would seem like good commerce.”
“Oh, why did you have to bring him into it?” moaned Reason, half smiling. “Now I know what we’ll have to do.” She stepped nearer Prayer and said, “You go on in, then, and see what you can do to hold together what’s left of the house walls. I’m afraid they won’t stand many more seasons, and with Neglect and Folly living there, Guiles has no attention left for such practical matters.”
“Work on their eyes too,” Dignity instructed. “It’s sure to be painful for them, but if you can find some way to help them to see obvious things…”
Miss Prayer drew a squeeze tube from within her cloak and held it up. “I’ve brought some celestial eye salve,” she said.
“That’s just the thing. But also if you could open up the house somehow to what outsiders say and think. As things stand they only seem to hear each other’s words, and they’re closed to anything new.”
“The Embassy has provided me with hearing aids for them,” she said. “Of course, I’ll have trouble getting them to wear them, but I can try. Then when the timing is right, Grace could have agent Conviction follow me into Leasing House. But that may be some time yet.”
With this settled, they left Grace House and led her down the street toward Leasing House. It happened that Neglect and Folly were just beginning their walk at this time and came to the corner of Sandhill and Flood just in time to meet the Grace House party.
“Dad! Mom!” Dignity cried out eagerly, for he had not seen them in weeks. “How are you?”
“Oh, we’re just fine, son,” Neglect said calmly, as if the events of the last several weeks had never occurred. He patted his pockets, searching for a cigarette pack. “Just getting out of the house to admire the Christmas decorations down the avenue over there. Won’t you join us?”
“Can’t do that, Dad. We’re already late for the Navy Ball on the Gloria Dothan.” Dignity pointed to the many lights of the ship where it loomed so impossibly large on the horizon.
Neglect looked that way. “On the what, son?”
“On the ship over there, Dad.”
Neglect turned back. “Stop joking. Now are you joining us?”
“Dad, you’ve got to see it; it’s enormous. Mom, don’t you see it?”
Folly paused to adjust something in her purse. “I just wish things could be how they used to,” she said without looking. “Where’s my little Pride I used to know?”
“I dropped that name eleven years ago, Mom.”
For some moments they all were awkwardly silent. Dignity had often felt desperate to see his parents since their ensconcement in Leasing House; but now that he finally had the opportunity to talk with them, he found that he had little to say.
“Uh, I don’t think you’ve met Miss Prayer,” he said at last.
“Who’s that?” Neglect asked.
Dignity gestured to her. “This is Miss Prayer. Miss Prayer, these are my parents.”
“Stop joking,” Neglect said. “Won’t you join us for our walk?”
Dignity belatedly remembered that Prayer was invisible to non-Heavenites.
“Sorry, we just can’t do it tonight.”
“Well, we’re going to go enjoy the lights, and then we’ll come home and watch TV. Good stuff tonight: ‘Next Millionaire’ and a rerun of ‘Bewitched’ and the Grateful Dead Christmas special. You better stay home if you don’t want to miss it.”
“Can’t, Dad. We’re going to the ball.”
“I just wish things could be how they used to,” Folly said again. “Where’s my little Pride I used to know?”
Neglect had not found his cigarettes. He seemed to sag down smaller in his coat. “I’ve been too long without a smoke,” he said. “Have to go back to the house.”
“That’s all right, I always carry some for him in my purse,” Folly said to them.
Apparently not hearing this, Neglect had turned back toward Leasing House and was trying to walk, but something was wrong. He appeared to be shrinking before their eyes, and his legs seemed spongy and boneless. At each step he sank down until his hips almost touched the ground.
Dignity ran to him in alarm and pulled him up, but his hands sank into his father’s arm as if it were an air pillow.
“Get me a cigarette,” Neglect said wheezily but still calmly.
“That’s all right, I always carry some for him in my purse,” Folly said.
Dignity was on the point of screaming for help, but Truth came to his side. “Don’t get upset,” he said. “He’s not hurting any. Just get a cigarette from Folly. That’ll fix him right up.”
By this time his father was down on the sidewalk and was flattening like a deflating pool toy. Trusting that Truth’s insane sounding advice would work, Dignity went to his mother.
“Let me have your purse for a minute,” he said, “so I can get a cigarette for Dad.”
“That’s all right,” she replied, “I always carry some for him in my purse.”
Since she made no move to offer the purse to him, he pulled it from her, opened it, and looked inside. At first he couldn’t see a cigarette pack, but on top was a small tape player. It was running and Folly’s taped voice came from it, saying, “I just wish things could be how they used to.” He looked at his mother and saw her lip-synching the next line, “Where’s my little Pride I used to know?”
This was not as frightening as it might have been, for he had occasionally suspected that something like this was the explanation for his mother’s personality. Pushing the tape player aside, he found the cigarettes, extracted one, and handed the purse back to Folly. By this time Truth was ready with Neglect’s lighter, and in a moment Dignity was holding the lit cigarette to his father’s lips. The effect was immediate. With each breath, Neglect visibly reinflated.
“Why couldn’t he have just breathed in?” asked Reason, crouching beside them.
“It’s not the air that keeps him going, it’s the smoke,” Truth said. “It’s an old Hellite trick.”
“But—a bag of smoke?” she said. “Is that all there is to Neglect?”
“Afraid so.”
“Well, what about Mom?” Dignity whispered. “It looks like a lot of what she seems to say is really a tape recorder in her purse.” He adde
d a few words of explanation concerning what he had just seen.
“That so?” Truth replied calmly. “I don’t see what difference it makes.”
“Yes,” said Reason with a giggle, “it works out the same as if she said things over and over herself and costs her less effort.”
“How could they be my parents?” Dignity challenged. “These aren’t my parents.”
“They were Pride’s parents, sure,” Truth said, “but you, you’re Dignity, and they aren’t your parents. You’ve got to understand that, when you turned Heavenite, your old family ties, which were bound to be temporary anyway, got replaced. It’s a shame you lost your blood relatives, but in the Kingdom you’ve got a hundred times more family than you used to, good people, and they’re all going to be with you forever.”
They watched as Neglect reinflated to the point that he could stand, while Folly stood by with her tape player talking. Then, before parting from them in seeming good health, Neglect asked again if they would join them to see the Christmas lights on Flood Avenue. Folly asked where the little Pride was that she used to know. Then the older couple slowly walked away as if nothing had happened, he smoking and she whining.
At last the Grace House residents were free to see Prayer into Leasing House. Reason was going to direct her to enter around back, but the young woman merely pulled her hood up and passed in through the front wall like a mist through a wire fence.
Truth nodded approvingly. “Now that’s a great secret agent,” he said.
Once within, Miss Prayer made her way down to the basement where she came first to a little room where Miss Confusion had found a warm place to nap. She was asleep in a tattered reclining chair, a copy of a tabloid newspaper on her lap (with her underlines), and her mouth half open. Prayer laid her hand in blessing on the nanny’s head.
After a minute she made her way to another room where she found the Leasing family watching television with wide open eyes and vacant expressions. She passed unseen from one to the next, rubbing salve into Oblivia’s eyes, whispering a word into Aunt Arctica’s ear. When she came to Prevarica, she tried to attach a hearing aid to her, but the girl brushed it away absently as if batting at a fly. She kissed the little girl on the cheek and passed on. There was time. With Dignity’s commission, renewed daily, she hoped to be here for years.
