Paper Angels

by Billy Coffey

  Elizabeth looked at me confused. I couldn’t blame her. A man needs to feel a certain way around a woman. Pitied is not that way. And that was something a woman could never really understand.

  “Sorry,” she said. “What do you mean by ‘up until this point’? You don’t think you have a good life now?”

  I held up my bandaged right hand and used my left to point at my head. “Oh, I have a great life right now,” I said. “Who wouldn’t want my life? Why, I’m sitting here in a hospital with burns all over me and my brains scrambled. My gas station’s a mess, but nowhere near the mess my life is. I’ve lost”—I almost said Eric’s name, but didn’t—“a lot. Everything, really. So yeah, I can say I’ve had a good life up until this point, but I’m just not a whole heck of a lot sure from here on out, Elizabeth. Besides, I think you need peace to have a good life, and it’s hard to have peace when you’re angry.”

  “The world’s a hard place, Andy,” she said. “People deserve as much real happiness in it as they can find.”

  “Be happy,” I said, and loud enough to catch Kim’s attention outside the door. She looked up at me and then down again, then shook her head. “Happy, happy, happy,” I continued, “Sheesh, you sound like her.”

  “Her who?” Elizabeth asked.

  I motioned for the box, and Elizabeth switched it from her lap to mine. I opened it and rifled through the contents until I found the worn and folded card. The words were still bright and bold—BE HAPPY!! GOD LOVES YOU!! I held it up to Elizabeth.

  “Her,” I said.

  8

  The Happy-Face Card

  I called her Willa to her face since that was what politeness demanded, but in whispered company and the privacy of my own thoughts, she was the Singing Christian. All it would take for you to understand would be getting caught standing in front of her in line at the market or beside her at the Laundromat. In a town known for its more colorful citizens, Willa was the electric lime among us—loud, bold, and impossible to miss. She was neither family nor close friend, yet she still managed to keep a place in my life that was just as familiar. And, at times, just as aggravating.

  Grandpa died a year before I graduated from high school. His heart gave out on him one Friday afternoon while he was pumping gas for a stranger passing through on his way to Charlottesville. That left just Grandma and me to make ends meet. She’d never worked outside the home and was getting on up in age, so it was up to me to provide for the both of us. That wasn’t too terribly hard. I’d been helping Grandpa at his gas station for years at that point, so I just dropped out of school and took over the business. Lots of people did that back then. Young men, especially. Times were tough, and education didn’t mean as much then as it does now. You had to do what you had to do.

  That’s where I met Willa. Our paths crossed regularly, as did the paths of so many townspeople who drove in and out of the station. She visited me four times a week to gas up an oversized station wagon which mainly doubled as a billboard for God. Bible verses were plastered all over the sides and back window with those stickers people used to put their names on the mailbox. Willa and her husband ran a hospice for the elderly—a difficult, often heart-wrenching way to make ends meet. But if anyone could have done it and done it well, it was her.

  She walked into the gas station early that day and interrupted a conversation I was having with the Old Man. He sat in one of the three booths by the door and finished his thought while studying her. He smiled at Willa like she was an old friend. That seemed about right to me. I figured all the angels knew about Willa.

  “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder” was the song of the day. The previous three visits that week had been to the tune of “The Old Rugged Cross,” “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” and “How Great Thou Art.” Sometimes she hummed and sometimes she vocalized, but neither was an under-the-breath kind of thing. You could hear Willa before you saw her, and she was pretty hard to miss as it was.

  She stopped at the register and plopped down a purse that could near have doubled as a suitcase for most folks. “Hello, Arthur,” she said. “How are you today?”

  Yes—Arthur.

  Willa did not know my name. Never did and never would. I’d tried at first to correct her in the most polite way possible—“My name’s Andy, ma’am” or “You can just call me Andy”—but it never stuck. Over the years I had been Arthur, Anthony, Adam, and Albert. Also Darlin’, Sweetie, Honey, and Child. But never Andy. Which was okay with me. I figured I’d been called worse.

