Angel Landing

by Alice Hoffman

  “You’ve really done a very stupid thing,” Sally Wallace said to me.

  “There’s been some bizarre behavior here at Outreach,” Johnson said. “Some irresponsible behavior.”

  “Naïve,” Mrs. Wallace said. “NaÏve would be a better word.”

  “I haven’t been irresponsible,” I said. “If you’re referring to the bombing at the plant, we have nothing to talk about. I have no information. It’s true, Mr. Finn is my client …”

  “Was,” Claude Wilder corrected. “He’ll see a court-referred psychiatrist from now on.”

  “He came to see me because he was having a problem dealing with his anger.”

  “I’ll bet,” the fund raiser, Gerkin, said.

  “And when he came to see me, the bombing had already occurred, it was already water under the bridge,” I said.

  “The point is,” Johnson said, “you have got yourself into a very controversial situation.”

  “Oh, no,” I said quickly. “I don’t think so.”

  “You’re still a new worker,” Claude Wilder told me. “You’re still on probation. If you know what I mean.”

  “No. I don’t know what you mean,” I said to Claude, but my palms had begun to sweat.

  Claude leaned far back in his chair. “I mean you can be fired for the slightest infraction of Outreach’s rules.”

  “I don’t understand,” I insisted. “I didn’t break any rules. I knew very little about the bombing until the day Mr. Finn turned himself in to the authorities.” As if for spite, my left eye began to twitch as I lied. “To my knowledge, the bombing was an accident. It seems that Mr. Finn realized he had made an error in his work when it was already too late.”

  “It doesn’t matter if it was an accident or if he was working with the Russian army. We just want you to be careful,” Johnson said coldly. “Watch your step,” he advised.

  “You may be in the public eye,” Sally Wallace told me. “You may even be called to testify at the trial.”

  “Do you really think so?” I asked.

  “Quite possibly,” Mrs. Wallace said.

  “Some members of the board feel that you won’t be able to handle the pressure,” Claude said. “But I’m sure you’ll do just fine. I’m certain that none of Outreach’s state or county funding will be jeopardized by any stupid mistakes.”

  “Don’t forget,” Gerkin said, “this is a great opportunity for you if you deal with the situation correctly.”

  “One hand washes the other,” Johnson nodded.

  “We want you to come through the trial without any controversy, and with as little publicity as possible. We don’t want Outreach linked with the bomber,” Sally Wallace said.

  “I’ll try my best,” I said.

  “Just remember,” Claude said, as the meeting came to a close, “we all have faith in you.”

  All the plans I had made for Finn’s trial seemed petty; it barely mattered that the board of directors now warned me against publicity, all those articles I had planned to write would have been touched by emotion anyway. The lies I had told regarding how much I knew about the explosion and the agreement I had made to appear as Finn’s witness would now bring me nothing, only a terrible loneliness I had never known before.

  For all practical purposes, Finn and I were through with each other; he would be referred to a court psychiatrist, I would move on to other clients. Still, all that day I thought of him, imagined him walking on slippery ice. Finn may have been sending out a distress signal in the holding center of the police station, his fingers on the bars might have been a sign of passion, and trust. I had difficulty listening to the soft complaints of my clients that morning, and when Susan Wolf, the young anorectic, appeared for her afternoon appointment, I found myself drawn to the window, hoping that Finn might somehow appear, that he might stand in the middle of the street and look upward, into my window.

  “Why is everything so difficult?” I said.

  “I don’t know a thing about it,” Susan said.

  Outside, on the window ledge, pigeons flapped their wings and cooed. He couldn’t be out there, not waiting in a doorway or alone in his Camaro. I went to my chair and sat heavily. “I’m so confused,” I said.

  Susan looked alarmed, she sat far back in her chair. “It’s not my fault,” she said. “Don’t tell me about it.”

  But it was too late, and Susan was too small and not strong enough to keep me from crying.

  “Don’t do this,” Susan said.

  Tears dripped down my cheeks, nothing was held back, not until every sob was out. I reached for a tissue.

