When I get home, Mom and Dad are both there. Since I never go out on—this isn’t the right word for what this was, but I don’t have another one—dates, I can tell they’re kind of curious about how it went. Mom especially, surprise, surprise.
But their attention is diverted away from me by an actual, and better, surprise: Adrian shows up. He’s here to cook dinner; we’ll be his guinea pigs for dishes he’s learned from—as I know and our parents do not—his cooking class. Pan-roasted halibut with chopped-up salsa-like stuff on top. Sautéed broccolini with garlic. Mashed potatoes. I hang around him as he cooks, and learn the difference between pan roasting and sautéing; broccolini, broccoli, and broccoli rabe; and the important question of when to cook fish with its skin on and with its skin removed.
“Oh my God, Adrian,” my mother says, practically melting into her plate.
“This is fantastic, son,” Dad says.
“Not bad,” I say. It’s so much better than delicious.
After dinner, Mom insists on cleaning up, which is her way of showing just how wowed she is by Adrian’s cooking. Adrian and I move to the living room.
“And then this freaky thing happens,” I say. I’ve told Adrian who Justin is, and about meeting him for coffee. “Actually, it happens twice. We’re talking, and he says these things—just a couple of words, but I’m telling you, it’s strange—that were Humphrey words. Things Humphrey and I used to say.”
Adrian raises his eyebrows. “And those words were?”
“He says ‘yeah, no’—wait, this was when we were on the phone,” I say.
Adrian cocks his head to one side. “Okay, Danny, I hate to tell you. That’s not exactly a unique expression.”
“I know, I know,” I say. “It doesn’t sound like anything. Yeah, no. But there’s a certain way to say it, a certain time when you say it—that was Humphrey’s and mine.”
“What’s the other thing?” Adrian asks.
“Just as I was getting on the bus, he was saying that he didn’t think something was peculiar—”
“Wait. That he didn’t think something was peculiar?”
“Yeah. It sounds like a weird conversation, but it made sense. In context. Anyway, so he’s saying the word ‘peculiar,’ only instead he says ‘perculiar,’ with an r stuck in the middle.”
“Which was something you and Humphrey used to say?”
“Well, which Humphrey used to say. He had a whole string of p words in his vocabulary—don’t ask—and they were mostly these hard, high-level words, which a five-year-old wouldn’t normally know. And he always got them right, all except the word ‘peculiar.’ He said ‘perculiar,’ every time, and he insisted that this was the right way to say it. Insisted, even, that Mr. Danker told him so.”
“That’s really pretty cute,” Adrian says.
Yeah. It really was.
“So.” My voice is a little shaky. Hold on. Take a deep breath. “So, I know it’s just a coincidence that Justin, who, also coincidentally, hangs out at the same park that I did with Humphrey, happened to speak in Humphrey-speak. I know. But it also felt like, I don’t know, Humphrey was there. Like some kind of Humphrey-angel was there.”
I can’t believe I just said that. It’s ridiculous, and I don’t believe in angels. I don’t even know what it means to say that you do or do not believe in angels.
“So.” There it goes again, all shaky. Breathe. “It’s just weird. And a little creepy. And I feel sort of mad at this guy for making me think Humphrey’s around.”
Adrian is quiet.
“But, Danielle,” my mother says. She’s standing in the doorway. “What’s wrong with thinking Humphrey is around?”
I didn’t know she was there. Obviously. By now, Dad’s in the room, too, but he’s quiet, like Adrian.
What’s wrong with thinking Humphrey is around? Isn’t this obvious, too? Talk about peculiar. Perculiar. Whatever. Do I really want to be seeing the angel—or ghost—of a five-year-old boy hanging around the only high school boy who’s ever paid any attention to me, ever, ever?
“I really don’t think I need an angel in my life,” I say quietly. “At this particular time.”
“Define ‘angel,’” Mom says.
Perfect. My mother thinks it will be helpful to analyze my vocabulary of the supernatural. Of the spiritual. Or whatever.
Mom sits down in the chair across from the sofa, where I’m sitting. I don’t offer her a definition.
“Okay, then, I will,” she says. “Or at least I’ll try to tell you something about—about angels.”
Mom and angels. This is unusual.
“My father died a long time ago,” Mom says. “As you know. Adrian was less than a year old. You, Danny, weren’t born yet.”
Yes. I know.