  “I’m good, Willa,” I said. “How about yourself?”

  “Saved and blessed, sweetie.”

  From his booth, the Old Man watched. Me now, not her. I met his eyes and then returned to hers and smiled. “What can I do for you today?” I asked her.

  “I would like to pay for this.” She pointed to the check on the counter that had bounced so hard it had to be held in place by a layer of Scotch tape.

  “Willa,” I said, “that’s not yours.”

  “Oh dear!” she answered. “Oh my, I know that. Passing off bad checks is an abomination to the Lord.”

  “Praise Him!” the Old Man shouted from the booth.

  I cut him a look out of the corner of my eye and made a mental note to remind him yet again not to mess with me when I was with a customer, then brought my attention back to Willa. She was still pointing to the bad check. A lifetime of constant smiling had formed an oval of wrinkles around her mouth. Her hair, once brown but now the color of lightning, was neatly brushed and set just so except for the ever-present cowlick near the back of her head that reached heavenward. I had a nickname for that too—the God Antennae.

  “So…,” I began, hoping she would finish.

  “Well, the Lord has laid it on my heart to help someone today, and I would like to help this person,” she said, now tapping on the check. “Jesus died and paid for my sin, so I thought it’d be nice to help pay for this fella’s here.”

  “That’s a good idea, Bossman,” the Old Man said.

  I looked at the check again, nearly a month old and written for thirty dollars. I knew better than to take a check from a stranger, but it was all he had and he swore it was good. Yet another reason why I’d never be a successful businessman.

  “You want to take care of someone else’s thirty-dollar bad check.”

  “Yes, Arthur.”

  “To pay for his sin.”

  “Yes.”

  “But shouldn’t this person pay it?” I asked, tapping the check myself. “I mean, to take responsibility and all?”

  Willa lowered her chin and shook her head nice and slow, her signal that this had now become a Teachable Moment. Willa lived for her Teachable Moments almost as much as the Old Man did. I did my best to avoid them.

  “They can’t, Honey,” she said. “I’ve seen that check at least a dozen times in the past few weeks, and it’s still here. Don’t you think he would’ve paid for it by now if he could?”

  She had a point, and I told her so. I looked to the Old Man. He nodded and winked.

  “Okay, Willa,” I said. “You sure you wanna do this? I mean, I’m gonna have to add the service charge to this. That’ll up it to fifty bucks.”

  Willa eyed me. In her opinion, I should know better than to deny a soldier of God her right to wage war on transgression, whether it was her battle or not.

  She pulled out her checkbook and began writing, asking me twice how much the total would be.

  “It’s such a shame,” she said as she wrote. “People do their best to get by in life. Don’t you think so, Darlin’?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I guess sometimes these things happen.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “How are you, Arthur?” she said.

  “I’m doing good, Willa.”

  “Are you happy, then?”

  Her question caught me by surprise. Willa had never asked me that. She’d asked me plenty of other things, things that had sometimes a
pplied to me and things that must have applied to whomever her mind had tricked her into thinking she was talking to at the time. Willa had thirty years on me at least, nearer to the Old Man than to me. And as much as I always wanted to hang on to this life as long as I could, having her walk into my store always tempted me into wishing my days would be cut short before I grew that senile.

  “I expect,” I said after some thought. “As happy as I can be, anyway.”

  “Oh, well that will not do!” she gasped. “That will not do at all. You can always be happy, you know.”

  “I can, huh?” I began pulling the tape off the check on the counter between us.

  “Are you happy all the time, Arthur?”

  “I can’t say that I am, Willa.”

  (Like right now, I thought.)

  She stopped writing and gave me a pitiful look.

  “That’s just the most horrible thing I’ve heard all day,” she said. “I’m happy all the time, you know. It’s God’s will.”

  “It is?” I said it with a smile, but not a genuine one.

