by Anna King
He nodded again.
“I guess you’ve heard about that one,” I said.
Then we laughed. Yup, we laughed out loud. I’d been in therapy with Dr. Patel for a total of twenty-three months, eleven days. Never seen him laugh before. Never. He looked like a different person, so different that I didn’t think I’d have recognized him. Or, better way to put it; he was transformed. Which, of course, had an impression on me.
I told him everything. After about fifteen minutes of nonstop talking, I suddenly felt my inner alarm clock go off. “Isn’t my hour over?”
He checked his watch. “True, but I don’t have another appointment right now. Would you like to have a double session?”
Wow. I’d never heard of a double session. I grinned. “Yeah, great.”
He grinned back. It was like we’d catapulted out of some dull dusty therapist’s office into a friendly neighborhood bar. There we were, perched on our stools, saying more than we should because it was dark and we’d been drinking. Now that I knew I had a second hour, I backtracked and filled him in on Mr. Rabbitfish.
Dr. Patel asked, “Do you think Rabbitfish connects with the angel?”
“Yes.” The word flew out of my mouth.
“In what way?”
“I haven’t a clue.”
“Umm,” he murmured.
“Am I crazy?” I said.
He looked at me with a calm gaze, yet, assessing. Finally, he said, “What do you think?”
I straightened in my chair and took a huge breath into my lungs. “No, I don’t think I’m crazy.”
Dr. Patel’s expression had reverted to his familiar blank look. Still, in the way that one knows one’s therapist, I knew he didn’t think I was crazy, either. I stretched my neck backwards and stared at the ceiling. Anger had rushed in and surprised me. I didn’t like to be angry or to have anyone angry at me. I, therefore, rarely expressed it except by creeping into my subterranean study and hiding out for awhile. I swallowed.
“What’s the matter?” Dr. Patel said.
My head snapped down and I glared at him. “I saw a god-damned angel! I need more from you. If you don’t think I’m crazy, then say so!”
“Wonderful,” he said. “And, by the way, there’s not a doubt in my mind that you’re completely sane.”
Apparently, when you saw an angel, you did a lot of crying.
Dr. Patel said quietly, “I think, if you can manage it, that two sessions a week would be a good idea for now.”
“Yeah.” I blew my nose. “I can handle that.”
We agreed to meet three days later. As I left his office, I had a sense that he was about to say something else, so I turned around abruptly just before closing the door. He was sitting very still, with his eyes closed. It looked like he was praying.
Out on the street, the sky was shuttered, turning Cambridge into an abandoned, derelict house. It smelled dark, too. A distant roar of thunder, then the darkness exploded with crackles of light. A spring storm would arrive soon. I was a twenty-minute walk away from my house, or I could take refuge in a bookstore. Another low rumble. I started to trot toward the Grolier Poetry Book Shop on Plympton Street. Despite my aversion to poets, I certainly cared about poetry itself, but, more importantly, Grolier was the closest to me, and I didn’t have an umbrella. I made it inside the door, except for my left foot, which received a splatter of cold drops. I moved into the store a few feet, then turned to watch the rain through the window.
The water fell straight and thick, like someone had dumped a bucket from the second floor window with a great swooshing motion. Except, instead of the water quickly dwindling, this downpour continued. Mesmerized, I watched the water’s white fluffy gleam. Behind me, in the bowels of the shop, came a sensation of complete emptiness. If a shopkeeper was back there, he or she was asleep or dead.
I knew it was coming this time. My head got heavy and my eyes froze into a staring trance. In fact, my entire body grew so heavy and still that it felt like gravity had abruptly doubled.
The dancing blue light jumped through the rain, almost comical with its little hoop-dee-doo leaps. I giggled. That made it go nuts. It jumped three feet into the air, seemed to pirouette on its ballerina toes, ending with a graceful slide into home plate. Very cute, I said in my head. My angel appeared in all his dismal glory, right smack in the middle of the pouring rain. He possessed neither a visible nor an invisible umbrella. His wings, back to their original brown color, instantly dripped and drooped with water, and two small tributaries ran from the pools under his eyes, down his cheeks, and into the corners of his lips where he seemed to suck them into his mouth. He wore a plain brown smock ending at his knees, or what would have been knees if he’d had any. He was also missing arms. None of which looked particularly odd. He was an angel, after all.
