Kissed by an Angel/The Power of Love/Soulmates

by Elizabeth Chandler

  Tristan always came early to play for a few minutes with Philip. Ivy saw, with some satisfaction, that this time Tristan couldn’t concentrate, though the home team was down by two in the rubber match of the series with Don Mattingly coming to bat. Second base was stolen while the pitcher was sneaking peeks at Ivy.

  Philip grew frustrated the third time that Tristan couldn’t remember how many outs there were, and stomped off to call Sammy. Ivy and Tristan seized the opportunity to slip out of the house. On the way to the car, Ivy noticed that Tristan seemed unusually quiet.

  “How’s Ella?” she asked.

  “Good.”

  Ivy waited. Usually he told her a funny Ella story. “Just good?”

  “Very good.”

  “Did you get a new bell for her collar?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is something wrong, Tristan?”

  He didn’t answer right away. It’s Gregory, she thought. He still has himself all wound up about Gregory and last weekend.

  “Tell me!”

  He faced her. With one finger he touched the back of her neck. Her hair was pinned up that night. Her shoulders were bare, except for two thin little straps. The top she wore was a simple camisole, with small buttons down the front.

  Tristan ran his hand down her neck, then across her bare shoulder. “Sometimes it’s hard to believe you’re real,” he said.

  Ivy swallowed. Ever so gently he kissed her throat.

  “Maybe … maybe we should get in the car,” she suggested, glancing up at the windows of the house.

  “Right.”

  He opened the door. There were roses on the seat, more lavender roses. “Whoops, I forgot,” said Tristan. “Do you want to run them back inside?”

  She picked them up and held them close to her face. “I want them with me.”

  “They’ll probably wilt,” he told her.

  “We can stick them in a water glass at the restaurant.”

  Tristan smiled. “That will show the maître d’ what kind of class we have.”

  “They’re beautiful!”

  “Yeah,” he said softly. His eyes ran all over her, as if he were memorizing her. Then he kissed her on the forehead and held the roses while she got in the car.

  As they drove they talked about their plans for the summer. Ivy was glad Tristan took the old routes rather than the highway. The trees were cool and musky with June. Light dappled their branches like gold coins slipping through angels’ fingers. Tristan drove the winding roads with one hand on the steering wheel, the other reaching out for hers, as if she might slip away.

  “I want to go to Juniper Lake,” Ivy said. “I’m going to float out there in the deepest part, float for an hour, with the sun shooting sparkles at my fingers and toes—”

  “Till along comes a big fish,” Tristan teased.

  “I’ll float in the moonlight too,” she went on.

  “The moonlight? You’d swim in the dark?”

  “With you I would. We could skinny-dip.”

  He glanced over at her and their eyes held for a moment.

  “Better not look at you and drive at the same time,” he said.

  “Then stop driving,” she replied quietly.

  He glanced quickly at her, and she put her hand over her mouth. The words had escaped, and she suddenly felt shy and embarrassed. Couples dressed up and on their way to expensive restaurants didn’t pull over to make out.

  “We’ll be late for our reservation,” she said. “You should keep going.”

  Tristan eased the car off the road.

  “There’s the river,” he said. “Do you want to walk down to it?”

  “Yes.”

  She laid the roses in the back of the car. Tristan came around to open Ivy’s door

  “Are you going to be able to walk in those shoes?” Tristan asked, glancing down at Ivy’s high heels.

  She stood up. Both heels sank straight down in the mud.

  Ivy laughed, and Tristan picked her up. “I’ll give you a lift,” he said.

  “No, you’ll drop me in the mud!”

  “Not till we get there,” he said, and hoisted her up higher till he held her legs, letting the top half of her fall over his shoulder as if he were carrying a sack.

  Ivy laughed and pounded him on the back. Her hair was coming out of its pins. “My hair! My hair! Let me down!”

  He pulled her back, and she slid down the front of him, her skirt riding up, her hair tumbling down.

  “Ivy.”

  He held her so tightly against him, she could feel the trembling up and down his body.