  “Well of course it is,” Willa said. “Lack of happiness is lack of faith.”

  The Old Man took that opportunity to clear his throat from across the room. He winked when I looked up at him. Outside Howard O’Malley (Old Howard O’Malley to us in town, Mr. O’Malley to the workers he supervised down at the factory in Stanley) pulled up to the gas pump opposite Willa’s and began filling his Cadillac. Two more vehicles had entered the parking lot. Prudence dictated that I got rid of her as soon as possible before she had the chance to cause a human traffic jam in front of the cash register, but I just couldn’t let her last sentence go.

  “Lack of happiness is not lack of faith, Willa.”

  It was Willa’s turn to look around, to Old Howard O’Malley pumping his gas, to the people getting out of their cars and making their way in, to the empty booths behind her. It was a strange sight to see; Willa had never cared about who had been around when she was in the grips of the Holy Spirit and a Teachable Moment.

  “Son,” she said, “my daddy died when I was twelve years old. The cancer took him, though it weren’t for lack of prayin’. We all prayed, but me especially. I prayed for him night and day, I loved him so.” She looked around again, satisfied that the people who were on their way in were now talking to each other. Then she turned back to me. “I was so sad. My daddy was leavin’. He was dyin’. Do you see?”

  I nodded.

  “But I prayed on like a good Christian should, and you know what? He died anyway.”

  “I’m sorry, Willa,” I said. “I never knew that.”

  Tears welled in Willa’s eyes, proof that sometimes the scars we carry can hurt us more than the cuts that made them. “It was his time, I suppose. But to this day I believe in my heart that God didn’t answer my prayers because the faith wasn’t in them. My sadness took up all the room. So I hope you pray for happiness. For your own sake, promise me you will.”

  “I will,” I said. And I meant it at the time. Partly because she was so convincing, but mostly because the other customers were coming in and the line behind Willa was growing by the minute. I would have prayed for anything if it meant getting her out of the door. I would have prayed for an aneurysm.

  “Good,” she said. “And I’ll pray for you, too.” She reached into her purse and pulled out what I thought was a business card. It wasn’t. Written on the front was BE HAPPY!! GOD LOVES YOU!! A smiley face was added for both emphasis and instruction. She handed it to me. “Here, I want you to keep this as a reminder.”

  “Well, thank you, Willa,” I said. I took the card like it was a letter of parole and hoped that would be enough to free me from her, at least for the time being.

  She patted me on the hand and turned to leave, picking up where she left off with her hymn. Twenty minutes and five conversations later, she finally pulled onto the main road and out of sight.

  I dispatched the remaining customers with their smokes and soda and grabbed a towel to wipe down the counter. The Old Man remained in his seat. Neither of us spoke because both of us were occupied. Me with my stewing, him with his bracelet.

  “Why don’t you like her?” he finally said.

  “Who her?” I asked him.

  “Willa,” he said. “You don’t like her, do you?”

  “Willa’s a saint. Everybody thinks so.”

  “Hey,” he said, and nothing else until I looked up to him. “It’s me.”

  I tossed the towel over my shoulder and sighed. Yet another Teachable Moment from yet another wise soul.

  “I hate that lady,” I told him.

  “That’s pretty harsh,” he said. “What’s so bad about Willa? She seems like a happy soul.”

  I pointed at him and said, “That’s just it. She’s a happy soul. I’ve never seen that woman without a smile stapled to her face. Never heard her speak without that gooey sentimentality and that cheerful melody. She’s the same way every single day. She’s a robot welded together with merriment and mirth. She’s the nicest, sweetest, most devout person I know, and every time I see her I want to rip her head off.”

  “I think that little speech she gave bothered you,” he said.

  “You’re right.”

  “And I think it bothered you that you were bothered.”

  “What?” I asked him. I shook my head. “You make about as much sense as she does.”

