Don’t make me angry.
Your rage is spent. I saw it go. I bowed to it like every other, back when you were heavenly. Now you are a pen. Woe!
Woe! I say, too, but I don’t really feel it. Woe to our brother, I say instead. For his is truly the hardest job.
Wrapped in flesh, she says. It binds worse than stone.
Anger without discernment, I say.
Violence without grace.
Ignorance without peace.
Woe to him! she says. May he forgive me for complaining, when my yoke is so light!
She goes on dramatically. Even an angel can make selfish a prayer of sorrowful concern for another. I go to him instead, because this moment has brought his suffering to mind. Ishmael is in his bed, two conquests on either side of him — they’ve turned away because of the heat in his skin. I sit down near Ishmael and say, Brother. Even sleeping he is not free to know me or to know himself, but I put my hand on his heart and say it again.
48
“We should get married, too,” Ethel Puffer said to Pickie Beecher. They were standing at the railing looking down into the atrium from the fourth floor, getting ready to drop a balloon. Four floors was as high as the angel would let them go. When they tried dropping one from any higher floor, the toy would lash out with a cord or a chain and destroy the balloon before it could find a target.
“I am too old to marry you.”
“If by too old you mean too young, then maybe. But not really. Do you think anybody cares about that anymore? Just wait. They’re going to be marrying us off to each other as soon as they think of it, and being ten years old isn’t going to protect you.”
“I am one hundred and thirty-seven years old,” Pickie said.
“That’s why I like you,” she said. “Because you realize how fucking stupid everything is. Don’t you ever tell the truth?”
“I wasn’t made to lie,” he said. “There goes John Grampus. Let’s get him.”
“Bombs away,” Ethel said, about to remove the balloon from under her smock. It wasn’t exactly a water balloon, and not exactly a barf balloon either, since it was filled with synthesized vomit, and yet when Ethel got a little bit of it from the angel in a cup, she discovered that it smelled just the same. And it was hot in a way that made it seem genuine, and made it pleasing to hold against her skin. Just as she was about to take it out and let it drop, Father Jane walked up to them.
“Glorious Day!” she said.
“Maybe for some people,” said Ethel.
“Greetings, fellow creature,” said Pickie.
“I am trying out new ways of saying hello,” Father Jane said. “Because Hello doesn’t seem like enough anymore. I think we need a more extraordinary greeting, since we have become extraordinary. Do you know what I mean?”
“Is goodbye still good enough?” Ethel asked.
“I haven’t thought about it yet. What’s under your shirt?”
“Stuffing. I’m pretending to be pregnant. Like Madame President.”
“Madame Friend,” said Father Jane. “Be careful or you’ll start a fashion trend.” She leaned over the railing. “There’s Dr. Chandra. And is that Frank’s white hair? That’s Grampus. I can recognize his big head from the ninth floor. Do you mind if I…?”
“It’s our balloon,” Pickie said. “We made it.”
“Our baby, Pickie,” said Ethel. “You mean our baby. Oh, hell.” She handed over the balloon, and Father Jane raised it up and aimed carefully.
“You’re supposed to throw it quick and then run away,” said Ethel.
“Quiet,” said Father Jane. Then she let it go, and Pickie and Ethel ran for the stairwell, but Father Jane stayed and watched the balloon hit her friend, and when he recovered enough to look up and see where it came from, she was still at the balcony, laughing and waving.
49
Jemma never had much of a hand in planning the wedding. After her roller-boogie display all sorts of unsolicited advice had begun to pour in. It was to be expected, that everyone should want to touch her pregnant belly, and she was as much touched as annoyed when five different people asked if she was taking her vitamins and when practical strangers rushed up to her as if to deliver news of an emergency only to tell her she looked tired, and that she should take a nap. But news of the pregnancy stirred up interest in the wedding. “Oh, we’ll do it sometime,” she kept telling Rob, whenever he tried to set a date. “The important thing is that we made the decision,” she said, and while he was not exactly happy with that, he knew better than to pressure her, and she might have delayed indefinitely, or at least until landfall, if the Council hadn’t taken up the issue. She reported to the chamber one morning to find that it was the fourth item on the agenda, after the question of whether it should be legal to eat fish but before the question of whether it would be legal to keep them as pets. “There seems to have been a mistake,” Jemma told them. “A piece of non-business has slipped into the business.”
It was entirely on purpose, though. The First, Second, and Third Friends had met secretly to discuss the matter and the Council had agreed with them that a great opportunity was being wasted. “Don’t you know what this means?” uninvited, unwanted Dr. Sundae asked her from her usual seat, a chair pulled up into the vicinity of the Council’s long table, right to the edge of propriety — she had been confirmed as the chiefest of the six magistrates, but she still wasn’t supposed to be butting into their business. Jemma didn’t really know what it meant, or what it was for. She knew she was pregnant, that she loved Rob Dickens, and that she had taken a solemn vow with her brother never, ever to marry but that she was going to do it anyway.
“Of course,” Jemma said, trying to come off as authoritative but only managing to sound a little snooty. “It’s all very serious. But it’s really just between Rob and me.”
“Yes, of course,” said Dr. Snood. “Except it’s not.” Didn’t she realize, he wanted to know, what it would do for their community, to celebrate a marriage? What better way to truly inaugurate a new beginning? Jemma suggested that somebody else might want to get married; they replied that there was only one Universal Friend, duly and spontaneously elected by the remaining population of the world, a Friend, they pointed out, who was already engaged to the father of her unborn child. “We don’t want to make you do anything you don’t want to,” they said. Except they did, and they would. Maybe it would be better, Jemma suggested, to wait until they were at their destination; no one knew how long that would be, but it was almost sure to be too long. She had always sort of envisioned a tiny little ceremony; they responded that plans change and dreams are not life, this must be something in which every single body among us can participate. I might do it but I won’t like it; Oh come on, of course you’ll like it.
“It’ll be some party,” said Monserrat. She sat back in her chair and a dreamy expression came over her face.
“Well, let it be recorded,” Jemma said, “that this wasn’t my idea.”
They took that for a yes. After that it was as if the whole hospital filled up with well-intentioned but annoying mothers-in-law. People no longer accosted her about their health, or her health, or with vapid pleasantries, but everyone had an idea about the wedding. Had she considered a fifteen-foot tower of cupcakes instead of, or in addition to the cake? Did she realize that a gardenia bouquet could lend a bold, classic aspect to her look? If she just would put her cheek against this swath of purple velour, she would certainly choose it for the bridesmaids’ dresses. White-gold rings were especially distinctive, and had the added advantage of giving you superpowers if you happened to be called away by God into an alternate universe. “Believe it or not,” Jemma would tell each chattering busybody, “I’m not that involved.” She’d give them one of Vivian’s cards and walk away.