Proof of Angels

by Mary Curran Hackett

  “My turn?” he said and turned, looking at Chief. “Not me. Not today. I am not ready. My body will know when it’s ready. Today’s not that day.”

  Chief nudged the board again.

  “Oh, oh, I see how it is. You want another ride? Ah, the surfing bug has bitten. You will never be the same again, ol’ sport. Lucky for you, I like it, too. Come on, let’s go,” Sean said, patting the board and signaling for Chief to get on.

  Tom, Sean, and Chief spent the next two hours taking turns swimming Chief out on the board over the swells and pushing him at the precise right moment. Sean never thought he’d ever find it possible to feel so much joy by simply watching another embrace his own. He’d thought those days were over. But it was possible. Anything was possible. Angels. Second chances. Colm. Chiara’s love. And, yes, even surfing dogs. All of it. He could have all of it.

  Chapter 19

  IT WAS PAST SUNSET BY THE TIME TOM DROPPED SEAN off at his apartment.

  “I can’t come up, Sean. I’m already running late. Told Melissa I’d be home for dinner. Do you mind if I hang on to the boards? I’d like to take my girls out one of these nights.”

  “That would be sweet. They’ll love it. Go for it. I won’t need them for a while. Come on, Chief, come on,” Sean said, beckoning for the damp dog to come to him.

  “All right. Get some rest tonight, Sean. James is coming over, right?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  When Sean and Chief exited the elevator and walked down the hall toward the apartment, they found James, disheveled, with his uniform shirt unbuttoned and slumped down by the door holding an open empty box of pizza.

  “James? What’s going on?” Sean said, approaching as quickly as he could, hopping along with his cane.

  “Don’t act like you don’t know, Sean,” James said, his mouth full of the last bite of pizza.

  “What are you talking about, James?”

  “Really? That’s how you’re gonna play it? I’ve known from the beginning. Ever since I saw you look at her that you wanted her. And you couldn’t let me have her. Jesus, Sean. I was your friend.”

  “I’m sorry. What are we talking about, James?” Sean said, confused.

  James stood up and the empty pizza box landed by Sean’s feet.

  “So I stop by Libby’s on my way home from work today to see if she wants to come over here with me. She’s crying, Sean. Sobbing actually. I couldn’t make any sense out of what she was saying. Man, she was a mess. And she keeps saying some bullshit about being sorry. So sorry, sorry, sorry. And she says she didn’t mean to hurt me. She didn’t mean to mess things up. I told her it was impossible for her to mess things up.”

  “Whatever she told you, James, it wasn’t me. I didn’t do anything.”

  “Oh, you didn’t? Really? She said she slept with someone, Sean. Told me how sorry she was and that she had to end it with me. Said I deserved someone better. Said that she belonged with an addict like her. That once an addict always one. Then she said some crap about all she would ever end up doing was hurt me and she told me to get out. And I started putting two and two together. She was here with you every night I was on duty. And you two are always going on and on about those dumb meetings. You two and your rehab stories. You two and your dogs. I asked her point-blank: ‘Was it Sean?’ And you know what she did when she heard your name? She started crying, man. She just started sobbing and could barely speak. I got my answer. So here I am. I want to hear it from you. I mean, Jesus, Sean, I am your friend. I’ve been there for you, man. Really there for you. I loved you like a brother, man. How could you?”

  “James, you have the wrong idea. Totally wrong idea. She came here last night and told me the same thing. She was talking about her ex-boyfriend. Some junkie. I told her to tell you everything and that you would forgive her.”

  “Bullshit. Don’t go giving me this. I knew all this Chiara crap was too good to be true, nobody acts like that anymore. Nobody goes holding candles for long-lost loves. All this time you were just feeding her lines that would get my girlfriend to fall for you. Isn’t Sean just so romantic? Isn’t Sean just so wonderful. Please. Save it. Quit lyin’ to yourself. Quit lyin’ to me.”

