Web of Angels

by Lilian Nattel

  Jake leaned forward to peer at her. “It must be a very small part.”

  “Maybe so. But it counts.”

  “Huh. Jews and Indians are the same.”

  “How, Zaidey?” Judy asked from the kids’ table. Josh elbowed her, mouthing, Shut up, tool. Don’t get Zaidey going. Especially in front of company. His own company, Cathy, was acting a little too much like one of the family, kidding around with his pesky sisters. The girls were in their holiday finery, too. Lacy socks, shiny shoes, Nina in a jean jumper and Emmie in a flowery frock. Their cousin was not in a dress. Her mother couldn’t make her. She had on her blue-green knit hoodie and the pants with the secret pockets. She concentrated on Josh as he demonstrated the disappearing-coin trick, sure that this time she’d figure it out. A glass, a coin, a towel. Plink, the coin fell into the glass. But look! It’s vanished. And here it is under your nose. Cathy was trying to grab the towel from him.

  “Don’t you have a shvitz?” Jake asked Ingrid. He was in a jacket and a tie that Mimi had chosen and knotted for him and which he was loosening. “I used to go to a shvitz with my father every week.”

  “He means a sweat,” Dan explained.

  “Yes, a sweat. It was on Hammond Street near the shooting range. You could hear the bang bang while you sat on the bench. Then they closed it after the riot.”

  “What riot?” Ingrid asked.

  “In Christie Pits,” Amy said, her grey eyes softly meeting her partner’s. They were both wearing nice pants and shirts, Amy with a vest over hers. “It was in the 1930s. Jews and Italians fighting with the Swastika Club.”

  Sharon got up and went to the sink, refilling the pitcher of water. Wars made headlines. Race riots. But rarely the crimes against humanity that were enacted inside a taxpayer’s house.

  “My great-grandfather was at Christie Pits,” Cathy said. Her hair was mussed, the part zigzagging as she ran her hand through it. She wore a white dress of fragile cotton and over it the silk jacket with its big shoulders and bold stripes over the pastel plaid. “He bashed heads. Did you see that, Mr. Lewis? My father says the police kept order.”

  “I was only six, but I was there. And no offence to your papa but the police did bobkes.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked. “They had horses and guns. My parents say that my great-grandfather was one scary dude.”

  “I didn’t see any guns. Nobody got shot and nobody died.” His voice was kind as if he’d realized who she was and who her sister was, but she didn’t look upset, only confused. “Listen to me, maideleh. The night before, the Pit Gang painted a swastika on the clubhouse in Christie Pits. And during the softball game they held up a white blanket with a swastika painted on it. When they yelled ‘Heil Hitler,’ people got mad. Boys fought. They came at each other with bats, pipes, broom handles, pool cues. It was a lot of excitement. Then they got tired and went home. The mayor was the smart one; he didn’t love us Jews but he banned the swastika anyway. In those days we weren’t considered white. Now—a miracle. We’re white!”

  “But you could always hide being Jewish,” Ingrid said. “People of colour can’t hide.”

  “Ahh,” Jake said, warming to the argument, almost like his old self. “My father changed his name from Zalkind to Lewis before he left England. So on paper he was like anyone else. But in person? No. So this is the question. If people don’t like you because you’re not like them, what? You should have a war with them or make yourself the same?” He turned his mild eyes on Ingrid. “Like you, bubbeleh. You want to be in a cupboard?”

  “Closet,” Ingrid laughed. “No. But when I receive hate mail, for a minute or so I wonder.”

  “Live and let live. It’s written on the pub. That’s why I bought the house on Hammond Street.” Jake pushed away his plate, smiling at Sharon.

  There were things that were suitable for dinner conversation and things that were not. Racism, yes. Gay rights, yes. Parents who split their children’s brains, no. People with DID didn’t come out at presidential inaugurations. They assimilated, they blended in.

  “After that the shvitz was closed. Indians have a shvitz, don’t they?” Jake asked.

  “Not a steam bath. A sweat lodge. It’s not for cleaning the body but for clearing physical or mental distress.”

  “Now we have psychiatrists,” Mimi said, determinedly looking past her daughter-in-law to the children’s table. “Are you seeing a good doctor?” she asked Cathy.

