Angels in the Morning

by Sasha Troyan

  Angels in the Morning

  Sasha Troyan

  New York

  For Paola Martelli

  One

  “If you don’t move, it won’t get you,” my great-aunt Ethel whispers.

  From the cloth flowers of my grandmother’s mauve hat, the wasp travels to the handle of my governess’s white vinyl bag where it rests an inch away from her fingers, each finger the size of two of mine.

  “If only it were a bee,” Ethel says. “Bees sting only once, and then they die. But this wasp could sting us all and continue on its merry way.”

  The wasp circles the chauffeur’s ear, brushing a tuft of hair.

  “If only it were a bee,” Ethel repeats, “then it could sting only one of us.”

  “Who?” I say. If I could choose, I would have a hard time deciding between my governess Juliet and my great-aunt Ethel.

  The wasp travels to the rear of the car. It flies straight onto my sister’s hearing aid. My sister, Al, lifts one finger as if to stroke it and we all gasp, but then the wasp flies out.

  We continue to sit stiffly, however. We don’t quite believe it’s gone. We lean back against the cream-colored seats only when Granny starts knitting again. Before, when I was little, I used to sit with Granny in the front, but now that I’m ten I’m too big. It’s the same with sleeping: before I could sleep in the same bed as her, but now I have to sleep upstairs with my sister.

  All I can see of Granny is her mauve hat reflected in the rearview mirror and one elbow appearing and then disappearing behind the seat. I hear her needles clicking and her bracelets jingling. Sometimes, I see a flash as one of her rings catches the sun. But I don’t need to see her to picture her eyes, more green than brown today because of the light, her face covered with wrinkles like a cobweb. Once my sister asked Granny why she had so many scratches on her face and Granny laughed and said it was life.

  Ethel is not knitting because it makes her feel ill. She’s waving a postcard of the Eiffel Tower in front of her cheeks. Her cheeks are usually pink but today they’re bright red. She says it’s not a sign of health, not at all, high blood pressure is responsible for her color. She says that if her color is an indicator of anything it is of her imminent decline. Ethel always wears dull colored dresses; gray, beige, or brown. She looks like a tall thin shadow following my grandmother who always wears bright-colored dresses.

  “Will, did you notice?” Ethel says, waving her postcard more rapidly. “She’s lost a lot of weight this year.”

  “Yes, she has lost a lot of weight,” Granny says. “She’s lost too much weight. She’s lost at least ten pounds, I should say, perhaps even more. She wouldn’t say exactly. Don’t you think she’s lost too much weight, Juliet?”

  “I told her,” Ethel says, “when you get to be a certain age, you have to choose your face or your figure, but she said she couldn’t force herself to eat when she’s not hungry.”

  “She’s been working too hard,” Granny says, “playing that piano from morning till night, reading that difficult music. It’s a wonder she doesn’t need glasses.”

  “But Mummy likes glasses,” I say. “When she was a little girl, she pretended she couldn’t see so you would take her to the eye doctor and you did, but she didn’t get glasses because the doctor realized she was fibbing.”

  “I hadn’t noticed. I’ve been concentrating on my own weight,” my governess, Juliet, says, looking up from her Agatha Christie. She peers over the rims of her glasses, pressing one finger to the page to mark her place, before looking back down again, the tip of her red nail moving along each line, stopping only to wet the tip of one finger before turning the page or to say, “I know who’s done it. I always do.” I keep moving closer to the window because her arm is sticking to mine, but she just takes up more space.

  We reach my favorite part, just before Fontainbleau, where trees, hundreds and hundreds of years old, form a long green arcade. There are so many leaves I cannot see a single thread of blue, and it’s impossible to tell the tips of one tree from another.

  I kneel on the seat and stare out the back window and Al copies me, but Aunt Ethel says, “Sit properly. You keep brushing your shoe against my skirt.”

  I articulate without sound to Al, “Arse hole. Pig.”

  She opens her mouth wide and laughs, making her hearing aid squeak.