  “I’m sorry,” I apologized, but Susan looked down at the floor and refused to speak. “Please,” I said. “Sometimes these things happen.”

  “Not to me,” Susan said.

  “You never cry?” I asked.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” the girl told me.

  “You’ve never felt like crying?” I asked.

  “No!” Susan told me. When she shook her head her hair flowed out in long, bitter strands.

  “All right, all right,” I said.

  “I don’t have to listen to you, you know,” Susan said. “I don’t have to.”

  “No,” I agreed. “You don’t.”

  “And I don’t have to stay here,” Susan said.

  “Unfortunately, you do,” I said. Susan had been referred to Outreach by the juvenile court after an arrest at the new shopping mall on Route 18; she had been discovered in the dressing room of the children’s department, filling her pocketbook with sweaters and shirts many sizes too small.

  “I can see another worker,” Susan said. “My parole officer told me I could.” She reached for her coat and stood. “I don’t have to stay here,” she told me.

  “Fine,” I said. “That’s just fine with me,” I called as Susan slammed out of the office. When she had gone I reached for her file; already the girl would have run across Main Street, her footprints would lead down to the harbor where she would stare mournfully at her own reflection in the thick slabs of harbor ice. I had chased Susan away with my own flood of feelings; if she surfaced in a hospital ward where old women and young girls were forced to eat against their will, I would be to blame. Even after I wrote a memo referring the girl to Lark, I felt that I had betrayed Susan, as I had all of my clients; every bit of reason I ever possessed was gone. I no longer felt able to try and arrange the lives of my clients when I was so caught up with Finn.

  It was then I called Carter; if I could spend the night with someone, someone whose skin and kisses I knew as well as Carter’s, my feelings for Michael Finn might disappear. I might wake up in the morning with Carter’s arm around me and find there was no one else I wanted to touch, no one else whose touch I wanted desperately. I let the phone ring five times, and just when I was about to hang up, Carter answered.

  “I’m so glad you’re there,” I said. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t answered.”

  “He’s out,” Carter told me, and as soon as he did my skin grew cold, and all the words I thought I would say disappeared. “I cashed in my mother’s securities yesterday, and Reno put up bail today.”

  “Where is he?” I asked.

  “Somewhere in town,” Carter said. “Otherwise I’m a poor man, otherwise he’s jumped bail.”

  “He wouldn’t do that,” I said. “He would never do that.”

  “I hope not,” Carter said. “Listen, I can’t really talk.”

  “Sure,” I agreed. Finn had walked out the door of the police station only hours before. Reno LeKnight had walked arm in arm with his client, speaking of defense tactics and courtroom secrets with every step.

  “I have to drive to New Hampshire tonight,” Carter told me. “The Soft Skies office in Manchester asked me to come up and brief them.”

  “Of course,” I said, already forgetting about Carter’s kisses, not quite remembering the color of the sheets on his mattress.

  “I’ll t
ry to be back by the end of the week,” Carter said. “It’s not that I like all this running around. It’s not that I don’t miss you.”

  A woman in love would have been much more disappointed, a woman in love would have cried and begged him to stay.

  “Drive carefully,” I said before I hung up.

  Because Carter was unavailable, I decided to go to the nursing home at the end of the day. I hoped to walk the rest of the way home with Minnie; I needed a companion other than Finn’s spirit. But when I asked for Minnie at the admitting desk, no one knew where she was. My aunt had finished calling off Bingo numbers at four; and although one of the nurses thought Minnie might still be in the dayroom, when I went there she was nowhere in sight. There was only the same row of captives, trapped in their wheelchairs, as if they hadn’t moved since last time I visited Mercy. At the far end of the room, across from the color TV, a neat elderly woman sat watching the screen. Because her posture was straight and her eyes focused, I went over to her.

  “Have you seen the news?” I asked, thinking Finn’s release might have been televised.

  “Oh, yes,” the old woman smiled. “Many times.”

  “Today?” I asked.

  “Sure,” the old woman nodded. “Absolutely.”

