Read Online Falling Angels by Barbara Gowdy - Free Book Online

blue marble, like a toy eye, blind.
    She saw his hand twitch again. “He’s waking up!” she screamed.
    “Shut up,” Lou said. “Do you want the whole neighbourhood here? Stop crying!” She started to cry herself. She began marching to the other side of the house, to where the garage was. If he had one, she’d get a wheelbarrow and carry him around to the vegetable garden and bury him there.
    Norma ran in front of her. “I’m calling the police,” she said, holding out her arms. “I’m going next door and calling them if you dare do anything.”
    Lou stopped. “You idiot,” she said, swiping at her tears, enraged that Norma saw them,“they’ll think we did it.”
    “No, they won’t,” Norma said. But what if they did? She dropped her arms.
    “Bury him!” Sandy screamed.
    “SHUT UP !” Lou hollered.
    “Let’s just go,” Norma said. “Okay? Let’s just go home and leave him here. Somebody’ll find him.”
    “I’m not going home,” Lou said.
    “Well,” Norma said,“I am.”
    They stood there looking at each other until Lou turned away. Tears streamed down her face.
    “Where’s the purse?” Norma asked. She saw it behind the old man. Taking a wide circle around him, she walked over and picked it up, stepping back to open it and count the money. Three times she dropped change because her hands were shaking. There was plenty of money for the subway and buses, she decided, but where was the subway? Where
were
they?
    She went into the house to get the suitcase and Sandy’s doll. Sandy followed her, saying she had to go to the bathroom. They used the downstairs toilet, and while Norma was going, she warned Sandy never to tell anyone about the old man dying. If anyone found out, she said, they’d all go to jail for murder.
    “I couldn’t tell
anyway.”
Sandy said, opening her hands, thinking with a melting heart of the dolls she’d left lined up on her bed with a promise to telephone. “We didn’t know what his name was.”
    Lou had stolen a ten-dollar bill from the pocket of one of the old man’s jackets, and this allowed them to take a cab once they were finally on a main street. Norma and Sandy climbed in the back seat and slid over for Lou, but Lou got in the front with the driver, then ignored him, so Norma had to give the address.
    When they pulled up in the driveway, their father’s car wasn’t there. They went inside and down to the t? room and their mother just said hi as if they hadn’t made her lunch and dinner. Their father had to work late, she said, her eyes returning to the screen. The note was still on his unmade bed. Lou picked it up and read it with a feeling of suspense because she couldn’t remember what she’d written and with a feeling of desolation because she remembered how excited she had felt writing it.
    “Dear Daddy. We have gone to Florida because you killed Rapunzel.” But she doubted now that he’d believe it, because he didn’t really kill Rapunzel, not on purpose, anyway. He wouldn’t believe that they’d run so far away over something that wasn’t his fault.
    She crumpled the letter, threw it in the wastepaper basket and started making the bed. What if, she wondered, she’d written,“We have gone to Florida because it hardly ever rains there. Not like here. Cats don’t have to climb into car motors to keep warm in Florida.”
    He’d probably believe a note like that. He’d like a note that blamed the cold weather, which he hated, instead of blaming him. He might even let them go. She could picture him saying,“What the hell. They’ve got a point.”
    Not that it made any difference now.

Disneyland 1961
    C hristmas morning there was only one gift under the tree for each of them. Ugly green pedal pushers with the “sale item” tags still on for Norma and Lou, and for Sandy, a beatnik doll with a string in its back that you pulled to make it talk. Their father let them be miserable for a while, and then he sprang the surprise. He was