Kissed by an Angel/The Power of Love/Soulmates

by Elizabeth Chandler

  “Whoa, whoa.” He wrestled her down in the grass with him.

  “I’m not worried about anything like that.”

  “Then what’s bugging you?”

  “Two things, I guess,” he replied. “One, I think you may be doing a lot out of guilt.”

  “Guilt!” She pushed him back and sat up again.

  “I think you’ve picked up your mother’s attitude, that she and her family are responsible for Caroline’s unhappiness.”

  “We’re not.”

  “I know that. I just want to make sure you do—and that you’re not trying to make it up to someone who is milking it for all it’s worth.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ivy said, pulling up tufts of grass. “You really don’t know what he’s going through. You haven’t been around Gregory. You—”

  “I’ve been around him since first grade.”

  “People can change from first grade.”

  “I’ve known Eric for that long, too,” Tristan continued. “They’ve done some pretty wild, even dangerous things together. And that’s the other thing that worries me.”

  “But Gregory wouldn’t try stuff with my friends and me around,” Ivy insisted. “He respects me, Tristan. This is just his way of reaching out, after the last three weeks.”

  Tristan didn’t look convinced.

  “Please don’t let this come between us,” she said.

  He reached up for her face. “I wouldn’t let anything come between us. Not mountains, rivers, continents, war, floods—”

  “Or dire death itself,” she said. “So you did read Beth’s latest story.”

  “Gary ate it up.”

  “Gary? You’re kidding!”

  “He kept the copy you gave me,” Tristan said, “but I swore to him that I’d tell you I lost it.”

  Ivy laughed and lay down close to Tristan, resting her head on his shoulder. “You understand, then, why I said yes to Gregory.”

  “No, but it’s your choice,” he said. “And that’s that. So what are you doing next Saturday night?”

  “What are you doing?” Ivy asked back.

  “Dining at the Durney Inn.”

  “The inn! Well, we must be earning big bucks giving swimming lessons this summer.”

  “We’re earning enough,” he said. “You don’t happen to know of a beautiful girl who likes to be treated to candlelight and French food, do you?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Is she free that night?”

  “Maybe. Does she get an appetizer?”

  “Three, if she likes.”

  “How about dessert?”

  “Raspberry soufflé. And kisses.”

  “Kisses…”

  “Well, that was fun,” Ivy remarked dryly.

  “I was bored anyway,” Eric said.

  “I wasn’t,” Beth told them. She was the last one to leave the party at the campus sorority house that Saturday night. Borrowing paper from one of the sorority sisters, she had interviewed just about everyone there. When the other high-schoolers had been thrown out, she was invited to stay. Sigma Pi Nu was flattered that she would put them in a story.

  “Eric, you’re going to have to learn to keep your cool,” Gregory said, clearly irritated. He had been in the corner with some redhead (which had prompted Suzanne to go body to body with a bearded guy) when Eric decided to pick a fight with a giant wearing a varsity football shirt. Not smart.

  Now Eric stood on the steps of a pillared building, staring up at a statue and cocking his head left and right, as if he were conversing with it.

  Suzanne lay on her back on a stone bench in the college quad, laughing softly to herself, her bare knees up, her skirt fluttering back provocatively. Gregory eyed her.

  Ivy turned away. She and Will were the only ones who hadn’t been drinking. Will had seemed at home at the campus party scene, but restless. Perhaps the rumors at school were true: he had seen it all and nothing much impressed him.

  Like Ivy, Will had been a newcomer in January. His father was a television producer in New York, however, which scored big points with the kids at school. Upon arrival, he had been immediately taken up by the fast crowd, but his silent manner kept everyone from getting a real fix on him. It was easy to imagine a lot of things about Will, and most people that Ivy knew imagined he was very cool.

  “Where’sss your old man?” Eric suddenly shouted. He was still peering up at the statue on the steps. “G.B., where’s your old man?”

  “That’s my old man’s old man,” Gregory replied.

  Ivy realized then that it was a statue of Gregory’s grandfather. Of course. They were in front of Baines Hall.

