But what a story it is.
It starts with the day of the great San Francisco earthquake. That’s when she and Dad officially met. By the time she gets to this part of the lurid tale, I’d already figured out that Dad is the angel who saved her that day, the one who broke the news to her, told her she was special, an angel-blood. She was sixteen then.
And when she was ninety-nine years old, she married him.
“How?” I ask her.
She laughs. “What do you mean, how? We showed up at the church, said the words, exchanged rings, you may now kiss the bride, all of it.”
“He was allowed to do that? An angel can marry anybody he wants?”
“It’s complicated,” she answers. “And rare. But, yes, an angel can choose to marry.”
“But then why did you divorce? Why did he leave?” Jeffrey asks with an edge of sullenness.
Mom sighs. “An angel can’t stop being an angel. They have duties, tasks that require their constant attention. Your father was given a vacation, so to speak, a seven-year period where he could stay with me in linear time and live a human life. Marry me. See the two of you born, spend some time with you. Then he had to go back.”
For some reason this makes me want to cry. “So you’re not divorced?” She smiles. “No. We’re not divorced.”
“But you couldn’t see him, all this time?”
“He visited on occasion. Once a year, sometimes twice, if we were lucky. We had to make do with that.”
“He couldn’t visit us?” Again, Jeffrey with the anger. He’s not taking this whole your-dad’s-an-angel-and-he’s-back surprise very well. I guess he doesn’t feel the incredible-joy thing. “His kids?”
“I wish I could have,” Dad says from the doorway to Mom’s room. He does that. Appears, out of thin air. It’s weird.
He comes in and sits next to Mom on the bed, takes her hand. They’re always touching each other, I’ve noticed. Always in contact.
“We decided that it would be best if I stopped seeing you. For your own good,” Dad says.
“Why?”
“Because, when you were little, it was easy for me to hide what I am. You didn’t notice anything unusual about me, or if you did, you didn’t know enough to understand it was unusual.
But when you got older, it became more difficult. The last time I saw you, you could definitely feel my presence.”
I remember. It was at the airport. I saw him and I felt his joy. And here I thought it was because I was hopelessly screwed up.
“But I have watched you from a distance,” he says. “I’ve been with you your entire lives, in one way or another.”
Okay, so this is the fantasy of every child of divorced parents, come true. Turns out, my parents love each other. They want to be together. My dad, all this time, wanted to be with me.
But it’s also like watching someone take an eraser to my life story, and then rewrite it as something completely different. Everything I thought I knew about myself has changed in the past few hours.
Jeffrey’s not buying it.
“Who cares if we knew what you are?” he says. “You said it was for our sake, but that’s bull. So our dad’s an angel? So what?”
“Jeffrey . . . ,” Mom warns.
Dad holds up his hand. “No, it’s all right. It’s a good question.” He looks at Jeffrey solemnly. There’s something regal about him, something that commands respect even if you don’t want to give it to him. Jeffrey swallows and lowers his eyes.
“This isn’t about me. This is about you,” Dad says.
“Michael,” Mom whispers. “Are you sure?”
“It’s time, Maggie. You knew this would come,” he says, caressing her hand. He turns back to us. “I am an Intangere. Your mother is a Dimidius, a half blood. That makes you and your sister a very rare, very powerful breed of angel-blood. We call them the Triplare.”
“Triplare?” Jeffrey repeats. “Like three-quarters?”
“This is a dangerous world for a Triplare,” Dad continues. “They’re rare enough that their powers are largely unknown, but there has been speculation that the Triplare, who are, after all, more angel than human, have nearly the same abilities as full-blooded angels, but with one crucial difference.”
“What difference?” prompts Jeffrey.
“Free will,” Dad says. “You’ll feel the repercussions too, your subtle sorrows or joys, whatever your actions lead you to, but in the end you are utterly free to choose your own path.”
“And this is dangerous because . . .” I say.
“It makes you very, very attractive to the darkness. The few Triplare who have walked this earth have been greatly sought after by the enemy. They are relentlessly hunted, and if they cannot be converted to the cause, destroyed. That’s why your mother and I have taken great pains to make sure that no one knew about you. It was crucial to keep your identities hidden, even from yourselves. We only wanted to keep you safe.”
“So why tell us now?” Jeffrey asks.
He smiles faintly. “It seems you’ve already caught the enemy’s attention. That was inevitable, I think. Therefore your safety has become a relative concept. We always knew we couldn’t hide you forever. We just wanted you to have as human a life as possible, for as long as possible. Now that time is over.”
It gets quiet while Jeffrey and I try to absorb this news. Triplare. Three-quarter angel. Not Quartarius, after all. And there’s something Dad said that burns like a live coal in my mind.
More angel than human.
So Dad’s an angel. Which makes us freaks, even among angel-bloods. Suddenly it makes sense that Mom never took us to the congregation before this year. She was hiding us, even from the other angel-bloods. Even, as Dad said, from ourselves.
Mom is quieter now, sleeping a lot. It took a lot out of her to tell the story, which she’s worked so hard and for so long to keep buried inside. She’s tired, but noticeably happy during those times when she’s awake. Unburdened, is the word. Like telling us the truth has set her free.
I spend all that evening Dad-watching. I can’t help it. Sometimes he seems like a normal man, joking around with Billy, eating the dinner she whips up for us, which he digs into with gusto. This makes me wonder if angels need sustenance the way we do. And then there are other times where he seems like, quite frankly, an alien. Trying to use the remote, for instance. He gazes at it for a while like it’s some newfangled magic wand. He understands how to use it quickly, though, and then he gets all amped up about the wonder of cable.