Angels Unaware

by Lisa Deangelis

  “We came to New York from Italy and then into Pennsylvania. My father has a brother in the next town, but when we arrived there, he was gone. We knew not where. Our money is not much and the hotels in other places are very dear. A man we meet when we stop to get water tells us to come here. He says he has been here once, and there is a woman who will help us.” I almost laughed out loud when he said that, as if Jewel were some great abolitionist hiding colored people on their way to Canada.

  The boy smiled at Jewel, revealing dimpled cheeks and even white teeth. I wasn’t impressed and made a great effort to show I wasn’t. Jewel, on the other hand, was pleased as punch at having her reputation precede her, and before I could put my foot down, she was leading the two up the steps and into the parlor, leaving me to go back to my butchering with renewed vigor and fit to be tied.

  That night, Jewel insisted we cook the pig. I’d been hoping to save it until the strangers were gone. It wasn’t easy raising it or butchering it, and I wasn’t about to share it with people I didn’t even know. But Jewel said that would be rude and served it up anyhow.

  For a sick man, that old Eye-talian sure could eat. I watched every piece that disappeared into his mouth, wishing I could pull it back up his throat. The boy, in contrast, ate hardly anything, and I got the feeling he was trying to make up for the other’s gluttony.

  Cursing every moment, I made up two beds in adjoining rooms. When I’d finished, I asked Jewel in my most sarcastic tone if she wanted me to tuck them in and read them a fairy story as well.

  Next morning, Jewel cajoled me into bringing the old goat his breakfast in bed. I fumed plenty, but in the end, I gave in because she promised I could throw them out in two weeks if they didn’t pay.

  Being disgruntled made the tray heavy and I lumbered up the steps as if it weighed a hundred pounds. Knocking at the door, I waited. No answer. I put my ear to the door and knocked again Opening the door a crack, I made out the curve of the old man’s back beneath the blanket. Nudging the door open with my foot, I deposited the tray on the bureau. “Good morning!” I said brightly. Then, walking around the other side of the bed, I stopped short. I knew immediately that he was dead. I felt his neck for a pulse. There was none. I raised his wrist and let go. It flopped on the bed. The man was dead, and I was madder than ever at Jewel for letting him stay the night. Now who the hell was going to take him away? I’d be damned if I’d be the one to drag him downstairs. Damn Jewel. Why hadn’t she listened to me when I told her he was sick? He wasn’t family after all. We weren’t responsible for him. He could have gone to a nice comfortable hotel somewhere and dropped dead in luxury.

  “He’s dead!” I hissed at Jewel when I got back downstairs. “He’s dead and piss, shit, hell, damn, what are we supposed to do with him now?”

  Her lips quivered like they always did when I yelled at her. “Are you sure?”

  “I know the quick from the dead, Jewel!”

  She looked at me helplessly. “I just thought maybe he wasn’t completely dead.”

  “Jesus H. Christ. He’s as dead as dead can be.”

  She wrung her hands. “How are you going to tell his boy?”

  I could have slapped her. “How am I going to tell him? I’m not telling anybody anything. You’re the one’s gonna march up there and tell him. You’re the one loves to minister to the sick and disheartened.”

  “Oh, please, Darcy,” she said in her most plaintive manner. “If you tell him, I promise never to take in any strangers again.”

  I knew she was lying through her teeth and she knew I knew because she avoided my gaze and said, “But you know I’m no good at this kind of thing.”

  I folded my arms. “Neither am I. And isn’t it you who’s always said that death isn’t nothing to be afraid of? That it’s no more than just passing through a door? Well, go tell that boy upstairs that his father just took himself through the door.”

  It never really did any good to try to resist Jewel. She had a peculiar magnetism that could always charm you into doing what she wanted, and the few times that didn’t work, she had no aversion to begging. A little later, I was knocking at the boy’s door, trying to think of a kind way to say, “Your father’s dead, so don’t look for him in this lifetime ever again.”

  He opened the door sleepily, rubbing his eyes. He was bare-chested and wore the pants he’d had on the night before. He turned clear and questioning blue eyes on me.

