A Simple Case of Angels Page 2

  Nicola and Lindsay headed off, leaving poor June Bug behind.

  “But I’m confessing, too, right?” Nicola said, and Lindsay nodded.

  For five leaf-strewn blocks Lindsay wondered out loud about the bride’s dress. Nicola, who saw no difference between one long white dress and another, didn’t say anything. When they reached the old brick church, Lindsay pointed to the marble statue of a lady above the door.

  “That’s the Lady of Perpetual Help. Perpetual means you can come day or night,” she explained.

  The wedding guests were arriving, dressed up and laughing. Lindsay fidgeted until a car decorated with paper flowers and streamers pulled up.

  “There she is!”

  The bride had trouble getting out of the car, she was so tangled up in lace. She needed all four bridesmaids and the flower girl to help her up the steps and into the church. Then Nicola and Lindsay had to wait around for what seemed like another hour while Lindsay praised the dress.

  “Did you see the beading on the bodice? My mom’s wedding dress had that.”

  “What’s a bodice?” Nicola asked.

  “The top of the dress. Bodice, sleeves, skirt and train.”

  Finally, the wedding march played and everyone came out again, the bride and groom smiling like crazy and kissing everyone gathered on the steps.

  “Now,” Lindsay said, giving Nicola a poke.

  Nicola squeezed through the crowd. She’d only been inside a church once, for her grandma’s funeral when she was four. She slipped through the big carved doors and looked around.

  Up front stood a table covered with a white cloth. Light shone through one of the stained-glass windows and painted a picture on it. All around the church there were these pretty windows. One showed a golden-haired angel unrolling a scroll.

  Peace Be Upon You.

  Nicola followed a path of flower petals to a bench

  in front. She sat and waited, breathing the perfumed air.

  After a few minutes, a side door opened and a man appeared, whistling and pushing a broom. He wore jeans and a plaid shirt and, on his belt, a silver knob about the size of a yo-yo with keys dangling from it.

  The janitor. He got halfway down the aisle before he noticed Nicola.

  “Did they forget the flower girl?”

  “No,” Nicola said. “I want to talk to the priest.”

  “Father Mark’s gone.”

  “What?” Nicola cried. “But I came to confess!”

  “He just finished a wedding. He’s gone for the day.”

  Nicola folded forward, pressing her forehead against the bench in front.

  “Is it that bad?” the janitor asked.

  Nicola looked up again. “Yes!”

  The janitor leaned the broom against the wall and came and sat in front of her. His eyes were kind and gray.

  “Do you want to tell me about it? Get it off your chest. If that doesn’t help, you can come back and talk to Father Mark.”

  “Will it count?” she asked. “I mean, if you’re not a priest.”

  “Why not?” the janitor said.

  “Okay. But I should tell you first that I don’t even go to church.”

  He shrugged. “That’s not important. Try to be good. That’s what I believe.”

  “What should I call you if you’re not the priest?”

  “Ignacio. That’s my name. What’s yours?”

  “Nicola. Okay, Ignacio. I have a lot to say.” Her eyes got watery at the thought of all the terror and destruction she had to put into words. “I’m not here for myself. I’m confessing for someone else. That’s allowed, isn’t it?”

  “Technically, no,” he said. “But I’m not the priest, so go ahead.”

  “I’m here for June Bug. Can you confess for an ­animal?”

  He drew back. “You’re here to confess for a bug?”

  “No, my dog. Her name is June Bug. Because she was born in June. Ignacio, she’s so bad. She does so many terrible things. She doesn’t mean to. I see it in her eyes. She’s as shocked as we are when she sees what she’s done.”

  And it gushed out of Nicola. All the shoes June Bug had chewed. The television remote controls she’d ­carried away and hidden. Julie Walters-Chen.

  Ignacio interrupted. “Keep her outside.”

  “She digs holes. She wrecked the lawn. Dad says it looks like an exploded minefield. Also, she ran away. Twice. Do you see how bad she is? Are these sins, Ignacio?”

  “Sins? I don’t think you could call them sins, no.”

