Kissed by an Angel

by Элизабет Чандлер

  "This is pretty good," said the kid.

  "Pretty good? This is a feast!" said Tristan. "Eat up! We'll need our strength to capture dessert."

  He saw a trace of a smile, then it disappeared.

  "Who're you in trouble with?" the boy wanted to know.

  Tristan chewed for a moment. "It's the caterer, Monsieur Pompideau. I was working for him and spilled some things. You know, I wet a few people's pants."

  The boy smiled, a bigger smile this time. "Did you get Mr. Lever?"

  "Should I have aimed for him?" Tristan asked.

  The kid nodded, his face brightened considerably by this thought.

  "Anyway, Pompideau told me to stick to things that didn't spill. Imagine that."

  "You know what I'd tell him?" said the kid. The pucker in his brow was gone. He was gulping down food and talking with his mouth full. He looked about a hundred times better than he had fifteen minutes earlier.

  "What?"

  "I'd tell him: Stick it in your ear!"

  "Good idea!" said Tristan. He picked up a piece of celery. "Stick it in your ear, Pompideau."

  The kid laughed out loud, and Tristan wedged in the stalk.

  "Stick it in your other ear, Pompideau!" the kid commanded.

  Tristan snatched up another piece of celery.

  "Stick it in your hair, Dippity-doo!" the boy crowed, carried away with the game.

  Tristan took a handful of shredded salad and dropped it on his head. Too late he realized the greens were covered with vinaigrette.

  The kid threw back his head and laughed. "Stick it in your nose, Doo-be-doo!"

  Well, why not? Tristan thought. He had been eight years old once, and remembered how funny noses and boogers seemed to little boys. He found two shrimp tails and stuck them in, their pink fins flaring out of his nostrils.

  The kid was falling off his box laughing. "Stick it in your teeth, Doo-be-doo!"

  Two black olives worked well, each stuck on a tooth, so he had two black incisors.

  "Stick it in-" Tristan was busy adjusting his celery and shrimp tails. He hadn't noticed how the crack of light had widened. He didn't see the kid's face change. "Stick it where, Doo-be-doo?"

  Then Tristan looked up.

  Chapter 3

  Ivy froze. She was stunned by the sight of Tristan, celery stuck in his ears, salad shreds in his hair, something squishy and black on his teeth, and-hard as it was to believe that someone older than eight would do this-shrimp tails sticking out of his nose.

  Tristan looked just as stunned to see her.

  "Am I in trouble?" Philip asked.

  "I think I am," Tristan said softly.

  "You're supposed to be in the dining room, eating with us," Ivy told Philip.

  "We're eating in here. We're having a feast."

  She looked at the assortment of food piled on the plates between them, and one side of her mouth curled up.

  "Please, Ivy, Mom said we could bring any friends we wanted to the wedding."

  "And you told her you didn't have any, remember? You said you didn't have one friend in Stonehill."

  "I do now."

  Ivy looked at Tristan. He was careful to keep his eyes down, concentrating on the celery, shrimp, and squashed black olives, lining them up on the box in front of him. Disgusting.

  "Mademoiselle!"

  "It's Doo-be-doo!" cried Philip. "Close the door! Please, Ivy!"

  Against her better judgment, she did, for strange as it seemed, her brother looked happier than he had in weeks. With her back to the storeroom, Ivy faced the caterer.

  "Is something wrong, mademoiselle?"

  "No, sir."

  "Are you tres certaine?"

  "Tres," she replied, taking Monsieur Pompideau's arm and walking him away from the door.

  "Well, you are wanted in the dining room," he said crisply. "It is time for the toast. Everyone is waiting."

  Ivy hurried out. They were indeed waiting, and she couldn't avoid an entrance. Ivy blushed as she crossed the room. Gregory pulled her toward him, laughing. Then he handed her a champagne glass.

  A friend of Andrew's made the toast. It went on and on.

  "Hear, hear," all the guests cried out at last.

  "Hear, hear, sister!" Gregory said, and drank down the contents of the glass. He held it out to be filled again.

  Ivy took a small sip from hers.

  "Here, here, sister," he said again, but low and soft this time, his eyes burning with a strange light. He clinked his glass against hers and downed the champagne once more.