  “Ivy?” he whispered.

  She opened her mouth and pressed it against his neck.

  At the same time, they both reached for the handle and pulled open the car’s back door.

  “I never knew how romantic a backseat could be,” Ivy joked a while later. She rested against the seat, smiling at Tristan. Then she looked past him at the pile of junk on the car floor. “Maybe you should pull your tie out of that old Burger King cup.”

  Tristan reached down and grimaced. He tossed the dripping thing into the front of the car, then sat back next to Ivy.

  “Ow!” The smell of crushed flowers filled the air.

  Ivy laughed out loud.

  “What’s so funny?” Tristan asked, pulling from behind him the smashed roses, but he was laughing, too.

  “What if someone had come along and seen your father’s Clergy sticker on the bumper?”

  Tristan tossed the flowers in the front seat and pulled her toward him again. He traced the silk strap of her dress, then tenderly kissed her shoulder. “I’d have told then I was with an angel.”

  “Oh, what a line!”

  “Ivy, I love you!” Tristan said, his face suddenly serious.

  She stared back at him, then bit her lip.

  “This isn’t some kind of game for me. I love you, Ivy, and one day you’re going to believe me.”

  She put her arms around him and held him tightly. “Love you,” she whispered into his neck. Ivy did believe him, and she trusted him as she trusted no one else. One day she’d have the nerve to say it, all of the words out loud. I love you, Tristan. She’d shout it out the windows. She’d string a banner straight across the school pool.

  It took a few minutes to straighten themselves up. Ivy started laughing again. Tristan smiled and watched her try to tame her gold tumbleweed of hair—a useless effort. Then he started the car, urging it over the ruts and stones and onto the narrow road.

  “Last glimpse of the river,” he said as the road made a sharp turn away from it.

  The June sun, dropping over the west ridge of the Connecticut countryside, shafted light on the very tops of the trees, flaking them with gold. The winding road slipped below, into a tunnel of maples, poplars, and oaks. Ivy felt as if she were sliding under the waves with Tristan, the setting sun glittering on top, the two of them moving together through a chasm of blue, purple, and deep green. Tristan flicked on his headlights.

  “You really don’t have to hurry,” said Ivy. “I’m not hungry anymore.”

  “I ruined your appetite?”

  She shook her head. “I guess I’m all filled up with happiness,” she said softly.

  The car sped along and took a curve sharply.

  “I said, we don’t have to hurry.”

  “That’s funny,” Tristan murmured. “I wonder what’s—” He glanced down at his feet. “This doesn’t feel …”

  “Slow down, okay? It doesn’t matter if we’re a little late—Oh!” Ivy pointed straight ahead. “Tristan!”

  Something had plunged through the bushes and into the roadway. She hadn’t seen what it was, just the flicker of motion among the deep shadows. Then the deer stopped. It turned its head, its eyes drawn to the car’s bright headlights.

  “Tristan!”

  They were rushing toward the shining eyes.

  “Tristan, don’t you see it?”

  Rushing still.


  “Ivy, something’s—”

  “A deer!” she exclaimed.

  The animal’s eyes blazed. Then light came from behind it, a bright burst around its dark shape. A car was coming from the opposite direction. Trees walled them in. There was no room to veer left or right.

  “Stop!” she shouted.

  “I’m—”

  “Stop, why don’t you stop?” she pleaded. “Tristan, stop!”

  P1-12

  It was dazzling: the eye of the deer like a dark tunnel, the center of it bursting with light. Tristan braked and braked, but nothing would stop the rushing, nothing could keep him from speeding through the long funnel of darkness into an explosion of light.

  For a moment he felt a tremendous weight, as if the trees and sky had collapsed on him. Then, with the explosion of light, the weight was lifted. Somehow he had gotten free.

  She needs you.

  “Ivy!” he called out.

  The darkness swirled in again, the road around him like a Twirl-a-paint, black spinning with red, night swirling with the pulsing light of an ambulance.

  She needs you.

