If Angels Fall

EIGHT

“I visited my baby’sgrave this morning.” Angela Donner felt the eyes of her weekly bereavementgroup upon her. It was always hard when her turn came.

Don’t be ashamed, embarrassed or afraid. We’re here together. Thatwas the group’s philosophy. Still, it was difficult to face them. Angela waspainfully self-conscious. She was an overweight, twenty-one-year-old, living onwelfare with her father, who had lost both his legs below the knee to cancer.She couldn’t help being uneasy when it was her time to talk. She apologizedwith a smile.

“Poppa went with me. We brought fresh flowers. We always do.”

Angela fingered the pink ribbon, bowed around the folded,grease-stained, take-out bag she held on her lap, like a prayer book.

“Today, when we got to Tanita Marie’s spot-it’s pretty there in theshade of a big weeping willow-I started pushing Poppa’s chair, he points andsays, ‘Look, Angie. There’s something on her stone.’ And I could see it. Thewind blew this bag up against it. Poppa wanted to complain to the groundsman.But I said no.” Angela caressed the bag, then squeezed it.

“I took the bag and folded it. I took the ribbon from the flowersfrom our last visit and tied it nice round the bag and saved it. Because of allthe hundreds of stones in the children’s cemetery, this bag came to my baby’sgrave. It came for a reason. Just like all of the babies in this city, mine wasmurdered.”

The room’s fluorescent lights hummed. Angela stared at the bag inher plump hands. The group listened.

“But, what’s the reason? Why was my baby murdered? I was a goodmother. I loved her. Why did someone take her? How could somebody be so bad?Poppa says somebody who would kill a baby must be dead inside already. But whycan’t the police find my baby’s killer? He’s still out there. He could killanother baby.” Her voice grew small. “I know it’s been a year, but sometimes,at night, I can still hear her crying for me.” Angela held the bag to her faceand wept softly.

Lois Jensen left her chair, knelt before Angela, ad put her armsaround her. “Go ahead and let it out, sweetheart. It’s all right.”

Lois knew the hurt. Two years ago, her thirteen-year-old son Allanwas shot in the head while riding his bike through the park near their home.Lois was the one who found him. She knew the hurt.

Dr. Kate Martin made a note on her clipboard. Her group wasprogression. Manifestations of empathy, comfort, and compassion were nowcommon. Not long ago, Lois, who was married to a lawyer in Marin County, wouldrefuse to open up as each of the others articulated their grief. Now, throughAngela, Lois was healing. Death, the great equalizer, had taken a child from eachwoman. Now, like shipwrecked survivors, they were holding fast to each other,enduring.

Dr. Kate Martin had endured. Barely.

While writing, she tugged at her blazer’s cuffs, hiding the scarsacross her wrists. She watched Angela cherishing her take-out bag. For Kate, itwas leaves, saved from each visit to her parents’ grave.

Kate was eight when her mother and father were late returning homefrom a movie. Waiting and playing cards with their neighbor, Mrs. Cook. Apolice car arrived at the house. The old woman put an age-spotted hand to hermouth, Kate stood in her robe, barefoot, alone in the hall. Mrs. Cook talked inhushed tones with the young officer at the door, holding his hat in his hand. Somethingwas wrong. Mrs. Cook hurried to her, crushing her against her bosom, with asmell of moth balls, telling her there had been a horrible, awful car accident.

“You are all alone now, child.”

Kate was sent to live with her mother’s sister Ellen, her husband,Miles, and their three sons on their pig farm in Oregon.

She hated it.

They were strangers who treated her as the dark child who had broughtthe pall of human death into their home. She was given her own room andeveryone avoided her. Her only happiness came once a year, when, only for hersake they reminded her, they’d stop work and pile into the family wagon todrive to California to visit the cemetery where her parents were.

Uncle Miles loathed it. “It costs too damn much money and serves nopurpose, Ellen.” He complained during their final trip together.

Throughout the drive the older boys taunted Kate.

“You never smile. Why don’t you stay in San Francisco. You piss usoff.” Quentin, the oldest, was fifteen and love killing pigs.

“Yeah. Why don’t you go and live in the stupid graveyard, you likeit there so much? Huh?” Lewis, Quentin’s sidekick, was thirteen.

Aunt Ellen told the boys to stop. At the cemetery, after Kate visitedher parents’ headstone and gathered leaves, they started back to the car. Theboys fell behind Kate and started up again.

“we’re going to leave you here.” Quentin grinned. His eye spottedthe dark earth of a freshly dug grave nearby. He nodded to his brothers. In aninstant they picked her up. Quentin held here ankles, his brother had herearms. “No Quentin, Please!” Her leaves floated to the ground. The boys carriedher to the open grave.

They dropped her into the grave and looked down on her from itsmouth, laughing and showering her with dirt. “Welcome home Kate.” She lay onthe cool dirt, watching them. Dead silent. Aunt Ellen screamed and screamed asUncle Miles lifted her out.

“You are all alone now, child,”

Uncle Miles had laughed it off. A joke, Kate, only a joke. She wasten. Aunt Ellen studied the horizon. When they got back, Kate took her sewingshears into the bathroom and sliced them across her wrists. She ached for hermother and father, wanted to be with them. She closed her eyes and lay in thetub, remembering the grave.

Quentin, who liked watching her through the bathroom keyhole, foundher. Just in time, Aunt Ellen knew Kate had to be rescued. So for the next fouryears, Dr. Brendan Blake had helped Kate climb out of hell. And at fourteen,she decided to become a beacon to those bereaved of light. There was enoughmoney in her parents’ estate for her to attend Berkeley.