  “She steals.”

  He frowned.

  “She steals Jackson’s Matchbox cars and eats the wheels. Then she hides them, too. And she smokes.”

  “Your dog smokes?”

  Nicola could tell by his shocked expression that smoking was a sin for sure.

  “Well, she eats anything on the ground, even cigarette butts. When we catch her, we shout, ‘No smoking! No smoking!’ Is there such a place as hell, Ignacio?”

  He squirmed, like he was sitting on something sharp.

  “I’m supposed to say there is. But really? I’m not sure. I think everyone makes his own way in the world as best he can. The real sinners? Thieves and murderers, people like that? I hope they find a way to make amends.”

  “For dogs, I mean,” Nicola said. “Is there a hell for dogs?”

  “For dogs? No. I say that with confidence.”

  “Because I’m worried about June Bug. Jared says that’s where she’s going.”

  “She’s an animal. She’s innocent of sin,” Ignacio said. “Whatever June Bug’s done, Nicola? Consider it undone. Okay?”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Feel better?”

  She nodded, uncertain.

  “Good! Now run home and see what that naughty dog of yours is up to.”

  “I’m almost afraid to.” Nicola stood up. “Thank you.”

  She walked out, following the trail of flower petals down the aisle. When she glanced back, Ignacio had taken up the broom again and was chuckling to himself.

  Outside, the wedding crowd had left. Lindsay was waiting by herself. “How did it go?”

  “The priest wasn’t there,” Nicola said. “Just the janitor.”

  “That’s Ignacio, the manager of our apartment building. He tells me when the weddings are. The priest would be too busy to hear about a dog anyway. So Ignacio’s better.”

  Nicola said, “I just hope he’s right. About June Bug not going to hell, I mean.”

  5

  —

  Painted in the entranceway of Queen Elizabeth Elementary School, just above the still-crooked picture of the queen, was the school motto.

  IS IT FAIR? IS IT SAFE? IS IT KIND?

  In October, the kindergarten teacher put up a frieze of construction paper leaves her students had made by outlining their little hands. Only when the frieze went up did people notice that the real leaves on the trees hadn’t changed color. One day it got very cold and the next the leaves were black and shriveled. Fall looked ugly, when normally Nicola thought it was the prettiest season.

  The school janitor had already got out the ladder for the kindergarten teacher to put up the leaf frieze. Mrs. Dicky didn’t want to ask him to get it out again, except the kindergarten teacher had accidentally covered the school motto. You couldn’t see anymore when you entered the school that it was a safe, fair and kind place. Also, Mrs. Dicky wanted to straighten the picture of the queen. Several times a week she asked the janitor to do it, but the queen always ended up crooked again.

  So that day, Mrs. Dicky decided just to drag a chair out of the office and stand on it.

  Which was when she fell.

  Nobody saw it happen. But at recess, while everyone was shivering in the early cold staring at the playground e
quipment they weren’t allowed to play on, they saw the ambulance take Mrs. Dicky away.

  For several weeks the students and staff of Queen Elizabeth Elementary didn’t have a principal. By the time the temporary one came, he had so much catching up to do that there was no winter holiday concert. Some of the classes didn’t even have a party.

  Ms. Phibbs’ class didn’t. Instead, they got extra homework for the winter break.

  * * *

  Over the holidays June Bug ate or destroyed most of the ornaments on the lower branches of the Christmas tree. She ate the Styrofoam balls that Jackson had pasted with pictures from Christmas cards. June Bug tore apart the Three Wise Men dolls that were Nicola’s favorite ornaments, chewing the bead eyes off their wise faces and ripping their stuffing out. Blobs of white stuffing covered the living-room floor the next morning. It looked like it had snowed inside.

  Whenever Nicola took June Bug for a walk, Terence, asked — sort of joking, sort of not — for a report on what Christmas decoration had come out the other end of June Bug.

