California Angel Read online

  You're a doctor, Stephen. I would have thought you would know that."

  He grabbed her arm and squeezed hard, making her wince. "You walk out that door, Toy . . . I . . . Don't come back."

  Suddenly she felt locked inside a dreadful cocoon of silence. Stephen had turned the television on in the living room earlier, but she didn't hear it. Cars were passing outside on the street, but she couldn't hear them. All she could hear was her own heart pounding inside her chest. In a whisper she said, "Do you really mean that?"

  "Yes, I mean it," he hissed. "I can't feed and clothe the whole city." He began pacing back and forth in front of her. "I was in surgery by five o'clock this morning, and how do I know I won't be called out again tonight. I work hard for my money. These people . . . they're lazy . . . loafers. They want a free ride. That's what we've got in this country now, people that expect other people to pay their way. Well," he said, puffing his chest out before he yelled at her, "they're not getting any free rides from my bank account, and they're certainly not taking advantage of my wife. I won't tolerate it."

  He stopped pacing and collected himself, seeing the look of dismay on his wife's face. Toy always came around, he thought, feeling confident that the situation was resolved. "Don't you see?" he said in a normal tone of voice. "It's all because we can't have children. You've developed some kind of psychosis relating to children. Just like these crazy dreams you're always talking about, telling me that you imagine you're saving children from some terrible fate. It's a form of hysteria, I believe. I think you need treatment."

  Once Stephen had established his practice, he'd asserted his desire to start a family. But Toy couldn't conceive. There was no physical basis for her infertility. Her husband had made certain. She had been tested, probed, poked, and studied. She'd even undergone exploratory surgery. Stephen had also been tested. Nothing was wrong. His sperm count was normal. They had to wait. Eventually, the specialist had said, it would happen.

  "Now that we've got that settled, let's eat," Stephen said, heading for the kitchen. "I'm starving."

  When he reached the door to the kitchen, he stopped and turned back, expecting Toy to be behind him. The front door was standing open, and a chilly breeze whisked into the room bringing a few leaves to rest on the marble entryway.

  eyes with the back of her hand. "I give them money for coats and shoes, things they have to have to come to school."

  Sylvia leaned forward, setting the coffee cup down on the end table. "What kind of coats? This is California, Toy. No one's going to freeze here. I mean, this isn't Idaho where there's two feet of snow on the ground." Then she smirked, her double chin resting on her chest. "Did you give Jesus Fernandez money the other day? Did he come crying to you, claiming he needed a winter coat?"

  Toy nodded meekly, lacing her hands together and placing them in her lap.

  "Well, next time you see him, get a look at what he bought. He bought a leather coat, woman. No one needs a leather coat. A cloth coat or a cheap jacket I can understand. He's a gangster, Toy. He took advantage of you."

  "He's twelve years old," Toy said. "Maybe that coat made him feel important. Maybe he won't rob someone or kill them to get what the other kids already have."

  Sylvia shook her head. "Forget it. What are you going to do about Stephen? Are you going home?"

  "No," Toy said firmly. "He doesn't want me. He made that perfectly clear tonight."

  "Did he say those exact words?" Sylvia asked, tilting her head to one side and staring at Toy. "Did he say, T don't want you, Toy'?"

  "Not exactly."

  "I didn't think so," Sylvia said, thinking Toy was exaggerating the severity of the situation. "Look, Toy, you just had an argument. Go home and seduce him or something. That always worked on Sidney." She saw the look on Toy's face and added, "Well, maybe it didn't work that well. He divorced me." Then she laughed, a wonderful, full-bodied sound that filled the room and seemed to jiggle the light fixtures. "Lighten up, okay? I was just kidding this afternoon. Even if you do end up in divorce court, you'll find another man. You're pretty as a picture, and of course, you're thin. That's all it takes, babe. Those skinny little twigs you call legs brings them in every time."

  "I don't want another man," Toy said. She got up and went to the bathroom, returning with a few squares of toilet tissue to blow her nose. Once she had done so, she continued, "I don't know what I want right now to be truthful. I just want to do something important, something that matters."

