Web of Angels

by Lilian Nattel

  All of this Alec knew though he drew no conclusions from it. He’d been back out in the life for the last two years, observing how it had changed, watching kids in the neighbourhood play, fight, fall out of trees, get soothed, yammer for ice cream when the ice cream truck drove by the playground with its hypnotically cheerful song. And while he was watching he found things to do.

  Last summer Heather had come over one day when he was in the backyard, stripping paint off a table top he’d picked up at a yard sale. She was going door to door, selling raffle tickets for one of her parents’ charities. She was practically bald then; her head looked like a grey stone covered with golden fuzz. People said her parents had had her head shaven because of lice. They said she’d shaven her own head out of spite.

  “Ten dollars each,” she’d said sullenly. He hadn’t known she was pregnant. She wasn’t showing yet. “Your chances of winning are one in five.”

  “That sounds like high odds.”

  “It is.” She’d suddenly grinned. One of her eyeteeth was chipped. “I lied.”

  “Okay, but move. You shouldn’t be standing so close to the chemicals. It’s bad for you.”

  She’d put a hand on her belly as she peered at him suspiciously. “Did my sister say something to Josh?”

  “It’s bad for kids, that’s all. I don’t let them in the yard when I’m using paint stripper.”

  He’d gone into the house to get some money for the raffle tickets, figuring that was expected. When he came back, Heather was still outside, sitting in the girls’ sandbox, overalls rolled up, drawing with a stick. There were no clues in the drawings, just random shapes, triangles, spirals. When she saw Alec, she scratched a tic-tac-toe board into the sand, putting an X in the middle. Obligingly, he made an O though he had no chance of winning with the X placed there. “I’m going for a draw,” he’d said. “Why’d you shave your head?”

  “It’s the antidepressants,” she’d said. “They make me so hot.” She’d laughed then.

  “I get it,” Alec said. “Very funny. But I thought that antidepressants, you know, shut that down.”

  “I guess I won’t make it as a hooker.” And then she’d laughed even harder. She’d stayed in the sandbox, making a tower of sand while Alec went back to working on the table. Now and then he glanced over at her. Once she looked back at him, with eyes as lucid as bright moons. “My sister has sold a lot of tickets. She always does, so, like they wouldn’t put her on pills. You know what I mean? No matter what, she’ll be okay. Thanks for letting me stay here for a while.”

  “No problem.” He’d paused, shaking off bits and pieces of thought from others inside, wanting to see just what was in front of him. It was late afternoon, a half moon rising over the yard, and the wind couldn’t make up its mind, coming from the north, then turning south and west, clouds moving in and out. The girl stood there in her rolled-up overalls, ankles bare and mosquito bitten, new sneakers pristine, her chest already starting to swell, not that he would have noticed that then. What he saw was that her overalls had a lot of pockets and that there were things hidden in them, as if she didn’t trust them as far away as the bag she carried. There was something he wanted to say to this kid. To tell her he’d run off at her age, too, and had driven up to his uncle’s. Only he’d come back because he had a little sister at home. Then he’d ask her where she’d run and why she’d come back. But while he hesitated, unsure of himself in this mom’s life, she’d said goodbye, ducking her head as if the sky was too low.

  On the porch of Heather’s house, Alec bent to pick up two cartons of food, straightened up and walked in. The kitchen was at the back, as in most houses, the front door leading first to what was on display—a living room with pale carpeting and dark furniture built to maximize utility in a small space. Past the living room was the den, more casual, with cushiony pieces, a thick rug, a framed family portrait on the wall and photographs of the sisters in their reindeer costumes, dancing in The Nutcracker. Finally the kitchen, efficient and gleaming in brushed aluminum marred only by take-out containers of Chinese food. He put the cartons beside them.

