All eyes turn back to me.
“You’re sure,” Walter says, not really as a question. “You’re sure it was this Black Wing’s sorrow you felt and not simply grief over your . . .”
“My mother’s death?” I finish for him, surprising myself with how calm I sound. “No. It was him.”
For a minute or two nobody says anything else.
“So tell us, Clara.” Walter again, his eyes that are so like Christian’s, deep pools of emerald, trained on me like he wants to pluck this information right out of my head. “What did you feel, in your dream, at the cemetery? What did he feel, exactly?”
“Sorrow,” I answer slowly. I don’t want to get Mom into trouble or embarrass her further, by telling them that Samjeeza is in love with her.
“Just tell them,” Mom says. “Don’t worry about me.”
Okay, then. I close my eyes, cast myself back to that moment in the dream, trying to recapture his feeling.
“I feel sorrow. Separation. Pain. And you’re right, I thought it was me at first. But then I started feeling his despair. He knows he’s never going to see my mom again. He can’t go where she has gone. He’s lost her, forever. He never got a chance to plead his case. To make amends.”
“He should have tried to make amends last summer, then,” Billy says hotly, “instead of trying to choke the life out of her.”
Mom looks at her with a mournful, pleading expression, and Billy quiets.
“The point is,” I continue, “he’s angry. At some of us, specifically.”
“Who?” Julia asks.
“Well, me, for starters. He thinks I’m an insolent child. I humiliated him. I said things that hurt him.” I shiver. “He wants to destroy me. I remind him of . . .”
“Who else?” Mom prompts then. “Tell them who else.”
“Mr. Phibbs—I mean Corbett. For some reason he really hates you.”
“Glad to hear it,” says Mr. Phibbs gruffly.
“He’s not too fond of Billy either. Or you, Walter.”
Billy snorts. “Tell us something we don’t know.”
“That’s why I thought it’d be appropriate for you to know. So you can decide whether it’s worth the risk to attend my funeral,” Mom says.
“Oh, we’re all going to be there,” Billy insists. “Like I said, we can handle Samjeeza. He wouldn’t take on forty of us.”
The rest of the group doesn’t look so sure.
“We’re all going to be there,” Billy says again, like she’s daring someone to cross her. “We stand by each other.”
Mom sighs in exasperation. “Bill, I’m not going to be standing anywhere. I won’t be there. It’s very nice for you to pay your respects, but it’s really unnecessary. Not worth the risk, if you want my opinion.”
Billy doesn’t bat an eye. She turns to my mom, my serene and dying mother, who wouldn’t have had the strength to hike out here to the meadow without us helping her, who can hardly keep herself sitting up straight now, and Billy looks at her like she’s a total moron.
“Mags, sweetie,” she says. “I know that. It’s not for you, dear. We’re going to be there for Clara. For Jeffrey. For everyone else who loves you. And if there’s a Black Wing, it’s all the more reason for everyone to be there. To protect them.”
Mom closes her eyes. “It’s only a funeral.”
“It’s your funeral,” says Billy, slinging an arm around her affectionately. “We love you. We’re going to take care of your kids.”
There’s another wave of whispering from the crowd, this time in agreement.
“I don’t think the funeral is really the issue here,” Mr. Phibbs says suddenly.
“So what is?” Billy asks.
“Clara says Samjeeza is at the graveside. And that he’s hurting, sure, as Black Wings are like to do. But she also says he’s mad at us. I’d say the larger question here is, what are we going to do between then and now to piss him off?”
Okay, so that ruffles more than a few feathers. People start arguing again.
“The last time one of us fought a Black Wing, she ended up dead,” that Julia lady says. “And she sacrificed her life so that the Black Wings wouldn’t find out about the rest of us, in case you forgot.”
This time Christian does not meet my eyes. He’s looking down into the crackling fire.
“We didn’t forget,” Walter says in a low voice.
“It’s understandable that you’re afraid,” says Mr. Phibbs. “But that was seven years ago. We’ve become sleepy since then. Sleepy and safe.”