We stared at each other. He was a little less ugly this time. Maybe it was because he looked happier. He fluttered his wings and I could see the water scatter sideways. Then he grinned. Now, normally, a grin is a grin is a grin, with the expected result that anyone seeing the grin would want to grin back. Except, I’d begun to feel ever so slightly troubled. My number one presumption was that this was, somehow, my angel. I could be wrong, of course, but from everything I’d ever read about angels, it seemed likely.
And, well, I was a tad bit insulted.
Besides being rather un-angelic looking, he also seemed stupid. The grin was what really clued me in. I mean, he just had this dense expression. His mouth hung open, and the grin went on and on, without stopping or any change of expression.
I wasn’t sure that I’d received the highest caliber angel, to be honest.
And thinking that made me feel guilty. So I turned away from the window and stared unseeing at the closest shelf of books. Then, unable to control myself, I peeked over my shoulder. The angel was still there, and still grinning. Well, I thought, maybe this is just a happy angel. So I waved at him.
One large brown wing waved back.
I reminded myself that Dr. Patel had gone to Harvard Medical School and trained at the MGH. No slouch. Exactly what you needed when you were seeing an angel waving a furry wet wing at you. If Dr. Patel doesn’t think you’re crazy, then you’re not.
I squinted at the angel and said, silently in my head, “What’s your name?”
Badda-badda-boom. I got the answer. Or, perhaps I did.
Ralph.
Ralph?
Not exactly an awe-inspiring name. I mouthed Ralph? out the window, my head cocked to the side in what I hoped was a questioning pose. He waved the other wing happily. Ralph it was.
Abruptly, just like that, Ralph disappeared. I was grateful. The whole thing was utterly exhausting. I walked quickly through the bookstore, my flip-flops making rude noises on the old wooden floor. I knew that at the back of the first floor, I’d find a cozy wing chair in a corner. I sat down in the chair. There was a slim book on the small table. I picked it up and looked at the title, Raphael. I began to read and was, perforce, reminded that there was an famous archangel called Raphael.
Could Ralph be a shorter, hip version of Raphael?
In which case, my angel was actually an archangel, a big fucking deal. I felt mollified. Like I’d gotten into Harvard, early decision. Which made me think about Isaac, who had gotten into Harvard early decision. I dug into my purse and grabbed my cell phone. Isaac had given me the number of his monastery, in case I needed to reach him for some kind of emergency. I’d keyed the number in, out of politeness, never expecting to use it. I suspected that the Grolier had a no-cell phone policy, but I still couldn’t hear or sense anyone else in the place. Plus, it was raining with Biblical urgency, and I wanted to call a monk on a Biblical matter, so to speak.
A cultivated, low voice answered the phone. “Namaste,” he said.
Before seeing my own angel, Ralph, I would have, undoubtedly, rolled my eyes at such a greeting. Instead, I whispered, “Namaste.”
“May I help you?”
>
“I’m trying to reach Isaac Goldsmith—can he come to the phone right now?”
“Unfortunately, no. I can take a message.”
“This is sort of an emergency.”
“Sort of?”
I imagined a robed figure in a tiny, windowless room. A candled flickered, and a stick of incense burned in a thin spiral of smoke. Rather evocative. I’m sure that’s why I said what I said next.
“I’ve seen an angel. His name is Ralph, short for Raphael. I just came from my Harvard-trained shrink, who said I’m not in the least bit crazy. Isaac had a premonition that something like this might happen. Now it’s raining really, really hard, and I absolutely must talk to him.”
There was a slight pause. Then the voice said, “Why don’t you come here?”
I realized immediately that I had three days and two nights before I had my next stint at the Harvest.
He added, “We have modest guest rooms available—you pay whatever you can afford.”
