Angel by Leonard Henry Scott
Angel by Leonard Henry Scott
The curtains moved.
Sometimes deep in the center of night, in the grim smothering darkness of a closed and curtained room, the eyes play tricks. There had been a quick triangle of light, a sudden nonconforming ripple on the surface of the long drapes which fully covered his closed window on the seventh floor of Quinn Sanatorium. It came and went almost instantly, but its luminous footprint was caught and trapped in the corner of one eye. Even at 94, his vision was still perfect.
Unfortunately, his eyes were the only part of him which functioned even marginally well in the sluggish vestigial thing that was his body. Even his once annoyingly precise engineers’ mind was inexorably degenerating into a bewildering circus of disconnected thoughts. Each day he drifted just a little further away from the person he once was.
“Who’s there?” He whispered.
His voice once led the entire congregation of Grace Episcopal Church from a third row pew. Once its vibrant power rattled the stained glass windows with clear, opulent tones; “Onward Christian Soldiers”, “There’s Room at the Cross for You”, on and on. Now it was a feeble and ruined thing; this once thundering baritone of a voice with barely a sliver of weakness in it (50 years ago, 60?).
“Uh, visiting hours are over.”
He wanted to say more, but he didn’t know exactly what more to say and the effort to speak or even to think was much too great.
The curtains moved again.
This time though, it was more than just a timid rustle. This time, the curtains swept opened completely with a sudden flourish which stirred up the currents of air around his bed and all at once filled the room with the soft clear light of a high crescent moon and a thousand stars. And there, silhouetted against the open night sky was the still, silent figure of a woman. Her dark outline was etched into the sky and perfectly framed in the naked window. But her features were altogether swallowed in shadows.
“Visiting hours are over,” Eddie repeated calmly.
There was no cause for alarm, no reason for concern. Some visitors simply were not familiar with the tedious litany of rules.
Slowly, the woman began to move noiselessly across the wooden floor, patches of moonlight sticking to her dress and her hair. She Her footfalls made no sound as she advanced closer until she finally stopped at the head of Eddie’s bed. There was something odd about her. She was there and yet somehow, she wasn’t. There was an ethereal lightness in her motions as though she had no substance at all, like an unfinished picture or a person made of smoke. Her skin had a vague transparent quality and Eddie could easily discern the entire outline of the window frame through her body.
As the woman knelt down beside him, the meager light from the naked window washed over her face and caused it to glow. She was smiling.
“Hello Eddie,” she said in a soft, familiar voice.
Eddie nodded in return and cordially smiled back
“You can see me!” She said, large eyes wide with surprise.
“Of course.”
He shrugged. But then it occurred to him that there was something about her voice, something precious. There was something about that voice that was all at once on the very edge of his thoughts. Eddie’s pitifully damaged mind blurred the days, the nights, the weeks and months together, routinely distorted the simplest events. But though the stream of his life in recent years was often jumbled and confused, the voice, this voice, remained a clear constant in his head.
“Yes” he said. “Yes, yes….yes.”
His mouth dropped open and his eyes darted nervously about as they examined the contour of her face, the shape of her chin, her hair. And then he knew, there could be no mistake. Even though the darkness concealed the true color of her eyes, he knew that they were hazel and clear as windowpanes. To say that he remembered her smile would not be entirely correct, for the image of it had never left him. And the ever present light of this certain smile had routinely haunted his dreams.
“Jenny?” Eddie asked, barely able to speak, afraid to say her name out loud for fear she’d vanish.
“Yes”
‘Yes’…Yes.’ He thought, Jenny…. is it really you?
Suddenly there was no strength left in him and his flaccid, tired body began to fold inward. He reached out one trembling hand to touch her face as the great burden of his torso slid back down into his gathered bed sheet. She lightly pressed her palm to his cheek. Her touch was like the feathery caress of a warm night sky, so light in fact that he wondered if he had actually felt it at all.
“You are so handsome, ” she said softly and he could feel the gentle rhythm and gentle caress of her words.
“Even more handsome than I remember.”
