Angelology(130)

As she recalled her dream, a wave of longing enveloped her. No matter how much time passed,

Evangeline felt her parents’ absence as acutely as she had as a child. Her father had died suddenly

three years before, his heart stopping in his sleep. Though she observed the date of his death each

year, performing a novena in his honor, it was difficult to reconcile herself to the fact that he would

not know how she’d grown and changed since taking vows, how she’d become more like him than

either of them would have thought possible. He’d told her many times that in temperament she was

like her mother—both were ambitious and single-minded, eyes trained blindly upon the end rather

than the means. But in truth, it was the stamp of his personality that had been impressed upon

Evangeline.

Evangeline was about to leave when she remembered the cards from her grandmother that had so

frustrated her the night before. She reached under her pillow, sorted through them, and, despite the

fact that she was late for adoration, decided to try one more time to understand the tangled words her

grandmother had sent to her.

She removed the cards from the envelopes and placed them upon the bed. One of the images caught

her attention. In her exhaustion, she had overlooked it the previous night. It was a pale sketch of an

angel, its hands upon the rungs of a ladder. She was certain she had seen the image before, although

she could not recall where she’d come across it or why it seemed so familiar. The hint of recognition

compelled her to move another card next to it, and as she did so, something clicked in her mind.

Suddenly the images made sense: The sketches of angels on the cards were fragments of a larger

picture.

Evangeline rearranged the pieces, moving them into various shapes, matching colors and borders

as if constructing a jigsaw puzzle until a whole panorama emerged—swarms of brilliant angels

stepping up an elegant spiral staircase and into a burst of heavenly light. Evangeline knew the picture

well. It was a reproduction of William Blake’s Jacob’s Ladder, a watercolor her father had taken her

to see in the British Museum as a girl. Her mother had loved William Blake—she had collected

books of Blake’s poetry and prints, and her father had bought a print of Jacob’s Ladder for Angela as

a gift. They had brought it with them to America after Angela’s death. It was one of the only images

that had adorned their plain apartment in Brooklyn.

Evangeline opened the top left card and removed the piece of paper from inside. She opened the

second card and did the same. Holding the pieces of paper side by side, she saw that her

grandmother’s message worked in the same fashion as the images. The message must have been

written at one time, cut into squares and sealed into envelopes that Gabriella had sent in yearly

intervals. If Evangeline placed the creamy pages side by side, the jumble of words came together to

form comprehensible sentences. Her grandmother had found a way to keep her message safe.

Evangeline arranged the papers in the proper order, placing one sheet next to another, until a whole

expanse of Gabriella’s elegant writing lay before her. Reading over it, she saw that she had been

correct. The fragments fit together perfectly. Evangeline could almost hear Gabriella’s calm

authoritative voice as she scanned the lines.

By the time you read this, you will be a woman of twenty-five and—if everything has

worked according to the wishes of your father and me—you will be living a safe and

contemplative existence under the supervision of our Sisters of Perpetual Adoration at St.

Rose Convent. It is 1988 as I write this. You are just twelve years old. Surely you will

wonder at how it came to pass that you are receiving this letter now, so long after it was

composed. Perhaps I will have perished before you read it. Perhaps your father will be gone

as well. One cannot glean the workings of the future. It is the past and the present that must

occupy us. To this I ask you to turn your attention.

You may also wonder why I have been so absent from your life in recent years. Perhaps

you are angry that I have not contacted you during your time at St. Rose. The time we spent

together in New York, in those most important years before you went to the convent, has

sustained me through much turmoil. As has the time we spent together in Paris, when you were

but a baby. It is possible that you remember me from that time, although I doubt it very much. I

used to take you through the Jardin du Luxembourg with your mother. These were happy

afternoons, ones that I cherish to this day. You were such a little girl when your mother was

murdered. It is a crime that you were robbed of her so young. I often wonder if you know how