  Then he pulled Ivy to him, so close she couldn't breathe, and kissed her hard on the mouth.

  Ivy sat at her piano, staring at the same measures of music she had opened to five minutes before, one hand resting lightly on her lips. She dropped her hand down to the yellowed keys and ran her fingers over them, eliciting ripples of music, not quite in tune. Then she ran her tongue over her lips. They weren't really bruised; it was all in her mind.

  Still, she was glad that she had talked her mother into letting Philip and her stay in their apartment until after the honeymoon. Six days alone with Gregory in that huge house on the ridge was more than she could face, especially with Philip acting up.

  Philip, who in their crowded Norwalk apartment had rigged up old curtains around his bed because he wanted to be away from "the girls," had been begging to sleep with her for the past two weeks. The night before the wedding she had let him bring his sleeping bag into her room.

  She had awakened to find him and Ella the cat on top of her. After their long day at the wedding, she'd probably let him sleep in her room again that night.

  He was on the floor behind her, playing with his baseball cards, arranging dream teams on the scatter rug. As usual, Ella wanted to stretch out in the middle of the baseball diamond. The pitcher rode on her black belly, up and down. Every once in a while, a soft phrase would escape Philip. "Fly ball deep to center field," he'd whisper, then Don Mattingly would make his home-run trot around the bases.

  I shouldn't let him stay up this late, Ivy thought. But she herself couldn't sleep, and she was glad for his company. Besides, Philip had eaten such a conglomeration of party food, and so many sweets on top of that-thanks to Tristan-he'd probably throw up all over his sleeping bag. And clean sheets, like most everything else in their apartment, were packed.

  "Ivy, I decided," Philip said suddenly. "I'm not going to move."

  "What?" She lifted her legs and spun around on the piano bench.

  "I'm staying here. Do you and Ella want to stay with me?"

  "And what about Mom?"

  "She can be Gregory's mother now," Philip said.

  Ivy winced, the way she did each time her mother made a fuss over Gregory. Maggie was warmhearted and affectionate-and trying hard, much too hard. She had no idea how ridiculous Gregory found her.

  "Mom will always be our mother, and right now she needs us."

  "Okay," Philip said agreeably. "You and Ella go. I'm going to ask Tristan to move in with me."

  "Tristan!"

  He nodded, then said softly to himself, "Walked the batter. Tying run coming up to the plate."

  Apparently he had made up his eight-year-old mind and didn't figure that the matter needed to be discussed further. He played contentedly. It was the strangest thing, how he had begun to play again after his fun with Tristan.

  What had Tristan said to Philip that helped him so? Perhaps nothing, Ivy thought. Perhaps instead of trying to explain their mother's marriage for the last three weeks, she should have just stuck some shrimp in her nose.

  "Philip," she said sharply.

  The tying run had to come home before he was willing to talk to her again. "Huh?"

  "Did Tristan say anything to you about me?"

  "About you?" He thought for a moment. "No."

  "Oh." Not that I care, she told herself.

  "Do you know him?" Philip asked.

  "No. No, I just thought that maybe, after I
found you in the storeroom, he'd say something about me."

  Philip's brow knitted. "Oh, yeah. He asked me if you like to wear pink dresses like that, and if you really believe in angels. I told him about your collection of statues."

  "What did you tell him about my dress?"

  "Yes."

  "Yes?" she exclaimed.

  "You told Mommy you thought it was pretty."

  And her mother had believed her. Why shouldn't Philip?

  "Did Tristan say why he was working there tonight?"

  "Yup."

  The inning was over. Philip was setting up a new defense.

  "Well, why?" Ivy asked, exasperated.

  "He has to make some money for a swim meet. He's a swimmer, Ivy. He goes to other states and swims. He needs to fly, I can't remember where."

  Ivy nodded. Of course. Tristan was just hard up, earning his way. She should stop listening to Suzanne.

  Philip stood up suddenly. "Ivy, don't make me go to that big house. Don't make me go. I don't want to eat dinner with him!"

  Ivy reached out for her brother. "New things always seem scary," she reassured him. "But Andrew has been nice to you, right from the start. Remember who bought you Don Mattingly's rookie card?"

