Mrs. Ramirez tells us how she and Angela took to the road a few months ago, how they became devoted to the Virgin Mary. The lines of her story run parallel to the one Angela told me, but I can’t help noticing certain discrepancies. For example, according to Mrs. Ramirez, Angela has a true devotion to “Our Lady in Blue,” and they didn’t leave Tucson in search of a miracle. In fact, there is no mention of the fact her daughter was paralyzed. I begin to wonder if it ever happened. I’m about to mention it, and I also want to find out if the father is, in fact, wanted by the police for stealing, but every time I open my mouth to speak, Mrs. Ramirez introduces another new detail that takes my breath away.
“He is an evil man,” she whispers, referring to Mr. Ramirez. “Pure evil. Do you know what Our Lord said about the children? ‘And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea.’ This is a fate fit for Angela’s father. For what he did to her, even Our Lord could not forgive. No. Not even Jesus. And he did worse than offend.”
“What did he—?”
But before Doug can finish the sentence, Mrs. Ramirez is raising her hand and turning her head away. Then, after a short pause, as though she refuses to be silenced by her own sense of propriety, she adds, “I will say this: because of him there is a hole in Angela’s heart where the world used to be.”
Mrs. Ramirez and Angela escaped Tucson, but apparently they had a hard time escaping Mr. Ramirez. First they went to Austin, Texas, where Mrs. Ramirez’s sister lived. One night, while they were asleep, an angel came to Mrs. Ramirez in a dream and warned her that her husband was on his way.
“An angel?” I ask, trying to get a few more details. “Like with wings and a halo?”
“A real angel,” she says, which seems the only description she’s willing to provide. I don’t press her any further.
“Go on,” says Doug.
“I woke Angela, put her in the car, and off we went. It only took a couple of days for us to find our way to Lubbock. Everywhere we stopped, people guessed where we were headed and gave us directions, whether we wanted them or not. ‘Headed to Lubbock?’ a stranger would say to us. ‘Fifty more miles. Straight through to Lubbock. Lubbock’s up ahead there.’ I didn’t have a plan of my own, you see, so I accepted Lubbock as our divinely inspired plan.”
Once in Lubbock, it wasn’t hard for them to get lost in a crowd of mostly women and children; all they had to do was smile, nod, wear a BVM T-shirt, and follow the movements of the faithful as they went about their business. Considering their financial situation, Lubbock was the safest place for them to disappear; they had about four hundred bodyguards free of charge. After a few weeks, they began to understand that the Virgin Mary could offer protection to women who were on the lam from husbands and fathers, and that was exactly what they’d been looking for.
“Maybe this was our miracle,” Mrs. Ramirez concludes. “We found a safe place.” But she doesn’t look like a person who has experienced a miraculous healing, nor does she seem particularly safe. She just looks sad and upset.
She takes a sip of coffee and then starts fishing around in her purse, muttering in Spanish. Doug and I involuntarily lean forward. But then she surprises us by pulling out Marie’s little gold god and placing it on the glass coffee table in front of her. We stare at it as though it is Exhibit A presented for consideration in an ongoing trial.
“And there is this!” she says. “I found this … this thing in Angela’s bag last night. I know what this is! A false idol. So I took it away from her. I had to. Do you know your Bible? God said, ‘I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. Thou shalt have none other gods before me. Thou shalt not make thee any graven image—’ ”
“That belongs to my mother,” Doug announces. He then turns to me and adds, “How’d she get ahold of it?”
Did Angela steal the little gold god from Marie’s room? In all the excitement and confusion about Desirée’s new outfit, she could have easily slipped the thing into her purse without anyone’s noticing, no questions asked. “It wasn’t like we stole from anyone in particular. We just took stuff that no one would miss.” But I didn’t see Angela actually take it, so how could I accuse her?
Doug is tired of waiting for me to respond, so finally, in a voice that is louder than necessary, he says, “Dylan?”