“You’re careless, Corbett, but you can afford to be,” Julia replies. “You don’t have anything to lose, since your time is almost up, yourself.”
Mr. Phibbs regards her like a troublesome student. “Maybe that’s true,” he fires back. “But we’re at war, in case you’ve forgotten. You can ignore that and go on with your human lives in your human houses and your special camping trips in the woods a few times a year, but the reality is, we’re angel-bloods. This is a war. We’ve been chosen to fight.”
His words ring out in the cool night air, which has gone suddenly still.
“Stop,” Mom protests. “I’m responsible for this mess with Samjeeza, and no one else.”
“Mags, dear, be quiet,” Billy says.
I look around the campfire. Mr. Phibbs is right. Everyone knows he’s right.
“I’ll be there, at the cemetery,” says Christian suddenly, fiercely. “It doesn’t matter who else shows up.”
“As will I,” says Walter, clapping a hand on Christian’s shoulder.
“And me,” pipes up someone else. “To the end.”
They go around the circle, each angel-blood vowing to be there in Aspen Hill Cemetery that day. Even Julia begrudgingly agrees. When it gets to Jeffrey, who hasn’t said anything this entire weekend, he shrugs and says, “Kind of a given, right?” and then Angela says, “Bring it on,” and then it’s me and I just nod, because I’m suddenly too choked up to get the words out. Then our impromptu meeting is adjourned, everyone going back to normal, except that there’s a new energy in the air, because we are angel-bloods, and we aren’t cowards, and we’ve been given a call to battle. Mom looks exhausted and Billy escorts her back to our tent, then returns to the fire to where the other members of the inner circle are gathered to discuss, I assume, what they’re going to do about this situation. I glance over at Mr. Phibbs, who’s still sitting in the circle, leaning back with a pleased expression on his face.
“You’re a troublemaker, you know that?” I tell him.
He raises his scraggly white eyebrows. “Takes one to know one.”
I laugh, but later, when everyone else is asleep, I keep going over what he said. That we’re meant to fight. That this is a war. And that would put me, and Jeffrey, and Christian, and Angela and all the people I care about, right smack in the middle of it.
In the morning there’s this crazy-loud angelic trumpeting, and everyone gets up for the sunrise. This time they haven’t planned an official meeting. We had enough talk last night, Stephen says. He waves us all, even those of us who are not official members, into a circle in the middle of the meadow.
“We want to take this moment to honor Margaret Gardner, as this is the last meeting that she’ll be able to attend,” he says when we’re all assembled. I look for Jeffrey, but I don’t see him. He’s probably sneaking in some extra fishing or something, which makes me mad. He should be here for this.
Mom bows her head and steps into the center of the circle. Everybody summons their wings. Stephen puts his hand on the snowy feathers at Mom’s shoulder.
“You have been a faithful servant and an inspiration to us all,” he says. “We give our love to you, Maggie.”
“Love to you,” murmurs the rest of the congregation, and we all close in, the other members of the inner circle each laying one hand on her wings and one hand on the person next to them, the rest doing the same to the person in front of them, back and back until
we make a great web of angel-bloods with my mother at the center. The sun breaches the mountain, casting her in a pool of radiance, a combination of sun and glory that almost hurts my eyes to behold. The meadow fills with an angelic hum, and then the hum becomes a word in Angelic, the word love, I think, coming across in that multitoned music of the language of angels, or maybe it’s a combination of words, everyone saying a different word that ends up all meaning the same thing, something that transcends translation.
I realize I’m crying, tears sliding down my face and off my chin and falling down into the grass at my feet. And I’m smiling. I have a sense that no matter what, no matter what darkness lies ahead, there is nothing that can overcome this power.
All it takes to punch a big old hole in that joy is seeing Mom struggle as we hike back to the car, Jeffrey, Billy, and I flanking her so we can catch her if she starts to fall. It’d be easier to fly, but we all have gear to carry, which is cumbersome, and Mom’s not safe to fly alone. She keeps saying she’s fine. She’s not. She’s sweating, and twice we have to stop to rest.
