Christopher Hebert - Angels of Detroit

It felt wrong to her, humoring such petty grievances. But they had to start somewhere. Otherwise there was just too much. And anyway, the places were all empty now, the people who had wronged Michael Boni long gone. For all she knew, the owners themselves had their own bad memories they’d just as soon see forgotten.

Darius’s additions to the list were just as arbitrary. To her at least. They were places he passed on the bus on his way to work, depressing sights that caught his eye. Obstructions in the skyline — towers full of gaping windows, like spent candy Advent calendars; and smokestacks caked with dead soot. They were offenses to the eye, which meant they were often large and prominent and hard to get rid of. On their first try, still working out the kinks, they’d managed to inflict barely more than a blemish.

To the entire list, she’d contributed just one address. And she was saving it for when they were ready.

If she opened the notebook in the back, the plain brown cardboard holding on by just a few untorn tabs, she could see the other list, the dozens of letters she’d begun and then abandoned.

Dear Myles:

I love you, though you think I don’t.

Dear Holmes:

I know it was you who broke my mug, the one with the glazed yellow sun. I forgive you.

Dear Myles:

You always smelled best coming in from the cold.

Dear Fitch:

Last New Years Eve I laughed so hard I peed on your couch.

Dear Holmes:

I was the one who broke your watch, the one with the peeling leather strap.

Dear April:

I tried to like Inez. I really did.

Dear Myles:

I don’t know what to say.

Dear Fitch:

Did you know, the first time we met, that your cousin was trying to set us up?

Dear April:

I also question your taste in men.

Dear Myles:

I know that you don’t understand. I’m not sure I do either.

She meant every word. And that was why the letters were impossible to send.

Only one had she succeeded in signing and folding into an envelope, addressed to April, three states away. That one had been easier — also full of things she meant, but all of them comfortably buried in a lie. A lie somewhat softened, she hoped, by cookies.

The knotty pine booth came from a private club in Hamtramck, a dingy, subterranean dive pretending to be a mountain lodge, bear traps and beaver pelts mounted to the walls.

The bright red molded-plastic booth looked like a piece of playground equipment; she’d found it in a hamburger joint on Woodward.

The third booth came from an east side diner, marbled laminate edged in imitation chrome.

“I was in a library,” Dobbs was saying as they staggered across the floor at either end of a wrought-iron patio table. “I had one of those encyclopedias — you know, the big, heavy kind.” With a melodramatic shiver, he fell silent, implying what she supposed was more of his grisly comic book violence.

He liked to talk about his dreams. He was the palest, unhealthiest person Constance had ever known, but he dreamed blockbuster action movies: explosions, chases, high-wire fight scenes. The villains were interchangeable, but Dobbs was the indestructible hero. Except of course there was nothing heroic about him. Even the table had him gasping, nearly breathless. More than forty years younger than she was, and he let down his end first. At this rate it would be days before they finished.

“The thing is,” Dobbs said, “I’ve never even been in a real fight.”

Constance said, “No kidding.”

By the time they were done for the night, it was three o’clock in the morning. The place didn’t look half bad. They’d managed to squeeze in six tables, three in the center and the three booths along the back wall. No two of them matched. And there was a van full of chairs and lamps and assorted stuff from the housing project, still waiting to be unloaded.

Dobbs sat down at the red booth and poured himself a cup of coffee. “What are you going to call the place?”

Constance came over to join him, her bottom nearly slipping out from under her on the slick plastic bench.

“How about Constance’s?” he said. “Simple but classic.”

“I’ll leave that to you.”

Dobbs lifted his cup, waved it vaguely around the dining room. “This is the future, you know. When everything else collapses—”

“You make it sound romantic.”

“People will remember you,” Dobbs said. “What you started.”

“I prefer when people don’t talk like I’m already dead.”

Dobbs raised his hands in protest.

“Tell me about your parents,” Constance said.

“My parents?”

“These dreams of yours …” Constance said.

He gulped his coffee like water. “You think I’m damaged goods? The product of a troubled childhood?”

She shrugged. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“They’re lovely people,” he said. “There’s nothing to tell.”

“All right,” Constance said. “Then let me tell you about mine.”

In 1941, Constance said, when she was six and Darrell, her brother, three, her family moved into the Brewster Projects. Getting into Brewster then was like winning the lottery. The place was a marvel, clean and shining and new, the same age as Constance. For a family even to be considered for an apartment, at least one parent needed to have a job. Constance had only one parent, and as far as she knew, her mother had never worked a day in her life.

Constance measured her childhood by her mother’s illnesses — birthdays and holidays entertaining herself in dark, curtained rooms. When her mother was away in the hospital, it was Constance’s job to take care of the apartment and of Darrell. This was when most of Constance’s happiest memories took place. Left to themselves, Constance and Darrell slept curled up together in their mother’s bed. In the morning they strolled to school singing “Chickery Chick” in off-key harmony, and each night they ate lukewarm soup in front of the radio until they dozed off, fully dressed. But the bliss never lasted. As soon as their mother was discharged and sent home, Darrell turned feral, tearing at the couch cushions with his teeth and nails, charging at his mother and sister, butting their legs with his head until their mother shouted, “I guess I have to do everything!” and then closed the door to her bedroom until it was time for Constance to bring her dinner.

Her aunts didn’t believe Constance’s mother was really sick. They thought her illnesses were just a way of getting attention, now that she’d lost her looks. Her mother had been pretty once, the best-looking of all her sisters. Constance had seen the photos herself: tall and generously curved, almond-shaped eyes. But now her skin looked like the dust Constance let gather in the far corners under the dresser.

The doctors must have had a name for it, but Constance’s mother referred to her sickness only as “my condition.” Her condition required meals in bed. Her condition made it impossible for her to work or wash dishes or buy groceries or do anything strenuous. Her condition responded well to foot massages and heavy doses of rest. Her condition made noise intolerable, except for when she needed to shout orders at Constance through the bedroom door.

Constance did whatever her mother asked. It had never occurred to her that she had a choice.

“And that,” Constance said, “is everything you need to know about my mother.”

Dobbs was slumped in the corner of the plastic bench, half asleep.

She got up to refill the coffeepot. “These dreams are your conscience,” Constance said. “You know that, right?”

“Yeah,” Dobbs said. “I know.”