  “Why isssn’t your old man up there?”

  Gregory sat down on a bench across from Suzanne. “I guess because he’s not dead yet.” He took a deep swig from a beer bottle.

  “Then why isssn’t your old lady up there? Huh?”

  Gregory didn’t reply. He took another long drink.

  Eric frowned up at the statue. “I miss her. I misssss old Caroline. You know I do.”

  “I know,” Gregory said quietly.

  “Ssso, let’s put her up there.” He winked at Gregory.

  Gregory didn’t say anything, and Ivy went to stand behind him. She rested one hand lightly on Gregory’s shoulder.

  “I got Caroline right here in my pocket,” Eric said.

  All of them watched as he patted and searched his shirt and pants. Finally he pulled out a bra. He held it up to his cheek. “Still warm.”

  Ivy laid her other hand on Gregory’s shoulder. She could feel the tension in him.

  Eric wrapped the bra around his arm and struggled to climb up on the statue.

  “You’re going to kill yourself,” Gregory told him.

  “Like your mother,” said Eric.

  Gregory made no response except to take another drink. Ivy turned his head away from Eric. Gregory let his face rest against her then, and she felt him relax a little. Both Suzanne and Will watched the two of them, Suzanne with flashing eyes.

  But Ivy stayed where she was while Eric put the bra on Judge Baines. Then she confiscated a few unopened beers and walked over to Suzanne. “Gregory could use some hand-holding,” she said to her friend.

  “Even after you and the redhead.”

  Ivy ignored the comment. Suzanne also had had too much to drink.

  Eric gave a sudden yelp, and they turned quickly to see him sliding off the statue. He landed in the gravel and rolled up like a snail. Will hurried over to him. Gregory laughed.

  “Nothing broken but my brain,” Eric muttered as Will pulled him to his feet.

  “I think we should get back to the car,” Will said coolly.

  “But the party’s just begun,” Gregory protested, rising to his feet. The alcohol was obviously kicking in. “I haven’t felt this good since who knows when.”

  “I know when,” said Eric.

  “The party will be over soon enough if the campus police catch us,” Will pointed out.

  “My father’s the prez,” said Gregory. “He’ll get us off the hook.”

  “Or hang us from a higher one,” said Eric.

  Ivy looked at her watch: 11:45. She wondered where Tristan was and what he was doing. She wondered if he missed her. She could have been sitting next to him at that moment, enjoying the soft June night.

  “Come on, Beth,” she said, sorry she had gotten her friends into this situation. “Suzanne,” she commanded.

  “Yes, mother,” Suzanne replied.

  Gregory laughed, which stung Ivy a little. They’re both wasted, she reminded herself.

  It took a long time for the six of them to find Gregory’s car again. When they did, Will held out his hand for Gregory’s keys. “How about if I drive?”

  “I can handle it,” Gregory told him.

  “Not this time.” Will’s tone was easygoing, but he reached determinedly for the keys.

  Gregory yanked them away.
“Nobody drives this Beamer but me.”

  Will glanced over at Ivy.

  “Come on, Gregory,” she said. “Let me be the D.D.”

  “If someone else drives,” Will pointed out to Gregory, “you can drink all you want.”

  “I’ll drink all I want and I’ll drive all I want,” Gregory shouted, “and if you don’t like it, walk.”

  Ivy thought about walking—to the nearest phone and calling for a ride. But she knew Suzanne would stay with Gregory, and she felt responsible for her safety.

  Will asked Ivy if he could borrow her sweater, then stuffed that and his jacket between the two front seats, making a seat in the middle. He pulled Eric into the front of the car with him, so that Gregory, he, and Eric sat three across. Ivy climbed into the middle of the backseat, with Beth and Suzanne on either side.

  “Why, Will,” Gregory said, observing the way he was squeezed in next to him, “I didn’t know you cared. Suzanne, get up here!”

  Ivy pulled Suzanne back.

  “I said, get up here. Let Will sit back there with the girl of his dreams.”

  Ivy shook her head and sighed.

  “Anybody likely to throw up has to sit by a window,” Will said.