  June Bug didn’t eat the glass balls because she was a smart dog. Instead she unhooked them with her teeth, dropped them on the floor and batted them around the house like a cat. Nicola checked all the rooms several times a day because her father had said, “Christmas or no Christmas, if anyone ends up in the emergency room with broken glass in their foot, June Bug is spending the holidays at the SPCA.”

  So Nicola removed all the remaining decorations from the lower branches of the Christmas tree and hung them up higher. The tree looked funny after that, like it had forgotten to put on its pants. Also, there weren’t any presents under it. They couldn’t trust June Bug not to rip them open. All the presents were closed up in Mina and Terence’s bedroom.

  After Nicola moved the decorations, several disaster-free days passed. She started to relax and enjoy the holidays. She helped bake the gingerbread. (June Bug loved gingerbread. She would Sit and Shake a Paw and Roll Over for gingerbread.) Nicola even went shopping with her mother and, while they were out, forgot completely that she had a bad little dog. Her stomach only started churning when she got home and Mina said, “I wonder what trouble June Bug got into while we were gone.”

  None! Once the decorations were out of reach, she was almost a good little dog as well as a cute little dog — all white except for her black eye patch, and one black ear and the black leather of her nose.

  Nicola had asked for only one Christmas gift — Three More Chances for June Bug.

  “You’re sure about that?” Terence and Mina asked.

  “Yes,” Nicola said. The money the family saved by not buying Nicola presents, she wanted put in a special June Bug damage fund, so Jackson could replace any cars June Bug stole, or Terence could buy some grass seed to patch June Bug’s holes.

  “Ha!” Jared said. “Money isn’t going to buy me love.”

  He was still mad about Julie Walters-Chen. All the hours he wasn’t playing on the computer in the den, he spent shut up in his room listening to rap music and tattooing JWC all over his arms with a ballpoint pen.

  On Christmas Eve, after everyone had gone to bed, Mina moved the presents. She stacked them under the tree, making a perfect set of stairs to the higher ­branches.

  Then she shut June Bug up in the kitchen so she couldn’t get into trouble.

  And she wouldn’t have, if Terence hadn’t got up in the night and wandered sleepily into the kitchen for some gingerbread.

  Terence forgot to close the kitchen door.

  In the middle of the night, Nicola heard a crash. It sounded like Santa had missed the mark completely and flown into the chimney and knocked it down.

  She sprang out of bed. Everyone did. Moments later, the whole Bream family was in the living room, gaping at the tree that lay across the floor like the day it had been chopped down on the tree farm. Little June Bug was leaping over it, joyfully flinging ornaments that, until a minute ago, had been so tormentingly out of reach.

  “Now Santa won’t come!” Jackson wailed. “Santa won’t bring me a present!”

  “Look at all the presents,” Mina said. “Santa already came.”

  All the presents were under the fallen tree, lying in a pool of water from the tree stand.

  Jared stabbed his finger at Nicola. “Two More Chances! Just Two More Chances for that dog!”

  “Stop it!” Terence said. “For heaven’s sake! Let’s all go back to bed! It’s three o’clock in the morning!”

  Everyone did, except Nicola, who rescued all the wet presents and set them out of June Bug’s reach. She wiped up the puddle of water. Then she sank down by the fallen tree and sobbed while June Bug danced around her, pushing a toy soldier ornament against Nicola’s leg, trying to get Nicola to chase her. When Nicola wouldn’t, June Bug jumped into Nicola’s lap and licked the snot and salty tears off her face.

  The next morning, Nicola was up first, even before June Bug, who was still tired from her active night. Half an hour later Terence came into the living room, yawning and tying up his robe. He looked around and saw Nicola curled on the couch waiting for the rest of the family to wake up.

  “I was hoping it was a nightmare,” he said.

  Together, they stood the tree up again.

  “Look,” Nicola said.

  Not a single ornament remained on the branches. The lights, too, were mostly pulled off, lying in loops at the base of the tree. But at the very top the china angel still perched, unbroken, soundlessly blowing its golden horn.

  June Bug hadn’t touched it.