I visibly jump and then, after I’ve swallowed hard and regained the use of my voice, I say, “We went to visit Marie. She gave it to Angela because Angela said she liked it.”
I explain to Mrs. Ramirez that the little gold god isn’t a false god; it’s just a decoration, something Marie picked up on her travels around the world, something to remind her that she once had a life. “She gave it to Angela. She did.”
“She stole it from your grandmother, didn’t she,” Mrs. Ramirez says wearily.
My silence is damning.
She turns toward Doug. “Do not judge her too harshly,” she tells him. “We have run out of money, and she was trying to help out. But it was wrong. And to me this is still a false idol. This is how I see it. ‘For I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children … ’ ”
Suddenly, a look of panic washes over her face as a new thought occurs to her. She turns to me and asks, “Do you think this is the reason my Angela ran away? Because I took the god from her? I didn’t mean to cause her harm. I meant to save her from harm.”
More tears.
Doug and I exchange a look, and suddenly, we’re in this together. And then Doug tries to reason with Mrs. Ramirez the way anyone might reason with a crazy person. He gets all matter-of-fact and tells her that it would be better if she drove back to the motel where she can lie down and get some rest. There’s nothing that anyone can do for Angela in the middle of the night. And who knows? Maybe Angela has already returned. What then? Who will be there to greet her?
As Mrs. Ramirez gets to her feet, Doug asks, “You feel okay about going back to the motel, Dolores? I mean, we’re not trying to get rid of you, it’s just—”
Doug gives Mrs. Ramirez a handful of dollar bills that he keeps stuffed in his jeans pocket—beer money. Then he and I stand by the living room window watching Dolores drive off in her dusty Subaru. Even after the car has turned the corner and disappeared, Doug and I stare out into the night. Neither of us says a word.
“You okay?” Doug asks me.
“Yes,” I reply. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“No reason. I was just asking.”
Frankie Rey
Under the circumstances, sleep is out of the question. I’m too busy thinking about everything that has happened—Mrs. Ramirez’s showing up, Angela’s going missing, the little gold god still sitting downstairs on the coffee table. What is it that Mrs. Ramirez said? “And to me this is still a false idol. This is how I see it.” But when Marie looks at the little gold god, she doesn’t see a false idol; it reminds her that once upon a time she had a heyday and her life wasn’t always about slipping the knot. To her, it’s a solid gold connection to her imaginary friend, Frankie Rey, and a world of adventure. It’s one of the treasures Frankie Rey looted from a grave in Colombia and gave to her as a gift. More likely, she and Granddad bought it in some dusty South American marketplace for a few pesos. To Doug, the god is proof that he has a mother. To Angela, it’s something to be auctioned off on eBay in exchange for cash. Each of us sees the thing differently. We each have a story, according to our needs. Who’s to say which story is the true one?
Doug is still up. I can hear him knocking around in his bedroom, trying not to make any noise. How come I always hear him when he’s trying to be quiet? I get out of bed and head off to make myself an early breakfast. But I notice a thin strip of light spilling across the carpet in the hallway. Doug’s bedroom door is slightly ajar. I inch forward, hoping not to creak a floorboard and give myself away. I
stand there in the slip of light, peeking through the crack of the door. And what do I see? Doug is sitting at the edge of his unmade bed, his back turned toward me, unaware that anyone is watching. I push the door open just enough to get a better look, and there it is sitting on the bed beside him—the cookie tin of photographs. Even from across the room, I can see that a few pictures have spilled out of the tin, others are arranged in neat piles on the pillows, and he’s holding two of them in his hands. These are the pictures of me, of Kat, of Kat and me together, of Doug alone, of Doug and Kat as a couple, of Doug and me, of all three of us together—our family history.
The photos have a strange effect on me; they act like a magnet, pulling me into the room, closer to the bed. It’s as though my past is calling to a present that will determine my future.