  “Did they mention anything about the bombing?” I asked.

  “Bombing?” the old woman laughed. “That was in nineteen forty-one. You’re a little confused, aren’t you?”

  I excused myself, left the dayroom, and began to search for Minnie. I walked up and down the first-floor corridors; here, the very old and ill rested on hard mattresses, their eyes closed, their breathing soft and slow. Up on the second floor the old folks were healthier; they played checkers or chess, some listened to transistor radios or sipped tea. There, at the end of the hallway, I found Minnie.

  My aunt sat on a hard-backed wooden chair; she spoke with two identical old sisters and a bearded old man who mopped his brow with a linen handkerchief.

  “It’s so damn hot in this place,” the old man said. “Are they trying to broil us alive?”

  “It’s that old myth,” I heard Minnie say cheerfully. “The older you are, the hotter you should be. Although people are dying like flies in Florida, and they’re living to a hundred and twenty in the Georgian mountains.”

  “Exactly,” the old man nodded.

  “Of course in Florida you have your oranges, you have your lemons,” one of the twins said.

  “And your grapefruits,” her sister added.

  “Filled with chemicals and coated with wax,” Minnie said gravely.

  When I knocked on the open door, all four turned toward me like thieves caught in the act.

  “Relax,” Minnie told the others when she saw me. “It’s just my niece. We thought you were one of the nurses,” she explained to me. “Although God forbid they ever get up the stairs to the second floor. It would be easy enough to die up here and not be missed for weeks.”

  Minnie then introduced me to the Fuller twins—Evie and Yolanda, whom I could tell apart only because Evie wore a lime-green pants suit and Yolanda a beige woolen dress. Arthur, the old gentleman, stood and shook my hand.

  “You may ask what we’re doing up here,” Minnie said. “The truth is that we’re conspiring.”

  “No better way to phrase it,” Arthur nodded.

  “These three are going to be my new boarders,” Minnie said proudly.

  “That’s a nice idea,” I said vaguely.

  “It’s more than an idea,” Yolanda said.

  “It’s a lifeboat in the sea of old age,” Arthur added.

  Minnie wrinkled her nose. “Maybe not a lifeboat. But you’ve got to admit,” she turned to me, “there’s no reason for these three to be in a nursing home.”

  “Well, no,” I said. The three old folks sat up straight and puffed themselves out like chickens showing off beautiful feathers.

  “They look quite healthy,” I agreed.

  “You’re damn right,” Evie said, as she tossed her head and her long gold earrings chimed.

  “And I’m even healthier than she is,” Yolanda pointed to her sister. “I have all my own teeth.”

  “We’re here because of poverty,” Arthur explained. “None of us can afford our own home on Social Security.”

  “Now that you’re here,” Minnie said to me, “I can tell you the news. I saw your bomber on TV.”

  “Minnie,” I said, “he’s not ‘my’ bomber.” Arthur looked away discreetly, but Evie and Yolanda now craned their necks forward to listen.

  “You can trust them”—Minnie gestured at the twins—“they’re old.”

  The sisters’ heads bobbed in agreement, and because I longed to find out more about Finn, I asked my aunt, “What do you know?”

  “He’s out on bail. He was filmed walking from the station house to his lawyer’s car. A Lincoln.”

  “How did he look?” I asked.

  “How could he look?” Minnie said. “He looked tired.” Minnie turned to her friends. “This bomber is a very young man,” Minnie said, and the twins nodded as if everything was now explained.

  “All I can do is sit and wait for the trial to begin,” I said. “Outreach doesn’t want any publicity.”

  “Your bomber is out on bail and you’re not going to see him?” Minnie shook her head sadly. “Love,” she said to her friends, “is not what it used to be.”

  “It used to really be something,” Evie said wistfully.

  “It used to be the sparkles in a naked woman’s eyes,” Arthur sighed.

  “Nowadays,” Minnie added, “everything is practical.”

  “Why do you keep insisting I’m in love with this man?” I said angrily.

