Silent Girl (15 page)

“Hu ha,” Rhonda said. “Who's asking? Name and location, please.”

“You know who it is.”

“Humour me.”

“Charles Stammler. Capitola, California.”

A long pause followed. Mira wondered if Jackie had fallen asleep.

“Aha, okay, I have him. A
mentsch
, a good soul. Ready to take on a leading role at last. You've written many scripts with this one.”

“That's part of the attraction. I never have to explain myself to Charles and he's incredibly dependable. I can't tell you how many times he's rescued me. When my parents went bankrupt and killed themselves … after my husband left me pregnant with our second child.”

Suicide. Abandonment. Mira's story wasn't half as impressive.

“I meant in more realities than this one,” Rhonda said. “If your world didn't go so
meshuge
over time, you'd realize a thousand years are like yesterday. He has always been with you and, sometimes, you've done the rescuing. So what's the problem?”

“It feels too easy,” Angel said.

“Why create the belief that life must be difficult?”

“I haven't proved I can make it on my own yet. I can't pay my bills on time and I've got zero savings for a house or the boys' education. Marrying Charles would solve all that, but – don't laugh – you know what stops me? Wondering what Gloria Steinem would say.”

“Does Gloria pay half the rent, roast you a chicken now and again, baby-sit?”

Angel laughed. “No.”

“You think from fasting you'll get rich?”

“No, but that's not all. Charles has a weak heart. I don't know how long he'll live.”

“So, maybe the contract calls for him to disengage first. People come, people go.”

“Why make contracts you know will cause pain?” Angel asked.

“Pain, schmain. We're not talking root canal or childbirth, right? So he leaves. An actor exits the stage when he runs out of lines. You forget you are eternal. You create the idea of death – and it is only an idea – to move things along. It's not for nothing you wrote this script.”

“What I want to know is if marriage is part of the script, part of the contract I've made with Charles.”

“Look for the story you're telling each other and you'll have your answer. Who's next?”

Angel flopped back in her chair, clearly exasperated. The others brought up problems at work, problems at home, mysterious aches and pains.

“People!” Rhonda said. “You're such vinegar pusses tonight. Life is supposed to be fun. These plays you've written for yourselves? Get into them. Go for an Oscar.”

“It annoys the heck out of me when she won't give you the answer,” Angel said on the way home.

“Don't you find her Yiddish accent a bit odd?” Mira asked.

“Not at all. She said her last planting – well, last in the way we think of last – was in Jewish soil. Isn't that wonderful? She's role playing like she says we all do. The other channellers I tried all spoke like Polish counts.”

In Mira's opinion, Rhonda hadn't said anything Jackie couldn't have made up. It didn't make sense that Angel would spend ten bucks a week on so-called study group yet drive with a broken muffler. “Has Jackie been tested?”

“For what?”

“There must be some voice test. She
sounds
different as Rhonda but maybe she's just a good actress. And that talk about scripts. I don't want to piss you off, but it's hard to believe.”

Angel reached over and lightly touched Mira's arm, her touch like a secret passing between them. “You won't offend me by speaking your mind, Sweetie.”

Mira had never thought of herself as a Sweetie. She liked it.

“As far as I know,” Angel said, “God hasn't been tested, either, and look how many people believe in him or it or her. All I know is God doesn't talk to me. Rhonda does. She's helping me discover my soul's mission. There's nothing more important than that. If I knew for sure marrying Charles was part of that mission, I wouldn't hesitate. But I don't, and I can't afford another mistake.”

Mira had never spent two minutes thinking about her soul, much less its mission. “Did she tell you where your parents are?” She wondered for a crazy moment if Rhonda could reach Marko.

“No. If I wanted her to find anyone, it would be my ex so I could sue for support. But she needs a location. Heck, if I had that,
I
could find him.”

Angel's ex didn't see the kids, didn't have a clue what Matty even looked like. He'd won a bunch of money gambling and didn't want to share it.

“What a sleaze,” Mira said. She and Marko had “won” a decent inheritance and shared it freely until it was gone.

“Fine for Rhonda to say, ‘people come, people go.' I have to think about the boys. What if they get attached to Charles and he dies before they're grown? Anthony was a mess for two years after his father left. I wish someone would just tell me what to do. Not having to worry about money would be heaven. Is it terrible to want more than I have?”

“I'd still be in Edina if I could afford it.”

“I wondered about that.”

“My brother and I were living together and he died. I couldn't handle the rent on my own.” There. She'd said it without getting weepy.

“Oh, Mira. How? When?”

“April. A fish bone in his esophagus. He couldn't turn his neck that night without it hurting but he was too macho to go to emergency. He went to bed and never woke up.”

Angel sucked in her breath. “An infection that went to his lungs.”

“Yes.” Mira swallowed hard and turned her head towards the window, watched the stars play hide-and-seek between the buildings rushing by. When she could speak again, she said, “You know that restaurant on the corner of Fourth and Seventh?”

“No, is it any good?”

“I don't recommend the stuffed trout.”

Angel shook her head. “Oh, Sweetie, I'd like to give you a big hug right now.”

Mira sniffed the apartment air that night for Marko's scent: a mix of Brut and garlic pickles. She tried to imagine him lurking in the wings like some celestial Peeping Tom, waiting for new lines. If the couches and tables were merely props in a play they'd written, it wasn't fair that the set had a longer life than he did. It looked like a doctor's waiting room now. Nothing personal about it at all. “Curse you, Red Baron,” she said, raising a fist to the ceiling. “Even if we did have a contract.” Without cash to replace the furniture, she wondered how she could change the set.