  “James, listen to me. She loves you. She does. She was crying when you said my name because I was an ass to her yesterday. I was mad at her for something she said to me about Chiara, and of course, I was mad because of what she did to you. But, James, she loves you. She does. She deserves a second chance. She messed up. Listen to her. Go listen to her. She’ll tell you everything. It wasn’t me.”

  James had been crying and wiped the tears rolling down his cheeks, and the red sauce from the corners of his mouth.

  “I ate your dinner, man.”

  “That’s okay. I wasn’t hungry.”

  “It sucked. Worst pizza I ever tasted. I spared your ass,” James said, chucking a piece of crust onto the box.

  “Good,” Sean said with a smile and patted James on the back, leaning in for a hug.

  James shook his head over and over. “I said some horrible things to her, Sean. I called her a junkie. I was so pissed. I said you two deserved each other. I told her she would always be a screwed-up junkie. I was just so hurt. So mad. I didn’t know what I was saying.”

  “Jesus, James.”

  “I messed it up. She won’t forgive me.”

  Sean shook his head. “I don’t know, James.”

  “I’m worried about her. What if—what if she’s doing something awful because of what I said?”

  Sean nodded, thinking the same thing. Sean knew the feeling. Falling down and trying to get up was like walking on sand, the earth moving beneath you, the muscles inside you contracting and making it even harder to push, and only wanting some relief, any, to feel as though you’re on firm ground again.

  “Where did you leave her, James?”

  “Her place.”

  “You want me to go with you?”

  “Would you?”

  “Sure.”

  Just as Sean, Chief, and James turned to get on the elevator, the doors opened and Tom stepped out.

  “What are you doing back here, Tom?” Sean asked. “I thought you had to rush home.”

  “I have Chief’s leash and bag,” Tom said, holding up the blue service-dog bag. “We took it off him at the beach and I realized that I left it in my truck.”

  “Oh, yeah, thanks,” Sean said, reaching for it.

  Tom looked at James and back at Sean. “Something going on?”

  “We’re worried about Libby,” Sean said. “She and James had a bit of a misunderstanding today.”

  “We have to go to her,” James said anxiously. “Now.”

  “Want me to come along?” Tom asked, looking at the distress on James’s face and feeling his sense of urgency. “It’s no trouble, guys. I’ll drive you both over in the truck. I can call Melissa on the way and tell her something is wrong with Libby. She’ll understand.”

  “Thanks, Tom,” Sean said, whispering. “I don’t think he’s in any condition to drive.”

  “She’s probably fine, James,” Sean said, trying to reassure James.

  “I know. But I’ve never seen her so sad. So messed up,” James said, shaking his head.

  Sean winced thinking of what he’d said to Libby and what her face had looked like when he said it. She looked like Colm had when Sean had lost his temper at him all those years ago. She looked broken. And there was no putting the pieces back together. How cruel he’d been. He wished he could take it all back. She had been nothing but kind to him. She didn’t have to be his friend. She didn’t have to care for him. But she did. He didn’t even know her a year ago, but now she was like family. She came over every day. She made sure he had food in the refrigerator. She brought bunches of flowers and set them in vases throughout the apartment. She brought his dead plant on the balcony back to life. She and James sat with him for hours on end and watched old movies just to make sure he wasn’t alone. Even when
he could tell they would rather be alone, they sat with him. Yes, she had messed up, but Sean knew she was a good person and his friend. Sean thought of her past. Her drug abuse. And he shuddered. Sean himself had relapsed over much less. Time and time again he went back to the bottle just because it felt so good to disappear and not to feel anything at all. It felt good not to cry. It felt so good not to feel like he had disappointed anyone—his nephew, his sister, his mother, or his friends. It felt so good to taste the burn. He remembered the first sip. The warming of the esophagus. The loosening of each limb. The sense he always got after the alcohol settled through his body that he was flying. He was free, like an angel set forth on the world to bring not only light, but this message, the same simple message that every drunk from the beginning of time had slurred before passing out: It will all work out. It will all work out. Heroin did that, too. It did it for Libby once, and Sean knew it wouldn’t take much for Libby to get her hands on it and for it to work its magic again. Sean’s steps quickened. Forgetting the pain he felt when he walked, Sean picked up his pace down the hall to catch up with the men and said, “It’ll all be okay, James. It’ll be all right.”