  The girl looked back at the old woman. “A hell of one,” she replied with a wicked smirk.

  “Dessert is in the living room,” Sharon jumped in, kicking her sister-in-law under the table. Eleanor caught her eye. Sharon tilted her head toward the kids’ table. It was enough: they understood each other.

  Eleanor pushed her chair back and stood up. “There’s lots of cake and chocolate, kids. Don’t eat it all before I get there! Judy, you can have anything but the lemon cake. It’s got wheat flour in it. We’ll bring the plates.” Eleanor took them down from the cupboard, handing them to her mother, then fished the small forks from the cutlery drawer.

  “Great supper, Mom. Thanks,” Josh said, the other kids echoing him. Thank you, Mama. Dan extracted himself from behind the table, and came around to put an arm around her. Thanks, Aunt Sharon. Thanks, Mrs. Lewis.

  While the others moved to the living room, Ingrid stepped outside for a smoke and Sharon put the kettle on for tea. Even from the kitchen she could hear her younger children showing off for Mimi, bringing her their homemade books and crafts. Judy was saying, “Everyone has germs. Even rich people who don’t pick their noses. Watch me, Nai-Nai. I can do a headstand.” Sharon put eight scoops of coffee in the filter, turned on the coffee maker, then began on the dishes. Dan would load the dessert plates later, but she enjoyed washing by hand, the soapiness and warmth of the water, the faint smell of cigarette smoke coming in from the yard. She hummed to herself a tune that she didn’t recognize. Franky had come out of some hiding place to chase a crumpled napkin. Now he lay on his back, tearing it with his claws, amber eyes ecstatic.

  “Do you have candy, Zaidey?” That was Emmie’s high voice. Then a rumbling reply. He’d wait until Mimi was out of the room, then slip a candy into his grandchild’s hand. In the meantime she whined, “Do I have to wait for Mommy? It’s too yummy, Daddy.” This was what mattered. Candies. Dessert. Fruit plate, gluten-free gingerbread cookies to dip in coconut mousse, lemon cake, chocolate farm animals and a chocolate barn.

  No matter what the others inside thought, Sharon hadn’t forgotten what was said during therapy. But this was the gift she gave her children: a life of pleasantries and pettiness; a mother who did not scream or howl from the roof, but stood at the sink, washing dishes, rinsing them, placing them in the dish rack.

  “Can I have a glass of water, please?” Cathy asked as she came into the kitchen. Franky mewed and went back to shredding the napkin.

  “Sure, let me just get this first.” Sharon picked up a napkin to wipe a bit of chocolate from the corner of Cathy’s mouth. The chocolate was persistent and rather than dig at the soft skin, she flipped up the handle of the faucet, dipping the napkin in water. They stood close, Sharon bending a little, Cathy lifting her chin as Sharon held it, fingers supporting the delicate underside, thumb near an ear and the earrings dangling from it, no longer hidden by hair. “New earrings,” Sharon said as she dabbed. “A different look for you. I like it.” Black and white checked button studs in the lower hole, chains in the higher. When did her parents allow a second piercing? “There. All done. That jacket’s nice on you.” Sharon fetched down a glass, ice, lemon, water.

  “Thanks.” Cathy took the glass, just holding it. “I don’t think Josh’s grandmother likes me.”

  “Sure she does,” Sharon lied.

  “What if she finds out I’m seeing a psychiatrist?”

  Sharon paused, considering not the answer but the question, for Mimi had already asked and heard the answer to it. Yet here was Cathy, lookin
g troubled, wanting advice as if time had been rewound to some earlier point in the evening. “That shouldn’t bother her,” Sharon said, going along.

  “It’s embarrassing,” Cathy said.

  “Mimi knows I see a therapist.”

  “Not a shrink though. Not like you’re sick. And he’s a jerk.” Cathy watched for Sharon’s reaction, but she just nodded. “Heather’s gone and she’s still messing up my life. If I …” Cathy turned as the sliding glass doors opened.

  “Can I help?” Ingrid asked, coming in from her smoke, unaware that she’d interrupted anything. “I could dry.”

  “Great. Here.” Sharon tossed her a tea towel while Cathy slowly drank her water, looking over the rim of her glass, holding onto her excuse to remain in the kitchen.