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  "I have tissues, you know," Sylvia said. "You don't have to use toilet paper."

  Toy gave her a wide-eyed look, 'it's cheaper and thinner. Why waste the paper? Every time you use paper, another tree dies."

  "Wow," Sylvia said, rolling her eyes purposely, 'i didn't know that. You mean, they make paper from trees? Why didn't anyone tell me?"

  Toy wrinkled her nose and then laughed. "You're a case, Sylvia."

  "So," she said, "you gonna stay with me? Is that the plan?"

  "Can I?"

  "Of course," Sylvia said. Then her face came alive, and she sprang to her feet. "I've got a super idea. Why don't you go to New York with me to my nephew's Bar Mitzvah? We have Monday and Tuesday off anyway because of the district meetings, so if we leave tomorrow night, we'll have all that time in the city. It should be a fun trip. You can meet my brother and his wife, my nephews and nieces. The only day we'll be tied up is Saturday, the day of the Bar Mitzvah."

  "I thought you were going with Louise," Toy said. The thought of getting on a plane and flying off somewhere suddenly sounded appealing.

  "She backed out today. Says she has the flu, but I know she's lying. This dentist she's been after for six months finally asked her out, so she axed our trip." Sylvia stopped and took a sip of her coffee. "Really made me mad, you know. We've already booked the tickets and they're non-refundable. Bet she'll sell you hers for peanuts.

  "I'll go," Toy said eagerly, thinking it was just what she needed. She'd get away for a few days, and it would give both her and Stephen time to think, time to put things in perspective.

  Sylvia seized the smaller woman in a bear hug, lifting her off the sofa. "Great! We're going to have a ball. We'll do Manhattan and I'll show you all the sights."

  Rather than removing herself from her friend's embrace, Toy rested her head on her shoulder and let her continue to hold her. She felt so tired, so emotionally drained. "I love you," she said to Sylvia. "You're my best friend in the world."

  "Mine, too," Sylvia said, reaching up to pat her on the head like a child. "Everything's going to be all right now. You're with me now. kid. and old Sylvia knows how to have fun. Just let that pompous creep you married sit and think about what a louse he is. H the time you get back, he'll be begging."

  "Do you really think so?" Toy said tentatively.

  "You bet your britches," Sylvia said, hugging her to her chest even tighter. "Who in the world could walk away from an angel like you? The man would have to be crazy." She pushed Toy back with her arms and glanced at her clothing, a broad smile on her face. "Hey, you even have an Angels T-shirt. Well, get ready to sweat, Ms. Goody Two-Shoes. You made me miss the gym. Now you have to chase me around the block about five times or I'm never going to forgive you."

  "What would I ever do without you?" Toy said, crying and laughing at the same time.

  "Exactly like Sidney did—move away, make a million dollars, and forget you ever knew me." She pulled on Toy's arm. "Come on. It's time to run."

  Later that evening, Toy couldn't sleep and the two women sat in the dark on the floor in the living room, talking until all hours of the morning. "Remember when we used to do this at school?" Sylvia said, munching on potato chips. "Want some?" she said, extending the sack to Toy.

  "I'm not hungry."

  "You're never hungry. What? Do you think you're saving the food of the world or something by limiting your intake? Sometimes I think you really are loony, you know." She tossed the half-empt
y sack of chips aside, disgusted at herself for eating them. "You're the only skinny person I've ever trusted. Thin people are weird. They aren't wired the same as fat people. When I was a kid, I was even fatter than I am now. I was certain all the toothpick kids in school were from Mars or somewhere. Heck, everyone in my family is fat. How did I know?"

  "You're not fat," Toy said offhand, her thoughts drifting to the past and her own childhood. "Did I ever tell you that I used to pretend I was a nun?"

  "When was this?"

  "I don't remember exactly. I think I was thirteen."

  "How did you pretend to be a nun? You prayed, you mean?" Sylvia chuckled. "Did you walk around chanting? Hey, tell me already."