“What’s the point?” Jeffrey spits out when we’re stopped the second time.
“The point?”
“The point of the whole congregation. It’s not like they really do anything. It’s not like they could heal her.”
“Of course not,” I say, although the thought did cross my mind, what with all the light and power spilling everywhere and the fact that glory heals people, maybe somewhere deep down I’d hoped that Mom would be miraculously saved, at least strengthened for a few days or something. But eventually that spectacular light faded into regular sunshine, and the congregation dropped their hands, and Mom went back to dying. “Don’t be a jerk, Jeffrey. The congregation cares about us, or weren’t you there when they all said they were coming to Mom’s funeral?”
“We’ll see,” he replies like he couldn’t care less. “We’ll see who actually shows up.”
“They do come.”
“Why, because you saw them in your dream?”
“Yes. I saw them.”
“And what if your dream doesn’t mean anything?” he asks with sudden bitterness. “What if it’s only a dream?”
“It’s a dream, yes, but it’s also a vision,” I say irritably. “Of course it means something.”
“You think it’s part of your purpose?”
I stare at him. I wish I knew the answer to that question.
“It’s the future,” I say.
Jeffrey’s eyes are a blaze of silver fire. “What if it’s not? What if it’s a practical joke somebody’s playing on you? Maybe we don’t even have a purpose, Clara. Just because someone told you that you were put on this earth to do something, to be something, doesn’t make it true.”
I don’t know what’s gotten under his skin, but I do know that he’s questioning everything we’ve ever been taught, and it bothers me. “You don’t believe Mom?”
“Right, because she’s been so upfront with us so far.”
“Hey, what are you two arguing about over here?” Billy interrupts, jogging over to us from where she left Mom sitting at a picnic table at a campground under the trees. “Do I need to break this up?”
“Nothing,” says Jeffrey, turning away from her. “Are we ready to go yet? I have homework I have to do before tomorrow.”
“Yeah, we can go. I think she’ll make it the rest of the way,” Billy says, looking at me. I study the laces of my hiking boots. I wonder if Mom heard any of that. I wonder if what Jeffrey said hurt her, each bad thought, each doubt like a dart striking her. I swallow painfully.
“Everything okay?” Billy asks.
I lift my head and try to smile and nod. “Yeah. I’m good. I just want to go home.”
“Okay then, let’s go,” she says, but as Jeffrey moves away from us, she grabs my arm. “Keep your chin up, okay?”
“I know.”
“Storm’s coming, kid,” she says, smiling in a way that reminds me of how she looks at my mother’s graveside. “I can feel it. Things are going to be rough. But we’ll make it.”
“Okay.”
“You believe me, right?”
“Right,” I answer, nodding.
Even though the truth is, not all of us are going to make it, and I don’t know what to believe.
Chapter 12
Don’t Drink and Fly
It all starts happening pretty fast, then. Mom quits her job. She spends a lot of time in front of the television wrapped up in quilts, or out on the back porch with Billy, talking for hours and hours. She takes long naps. She stops cooking. This may not seem like a big thing, but Mom loves to cook. Nothing fills her with more domestic joy than putting something wonderful on the table, even if it’s something simple like her signature coffeecake or five-cheese macaroni. Now it’s too much for her, and we fall into a predictable pattern: cereal for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, frozen dinners. Jeffrey and I don’t complain. We don’t say anything, but I think that’s when it really hits us, when Mom stops cooking. That’s the beginning of the end.
Then one day she says to Billy and me, out of the blue, “I think it’s time we talk about what we’re going to tell people.”
“Okay,” I say slowly. “About what?”
“About me. I think we should say that it’s cancer.”
I suck in a shocked breath. Before that moment I hadn’t given any thought to what we would tell people, how we would explain Mom’s “illness,” as she likes to call it. Cancer would definitely explain it. People are starting to notice, I think. How she stays seated now at Jeffrey’s wrestling matches. How quiet and pale she’s become, how this one strand in the front of her hair has turned silver and she always wears hats now to cover it. How she’s gone from slender to just plain thin.