  Heather’s dad, Rick, was sitting at the table, stirring sugar into his tea. His hobby was digital photography, but he was a professor of business ethics. Nothing important happened in the neighbourhood without his assistance. The arena had been renovated through a corporate sponsorship he’d arranged, the after-school program Learn About the World was his brainchild and had become a model for intercultural programs. He sat on the boards of numerous charities, some of which raised money through the sale of raffle tickets. He was blond, like his wife, and wiry. They could have been brother and sister. But he wore his grief more obviously, his eyes bloodshot, his clothing rumpled.

  Alec returned with two more cartons and Debra was asking, “Couldn’t you have some tea?” Without waiting for a reply, she poured it for him and pulled out a chair.

  Cathy was leaning against the wall, staring at the blank fridge. There were no photographs or lists on it, the shiny front undisrupted.

  “We had a lock on the medicine cabinet,” Rick said, putting more sugar in his tea as if he’d forgotten that he’d already sweetened it while Debra sat down in the chair beside his.

  “My sister’s flying in tomorrow,” she said, pouring tea for herself. “Rick’s cousin lives in the city, which makes things easier, but his brother couldn’t get a flight this morning. He’ll be here later tonight. We’re going to have her cremated.” Alec didn’t flinch, though others inside did. “I don’t want anyone trying to put her back together and make her look pretty. It wasn’t pretty.”

  Alec sat with his feet planted flat on the floor, knees apart. In his hand the china teacup, rose patterned, held a dainty quantity of tea. It wasn’t bad. Milky and sweet. “That took a lot of guts what you did,” he said.

  “I couldn’t be a mother right then. In a crisis one has to focus.” As a doctor, she said, she knew there was only one thing left to do: extract the fetus quickly. The body would incubate it for five minutes to eight at most. There was no thought of whose body.

  Alec did what he knew how to do, listen rather than speak, taking in whatever strangeness was before him until action was required.

  When she fell silent, Alec asked, “How’s the baby?”

  “She’s in the neonatal ICU,” Debra replied. “I’ll go back to the hospital tomorrow, but there’s no reason to think she shouldn’t do well.”

  “I thought Heather would do better at home,” Rick said in the same whispery way he’d spoken about the medicine cabinet, as if his daughter’s death had left him transparent, his organs barely held in by skin. “There was no reason to make her go away.”

  “You’d never let her,” Cathy said. And then bitterly, “Even though she never did what you wanted.”

  “She was still our daughter. Regardless.” Rick put more sugar in his tea. He hadn’t drunk any of it yet. “But if we had sent her away, then maybe she’d be alive. If only we’d left the other side of the house vacant. We were thinking that we would renovate before we rented it out again.”

  “Without the gun, she’d have done something else,” Debra said. “The baby would have died if she’d thrown herself off a bridge. Look, I’m not going to sugar-coat this. Thank God she was close enough to term. Think of the silver lining. We still have our baby and we’ll be able to bring her home soon. Heather didn’t take her away, too.” She turned to Alec. “Thank you for having Cathy over yesterday.”

  “She can come over anytime she wants. You don’t need an invitation, Cathy.”

  He noticed then that Cathy’s feet were bare, her legs were bare, her skirt short even though the house was cold, conserving energy. Her top was thin, you could see the outline of her bra through it. When she felt Alec’s glance on her, she moved her shoulders back, making the most of what little she had as if it was automatic, sensing that a guy sat at her parents’ table, whatever the outward appearance. “I can help babysit.” She flicked
her hair, head slightly tilted. “Or whatever.”

  “There’s always place for you at our house, kiddo. No payback.”

  Cathy didn’t answer; she was looking at her dad stir his tea. Forming words had become too hard for both of them.

  After a pause, her mother said, “Thank you. As long as she keeps up with her school work.”

  “I guess the kids can study together,” Alec said. “Josh is a good kid. He’s doing all right.”

  “One can’t let grades slip. People who do well do well.”

  Cathy nodded, the familiar phrase a steel rod along her spine, allowing her to shift away from the wall as though she could now stay vertical without it holding her up, moving to stand beside her father’s chair.

  “Thank God I still have you.” Rick looked up at his daughter.