She unpacked a few cartons, looking for inspiration. Their baseball equipment, her sketch-books, the pastel and watercolour pencils. In a book box she found the dictionary. Disengage:
to detach, free, loosen or separate.
Animus:
in Jungian psychology, the masculine aspect of a woman's personality.

She had taken a psychology course in university but all she retained from it was an image of the professor rocking back and forth in front of the class, rubbing himself against a hard-backed chair. It occurred to her she might have wasted those years, helping Marko with his exams and papers, spending only enough time on her own to pass. Angel was on a quest for her soul's mission. What could Mira claim to be doing? She'd gone after her new job simply because it paid more. Nothing creative about it. She didn't even get to write the commercials. If she could stick it out long enough to put some money aside, she'd take an art class or two. She felt a surge of new ambition.

The program from a play she and Marko had seen at the Guthrie turned up in one of the boxes.
Cyrano.
She had loved everything about it but he'd called it a big yawn. There was a balcony in that play. She had a balcony.

“Just macaroni and cheese,” Angel had said when she called, “but I'd love some grown-up company.” As the elevator was on the fritz, Mira took the fire stairs and made her way down the dimly lit hallway to 103. A pack of kids nearly knocked her over. Marko would've insisted on an adults-only place.

Angel opened the door wearing black leggings, a billowy white blouse and no makeup. Could anyone be that pure?

Mira had lugged along two gloves, a bat, a couple of balls. “I thought we could give the boys a work-out after supper, help you release some of that animus.”

Angel laughed then made a face. “I'm hopeless at baseball.”

“I'll help you.”

Angel's apartment was laid out like Mira's except it had a second bedroom and a small concrete slab patio. She led Mira through the galley kitchen into the dining area. “Come sit with me. We'll eat when their show's over.” The boys were on the living room floor in front of the TV, stuffing potato chips into their mouths. Their little hunched backs looked harmless enough.

Angel cleared a pile of mail off a chair for Mira. “I only open the ones that say Final Notice on the envelope.”

Her living room looked like a set from
South Pacific:
white wicker furniture with rose and beige cushions, pictures of pink and white shells on the walls. “Is that real?” Mira asked, pointing to a six-foot palm tree next to the patio door.

“Doesn't it just look it? It's silk. A gift from Charles. He'd pay my bills if I let him, but I won't, so he surprises me with things I'd never buy: a leather dress, of all things, a huge box of walnuts – like I bake. There's a carousel horse in my bedroom.” She walked to the tree as if on springs. “Have you ever noticed that a gift carries the electromagnetic energy of the person who gave it to you?”

“Can't say I have.” An image of Charles was coming to her: Mr. Moneybags in top hat and spats, dancing around a
Monopoly
board.

“I tried it in several different places before it worked. Same as a real plant. A plant's consciousness responds better to one area than another even if conditions are the same.” She moved her hand slowly around the tree, not touching the fronds. “I feel little bubbles of carbonation. Little bubbles of Charles's subconscious.”

“What's the point?”

“Connection. One soul essence connecting with another. Connection is everything.” She twirled around like a child with her arms out then leaned down and hugged the boys.

“Hey!” Anthony said. “You're making me miss the best part.”

“Well, excuse me,” Angel said. She came back to the table, flushed – from motherly connection, Mira supposed. Mira didn't know the first thing about plants or children.

They talked about Charles. His parents were diplomats who'd left him so well off he'd never had to do anything except keep himself busy. They died when Charles was in his twenties. When he wasn't travelling, he played piano until his fingers ached.

“He's had a stutter for as long as I've known him,” Angel said, “but when he plays, I could weep for what his fingers are able to say.”

Mr. Moneybags, flipping his tux tails up and over the bench, sitting down to play something staccato. “Do you love him?”

“Love's one of those vague words. I'm enormously fond of him. He's fun. Always on, always performing. Trying to distract everyone from the stuttering. Sad, really, but also endearing. He says I'm the only woman who's never treated him as if he's brain damaged.”

“You wouldn't marry him because of that, would you?”

“I'm never quite sure what I'll do. I try to stay away from cliffs for that reason.”

Mira laughed because Angel did, but she wasn't sure Angel was kidding.

Angel and the boys saw Charles three or four times a year. “He's coming for Thanksgiving. You must meet him. He stays in a hotel when he's here, proper to a fault. Flies us out to his place when I can take the time off. His house, you should see his house! Overlooking the ocean. I have such
longing
there.”

“For what?'

“To be a drop in that ocean, hugging all the other drops as we crash onto the shore. If I didn't have the boys, I would find a deserted island and do nothing but meditate, become a wave in my mind. Let me show you something.” She took down a picture that was taped to the refrigerator and brought it back to the table. A townhouse development. “Look at all the land around it. In the winter you can cross-country ski right outside your front door. I'd have to sell tons more than I do now for a place like that. Put more hours into it than I can manage with the boys.”

Mira felt dizzy trying to fathom what Angel truly wanted. “Having that house would make you feel like a wave?”

“I never thought of that. Aren't you clever? Maybe. A powerful wave. Powerful enough to provide for my boys.”

“I'm off work at four Tuesdays and Thursdays,” Mira said. “I could pick them up and feed them those days. You could work as late as you wanted.”