Poe's children: the new horror : an anthology - By Peter Straub Page 0,220

and I turned away. I gazed up at the stone angel, at the gaping cavity in its chest where its life had gushed, and the wings that hooked a silver awning of sky. In the corner of one eye balanced a single teardrop: spider. A delicate leg caught in a shred of web quivered in the wind like an eyelash. Eternally poised, I knew the arachnid teardrop would never fall. The spider was long-dead, and its hollow shell had, over time, become a crust of sleep in the angel’s eye.

The angel’s dry eye.

God weeps no tears for whores.

A roosting magpie, thief of hearts, cawed from the cypress with bony branch-wings dark as dusk. Soon night would roll in on the back of a rumbling thunderhead. I grit my teeth hard, my knuckles whitening on the marble ankles.

Why had she done it? I didn’t know—how could I? All I knew was that the angel’s heart had not been torn out, then. Not yet. The heart still beat, if only for a few moments more. It felt everything. Knew everything. Told everything. It whispered a single word: a wet red kiss blown to me from across a kitchen floor, from the lips of the dying to the heart of the living.

One kiss, one word.

Summertime was nearly over

Blue Italian sky above

One kiss, one word.

I said, “Lady, I’m a rover

Can you spare a sweet word of love?”

One word was enough. I never forgot what Mother had whispered while she lay on the floor, her life seeping away from her, from me, in the burnished brass light of that autumn afternoon. But I’d misunderstood what she meant by it.

Until this moment. Maybe, until this moment.

It was this remembering that had carried me back to the angel’s arms.

Remembering and time, and dreams and hearts, and forgotten songs and dying angels. The kiss of angels, painted and real and dancing and drunk, with lips wide open and hearts torn out, as sweet as crème de cacao.

Mrs. Caiola never did leave Daddy. She’d threatened to a thousand times but there was no way in hell she’d give him his freedom so he could be with her. That’s how Daddy told it, when he and Mother stayed up talking and I caught snatches of their heated discussions in the other room.

Then there were the accusations and counteraccusations pitched back and forth through the night like hardballs from the house next door. Begging on both sides. Cassandra, this is crazy. You know it isn’t any good. Why don’t you let me go? Not on your life, Joe. Not on your GODDAMNED life.

Then she’d turn on the waterworks. That’s what Mother called them, with a snort.

I knew about waterworks.

“What does the water in the convent fountain taste like, Capri?” she asked me once, squeezing my hands. “Jesus’ tears?”

“Crème de cacao,” I answered, giggling.

An angel’s kiss….

Sunday afternoons, after the Cocoa Club shakedown, I poured and mixed the Angel’s Kisses carefully. I set them on a tray inlaid with opal dragons that wound round it like the painted twin on Lana’s neck. Then I took them on tiptoe to her boudoir. Stolen sips of Angel’s Kisses. I used to think in sweet rapture: she’s like that. An Angel’s Kiss, as pure as bliss….

Mother, lying in bed with a sleeping mask strewn on the sheets like a leftover from a masquerade, sipped her drink. “Mmm. Just the thing for that Mood Indigo,” she confided.

“The mood indigo?”

Shadow of a smile. “Mood Indigo, baby.”

Through Mother’s bedroom window I watched Cassandra Caiola click-click-click down the front walk in high heels and a Christian Dior suit. Her hair was pulled tightly back from her made-up face, not a strand out of place. She paused, frowning, fastening the little buttons on her gloves. I’d never seen her go anywhere without those gloves. Perfect and pristine and white as ice. She called Daddy’s name sharply as she unlocked the door to her Cadillac, so shiny you could see your reflection in it. White, just like her gloves.

White ice melting red flame, burning the glass, the two as one.

Mother and Cassandra: fire and ice.

I watched Daddy amble out of the house and toss his cigarette on the sidewalk. Slouch his hat forward. Slam.

“You know that wasn’t our arrangement, Joe.” Backing out. “You said you wanted the brat. And far be it for me to stand in your way, especially since you’d already knocked her up. Though God only knows what that one will turn—” squeal of rubber “—with a mother like—”