Now at thirty-five, Kate Martin was a tenuredprofessor at San Francisco Metropolitan University’s Department of Psychiatry,where she was the focus of a small academic sensation. It was rumored that herresearch into the impact on parents bereaved of their children throughunnatural death could lead to a university bereavement studies center.

For nearly a year, fifteen volunteers, all parents of childrenwho had been killed, met on campus every other Saturday to discuss theirprivate torment. The corporeal and psychological toll of each child’s death wasalso measured in journals the parents keep.

Kate looked fondly at Angela Donner. The study wasborn with the murder of her-two-old daughter, Tanita Marie. Police had toldKate about a non-profit support group that was working with Angela Donner. Kateoffered counseling, to help her cope with Tanita’s murder. Then she becameconvinced more in-depth empirical studies were needed on the impact of childrenwho had died unnaturally.

She submitted a proposal for a research project, butthe university’s bureaucracy moved at a glacial pace. Despite cutbacks, she knewfunding existed. She lobbied the research committee. Eventually the committeemembers threw up their hands and found her some money-a fraction of what she’drequested-but enough for one year. Through the police, victims’ groups,personal ads, and notices posted around the campus, she found volunteersubjects for the project.

Now, with less than eight weeks remaining, when thestudy was beginning to bear fruit, the plug was going to be pulled. Kate wasconcerned. Patterns were emerging. She’d observed three, possibly four, distinctcycles, and in one case, an extremely unusually phenomenon that exceeded guilt.She was on the verge of understanding it and needed another year. But she wouldnot get another cent from the university. Despite accolades from somecolleagues, her request for more funding was denied and her work deemedredundant.

“Previous studies have clearly shown us the cycles youclaim to have found, Katie.” Dr. Joel Levine, the dean of psychiatry, advisedher to wrap up her research, as he cleaned his glasses with his tie. “You can’tperpetuate this artificial healing process for your group. It’s not fair tothem. Some in the department believe you’re using your subjects as acornerstone for a bereavement center. Write your paper, or a book, then moveon. Go out on a date. You know, you’re far more attractive than you allowyourself to be.”

Kate’s face reddened with fury, the same way it did atthe faculty Christmas party, when the eminent Dr. Levine, married father offour children, groped her breasts and suggested they slip away to “fuck likerabid mink” in the back seat of her Volvo.“Go to hell,” she hissed beforeslamming his office door, startling an undergraduate in the hall who droppedhis books.

As today’s session ended, Kate steepled her fingersunder her chin and informed the group that she had written to The SanFrancisco Star about the project with the hope that a sensitive articlewould give them positive exposure, and perhaps inspire the additional fundingthey needed to continue. She had violated university policy, but she didn’tgive a damn. It was a matter of survival.

That night, alone in her Russian Hill apartment,taking in her view of the Golden Gate, Kate agonized over her decision. Had shedone the right thing? Or was she reacting to Levine’s insult? She sipped aglass of white wine and continued reading files. She worried about each member.Most were healing, but she feared for those who might not recover. Ending thestudy now would mean irreparable damage. Anniversaries and birthdays wereapproaching-the most difficult times. It was coming up on one year sinceAngela’s daughter was stolen and killed. She was going to have a rough time.Then there was Edward Keller, her most unusual case.

She opened his file. An anniversary was coming up forhim. She flipped through her notes, handwritten on yellow legal pads, biting herlips, So many deaths in one incident. He was the most withdrawn group member.The others were referrals from police or victims’ groups, Keller was a walk in.He came to her office after a newspaper ad. A sober man with a whisperingvoice, he embodied pain.

His three children had drowned together in a boatingaccident. He nearly drowned trying to save them. He believed their deaths werehis fault. So did his wife, who left him six months later. His grief wentbeyond guilt and remorse. Kate worried about him. Privately, she advised him toget independent therapy. He was consumed with their deaths, even though theyhad died so many years ago. It might as well been yesterday. His was anabnormal case of sustained grief reaction. He relived the tragedy over andover, condemning himself, begging for another chance. She came to one page thatreminded her vividly of the night he stunned the group. She had written hiswords verbatim: “On certain nights, an energy flows through me, it’s hard todescribe, it’s extremely powerful, but I sometime believe I can bring themback, that it really is possible.” Flagging the note with an asterisk, she’djotted “Delusional” next to it. She flipped back to the beginning of Keller’sfile and checked the anniversary date of his children’s deaths. It was comingup. How was he going to survive?

Kate yawned, set her work aside, and switched on thelate night TV news. The top story was the kidnapping of Danny Raphael Becker.Next came footage of a helicopter hovering over the area, police officerssearching the neighborhood, some with dogs, Inspector Somebody saying that thepolice have no leads, frightened parents vowing to keep their children indoors.A picture of Danny Becker was shown for several seconds, and latter a pictureof Tanita, the reporter saying the police cannot rule out the possibility of alink between today’s case and Tanita’s murder, which remained unsolved. Katefeared for Angela. There was also some controversy over the Sunday schoolteacher who proclaimed his innocence, then committed suicide after he was namedas a suspect in Tanita’s murder. There was file footage of the man’s widowslapping the reporter who wrote the article for The San Francisco Star.Kate groaned. She had forgotten about the scandal over Tanita’s case. What wasshe thinking? Why didn’t she write the Chronicle or Examiner? What hadshe gotten herself into?

As the news droned, she thought of Danny’s parents,Angela Donner, and the people of her group. She switched off her TV, stared outat the San Francisco skyline. More Victims. Always more victims. Suffer thelittle children to come unto me, the malevolent deity.

She smelled mothballs and fresh, cold earth.

You are alone now, child.

I can bring them back.