Read Online Love Letters of the Angels of Death by Jennifer Quist - Free Book Online Page A

she repeats, loudly and clearly between the drawn curtains, “lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.”
    You’re glancing over both your shoulders again, but there’s still no interpreter, no adaptor, no one else but you.
    Your grandmother’s eyes drift off to the right, and she speaks so softly you can’t hear her. In a moment, her shaking subsides until it’s almost stilled. She grows so quiet you’re afraid. You’re pulling your hand away – leaving to find Virgil, to get help – but her fingers are suddenly strong against your skin, pressing white, oval impressions of her fingertips into your flesh. You can’t go anywhere.
    And the poisoned boy is shedding green film from his stomach again, two curtains away.
    Time passes in the emergency ward – in this tiny curtained block of space big enough for just the two of you and the clock spinning its hands over your grandmother’s bed. Outside, there’s a shuffling of feet and the hospital curtain clicks open behind you. Nurse Virgil flings it back far enough to make way for the substantial forms of both your parents. The small gurney is exposed to the rest of ward. The curtain won’t close around all five of you, so Virgil leaves it hanging open.
    â€œWell, will you take a look at this rescue party?” your Dad says. “It’s our girl.”
    At the sound of her son’s voice, your grandmother opens her eyes, skittish and alarmed.
    â€œTook a fall tonight, did you, Mom?” your mother says, moving forward to smooth the blanket over the end of the thin mattress.
    Your grandmother pushes your hand back at you. Her eyes trace the length of your arm to the shoulder, up your neck, and into your face. And all at once, the creases etched into the woman’s face seem to twist and crack. And you know you have betrayed her.

Six
    Sometimes, usually when the weather is bad and the freeways are black with ice and the commute takes too long, you try it on – my death. You take it in – shallow but still very much beneath your skin. It’s a tiny injection of grief and fear. It’s meant to protect us, like an inoculation. You stand in our kitchen as the sky outside gets darker, and you let this contrived, imaginary tragedy immunize you against real sorrow. In your imagination, you marshal the possibility of my death into the small, controlled sphere – one you hope cannot coexist in the same world as a truly dead me. It’s a bit like Halloween – playing dead, acting it out to keep real death away.
    I’m late again tonight. You turn the lights on, pull the food out of the refrigerator, get the older boys to set the table, glance out at the weather, check the phones again, and wait.
    When I finally come walking into the kitchen from the garage in my shiny black shoes, you look up at me from your cooking and our kids.
    â€œOh, there he is,” you begin, talking over the heads of the little boys who’re chattering and hugging me by my knees and waist. You’re nothing like gushing with relief at seeing me, but you’re not quite acting normally either.
    â€œLook boys, Daddy’s come back to us. And here I’ve already gone to the trouble of picking out hymns to sing at your funeral, Brigs. Hey, do you think bringing a string quartet into the chapel would be over the top? I mean, as long as you’re dead I should be able to afford it, what with all that life insurance blood money and everything.”
    I drop my keys on the counter. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be late. Someone came into my office to talk to me right at five o’clock, and I couldn’t get away.”
    â€œAnd so you turned off your phone, naturally.”
    You’re standing over the countertop where a small, dead, raw chicken is dripping a thick, pink fluid onto a block of wood. There’s a knife in your hand – one of those astoundingly expensive