  "No, I made a nun's habit. I took sheets and wrapped them around my head, then draped them around my body, tying them with a cord. I had this big iron cross I used to wear on my neck. I bought it at a garage sale for a dollar."

  "You never told me your parents were Catholic," Sylvia said, grab-

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  bing the bag of chips again and tossing a handful in her mouth, then crunching them loudly with her teeth. So much lor willpower, she thought, wondering if it would help any if she ate the chips while running in place.

  "They weren't Catholic," Toy answered. "My lathers an agnostic. I went to church only once in my life. It was somebody's wedding. I don't know what my mother believed. We never talked about it."

  "What did your parents think when you dressed up and pretended to be a nun? Didn't they think that was a little strange?" Even though Sylvia knew she shouldn't, she added, "Maybe they should have taken you to a shrink back then and you would have turned out normal. You know, mean and uncaring like the rest of us."

  "Oh," Toy said, recalling the day her mother had come home and seen her in her makeshift habit. "They didn't know. I always did it when no one was at home. Except one day my mother came home unexpectedly and saw me. She just thought I had made a costume for Halloween."

  "Why'd you want to dress up like a nun? I've certainly never wanted to dress up like a rabbi."

  "How do I know?" Toy answered, lifting her heavy hair off her neck. It was damp and sticky. Sylvia had never been into fresh air. She was certain if she opened her window, someone would crawl in and murder her in her sleep. "I was a kid. It was a fantasy like boys pretend to be firemen. There was a Catholic church on the corner, and the nuns wore old-fashioned habits then. I used to hide in the bushes and watch them."

  The two fell silent, and Toy was soon roaming through other memories from her childhood. She'd been a happy, bubbly little girl, always running and jumping, full of energy. When she was eight, she decided to emulate the tightrope walkers at the circus and had strung a clothesline across her swing set. Once she stepped onto it, hands spread at her sides for balance, it snapped and she fell to the ground, breaking her arm. It was one in a long line of injuries: broken bones, bumps and bruises, sprained and twisted limbs. Her mother called her a tomboy. Her father went further, nicknaming her Roy. "We just missed your name, tiger," he would tell her. 'instead of Toy, we should have named you Roy." Calling this rough-and-tumble little girl Toy had been a misnomer from the word go. II she had resembled any toy, it wouldn't have been a doll. It would have been a spinning top.

  For Christmas one year her mother had gone to the Sahation

  Army and purchased a complete assortment of costumes someone else had discarded. Toy would dress up in one of the costumes almost every night after supper and perform for her parents, doing tap dances and making up ballet steps. They couldn't afford for her to take lessons. Her father was a postal worker and her mother didn't work, so money for extras was scarce. Toy didn't realize there was such a thing as lessons, or that a person could really learn to do something so natural.

  But things began to change around her thirteenth birthday. Toy became quieter and more introspective. Her mother assumed it was simply puberty, that she knew she was too old now to dance around the living room in silly costumes. Once she had done her homework, Toy would retire to her room and read or just sit there quietly thinking. Eventually, her reflective states extended to school hours, and her grades started to plummet. When she became ill in her senior year, she had been no more than a B student. After her experience at the hospital, though, she had poured herself into her school work and managed to graduate at the top of her class.

  "You think there's some deep-rooted underlying psychosis because I once liked to dress up like a nun?" Toy asked after a long silence.

  "No," Sylvia said, her eyes half closed, the entire bag of chips history. "I'll tell you what I think, okay? I think we need to go to bed and get some sleep. God, I ate so much salt, I feel like I could float to New York like the Goodyear blimp."

  Toy ignored her and continued. "Stephen isn't a bad person, Sylvia. He's just developed the typical surgeon's attitude: thinks he's God, orders me around, treats me like I'm inferior. When I talk to him about something I'm interested in, he just walks away."

  Sylvia stuck her hand in her glass of ice water and patted her face to stay awake. "How do you feel about that?"

  "I don't like it," Toy said. "No one would."

  "Then I guess your marriage is over," Sylvia pronounced with a sense of finality. She pushed herself to her feet to head to the bedroom before she passed out.

