Angel offered to join me for the trip to Maine State Prison, which said a lot about how dull his day might otherwise have been.To be fair, I agreed to detour via Rockland, where Angel could kill a few hours at the Farnsworth Art Museum, which he liked, while I went on to Warren.Louis was in New York—I didn’t ask what he was doing there, on the grounds that there were some things I was better off not knowing—while his partner elected to stay in Portland.These days, the two men spent more time in Maine than New York.Portland had grown on them, but they were also older, and the pace of life in the Northeast suited them better.
Before we left, Angel asked me to take a photo for his passport renewal.I took four, none of which met with his approval.
“Do you have to make me look so old?How about moving back a little?”
“To make you look younger,” I said, “I’d have to be in a different zip code.”
“Just try.”
“You need to be more than a distant figure in a landscape.It’s supposed to be your passport photo, not something by Caspar David Friedrich.”
I made a few more attempts, and he finally conceded that one of the dozen was acceptable.
“It still reminds me of a mugshot.”
“That’s bitter experience talking,” I said.“But thanks to my efforts, it’s now the mugshot of a marginally younger-looking man.”
I let Angel take care of the music for the ride, and he picked a playlist of yacht rock put together by the musician Questloveas a tribute to the late chef Anthony Bourdain.Louis wouldn’t have allowed us to listen to it—he’d have sooner walked to Rockland—so it felt like we were thumbing our noses at him.While I drove, we spoke of my daughter Sam, who had recently commenced studying criminal justice down in Lowell, Massachusetts.Ultimately, she hoped to become a private investigator, though it was possible that her studies might open her eyes to alternatives.Private investigation was a hard way to make a living—even if done right, when it was just tedious.I’d never figured out how to do it right, which was why I had so manyscars.
“That guy really did a job on your nose,” said Angel, who’d been checking out my profile since we passed Bath.
“Macy assures me it adds character to my features.”Macy and I had been seeing each other for a while.(She hated her first name, and didn’t have a second, so Macy she insisted on being, even with me.) I was in love with her, and thankfully, she felt the same about me, otherwise it would have been awkward.“And there I was thinking I had enough character to be getting along with.”
“Nobody needs that much character,” said Angel as we crossed Montsweag Brook.“You get any more characterful and you’ll be dead.”
Angel finished the apple he’d been eating, wrapped the core in paper, and placed it on the dashboard to dispose of later.Discards from cars drew animals to the road, and animals drawn to roads eventually ended up as roadkill.
“How’s Sam doing down there among the great Massachusetts’ unwashed?”Angel asked.
“Holding her own,” I replied.“I wish anyone who crosses her the best of luck.Plus, Lowell’s an okay town.”
“Yeah?”
“It has a quilt museum.”
“Be still my heart.”
Angel was quiet again for a time, then: “And Jennifer?”
Ah.Jennifer was my first child, who had died with her mother back in the 1990s.Jennifer still came to me.This Angel knew,but rarely mentioned.When last I’d heard her voice, Jennifer was frightened.
i should have hidden myself better
i should have hidden us both
And through her eyes, I’d glimpsed what scared her so: It was an angel, but one immense, curious, and deeply, coldly destructive.I had not spoken of this to anyone, not even Macy.I did not know what it signified.I hoped only that the angel’s gaze would pass on, and that a young girl waiting by a lake for her father to join her could hold no fascination or represent no threat.Even if I was wrong, what could I do?I could not intervene.Jennifer was a dead child in a dead land.But if the angel persuaded her to go with it, she would be lost to me.The prospect was unbearable, which was why I chose not to think or speak of it.For now, I believed her to be safe.If it came for Jennifer, I would know: I would hear her screams.Still, I wasn’t sure why she stayed there, waiting.I knew it was for me, but not so we could enter the water together and be swallowed up like the rest.We had another purpose, one that remained concealed from me.I could not say the same for Jennifer.
Now here was Angel, speaking her name.We were in uncharted territory, he and I, but the time for mapping it had come.
“Why do you ask?”
Another silence from Angel.Finally: “Because I’ve seen her.She came to me, like she comes to you.She still does, right?”
“Yes,” I admitted.
“Lately?”
“I’ve felt her close, but she hasn’t spoken, not since the spring.March, I think.Yes, March.”
