“Sorry for lying to you. That was stupid and unnecessary. I should have trusted you to trust me.”
Dennis can feel Dan isn’t angry, which makes it easier for him to relax. He even manages to send Dan a meek smile.
“This is William,” Dan goes on. “And this is Liv.”
“Howdy,” William says, stuffing most of a banana down his throat.
“Nice to meet you,” Liv says, sounding like she’s still a little tense, but at least trying to mean it. “I’m glad we could, you know … make it work.”
“We’ll see,” Mom says, pulling out a chair and looking at Dennis.
He goes to sit.
“Was it your scrambled eggs?” William asks him. “Sorry, but I ate them. Damn, they were good. Can’t remember the last time I’ve had scrambled eggs.”
“That’s … okay,” Dennis mutters. He feels weird just sitting there, while the rest of them are eating, so he takes a slice of bread and starts making himself a sandwich. His tummy feels very uptight, and he’s not sure he can squeeze down a single bite.
“You care to join us?” Dan says, looking up at Mom still standing there.
“That’s okay, I’m not hungry,” Mom says, going to stand by the sink. She turns and leans her lower back against the table, folding her arms across her chest.
“Oh, shoot,” William says, getting up. “I almost forgot about Ozzy. One moment.”
“What are you doing?” Mom says as he goes to leave the kitchen.
William looks at her. “I’ll let in my dog. It’s okay, he’s very well trained.”
“You can’t just open the door,” Mom says, nodding towards the windows. “They are still out there.”
“I know, I’m not stupid,” William says. “I’ll let him in through the vegetable garden—don’t worry, I’ll lure them away first. They’re not interested in Ozzy, so it’ll be easy for him to slip inside.”
Then he leaves the room.
Mom looks at Dan, her expression hard to read. They keep on eating for a few minutes, the silence in the kitchen becoming more and more oppressive to Dennis. He’s done making his sandwich and forces himself to chow down a couple of bites. As soon as it reaches his stomach, he realizes he’s actually hungry.
Then William returns, a German shepherd by his side. “Piece of cake,” he says, sits down and resumes eating.
The dog goes to Dan, licking his hands happily, and Dan ruffles his ears. “Good to see you too, buddy.”
Then the dog goes to the girl, and she lets him smell her hand, then pats him on the head. The dog comes to Dennis next. He copies the girl’s gesture of offering the dog his open palm, and the dog sniffs it, then gives it a quick lick. Finally, the dog goes to greet Mom.
“I hate dogs,” Mom says. She’s talking to William, but the dog reacts to her voice as well, stopping a few paces away from her.
“Ozzy,” William says, looking up briefly. “Find a place to rest, buddy.”
The dog looks up at Mom for a moment, giving off a short whimper, then slinks to the far end of the kitchen and lies down.
“So,” William says, putting his hands together. “Looks like all are present and the disciplinary meeting can begin.”
Dan finishes chewing, puts down his sandwich, then looks at Mom and says: “We need your help. Like I said, we want you to try and reverse this thing.”
“And like I said, that can’t be done.”
“Why not?” William says right away.
Mom looks at him, answering in a voice like a patient teacher having to explain something to a dumb student: “Because it doesn’t work that way. These things can’t just be reserved. They can only be lifted.”
“Explain to us the difference, please,” Dan urges.
Mom runs her tongue across her teeth. “The difference is, reversing a curse would mean to undo it, to make it as though it was never there. That’s not possible. It’s like curing someone of a bad fever: you can’t make it so that the fever was never there.”
“But you can make it go away?” Dan asks. “The fever?”
Mom looks at him for a long moment, then shrugs. “In theory, yes. You might make it go away, but whatever damage the fever has done will remain.”
“So what would that mean?” William asks. “Supposing we could lift the curse off these poor pricks—would it bring them back to life?”
Mom shakes her head. “They’re already dead.”
“So what would happen to them, exactly?”
Mom shrugs: “They would die.”
William smacks his lips and looks at Dan. “Not exactly what we were hoping to hear, huh? Even if we could make a ritual to cure this thing, it would just kill them. Sounds a lot easier to just shoot them.”
“Hold on,” Dan says, looking at Mom. “Could you explain how exactly lifting the curse would work? I know a little about voodoo. I know about the big and the little angel and that thing about how the soul is split in two.”
Dennis is surprised to hear Dan mention these terms. Mom never speaks to Dennis about her beliefs, not directly at least, but he has picked up a few things over the years. He looks at Mom, curious to see her reaction.
She looks at Dan with slightly raised eyebrows. “Where did you learn about that?”
Dan shrugs. “In school.”
“Well, your school is wrong. That’s not at all how it works.”
“How does it work, then?”
Mom is quiet for a few seconds. When she starts speaking, the words come slowly and pensively. “What you’re referring to are the ti bon ange and the gros bone ange. The ti bon ange or the Little Angel is our individual personalities, small, imperfect, vulnerable. The gros bone ange is the collective life force which animates all life and flows in every human being from birth until death. It is eternal and can never be killed or harmed or even stained.”
For some reason, Dennis feels very uncomfortable hearing Mom talk about this stuff. Maybe it’s because he considers it to be crazy, and he’s sure the others will