“We were sitting in the kitchen of my parents’ house—where Grammy stayed on to live until she died. Grandpa had died that morning. It was late afternoon, and he had already been taken to the funeral home. We were waiting for the rabbi to come talk to us.
“You know how Grammy’s house had that big window in the kitchen looking out to their little backyard? As we’re sitting there, a big, beautiful red cardinal flew into the dogwood tree. He sat there on the tree branch for the longest time.”
“I remember this, kids,” Dad says.
“The next day, we have the funeral. It was a pretty day. Afterward, we go back to Grammy’s house, where we’re going to sit shiva. Grammy and I and Uncle Harold are there, sitting in the living room in those special shiva chairs—the ones that are so low to the ground. Because we’re only a few inches off the floor in those chairs, our point of view is a little different than usual. We’re looking up, if you can picture it. So I’m looking up and out the bay window in the living room, to the front yard. And there’s that cardinal again, this time in the cherry tree.”
“You know it’s the same one?” Adrian asks.
“I have no doubt,” Mom says.
Adrian and I share a look. Of course she has no doubt. She’s Mom.
“Every day of shiva, during daylight hours, I see the cardinal,” Mom continues. “He’s always on a branch or windowsill as close to the house as he can be. ‘Mom,’ I said to Grammy, ‘if we open the door, I think that cardinal will fly right in.’ ‘What are you waiting for?’ Grammy said.”
Mom smiles. I can hear Grammy saying that.
“Grammy had never seen a cardinal around the house before,” Mom says. “Chickadees. Blue jays. Finches. Sparrows. But not cardinals. They just weren’t seen much around that neighborhood.”
“But Grandpa dies and suddenly a cardinal appears,” Adrian says.
“Yes,” Mom says. “And doesn’t just appear; he makes his presence known. He preens. He doesn’t flit around like the other birds. Every other bird flies away when we approach the window. He stays put and acts like he’s perfectly at home.”
“So you’re saying this cardinal was an angel?” I say. “It was Grandpa?”
Mom sighs. “To this day, when I’m stressed—but also when I’m very happy, or just feeling emotional in some way—I find that I’m likely to see a cardinal. Do I think it’s Grandpa in the form of an angel? I don’t know. That’s why I said ‘define angel.’ When Grammy and I were sitting shiva, I just might have said that, yes, the cardinal that suddenly showed up and acted like he owned the joint, he was Grandpa, coming back to make sure we were all right. My father was a good-looking man, and meticulous about his appearance and dress. And he liked a little dash of flash. Special cuff links, a good tie, a silk hanky in his jacket pocket—something. If he were to come back as a bird, it would be as a cardinal, a bird so bright you can’t miss it, and with that dashing crest on its head.”
Adrian is looking at Mom with his mouth half-open. I think he can’t believe what he’s hearing. I saw it in his face when Mom said she sees cardinals when she’s feeling emotional.
“But do I really and truly think the cardinals I see today are all Grandpa? Heck, I know they’re not the same bird we saw all those years ago during shiva. I guess they’re not really Grandpa. I guess they’re not truly angels, if an angel is defined as some kind of ethereal being.” Mom has been looking at her hands, and at Dad, mostly, while she’s been talking. Now she looks at me. “But when I see a cardinal, I feel like the universe is communicating to me. Not that my father is physically present, or even present in spirit, but definitely that his life force, his impression on the universe, is very much present. Present and available to me.”
We all just sit there for a few minutes. Mom gives me a cockeyed little smile. Adrian looks blown away. Here is what I gather he’s thinking from the gears I see grinding away through his transparent skull: She feels! She thinks about the universe communicating! She talks about life force!
“Thanks, Mom,” I say.
We sit quietly for a few more minutes.
“There’s dessert,” Adrian says. “Warm apple crisp, anybody?”
He brings it into the living room.
“Speaking of angels in heaven,” Mom says after she takes a bite. It is, like the rest of Adrian’s dinner, so, so, so good.
“In other news of the day,” Adrian says after he finishes his dessert, “I’m a high school graduate. I just wanted you guys to know.”
He explains. I know this already, of course. But I won’t let on. This is Adrian’s offering to Mom. His acknowledgment that she is, after all—human. That she isn’t just cold-blooded, driven, and prestige chasing.
Wait for it.
“Now you can apply to colleges!” Mom exclaims.