Chris Bohjalian - Secrets of Eden

IT SEEMED TO matter greatly to the state troopers from Vermont whose idea it had been to go to Statler the week after Stephen Drew had arrived at my home. I told them that I had been planning to visit Amanda for a while. The truth is that Amanda and I see each other at least every other month, either because I venture to Statler or she is in Manhattan meeting with galleries. I am confident that on one of these visits my angel will reach hers and my wounded but no less remarkable sister will begin to heal. Ah, but whose idea had it been for Stephen to come along with me, the troopers kept asking? I could see how pleased they were when I admitted that it had been Stephen’s. I had proffered the invitation, I said, but he had been hinting. He had been fascinated by Norman’s osprey when he’d been at my loft in Manhattan; he had wondered about how Amanda had handled the deaths of our parents. He had remarked on the beauty of the Adirondacks and how-despite his proximity-he rarely seemed to visit those rugged mountains. He even told me how he could go for a Michigan, a Plattsburgh, New York-based concoction consisting of a steamed hot dog on a steamed bun smothered in meat sauce and onions. And so I suggested that he join me, and he agreed without hesitation. He didn’t offer even token resistance, not a single “Oh, I couldn’t,” just to be polite.

And I was thrilled. It was important to me that we were together. His aura was in total disrepair, and he needed to be in a world that was wholly new to him-a place where his aura might be free of memory and association and thus could heal. Moreover, our bodies were absolute canyons of want that week. Certainly the aura hungers, but so does the flesh. I used to dance; I know the pleasure the body can offer. And so yes, I wanted Stephen Drew with me.

“THAT’S AN OSPREY,” Norman was mumbling, and I looked up from my tea at the picnic table that served as my sister and brother-in-law’s dining-room table in their log cabin. Stephen was staring at Norman’s shelves of ospreys with angel wings and the way the morning sun gave them an elysian glaze as it poured in through the wide, eastern-facing windows. Stephen had recognized right away the similarities to the raptor I had insisted on buying from my brother-in-law for my loft in the city.

“It’s very good,” he said to Norman. The two men were standing together. Stephen’s hands were folded behind him, and Norman’s were jammed into the pockets of his ragged blue jeans. “Heather explained to me about the wings, how you allowed yourself to imagine what an angel’s wings might look like. It’s haunting. Very creative.” I don’t believe he had meant to sound condescending, but he had. And I knew instantly what was coming.

“I didn’t have to imagine the wings,” Norman said, his voice low and curt. Then, his body hunched over, he stalked from the log cabin, and I knew he was going to find Amanda in the vegetable garden, where she was weeding.

Stephen turned to me, trying to gauge either my reaction or the magnitude of his offense. He sat down beside me, his legs straddling the bench.

“What was that about?” he asked.

I slid my mug of tea toward him and offered him a sip. A little grudgingly he took one. “You came across a bit patronizing,” I said.

“I didn’t mean to. Last night he seemed fragile to me, but not especially temperamental.”

“Oh, I think you diagnosed that right. He is fragile. And I can tell he’s worried about Amanda. But he also takes his work seriously,” I said. I took back the mug and placed it on the picnic table and then wrapped his fingers in mine. “And he really didn’t need to imagine the wings,” I explained.

“I do hope you’re going to tell me he had a beautiful painting as a model,” he said. “Something from the Renaissance, maybe.” By then he knew of my first face-to-face experience with an angel in the basement of my dormitory at college. He knew of the other times I had been blessed with encounters with angels as well. He was skeptical but patient.

“Nope.”

“If Norman has seen an angel, too, then why is he so… ”

“Damaged?”

“That’s a good word.”

“We’re all mortal. We’re all damaged. We still need to be able to welcome the angel into our realm. We must be hospitable. We need to return the angel’s love and be willing to live our lives accordingly. He’s not there yet. He’s still too guarded. Too solitary. Angels are sociable. They rather like showboats.”

“Where was he?”

“When he saw the angel?”

“Uh-huh.”

“In Ray Brook.”

“The correctional facility?”

“That’s right. It’s about sixty miles from here. He was in for robbery. He needed money for drugs, and over the course of five days he hit a half dozen liquor stores and convenience stores in Albany. It was quite a visible rampage, and I still find it appalling that it took nearly a week before he was rounded up. He didn’t hurt anyone. He’s not the type who wants to hurt anyone. Nevertheless, he had a pretty violent method, and it could have ended very badly for someone behind those counters-or for Norman or a police officer. He would go in and smash a bottle on the counter in front of the kid at the register. That would be his weapon. It was, I gather, extremely intimidating, especially since it was evident that Norman was seriously strung out.”

In the trees that bordered the yard, I saw a chickadee light on a branch and I watched a brown creeper spiraling up the side of a maple. I had told Stephen before we left Manhattan that Norman was bipolar, which was why as a younger man he had wound up on illegal drugs. There had been no one to diagnose and treat him and so he had treated himself in the only way he could imagine. Now, however, he was properly medicated.

“And he saw this angel in prison?” Stephen was asking me.

“Uh-huh. He came to his cell while the other prisoner was sound asleep. Lights were out, but still the small room grew brighter by far than it ever did during the day. I gather the one window they had was very small. And Norman saw perfectly the rows of feathers on the angel’s wings, as well as their shape.”

“What did the angel say to him?”

I thought for a long moment before answering. “In all of the things I have shared with you about angels, have I ever described a verbal exchange with one?”

“I guess not.”

“We can no more hear the voice of an angel-at least in a literal way-than we can see the face of God.”

“Ah, but the angels spoke in the Bible. Think of Gabriel’s comforting words to Mary in Luke.”

“Mary shared Gabriel’s visitation with the disciples many years later. I have no doubts that an angel came to her when she was a very young woman. But it has always seemed more likely to me either that Mary remembered the comforting presence in a fashion that grew more conventional as she grew older or that the men who wrote the Gospel put words into the angel’s mouth.”

“There are a lot of Christians in this world who would seriously question that interpretation.”

“And there are a lot of Christians in this world who nonetheless buy my books,” I told him, and he chuckled loudly. I hadn’t meant this as a joke, and I hadn’t meant to convey with it the sort of edge that he would tell me later he had heard in the remark and had caused him to laugh. I had simply meant that the historiography of Christianity is a subject worth discussing and there is a continuum of belief among Christians. I tried to rein in his smirk by reminding him that Baptists think very differently from Episcopalians and more people in this country believe in angels than in evolution.

“Touché,” he agreed. Then: “So the angel said nothing to Norman.”