  The Old Man leaned back in his booth and sighed. “If I had to settle on a word to describe your outlook on life, Andy, it would not be happy. Not that your days are filled with angst and dread, mind you. You don’t pout or sulk or any of those childish things. You don’t have angst. But you do have a certain sadness about you. I see it. And I know that even if you say you don’t want to experience what she feels, a part of you wishes you could feel that happy. I also know a part of you wishes that once, just once, Willa would experience a bit of the winter that blows around in your heart. Because maybe then she could see the other side of life. Maybe then her views on God and happiness would change.”

  If I knew anything by then, it was that a body couldn’t argue with the truth. That’s why I didn’t bother arguing with anything he’d just said. All I could do was stand there and look at him.

  “You see in Willa all the traits every person should embody and you don’t. She’s smiling and singing and talking, and you’re stoic and silent and listening. She displays her feelings for all the world to see, but you guard yours lest they be discovered. And most of all, she has the sort of faith that says all she needs to do is profess her love for God and man and everything will be roses. That’s it, simple as that. Do that, and whoosh! Suddenly there’s this heavenly force field that surrounds you and keeps the nasties away. You’ll be safe and joyful, no longer left to be tossed about by life’s thrashings, but securely tethered to the holy grail of glee. That’s what you see, Andy. Isn’t it? But is it what you feel? Is it what you think? Because I know better.”

  I stared at him and said nothing.

  “You hurt, Andy,” he said. He let that hang in the air for a bit and took his eyes off of me, resting them instead on the bracelet around his hand. He traced it with a finger and smiled. “You’ll hurt for a long time, and more than you do now. I know you blame your father for that. I know the things he said to you about how you’ll always be alone. But do you know what? You don’t really hurt because of him. You hurt because of me.”

  We’d had our share of talks over the years, the Old Man and I. Moments when there were no lessons to be shared and no advice to be given and we simply sat like two normal people passing the time. But he had never spoken the way he spoke then. There was no sadness in his eyes, no regret. Just a statement of fact he could neither deny nor spare.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “You’re a friend to many, Andy, but you don’t have many friends. You get here most every day before dawn and close up every night after everyone’s gotten home from work. Whatever
free time you have you spend on your own. You go home to an empty house that is just that—a house. Not a home.

  “That card Willa just gave you? I want you to do something with it. I want it to go in your box. Because it’s important for one, and for another to prove a point. Remember when I told you to go into your grandpa’s attic to find the box? I told you to keep it somewhere safe. Where’s that box, Andy? Not at the house. It’s right there on the shelf under the cash register. This is your home. This is where you feel most comfortable—where there’s people, but where no one really lingers for long.

  “This isn’t the life you wanted for yourself, is it? You’re comfortable enough, yes. But are you happy with where you are? I doubt it. You wanted a wife and children, didn’t you? A home. But you’ll never have them because of me. I’m too hard to explain and near impossible to accept. That’s why Caroline left.”

  I threw the towel onto the counter and pointed to him. “Don’t you mention her name. Don’t you ever do that.”

  “It’s true, Andy. You know it’s true. You know having a wife means sharing everything with her, and I’m not something you can share. Not without coming across as a kook, anyway. Face it, Andy. I’m your secret. I’m your answered prayer, but I’m your curse, too. Just as much as I’m your blessing.”

  Only half of me was listening. The other half had drifted back ten years’ worth of yesterdays to a time when life handed me a gift I thought God intended me to refuse. I shook the memories off, pulling myself out of the bright hues of the past and back to the black and white of the present.

  “I prayed, you’re here,” I said. “How can an answered prayer be a curse? I don’t think so.”

  “You must think so,” he said. “Or else you’d be content with your life and not angry with the one Willa lives.”

  “I don’t want Willa’s life!” I laughed. “No way I could take care of all those folks.”

  “That’s not what I mean. I mean her happiness.”

  I’d had enough. Enough of the Teachable Moments, enough about what I was doing wrong. Enough.