Lisa Miscione: Angel Fire

“Ready or not, here we go again,’’ she said aloud, without really meaning to.

Her mother had always called her a dreamer and a storyteller because Lydia was forever concocting tall tales to entertain herself. She had always loved to read and found books much more interesting than the real world. After reading Alice in Wonderland at the age of ten, Lydia had spent hours at the creek in the woods behind her house waiting for a clothed forest animal to lead her to a magical world. After reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lydia had completely disassembled her mother’s armoire looking for the gateway to Narnia.

Rather than be disappointed by the failure of life to imitate art, she kept a journal, which she filled with her grand adventures. On the pages of her black-and-white-mottled composition book, she slew dragons with a enchanted emery board, stole magic from a warlock and kept it in a compact which she carried in her backpack (using it when necessary to defend the innocent or to clean her bedroom), led a band of orphans by ship to an island where a rich, lonely woman who could love and care for them had been exiled by an evil witch.

As she grew older, Lydia tired of fairy tales, but not of storytelling. She found she had the ability to perceive certain truths by observing the subtle nuances others failed to notice. She was thirteen when she first realized her ability.

One day when her mother brought her home early from school because Lydia had the flu, she noticed two cars parked in her neighbor’s driveway. One she recognized as her neighbor’s car but the other she had never seen there before. She felt instantly that something was very wrong.

She watched out the window of her bedroom. Her neighbors, Taylor and Claire Brown, a young couple who had lived there for over two years, both worked during the day. Claire had become friends with Lydia’s mother.

“What do you think is going on over there, Mom?’’

“It’s none of our business. Now, I thought you were sick. Get into bed.’’

But soon as her mother left the room, Lydia was back at the window. She saw a petite well-dressed woman leave the house. The woman walked quickly, looking around and glancing at her watch. Five minutes after she drove away, she saw Taylor leave the house. He paused and looked at her mother’s car and then glanced nervously over at Lydia’s house.

Lydia moved behind the curtain to avoid being seen. Then he, too, got in his car and drove off. Lydia was certain he was having an affair.

Perhaps it was because when Taylor and Claire had them over for dinner at their house that Sunday, Lydia had noticed they didn’t touch or smile at each other. Perhaps it was because when Claire came over for coffee the week before, Marion and Claire spoke in hushed tones so that Lydia couldn’t hear. Maybe it was because both Taylor and the stranger had seemed anxious and self-conscious when they left. But Lydia was certain of her conclusion.

“You have to tell her,’’ she said to her mother.

“Tell her what? Just because a young couple is having problems doesn’t mean one of them is cheating, Lydia. They’re thinking of selling that house; that easily could have been their real estate agent. These fantasies are going to get you into more trouble than you can handle someday.’’

Lydia insisted. “Then just tell her that you saw a strange woman in her house.’’

“No. I’m not going to cause trouble like that. Shame on you, Lydia. You’re thirteen years old; you have no idea how complicated relationships are. In fact, though you think you’re a genius, you can’t imagine even a fraction of what goes on in the world. Claire and Taylor need to work out their problems on their own

– without meddling neighbors.’’

Her mother led her back up to her bedroom and closed the shades. Lydia fumed as Marion tucked her in for the second time. But she was tired and sick and fell asleep.

When she woke up that evening, she heard the sound of a woman crying. She walked quietly down the carpeted stairs and heard Claire’s voice from the kitchen. Claire had found another woman’s earring in her bed, the last straw in over a year of verbal abuse and suspected infidelity. Claire had packed a bag and was leaving that night to go to her mother’s home just a town away.

From her perch on the step, she saw her mother through the banister slats, though Claire had her back to Lydia. Her mother raised her eyes from Claire, sensing Lydia’s presence. Marion raised her eyebrows and shrugged sadly, as if to say, You were right. Too bad.

Lydia would remember this incident as the first of many that taught her a powerful lesson: an object out of place, a furtive gesture, something left unsaid could be indicators of a hidden truth. Most people, wrapped up in their own inner narratives, their own secrets, never noticed the subtleties of dishonesty. But very few things escaped Lydia’s notice.

She never acknowledged her peculiar ability with any gravity until the death of her mother years later. Until then, it was always a game. Life was a series of little mysteries and Lydia was a detective putting the clues together.

“Mom, I’m telling you, I’ve seen this guy before. He’s following us,’’ she told her mother urgently. She was imagining herself in an ABC Afterschool Special.

“Oh, Lydia, for Christ’s sake, he is not following us.’’

“He was standing in the parking lot watching us and when we drove away, he pulled out after us.’’

Her mother glanced uneasily in the rearview mirror. Lydia was making Marion nervous. She had seen the man and he looked very strange; Marion just thought he was some pervert leering at her daughter. And she had seen him pull out after them. She made a right turn suddenly without signaling. The red car went driving by without even slowing down.

“Wow, Mom. Good going, you lost him,’’ Lydia said dramatically.

Marion looked over at her daughter and they both started laughing. Lydia put the cap back on her blue eyeliner.

“I got the license-plate number,’’ she said.

“Good for you,’’ said Marion said, playing along. It was a game for her now, too. The threat, real or imagined, was gone.

But Lydia couldn’t drop it so easily. She was trying to remember where she had seen the man before. She knew she had. It was bothering her, making her feel uneasy.

She had the same feeling now, as she contemplated the clippings before her, the Santa Fe sun reaching into her window and heating the room like a greenhouse. It seemed like ever since the death of her mother she’d been hunting demons, trying to reveal their faces to the world so they couldn’t walk around masquerading as normal people, surprising innocent women in the night or little children as they slept.

She turned her mind to the Church of the Holy Name and how she had been there the night before and again in her dreams. What would it mean if all the pieces fit together as she imagined? She felt a tingling of the senses, as if she’d heard a scream in the night that had awakened her from sleep. As if she were lying, paralyzed in the dark, hearing the scream echo in the silence, hoping that it would come again so she could spring into action – but praying that it wouldn’t.

Her study was the heart of the New Mexico house. It was a large room with a twelve-foot ceiling, decorated in warm browns and rusts, deep plum and evergreen, all the colors she found most soothing. The western wall was lined with shelves from floor to ceiling, wall to wall, each shelf filled with the books she had read and written in her life. She kept them all, could never bear to throw any of them away. The southern wall, like most of the southern walls of the house, was glass, exposing the view she cherished. On the floor, a rich brown wall-to-wall carpet felt like velvet beneath her feet. Beside the glass wall a large sofa and overstuffed chair of sienna Italian leather faced each other. Over the couch she had draped a blanket given to her by a Tibetan monk. Velvet pillows of gold, green, and red picked up the colors of the blanket. Between the chair and table lay a huge wooden door she had purchased from an auction of an eighteenth-century Spanish castle and converted into a coffee table resting on a mahogany base. The wall behind the couch was a clutter of original black-and-white photographs from Alverez Bravo, Ansel Adams, Tara Popick, and a photo of herself taken by Herb Ritts for a profile written for New York magazine. A gothic iron candelabra sat on top of the table. On the floor over the carpet lay a large, elaborately embroidered Oriental rug.