  I lean my head out the window. The light is blinding, so I close my eyes and imagine the canoe I’m going to persuade Granny to buy. I’m going to float down the river. I’ll lie flat on the bottom of the canoe and look up at the blue sky. I’ll fix up my tree house. I’ll go swimming in the pool.

  When I sit back, the car seems dark. Juliet and my sister Al are singing, “Alouette, gentille alouette.” Juliet has closed her book, and her glasses hang from a yellow string. She has slipped her heels out of her shoes. “Je te plumerai le bec, alouette, alouette, aah.” Each time Juliet says, “Aah” I can see her purple tongue.

  “Stop singing,” I say. “You’re completely out of tune.”

  “No, we’re not,” Juliet says. “Gabriel, what an awful thing to say to your little sister.” I stick a finger into each ear and stare out the window. Juliet always defends Alex. It’s because she came when Al was a baby. Juliet says she got me too late.

  I count the cars passing our car. I wish my father were driving. My father is a good driver. Luis is the worst driver. He only speeds up going around corners. He honks every few minutes and if you point out a cow or a church he swerves off the road. He perfumes his car.

  Since everyone is singing, I begin to sing too. I sing as loudly as I can. I yell. Our singing sounds terrible. Everyone sings with a different accent. My great-aunt and grandmother sing with a South African accent, Juliet with an English accent, Luis with a Spanish accent, and Alex on the same flat note.

  Then I see a bottle-green car speed by our car. It’s my father and my mother. He’s coming to surprise us. I recognize the dark brown felt hat he always wears. He won’t let me try it on because it’s too delicate. But this hat has a red feather. It’s not my father, and it’s not my mother either. My father is away on a business trip. Mummy says he’s in Brussels. He’s supposed to come back tonight, but sometimes he comes early to surprise us. He always brings lots of presents. He often gives us boys’ toys, like an electric train or electric cars. It’s because he hoped we would be boys. That’s why we’ve got boys’ names.

  Perhaps my mother and father will be there when we arrive. Perhaps they will be sitting on the yellow and white striped chairs by the swimming pool, the skirt of my mother’s white dress blowing up in the wind, her high-pitched laugh drifting across the lawn as she tries to hold her skirt down. “Let it go,” my father says. “Let it fly.”

  “Luis,” Granny says, startling me. “Do you think we’re going to a funeral?” He replies that no one has died in his family and we all laugh except for Al, who gets upset because I don’t feel like repeating what he said.

  Al’s the best lipreader, but she has to be able to see the person’s lips. If the person is eating, has a beard or bad teeth, she can’t understand either.

  “I don’t recognize that church. I don’t remember it being so run down. Do you?” Granny turns to look at us. “Are you sure we’re going the right way?”

  “Yes,” I say, looking across a field at a small stone church.

  “There’s only one way, Mrs. Bodley,” Luis says as we continue to drive along the straight road with poplars on either side.

  “Are you absolutely sure?” Ethel says.

  “It’s strange,” Granny says, “how a place can be exactly the same and yet look different.”

  Then Juliet screams, “here comes the turn off.” The car swerve
s across the road and my head hits the door. Juliet—everyone in the back—is thrown against me and I cannot breathe. The car screeches and wobbles from side to side. Gradually the wobbling stops and Luis drives slowly again, but it takes us several minutes to believe that everyone is all right and that we’re not going to have an accident.

  Juliet is the first to recover. She leans over and picks up her white handbag, which makes a clinking noise. Luis passes Granny her hat, and I feel the side of my head for a bruise.

  “That was fun,” Al says. “Let’s do it again.”

  We all laugh except for Ethel who says, “Certainly not.” She waves her postcard furiously even though it is of no use now, badly crumpled between her fingers.

  Al isn’t afraid of anything because she’s deaf. She can’t hear witches coming down corridors, creaks overhead. Every night, even though I’m the oldest, I slip into her bed. Al will swing from the highest branch, pet a snake, stand watching a fire spread across a field.

  “Oh dear, oh dear,” Ethel says. “Are you sure you’re all right, Will? Your heart—”

  “I’m fine.” Granny says, her head appearing around the seat. “Pull yourself together.”

  “Yes,” I say, “or Juliet will have to slap your cheeks like they do in the movies.”

