When Moths Fall Asleep

4.5 - cold

Bus rides used to feel like such an adventure to Angelina.

Oh, she was such a child then, leaning her head on the window and thinking, What a place. Everyone together, all managing to get along just fine. Why can't the world just be like a bus?

That a city bus might be a microcosm of world peace was not the only strange thought flying through Angelina's head at that age. She also thought that she and Skipp were going to live happily ever after once they took their vows and that no matter how much money she had, she could be happy.

Well, Angelina? Where's your happiness? Angelina pressed her nose into Dewey's hair and wondered where that bus of peace from the past had gone now that she needed it so badly.

The bus smelled of smoke and frost, the evening growing colder every moment as the sun slipped away easily, aloof as a mother bird pushing her baby out of the nest. Angelina felt her defection as acutely as anyone, her insides beginning to shake with cold. She didn't want Dewey to feel her shiver, so she held him closer and clenched her teeth.

Travelling back and forth for work, Angelina saw her own daily allowance of homeless people on buses, usually grizzled men with jackets tucked under their heads as pillows. There was always a shallow bite of pity that her heart held in its cheek for them, enough that she did not despise their stink or abhor their presence, but never a compassion so moving that she might talk to one of them, much less tuck a five dollar bill into their hands and insist that they keep it.

So how could she expect this from anyone here? That universal love that she so depended on today -- when had she ever shown it herself, enough that she was worthy to receive it in return?

Dewey's grip on her hand slackened. The living buzz of him soon became a dead weight and his feet stopped kicking against her calves. They went still together.

Angelina tried so hard not to resent him, but as he slept on, virulent thoughts ran rampant in her mind. For tonight, she had kept him silent on the pretext that she would leave him on the bus and go elsewhere alone if he didn't quit talking. He'd cried for a minute, but then he was quiet. It would only work for so long, though. In the morning, he would ask questions. Why are we still on the bus? he would want to know. He would ask for his bed, for breakfast, for his father and Angelina would not be able to give him what he wanted.

Oh, his little bed, musty, donated race car sheets and creaky post, all eaten up by the greedy, reckless flames that cared not who they stole from, not women, not children, not the even those in the most wretched of suffering could entreat them to divert their truculent path.

And then after the fact, when water seeped into the ceiling and through the floors and deep brown layers of peel began to emerge from the walls. Then, before the night was even out, there was a notice tacked to her door -- seven days to get out and take everything she could. Not that it mattered, anyway -- they couldn't stay in that soggy, smoky, toxic apartment even if they were allowed to.

Skipp, well he had it easy. Hardly any of his things were in the apartment anyway. After the fire, he didn't answer the phone number he had given her -- the one connected up to a phone in his mistress's house.

Angelina didn't know how long she could call her that, a mistress. That made it sound too sexual, too venereal. What hurt was that Angelina knew this woman wasn't just a new toy for Skipp to play with. Obviously, he felt something for her and the feeling was mutual.

She imagined him lying in her arms (in her mind, the woman was tall and blonde with long legs) telling her all about the woes of these past years as she listened with a sympathetic ear, something Angelina had never done for him.

"Please," she had begged in her phone messages. "Tell me where you are. We don't have anywhere to go." He wouldn't answer, wouldn't acknowledge that everything was so terribly, terribly wrong.

Angelina decided to get off at the next stop. She didn't know anyone there, but at least there was a payphone on the corner. She could call someone . . . anyone. What friend could she depend on now? Who would not laugh, would not hang up, would not be stingy with their compassion?

Ellen, she thought to herself. She was going to have to call Ellen.

There was nothing she wanted to do less. The last time she'd spoken to Ellen was over lunch nearly a year and a half ago where they had fought quietly but intensely about Angelina and Skipp and how they needed or didn't need marriage counseling. At the time, Angelina had been insulted by this assertion, but now, she was only determined not to prove her friend right.

What had happened to all the girls from high school, the ones who were her bridesmaids? Well, she knew where they were. Slowly, they had stopped inviting her to their get-togethers. The fact was, they had married into other neighborhoods, held statuses where they liked to talk about kitchen renovations, where they saved for retirement instead of living paycheck to paycheck. Angelina had nothing in common with them anymore, and they started to realize that she couldn't make as good of an appearance in public as they could. She didn't belong in the ritzy, fashionable restaurants where Ellen had to pay her tab at the end of the night.

Angelina wrapped her arms around Dewey's waist, pulling his body against hers. She touched the thick brown hair that sprung from his scalp and thanked the lord that he was alive and largely unharmed. He'd cried so hard when the fire department lifted him out of the dumpster that Angelina had worried that he'd gotten a concussion.

The fire marshall had assured her that what she did was the right thing. If felt all wrong, though -- slinging her baby into her arms and tossing him so haphazardly out of the flames that he could, feasibly, have landed anywhere. True, she had been aiming for the soft bed of trash open below, but she hadn't had any real faith that her aim would prove correct.

The doors opened again. The driver glanced at her in the rearview mirror as Angelina stumbled to her feet, heaving the heavy backpack stuffed with everything salvageable from the apartment. She lifted Dewey onto her hip, almost falling to the side under his heavy, sleeping weight. She hadn't eaten anything since last night and the world began to spin as soon as she stood.

The block of time between her seat and the road seemed to disappear for her. Suddenly, the cold surrounded them and the darkness became a wall, penetrated only by the darting arrows of car lights as they zipped past, uncaring.

Angelina felt the rhythm of Dewey's heartbeat change, jumping forward and then back again. He lifted his sweaty head from her shoulder, eyes still shut. "Mama," he muttered. His eyebrows fell together, lip wobbling.

"Please, Dewey." Angelina tucked his head against her neck and began to shuffle down the road towards where she thought the phone ought to be. "Don't cry. Not now."

While she walked, the cold seeped past her jacket and she knew that she could not call Ellen. No, Ellen would be a cough drop, relieving the symptoms for just a moment. What she needed was hard medicine, a cure that would not end after she had tired out her welcome. Who could that be? Who, these days, would be willing to take her in and keep her.

She didn't think of who she wanted to call until the phone was already in her hand. Angelina placed Dewey gently on the sidewalk beside the backpack, ordering him to stop his whining (I'm cold, I'm hungry, I'm tired) and sit still. With quaking hands, Angelina began to dial the number of one of the last people who even noticed her anymore: her boss at the restaurant, a man named Robert Spurling. As the phone rang, she pleaded to the lord that he would pick up. Luckily, or perhaps, unluckily, he did.