Perfect Little Angels

by Andrew Neiderman

  “What will I do? I don’t remember what I can do.”

  “I told you—you’ll do what I tell you to do. Stop worrying about that.”

  He nodded and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, his father’s entire head and neck had risen.

  “Your body’s coming back. What about mine?”

  “It will come,” his father predicted with the confidence of an Old Testament prophet. “You will rise from the dead. I will bring you back. You’ll be born again, thanks to me.”

  “Thank you, Father.”

  “What’s the rest of it?” his father demanded.

  “Forgive me, for I have sinned,” he said.

  “That’s it.”

  “She forgives me though, doesn’t she?”

  “Can’t say. Imagine she would, remembering what she was like. She forgave everything—the birds that dropped bird shit on the patio, the rain that pounded the flowers to pulp, the wind that tore off shingles—everything. She had this habitual smile, this soft, gentle smile. You, especially, could do no wrong. She either didn’t understand or didn’t want to understand the things I told her.”

  “But I did. I did do wrong.”

  “That’s good,” his father said. “You’re really coming along.” His father’s entire body was now in the light. The nurse entered, and she was in the light, too. All the shadows had retreated. His father stood up. “Now you’ll eat, and the rest of you will return,” he said.

  She put the tray on a small table and brought it to him.

  “He can feed himself,” his father said. “Go on,” he instructed. “Feed yourself.”

  “I will.” He sat up. His lower abdomen had already returned. They both stood aside and watched him eat. “This is how you do it, right?”

  “You’re doing fine,” his father said. “Mildred?”

  “You’re doing fine,” she said indifferently.

  “Later, after your legs are back, we’re going to go outside, and I’m going to tell you some more about the project. It’s about time I had someone to talk to, someone who will appreciate me,” he said, turning to Mildred. She laughed. He turned back to him. “That sound all right?”

  “Yes,” he said quickly.

  “See you later,” his father said and started out of the room.

  “Dad,” he called. Where did that word come from? Dad? His father turned back, a curious smile on his face. “Thanks,” he said. “For forgiving me.”

  “Oh, but I haven’t done that yet, Eugene. I said she probably would, but it’s going to be awhile yet for me. Understand?”

  He didn’t, but he nodded. Then his father left.

  Mildred stood there, smirking.

  “You don’t think he’s going to forgive me, do you?” he asked her.

  “What difference does it make if he does?” she replied.

  He stared at her for a moment.

  He couldn’t think of the answer, but knew the answer was out there, waiting for him.

  Like one of those fish, eager to nibble on the bread.

  Sorry, he thought; this time I have to use a hook. I’ve got to have the answer.

  He continued to eat. His thighs were already back. Soon he would have his knees, and then the rest of him would return, and he could stand up and take a walk with his father.

  6

  “Wait,” Lois said a block from the entrance to the Elysian Fields development. She stopped, looked around cautiously, then juggled her books to rip a sheet of paper from her notebook. “I want you to write something on here.”

  “What?” Justine smiled quizzically.

  “Write: I hate Elysian Fields, and then sign your name. It has to be in your handwriting, something you did yourself.”

  “You’re kidding?” Justine said, stepping back as though Lois were tempting her with drugs.

  “No. Please do it. I know you can do it right now, before we go in there.”

  “I can do it. I just don’t see the point,” Justine said, eyeing the blank sheet of paper as though it were something terribly forbidden.

  “Just trust me. Please,” Lois pleaded. “Hurry,” she added, looking down the street.

  Justine shook her head. “I feel silly doing this,” she said, but she took out her pen and wrote it, signing her name.

  “Thanks.” Lois placed it back into her notebook carefully.

  “So? What are you going to do with that?”

  “You’ll see later,” Lois replied. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to show it to anyone else,” she added. “Come on,” she said, moving toward the entrance. Justine followed quickly.

  As soon as they entered the grounds, the security guard, the name Dobson embroidered on the front of his khaki shirt, stepped out of the booth to greet them. A man in his early fifties, he wore his dark brown hair very short, in military style. Although he nodded and smiled at them, he had a stern, no nonsense look in his eyes. He looked more like a correctional officer than the security guard at a housing development.

  Both girls smiled at him, then sighed as they started up the small knoll. The security guard watched them closely until they disappeared over the top.

  “I’ll just run in and tell my mother where I’m going,” Lois said when they reached her home.

  Mrs. Wilson, a tall, slim woman with birdlike features, was hovering at the door already. She wore a light blue cotton skirt and a loosely fitting matching blouse. Her thin arms looked lost in the wide sleeves. She had a very fair complexion with the same tiny freckles on her forehead that Lois had on her cheeks. As Justine and Lois approached, Justine could see the tiny blue veins in Mrs. Wilson’s temples. They looked like the legs of small aqua spiders pressed under the skin. Her amber-tinted hair was brushed back and pinned on the sides with the back strands brushed straight down, much like Christy Duke’s hair.

  Justine noticed that, like a bird, Mrs. Wilson didn’t look directly at them. She faced a little to the right of them, but seemed to note their every movement. She held her thin hands against the top of her small bosom and worked her fingers nervously, as though groping an invisible necklace. Although Lois had her mother’s small facial features, they weren’t as hard and as sharp.