  Chapter 20

  WHEN SEAN, TOM, AND JAMES APPROACHED THE tiny yellow bungalow with the fenced-in yard in Silver Lake, everything that had once seemed fuzzy about Libby came into focus. Her life of contradictions extended far beyond the sleeve tats and bubble gum pink lipstick, the cruddy wardrobe and the beautiful body, the tough talk and the gentle touches, the longing for romance and the falling for a guy like James, the prep school education and the dog-training career, the helping others when she was clearly incapable of helping herself.

  The broken and paint-chipped porch swing that was hanging by one solitary broken chain was the first giveaway. The second was the overgrown ornamental grasses and weeds that grew up alongside the house and blocked off half of the steps and walkway leading to the front door. Then the stacks of unopened newspapers lining the porch and the mail bursting out of the mailbox was the final indicator. Libby was not in full control of her life, and probably hadn’t been for some time, perhaps even before James.

  “Jesus, James. How often do you come by here? You guys don’t pick up newspapers, cut grass?” Tom said harshly. And almost reflexively, Tom got out and reached into the bed of his truck and grabbed his medical bag, then walked over to the passenger side to help Sean out.

  “I don’t know. Never occurred to me. We spent most of our time at my place or in restaurants. Movies. The beach. Sean’s place. She didn’t like coming here too much.”

  “I can see why,” Sean said in a whisper.

  James hopped out first and ran down the narrow and uneven concrete steps that sloped a bit to the left and led to the house that sat at the bottom of a hill.

  James heard Mirabelle barking frantically from inside the house. He knocked on the door and shouted, “Open up, Libby. Open up. It’s me, James. I’m sorry. I was an idiot. I had no right to say those things to you.”

  There was no answer. James looked back at Tom and Sean, by the truck, and nodded for them to both come down.

  Tom took Sean by the waist and helped him to the steps and let him use his body as leverage as he took each step.

  “We’re coming, James. It’s okay,” Tom said reassuringly.

  “Maybe she’s not home,” Sean suggested hopefully.

  “That’s her car,” James said, pointing to the green Prius parked on the street in front of Tom’s truck.

  “Okay. Maybe she went for a walk.” Sean offered another suggestion, though his stomach was starting to turn.

  “Without Mirabelle? I don’t think so. She’s freaking out in there. Can’t you hear her barking?”

  “Maybe she’s freaking out because three men are walking toward her house?” Tom added calmly, though he was feeling nervous now, too.

  “Libby, open the goddamn door!” James shouted while banging furiously.

  “James, I don’t think that’s the best way to try to get the girlfriend you just pissed off to open the door,” Sean suggested as he approached the steps to the front porch and pulled himself up by using the unstable railing as leverage.

  “Okay. You try,” James said, raising his arm toward the door like a flight attendant pointing to the exit.

  “Lib, it’s me, Sean. Open up. Tom is here, too. We’re just worried. Let us know you’re okay and we’ll leave.”

  There was no sound coming from the house now. Mirabelle stopped barking and they could see her face peeking through the window behind the forlorn porch swing.

  “She couldn’t have gotten drugs and OD’d in what, an hour and a half?” Sean looked at James, trying to calculate the time.

  “It’s been more like three,” James whispered.

  “I thought you said you just came from here and went straight to my apartment?” Sean asked to clarify.

  “I stopped for a couple of bites on my way to get your pizza.”

  Sean nodded and understood. He would have stopped off at a bar a few years ago, too.

  “Should we break in?” James asked.

  “James, did you try turning the knob? Maybe it’s open?” Tom said.

  When Sean did, the door gave way.

  “Genius,” Tom said.

  “Whatever, Tom,” James spat back.

  The three men walked in and Mirabelle immediately turned and left the living room as if instructing the men to follow her.

  James ran after the dog. Tom ran after James. Sean stood still and took in the room, the single beige love seat alone in a vast white undecorated room. In the kitchen a small IKEA bistro table with two bright yellow chairs, covered with stacks of clothing and unfolded towels, blocked the sliding doors that led to the patio out back, which was also covered in overgrown grass and weeds.