Doug jumps when he sees me, but he doesn’t try to stop me as I pick up a picture of Kat. It is the photograph that was taken on my fourth birthday. I’m sitting on Kat’s lap, staring into the camera, wearing a little jacket, a white shirt, a red bow tie. I look like a ventriloquist’s dummy. Kat is throwing her head back, and she’s laughing as though someone just said the funniest thing ever.
Doug is waiting for me to say something, anything, but I can’t speak. My mind is racing, and I’m thinking, I’m asleep, and this is actually a dream. But what if that picture of my fourth birthday just disappears? I don’t want to wake up. Not yet. No, not until I’ve memorized each and every photograph, recaptured all the history.
“What’re you doing out of bed? You should be asleep.”
I ignore Doug; he’s flipping through the pile of pictures and I find my second and my third birthday parties; that summer vacation we took in Cape May, New Jersey; our family trip to Disney World (2000); Christmas 1997 (at the loft); Christmas 1998 (in Jupiter); Christmas 1999 (the loft again); pictures of Kat before we knew that she was sick, of Doug with his video camera and decked out for yet another wedding, of me posing for school pictures, year after year, always with the same pose and the same frozen stare, different hair; and those around-the-world pictures of Marie and Granddad.
There is a shopping bag on the floor beside the bed. I pick it up and frantically begin stuffing it full of photographs. Doug takes hold of my arm. I can feel his rough fingers digging into the flesh just above my elbow.
“Put them down,” he says. “Let me explain.”
I say nothing. I am stone cold.
I try to make a clean break. I have the shopping bag in my one hand and a fistful of pictures in the other, but he grabs hold of both my shoulders and forces me back onto the bed.
“Forget it!” I yell at him.
I jump back off the bed as though the mattress is on fire. No way am I going to sit there and listen to him explain something that can’t be explained in a million years, so I gather handfuls of photographs and throw them in his face. When he’s turned away, I run from the room. I take the stairs, two at a time, until I’m in the living room. I give the room the once-over, surveying the chairs and tables to see if there’s anything I need. The little gold god is sitting on the coffee table, and I grab it.
“Get your ass back up these stairs, mister!” Doug bellows from the second-floor landing.
Mister?
He’s not even bothering to come lumbering down the stairs after me. He doesn’t think I have it in me to run out the door in the middle of the night, hop on my bike, and take off down the street. But he’s wrong. I don’t look back to see whether Doug is chasing me. I don’t care. I just pedal like a maniac, pumping distance between that house and myself—one block, two blocks, half a mile, one mile—until I’m gone.
The night has been turned inside out, showing its black-and-silver lining. Trees and bushes look as though they’ve been waxed and buffed to a high shine. The grass is something else, not green, but not exactly black, either; the feel of it beneath my feet is all that I can trust, the dark equivalent of my familiar daytime world. Without a moon, everything has turned to pitch. Sound and touch are my only guides.
I park my bike against the far end of the fence, my usual spot, and then head around to the back of the clubhouse. I’m treading lightly and feeling my way with hands and feet, inching toward the Black Hole. Fortunately, I’m familiar with the place, so when I finally come upon it, I don’t tumble headfirst into one of the slatted benches or bang my leg against a post. I just step down quietly into the darkness and feel my way along the wall.
The first sign that I’m not alone is the sound of heavy breathing.
“Hello?” I whisper into the blackness.
Nothing.
I hear some quick rustling, a click, and suddenly a light is in my face. I go all deer-in-the-headlights, lose my balance, and fall backward onto a pile of soft luggage.
“Dylan?” a voice asks from out of the darkness.
“Angela?” I ask, astonished. And then she’s scrambling over some bags in an effort to get to me and help me up. “What’re you doing here?”
Even in the spill of light, I can tell that Angela is just as surprised to see me as I am to find her. She looks a little rough around the edges; her hair, usually combed and neatly done, is going every which way, and her clothes are rumpled and creased from sleep.
“My mother and I had a fight,” she says as she helps me to my feet. “I left the motel. I had no place to go. And you?”