Jenny’s smile broadened as she bent closer to his face. He squinted through the darkness to see her better. It was so difficult to believe that Jenny, or at least some apparition of Jenny, was here with beside him. He couldn’t recall that she’d ever come to visit before. She appeared to be no more than 25 years old, slender and pretty, with long raven hair and light brown lingering eyes. So many things about Jenny came to his mind all at once, how his heart would beat just a little bit faster when someone mentioned her name, how he couldn’t help but smile whenever he thought of her.
“It’s been a long time, Jenny. I’m here now, you know, in this place. I’m, I’m…. ”
Tears welled up in his perfect eyes.
“I know,” she said and the smile dropped briefly from her lips. Eddie remembered her sweet, consoling touch. It was unlike any other experience in all of his long life.
“Do you remember the last time we saw each other?”
Eddie didn’t have to think at all.
“Of course, Jenny.”
He said immediately. “It was in the park, last summer”
She moved her lips closer to his ear. Her long fragrant hair spilled across her shoulder. He could almost feel the warm cat’s breath tickle of it on his neck (almost).
“That’s right. We went to Grant Park.”
Her close voice, her definite, penetrating words were palpable and intimate as the feel of her bare skin against his.
“It was late in July. We had a picnic. Do you remember the picnic, Eddie?”
“Oh, oh yes!” He said with feeble excitement, watery eyes wandering off in some vague direction through the mist of years.
“That was a long time ago, several years I think.” He smiled. “But I remember the picnic in, in the park.”
“Grant Park,” Jenny said patiently, her voice low and even.
“Grant Park,” Eddie repeated, closing his eyes now and relaxing into the warm, soothing cradle of her voice.
“We brought a huge basket of food, enough for ten people it seemed, fried chicken, ham sandwiches and chocolate cake that my mother had just made that morning. Also, there was a large thermos of ice cold lemonade. It was a picnic just for the two of us. You brought your red and black checkerboard blanket from the car and Lyle Crimmons’ Band played all afternoon and late into the evening. We ate. We talked about so many different things, everything and
nothing. We laughed quite a bit. I don’t know why, but that day everything seemed funny.
“Then, later on as it started to get dark, we strolled along through the park listening to the music. It was a soft summer evening, warm and still, with the scent of honeysuckle hanging in the air. Occasionally, someone would light a firecracker in the distance, or send up a roman candle left over from the 4th of July. We walked hand in hand and talked away the evening, just so happy to be together that it didn’t matter what we talked about or even what we did.”
Jenny stopped abruptly and the next few moments passed in heavy silence. Finally, Eddie opened his eyes and stared deeply into her face. Now, the smile was altogether gone and her clear hazel eyes were large and sorrowful, the sad dispirited eyes of someone who had been abandoned and forgotten. He had seen those eyes too often at Quinn Sanatorium in the old ones left to rot inside their silence. She looked quietly down into her lap. After a time, she said in the faintest whisper.
“You asked me to marry you.”
On the third finger of her left hand was an engagement ring, the same ring he had given her on that day in the park.
“And then,” Jenny continued her voice diminished and wistful.” Afterwards, much later when the park was practically deserted, we found the perfect little spot, a tiny clearing in the bushes near the lake. And there on your red and black checkerboard blanket, on a bed of soft pine needles, we made love for the first and only time.”
She thought for a moment, and then added, “that was over seventy years ago.”
Eddie wasn’t surprised, seventy years, five years, two weeks, in a sense it was all the same, for time had no particular meaning to him.
“Has it been that long?” He asked matter-of-factly.
“Yes,” Jenny said in a very soft voice. “And it was the most wonderful day of my life.”
The two of them fell silent. Jenny seemed to rest her head on a corner of Eddie’s pillow She was the special one. Jenny had been an elementary school music teacher who loved her students and patiently nurtured even the faintest spark of talent each one may have possessed. She was a poised and elegant woman, an accomplished pianist who played with such complete absorption, such brilliant sensitivity that her music seemed almost too personal to share. He would watch her and listen to her play with rapt fascination, unable to take his eyes away for even the briefest moment. Jenny would sit erect with perfect posture at the upright Sohmer piano in her family parlor, her rapid fingers moving flawlessly through the keyboard, her soft angelic face lost in the blissful serenity of absolute concentration.
