I saw him suck in breath, his teeth clamping, and then he was gone.
Mother and I stood there, breathing heavily, regaining our composure. “The name of God disturbed him,” she said finally. “He could be demonic in origin. Not good.”
I wanted to dispute her, shaken as I was. “He said he would never hurt me or Daniel.”
“Be careful how you define hurt,” she said. “You know the expression about the road to Hell. I would be less concerned about his intentions and more concerned with how in God’s name you’re connected to him. I’ll reinforce protection around the entire household to try to keep him out. If he hasn’t the good sense to stay away, we’ll mentally recite the 23rd psalm.” She turned her head toward the arch leading to the dining and living rooms. “Hush now. I hear your father coming.”
I nodded.
“In the meantime, we have enough to handle with your financial and marital problems. Oh, hello, dear.”
My father came into the kitchen and stopped, staring from my mother to me. “I know that look on your faces. All right.” He wearily pulled out a kitchen chair. “So tell me what’s wrong.”
Mother sat opposite him. “Bill, Leigh Ann feels they’re on the brink of disaster in Queens. She hasn’t told Richard yet, but she wants to stay here, for us to put them up until they get resituated. I told her they could.”
Father sat quietly, contemplating it. I could tell he didn’t like it. “There goes my peace and quiet.” He sighed. “Well, first, I think we ought to tell Richard this great plan of yours, Leigh Ann. It’ll be crowded, but if you think it’s that bad, and your mother wants you to stay, okay. But you’ll have to tell him and hope he takes it well.”
Mother got up from her chair. “I’m going upstairs to use the bathroom and check on the baby. I’ll be back.”
I slid into the chair. “I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean to impose on you and Mom.”
“We’re your parents,” he said. “We’re not going to turn you down. But men have their pride, and he may not take this well at all.” He lowered his gaze to avoid looking at me, and said, “I told you not to marry him. But you wouldn’t listen,” then shook his head at the stubbornness of children. “Why don’t you make yourself useful and get me a cup of instant coffee?” I got up and began searching for it. “Bottom right-hand drawer. And by the way, Leigh Ann—don’t tell your mother this—but if that bum of a husband of yours doesn’t get a job and earn his keep within a reasonable amount of time, I’m kicking him out. You and the baby can stay, but I’ll kick him the hell out!”
When Richard came back that night, Dad led the conversation, telling him I didn’t want to return to Queens, and that he would drive his truck back to the apartment on Sunday, following Richard in the Volkswagen, to collect our belongings and bring them back to Philadelphia.
Richard reacted oddly, chiding me with more than a hint of disgruntlement for not discussing this with him beforehand, but he also seemed relieved. He agreed that this would give us a chance to start anew, and he returned to Queens with Dad that Sunday, packing and loading our personal belongings in the truck, then insisted on staying in Queens to settle affairs and say goodbye to friends, since we had one week of paid rent left on the apartment. I later discovered, rather rudely, that one affair he stayed to settle had been with a woman I’d never met, and only found out about due to a dangerous legacy she had passed on to Richard, who had then passed it on to me.
If Richard had played his adulterous games in the 1990s, the news he brought back the following Sunday might have been my death sentence. But the AIDS virus had not begun to spread rampantly among heterosexuals in the early 1970s, and at least Richard had the common sense to tell me he had syphilis. Early diagnosis allowed him to cure it with penicillin. He strongly advised me—his departmental words exactly—to see a doctor and get some penicillin for myself.
I immediately called a Planned Parenthood clinic, let them take a blood test, and was also put on penicillin. The doctor said he would call if there were further complications, but I had apparently escaped Richard’s foolhardiness, as no further problems surfaced medically.
Emotionally, I had to confront the truth, two truths to be exact: that Richard had been unfaithful to me, and that the dark spirit calling himself Bael had good cause to ask me to refuse Richard’s sexual advances.
I needn’t have worried about Richard making further moves on me. He knew how deeply upset I had been about his cheating and the syphilis. He told me he’d be staying with his own folks until we resolved our marital problems. I won’t deny that I was vastly relieved to hear this. But I never believed he was simply being considerate of my feelings and my family’s comfort. It seemed to me he really wanted his freedom. He even told my father that he’d done a foolish thing and felt I’d need time away from him before I could forgive him. My father didn’t respond to that, already furious with him, for Father was a man who held steadfast grudges. But he did tell Richard to find a job and act like a good husband to me, and then perhaps his wife might forgive, if not forget, the bad marital beginning.
I neither forgave him nor forgot, and from that moment on, I no longer loved Richard.
CHAPTER 3
No one in my family blamed me. They seemed to accept my separation from Richard as the lesser of two evils, as if they thought the future would be far more horrid if I stayed with him. I agreed.
I finally told Mother, on a quiet Monday afternoon two weeks after moving back to Philadelphia, of the warning the dark spirit calling himself Bael had given me, and my initially pegging it as possessive jealous intrusion. Mother listened carefully as I related the psychic conversations I had had with him, those last two days in Queens.
“Are you sure you haven’t sensed him in the slightest way since your first night home?” she asked.
“Not at all. It’s almost as if his only purpose was to prevent me from catching VD.”
“That doesn’t jive with his story about returning to claim you, obviously as a lover, which would be an intrusion into a mortal woman’s life.” She cupped her chin in her hand, her eyes taking on the distant look she always wore while thinking. “It could have been symbolic,” she said finally. “He loved you then, and he returned to keep you from potential harm, and departed to his own proper plane of existence, the job finished. A fine theory, except that he seemed to flee at the mention of God.”
I spooned sugar into my coffee and stirred it slowly. “I’d like to know the answers to the riddles he gave when you questioned him: He’s from a place where he and I were meant to be, but he couldn’t let me ‘follow’ him there . . . and he seems to claim he knew me before historic times, but he’s been watching me ever since. Watching over me?”
Mother pursed her lips. “I’m not sure. His last response mentioned angels living among mortals . . . no. Forced to live among mortals. And he called us ‘pale imitations.’ Of what? Angels?”
“There’s one fluke in your theory. He specifically said—the last thing he said—he means to win me back.” I hesitated, then decided to spill my gut feeling. If I needed my mother’s help with this, I couldn’t hold anything back. “I get the feeling this is unfinished business, Mom, at least as far as this Bael spirit is concerned. But I can’t pick up on having known him before. I’ve probed and probed, and I’m coming up blank. And yet . . . .”
There are moments when a strong current seems to enter a conversation, and you know someone has something very important to add, a fact or a response which holds a key, a breakthrough, to its comprehension. Mother must have sensed this, for her head, which had been lowered introspectively, snapped upward, her posture, her expression, and her voice sharp with attention. “And yet what?”
I wet my lips, afraid to admit it, fearing her ridicule, her horror, or both.