  “Here’s your breakfast,” I told him, placing the plate on his bedside table. “You hardly ate anything last night. You must be hungry. Go ahead and eat. I’ll wait to take the tray back.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed, looking suspiciously at the food, then at me, as if I’d poisoned his breakfast. I watched him taste the oatmeal and even though his expression didn’t change, I could tell he didn’t like it. But he ate everything while I tried to gather my thoughts. He looked haggard and weary, as if he’d scarcely slept. He had a long straight nose and a delicate mouth, and if not for his square chin, he’d have looked feminine. But even the chin couldn’t make up for the long black eyelashes and the dimples. There was no getting away from it—he was almost as pretty as Caroline, and I thought he looked like a right sissy.

  My eyes dropped down to the rest of him. Not the body of a man, nor that of a boy, but somewhere in between. “Your father’s pretty old, isn’t he?” I said abruptly.

  “Old?” he asked with a frown. “Not so old. Perhaps fifty years or so. Hard work has made him seem older than he is.”

  I opened my mouth to speak when I realized that I didn’t know his name. “What’s your name?”

  “I am called Luca,” he answered patiently. “Luca D’Angeli.”

  “Luca,” I repeated. “That’s a funny name. And you’re from Italy. Is that anywhere near Kathmandu?”

  “No.”

  “Oh,” I said, disappointed. “We’ve never had any Eye-talian people around here before. How old are you?”

  “Sixteen. How old are you?”

  “Seventeen,” I said and watched his eyes widen.

  “Seventeen? But your hair—?”

  Suddenly aware of the gray in my hair, I stammered, “How come you speak English so good?”

  He swelled up some when I said that. “My father and I always knew that one day we would come to America, and knowing this, I studied very hard to prepare myself. But when we get to New York, a doctor says we must go back because my father is sick. He makes an X on my father’s coat and says that sick people cannot come to America.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I tell him that my father is not sick, only tired. The doctor looks in his eyes and ears and mouth and then says it is all right. We can leave the boat. He is not so sick.”

  “Hmmm. Maybe they were right the first time.”

  Luca looked at me blankly.

  “Look,” I said, “I don’t know how to tell you this except straight out. Your father died during the night.” I couldn’t help feeling a little annoyed that he hadn’t guessed and spared me the awkwardness of having to tell him.

  For a moment, Luca just stared at me, expressionless. Then he covered his face with his hands and started to cry.

  I had never seen a man cry before, and I was embarrassed for both of us. Watching him, I felt a little sad, too, but reminded myself that it was his father and not mine who had died—and that the dead old man and his crying boy were both strangers to me. Like our other boarders, they would come and go, bringing nothing with them when they came and leaving nothing behind when they went (except for Leon, who’d left the truck, the Rubaiyat, and the gun; and Duncan, who’d left Caroline and Jolene). Just the same, it was uncomfortable to see him carry on like this, and I hoped he’d stop soon. I reached out to touch his shoulders that shuddered with his sobbing, but at the last minute changed my mind.

  “It isn’t like he
got hit by a truck,” I said, trying to comfort him. “He lived, grew old—fifty is old—and died in his sleep. It was real natural. I should be so lucky.”

  Luca didn’t answer me and when finally, he had calmed himself enough to speak, it was more to himself than to me. “My father must have been sick all along,” he said, wiping his eyes. “He must have held on just long enough to see that I got here safely.”

  “I s’pose,” I said, trying to be agreeable. “What do you want to do with the body?”

  “The body?” he repeated dully. “Yes, his body. I must go and prepare him.” With that he stood up and went into the adjoining room, closing the door behind him. With my ear to the thin wood, I could hear the sound of running water and the creaking of bed springs. He was washing his father’s body, though I couldn’t for the life of me imagine why. Once you were dead, what difference did it make if you were dirty or clean? Why get spiffed up for kingdom come?

  Jewel came up with Old Sam at her heels. The dog sniffed the door frame, and I wondered if dogs could smell death and what it smelled like to them. Cooked cabbage, I guessed. About half an hour passed before Luca came out. He closed the door softly behind him, then stood before Jewel and me looking down at the floor uncomfortably.

  “Sometimes, Luca, honey, you just got to leave it where Jesus flung it,” Jewel offered cryptically, doing little to make an awkward situation any easier.

