Proof of Angels

by Mary Curran Hackett

  “Whatever it is, shoot.”

  “Since Lib is going to be away for a while, and well, I’m going away, I’m going to need you to watch Chief. Keep an eye on him while I’m gone. Just a couple of weeks, till I figure out my next move.”

  “But don’t you need him? Where are you go—” James stopped. And shook his head. “No. You’re not ready, man. You’re not ready. You passed out a few days ago. You’re limping around. No. You can’t even bend over. What if you drop your cane or something? You need Chief.”

  “I’ll be fine. You need him. He’ll look after you. Besides, he needs a coach.”

  “A coach?”

  “Yeah. Tom and I taught him to surf. He’s a natural. Found the moment, and hopped right up. Just like you taught me.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, I meant to tell you. But then that night . . . Libby . . .”

  “Man, that’s amazing. Amazing. Two amazing things in one day.”

  “I know, James. I know,” Sean said, smiling, always so pleased to see how easily James embraced the amazing.

  “Sure, I’ll take him,” James said to Sean, and then turned to Chief. “So you can surf, man? That’s wicked cool, my four-legged friend.”

  “I’m leaving tonight. All of his food, everything he needs, is at my apartment. Here are my keys. Come after your shift and get him. I’ll have walked and fed him.”

  “You gonna be all right over there? By yourself? You won’t need Tom?”

  “Nah, it’s time Tom and I went our separate ways. He got me where I need to go, and I’ll take myself the rest of the way.”

  “You’re sneaking out, aren’t you? You don’t want Gaspar or your sister to find out?”

  “I don’t.”

  “What do I tell them if they call looking for you?”

  “The truth. By then, they won’t be able to stop me.”

  “You know what you’re doing? You think this is smart?”

  “James, I made a promise. I am alive today, I believe, because of that promise. And I have to go to her and make this right.”

  “Well, we’ll be here when you get back. Tom, Chief, and me. We’ll be here. No matter what.”

  “I know you will.”

  “Sean, man?”

  “Yeah, James?”

  “This is gonna sound really queer to you, but I need to say it because I feel it.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too, James.”

  “I want to hug you, man. Would you let me hug you?”

  “That’s cool.”

  “Cool,” James said, reaching forward and wrapping his arms around Sean, who stood stiffly, accepting James’s hug. “You’re like a brother, man. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you. So you be safe. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “You call me if you get into trouble or need anything. I’ll come. I am due for some time off and I’ve never even left the state of California. So it would be good for me. You know?”

  “Yeah, man. I know. I’ll be safe. I promise. I better get going. I have some packing to do. You won’t forget to come and get him?”

  “Cross my heart, Sean,” James said making a giant X over his chest. And with that Sean said, “To hell with it,” and leaned in and returned James’s hug with a big, tight squeeze before slapping him on the back.

  “Get outta here, man,” James said, wiping his eyes.

  Chapter 24

  BEFORE SEAN WENT UP TO HIS APARTMENT TO GRAB his bag, he crossed the street and the walkway and walked Chief to the beach. It was unseasonably hot for November. The beach was packed with weekenders trying to store up some sun before being trapped again in their offices and cars all week. Sean walked until he found an empty park bench and could sit down and look at the ocean and say good-bye to one last friend.

  “So, Chief,” Sean started, “James is gonna take good care of you. It will only be a couple of weeks.”

  Chief growled and dropped on his two front paws, resting his head and looking out at the water.

  “It’s crazy, isn’t it? I didn’t even know you a year ago, and now I am just leaving for a little while and I feel like I am leaving my family all over again.”

  Chief popped his head up and looked back, seemingly disapprovingly, at Sean and turned quickly away and plopped his head back down between his paws.

  Don’t even talk to me right now.