  Ivy buckled Suzanne’s seat belt.

  Gregory shrugged, then started the car. He drove fast, too fast. The tires squealed on turns, the rubber barely holding the road. Beth closed her eyes. Suzanne and Eric hung their heads out the window as the car lurched sickeningly from side to side. Ivy stared straight ahead, her muscles contracting each time Gregory had to brake or turn the car, as if she were driving the route for him. Will actually did help drive. Ivy realized then why he had placed himself in a dangerous spot without a seat belt.

  They were snaking south on the back roads, and when they finally crossed the river into town, Ivy let out a sigh of relief. But Gregory made a sharp turn north again, taking the road that ran along the river and beneath the ridge, past the train depot, beyond town limits.

  “Where are we going?” Ivy asked as they followed a narrow road, their headlights striping the trees.

  “You’ll see.”

  Eric lifted his head off the door. “Chick, chick, chick,” he sang. “Who’s a chick, chick, chick?”

  The ridge, looming high and dark on their right, crowded the road closer and closer to the train tracks on the left. Ivy knew they must be getting near to the point where the tracks crossed over the river.

  “The double bridges,” Beth whispered to her, just as they ran out of road. Gregory cut the engine and lights. Ivy couldn’t see a thing.

  “Who’s a chick chick chick?” Eric said, swinging his head back and forth.

  Ivy felt ill from the fumes of the car and the alcohol. She and Beth climbed out of one side. Suzanne sat with the door open on the other. Gregory popped open the trunk. More beer.

  “Where did you get all this?” Ivy demanded.

  Gregory grinned and put a heavy arm around her. “Something else for you to thank Andrew for.”

  “Andrew bought it?” she said incredulously.

  “No, his credit card did.”

  Then he and Eric each reached for a six-pack.

  Though Ivy understood Gregory’s need to blow off steam, though she knew how tough it had been for him since his mother’s death, she had been growing angrier by the minute. Now her anger began to ebb, giving way to a slow tide of fear.

  The river wasn’t far away; she could hear it rushing over rocks. As her eyes adjusted to the country dark she traced the high wires of the electric train line. She remembered why kids came here: to play chicken on the railroad bridge. Ivy didn’t want to follow Gregory as he led them single file to the bridges. But she couldn’t stay behind, not with Suzanne unable to take care of herself.

  Eric was pushing her from behind, singing in a high, weird voice, “Who’s a chick, chick, chick?”

  Small round stones rolled under their feet. Eric and Suzanne kept tripping on the railroad ties. The six of them walked the avenue that sliced sharply through the trees, a path made by the trains rushing between New York City and towns north of it.

  The avenue opened out and Ivy saw the two bridges side by side, the new one built about seven feet from the old. Two gleaming steel rails penciled the path of the new one. There was no railing or restraining fence. The fretwork beneath it stretched like a dark and sinister web across the river. The older bridge had collapsed in the middle. Each side was like a hand extending from the river banks, fingers of metal and rotting wood reaching toward but unable to grip the others. Far below both bridges, the water rushed and hissed.

  “Follow the leader, follow the leader,” Eric said, prancing ahead of them. He stumbled toward the newer bridge.

  Ivy looped two fingers through the waistband of Suzanne’s skirt. “Not you.”

  “Let go of me,” Suzanne snapped.

  Suzanne tried to follow Eric onto the bridge, but Ivy pulled her back.

  “Let go!”

  They struggled for a moment, and Gregory laughed at the two of them. Then Suzanne slipped out of Ivy’s grasp. Desperate, Ivy reached forward and caught Suzanne’s bare leg, causing her to trip over the rail and tumble down the track’s bed of stone into some brush. Suzanne tried to pull herself up but couldn’t. She sank back, her eyes blazing at Ivy, her hands curled with anger.

  “Beth, you’d better see if she’s all right,” Ivy said, and turned her attention back to Eric. He was fifteen feet out now and over the water. His too-thin body skipped and turned along the track like a dancing skeleton.

  “Chick, chick, chicken,” he taunted the others. “Look at all you chick, chick, chickens.”