  I wanted to know what he planned to do with his father’s body, and how soon he would be vacating his room. What he did after that and where he went, I didn’t know or want to know.

  Predictably, Jewel put a hand on his arm. “Come, sit downstairs for a moment,” she said, leading him gently down the hallway to the sitting room below. Once Luca had been settled in an armchair to her satisfaction, she asked, “Do you want us to take care of the funeral arrangements?”

  Aware where this was leading, I gritted my teeth, shooting her what I hoped was a discouraging glare. Luca’s eyes hung on Jewel as if she were all that kept him afloat.

  “We haven’t much money,” Jewel told him to my relief--“but whatever we have, you’re welcome to.”

  That was the last straw. “But—but that money is for the girls’ college education!” I blurted out.

  Luca gave me a look that would have withered me if I were capable of being withered. “My father brought money,” he said. “Not a lot of money, but enough to bury him. I would not take money from women.” he added with a stiff pride.

  “Shame on you, Darcy,” Jewel said.

  But Luca looked bewildered. “Shame? She has no reason for shame. It is right she thinks of her family first.”

  “There’s the family of man too,” Jewel told him. It was just the kind of thing she would say, and mad at them both—Jewel for crossing me, Luca for defending me—I folded my arms and turned away.

  Luca clearly understood Jewel’s pronouncement no better than I did because from the corner of my eye, I saw him watching her mouth like a deaf man, trying to figure out what she was saying from her moving lips. “And after the funeral,” she went on, unruffled because she was used to being misunderstood, “what then? Do you have family back in Italy?”

  My ears perked up, like Old Sam’s when something stirred in the brush. This was more in keeping with my plans.

  “I have an aunt and uncle there and a few cousins, but after I pay to bury my father, I won’t have enough money to return. I wish very much that I had enough money to bring my father to Italy and bury him there.”

  “What’s wrong with here?” I interrupted, feeling somehow slighted. “Galen’s a great place to be buried. Sometimes, I think that’s all it’s a great place for.”

  “I don’t know what to do,” Luca told Jewel, ignoring me. “Perhaps it would be wrong to go back to Italy. My father sacrificed everything for us to come here.”

  Jewel patted his hand. “I don’t think your father would have wanted you to go back. I think he’d have wanted you to stay with us for a while.”

  I choked on my breakfast, and Jewel pounded me on the back as I coughed and spluttered.

  “No, I could not stay here,” Luca replied. “I would be a burden.”

  Because I could not speak for coughing, I nodded vigorously to show I concurred.

  “No, no,” Jewel insisted. “We could use a man’s help around here, especially a big, strong boy like you.”

  “Perhaps I could find work,” Luca said hesitantly. “Just for a short while.”

  Jewel laughed. “Honey, if you try and take work away from the men in Galen, especially you being foreign and all, you’re just likely to wind up seeing your father again sooner than you think. Besides, you’re just a boy. You should be in school. In the meantime, you could be a big help to us just doing things around the inn. I know Darcy needs you.”

  My mouth fell open in protest, but Jewel was already pushing me toward the door.

  Two days later, Jewel badgered me and the girls into putting on our good clothes and going to the funeral, where she and the boy stood together crying like professional mourners. His wailing I could understand. He was Eye-talian after all, and the man had been his father. But hers? She had known the old man less than five waking hours. How aggrieved could she be? It was galling the way she was forever bringing trouble into the house, while I was forever trying to keep it out. It wasn’t our tragedy after all. But as with everything else, Jewel never could tell the difference as to where she left off and other folks began.

  So gradually, almost inevitably, did Luca D’Angeli work his way into our lives that before many months had passed, it seemed he had always been with us, as much a part of the Hopsitality Inn as the old weather vane on the roof that had belonged to the Justice’s grandmother. Or rather, it seemed that way to the others.

  To me, there was nothing right about him being with us, and I resented his presence more and more every day. For one thing, he was so damned helpful, it made me want to scream. Wherever, I was working—in the yard, house, barn, or orchard—he was there, waiting to take the hoe or the axe or the scrub brush from my hand. He was trying to replace me in my own house, and the others were happy to let him.