  “Jesus, Libby,” Sean said aloud to no one.

  He walked across the room, and on the mantel above a bricked-in fireplace were four framed pictures. One was of her and what appeared to be her parents, their arms wrapped around her on her graduation day from dog-training school or rehab, he wasn’t sure which. Mirabelle was at her feet. Both Libby’s and her father’s hands were patting Mirabelle’s head. In another picture, James was hanging outside his fire station, in his blues, his hands stuffed in his pockets and smiling a wide, banana-shaped grin. Another was of Libby, a younger version of herself, no more than fifteen or sixteen, and a girl who looked every bit like Libby’s mirror image, save for the blond streaks in her hair. Libby had a sister, Sean realized. A twin. They were wearing matching maroon-and-gray plaid kilts and tweed blazers with matching crests. Their arms were pretzeled together and their hips cocked in opposite directions. A giant WELCOME BACK banner attached to a school building hung behind their heads. Libby never mentioned her sister. And a thought, brief but heart-wrenching in its realization, came to Sean. She wasn’t doing drugs to impress her friends. It wasn’t chemistry. It was, as it often was, because of pain. Trying to dull the unrelenting pain. Somehow, Sean knew without even hearing the story, he knew that Libby’s sister was gone. Then Sean’s eyes darted to the picture of all five of them together smiling—Tom, James, Libby, Sean, and Chief, wearing sombreros and holding maracas. “Shit,” Sean said quietly to himself before hearing what he knew was coming.

  “Oh God, no! No! Libby! I am so sorry, Libby!” James shouted from a room at the back of the house.

  Sean fumbled with his cane and limped back down the hall, following James’s screams. When he arrived in Libby’s room, he saw Tom on his phone, probably calling 911, and James in the tiny bathroom pulling Libby out of the bath and dragging her to the bedroom where he placed her on the floor.

  Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.

  Sean grabbed the phone from Tom. “I got this. You get down there and help James.”

  Tom opened his bag and pulled out his portable shock paddle kit. While James leaned over Libby’s naked, wet, lifeless chest and pulled her up to hug her, Sean, watching in d
etached silence, saw that tattooed on Libby’s back was a set of angel’s wings whose feathers were falling off in pieces down her back. Sean opened his mouth to speak but no words came out. James placed her flat on her back and began breathing deeply into her mouth.

  “She’ll come back, James,” Sean said, waiting for the 911 operator to pick up, as much to reassure James as to reassure himself.

  James looked up at Sean as if he was deranged or didn’t quite understand what was actually happening and then quickly snapped his attention back to Libby, shouting, “Don’t you die, Libby. Don’t you dare.”

  Sean spoke the address into the phone and explained the scene to the always surprisingly unruffled operators. “We think she overdosed on something. She was in the bathtub. We’ve pulled her out. We have a registered nurse/physical therapist as well as a registered EMT performing CPR. The nurse is going to administer the paddles from a defib kit.” Sean spoke with the calm facility of a pro. He realized he had missed the sense of calm that came over him in a crisis.

  “It’s okay, James. It’s okay. She’ll come back,” Sean said, pulling the phone away from his mouth. “They’re coming. They’re on their way.”

  “Come on, Libby,” Tom kept shouting.

  “What did she take?” the operator asked Sean.

  “I don’t know. I have no idea.”

  “Can you look in her bathroom or on her nightstand?”

  Sean limped across the bedroom and peeked into her bathroom where he saw the rubber band. The needle and glass vial on the sink. His stomach turned. “That asshole,” Sean said aloud, thinking immediately of Libby’s ex.

  “Excuse me?” the operator asked.

  Sean shouted into the phone, “It’s heroin, goddammit. She OD’d on heroin. That useless son of a bitch,” Sean screamed, looking for Libby’s cell phone and hoping to find his number. “When I find him, I’ll kill him.”

  “Excuse me?” the 911 operator asked again.

  “Her ex. I’d bet my life on it. She got the stuff from him.”