  “Aw, don’t be like that, Chief. You’re gonna love James. He can take you surfing every day. You know I couldn’t have come this far without you. And now James needs you. He doesn’t know it. But he needs you. He needs you more than I do right now. He’s gonna need a friend. With both me and Libby gone, he’s gonna need someone to look after him. Bark at him if he eats too much Thai food, you know. Make him run after you on the beach. Now I know what you’re thinking. You think I am passing you off. I’m not. I just have to go and do this. Find out if what I saw that day in the fire was real, that everything I believe is real. I just need some proof that I am not crazy. That what I saw up in that fire was real. That I made that promise to find her and survived for a reason.”

  Chief stood up again and placed his head on Sean’s lap and let Sean pet him. “I’m gonna miss you, boy. I will. And honestly, I don’t know what I am doing. I really have no idea. I don’t know what I expect. You think she’ll even remember me? You think she’ll give a damn? Maybe Lib is right. Maybe I am going to do nothing more than mess up Chiara’s life. Maybe this is selfish of me. I don’t know. I can’t explain it, Chief. I can’t. But I just know if I don’t do this, if I don’t play this thing out, I will always wonder. I’ve never stopped thinking about her. And since the fire, she’s all I’ve been able to think about. These legs are working today because I wanted to get up and walk to her. And I hope you know, Chief, I couldn’t have done it without you. I hope you know that I couldn’t have done it without any of you.”

  Chief barked at Sean in reply.

  “I know you get it, man. I know you do. And who knows, maybe if things don’t work out with Chiara, maybe I’ll find that other thing I was looking for. Maybe I’ll find that spot I’ve been looking for since the night of the fire—that place where I started from, and maybe I’ll have a shot at getting better for good. Or maybe I’ll find out that I was hallucinating up there after all, and that there aren’t really angels out there looking after me, looking after everyone.”

  At that, Chief turned, as if suggesting that Sean get up and walk toward the water with him. Sean couldn’t be sure, but it seemed to him that Chief understood every word. Sean struggled for a bit, but eventually he stood and led Chief to the water’s edge. When they reached the cool slaps of water, Chief offered up a wet paw and Sean bent as far as he could to take it in his hand. And if Chief could talk, Sean knew he would have said: Here’s your proof, Sean. Here.

  Part 3

  Yes, love indeed is light from heaven;

  A spark of that immortal fire with angels shared . . .

  —Lord Byron

  Chapter 25

  THE FLIGHT TO FLORENCE DAMN NEAR KILLED SEAN. His legs throbbed. The pain in his back was excruciating. He knew he should have sprung for first class. But when he got to the counter and saw how much the tickets cost, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He needed to stretch his cash in case things worked out and he would need to stay longer.

  The pain had gotten so bad, Sean began eyeing the small bottles of vodka and whiskey on the beverage cart the flight attendant had pushed past him earlier.

  It took everything he had not to raise his hand and order. It would be so easy. One bottle and the pain might disappear. He would be able to stop, he told himself. It was just for the pain. Just this one time. A self-administered dosage. I could taper. I did it before.

  He fought the urge. He circled back to his meetings. The Big Book. The mantras. If he could get through this five minutes of pain, he could get through the next five
minutes. And the next. And the next after that. And it would all add up. It was better not to think of the entire flight, the endless hours, the stifling cabin, the fact that nothing was holding the plane up, nothing but thirty thousand feet of air and miles of water below that. It was better not to think of the snoring passenger beside him, the overwhelming cologne barely covering the putrid body odor of the man sitting in front of him, whose chair was reclined and resting on Sean’s knees. His knees. It was better not to think of them, and the femurs that were attached to them and that ached.

  Sweat poured down Sean’s back. His forehead glistened. His pants were soaked through.

  He eyed the drinks cart again. Just one. It would only be one.

  His teeth had formed a solid wall behind his open lips when a flight attendant approached him and asked, “Sir, is everything okay? Can I get you anything?”

  He began to raise a finger to point at the small bottle of vodka he saw on an open tray table across the aisle, but he caught himself. I didn’t come this far. I didn’t make it this far to fall off the wagon now. To screw up now. Screw the pain. You’ve been through worse, Magee. Pull your shit together. Panic seized him. What if he Tom, James, and Libby were right, what if he wasn’t ready? What if something terrible were to happen to him up here? He couldn’t take it any more so he did what his meetings taught him to do: talk.