  Minnie looked straight at me. “It’s obvious.”

  “Well, you’re wrong,” I said, afraid that the more Minnie insisted, the less I would be able to protest. “It’s ridiculous to think I’d become involved with a client.”

  “Oh.” Yolanda nodded. “A client. That’s a different story.”

  “Nonsense,” Evie said. “Love is love.”

  “What kind of client?” Yolanda asked.

  “Are you coming home?” I asked Minnie.

  “I can’t,” Minnie shook her head. “Beaumont’s picking me up here. We’re going to buy an elevator seat for the staircase. I don’t want Arthur to strain himself walking up and down once he moves in.”

  “It’s no strain,” Arthur said self-consciously.

  “Don’t be silly,” Minnie said. “Every house full of old people should have one of those contraptions.”

  After I walked home I would have dinner alone, but once I had cooked the scrambled eggs, I would be unable to eat. My untouched dinner would congeal, the floorboards would creak, the clock on the kitchen wall would tick like a heartbeat.

  “Don’t wait up for me,” Minnie now advised me. “I’ve got a million things to do. Beaumont’s something like a werewolf,” she explained to her friends. “He won’t set foot on the street till after sundown.”

  I wondered if Minnie was right; perhaps Finn was mine whether I wanted him or not, maybe because I was the first one to hear his story or just because I cared. He would be with me no matter what I did; even if I tried to avoid him, his spirit would be waiting for me in the parlor, in every room, ready to turn to flesh and blood.

  “He’s got a thing about the dark,” Minnie was saying. “Look, everybody’s a little crazy.” She shrugged.

  I stood and interrupted my aunt. I was not nearly as afraid of that empty house as I had been just minutes before, the walk home didn’t seem half as long.

  “I’ve got to go,” I said. “It was nice to have met you,” I told Minnie’s friends.

  The conspirators called out their goodbyes as I went toward the stairs. I walked home slowly. When I got there I didn’t hesitate at the door, I went inside alone, no longer resisting my thoughts of the hour when I would meet Finn again.

  THREE

  AS S
OON AS I COULD, I went to see him. What had begun that first night we met in the field had now come together; tendrils led to a pure, red rose. Finn was more than just another client to me; I could no longer pretend otherwise.

  As I walked up to Finn’s second-story apartment I was unsure of what his reaction might be when he found me at his door. I was nervous, I listened for footsteps behind me, my palms were wet. After I knocked, the door opened slowly; I couldn’t see who had answered, it might have been anyone. Michael Finn might have jumped bail and left town.

  “Who is it?” Finn’s voice asked from inside.

  “Hurry,” I said. “Someone could see me here.”

  He opened the door just wide enough for me to slip inside. Then we stood next to each other in the unlit entrance hall, until Finn finally reached over and switched on the light. I could see then he hadn’t shaved for days; the scar across his face was like neon, it marked him like a brand.

  “What are you doing here?” Finn asked.

  “For a minute I thought you might have left town,” I said.

  “You shouldn’t have come here,” Finn told me. “There could be trouble if anyone knew.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I wouldn’t do anything to hurt your case.”

  “My case?” Finn said. “I meant trouble for you. Your job.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” I said.

  “Well, you’ve seen me,” Finn said. “I’m out on bail, thanks to your friend Carter. I’m alive and well, and now that you’ve seen that for yourself, you can go.”

  “You could offer me a cup of coffee, you know,” I said then, because pity had nothing to do with the reasons why I had come. I was there because of sleepless nights and desire, not sympathy.

  “Coffee?” Finn said.

  “With milk,” I nodded.

  “I haven’t gone shopping.” Finn smiled.

  “Black is fine then,” I told him.

  While Finn was in the kitchen, I looked around—no paintings hung on the walls, no rugs covered the floor, cobwebs hung in every corner. I sat on the couch, across from a rocking chair. But the room was also Finn’s bedroom, a single bed had been pushed against the far wall. When Finn returned, carrying two cups of watery instant coffee, that bed over in the corner was on my mind.