Alone in the room, she shut the door and began to cry. A prairie wind shook the windowpanes, startling her, and she composed herself and pressed the flat of her hand against her waist, expecting to feel something inside, but she felt no different, she felt nothing at all. From the space between the bed and the wall, the mangle-faced grocer rose from the dead and pointed his fountain pen at her, and when he opened his mouth to accuse, out poured a river of blood black as ink. What would she tell her parents? Would they send her to jail? She shut her eyes and tried to clear all questions from her mind.
So long ago, it seemed, when he first told her of the Angels, Wiley's voice had intensified, the words spilling over like champagne foam in a flute, such rich passion that she ceased to receive the meaning of his sentences, the battering flow of his paragraphs, and heard only the symphonic rise as he worked himself into a kind of sexualized frenzy. They were to save the world by destroying corruption—especially the authoritarian grip of the state, the church, big business. All they had done was rob a few people poorer than they had been. And shoot a small-town grocer in the face. The thought of Wiley as a father put her on the edge of feeling. Livid, dangerous, he was lit within as few boys his age were, and she had loved that great mane of curls, his earnest eyes, the way he walked defying wind and gravity, how he beat back the sea with chains, how his skin flamed at each touch. She remembered why she had fallen so hard and, once smitten, allowed herself to be subsumed by all that he said, though his words now seemed husks of someone else's thoughts, a screen for his anger and self-hatred. Bad as her father. She clawed at her doubts, pushed them away, and washed her face again, put on new lip gloss, ran a brush through her hair.
The sound of his singing preceded him by half a minute. Morrison and The Doors intensifying as each step drew near till the key clicked in the door, and he came in wired, happy she was up and dressed, swinging a bag of doughnuts by two fingers and grasping a coffee with the other three. Sugar and grease perfumed the room. “Good news, babe. I mapped the rest of the way. Sixteen hours to Vegas, and another eight or nine from there to San Francisco. We can be there by the end of the week and begin again like we planned.” The aroma of coffee and heavy sweetness made the gorge rise in her throat, but she choked back her fears and offered him one last honest smile.
28
Paul was talking, but Margaret could not hear a word he said. The voice in her head overtook his speech, reducing it to white noise, and a part of her took perverse delight in watching his lips part and move, the animation of his features, and the grand sweep of his hands as he rambled. He never could still those doctor's hands as he spoke, how bound to his thoughts were the unconscious gestures, so that he was a mime, a clown making a dumb show, and all Margaret saw was the silent movie.
She counted the days, wistful at each one's passing. After the local newspaper ran a story about the teens’ disappearance, she had expected more from the press. But time passed and there was nothing to report. The newspapers moved on to the next big thing. The police stopped coming round, the man from the FBI had not called since November. Erica did not come home for Thanksgiving. She did not come home for Christmas. For New Year's. Not on the second, the third, the twelfth day. She did not come home in January. She will not make it back in February. No valentines. Not tomorrow. Not next week or the one after. Not in time for spring and the tulips in the garden. Not in time to see the cherry tree blossom and bloom. She will miss Easter, Mother's Day, Father's Day, the whole Bicentennial. She will not be home for the fireworks, the barbecue, the swimming pool. She will not call on the telephone. No telegrams. There will be no letters, no more postcards. She will not see you in September. This whole year will pass without seeing her again. You will not know where she is. She will not be right back, see you soon. She will forget your birthday, his, hers. Nothing you do will bring her back. Jackson cannot find her. Linnet will not. Paul could not. Everyone shuns you, even the Delarosas don't come round with flowers anymore. Erica has hidden herself underground, in the stars, beneath the sea, up above the sky. You may look a thousand years, take a thousand steps, but you will not find her. She is back in the womb, beneath six feet of dust. She is with the angels in heaven. She is in hell.
Paul did not seem to mind that she was not listening, if he could tell. Someone something at the clinic, he said, and somehow some way I sometimes can say a real word. “Anyhow, I hope she's happy now,” he said. “Now that's she expecting. I hope the baby does the trick.”
“Expecting? I'm sorry, dear, I drifted off.”
“Eve Fallon.” He sawed off a hunk of steak and pierced it with his fork. “She thinks a baby might help tame that tomcat husband of hers, and I hope she's right, because the baby is coming, ready or not.”