Hallowed

Mom nods. “Thank you, Carolyn. And if you could do me an enormous favor, please don’t mention this to anyone. Not even the congregation. Please.”

“Of course,” Carolyn says, and then she closes the door.

Mom finally seems to notice I’m here. “Hi, sweetie.”

“Hi,” I answer dazedly, unable to look away from my parents’ hands, still joined.

“How’s your day going?” she asks, the hint of mischief in her voice I haven’t heard for weeks now.

“Oh, fine. I just found out that my dad’s an angel,” I say offhandedly. “It’s kind of blowing my mind.”

“I thought it would.”

“This is the thing, right? The thing you’re not telling me?” Her eyes sparkle. I’m floored by how happy she looks. It’s impossible to be mad at her when she looks like that.

“I’ve been waiting to tell you for so long. You have no idea.” She laughs, a weak but delighted sounded. “But first I’m going to need two things. A cup of tea. And your brother.” Dad volunteers to make the tea. “I think I can still remember how,” he says, and strides off to the kitchen.

That means I’m in charge of fetching Jeffrey.

He’s in his room, as usual. Music blaring. As usual. He must not have even heard the doorbell, or maybe he didn’t care. He’s lying in his bed reading a Sports Illustrated, still in his pj’s and it’s getting close to noon. Slacker. Where was he when I was neck deep in laundry? He glares at me when I come in. As usual.

“Don’t you knock?”

“I did. You might want to have your hearing checked.”

He reaches and turns down his stereo. “What do you want?” I can’t decide how much to tell him here, or how to break it to him. So I go for the direct approach. “Dad’s here.”

He goes still, then turns to me like he really does need to have his hearing checked. “Did you say Dad was here?”

“He showed up about ten minutes ago.”

How long has it been for him, I wonder, since he last saw Dad? How old was he then?

Eleven? Jeffrey wasn’t even two years old yet when Dad left, not old enough to remember anything but those few times we visited him, the birthday cards with cash in them, the gifts, which were typically extravagant (like Jeffrey’s truck, which was his birthday gift from Dad this year), the handful of phone calls, which were generally brief.

“Just come downstairs,” I tell him.

We arrive in time to see Dad burn himself on the tea-kettle. He doesn’t curse or jump back or anything. He examines his finger like he’s curious about what just occurred. There’s no damage to his skin, not even a red mark, but he must have felt it. He goes back to pouring Mom’s tea, setting her teacup on a delicate china saucer with some vanilla cookies he must have found in the pantry. Two lumps of sugar. A dollop of cream. Just how she likes.

“Oh, there you are,” he says when he sees us. “Hello, son.”

“What are you doing here?” Jeffrey’s voice is sharp, almost cracking. “Who are you?” Dad’s expression sobers. “I’m your father.” It’s impossible to deny that, seeing the two of them standing so close together. Jeffrey is like a shorter, bulkier carbon copy of Dad. They have the same hair, the exact same eyes.

“Let’s go see your mother,” Dad says. “She can explain.” It takes her all day to tell the story, because she doesn’t have the strength to tell it all at once. That and we keep getting interrupted, first by Billy, who bursts in and gives Dad a giant bear hug, calls him Mikey, actually gets all teary-eyed for a minute, she’s so happy for Mom. She knew, of course. All this time, she knew. But I guess I stopped being surprised by that kind of thing a while ago.

Then there’s the fact that Jeffrey keeps freaking and walking out of the room. It’s like he can only stand to hear so much before he thinks his head will explode. Mom’ll say something about the way she always knew, deep down, that she and Michael (my dad’s name, which we have almost never heard her utter, these last fourteen or so years) were meant to be together, and Jeffrey will get up, tug at his hair, nod or mumble something incoherent, then leave. We have to wait for him to come back before she can finish the story.

But what a story it is.

It starts with the day of the great San Francisco earthquake. That’s when she and Dad officially met. By the time she gets to this part of the lurid tale, I’d already figured out that Dad is the angel who saved her that day, the one who broke the news to her, told her she was special, an angel-blood. She was sixteen then.

And when she was ninety-nine years old, she married him.

“How?” I ask her.

She laughs. “What do you mean, how? We showed up at the church, said the words, exchanged rings, you may now kiss the bride, all of it.”

“He was allowed to do that? An angel can marry anybody he wants?”

“It’s complicated,” she answers. “And rare. But, yes, an angel can choose to marry.”

“But then why did you divorce? Why did he leave?” Jeffrey asks with an edge of sullenness.

Mom sighs. “An angel can’t stop being an angel. They have duties, tasks that require their constant attention. Your father was given a vacation, so to speak, a seven-year period where he could stay with me in linear time and live a human life. Marry me. See the two of you born, spend some time with you. Then he had to go back.”

For some reason this makes me want to cry. “So you’re not divorced?” She smiles. “No. We’re not divorced.”