  6

  —

  Nicola lay on her bed with June Bug. From the basement came the repeated smash of Jared practicing kick-flips on his new skateboard in the desperate hope of impressing Julie Walters-Chen. He’d asked for a cellphone and a laptop. The skateboard had been a distant third choice.

  In the hall, Jackson’s new remote-control car whirred up and down. Every time it neared Nicola’s closed bedroom door, June Bug would stop chewing Nicola’s braid, stand at attention and bark.

  Nicola began humming along to “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” playing on the radio in the kitchen. June Bug stopped chewing again. She tilted her head.

  “What is it, June Bug?” Nicola asked.

  June Bug tilted her head the other way and her ears twitched. Her tail, stubby and white, thumped the bedspread. June Bug thumped slowly, then faster and faster until she had wound herself up. Then she pounced on Nicola’s chest and washed kisses inside her ears and nose until Nicola shrieked with laughter.

  “Dinner!” Terence called. “Come and get it!”

  Dinner was one of the words June Bug understood, along with her name and the commands Come, Sit, Lie Down, Roll Over, Bang Bang You’re Dead, Shake, Wave and Crawl. Despite being such an intelligent animal, June Bug could not seem to make sense of No, Stop, Leave It, Get Down or I’m Going to Kill That Dog Right Now.

  June Bug dashed ahead to the dining room and jumped up on Jared’s chair.

  “Get Down!” Terence commanded.

  June Bug didn’t. Her face, divided down the middle, white and black, peeped hopefully over the edge of the table at the enormous turkey spilling out stuffing, the Brussels sprouts and mashed potatoes, the steaming gravy in the china boat.

  “No, June Bug!” Mina scolded, coming in with the Christmas crackers.

  June Bug lifted her nose in the air and sniffed.

  “I’m Going to Kill That Dog Right Now!” Jared said, shoving June Bug off his chair and throwing himself on it.

  “Don’t be so mean!” Nicola cried.

  “Put her outside,” Mina said.

  Nicola didn’t want to. It was terribly cold. Despite how much white hair June Bug shed all over the furniture, she hardly seemed to have any on her body. The pink skin of her belly showed right through her skimpy coat.

>   “Out!” Terence said, and Nicola picked up the squirming dog and carried her to the kitchen door. She shook the snow off the doormat so June Bug would have a more comfortable place to sit while she waited to be let back in.

  The Breams popped the Christmas crackers and laughed over the prizes and jokes inside. They put on the colored paper crowns. Then they ate. And ate. Gravy drowned everything, except the trifle. They gobbled up the trifle, then pushed back their chairs, groaning.

  “All day to cook,” Mina said. “Fifteen minutes to eat.”

  Nicola, who had saved a bit of everything in the napkin in her lap, hurried to the kitchen door to give June Bug her Christmas dinner.

  Snowy pawprints disappeared down the back steps.

  “June Bug!” Nicola called. “June Bug, come!”

  June Bug did not.

  Nicola wanted to look for June Bug right away, but her mother said that June Bug always came back.

  This was true. They had to phone Grammy and Grampy in Nova Scotia to wish them a Merry Christmas, and Nicola had to help clean up. Then the Breams were going to play rummy.

  “If she’s not back after rummy, we’ll look,” Mina said.

  Nicola left the kitchen door open a crack, which she wasn’t supposed to do. She wasn’t supposed to let the heat out, but she was too worried about June Bug. No one noticed because they were all in the dining room dealing out the cards.

  They were well into the game when June Bug came in again, smiling. She was a dog who could smile. She smiled when she dug a hole in the lawn and when she Rolled Over or fell down on her side, Pretending to be Dead. When she did anything she was proud of, she smiled.

  Like now, when she backed into the dining room dragging half a snow-covered Christmas turkey.

  June Bug parked the turkey at Nicola’s feet. It was nearly as big as she was. Jackson saw it first and screamed, “Our turkey! June Bug got our turkey!”

  No one else said anything, because what was left of the Breams’ turkey was on the kitchen counter.

  “June Bug?” Nicola asked in a quavery voice. “Where did you get that turkey?”