  Ingrid launched into the story of their apartment hunt and the places they’d seen, one of them with a cockroach in plain sight, another supposedly two bedroom but one of the rooms was the size of a closet, and the rent! Then they’d found the perfect place, the lower unit of a duplex with a yard for the dogs to run around. Sharon nodded, listening over the din of voices in her head as she set pots and cups on a tray. After she carried the tray to the living room, she came back to the kitchen for more napkins.

  Cathy was standing next to Ingrid. “What are you doing here?” she was saying.

  “The same as you, I think.”

  “I hope you’re moving far away.” The girl’s hair fell over eyes that had darkened to a stormy blue. Her hands were in her pockets, and she was rocking on her heels.

  “I’m not going to tell. You don’t have to worry.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s no reason,” Ingrid said in a quiet tone meant to quiet Cathy’s. “Would it make any difference?”

  “Nope.” The girl’s voice was sharp-edged, like her eyes. Sharon had seen exactly that look and heard exactly that voice before. Cathy arm-wrestling with Josh, swearing out of incongruously pink lips when she lost. Chewing gum, snapping it with a smirk.

  “Tell what?” Sharon asked.

  “Nothing,” Ingrid said, and began to chatter about packing and moving and wasn’t it a pain, though the new place was still in the neighbourhood and right near the dog park.

  But Sharon was looking at her son’s girlfriend. Just a few minutes ago, those same eyes, excited, suspicious, a hand running through that blonde hair messing it up. In between, the polite girl smile. Please and thank you. Vagueness. Catching up on what she’d missed because she hadn’t been there. This child, her son’s girlfriend, had switched. Now what was she supposed to do?

  Sharon went to the bathroom on the second floor and sat on the toilet seat next to the blooming African violets, her head in her hands, still holding the bundle of napkins. For a moment, she felt dizzy, a flood of memories threatening to engulf her.

  INSIDE

  “Get back!” the punishers yelled. They ran, pushing people down the stairs, pushing people up the stairs, it didn’t matter where, as long as it was far from Sharon. They ran up to the attic, they fled down to the sub-basement. There they huddled, keeping their memories away from Sharon: day one, day two, day five hundred, day five thousand of the things that had made them like that girl.

  Alone in the middle of the house, a couple of kids hid under the teeter-totter in the playroom.

  “Let’s go up to the attic,” Echo whispered.

  “We have to go downstairs,” Ally said.

  “I don’t want to hide in the boot closet. It’s dark.”

  “Not so dark.”

  “The punishers say there’s a monster in the kitchen.”

  “There isn’t,” Ally said.

  “How do you know?” he asked.

  “I looked,” she said, even though the knothole was too small to see very much. “Okay?”

  Echo nodded, trying not to cry.

  “Come on.” She grabbed his hand and led him out of the playroom.

  They snuck along the hallway, all the rooms on either side empty and quiet as if there were only the two of them in the whole house, waiting for something scary to swoop down on them. At the staircase they paused, listening. Not a sound. Ally and Echo crept down the stairs and along the short hall to the end where the boot closet was. And there stood a punisher.

  “Get back,” he yelled, starting to move toward them.

  “This way,” Ally said, and Echo followed her, though he cried, I can’t, No, Wait, We’re not allowed as she made a dash for the kitchen, slowing her steps just a bit as she rounded the corner, waiting until Echo caught up. At the doorway to the kitchen they held hands, peeking in, ready to bolt if the punishers were right, if there really was a monster.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” the Housekeeper said. Her arms moved fast, like she had a thousand arms, the light in the kitchen so bright it made Ally blink. There were windows and through them she could see the field she’d imagined and, yes, there was a creek and near the house a tree where someone could have a tree house. “Do your feet still hurt, Echo?” the Housekeeper asked.

  “Uh huh,” Echo said.

  “Come,” she said.

  Echo went into the kitchen and when she opened her arms, he climbed onto her lap. It wasn’t fair. Ally was always first, Echo behind. But she came after him, and the Housekeeper’s lap was big enough for both of them. The Housekeeper’s arms went around Ally and Echo. Her hands touched the soles of Echo’s feet.

  “How’s that?” the Housekeeper asked him after a while.