  “You always have me, Daddy.” She leaned toward him and his arm went around her waist. He put his cup to his lips, took a swallow, then grimaced. “Too sweet.”

  “I’ll be heading out unless there’s something else I can do here,” Alec said. It had been a long day and even he was tired, the headache getting worse. As soon as he got the car back to Eleanor’s, someone else would have to come forward.

  “We’re fine. Thank you for everything,” Debra said.

  Cathy was washing the cup in the sink as Alec said goodbye, her hair twisted up and out of the way, held in a knot with a wooden chopstick. Her back was straight, her feet turned out, her elbows oddly bruised.

  INSIDE

  It was dark and the inside children cried from the cold, but the Overseer was deaf to their whining and indifferent to the chill. The sub-basement was big enough to contain them and the basement just as big, though it felt too small for him as he paced in the darkness. He wasn’t afraid. Only someone weak would be afraid of his enemy or his last resort. People averted their eyes from death, believing they knew how it had come when they had barely perceived its outline. How could they appreciate its power, its drive and its cunning? The girl who died had stolen herself from her parents. She could not endure; that showed weakness. She had used a weapon, which took strength. But if she was strong, why did she desert her family? Family is all, it is everything, the one place where you have a place.

  He paced and he asked himself these things. It was all he could do because the Housekeeper had blocked his way. He was confined and his nostrils narrowed at the stink of it. This was his: a floor of cold earth and walls of stone, which were wet from the sewage that seeped in. And the darkness, it was his, too. From here he sent out his punishers; he made sure that crying children stayed below. He had his means and ways, his keys and his locks. Order had to be maintained. The rules were simple:

  1. Obey.

  Do what you were taught. Do it right. Do it quick.

  2. Do not speak to strangers.

  They are not your family, not your father, mother, brothers, and not your uncles who were given the title because they are as good as family.

  3. There are no second chances.

  Do what you were taught. Do it right. Do it quick.

  Of course children would be tested. How else could anyone discover their strength? The harder the test, the greater the honour to be won. He understood that, unlike those inside children with their whining and crying over every little thing. He pictured them coming forward—running madly, switching uncontrollably, endlessly weeping loud and open-mouthed. What would happen then? But it wouldn’t, for he was in charge. The Overseer. Maintaining control. Ensuring that everyone behaved.

  He couldn’t get past the kitchen, where Sharon rested, unaware of her surroundings. But at the door, he could call her name, “Sharon,” the snivelling outsider who spoke to strangers, telling tales out of turn. What right did she have to do that?

  “Sharon, Sharon,” he said softly, for she could close her eyes but not her ears. “What kind of mother are you? Always too tired. What kind of wife? All the burden is on your husband. He works while you are a waste of space. Filling cupboards with rags and scraps, spending his money. Wasting time and money in therapy, imagining things. You’re lucky he hasn’t left you. How long do you think that’s going to last? Then you’ll have nowhere to go and nobody will want you.”

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  Every nation has made a pattern of the stars, learning their positions to guide a person travelling, telling tales about the constellations to help memory along. The same group of stars outlined an emperor’s chariot in old China, a plough in Britain, a bear among the North American tribes.

  In ancient Rome, the story was told like this. There was a huntress, a woman named Callisto. An attendant of the goddess of the hunt, Callisto was a virgin, a necessary condition to be among the goddess’s favourites. Unfortunately the king of the gods, Jupiter, desired Callisto, even if she didn’t desire him. To gain her trust, he disguised himself as the goddess. When he opened his arms and pulled her into a hug, Callisto was pleased to be noticed until she couldn’t extract herself. Only then did she discover who had hold of her, as he reverted to his true shape and raped her.

  Some months afterward, seeing Callisto bathe in a creek—pregnant and ruined—the goddess had no sympathy. As punishment, she turned Callisto into a bear, who soon gave birth to a son, Arcas. When the boy was old enough to hunt, he came across a bear in the woods. Not knowing it was his mother, he raised his arm to throw a spear at it. But the king of the gods, believing himself more merciful than the goddess, intervened. He turned Arcas into a bear cub and then put mother and son in the sky as constellations so they might be together always, calling them Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.