  “Where were you?” her mother asked, still not looking directly at her.

  “Justine and I went for a short walk,” she said. She looked quickly at Justine, her eyes filled with warning. “Now we’re going up to her house to study. I was just coming in to tell you,” Lois added. Justine noticed that Lois’s voice had a new high pitched tone to it. She was straining to make a certain impression.

  “All the other girls were home some time ago,” her mother said, turning to face the girls. She brought her hands down to her sides. “I was worried.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lois said.

  Mrs. Wilson looked from her to Justine, then back to her daughter. “Be sure you’re back in time to set the table and read to your brother.”

  “I will,” Lois said.

  The girls walked very slowly back to the street, and started toward Justine’s house. Lois’s mother remained in the doorway, watching them.

  “She wasn’t always like that,” Lois said softly, so softly that Justine could barely hear her. “She used to be a lot more energetic and relaxed. Now she’s like a sparrow, fluttering about, always tense, never trusting. I can’t get near her, anymore. It’s like trying to pet a bird.

  “But I never noticed it until I stopped taking the vitamins,” she added.

  Justine looked at her, and then looked back at Lois’s house. Mrs. Wilson had stepped out and was picking up debris from the sidewalk: pieces of leaves, small twigs, blades of grass, pecking at them with her long fingers cupped like claws as she swept over the stones to make them immaculate.

  Although Justine didn’t reply, her heart began to beat faster. She looked ahead at her new house and thought about her mother. Were there any differences between what she was like in the city and what she was like here? Before she could reply to
her own question, the tiny ringing began in her ears, barely audible at first, and then growing gently in intensity.

  “It’s happening,” Lois said. Justine turned to her. Lois was grimacing through her forced smile. After a few moments, the ringing ceased. Both girls stopped and looked back over the development.

  “It’s a beautiful day,” Justine said. “I just feel like running through the development, don’t you?”

  “Yes, it is beautiful,” Lois said. “I can’t help but agree. But we’re still going to listen to some music, aren’t we?” she asked, fearing Justine’s change of mind.

  “Sure,” Justine said. “But I just love it here. I never thought I’d feel so good about a place.”

  “Neither did I,” Lois said automatically. “Although I know you find it prettier than I do,” she added so low Justine barely heard it. The words made no sense to her, anyway.

  When the girls entered Justine’s house, they didn’t notice Elaine Freeman, for she was standing so quietly by the front window in the living room, she was like a fixture. She waited until they were all into the house, then turned on them.

  “Where were you?” she demanded.

  Unaccustomed to such a tone of voice in her mother, Justine smiled.

  But Elaine’s face didn’t relax. In fact, the skin at the corners of her eyes tightened even more as she scrutinized her daughter. Elaine had been painting in her studio. She wore her sweat shirt and jeans and had her hair pinned up, revealing her small, pink ears. There was a little brown birthmark behind the right one, only now it seemed much more prominent. In fact, to Justine, all of her mother’s flaws were suddenly accentuated.

  “I was at school,” Justine replied.

  “School ended some time ago. I saw the others come home. Why weren’t you with them?”

  “We went for a soda,” Justine said. “Didn’t we, Lois?”

  “Yes, we did, Mrs. Freeman. It was right near the school and…”

  “You should tell me you’re going to do these things, Justine,” Elaine Freeman said, not looking at Lois. “This is a new place. I was worried.”

  “I’m sorry,” Justine said.

  For a long moment, Elaine just stared at her daughter. “For the time being,” she said, “until you join something at school, you should come right home to do your homework.”

  “That’s what we’re going to do right now,” Justine said quickly. “We’re going upstairs to my room to listen to music and do it.”

  Elaine studied them again, as if to be sure they weren’t lying.

  “Fine,” she finally said.

  Justine and Lois turned and went upstairs.

  “She’s just like my mother now,” Lois said when they entered Justine’s room. “I can see it. It’s because of their meeting with Dr. Lawrence. It’s starting for you.”

  “What’s starting?”

  “You’ll see it better when your mind is clear. When you stop taking the vitamins,” Lois replied. Justine shrugged. “You don’t even know what I’m talking about right now, do you?”

  “No,” Justine said. She dropped her books on the bed and went to her tape deck.

  “Was your mother always this worried about your every move?” Lois pursued. “Mine wasn’t.”

  “I don’t remember,” Justine said, half concentrating on what Lois asked and half concentrating on her tapes. She started sifting through them.

  “You will,” Lois said. “We’d better really do this homework,” she said, putting her books on Justine’s desk. “We’ll start with the biology outline of chapter one, okay?”

  “Sure,” Justine said. She inserted Foxy Lady, a rock group from New Zealand.

  Lois smiled as the music began. “Who’s that?” she asked.

  “They’re great,” Justine told her.

  “Never heard of them.”

  “Really? They’ve had two platinum albums and three songs in the top ten. Where have you been, Russia?”

  “No, right here,” Lois said. “But I might as well have been in a foreign land. Okay, I’ll read and do the first five pages, and you do the next five. Then we’ll pool our information.”