  "I don't want to eat dinner with Gregory."

  She didn't know what to say to that.

  Philip stood next to her, his fingers moving silently over the old piano's keys. When he'd been younger he used to do that and sing the tunes he was supposed to be playing.

  "I need a hug," she said. "How about it?"

  He gave her an unenthusiastic one.

  "Let's do our new duet, okay?"

  He shrugged. He'd play along with her, but the happiness that she had glimpsed in him earlier had disappeared.

  They were five measures through when he slammed his hands down on the piano. He banged and banged and banged.

  "I won't go! I won't go! I won't!"

  Philip burst into tears, and Ivy pulled him toward her, letting him sob in her arms. When he had settled into exhausted hiccups, she said, "You're tired, Philip. You're just tired," but she knew it was more than that.

  While he rested against her she played for him his favorite songs, then softened the medley into lullabies. Soon he was almost asleep and much too big for her to carry into bed.

  "Come on," she said, helping him up from the bench. Ella followed them into her room.

  "Ivy."

  "Hmmm?"

  "Can I have one of your angels tonight?"

  "Sure. Which one?"

  "Tony."

  Tony was the dark brown one, carved out of wood, Ivy's father angel. She stood Tony next to the sleeping bag and Don Mattingly. Then Philip crawled into the bag, and she zipped him in.

  "Do you want to say an angel prayer?" she asked.

  Together they said, "Angel of light, angel above, take care of me tonight. Take care of everyone I love."

  "That's you, Ivy," Philip added, and closed his eyes.

  Chapter 4

  Ivy felt as if she floated through most of the week that followed the wedding, with one day slipping into the next, marked only by frustrating discussions with Philip. Suzanne and Beth teased her about her absent-mindedness, but more gently than usual. Gregory passed her in the hall once or twice and made little jokes about straightening up his room before Friday. Tristan didn't cross her path that week-at least she didn't see him.

  Everyone in school knew by then about her mother and Andrew's marriage. The wedding had made all the local papers as well as the New York Times. Ivy shouldn't have been surprised, for Andrew was often in the paper, but it was odd to see photos of her mother as well.

  Friday morning finally arrived, and Ivy nosed her rusty little Dodge out of the apartment driveway, feeling suddenly homesick for every crowded, noisy, dilapidated rental place her family had ever lived in. When she returned from school that afternoon, she'd enter a different driveway, one that climbed a ridge high above the train station and river. The road to the house hugged a low stone wall and ran between patches of woods, daffodils, and laurel. Andrew's woods, daffodils, and laurel.

  That afternoon Ivy picked up Philip from school. He had given up the fight and rode next to her in silence. Halfway up the ridge, Ivy heard a motorcycle on the bend above them, roaring downhill. Suddenly the cyclist and she were face-to-face. She was already as far to the right as she could get. Still he came head-on. Ivy slammed on her brakes. The cycle swerved dangerously close to them, then sped past.

  Philip's head spun around, but he didn't say anything. Ivy glanced in the rearview mirror. It was probably Eric Ghent. She hoped Gregory was with him.

  But Gregory was waiting for them at the house, along with Andrew and her mother, who were just back from their honeymoon. Her mother greeted them with big hugs and lipstick kisses and a cloud of some new kind of perfume. Andrew took both of Ivy's hands in his. He was wise enough to smile at but not touch Philip. Then Ivy and Philip were turned over to Gregory.

  "I'm the tour guide," he said. Leaning toward Philip, he warned, "Stay close. Some of these rooms are haunted."

  Philip looked around quickly, then glanced up at Ivy.

  "He's just kidding."

  "I'm not," said Gregory. "Some very unhappy people have lived here."

  Philip glanced up at Ivy again. She shook her head.

  On the outside the house was a stately white clapboard home with heavy black shutters. Wings had been added to each side of the main structure. Ivy would have liked to live in one of the smaller wings with their deep sloping roofs and dormer windows.

  In the main part of the house, some of the high-ceilinged rooms seemed as large as apartments that they had once lived in. The house's wide center hall and sweeping stair separated the living room, library, and solarium from the dining room, kitchen, and family room. Beyond the family room was a gallery leading to the west wing with Andrew's office.