They would have been married. They would have been happy and whatever he finally achieved in life would have been better, greater, more satisfying if Jenny had been with him to share it. There had not been anyone since, not in thought, word or deed. He went down through the long solitary years reliving that day in the park, playing it over and over like a favorite record. His loneliness overflowed with thoughts of Jenny. There was truly no space in his heart for anyone else after she died.
“You died!” Eddie exclaimed suddenly, jerking his head back with surprise and staring intently into her face, a face that seemed to be increasingly more human that ghost. The glowing translucence of her skin slowly dissipated as she appeared to become more and more real. And he remembered the gentle feel of her hand on his, her flesh against his, warm and exhilarating, that night under the stars.
“That’s right.”
Things slowly began to come back to him through a small clear spot in the persistent haze which had to covered his mind. He remembered that day in Grant Park, he and Jenny together in the soft sheltering pines by the lake. It was the perfect memory of the most perfect day in his life. It was something he had carried with him always like the treasured photograph of a dead child.
But that was not the last time he saw Jenny. And that particular memory was one that he had always struggled desperately to suppress. Because the very next (and the last) time he saw Jenny, she was laid out in a copper colored coffin, in a beautiful white dress. He remembered the candles and the choking stillness. The air was thick and pungent with incense. He remembered the low, somber tones of the organ at Grace Church. He remembered the ritual, its smoke and sadness; the liturgy, its grim and solemn melody of words.
(…”Let us pray… Let us pray…Let us pray”).
All of it came rushing back at once.
“You died!” Eddie stammered. “You drowned on August 4th. Your mother told me. The two of you had been on vacation for almost a week at the seashore. You were going to be coming home that very day, the day that you drowned. You went in for a morning swim. You kissed your mother on the cheek and ran out into the surf.”
Eddie paused, wheezing and out of breath. He reviewed the words they hung in the air to be certain he remembered correctly.
“They looked for you for much of the day, without success. Then….then the evening tide returned your body to the beach, much further down than they thought you would be.”
He quickly moved away.
“You can’t be here….not if you’re dead.”
Jenny shook her head slowly up and down, keeping pace with the halting pattern of his words.
“You can’t be here….”
Eddie looked at her questioningly.
“….Can you… ?”
But Jenny did not respond. She stared at her folded hands and continued to shake her head as if she agreed with everything he had said. She continued to do that even after Eddie had finished speaking.
“Yes,” she said finally.
“Yes, I can”
Eddie looked at Jenny with bewilderment. His eyes squinted down to slits. He tilted his head and craned his neck to face her as directly as possible, and asked with some skepticism.
“Are you sure?”
He reached out to touch her shoulder. But his hand went right through her and he could see it poking out through her back. She seemed to be there, somehow. But then again, she wasn’t.
“Yes, I am,” Jenny replied, nodding her head patiently.
“I did die and I am here. I had been swimming and I went out too far. I got caught in an undertow. And I panicked. It was horrible. And I drowned. So…”
She shrugged, as if her unfinished life with all of its promise was some trivial, inconsequential thing.
“….Yes.” She said. “I did die on that day a long time ago. But Eddie I don’t feel dead and I am most certainly here.”
Eddie relaxed a bit and placed his palm through the smoke that was Jenny. He pulled it out and looked at it to see if some residue of Jenny was on his hand.
“Yes. Well, I’m here in a sense, but not entirely.”
“Okay,” Eddie replied, not having the faintest clue what she was talking about.
“I died, and you continued to live. Yes. And I have missed you every day of every year that we have been apart. I resented what had happened. We would never be married, never have children. All I wanted was to find you and reclaim the life I had lost. So, I was never able to leave. There are many of us still here, who cannot cross over. Though we can observe the living, we are unable to participate in life. I’ve banged on your window and shouted your name a thousand times, but you never could hear me. If I tried very hard, sometimes I could maybe rattle a cabinet door, but nothing more than that.