  Everybody liked him, liked him better than they did me. He talked with Jolene by the hour about two Eye-talians named Dante and Beatrice, and they completely ignored me when I tried to tell how Byron had died in Greece, far from the land of his birth.

  Jewel doted on him as if he were her own son, but worst of all was Caroline, who surely had the makings of a tart. She flirted outrageously with him and lacked the decency to try to hide it. Being short, she’d look up at him with those China-blue eyes in the most adoring way, and he’d beam down at her, showing his dimples. It was all I could do to keep food down. Needless to say, he never looked at me like that. I was just as tall as him and could look him in the eye, and it’s a rare man who can stand that. Once, when Caroline was trying to reach something high in the cupboard, she apologized for her limitations, then coyly asked Luca to retrieve it for her. Her apology was insincere, I knew, because Caroline enjoyed being small. It made it easier to get people to do things for her. Luca shrugged off her apology and said that there was an old Eye-talian saying: “Tall girls are only good for picking fruit.” When he turned and saw that I had heard, he blushed and turned away.

  I put up with this throughout the long summer, but I knew, come autumn, I’d have my revenge when classes started, and Galen highschoolers got a look at this foreign boy. They’d take him down a notch or two.

  But it never happened. Luca’s classmates were standoffish instead of hostile, and even that turned quickly to a warm indifference and then to aloof affection. Through Caroline, who soaked up gossip like a sponge, I learned that just about all the girls in Galen thought Luca was good looking, that the boys liked him because he was good at games, and even the teachers liked him because he was so damned smart
with books and could outshine almost all the natives. And it was this ability to make people like him that, more than anything else, settled my determination to rid myself and my household of his presence forever.

  Things changed somehow at the inn after he came, and try as I might, they wouldn’t change back. Every night at dinner, Jewel would ask Luca and the girls about the events of the school day. Luca would proceed to regale them with stories of very ordinary everyday things, yet he managed to make them seem more interesting than they were, and everyone would laugh and beg him to tell more. Everyone but me.

  Life was a serious business and having a court jester in residence didn’t change that. It wasn’t that I wanted dinner to be grave, but I would have liked to talk about what we should plant that year, or if we should plant anything at all in view of all my past failures to coax anything out of our rocky dirt. I wanted to talk about how we could make more money and whether it would be worth it to get a new wood stove. But the dinner conversation never got more serious than talk about how Miss Beehall’s bloomers showed when she bent down to pick up chalk.

  Why everybody was so willing to provide an audience to his bragging, I had no idea. Maybe he was smart—almost smart as Jolene, maybe even smarter in his own language—but did he have to be such a know-it-all? When he first went to school, I’d decided to say yes when he asked me for help with his homework. I was a year his senior, after all. But he never asked. In fact, sometimes he used English words that I didn’t understand. So I was reduced to using words peculiar to Galen, so he wouldn’t understand. But even that satisfaction was short-lived. He was as quick to pick up Galen-talk as he’d been to learn French, German, and Spanish. I couldn’t trust a boy who spoke five languages. It just wasn’t natural, and it was just one more thing about him that kept me from liking him.

  Then in the spring, I finally found someone who didn’t like Luca. His name was Joseph Gibbet and he stayed with us only one night on his way to New Hampshire. Board was always included with a room at the Hospitality Inn and so we sat down to dinner together. Our guest ate like a hog and didn’t say a word until he’d finished his dinner. But then he leaned back and lit a pipe and waxed playful. He said he was headed to New Hampshire, because he had found work there and dared us to guess his livelihood. He bet us a dollar that we’d never be able to guess, which set us all to pondering. Clearly, he wasn’t a coal miner or a railroad man. We demanded hints, and he cheerfully provided some. He travelled often; there was little enough work in any one state to keep him there for long. In many states, he was prohibited by law from working at all; in others, other people had the same job but did it in a different manner. There was a lot of measuring required to do it right and it involved climbing steps. Even when he didn’t perform his job particularly well, no one complained. “Give up?” he asked, gleeful as a small child. We all gave up, Jewel and the girls because they couldn’t figure it out, me because I never saw the sense in giving effort to something that would not substantially profit me or mine.