  Gregory leaned against a tree and laughed. Will watched, his expression guarded.

  Then everyone’s head turned as the whistle sounded from across the river.

  It was the whistle of the late-night train that Ivy had heard so often from their house high on the ridge, a streamer of sound that wrapped around her heart every night as if it wanted to take her with it.

  “Eric!” she and Will shouted at the same time. Beth held Suzanne, who was leaning over the bushes and throwing up.

  “Eric!”

  Will started after him, but Eric took off crazily bobbing over the tracks. Will pursued.

  They’ll both be killed, thought Ivy. “Will come back! Will! You can’t!”

  The train made its swing onto the bridge, its bright eye throwing back the night, burning the two boys into paper-thin silhouettes. Ivy saw Eric tottering on the very edge of the bridge. Water and rocks lay far below him.

  He’s going to jump to the old bridge, she thought. He’ll never make it.

  Angels, help us! she prayed. Water angel, where are you? Tony? I’m calling you!

  Eric leaned down, then suddenly dropped over the side.

  Ivy screamed. She and Beth screamed and screamed.

  Will was running back now, stumbling and running. The train wasn’t slowing down. It was huge and dark. It was as large as night itself, bearing down on him behind one bright, blind eye. Twenty feet, fifteen feet—Will wasn’t going to make it! He looked like a moth being drawn into its light.

  “Will! Will!” Ivy shrieked. “Oh, angels—”

  He leaped.

  The train rushed by, the ground thundering beneath it, the air burning with metal smells. Ivy took off down the steep hill, crashing through the brush in the direction that Will had leaped.

  “Will? Will, answer me!”

  “I’m here. I’m okay.”

  He stood up in front of her.

  By the hands of the angels, she thought.

  They held on to each other for a moment. Ivy didn’t know if it was he or she who was shaking so violently.

  “Eric? Did he—”

  “I don’t know,” she answered quickly. “Can we get down to the river from here?”

  “Try the other side.”

  They clawed their way up the bank together. When they got to the top,
they both stopped and stared. Eric was walking toward them along the new bridge, a thick rope and a bungee cord slung casually over his shoulder.

  It took them a moment to figure out what had occurred. Ivy spun around to look at Gregory. Had he been in on the trick?

  He was smiling now. “Excellent,” he said to Eric. “Excellent.”

  P1-11

  “You know what I don’t understand?” Gregory said, cocking his head, studying Ivy in her short silk skirt. A mischievous smile spread over his face. “I don’t understand why you never wear that nice bridesmaid’s dress.”

  Maggie looked up from the plate of snacks she was carrying upstairs to Andrew. Everyone was going out that evening.

  “Oh, it’s much too formal for the Durney Inn,” Maggie said, “but you’re right, Gregory, Ivy should find someplace to wear her dress again.”

  Ivy smiled briefly at her mother, then shot Gregory a wicked look. He grinned at her.

  After Maggie had left the kitchen, he said, “You look hot tonight.” He said it in a matter-of-fact way, though his eyes lingered on her. Ivy no longer tried to figure out what Gregory meant by some of his comments—whether he was truly giving a compliment or subtly mocking her. She let a lot of what he said roll right on by. Maybe she had finally gotten used to him.

  “You’re getting used to making excuses for him,” Tristan had said after she told him what had happened on Saturday night.

  Ivy had been furious at Eric for his stupid trick. Gregory wouldn’t admit to being in on the stunt. He had shrugged and said, “You never know what Eric’s up to. That’s what makes him fun.”

  Of course, she had been angry at Gregory too. But living with him day after day, she saw how he struggled. Since his mother’s death there were hours when he seemed completely lost in his own thoughts. She thought about the day he had asked her to go for a ride and they had driven through his mother’s old neighborhood. She had told him that she had been there that stormy night. He had barely spoken after that and wouldn’t meet her eyes the rest of the way home.

  “I’d have to be a stone not to feel for him,” Ivy had told Tristan, and ended the discussion there.

  Both Gregory and Tristan were inclined to avoid each other. As usual, Gregory disappeared as soon as Tristan drove up that evening.