  “Good idea. Hey, if we do this all the time, we’ll finish our homework in half the time.”

  “Now you’re thinking,” Lois said, smiling. “It’s great to have someone to work with. Janet and I used to share homework, until one day she decided it wasn’t right. We were not only cheating our teachers, we were cheating ourselves, she said. Of course, I knew she had discussed it with Dr. Lawrence at a session.”

  “He’s such a good-looking man,” Justine said. “Is his son as good-looking?”

  “You’ll see, and then you can tell me,” Lois said, smiling, but it was a wry smile, the look of someone who already knew the answer.

  “When are we going up there?”

  “When you are free of the vitamin for at least twenty-four hours. I want you to be alert for this,” Lois said. “What we will do…”

  The door to Justine’s room was thrust open, and Elaine stood there, her hands on her hips, her face twisted in an ugly grimace. “How can you two do any concentrating with that awful music blaring?” she asked.

  For a moment, Justine simply stared at the sight of her mother in the doorway. Her mother had never barged in on her like that. Her mother always knocked, always respected her privacy, especially when she had friends over.

  “It’s Foxy Lady,” Justine replied, as if simply identifying the music would be all the explanation necessary.

  “I don’t care what it is; it’s terrible. It sounds like a group of people in pain. I think that kind of music might even be damaging to your mind. It certainly isn’t good for your hearing. Oh, God, turn it off.”

  “I like it,” Justine said. “You used to like it, too.” She recalled how her mother had once danced to it back at their co-op, and her father had laughed hysterically. But as fast as the image came into her mind, it popped out, the memory drawn out and lost forever.

  “I could never like that. Now I’m sure you are torturing your friend, who’s just being polite about it.” Elaine turned directly to Lois, still keeping her hands on her hips. “Lois, be honest. What do you think of that…that wailing?”

  Justine looked at her and saw the quick change in her friend’s expression.

  Lois smiled and nodded. “You’re right, Mrs. Freeman, but I thought if Justine liked it…”

  “See?” Elaine said. “Lois was just being polite. Do us all a favor. Put on something beautiful. Here,” she said, thrusting a tape at her. She had had it in her hands all the time.

  “What’s that?” Justine took the tape from her mother and read the label. “Andre Previn, ‘Movie Themes’?”

  “Oh, my mother has that,” Lois said quickly. “It is pretty.”

  “See?” Elaine said, smiling.

  Justine stared at Lois as though she had just stabbed her in the back, but Lois simply smiled and nodded.

  “It is beautiful—and perfect to play while studying,” Lois said.

  “Go on, put it on,” Elaine commanded. Reluctantly, Justine switched tapes. The soft music began, and Elaine closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Isn’t it beautiful? That’s music that makes you feel good. Enjoy,” she added and walked away, leaving the door open.

  Almost immediately, Justine turned on Lois.

  “Wait,” Lois said, holding up her hand like a traffic cop. She went to the door and looked down the hallway. Then she came back to Justine. “I had to say those things. It’s expected. I would have said them and thought them if I hadn’t stopped the vitamins. Otherwise, your mother might have said something to my mother, and she would have called Dr. Lawrence immediately. I’ve had a half a dozen sessions with him, so I know what it’s like.”

  “You’re crazy,” Justine said, backing away from her.

  “No, I’m not. You’ll see. The other kids are the same way, all those who have been seeing Dr. Lawrence.”

  “I h
ate this music,” Justine said, scowling at her tape deck.

  “You won’t after your first visit with him. You’ll begin to hate everything else.”

  “That’s ridiculous. No one can make me hate what I like, or like what I hate,” Justine said, her eyes bright with cold determination.

  “Oh, really?” Lois said, smirking.

  “Really,” Justine said. Lois shook her head. She went to her notebook and took out a sheet. Then she handed it to Justine.

  “What’s this?”

  “Read it,” Lois said.

  Justine looked at it and then looked up. “I don’t believe this.”

  “Isn’t it your handwriting? You did it just before we walked onto the grounds.”

  Justine looked at it again. It was her handwriting. She looked up at Lois.

  “But I don’t remember doing it and I…” She looked down at the words. “And I love Elysian Fields. I don’t understand,” she said, nearly in tears.

  “I don’t understand it all, either,” Lois said. She went to the window and looked out at the development. “Right now, all I feel is pleasure when I look at this place. It’s so beautiful here. The sky is always blue; it’s blue even when it’s raining, and the rain is always warm and gentle.”

  “Yes,” Justine said, coming up beside her to gaze out her window. “Everything looks so soft; all the colors are so bright. I think I could stand here and look out all day long.”

  The two new friends, joined by the common pleasure they were experiencing, stood silently for nearly a minute. Justine even took Lois’s hand. She had never identified with any of her friends as strongly, not even with Mindy. She felt a great need to be a part of whatever it was that united everyone here. There was a great sense of community, of belonging.

  Lois was the first to break the spell.

  “We’d better do our homework,” she said. “Otherwise they’ll know.”

  “Who’ll know?” Justine asked, that same curious smile coming over her face. It was as if she were talking to a child.