Angels Unaware

half of it in frivolous ways. Her most ridiculous extravagance, and the one that never failed to make me mad, was the massive sign she had printed that hung on the side of the dilapidated house, placing a heavy burden on the shingles. It read: The Hospitality Inn. And underneath, it had a slot for a smaller sign to read either: Vacancy or No Vacancy. In all the years I would live at the inn, we never once were able to show the No Vacancy sign.
I was three when Jewel got her first boarder, Duncan—an art student on summer break from college. He’d discovered Galen while searching the countryside for landscapes to paint. Later I found out he came from rich people who lived in Philadelphia, and he proclaimed both Jewel and the inn to be “delightfully quaint.” That was my second observation about life. Rich people always find poverty picturesque. Duncan’s summer break turned into a two-year “hiatus” to learn about “the quintessence of life.” I don’t remember Duncan very well, but I think he must have been an idiot. It was said I bit him once. How else was I to demonstrate my feelings toward guests? This formed the foundation for my lifelong attitude to innkeeping in general and the Hospitality Inn in particular. I hated the loss of privacy, the constant wearying need to make pleasant conversation, maintaining the pretense of caring about the minutiae of other people’s lives.
When I was four, Caroline was born, and I found myself saddled with a sister I welcomed as much as smallpox. Caroline had Duncan’s blue eyes and black hair, and she was the most beautiful baby anyone had ever seen, just as she would grow into the most beautiful girl the residents of Galen had ever seen. Jewel’s second baby by Duncan was comparatively plain, but Jolene would grow up to be a genius, so it didn’t matter so much.
After Jolene was born, Duncan decided he’d had about enough of our quaintness, and that life in Galen wasn’t any more meaningful than life in Philadelphia, so he went back to his family and his money. Poor Jewel, ever the good sport, kissed him goodbye and wished him well.
“How could you let him get away like that?” I demanded later when I was old enough to demand. Missed opportunities always made me cross.
“What else could I have done?” she answered nonchalantly. “He wanted to go.”
“Dammit all! You could have made him pay for the trouble he caused you, not to mention two years’ room and board.” It still gnawed at me twenty years later that that little Philadelphia turd had ate and drank and slept and got his pole greased for a whole two years free of charge.
“Oh, Darcy,” Jewel exclaimed, waving me away. “What’re you so mad about? The man gave me happy times and two beautiful daughters. Why, I’m the richer for having known him.”
I never understood Jewel. Sometimes I even wondered if she was my real mother or if roving gypsies had left me to her when they broke camp. I looked nothing like her, and everything she did, or failed to do, made no sense to me. Her name for instance. Once, while rooting in the attic, I came across a birth certificate for Margaret Mary Willickers, and another document that legally changed her name to Jewel Willickers. I could understand her dislike for her first name, but why keep Willickers, which was just as silly as Margaret Mary. There were no answers to questions like that. It could only be chalked up to Jewel being Jewel.
My mother could remember in detail events of ten years ago, but completely forget what had happened the day before. And she could not seem to recall that which I most wished to know—the identity of my father.
“One of those boys must have looked more like me than the others,” I persisted.
“No,” she mused. “I can’t say as they did. And they didn’t have your mean streak either. No, not one of them. What’s so important about fathers anyway? The reverend was the only sour note in my otherwise sweet existence. You should be glad you don’t have to be bothered with one.” (Jewel always referred to Willickers as ‘the reverend,’ and never as her father.)
Perhaps it was that Caroline and Jolene had the same father, while mine was not only different but unknown, that divided us from the very beginning. That, and my need to be obeyed and respected. Even as a child, I refused to play games with my sisters. Less than four years seperated us, and I figured they wouldn’t respect me if I indulged in childish games, so I hung back, aloof, and watched a little contemptuously, just to show I was a cut above. My strategy worked because they always paid attention when I told them to come into the house or to do their chores. Jewel said I was born with a natural gift for intimidation, and it was certainly true enough with my sisters. But there were people in Galen who were a lot harder to scare off.
Just about everybody in the town believed that Jewel was a whore, which struck me as funny since after the art student, Jewel had sworn off men for good. She still liked them all right, and she had no regrets, but men made more problems than solutions as far as she was concerned, and she didn’t want any more problems than she already had. I guess people thought she was a hussy just because she looked like one. She had wild hair that was always messed up, no matter how many times you combed it, and made her look as if she’d just gotten out of bed. And she had a tart’s way of walking, with her pelvis out and her hips swaying. Galen had a whorehouse, but it was out in the middle of the woods and the girls pretty much kept indoors, so I’d