  “Don’t you be rude, Gabriel,” Ethel says, opening her handbag with trembling fingers.

  “Mrs. Bodley, are you all right?” Luis says.

  “No thanks to you,” Granny says.

  “I wish you’d be more careful, Luis,” Ethel says, staring into the mirror of her powder case and patting her nose. “Are you sure you’re all right, Will?”

  “I’m fine,” Granny says. “Don’t worry. I only dropped a stitch or two. But what about the suitcases?”

  “They’re still there,” I say. Every summer Granny and Ethel arrive from South Africa with six pink suitcases and one black vanity case, and every year we’re afraid the suitcases will slip off the roof.

  “Luis, you should have been more patient,” Ethel says. “You should have waited to make sure the path was clear. Men lack patience.”

  “Yes,” Juliet says. “Patience is a virtue seldom found in men.”

  “Unlike women,” Ethel says.

  “But some men,” Granny says, “are not worth being patient for.”

  We continue to drive through fields. The wheat parts here and there, hiding rabbits or foxes or hares. I can smell the sun in the air, and every few minutes I lift one leg because it’s sticking to the seat, or I move forward to let the breeze cool off my back.

  I close my eyes and imagine we have already arrived. I imagine the sign for Malsherbes; a white sign with a black line around it. Malsherbes is in big letters, and beneath those letters are smaller ones in script saying, Pays du miel et des alouettes. I imagine the long white road cutting through the green fields, the sharp drop, the twist, the turn followed by another drop leading to the old stone house covered with ivy. I imagine the river flowing from beneath the house. As we pass through the white gate, the caretaker, Mme Daudiet, comes running out.

  Inside the house it’s just as it was the summer before. It’s filled with light. Windows are so clean it looks as if there’re none at all. Vases are filled with roses and globe thistles and dahlias, and the sound of the river drifts through the open doors.

  It’s quiet in the car now. I can’t even hear the sound of Granny’s clicking needles; only the sound of air rushing through windows and cars passing one by one.

  The sound of tires crunching gravel awakens me. Al climbs over Ethel’s knees. “Can’t you wait a minute? You haven’t even put on your shoes,” Ethel says. “Look at what you’ve done!” She licks two fingers, then bends over and rubs her calf. The car stops in front of the house with a lurch. Alex jumps out and Luis swings his door open. He walks around the car to Granny’s side. Only Juliet does not move. She continues to read. She has reached the last paragraph. I turn and look out the back window. Mme Daudiet is not here.

  “All right.” Juliet closes her book and prods me with her elbow. “Get out.”

  “The door won’t open,” Alex shouts, twisting the handle of the front door. “It’s locked.”

  “Of course it is,” Ethel says, placing her hand over Alex’s and trying the handle anyway.

  “Look under the mat,” Juliet calls, rushing past me.

  Al flips over the mat. “It’s not here.” She looks up at Juliet.

  “What are we going to do?” Ethel says, throwing her arms out. “I asked your mother twice if she was sure it was under the mat.”

  “But where’s Mme Daudiet?” I say.

  “It really is aggravating,” Ethel says, leaning towards Juliet.

  “Where’s Mme Daudiet?” I pull on Juliet’s arm.

  “Just a minute,” Juliet says, glancing over her shoulder and frowning, shaking off my hand. “You can see I’m talking.”

  “And it’s probably too late to call. She’s gone by now,” Ethel says.

  We move back a few steps. We look up at the stone house. Windows and doors are locked. Shutters are closed and ivy grows across some of the windows. Swallows flutter to the roof and disappear under the eaves. One swallow swoops into a broken attic window.

  Granny places her hand on my shoulder. “Maybe they’ve forgotten to lock one door or window,” she says. “It’s worth a try. You girls go this way and we’ll go that way.” She wanders off with Ethel and Juliet following behind her.

  Alex and I go from door to door trying each handle, but not one door or window will open. Around one corner of the house, Tiger, the cat who lives with Mme Daudiet, appears. She’s much thinner than usual and her hair is matted on one side. I wonder where Mme Daudiet could be. Perhaps she mixed up the day. Mummy often mixes up dates.

