Angel Interrupted - Chaz McGee
Chapter 1
Love is squandered by the human race. I have seen people kill in the name of love. I have watched others torture themselves with it, bleeding every drop of joy from their hearts because they always hunger for more, no matter how much love they may have.
Love is different when you are dead.
It becomes less self-serving and less specific. It transcends the whims of the chemical for a simple desire to be near. My love for a stranger can be as profound as my love for the woman and children I left behind when I died. Love has become both more tangible and more important. Could it transform my fate? Love is, I tell myself, the answer.
I have come to know all these things and more in the months since my death. I try hard to remember these lessons, since I failed so miserably to learn any when I was alive. I was too busy drinking my way through my days and running from the love I was given. Death is my second chance to understand life. So far, I have learned that no one is as important or as alone as they think, that kindness is the reason why people survive—and that evil is as real as love when it comes to the human race.
I have learned these things while wandering the streets of my town, unseen and unmourned, contemplating the failures of my life and the mysteries of my death.
I could dwell on the mysteries of my death—god knows I still don’t understand it—but on a fine spring morning I prefer instead to dwell on the mysteries of love. For example, why do we give physical love such importance when it is, truly, the most fleeting love of all? Love comes in as many forms as there are people walking the earth. Just this week I have loved, among others, three children playing school in the park, especially the small boy wearing glasses who took his pretend role as a student very seriously indeed; the waitress at the corner coffee shop who smiles at her solitary customers out of happiness, not because she feels sorry for them; the pimple-faced grocery boy who stopped to pet a stray dog outside his store and fed it hamburger when no one was looking; and, of course, my Maggie, my replacement on the squad.
All of my infatuations, with the exception of Maggie, tend to come and go. They are as different as each day is new. Today I was in love with an old woman. It amused me to no end. I would never have noticed her when I was alive. I would have looked right through her, walked right past her, relegated her to the ranks of all the other white-haired ladies that crowded the edges of my life. But now that I am dead, I find I cannot take my eyes from her. She is exquisite.
She doesn’t look like you would expect. If she had looked the part, she would have been tall and elegant with slender hands and silver hair and a finely carved face of angular perfection. Instead, she is a plump dove of a woman, round faced and rosy cheeked, her eyes bright pools of blue among crinkles of pink skin. Her hair is cropped short, often tucked behind her ears, as if she does not want anything to get in the way when she looks life in the eye.
And that, I think, is where my love for her is born. I have never met anyone quite like her, not in life and not in death. She is content to be exactly where she is. She feels every moment of her day with a willingness that takes my breath away. Life glints off her in bright flecks; she is sunlight sparkling from a spinning pinwheel. She sprinkles diamonds in her wake as she moves through her house and sits in her garden. She is always alone, and yet she is always content.
I have searched the hidden corners of her life and seen the photos of younger times. I have followed her, unseen, through her tidy house, certain I would spot signs of regret. But though she lives alone—the man in the photographs has obviously passed over, and I see no evidence of children to comfort her in advancing age—I do not feel sadness in her, not even at those times when she slows to examine the images of her past life. Happiness flows from her like silver ribbons and entwines her memories. She pauses, she feels, she moves on. I envy her certainty.
This morning, she was sitting on a small metal bench in a corner of her garden. Her tranquility was so great that rabbits hopped along the garden path without fear and chewed clover at her feet. Birds bathed in their concrete bath inches from where she sat. A sparrow lit on the arm of the bench, inches from her, rustling itself back into order. The old lady saw it all with bright eyes, soaking in the life surrounding her.
I could not tear myself away from her. I had followed her for days now, absorbed in learning the secrets of her serenity. To be near her was to live life in infinitesimal glory. She was the opposite of what I had been.
A breeze blew past, ruffling her hair. She closed her eyes to enjoy the sensation. I was so lost in watching her that I failed to notice I was not her only observer.
“Excuse me,” a timid voice said.
The old woman opened her eyes.
