Men and Angels by Mary Gordon Read Free Book Online Page B

it. What she says.” Do you, my father, mean it, what you say? No, never. Because her mother was beautiful. “I can still fit my hands around your waist,” her father said to her mother. Her mother was small. At eleven, Laura weighed more than her mother. At twelve, she was taller.
    Anne was tall. Laura saw that she was more like Anne than she was like her mother. Her mother would think Anne was pretty. Was good-natured. Was lively and smart. Her mother would like Anne. When Anne told her mother that Laura was the best thing that had happened to the children, her mother would change her mind. She would say, “Why don’t you come home and live for a while. Come and live with me. Here is your room.”
    But Laura would say no. Because none of it was important. There was nothing that she needed now. She would say no to her mother. After she had saved Anne, saved the children. After they loved her. But it didn’t matter if they loved her. It only mattered that she saved them.
    She was so happy now. Before she found the Lord, she would have worried about all these things. Anne. Her mother. Now that she no longer needed anyone, now that her strength was in the Lord, she could feel sorry for Anne. Before, she would have been afraid Anne wouldn’t like her. Now she just felt sorry for her.
    Hélène said Anne had never known trouble. Hélène had been kind to Laura. But people like Hélène were always kind to her. Hélène liked her. But people like Hélène always liked her. Her mother wouldn’t like Hélène. She wouldn’t like her clothes. Hélène wouldn’t make her mother change her mind, think that she had been wrong about her daughter. Hélène’s house wouldn’t make her change her mind. It was a college house, but she did nothing to it. It had no pictures on the walls. The dishes were from the dime store. Laura knew that Hélène’s house was like that because Hélène knew that beauty didn’t mean anything. Often it was a lure. Hélène said that Anne had gotten through the world too easily because of beauty. Anne’s husband had been deceived by it. Hélène said she knew Michael was not happy in his marriage. “He has sold his birthright for a mess of pottage,” Hélène said. He chose a companion with a pretty face, an alluring body, instead of a partner for his mind and his spirit. Michael was a very spiritual person, Hélène said, although it wasn’t evident until one knew him well. But Anne had nothing in her of the spirit. She was a complete materialist. Even what she called her intellectual life was sensual. Pictures of fat mothers with fat babies, that was what she studied. Anne had no ideas, Hélène said. She had no life above the flesh. Putting her hand on Laura’s hand (the palms of her hands were damp) Hélène told her that she would be very good for Anne and for the children.
    When she saw Anne sitting by the window in her living room, looking at the asters in her garden, when she ate the food Anne offered her, when she wore the clothes Anne lent her, she knew she would save Anne and the children. Anne was not a bad person. But she was sinking in the flesh. The flesh of her hands was cool and dry; her forehead was cool. There were pink spots on her cheeks that gave her white skin color. For a while, that first day in the living room, Laura was afraid Anne didn’t like her, didn’t want her to take care of the children. But Anne did like her; she had called her back. She probably had to check on something. Money, maybe. Laura would have worked without money, for her food, her bed. One day Anne, if Laura helped her, would be saved. But now she was drowning. Laura could see her; drowning as the damned souls drowned in flames of eternal fire. She could see Anne as no one else could see her. She was drowning in flesh. Her own cool flesh. The soft flesh of her children.
    From the bedroom Anne had fixed for her, Laura could look out the window to the garden. Now there were chrysanthemums, and