“I guess it would be all right with Isaac.”
“I’m sure he would be delighted. If you go to our web site, you can find directions—would you be driving?”
“Yes.”
Just before hanging up, the monk said, “Ralph is welcome, too.”
“What?” I said, totally discombobulated.
He waited, without repeating himself, for me to process the words. Two seconds later, I laughed.
“Namaste,” the monk said, giggling.
I leapt up from the wing chair and rushed to the front of the store. Outside, the rain poured down. I thought of walking home, accepting that I’d be drenched. What was the big deal about getting wet, after all? I could take a hot bath, wash my hair, and throw together an appropriate outfit for visiting a monastery (big challenge). I looked at my leather shoulder bag, which contained such possibly non-waterproof items like a cell phone and the address book I’d bought twenty years earlier in Florence. I could imagine the ink smearing and the pages turning to mush.
Behind me, a voice said, “Well, as I live or die.”
Even without turning around, I knew it was my least favorite poet among all my least favorite poets.
“Hey.” I acknowledged him with a sidelong glance.
“Finding shelter from the rain?” He sidled closer.
I smiled as graciously as I could manage, wondering, at the same time, why I had such a viscerally negative reaction to him. I knew why I didn’t like poets. They thought they were prophets and, therefore, special. And it was probably relevant that my mother, as well as being a literature professor at Smith was also a … poet. Not a very good one, either, though I always thought that made it worse. The subject of her poetry was equally unfortunate, from my point of view. She wrote about her kids, her crippled husband, as well as her own brothers, sisters, mother and father. That is, she was a poet of The Family.
I read my first poem of hers sometime during the week when I learned to read. I was five years old, and the poem, not inconsequentially, was about me learning to read.
I should be
would be
if could be
happy.
She reads now the words
I write and so
my privacy, small enough,
goes.
We will both have to learn to bear it.
I was able to read the first stanza, but I didn’t really understand it at the age of five. Yet, somehow, I must have. In fact, my sensitivity to language, the whole reason I became a writer, stemmed from knowing that my mother resented it when I learned to read.
Bummer.
When my brother and sister and I were in elementary school, we used to play Poetry Reading. Other kids would play War, or Zoo, or House. Not us. No, sir. It was Poetry Reading, complete with a microphone fashioned from one of my Dad’s discarded crutches and a spatula balanced in the armrest, chairs lined up in rows, ashtrays (those were the days when poets still smoked), bottles of booze and glasses displayed on every table surface, and my smallest brother, Jeffrey, strumming a ukulele and “singing.” Obviously, the best part was writing and reading our poems, which we believed—as per our mother—were brilliant. Maybe they even were. My youngest sister, Annie, told me recently that she’d saved all extant copies in a special, flame-resistant storage box. She suggested that at the next Christmas Eve, we should play Poetry Reading. I told her over my dead body.
Speaking of dead bodies, my mother’s funeral had been one giant Poetry Reading. Members of her department had taken turns reading her unpublished poems, analyzing them as if they were somehow worthy of such enlightened attention. They weren’t. Despite my father’s obvious and genuine grief, I saw more than one pained expression cross his face during the service. I kept expecting Jeffrey to start playing the ukulele and singing one of his inimitable tunes.
I was my mother’s least favorite child and I still didn’t know why. Naturally, in therapy, I had to try and figure it out. I came to the obvious conclusions: she was envious of my writing ability and publishing success; I was too needy; she hadn’t been well-loved as the oldest daughter when she was growing up; I was more interested in my father; I was a bossy-boots, and so was she, with the result that we clashed. Somehow, though, none of these entirely plausible explanations had much wearing power. I kept feeling as though I didn’t quite get it.
Though I did get why I hated Poets with a capitol P.
“Yes, shelter from the rain,” I said to Mr. Poet. “You, too?”
“My girlfriend is manager here—she had a doctor’s appointment and I offered to keep an eye on things.”
“You have a girlfriend?” I raised both eyebrows.
He shrugged and actually winked at me. “Can’t fault a guy for noticing a beautiful gal.”
