“But the other Angels of Destruction?” her niece asked.
“All captured, except for you, and none of them mentioned your name. Two were caught trying to sneak into Canada on the Vancouver ferry. Another one arrested at Berkeley for threatening President Ford. The others got away for two or three years, but they're all gone, done their time I expect, probably out of jail already.”
“I don't want to go to jail. I'm worried about getting caught if I go home.”
Maya raised her glass. “It could work, you know, if you're careful. Follow the rules. Stay low, keep to yourself, don't talk to strangers. You've been underground so long they have you buried. You've become Mary Gavin, and for all anyone knows that's who you are.”
“To Mary Gavin.” Diane joined the toast. A sip remained in her chalice. The three glasses chimed, waking the dogs beneath the table.
14
A note and accompanying flyer had been sent home with the schoolchildren announcing, in rhetoric bordering on the hysteric, a case of head lice in the first grade. Precautions were spelled out in graphic detail, complete with a close-up illustration of a louse, so Margaret made Norah wash her hair, rinse and repeat, and sit under a strong light for a thorough combing and inspection of the girl's scalp. Norah knelt and fidgeted with her nails while the teeth glided through her still-wet hair. From the easy chair, Margaret concentrated on the simple task, taking care not to snag the comb on the tangles of split ends and marveling at the ragged lengths. With each stroke, the pain in her hands flared, but she persisted. “Who attacked you with the scissors, darling? This is all hacked and uneven back here.”
“I cut my own hair.”
“We'll get you a proper haircut.” She smoothed the girl's head with her free palm. “Maybe in time for Easter. When the weather gets warm, you won't be able to hide under a hood.”
“I never pay much attention, just snip and you're done.”
Margaret cupped her hand around the nape of the girl's neck and bent around to peer into her pale eyes. The bruise on her face was fading and had split in two. Barely touching a fingertip to the cheekbone, she traced the contours of the mark, remembering through the smoothness of her skin, remembering a girl through the whiteness in her eyes and the specked irises, remembering through the fineness of her hair, the delicate fretwork of bone and musculature. She was not resurrecting Erica, but lost in her own childhood, beholding her reflection. As a child, she had an ardent faith, said her prayers before every meal, before bedtime, prayers of thanksgiving or supplication. As a child, she readily believed in angels, guardians at her shoulder, Gabriel to Mary, avenging Michael, the angel of Exodus, sent ahead to protect the chosen people. But she had not thought about such things for decades, only the twisted version of Wiley Rinnick's delusions. And then, the one who visited her in her grief, the man in the fedora, who seemed at times to her an outcast from heaven, now that heaven had closed. Nothing left to believe, faint echoes of a forgotten faith until this girl, Norah, dropped from the sky. She was new and freshly scrubbed. The bottoms of her feet were puckered with ripples of loose skin. A scab on her ankle had fallen off in the tub and left a clear pink spot the size of a dime.
Margaret folded back the collar of the child's robe. “What do you say we go shopping soon? You could use some new clothes, and I'd like to take you downtown to Pittsburgh, maybe go to the zoo or the children's museum.” She pictured them holding hands as they crossed the street. “And maybe this summer, I can take you to the beach where I went when I was your age.”
Norah interrupted her reverie. “Where I come from, there was no one to cut my hair, so I just reached around with the scissors. I learned to take care of myself.”
“You certainly did, and you did a good job. But I'm here now, and I'd like you to feel at home, and if you need a haircut or want to get a proper dress for Easter, or maybe go somewhere for a special occasion, you just let me know.”
“Easter is a long way off.”
“Not so long at all. Spring will be here before you know it, and summer. Maybe we could ask your little friend along.”
“You have been very kind to me, Mrs. Quinn. I wish I could stay with you.”
“You must call me Gramma, like when my sister was here. All the time now. My home is your home.”
The child threw out her arms and hugged Margaret around the neck. The scent of baby shampoo filled the air. Margaret spoke cheek to cheek. “I want to tell you something, not because I expect any answer, but because sometimes you just need to say it, do you understand? I love you.”
The girl squeezed more tightly, nearly choking her, and said something that Margaret could not hear, she could not hear any sound but the pounding of her own heart, and the whisper of the oceans from the girl's lips into the shell of her ear.
15