  “I broke my legs. I broke my back, too, and burned my arms and face,” Sean said, lifting his arms up and unaware of why he felt compelled to talk, to tell someone this, but he knew it was coming from somewhere deep within him. If he didn’t, he knew he would ask for a drink. “I’m an alcoholic. I can’t drink. I can’t take anything for my nerves. For my pain. I can’t take pills. I don’t know how I am going to make it through the next few hours. This is hell. Hell. I can’t take it,” Sean said breathlessly. Panting out the last few words, I can’t take it.

  The flight attendant leaned over and in a stage whisper asked, “Sir, do you think you can stand up?”

  “Yes, I think I can,” Sean whispered back.

  “Follow me,” she whispered, quietly this time, putting a finger in front of her lips.

  Sean braced himself and pushed out of the minuscule chair that had pinned his hips. “Ahhhh,” he cried out, briefly waking the snoring passenger, who gave a final snort and flopped her head over in the opposite direction.

  Sean limped slowly behind the flight attendant, using each row of seats as support down the long row and through the curtains to first class.

  “We have one available. I was supposed to sit here, but you can take it,” the flight attendant said, pointing to what appeared to be a wide fold-out bed. “It’s a recumbent chair, folds out like a bed so you can stretch your legs and sleep.”

  “But where will you sit?”

  “Back in your seat during landing. I’ll be okay.”

  “Why? You don’t know me.”

  “It’s okay. You need this more than me. Get some rest. Sooner you sleep, sooner you’ll be where you want to be.”

  “Thank you,” Sean whispered. “You have no idea what you just did for me.”

  “I just gave you my chair.”

  Sean wanted to say, You just saved an old drunk from possibly blowing everything he spent the past eleven years trying to fix. But instead he said, “What you did was huge. Huge.”

  “Come on,” the flight attendant said, swatting him. “It was nothing.”

  “Nothing to one person can mean the world to another,” Sean said, shaking her hand before falling into a deep, fast sleep that took him exactly where he wanted to go.

  Chapter 26

  DESPITE THE ABILITY TO STRETCH OUT, THE PAIN never left Sean’s legs, even after he stepped off the plane. Even after he walked through the gates and out of the airport, a throbbing, tight sensation wrapped his left calf. No matter how he stretched, he couldn’t kick it. The pain radiated up his legs and his chest. He felt anxious, afraid. His old I can’ts and self-doubts crept in. He was standing on the ledge of a window all over again.

  Jump, dammit. Jump.

  Sean stood motionless at the curb outside the airport in Florence for several minutes, contemplating his next move. This was so stupid. Every instinct in him was telling him to turn around, get back on the next plane, and go home. The entire trip was a terrible idea. Everyone had been right to warn him, to try to stop him. He stood with his back to the road and looked up at the airport, deciding whether or not to go back inside and forget this foolhardy decision. Just as he was about to step forward and return through the doors, a large woman with a rolling suitcase knocked Sean’s cane from beneath him and threw him off balance. When he regained his composure, he was facing a taxi that had pulled up alongside him.

  Sean fought the instinct to retreat and stepped off the curb.

  “Duomo,” Sean instructed the driver curtly.

  “Si, si. Do you speak English?” the cabdriver asked in a thick accent.

  “Si,” Sean said.

  “Lucky for you, I speak it. First time in Firenze?”

  “No, I lived here many years ago,” Sean said while fumbling with his bag and handing it to the driver to put in the trunk.

  “I can help you, sir. Please, sit. Sit.” The driver held Sean’s arm and instructed him to get in the car.

  “You don’t look so good. Are you sick, sir?” the driver said, leaning in before shutting the door.

  “No. Yes. I don’t know,” Sean mumbled in confusion.

