The House of Broken Angels

That is the prize: to realize, at the end, that every minute was worth fighting for with every ounce of blood and fire.

When you died, you died in small doses. You had trouble speaking. You forgot who was beside you. You were suddenly furious and in a panic of outrage. You wished you could be saintly. You wished you weren't so weak. You suddenly felt better and fooled yourself into believing that a miracle was about to happen. Well, wasn't that all a dirty rotten thing to pull on somebody.

There is a minute in the day, a minute for everyone, though most everyone is too distracted to notice its arrival. A minute of gifts coming from the world like birthday presents. A minute given to every day that seems to create a golden bubble available to everyone.

And everyone loved sunsets. The light lost its sanity as it fell over the hills and into the Pacific--it went red and deeper red, orange, and even green. The skies seemed to melt, like lava eating black rock into great bite marks of burning. Sometimes all the town stopped and stared west. Shopkeepers came from their rooms to stand in the street. Families brought out their invalids on pallets and in wheelbarrows to wave their bent wrists at the madness consuming their sky. Swirls of gulls and pelicans like God's own confetti snowed across those sky riots.

Big Angel could not reconcile himself to this dirty deal they had all been dealt. Death. What a ridiculous practical joke. Every old person gets the punch line that the kids are too blind to see. All the striving, lusting, dreaming, suffering, working, hoping, yearning, mourning, suddenly revealed itself to be an accelerating countdown to nightfall. ....This is the prize: to realize, at the end, that every minute was worth fighting for with every ounce of blood and fire.

Why was he thinking about work? About the past? It was over. It was all over. He was never going to work again. “This second,” his father liked to tell him, “just became the past. As soon as you noticed it, it was already gone. Too bad for you, Son. It’s lost forever.

Spanish! His family didn't even like speaking Spanish to him. He tried, and they insisted on answering him in English. Though they knew perfectly well that he spoke Spanish as well as they did and better than their children did. Each side had something to prove, and none of them knew what it was.

Even Ignatius Loyola wavered. That dark night of the soul, man. No one’s immune. It would all be meaningless if you didn’t wonder and doubt. That’s what makes it real. That’s what makes us people. God could have sent angels to flutter around like fairies, delivering rum punch and manna all day on a cosmic cruise ship. But what would that avail us?

To my dogs,” he announced, “I am a legend.

These children are so stupid; they think they are the first to discover the world.

Families came apart and regrouped, she thought. Like water. In this desert, families were the water.

Big Angel had never noticed his mother’s endowment before. Suddenly, she seemed to be blessed with an expanse of pillowy flesh. And she tucked the parrot into that cleavage, adjusting herself as it sank from view, finishing the operation by using her thumb on its head to get it well positioned in the shadows. She adjusted her bust and said, “Let’s go to San Diego, boys!

There were other things, though. There were always more details trailing any good story. Like tin cans on the back bumper of a newlywed’s car. Rattles and pings and wonderful small moments spinning in the wake of a great life.

Carnal, rocks remember when they were mountains.' They stared at the rocks in the garden. 'And what do mountains remember?' 'When they were ocean floors.' Big Angel, Zen master.

Tell me," Big Angel said. "Did I do anything good in your life?" "You gave me the books." It was instantaneous. "Yes. All the books--that was pretty good. I gave you good ones." "And bad ones." "True. But all books are good, man. Imagine no books.

Miguel Angel," he said, "It isn't hard to die. Everybody does it. Even flies do it. Everyone here is doing it. We're all terminal." He had a tear in his eye; Big Angel could see it brimming. "Your schedule is just different from mine.

He believed he was celebrating them when he shared stories of their foibles. He felt the burden of being their living witness. Somehow the silliest details of their days were, to him, sacred. And he believed that if only the dominant culture could see these small moments, they would see their own human lives reflected in the other.

The whole family had inherited the bizarre belief system of Antonio and América: instant coffee was some kind of miracle. Mexicans of that generation liked to stir a spoonful of coffee powder into a cup of hot water and tinkle it around with a spoon. As if something highly sophisticated and magical were happening. Nescafé. Café Combate. Then they poured Carnation canned milk into it. They thought they were in some James Bond movie, living ahead of the cultural curve. Or maybe they were just sick of coffeepots and grounds.

This ain’t what we are, homes,” Lalo says. “This is not us. This is the story they tell about us, but it’s not true.

It was as if a dump truck had spilled a ton of humanity into the yard. Bodies were jammed onto the patio, elbowing gently to get at the new macaroni salad and ignoring the mustard coleslaw.

By the time he realized he was nowhere near Target, he was lost in a housing tract apparently formed entirely of cul-de-sacs.

Each of the women elaborately ignored the other.

Big Angel was late to his own mother's funeral.

Back at the house. How could you end a whole era and bury a century of life and be home before suppertime? Big Angel could not reconcile himself to this dirty deal they had all been dealt. Death. What a ridiculous practical joke. Every old person gets the punch line that the kids are too blind to see. All the striving, lusting, dreaming, suffering, working, hoping, yearning, mourning, suddenly revealed itself to be an accelerating countdown to nightfall.

Little Angel loved that expression...the old matriarch asserting herself in the faces of her children. All men had women inside of them – they just could not admit it.

He felt the burden of being their living witness. Somehow the silliest details of their days were, to him, sacred. And he believed that if only the dominant culture could see these small moments, they would see their own human lives reflected in the other.