A Quiet Belief in Angels by R. J. Ellory Page B

awful lot more than I do.” She lifted her satchel and started to fill it with our notebooks, the meager offerings of literary vagueness we had submitted for her consideration. She said nothing more, but I could hear the machinery of her mind turning over.
    “It’s personal,” I said.
    She nodded. “Seems to me that anything to do with one’s life is personal, Joseph.”
    “I mean . . . I mean this is really personal.”
    “I am not trying to intrude, Joseph, I am merely expressing my concern as your teacher and your friend for your well-being.”
    She closed her satchel and snapped the buckle closed. She hefted it off the desk and set it on the floor. She stood motionless, motionless but for the circuitous convolutions of her mind.
    I could feel her drawing me in. I knew what she was doing. She was perhaps better than anyone I had known, anyone I would ever know, at gently, cautiously, soliciting communication. There was something in her voice, something earthy and seductive. Even amidst a group, Miss Webber leading the recitation of times tables, the conjugation of perfect verbs, you could hear the singular pitch of her voice, both above and beneath the sound of the class. When she read stories you could hear the sounds she described, smell the woodsmoke of ranchers’ fires beneath the Red Top Mountain or the Amicalola Falls, see the endless waves of brushstroke maize, feel the raw and unrelenting sun cursing the back of your neck . . . all these things were present. It made you want to listen, and when she asked, it made you want to speak.
    “My mother—” I started. I looked at her, my eyes wide as tears crept up behind them, threatening to break the surface and make a run for my cheeks. “My mother was unfaithful, Miss Webber.”
    I looked down at the floor.
    Miss Webber stepped forward. I felt the warm certainty of her hand on my shoulder.
    My mind felt like a drought field, arid and cracked, and my conscience like an aged tree, its roots clawing desperately at parched dust, hoping against all hope to remain. Conscience was slipping, losing its hold, and soon it would tumble. Within the branches of that tree had once flowered loyalty, faith, trust and duty, everything that had once represented family. In speaking I had broken some bond of silence, some unspoken consent that defied any word be spoken beyond the walls of our house.
    “I don’t understand,” Miss Webber said. “Your mother is a widow—”
    “With another woman’s husband,” I interjected, and after the words left my lips there was a stony silence.
    Miss Webber exhaled slowly and sat down.
    I looked at her; she was misty and insubstantial through my tears.
    “Not everyone is perfect,” she said quietly. “Not everyone can live up to your expectations, Joseph. Human beings are human . We all fall from grace at some time.”
    I nodded slowly. My breath came short and fast. “I know,” I whispered. “I know, Miss Webber . . . but something like that would never be forgiven, and that means she will never be an angel . . . and that means she won’t ever see my father again . . . and . . . and you have no idea how much that will hurt him.”
     
    I stayed with Reilly Hawkins for another day. He spoke with me about inconsequential things. He gave me a book called the life and times of archy and mehitabel . Archy was a poet reincarnated as a cockroach, who typed letters to the author of the book. Being a cockroach he could not reach the shift key, and thus everything he wrote was typed in lower case. Mehitabel was an alley cat, worldly-wise and cynical. Archy was philosophical, more tolerant and forgiving, and together they set the world to rights in their own inimitable way. I read the book and it made me smile, and for minutes at a time I would forget about my mother.
    In the evening Reilly told me stories of his family, first and foremost of his brother, Lucius.
    “I thought you only had one brother,” I said.
    “Levin? Yes, there