  At the tip of little bear’s tail, the North Star shone over Crookshank’s Lane. A couple of cats howled and hissed, fighting in a yard. On the sidewalk, a redhead in jeans and a sweater was pulling a wagon home from Eleanor’s house, while inside that head—imperceptible to any passerby—a conversation took place. What’s going on in that house? Forget it, none of our business. If it’s not our business, what is? The mummy cut Cathy’s sister. Bad mummy. No, hon, you don’t understand. The sister was gone and her mom was saving the baby. We should’ve done something before, then maybe there wouldn’t be a funeral. Don’t go off like that. You’re thinking of our crap, getting triggered. I am not.

  As they argued, one of them came forward. She slipped out as she always did when the situation required it, pausing only a moment to get her bearings, gripping the handle of the wagon, her feet on the ground, the cool air on her face. Her head tilted back, she could spot the Big Dipper even in this pallid night sky polluted by circling beams of light from the great towers by the lake. She wished to know how stars were made, where they began, where they would end. She liked looking at the stars, at their distance and indifferent shining. She had no given name. But she called herself Callisto, after the girl who became the bear in the sky. And so she walked back to the house on Ontario Street, doing what she had always done, waiting out the darkness.

  At last the day was ending. She glanced in at Josh, who was in his room, texting his friends or playing a game on his phone. He was back in his PJ bottoms and the T-shirt he’d decorated at last Mayfest when Cathy had been helping at the tie-dye stall. After he’d tripped over the bucket of blue dye, it had taken him months to work up the nerve to ask her if she’d like to come over to study. Down the hall his sisters were sleeping, both of them in the lower bunk, arms wrapped around each other, stuffed animals guarding the head and foot of the bed. They’d hung a blanket from the upper bunk to shield them. Above their room, in his third floor office, Dan was sitting between stacks of newspapers on his desk.

  He looked up as she stood in the doorway, his dark eyes searching her face. More than anything right now, he wanted sex. Let’s forget everything and just hump sex. Afterward holding her close sex. But it had been a while since they’d had any sort of sex, even if that was really her standing in the doorway now—and he thought it was not.

  They’d come out t
o him as multiple a year ago. On a mild winter day, the streets dry, Dan had taken the morning off work to come with Sharon to her therapist’s office in the basement of a house on Hope Street. There was a separate entrance to the basement, which did its best not to look or smell like one. The walls were painted a robin’s egg blue, decorated with cheerful posters. The carpet was thick, and full-spectrum bulbs in floor lamps with glass shades imitated daylight. The dehumidifier hummed in the background and water trickled over stones in a table fountain. The therapist sat in a leather recliner, wearing furry slippers, the only sign that this was the basement of her home. Sometimes Brigitte leaned the recliner back, her pudgy slippered feet propped on the footrest. But not that session. She sat forward, attentive, a hand on each arm of the chair.

  Dan sat at one end of the couch and his wife at the other, heart beating so fast they—Sharon and all—thought they’d pass out until Callisto came forward. The therapist knew they’d switched. She glanced over as her client sat up straighter, hands stilled.

  “So what’s the big secret?” Dan asked. He wore a suit as he’d be going from the session to the office.

  “No secret,” Brigitte replied. “I felt that a joint session would be helpful at this stage. I can explain the situation and answer any questions you might have.”

  “And the situation is?” Dan had a leg crossed over the other, one foot moving up and down. His foot moved like that when he was nervous or angry. It was the possibility that he was angry that had sent the heart knocking against the ribs.

  “I’d like to ask you first about your perception. How would you describe things at home?”

  “Honestly? I don’t know if therapy is helping or making things worse. We hit a bad patch after Emmie was born and four years later it hasn’t improved. If anything Sharon seems more withdrawn now than when she started.”

  “That must be difficult for you.”