“Same,” I tell her. “Fight with my dad.”
She nods, and then from out of her pile of bags and blankets, she produces a large silver thermos, two Styrofoam cups, and a couple of paper napkins. She sits down on the slatted bench, and, in the beam of her flashlight, she pours each of us a serving of thick hot chocolate. There’s an unzipped suitcase, and several pairs of shoes are neatly arranged against the wall. I recognize some of her clothes spilling out of a plastic bag. And how long is she planning to stay?
“Anyway, it wasn’t safe in the motel,” says Angela.
She hands me the hot chocolate, and I take a sip. It’s delicious—thick and creamy—and I’m reminded of Christmas morning, snow days, sledding in Central Park, and Kat.
“Your mother came to our house looking for you,” I tell her between sips. “She showed us the little gold god.”
Silence.
“Did you steal it from my grandmother?” I ask her.
“I was just borrowing it. I thought maybe I could use it against a loan. Just until my mom got on her feet again. But when I had it appraised, it turns out it’s not worth anything. I was going to bring it back to Marie tomorrow. Honest.”
She goes on to explain that she and her mother recently ran out of money, and without a green card, her mother wasn’t able to get a job. But they have to leave town anyway. It’s time to move on, she tells me. Apparently, they’ve been invited to crash with a family they met. They’ll stay there at least until they can figure out where to go next.
“So this thing between you and your mom,” I say, trying to sound diplomatic, “it’s just a temporary thing.”
She shrugs and looks away.
I pull out a few folded dollar bills that I have jammed into my back pocket. It’s not much, but I offer them to Angela.
“Go on,” I say. “You’ll need it.”
She hesitates, and for a moment I think that her pride will prevent her from accepting, but then she puts down her hot chocolate, takes the bills, and stashes them in her purse. Then she reaches into one of her bags and pulls out two objects, both of them wrapped in newspaper. She places them on the slatted bench between us. Away from the coziness of Marie’s cabinet and in the glare of the flashlight, the plates of Brazil and Argentina and Peru look like the kind of junk you might find in a box by the curb on trash day. But to me, they are worth more than all the little gold gods in the world, and I’m happy to have them back.
“Thanks,” I say, inspecting the items. “I’ll make sure Marie gets them.”
As I stuff the stolen loot into my shopping bag, I try to think of Angela in
the way I used to think of her when I first met her—as golden, as a goddess. Now, even in the dark of the Black Hole, I want to see her clearly, for who she is.
Angela asks me about the fight I had with Doug, and I tell her the whole unhappy saga. Then I show her some of the pictures from my childhood.
“Look,” I say, holding up an old Polaroid of Kat and me standing against the backdrop of the rolling surf at Jones Beach. I’m about four years old in the picture, looking like a happy drowned rat and hanging on to Kat. She’s wearing a faded, two-piece bathing suit; her feet are spread wide, and her arms are folded tightly across her chest. “That’s my mother. I’d forgotten how pretty she was.” And then, when Angela doesn’t respond right away, I add, “Do you think she’s pretty?”
“Oh, God, yeah,” she says, taking the picture from me and examining it closely. “You look like her. Has anyone ever told you that?”
“Not for a while.”
I show her one picture after another.
“This is us in the Adirondacks. You can see Doug’s reflection in the car window.… Here we are all together at the Jersey shore. Can’t remember who took this one … This is Kat pretending to be crying as I leave for my first day of preschool.…”
“We ought to save the batteries,” Angela says as she clicks off the flashlight. I figure that she’s seen enough, but then in the dark, she sighs heavily and says, “You’re lucky. I never had a childhood like that.”
“Like what?” I ask.
“One that’s worth remembering.”
I hear the rustling as Angela gets comfortable among the bags and blankets. Then she stops suddenly and says, “D’you hear that?”
“What?”
“I thought I heard footsteps in the grass.”
Virgin Territory Page 14