  When we come back to the front of the house, all the grownups have scattered except for Luis. He’s smoking, leaning against his car. He has his back to us and he’s taken off his cap. Then the front door opens and a man steps out. His clothes are torn and he’s barefooted. One of his eyes is made of glass. He glances at us, then hurries round the side of the house. I wonder if he’ll bump into Aunt Ethel or Juliet.

  Al and I slip inside the house. The air is cool, the stone floor cold beneath our feet. It’s so dark we can just see to our left the doors leading to the kitchen and the dining room, our silhouettes reflected in the dusty mirror in the entrance hall. We’re wearing the same red dresses with green stems down the front and white collars shaped like petals. I hold Al’s hand.

  All the shutters are closed. Even the living room with its high ceiling and fourteen windows is filled with shadows. The sun slivers through cracks, lighting a thread of cobweb or a thin layer of dust covering the furniture and the window sills. The smell of damp wood fills the air as if the wood beams lining the ceiling have begun to rot. Vases stand empty. The grandfather clock is silent. The sailboats painted across its face seem to float through the dust. The staircase leading to our parents’ room and the music room is missing two pegs which stand against the bottom step. We each carry one. “In case the tramp has a friend or if he comes back,” I say. It doesn’t look like he’s taken anything. A few crumbs on the coffee table are the only trace of his visit. Al and I decide to keep him a secret.

  We leave the pegs at the bottom of the staircase leading to our room. We pull ourselves up the back stairs holding onto a red velvet cord as if we were drowning. In our bedroom, there’s the smell of damp wool and mothballs. The mattresses are bare. I listen to the river flowing beneath the house. Long ago the house was a mill. Chickens used to cluck and hop around the rooms. But the wheel was removed, and all that’s left of the mill is the name; the house is called, “Le Moulin de Doureux,” the “dou” like doux, soft or sweet, and the “reux” like the sound birds utter as they glide to their nests. I place my favorite yellow toy rabbit on top of my bed. Juliet is always trying to persuade me to get rid of it because the material is brown in places and it’s
so faded she’s always having to darn it to stop the sponge from falling out. Al puts her favorite toy monkey whose head is always falling off and her white blanket with the tiny blue flowers on her bed. Usually we jump on the beds, but today the house is too quiet.

  I push open the shutters in our bedroom. They bang against the outside wall. Then we wander into Juliet’s room where the walls are covered with a green cloth that is coming apart at the seams.

  I hear the distant tapping of a windowpane or the rattling of a door. Juliet’s voice rises from below: “Gabriel, Al, Gabriel.”

  I run down the stairs through the living room and to the front door. The grownups stand outside. Juliet’s forehead is pressed against one of the window panes. Ethel peers over her shoulder, eyes narrowing, as if to make sure we are not hidden in the shadows.

  “Open the door,” Juliet shouts.

  “It’s open,” I say and turn the handle. I pull, but the door is stuck. Alex puts her hands around my waist, and we pull together. Juliet kicks the door several times. “Keep the handle turned,” she says, but still it won’t open. “Move,” she says. “Al, stand a few feet away.” Luis and Juliet lean against the door. It opens, and they come stumbling in. Juliet almost falls and Luis catches hold of her. She breaks away from him. Al and I laugh but then we stop.

  “What were you doing?” Juliet says. “That was very naughty of you. You should have come immediately and told us you had managed to open the door. Gabriel, show Ethel to her room, and you, Al, come and help me.”

  I mouth to Al, “Shit. Merde. Shit.”

  “Give those to me,” Juliet says to Luis who has carried in two pink suitcases. She lifts the two enormous suitcases, swinging them with her as if they were as weightless as the hem of her dress.

  “Please,” Luis says. “Let me.”

  I glance over my shoulder at Granny, but she doesn’t see me. She’s staring up at the sky. She looks smaller this year. I’m almost as tall as her. I want to ask her about Mme Daudiet but Ethel tells me to come and I follow her. Her beige skirt is all creased and twisted. The front is in the back, and there’s a ladder in her left stocking. Through the ladder, I can see pale white skin, blue veins and freckles.