  He did not hear it, but he understood it. Did the others? “Ivy! Where’s Ivy? You have to help Ivy!”

  She was lying still. Bathed in red.

  “Somebody help her! You’ve got to save her!”

  But he could not hold on to the paramedic, could not even pull on his sleeve.

  “No pulse,” a woman said. “No chance.”

  “Help her!”

  The swirling ran long and streaky now. Ribbons of light and dark rushed past him horizontally. Was she with him? The siren wailed: I-veee. I-veee.

  Then he was in a square room. It was day there, or as bright as. People were rushing around. Hospital, he thought. Something was laid over his face, and the light was blocked out. He wasn’t sure how long it was out.

  Someone leaned over him. “Tristan.” The voice broke.

  “Dad?”

  “Oh, my God, why did you let this happen?”

  “Dad, where’s Ivy? Is she okay?”

  “My God, my God. My child!” his father said.

  “Are they helping her?”

  His father did not speak.

  “Answer me, Dad! Why don’t you answer me?”

  His father held his face. His father was leaning over him, tears falling down on his face—

  My face, Tristan thought with a jolt. That’s my face.

  And yet he was watching his father and himself as if he were standing apart from himself.

  “Mr. Carruthers, I’m sorry.” A woman in a paramedic’s uniform stood next to him and his father.

  His father would not look at her. “Dead at the scene?” he asked.

  She nodded. “I’m sorry. We didn’t have a chance with him.”

  Tristan felt the darkness coming over him again. He struggled to hold on to consciousness.

  “And Ivy?” his father asked.

  “Cuts and bruises, in shock. Calling for your son.”

  Tristan had to find her. He focused on a doorway, concentrated with all his strength, and passed through it. Then another, and another—he was feeling stronger now.

  Tristan hurried down the corridor. People kept coming at him. He dodged left and right. He seemed to be going so much faster than they were, and none of them bothered to move out of his way.

  A nurse was coming down the hall. He stopped to ask her help in finding Ivy, but she walked past him. He turned a corner and found himself facing a cart loaded with linens. Then he faced the man pushing it. Tristan spun around. The cart and the man were on the other side of him.

  Tristan knew that they had passed through him as if he were not there. He had heard what the paramedic said. Still, his mind searched for some other—any other—explanation. But there was none.

  He was dead. No one could see him. No one knew he was there. And Ivy would not know.

  Tristan felt a pain deeper than any he had ever known. He had told her he loved her, but there had not been time enough to convince her. Now there was no time at all. She’d never believe in his love the way she believed in her angels.

  “I said, I can’t speak any louder.”

  Tristan glanced up. He had stopped by a doorway. An old woman was lying in the bed within. She was tiny and gray with long, thin tubes connecting her to machines. She looked like a spider caught in its own web.

  “Come in,” she said.

  He looked behind him to see whom she was talking to.

  No one.

  “These old eyes of mine are so dim, I can’t see my own hand in front of my face,” the woman said, “But I can see your light.”

  Tristan again looked behind him. Her voice sounded certain of what she saw. It seemed much bigger and stronger than her little gray body.

  “I knew you would come,” she said. “I’ve been waiting very patiently.”

  She has been waiting for somebody, Tristan thought, a son or a grandson, and she thinks Pm him. Still, how could she see him if no one else could?

  Her face was shining brightly now.

  “I’ve always believed in you,” she said. She extended a fragile hand toward Tristan. Forgetting that his hand would pass through hers, he instinctively reached out to her. She closed her eyes.

  A moment later, alarms went off. Three nurses rushed into the room. Tristan stepped back as they crowded around the woman. He suddenly realized that they were trying to resuscitate her; he knew they would not. Somehow he knew that the old woman did not want to come back.

  Maybe somehow the old woman had known about him.

  What did she know?

  Tristan could feel the darkness coming over him again. He fought it. What if this time he didn’t come back? He had to come back, he had to see Ivy one last time. Desperately he tried to keep himself alert, focusing on one object after another in the room. Then he saw it, next to a small book on the woman’s tray: a statue, with a hand outstretched to the woman and angelic wings spread.