“I’ve watched you many times, clinking your pipe against your glass humidor. I could hear the tinkling sound of it. I could smell the rich fruity aroma of your tobacco and feel the air moving around you. I’ve watched you read away the long winter nights, sitting in your big leather chair, jiggling your feet and sipping your glass of scotch. I’ve watched you carefully studying huge long rolls of blueprints at your work table, still as the furniture itself and so deep in concentration that you seemed not even to breathe. I’ve watched you for hours and hours as you slept. I would stand at the head of your bed or kneel down on the floor beside you, almost as close as I am now. But it was so frustrating, because although I could see you, be close to you, I was completely unable to reach through and touch you just to let you know that I was there. I would sit on the couch and talk to you, pretending that we were really together. But you never heard me.
“You seemed so lonely, even though I was with you. And as the years passed, I realized that my visits brought you no comfort at all. I could hear you speak my name and it made me very sad. Then, for a time I prayed you’d find someone else to help ease the empty hours.”
He thought of Jenny now. But that was certainly not unusual because in all the long years without her there was never a day when she was not on his mind. They would have been married. And Eddie believed deep to the core of his soul that anything he would have achieved in life would have been greater, better, more satisfying if Jenny had been with him to share it with him.
Eddie smiled.
“Nobody could ever take your place, Jenny.”
“I know. I know,” she said softly, wringing her hands in despair.
“I was burdened by your sadness, until it finally became clear to me that you and I were destined to be together. So, I waited.”
“I’m glad you’re back. I missed you.”
Jenny studied Eddie’s face for a moment.”.
“Your living time is ending. The barriers between us are slowly peeling away. That is why we were able to make contact.”
“I’m dying?” Eddie asked, tentatively rubbing his brow as if checking to be certain that he was still there.
“Yes. Soon, very soon you will cross over. But I can’t bear to witness that moment. And it is something that you must do alone. When I drowned in the ocean, I was alone and when your time comes, you must face death your own alone.”
Eddie thought about this for a moment.
“I’m dying,” he said steadily.
Life held little meaning for him. In earlier years he had his work to occupy his mind and much of his time. But now, the days were heavy and repetitive; long days without purpose.
Eddie smiled and touched Jenny’s cheek and this time he felt something, or thought he did; something very delicate, something almost real. And it caused his heart to race.
To his eyes, she was fully there with him and her perfect skin gave no hint of death. She bent to kiss him lightly on the forehead. And as she did, an almost imperceptible current of air tickled his skin. It was the touch of her, very faint but it was there. It was real. The two of them remained close to each other for several minutes more, neither wanting to break the spell.
Finally, Jenny said.
“We will be together very soon and we will be just as we were on that wonderful day we spent in Grant Park. Then, we will never be apart ever again.”
Eddie turned his head away to study the blank wall in silence. It seemed to him now that he and Jenny had gone to Grant Park just the week before. But that couldn’t be true because he was now all at once an old man now, old and sick. Yet it was all so clear in his mind. He recalled how the large round buttons felt like silver dollars between his fingers and how easily they came undone He remembered the softness of the night and the sound of distant music. He remembered the wall clinging vines of new blooming wisteria, the scent of it heavy and sweet in long still evening.
And when he looked at her again, he noticed for the first time that she was wearing a floral print dress, perfect for a hot day in July. It was the same dress she had worn on their day in the park. It looked exactly the same as he remembered it on that day in the park and how he recalled it for so many years, over and over in his dreams.
“Eddie?”
Her pale skin was luminous against the bright starry night.
“Yes, Jenny.”
The fog was slowly lifting from his mind and now he even understood what she was about to say.
“I have to go.”
Jenny stood up, hastily smoothed her dress, and then turned to Eddie with a painful smile.
“I know. He said propped himself up on one elbow.
“Goodbye, for now.”
“For now,” Jenny replied with a broad smile.
“You know, Lyle Crimmons’ Band is still playing in the park”
“Grant Park,” Eddie replied.
He also knew that Grant Park no longer existed in his reality. It had been sacrificed in the name of progress over thirty years before. A new stone and glass complex of sterile, unimaginative office buildings now covered that entire site.
“Yes, Grant Park.”
Jenny turned and walked quickly across the room. She stood by the window for one motionless moment a bright silhouette the moonlight. It was as though she was trying to decide whether to leave or to stay. Jenny glanced back to Eddie and smiled.
