wall? Why do I always feel like you're poking around under the plumbing?'
'Because that's where the bugs are.'
We spent several moments in silence. The room was cluttered and threadbare but as clean as Sally Oldfield's front seat. A picture of a woman in a beehive hairdo turned out, on closer examination, to be Mary Claire, squinting into the California sunshine as if its dazzle obscured her future. Finally Caleb Ellspeth came in carrying an invalid's tray. On it were three cups that were even worse-matched than the ones I used at home, a sugar bowl, and a creamer. He looked too frail to carry the tray, and Eleanor started to get up to help. I had to grab her wrist to keep her down.
'Just in case anyone changes his mind,' he said, putting the tray down in front of us. 'Me, I can't drink this stuff without a little help.' He began to spoon sugar into his cup. 'Okay,' he said, 'let's get it over with.'
'I want to know about the beginning,' I said. 'How you got into the Church. How Angel became the Speaker. What happened to you and Mary Claire.'
He snorted. 'Me and Mary Claire,' he said.
'Anything,' I continued, 'about how the Church works inside.'
He stirred his coffee. 'Is this going to be in the papers?'
'Not with your name in it,' Eleanor promised.
'If you tell me,' he said to her, 'I'll believe it.'
Eleanor took out her pad. 'When did you join?'
He shrugged. 'Mary Claire joined first. About eight years ago. This was in New York, where Angel and Ansel were born.'
'Ansel?' Eleanor said.
'My son. Anyway, she liked the Church pretty much, gave her something to do when Ansel got her down, which was most of the time.' He put down his spoon and studied the surface of the invalid's tray. 'Ansel's brain- damaged,' he said flatly.
'I'm sorry,' Eleanor said.
'Me too. Where was I?'
'In New York,' she prompted.
'Yeah. So she joined and she kept at me to join, and I wasn't that hot for it but Ansel got me down sometimes too, more than I could tell her, so finally I went with her and wound up hooking into a Listener.'
'Did it help?' I asked.
He looked at me reflectively. 'Didn't hurt,' he said. 'Nah, that's not right. Sure, it helped. I couldn't talk to Mary Claire because she always wanted to believe that it'd all be hunky-dory in the end and that I was the one who could make it happen. Anyway, it wasn't as hard on me as it was on her. I was in the Navy and I was gone a lot, you know? And she was always home, always having problems with the kid.' He took a sip of coffee. 'Ansel, I mean,' he added. 'Ansel was pretty rough on her. It's not easy when you're a woman, knowing that something came out of your body that probably ought to be dead. Anyway, that was how we felt at the time. So, yeah, it helped. It gave me someone to talk to.'
'And when did you come to California?'
'Not long after that. Mary Claire wanted to come, she was crazy about little Anna, who was the Speaker then, right? And I managed to get a transfer, and we came. The four of us,' he said. He swallowed once. 'You're not drinking your coffee, miss.'
'Sorry,' Eleanor said, taking a brave pull at it. 'Just listening.'
'Listening,' he said with an unamused smile. 'Let's hear it for Listening.'
'So you came to L.A.,' I said. 'Then what?'
'Things were better at first. We got a Mexican dame to hang around with Ansel, and Mary Claire started spending more and more time at the Church. There was a new Speaker then. It was okay with me if it made her happy, even when the bills started to add up and I figured that the Church cost more than everything else in our lives put together. So I was working at the naval station in Long Beach and she was passing out stuff at the Church, and so what? Like I say, it made her feel better.'
He tilted his head again in the same listening attitude we'd seen at the door. I hadn't heard anything at all. 'Excuse me a minute,' he said, standing up.
'May I come with you?' Eleanor said unexpectedly.
He shifted his weight uncertainly. 'Sure,' he said at last. 'I mean, I guess so. You're pretty. He might like to look at you.'
We followed him out of the living room and through the kitchen, a fussy, bleak, single man's kitchen with an old chipped gas range. The door at the end of the kitchen was ajar.
'These were the maid's quarters,' he said. 'I guess everybody had a maid then. Got its own bedroom, bathroom, everything. All I had to do was put in heat. California people don't think maids need heat.' He pushed the door the rest of the way open and said, 'Quiet, now.' Eleanor nodded soberly and we all went through the door.
I stopped in my tracks so suddenly that Eleanor bumped into my back. 'Gee,' she said.
It was like Dorothy stepping out of the house and into Oz. Here, everything was color. Two walls were painted bright yellow and a third was peach. The fourth, the one that held the door we'd come through, was covered with a kind of middle-earth fairyland, complete with mountains, castles, hobbits, and elves.
The entire ceiling was plastered with pictures. It must have taken Ellspeth days to paste them all up there. Illustrations cut from nineteenth-century children's books were interspersed with pictures of Disney characters, rainbows, waterfalls, an autographed picture of the Roadrunner and the Coyote signed by the genius who created them, Chuck Jones. There must have been two hundred of them.
In the center of the room was a hospital bed cranked halfway up. The chemical smell was strongest here. In the middle of the bed, lying on his back and connected to a gleaming chromium respirator, was a little boy.
He had Angel's golden hair, but his body was contorted and misshapen. His fingers clawed anxiously at the air. The respirator covered the lower half of his face. Ellspeth smiled, and years fell away from his face.
'Hello, darling,' he said. 'Look, I've brought you some new friends. See the pretty lady?'
'Hi, Ansel,' Eleanor whispered. 'What beautiful hair you have.'
Ansel's fingers extended and two of them pointed toward Eleanor. Some kind of a sound came out of the mask.
'Well, well,' Caleb Ellspeth said. 'Well, well.' Eleanor went past him and took the crooked hand in hers.
'Aren't you the lucky boy?' she said. 'Your own room and your own window. I never had my own room when I was little.'
It was true. Eleanor had grown up in the back room of a Harlem grocery. She'd slept in a double bunk bed with her two brothers until she was twelve.
Ellspeth picked up a glass and held it in front of Ansel's face. 'Lemonade,' he said. 'I'll make you some lemonade in a few minutes and give it to you.' He looked at Eleanor, who was stroking the yellow hair. 'Maybe the pretty lady will bring it if you're good.'
Ansel's fingers had curled around Eleanor's palm. She looked back at me.
'Sure, I will,' Eleanor said. 'In fact, why don't I stay here? You finish talking and I'll keep Ansel company. Would you like that, Ansel?' The boy blinked.
'I couldn't ask you,' Ellspeth said.
'You don't have to,' Eleanor said. 'But if you don't think Ansel would like it…'
'He'll like it,' Ellspeth said. 'Won't you, Ansel?' Ansel held on to Eleanor's hand.
Ellspeth backed slowly away from the bed. 'Call if he's any trouble,' he said.
'He won't be any trouble,' Eleanor said. She was beaming. 'I've just thought of a Chinese fairy tale that I'll bet Ansel has never heard. I'll bet you don't know any Chinese fairy tales, do you, Ansel? Is there a chair I could sit on?' she asked Ellspeth.
'Sure, sure,' Ellspeth said, as if embarrassed. He pushed a fragile-looking chair over from the wall and Eleanor sat down without letting go of Ansel's hand.
'That's better, isn't it, Ansel?' Eleanor said. 'Now we can be closer together. Now, listen, do you know where China is? No? Well, it's a long way away, farther even than New York, where you were born. Things in China take a long time to happen, and this is a long, long story, so if you go to sleep while I'm telling it to you, you won't hurt my