  Since her mother and Andrew were talking in the office, the downstairs tour stopped at the gallery, in front of three portraits: Adam Baines, the one who had invested in all the mines, looking stern in his World War I uniform; Judge Andy Baines, in his judicial robes; and Andrew, dressed in his colorful academic gown. Next to Andrew there was a blank spot on the wall.

  "Makes you wonder who's going to hang there," Gregory remarked dryly. He smiled, but his gray, hooded eyes had a haunted look. For a moment Ivy felt sorry for him. As Andrew's only son, he must have felt a lot of pressure to do well.

  "You will," she said softly.

  Gregory looked in her eyes, then laughed. His laughter was touched with bitterness.

  "Come upstairs," he said, taking her hand and leading her to the back stairway that ran up to his room. Philip tagged along silently.

  Gregory's room was large and had only one thing in common with other guys' rooms-an archaeological layer of discarded underwear and socks. Beneath that, it showed money and taste: dark leather chairs and glass tables, a desk and computer, and a large entertainment center.

  Covering the walls were museum prints with striking geometric shapes. In the center of it all was a king-size waterbed.

  "Try it," Gregory urged.

  Ivy leaned down and jiggled it tentatively with her hand.

  He laughed at her. "What are you afraid of? Come on, Phil"-no one calls him Phil, Ivy thought-"show your sister how. Climb on top and give it a good roll around."

  "I don't want to," said Philip.

  "Sure you do." Gregory was smiling, but his tone of voice threatened.

  "Nope," said Philip.

  "It's a lot of fun." Gregory grasped Philip's shoulders and pushed him back forcefully toward the bed.

  Philip resisted, then tripped and fell onto it. He sprang off just as quickly. "I hate it!" he cried.

  Gregory's mouth hardened into a line.

  Ivy then sat down on the bed. "It is fun," she said. She bounced slowly up and down. "Try it with me, Philip." But he had moved out into the hallway.


  "Lie back on it, Ivy," Gregory urged her, his voice low and silky.

  When she did, he lay down close to her.

  "We really should get to our unpacking," Ivy said, sitting up quickly.

  They crossed through a low-roofed passage that was just above the gallery and into the section of the main house where Philip and she had their bedrooms.

  Her door was closed and when she opened it, Philip rushed through to Ella, who was stretched out luxuriously on Ivy's bed. Oh no, Ivy groaned silently as she glanced around the elaborately decorated room. She had feared the worst when her mother said she was in for a big surprise.

  What she saw was lots of lace, white wood trimmed with gold, and a canopy bed. "Princess furniture," she muttered aloud.

  Gregory grinned.

  "At least Ella looks at home. She's always thought of herself as a queen. Do you like cats, Gregory?"

  "Sure," he said, sitting on the bed next to Ella. Ella promptly got up and walked to the other end of the bed.

  Gregory looked annoyed.

  "That's a queen for you," Ivy said lightly. "Well, thanks for the tour. I've got a lot to unpack."

  But Gregory lounged back on her bed. "This was my room when I was a kid."

  "Oh?"

  Ivy lifted an armload of clothes from a garment bag and pulled open a door to what she thought was a closet. Instead she faced a set of steps.

  "That was my secret stairway," Gregory said.

  Ivy peered up into the darkness.

  "I used to hide up in the attic when my mother and father fought. Which was every day," Gregory added. "Did you ever meet my mother? You must have; she was always getting done over."

  "At the beauty shop? Yes," Ivy replied, opening the door to a closet.

  "Wonderful woman, isn't she?" His words were heavy with sarcasm. "Loves everyone. Never thinks of herself."

  "I was young when I met her," Ivy said tactfully.

  "I was young, too," "Gregory… I've been wanting to say this. I know it must be hard for you, watching my mother move into your mother's room, having Philip and me take over space that was once yours. I don't blame you for-" "For being glad that you're here?" he interrupted. "I am. I'm counting on you and Philip to keep the old man on his best behavior. He knows others are watching him and his new family. Now he's got to be the good and loving papa. Let me help you with that."