  The driver dropped the bag in the trunk, ran around the car, jumped in the driver’s seat, and adjusted the mirror in Sean’s direction. “I will take you to the doctor? Hospital?”

  “No, no. The Duomo per favore.”

  “I know sick. You are sick. Very sick. Your face has no color. You are sweating. I must take you.”

  “I had a long night and a long flight. I came from California. My legs . . . they were cramped for so long. That is all.”

  “You should go for a walk. You might feel better.” The taxi driver looked at Sean in the rearview mirror again. “Why are you back in Firenze? That’s a long trip to just see the David, no?”

  “I came back for a woman.”

  “Ah, always a woman. Si, si. She is bellisima?”

  “Si.”

  “What is your plan? Stay here? Take her back to America and buy her a big house? Fancy white sneakers?”

  Sean laughed and shook his head. “I just hope she’ll want to talk to me.”

  “Ah, ah. Il mio consiglio . . .”

  “Your advice?”

  “Si, si, my advice.”

  “I don’t need any more advice,” Sean said, shaking his head.

  “No, no. You must take this. You must. I can see you need it.”

  “First you said I looked sick and now you say you see that I need advice?” Sean laughed again

  “Maybe your heart is sick? Eh? Maybe this old man can teach you some things?”

  “You don’t know me,” Sean said, staring back at the driver’s eyes in the mirror.

  “I know love.”

  “Oh no, here we go,” Sean said, rolling his eyes. “Another human, another opinion. Shoot.”

  “It is very, very simple,” the driver said, holding up his pointer finger for emphasis, “Ascolta,” the driver started.

  “I am listening,” Sean said, adjusting his legs again in the backseat.

  “No, that is my advice. Listen. Everyone needs to shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Just listen. You think you have so much to say. You probably flew all this way, and I wager this: I wager that you thought about all the things you wanted to say to the girl. You thought, I will say this, and then she will say that. But life never goes like you think it will. If you think it, then it does not happen. That is just the way. It is God’s way to show us who is the boss. Our minds don’t control what others will say and do. So shut up. Believe me. You listen and you will hear. You stop talking and you will see. You be still, and you will know,” the dr
iver said emphatically.

  “Do I have to tip you more for the consiglio?” Sean asked with a smirk.

  “No charge. I give my genius away for free. It’s an added bonus for ride with me.” The driver smiled and winked in the mirror back at Sean.

  For the rest of the ride through Florence, Sean shut up. He listened to the taxi driver talk about his wife and children, his long hours in the cab, his mother suffering from Alzheimer’s, the cost of gas, the economic crisis, and the rising crackdown on counterfeit wares. “Don’t buy a cheap purse for your girl. You will get arrested. Si?” Sean nodded and tried to do as the man instructed; he tried as hard as he could to not create scenarios in his head of what would be, how it would all turn out. He tried to stay present. He tried to do what James had said and wait for the moment. Wait for the right time to rise and soar.

  When the taxi came to a halt at a stoplight a few blocks from the Duomo, Sean tapped the driver’s shoulder. “I’ll get out here. I’ll walk the rest of the way.”

  “Did I talk too much? Did I bother you?”

  “No, you’ve been very entertaining. I just have to walk. My legs,” Sean said, tapping them with his cane.

  “Si, si. Are you going to meet la bella here?”

  “No, she doesn’t even know I am here.”

  “Ah, you Americans. Too many movies. Too much hope. Happy endings. You all think life is a Sandra Bullock movie? Eh? But in real life there is only one ending. In the ground. And it’s not so happy. Not so much a Sandra Bullock movie.”

  Sean laughed, pulled out his thick wallet, and counted out one hundred euros. “Keep the change, doc. Take your bella out to dinner.” Sean was always so tight with money when it came to himself, but never thought twice about giving it away for another’s benefit.

  After stuffing the money in his jeans, the driver leaped out of the car and grabbed Sean’s bag. “Here is my card. If things don’t work out with the girl, you call me. Just me. I’ll pick you up anywhere and I can drive you anywhere. I have a lot of advice I can give.”