Fiction by Paul Hadella
“You can say sorry all you want about breaking the lamp,” Mom said at the top of her lungs, “but this isn’t about breaking the lamp.” Then she stomped out of our apartment and slammed the door.
I asked Vince, “What’s she mean? If she’s not mad at us for breaking the lamp, then what’s she mad about?”
“Maybe she meant it’s about the money,” he said.
“The money?” I said.
“That now she has to buy us a new lamp,” my brother said, “and she doesn’t have the money. She never has the money for anything.”
“Do we really need the lamp?” I asked.
“I guess so,” said Vince. “I don’t know.” Then he asked me what I thought she meant.
“Beats me,” I said. “That’s why I asked you.”
“Could be she’s just mad because we’re boys, and boys play rough,” Vince said. “She really wanted girls. How many times has she told us that?”
I said, “She’s just teasing us when she says that.”
“Just teasing?” Vince grumbled. “Get real.”
Anyway, I’m not blaming the broken lamp all on Vince. It’s true, though, that I didn’t start it. He was the one who brought home the tennis racket with two busted strings. He found it on the grass outside Building Five. “It was just laying there,” he told me.
“What good is it?” I asked him.
“Watch,” he said. Then he went into the kitchen and came back with a sponge, just a bit damp, so it had some weight. Then he started whacking the sponge around the living room, using the racket like a hockey stick. “You be the goalie,” he told me.
We slid the coffee table against the wall and made it the goal. Then things got a little out of hand.
Mom walked through the door, home from work, about five minutes after we broke the lamp. She saw we were picking up the pieces.
Right away, Vince said to her, “Sorry for breaking the lamp.” I said it next. Mom tried plugging her temper but couldn’t. She yelled that thing about it not being about the lamp, then left me and my brother standing there in the living room, our heads down.
It wasn’t the first time Mom has stomped out of the apartment. It’s happened, I think, five other times. So me and Vince know how to handle it by now. First, we give Mom about fifteen minutes to cool down before we go get her and bring her back. We know where she’ll be. She walks down to the pond behind the apartment buildings, sits on a bench, and stares at the water.
Here’s how it usually goes.
First, when Mom hears us coming, she scoots to the middle of the bench. That gives me room to sit on one side of her and Vince on the other.
Then I take one of her hands, and Vince takes the other.
Then we all sit there and watch the water for a few minutes. None of us says anything.
Then I tell her I love her. Vince says it next. He should go first, because he’s older, but he always waits for me.
Then we promise we’ll try to behave better, and not make her life so rough.
Then we ask her to please come back home because we can’t live without her.
Then she kisses both of us on the cheek, and we walk back to our apartment together. Mom might even crack a joke or two to show there’s no hard feelings.
That’s how it usually goes—but that’s not how it went yesterday, after we broke the lamp. Not exactly. Yesterday, when me and Vince got to the edge of the parking lot behind Building Ten, we saw Mom down by the pond, just like we expected. She was even sitting on the same bench she always sits on.
Yesterday, though, she wasn’t there alone. She had company. Not a person—but a big white swan. There’s a bunch of swans that live at the pond. Yesterday, all but this one were out on the water, cruising around like little ships. They plowed right through the creases the breeze was making. This other one, though, was sitting on the grass, facing Mom, about ten yards from her and the bench. It looked white as an angel.
Even from where me and Vince had stopped, at the edge of the parking lot, we could tell Mom was talking to the swan. Talking and talking. Her hands moving to her words. You could bet she was telling the swan about our hockey game that got a little out of hand. I could almost hear her saying, “But it isn’t about breaking the lamp.”
The swan bobbed its head up and down as Mom talked. It was like an angel telling Mom, “Yeah, I get exactly what you’re saying, and I take pity on you.”
It even opened its wings and flapped them a couple of times—which made it look even more like an angel—a mighty angel. Maybe by flapping its wings it was giving Mom a blessing.
I spent a year in Catholic school, second grade—which is probably why I saw an angel and Vince just saw a swan. Vince has always gone to public school. He did think of something, though, that didn’t cross my mind. He said, “That swan must be a she.”
Paul Hadella is a journalist, creative writer and musician, living in Ohio. “Angel” is from a series of stories about his childhood on Long Island, New York.
