Future Home of the Living God(26)
Perhaps his wife had gone back to the car for her purse, or perhaps she was coming from another store. He looked both ways along the sidewalk, impatient. Perhaps they were buying shoes for their daughter and he needed help deciding, or perhaps the child hadn’t liked any of the shoes that were displayed in the store. The little girl was a small version of the mom, pretty and alert. She wore a pink sundress with white daisies printed all over it.
Suddenly, the little girl spotted her mom and pointed at her; the officers were attempting to coax her along to the squad car. The mom wouldn’t go. The male officer began to pull the pregnant woman’s arm and the female officer, poker faced and wooden, had now positioned herself on the other side of the woman and was trying to lift her. The man in front of the shoe store bolted forward and the pregnant woman cried out and flung herself toward him. People on the sidewalks and in the parking lot now stopped still to watch, frowning. They must have noticed that the pregnant woman was strikingly pretty, and her smooth rounded belly made her even more sweetly vulnerable. Her husband approached swiftly looking as though he had a reasonable query on his lips. The police ignored him and started dragging at his wife. She planted her feet in refusal. Her husband was a medium-sized man, but suffused with anger and protective belligerence he seemed to grow larger. His neck swelled and his eyes narrowed, the veins in his throat pumped. He grabbed the male officer and tried to wrestle the man down, but the police officer, more agile and trained, quickly flipped the man onto the ground and drew his gun. He pointed the gun at the man’s face. The little girl, who had followed her father, stopped short and began to cry, her face a crumpled flower. A bystander pulled the girl into the crowd. The female police officer succeeded in pulling and pushing the pregnant woman all the way up to the car, but the crowd had now grown. Several people had begun to shout. A terrible sound came from the mom—a wail, a shriek, a roar—as she was stuffed, kicking, into the car. The male officer handcuffed the husband, sitting on the small of his back and twisting his arm. He was pointing his gun at the bystanders, who shied back, though some were still yelling. The officer was young. His lips disappeared into the white rock of his face until he was all teeth. He jumped into the car and drove off, not quickly, no sirens wailing, so there was then an unreal and frozen quality about the whole scene in which the only sound to hear was the high-pitched, broken sobbing of the child.
I’d hunkered way down in my seat by then. I had pulled up my knees and wrapped my arms around my thighs so that I was balled protectively around you when your father returned with my wrapped sandwich and a large soda in a waxed cup, the straw pushed inside the cross cut into the leak-resistant top.
“Did you see it?” I said. “They took away a pregnant woman.”
Your father looked at me, his brown eyes round and still. “I was in there debating mustards. I missed it.”
“What should we do?”
“Did anybody see you?”
“No.”
We drove quietly and carefully out of the parking lot. The little girl was still sobbing. People were bent over the handcuffed man. I rolled up my window. As our car moved away I experienced a sinking sensation, a crawling panic, nausea. I closed my eyes and let it overcome me and swamp me. The feeling boiled up like an inner stink. By the time we reached home, I understood that I couldn’t bear that I had done nothing. Little sweetheart, I had to protect you. But still, I was ashamed.
*
We walked in the back door so at first I didn’t see the note that had been slipped underneath the front door, a note in Sera’s handwriting.
Don’t call us, honey, and don’t leave any messages. We’re all right. Stay safe. We took all of the records.
The Names of Angels
Zaphkiel, Zadkiel, Camiel, Raphael, Haniel, Michael, Gabriel, Malchideal, Asmodel, Ambriel, Muriel, Verchiel, Hamaliel, Zuriel, Barbiel, Advachiel, Hanael, Gambiel, Barchiel, Geniel, Enediel, Amnixiel, Azariel, Cabiel, Dirachiel, Scheliel, Amnediel, Ardesiel, Nociel, Abduxuel, Jazeriel, Ergodiel, Ataliel, Azeruel, Adriel, Egibiel, Amutiel, Kiriel, Bethnael, Geliel, Requiel, Abrinael, Aziel, Tagriel, Alhoniel, Cherub, Tharsus, Ariel, Seraph, Uricus, Amaymon, Paymon, Egyn, and then there is also Phil.
The Angel Phil is the seventh Olympic spirit of the moon. According to a book and manuscripts long banned in my church, the Angel Phil can change all metals into silver. He governs all lunary things and heals dropsy. He can show us the spirits of water and make us live three hundred years. He has a great, full body, soft of color like a black, obscure cloud. A swelling countenance with bloodshot and watery eyes. A bald head. Teeth like a wild boar. His sign is rain. Sometimes he appears as a king riding on a deer. A little boy. A woman hunter with bow and arrows. A cow. A goose. A garment of green or silver. An arrow. A creature having many feet.
And sometimes he is just Phil.
Except for the part about the bloodshot eyes, the bald head, and teeth like a wild boar, the description of your father, my angel Phil, is metaphorically accurate. It is taken from the Treatises of Dr. Rudd, which reside in the Harley Collection of manuscripts in the British Library. But I am sure that other sources, primarily myself, would describe Phil in more intimate depth as sweet, hot, big, funny, good-natured, a liberation-theology Catholic who cannot operate in any other church.
We fell in love last year. Or, more accurately, Phil fell in love with me. Working on a Christmas play we gradually got to know each other—coffee, drinks—but we carefully kept ourselves in the company of others. It was not until months later, as we stored props and riffled through equipment one evening in the basement of the church, that we found ourselves suddenly alone together. Phil put the wings on. I helped strap them over his T-shirt. He turned around. His beard and thick hair looked absurd with the wings. We both went silent.