  For days after, all Ivy could remember was the waterfall of glass. The accident was like a dream she kept having but couldn’t remember. Asleep or awake, it would suddenly take over. Her whole body would tense, and her mind would start reeling backward, but all she could remember was the sound of a windshield exploding, then a slow-motion waterfall of glass.

  Every day people came and went from the house, Suzanne and Beth, and some other friends and teachers from school. Gary came once; it was a miserable visit for both of them. Will ducked in and out on another day. They brought her flowers, cookies, and sympathy. Ivy couldn’t wait until they left, couldn’t wait until she could sleep again. But when she lay down at night, she couldn’t sleep, and then she had to wait forever until it was day once more.

  At the funeral they stood around her, her mother and Andrew on one side, Philip on the other. She let Philip do all the sobbing for her. Gregory stood behind her and from time to time laid his hand on her back. She’d lean against him for a moment. He was the only one who didn’t keep asking her to talk about it. He was the only one who seemed to understand her pain and didn’t keep telling her that remembering was good for her.

  Little by little she did remember—or was told—what had happened. The doctors and police prompted her. The undersides of her arms were full of cuts. She must have held her hands up in front of her face, they said, protecting it from the flying glass. Miraculously, the rest of her injuries were just bruises from the impact and the seat belt restraint. Tristan must have swerved, for the car had swung around to the right, the deer coming in on his side. To protect her, she thought, though the police didn’t say that. She told them he had tried to stop but couldn’t. It had been twilight. The deer had appeared suddenly. That’s all she remembered. Someone told her the car had been totaled, but she refused to look at the newspaper photo.

  A week after the funeral, Tristan’s mother came to the house and brought a picture of him. She said it was her favorite one. Ivy cradled
it in her hands. He was smiling, wearing his old baseball cap, backward of course, and a ratty school jacket, looking as Ivy had seen him look so many times. It seemed as if he were about to ask her if she wanted to meet for another swimming lesson. For the first time since the accident, Ivy began to cry.

  She didn’t hear Gregory come into the kitchen, where she and Tristan’s mother were sitting. When he saw Dr. Carruthers, he demanded to know why she was there.

  Ivy showed him Tristan’s picture, and he looked angrily at the woman.

  “It’s over now,” he said. “Ivy is getting over it. She doesn’t need any more reminders.”

  “When you love someone, it’s never over,” Dr. Carruthers replied gently. “You move on, because you have to, but you bring him with you in your heart.”

  She turned back to Ivy. “You need to talk and remember, Ivy. You need to cry. Cry hard. You need to get angry, too. I am!”

  “You know,” said Gregory, “I’m getting tired of listening to all this crap. Everyone is telling Ivy to remember and talk about what happened. Everyone has a pet theory on how to mourn, but I wonder if they’re really thinking of how it feels for her.”

  Dr. Carruthers studied him for a moment. “I wonder if you have really mourned your own loss,” she said.

  “Don’t tell me you’re a shrink!”

  She shook her head. “Just a person who, like you, has lost someone I loved with all my heart.”

  Before she left, Tristan’s mother asked Ivy if she wanted Ella back.

  “I can’t have her,” Ivy said. “They won’t let me!”

  Then she ran up to her room, dammed the door, and locked it. One by one, those she loved were being taken away from her.

  Picking up an angel statue, one that Beth had just brought her, Ivy hurled it against the wall.

  “Why?” she cried out. “Why didn’t I die, too?”

  She picked up the angel and threw it again.

  “You’re better off, Tristan. I hate you for being better off than me. You don’t miss me now, do you? Oh, no, you don’t feel a thing!”

  On the third try, the angel shattered. Another waterfall of glass. She didn’t bother to pick it up.

  After dinner that evening, Ivy found the glass cleaned up and the picture of Tristan sitting on her bureau. She didn’t ask who had done it. She didn’t want to speak to any of them. When Gregory tried to come into her bedroom, she slammed the door in his face. She slammed it in his face again the next morning.