A beautiful gal?
What a vomitous expression. I looked back out the window.
“Haven’t seen Isaac around—has he got a new wife to make him happy?”
I snorted. “Not even close.”
“Waddayamean?”
“He’s left Harvard on a sort of spiritual journey.”
“The India-thing is so retro.”
Remarkably, that man seemed incapable of saying anything I didn’t judge as ludicrous. Maybe I needed to read some of his poetry to counterbalance my displeasure, especially since I kept running into the jerk. If I was the type to question such things, I might even have asked why he reappeared in my life like some deranged homing pigeon.
But I wasn’t that kind of person and even the presence of Ralph the Angel wasn’t going to convince me to become that kind of person. Not without a fight, anyway. And I tended to avoid fights.
“I don’t think he went to India,” I said. In my head, I began a fervent little prayer.
Stop raining, stop raining, stop raining. I even closed my eyes briefly.
The Poet said, “Hey, it’s letting up.”
I made an effort to pay no attention to the fact that my wish had been granted. None whatsoever. You might imagine that if your wishes were routinely ignored, as I felt many of mine were, you’d notice when one was so dramatically answered. But the truth was that we had habits in our lives, and we grew used to having things happen as they were apparently meant to. I wondered how many people, praying for love (just as an esoteric example) had looked right past it when it arrived, simply because they’d grown so used to it not being there. Flannery O’Connor’s book, The Habit of Being, was an autobiography that seemed to laude habits. As a young writer, I’d tried to emulate her method. Probably, I now saw, a big boo-boo.
First time ever, I said, “Thanks.” Though not out loud, of course. And, okay, my tone was somewhat facetious, grudging, and doubtful. I had zero faith that the rain had stopped because I’d asked it to. Still, just in case, never hurt to express gratitude. Or so I taught my kids.
I waved to Mr. Poet. “See you,” I said, though I hoped I wouldn’t. Then, inspired, I made another silent request. May I never see him again.
Home finally, I dashed around, getting ready to take off for Isaac’s monastery, working up a lather of pointless anxiety, until I slipped on the stairs leading to the basement. I caught myself by a fast hand grabbing onto the bannister, though momentarily my stomach traveled down, as if unaware that the rest of me still stood poised at the top of the stairs. I took a deep breath and decided a hot soaking bath was a good idea. There was no need to be in a gigantic hurry.
To get myself in the mood, I put on a CD of monks chanting. The basement was cool and slightly damp from the earlier storm, and despite the sun having come out, it was mighty dark down there. Its basement qualities had never bothered me, and the shadows had been one of its attractions as a place to write and think, but that afternoon, I noticed it and, in the end, didn’t like it. I turned off the chanting monks, let the water out of the bath, and went to the second floor for a shower. Even though I was heading for a monastery, where I presumed my sexual charms would be irrelevant, I shampooed and conditioned my hair, shaved my legs and armpits, then applied copious amounts of body lotion.
Only at the last, when I had an overnight bag packed and had applied make-up that would be especially appealing to monks, not to mention my outfit ((blue jeans and an Indian-inspired tunic that I assumed would add an inspirational element to my overall appearance), did I check my e-mail. I hadn’t heard from Rabbitfish since our provocative exchange late Saturday night (“You should be ashamed of yourself.” “I am.”) and despite having talked to Dr. Patel about him, he seemed far away.
But he wasn’t.
5
THE ABHAYAGIRI MONASTERY, BUILT of stone in an edgy contemporary style, was brightly lit, sleek in design, yet almost gossipy or garrulous with excess stuff. I took an instant dislike to it and knew why Isaac would have found it appealing. Of the many myriad ways Isaac and I had been a mismatch, one of the most disturbing (after his delight in fucking around) had been our incompatibility about interior design taste. Frankly, he had no taste. Isaac merely possessed a cacophony of objects scattered all over the place. Also, he was a slob. I, to be equally honest about myself, was an anal-compulsive type with such an overdeveloped sense of style that I couldn’t sleep in a room whose feng shui was off kilter.