“Soon,” she said.
Then all at once she gathered the hem of her dress, stepped up and across the sill, through the closed window and out into the night sky. Eddie stared at the blank window. She was gone.
“Jenny!” He called out to the empty window in a voice that broke off in pieces. Logically, calling wouldn’t do any good, but it’s human nature, just as one instinctively yells “STOP” to a thief as he drives off in his car. Yelling doesn’t help. But he did it anyway.
“Jenny!”
He wanted her back.
“Jenny!”
The incredible idea that his Jenny returned to him after all these years stirred him to life. And Eddie pulled himself up onto the points of his rickety elbows and fixed his perfect eyes on the sky filled window. Then, slowly he maneuvered his body to the very edge of the bed, twisted himself to one side and forced his legs to the floor. And suddenly, all at once he was on his feet teetering on weak trembling legs. He held fast to the headboard for support. Still, he was standing, something he had not done in over six months. Eddie knew that this miracle would end soon when the burden of his dead weight became suddenly too much for his withered legs to bear.
There was little time and so Eddie threw himself forward in the hope that his inertia would carry him all the way to the window where Jenny had been. It didn’t. But as he felt himself falling, he veered to one side and crashed into the wall yet managed to remain on his feet.
Undaunted, he gathered himself. Then, much more cautiously, continued along inching his way in a slow, shuffling motion toward the distant window. All the while he struggled to remain standing. But Eddie was determined. He would be with Jenny this night and forevermore. Finally, he arrived at a place where only one small triangular space separated him from the window. He paused, took a breath, and pushed off the wall with all of his strength throwing himself wildly at the closed window.
If Quinn Sanatorium had been a modern building Eddie might have splattered himself against its thick, unyielding glass like a swatted fly. But at almost two hundred years old this ancient hospital was as rickety and feeble as he was. So, his careening body crashed right through the old, tired window in a great shower splintered wood and shards of broken glass.
And out into the sky he went.
Building, moon, parking lot, building, moon, parking lot, reeled over and over across his perfect eyes. Eddie the rag doll spun and pin wheeled down to earth. And the asphalt parking lot rushed up to meet him. It crashed into him like an unavoidable runaway wall.
And everything stopped (for a moment or a thousand years).
Eddie opened his eyes. His heart was racing. His pajamas were drenched with perspiration. All around was peaceful and quiet. He was in his bed at Quinn Sanatorium. The drapes were tightly drawn. He lay perfectly still for a moment and stared about the darkened room.
Something was wrong.
Immediately, he threw the covers off, got out of bed and went to the window. He pulled back the drapes and scrutinized the unbroken, closed, locked window.
A dream, he thought as the room filled suddenly with moonlight and the glitter of a thousand stars. Distant buildings shimmered in the bright night sky. But there was no sign of Jenny, no sign at all.
A dream? He thought again.
And then he realized something for the first time. He was standing, standing by the window. That was impossible. But it was true. He had just gotten out of bed and walked across the floor to the window. There was no pain at all. In fact, it was easy, as easy as walking used to be so many years ago.
And that is when he knew.
Reluctantly, Eddie turned all the way around and looked toward his bed. There, curled up under the covers was a thin, decaying old man with no hair and a still, gaunt face that glowed in sky lit room. His eyes were closed, as though he were asleep. But he wasn’t. No sound came out of him and he could have been a store mannequin or a scarecrow. He was a ruined and ravaged thing finally at rest. It was painful to look at the old man.
Eddie turned away. He held his hands into the shower of bright moonlight streaming through the window. They were the hands of a young man, smooth and strong. He smiled and ran his fingers through his thick, dark hair. It was true. He was now again as he once was so many years before.
Eddie stared out into the night. And then, without the slightest hesitation, he stepped through the closed, locked window out onto the sky. He walked lightly through the air, high above the grim, flat-roofed buildings of the city, among and between its forest of majestic spires and towering glass facades. He walked off swiftly, confidently toward Grant Park where he knew Jenny would be waiting.
After a time, he could hear the faint but distinct sound of music.
* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Leonard Henry Scott 2023