  “Lots better.” He wiggled his toes.

  “Good,” she said.

  Then she kissed the top of Ally’s head and, for the first time ever, Ally felt what it was like to be a good girl. After a million years of sitting there, she sighed. “Cathy’s in trouble,” she said. “I don’t want her to die.”

  “Neither do I.” Another million years went by, Ally sitting on the Housekeeper’s lap. Maybe it was just a minute. Light, warm. “You can help her.”

  “Not me,” Ally said. She was too little.

  “Yes, you.”

  The windows were open and maybe she could smell grass or flowers but she wasn’t going anywhere. She was staying in the kitchen with Echo and the Housekeeper, and she wasn’t going to tell anybody about it ever. Just her and Echo here in the kitchen. But the Housekeeper was standing up, slowly, and Ally slid off her lap like she was sliding down a slide. The Housekeeper took her by the hand and Echo by his and walked them to the door.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHTEEN

  When Sharon left the bathroom, she came down the stairs, smiling her company smile and carrying the napkins. She still had no idea what to do. Could she talk to Dan? What would she say—she had no proof, just the evidence of her eyes, and she didn’t want another fight with him. She always said any child in her house was her child, but that was about making milkshakes and knitting. Not this.

  The living room was fragrant from the pot of purple hyacinths on the window ledge, the daffodils beside the spider plant on the bookcase. The younger kids had already demolished the chocolate animals and a good chunk of the lemon cake was gone. Josh was still deciding what to have. He was sharing the ottoman with Cathy, his father sprawled on the rug between his older daughter and his niece. They were blowing bubbles into milk with their straws, seeing how high they could go without overflowing their glasses. Bram was down in the basement, checking out a fuse that kept blowing. She envied him. Anything to get a few minutes away from the chatter and noise.

  “What else did Uncle Dan do?” Judy asked. Tired after a sleepover, she was momentarily diverted from pinching her cousin.

  “Let’s see. He hated wearing clothes,” Eleanor said, ignoring her brother’s pointed look. She never took him as seriously as he took himself. Emmie was sitting on her lap, feeding her bites of cake. “Your daddy used to strip off and run into the wading pool naked and someone had to hold him down to get a swimsuit on him. Boy could he scream.”

  “And you enjoyed it!” D
an accused his sister.

  “I sure did.” Her plump arms were around her niece, her top cut low, her arms bare, stretchy pants hugging bottom and hips. In the morning she had fought with Bram, and then they had made up luxuriously before Judy got home. “Remember, Dad?”

  “Naked is nice,” Jake said absently as his son-in-law came back from the basement.

  “Fixed.” Bram tossed the old fuse onto the bookcase. He’d left his jacket in the basement, his sleeves were rolled up. He had muscular arms. “Who’s naked?” he asked his wife, his thin face breaking into a smile in recollection of their morning.

  Emmie was holding her fork, forgotten cake falling onto the plate, face agog with wonder, looking at her daddy who went naked! Outside!

  “Oh and there was this kid who used to pick on Dan in grade three until I beat her up,” Eleanor added.

  “Not the way I remember it!” Dan protested. “She was picking on you. I tripped her and you sat on her, Ellie. You were as big as me in grade one but you weren’t as smart.”

  “Are they always like this?” Cathy asked.

  “My family’s nuts. Do you want to go upstairs?” Josh said.

  “Not yet. I’m still eating.” She toyed with her cake as if to prove it, listening, watching.

  Sharon handed around the extra napkins, setting up the collapsible TV trays so her in-laws didn’t have to balance plates on their knees. While Amy exclaimed over the trays, which she hadn’t seen since her childhood, Sharon perched on the arm of the couch, holding her mug of coffee. Franky was on Amy’s lap, purring as Ingrid scratched between his ears, leaning into her partner.

  “The TV trays were in my parents’ garage,” Dan said, “along with the kitchen table. Completely forgotten until Sharon found them.”

  Sharon had told him they were practical because she couldn’t bring herself to say retro was cool: it had been so unlike her, that thought in her head, now eerily quiet.

  “She has good taste.” Mimi shook her head and frowned as if it was unbelievable given her indifference to Mimi’s opinion on other matters, such as Josh’s girlfriend.