A man stood on the edge of her garden, waiting permission to speak. He was a weighed-down man in both body and spirit. His flesh sagged with years of bad food, though he could not have been older than his early forties. He reeked of cigarettes. His face, though perhaps once almost delicate, had become doughy and lackluster. His spirit, too, was heavy. I could feel it clearly. All the things he had not said in his life—love left unspoken, anger swallowed, regrets not voiced, apologies that stuck in his throat—they all encumbered him. His body slumped under the weight of these unvoiced emotions and I knew he would grow old before his time.
“Please, come into my garden,” my white-haired muse said calmly, unsurprised to see him at her gate. “I believe we are neighbors, are we not?”
“We are,” the man said, shuffling into her tiny paradise with an awkward politeness. He stood near the birdbath and did not seem to notice the flash of wings or the frantic thumping as creatures fled from his presence.
He smelled of stale beer and fried food, an odor I had lived with perpetually while alive but had since come to think of as the stench of self-neglect and disappointment.
“I live six doors down,” he explained. “With my mother. Or, I did live with my mother. She died last fall.”
“I see.” The woman’s voice was kind. She recognized the loneliness in him and, though she did not feel it herself, she understood how it could cripple others. “I’m so sorry to hear that. I had not seen her for a long time. I wondered where she had gone.”
“She was bedridden for several years before she passed,” the man explained.
“And you?” the woman asked. “What are you doing with your life now that she’s gone? Here, please—sit.” She waved her hand at a metal chair by a flower bed blooming in a riot of blues and purples around a miniature pond. But the man chose only to stand behind it, his hands gripping the curve of its back.
“I work,” he explained. “I’m a chef at the Italian restaurant on Sturgis Street. And I volunteer. Actually, that’s why I’m here.”
“I hope you aren’t here about me.” The old woman laughed. “I am quite fine. I have no need for meals, on wheels or otherwise.”
He smiled with an effort that told me it was an expression he seldom wore. “No, not that.” His fingers twitched as mine used to when I needed a cigarette. “I keep watch, you see, in the park. I watch over the children.”
The lady waited, her face betraying nothing.
“I’m part of an organization,” he added quickly, as if her silence meant she thought him peculiar or, worse, suspected him of being the evil he purported to prevent. “It’s not a big deal. I just keep tabs on the people who come and go. Jot down license plate numbers sometimes. Keep an eye on the children. I mostly work nights, preparing food for the next day, so I like to walk in the mornings when they play.”
“I see,” the old lady said. “You are Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye.”
A spark lit inside him. This time, the smile came easily. “That’s my favorite book,” he admitted. “How did you know?”
“Many years of teaching school, my young friend.”
He nodded and wiped his hands across the tops of his pants, leaving streaks of flour on the denim. “I have a favor to ask. But you’ll think it’s strange.”
“I’m too old to think anything’s strange,” she assured him.
“There’s a man in the park. Sitting on a bench.”
“Perhaps he is enjoying the weather?” She lifted her face to the sun. “It is the finest of spring days. I have been sitting here for an hour myself.”
“I don’t think so,” the man said reluctantly, as if hating to spoil her pleasure. “I’ve seen him now for several days in a row, sitting on the same bench for hours, watching the children play. Sometimes he sleeps or pretends to read the newspaper, but he is secretly watching the children. I’m sure of it. Once you suspect, it’s easy to tell.”
A cloud of sadness passed over the old lady’s face. She knew too much about the world to question the possibilities of what he implied.
“I wonder if you might go with me?” the man asked. “To the park? To take a look at him to see.”
“To see what?” she asked.
“To see if you think he is a danger or if, maybe, well . . .” His voice trailed off.
She looked at him and waited, unhurried, willing to let him take his time.
He glanced about him as he searched for the right words. “I need you to tell me if you think he is a danger to the children or if he’s just someone like me who lives alone and likes the company of the park. His life could be ruined if I made an accusation. But a child’s life might be ruined if I don’t.”
“Well, then,” the old lady said, rising to her feet as she made up her mind to trust him. “Let’s just have a look, shall we?”