It seems so sudden, but then I think, I wasn’t paying attention before. I was so consumed with my own life, my dream, with the idea that it was Tucker who was going to die. She’s been getting weaker all this time, and I didn’t really notice until now.
Some stellar daughter I am.
“What kind of cancer?” Billy asks thoughtfully, like this is not at all a morbid topic.
“Something terminal, of course,” Mom says.
“Okay, so can we not talk about this?” I can’t take this anymore. “You don’t have cancer. Why do we have to tell them anything at all? I don’t want to have another lie I’m going to be forced to tell.”
Billy and Mom share this amused look I don’t understand.
“She’s honest,” remarks Billy.
“To a fault,” Mom replies. “Gets it from her father.”
Billy snorts. “Oh come on, Mags, she’s like a carbon copy of you at that age.”
Mom rolls her eyes. Then she turns her attention back to me. “A rational explanation will help everybody. It will keep them from asking too many questions. The last thing we want is for my death to appear mysterious in any way.”
I still find it crazy that she can say the words my death so calmly, like she’s saying my car or my plans for dinner.
“Okay, fine,” I concede. “Tell them whatever you want. But I’m not going to be involved. I’m not going to call it cancer or lie about it or anything. This is your thing.”
Billy opens her mouth to say something smart-alecky or maybe chew me out for how insensitive I’m being, but Mom holds up her hand.
“You don’t have to say anything at all,” she says. “I’ll take care of it.”
So, cancer it is. But Mom was wrong about me not having to deal. Maybe it would have worked before I got slammed by the power of empathy, but now it’s impossible not to know how everyone is feeling about me. The news that my mother has terminal cancer is like an atom bomb going off at Jackson Hole High School. It doesn’t even take a whole day before everybody, and I mean everybody, knows. First it’s people looking away, some of the nicer girls shooting me sympathetic looks. Then whispers. I quickly know the script by heart. It starts with, “Did you
hear about Clara Gardner’s mom?” and it ends with something like, “That is so sad.”
I keep my head down and do my work and try to act normal, but by the second day I’m suffering through overwhelming waves of sympathy, and this from people who didn’t even bother to learn my name last year. Even my teachers are solemn, with the exception of Mr. Phibbs, who just looks at me like he was quite disappointed in the half-assed paper I wrote on Paradise Lost, for which he gives me a D minus and demands that I rewrite. It’s like I’m a tiny boat adrift in an ocean of pity.
For instance: I’m in a stall in the ladies’ room, minding my own business, when a bunch of freshman girls come in. They chatter like squirrels, even while they pee, and then one of them says, “Have you heard about Jeffrey Gardner’s mom? She has lung cancer.”
“I heard it was brain cancer. Stage four, or something. She’s only got something like three months to live.”
“That is so sad. I don’t even know what I’d do if my mom died.”
“What’s Jeffrey going to do?” asks one. “I mean, when she dies. Their dad doesn’t live with them, does he?”
Amazing, I think, what they know about us, this group of total strangers.
“Well, I think it’s tragical.”
They murmur their agreement. The most tragical thing ever.
“And Jeffrey’s so broken up about it, too. You can totally tell.”
Then they move on to discussing their favorite flavor of lip gloss. Either watermelon or blackberry cream. From my dying mom to lip gloss.
Tragical.
“O goodness infinite, goodness immense! / That all this good of evil shall produce, / and evil turn to good; more wonderful / than that which by creation first brought forth / light out of darkness! Wait,” I say, laying my book on the floor next to my feet. “I don’t even know who’s talking here. Michael, or Adam?”
“Adam,” supplies Wendy, homework buddy extraordinaire, looking down at me from her perch on my bed. “See where it says, So spake the Arch-Angel Michael, then paused, / as at the world’s great period; and our sire, / replete with joy and wonder, thus replied. So now it’s Adam speaking. He’s our sire, get it? I love that line, ‘as at the world’s great period.’”