  Feeling downcast and empty, as if she'd just had four teeth extracted, Toy silently followed her friend down the dark hall to the guest room, flopping face first onto the bed.

  Why had she walked out? She'd never walked out on Stephen, no matter how severely they had argued. Toy didn't believe in going to bed angry, and always forced herself to make up, even if she had to

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  give in to her husband's demands. Life was too short to Ik- angry, she

  always told herself. And in every relationship someone had to compromise, acquiesce to the other's needs. She didn't mind that the person was her. as long as Stephen didn't interfere in the things she wanted to do.

  But tonight was different, and Sylvia was right. It was more than Margie Roberts and a penchant for charitable endeavors. Stephen had brought up the dreams, made Toy feel foolish for telling him about them. She'd known better, but the man was her husband. How could a person be married to someone who intimidated her so badly that she was afraid to share her inner thoughts, her dreams? She had always thought that was the purpose of being married, but evidently, her husband did not agree.

  Had she become angry because he had mentioned the dreams? Toy asked herself. Once she had told Stephen, the dreams had stopped. It had been at least six months since she had had one, and she longed for the blissful feeling that accompanied them, the feeling that she had saved some child's life. She knew they were just dreams, fantasies, grandiose delusions, as Stephen called them. She'd never tried to tell him they were real, just how good they made her feel.

  Did she blame Stephen because she didn't have the dreams anymore? In some way, did she think telling him had interfered with the magic?

  The phone loomed in the corner of the room, but Toy refused to call her husband. If she was childish, foolish, and naive like everyone told her, she simply didn't care. She wanted magic, miracles, overnight solutions. She wanted to live in a world where there was hope. Her eyes closed and she tried to recall the specifics of one of the dreams. When that didn't work, she tried to will herself to create a new one. But nothing came—not the dreams, or sleep of any kind. Her heart was racing inside her chest, and there was no way to stop it.

  Finally, she made a commitment. She would go to New York with Sylvia and turn over a new leaf, embark on a new life. Instead of trying to save one child, she would try to save them all. If there was such a thing as a miracle, a divine presence, she would search until she found it. She'd waded through the shallow waters o the world long enough. If she had to, she would step outside again. She'd done it before, she told herself, she could do it again.

  But tears soon
streamed down her cheeks and she curled up into a tight ball, filled with anguish and self-loathing. She was everything

  they said she was—a loony, a goofball, a dreamer. How could an intelligent, rational mind tender such ridiculous thoughts? How could she possibly think that she alone could ever make a difference? It must be like Stephen always told her, that she was no more significant than a fish swimming upstream in a school of millions.

  Then she thought of all the children, the ones with no food, no homes, no parents to care for them. Children who were dying from horrid illnesses like little Margie Roberts, suffering and in pain. From the shadows of the room she could see their soulful eyes reaching out to her, pleading with her. And from the center of her soul she could hear their frail voices crying. Faces from the news filtered into her mind—children slaughtered in senseless acts of violence. How could an intelligent, rational person sit by and do nothing while the world sank deeper and deeper into despair?

  She wasn't crazy, she concluded. It was the people who looked the other way who were crazy. With this thought in mind, Toy finally felt her body relax, and in seconds, she fell into a deep, peaceful slumber.

  you'll have to find your own studio. I have another artist coming over from France."

  Raymond wasn't thinking of where he would go or how he would survive if Hillburn forced him to move out of the loft. The darkly handsome young man with the haunting eyes was staring at the floor thinking of the woman, her bright red hair, her blazing green eyes. He could see her soft, saintlike face as she lay stretched out on her stomach on the floor of the Sunday school classroom, her head braced in one hand, a green crayon in the other. Exactly what had happened that day, Raymond didn't know. All he knew was he had to find her. She had completely taken over his mind. Her image was in every one of his paintings now. No matter what he intended to paint when he began, he always ended up painting her face, her hair, her eyes. His obsession with this woman, this one monumental event in his life, was stifling his creativity, endangering his career.