On Little Wings (3 page)

Cleo stared at my hand holding the photograph. “I don’t think so. I think we find her number and you call and say…” she paused for an agonizing length of time while her mind went grabbing… “Say, ‘this is your niece, Jennifer.’” The obvious line fell flat.

“Hi,” I muttered, “I’m your niece, Jennifer. Sorry I haven’t been in touch lately. Hope you don’t hate me.”

“Or,” she said, ignoring my sarcasm, “I’m your niece, Jennifer. I’m so glad I finally found you.” Her honest voice added depth to the simple words. I repeated the phrase slowly in my mind. It sounded meaningful when Cleo said it, but she wasn’t the one who needed to say it.

We couldn’t stay at the graveyard much longer. The day was dimming and a dark walk through the field always has an ominous feel. “Let’s go to your house and see what we find,” I said.

“Excellent,” Cleo’s face flushed with something akin to victory.

“Cleo,” I spoke like a parent telling their child that they are going to look at toys, but not buy any. “I don’t know if I can do this. I said I’ll see. Even if we find her I don’t know what I’ll do.” She nodded soberly and I wiped a wet spot on William’s tombstone, smearing it into a dark streak, before standing up. What I said was mostly true. I didn’t know exactly what I would do, but I knew if I found her, I would have to do something. I replaced the tight flip flops that I had removed while we sat and stood, bracing myself against the worn, granite resting place of C.A. Weller.

Back at the Douglas house we made it past Stephen and Brett, Cleo’s younger brothers, and took the laptop into her room since the boys had commandeered the living room for their noisy video games. Cleo sat me at the desk in front of the computer and knelt down beside me on the floor.

“Are you ready?” she asked.

Most of me answered in the negative: my moist palms, my shivering stomach, the faint, indefinable feeling that I was doing something wrong. I propped Sarah’s picture up against the corner of the screen and studied it, hoping for . . . I don’t know what. Cleo didn’t interrupt or even move. She peered at the picture with a thoughtful frown and a fervent glint in her eyes. I’m convinced her expression propelled me onward. If Cleo wanted to know her - Cleo the Standoffish, Cleo the Suspicious, Cleo, the wisest judge of character I knew – then I could hardly argue.

Having no better ideas we opened up the main search page and started with the only information we had: Sarah Dyer. I clicked the keys slowly, watching the black letters appear against the glowing screen, looking so official. I paused, studying the name for the first time in my life, feeling the length and weight of it, memorizing the sight of it. I noticed how the slants of the y and the r in Dyer appeared to fight against each other, as if they couldn’t stretch far enough apart. And then, sensing Cleo’s impatience, I hit ‘enter’.

The results flew up too quickly. I didn’t have a chance to collect my thoughts before the screen filled with Sarah Dyers. The name flashed from several different web addresses and pictures filled the space under ‘image results’. A girl with white blonde hair holding up a book annoyed me because she looked so impossibly different from the Sarah in the picture. There were too many. My tense fingers hovered over the mouse while I stared at the page. “Which one?” I breathed quietly. Cleo gently pushed my hands off the keyboard as her fingers took my place, clicking.

“Here’s a bakery in New Hampshire owned by Sarah Dyer. That’s not far from Maine. A bakery sounds like something an aunt would do. Here’s an artist from Texas. That’s a nice painting.” She prattled on as the screen flashed from website to website.

I could barely stand to look, so I stared at the screen itself, not paying attention to individual words. We scanned through the images, quickly discarding anyone under forty, over fifty, and easily picking off the rest because they didn’t look anything like the picture at the corner of the screen. After several tense minutes of picking through the results and constantly reminding each other that Dyer may not be her last name anymore, Cleo closed the browser. For a moment I thought she was quitting and I felt nothing but relief and the need to take a shuddering breath. Then she opened a fresh page.

“Start over. Phone book. We need to try the phone book.” That jolted me out of my nervous haze. It seemed ridiculously simple. Why didn’t I think of the phone book? I nodded at her, a fever rushing under my skin. Cleo clicked in the name and selected Maine, U.S.. It took only a blink before eleven Sarah Dyers in Maine filled the screen. Almost all of the Sarahs were spelled without an H and I realized that I didn’t know how Sarah spelled her name, but I somehow assumed she would have the H.

“Do you know the town?” Cleo asked as my eyes scanned the directory. New Gloucester, Belgrade, Glenburn, Brunswick, Smithport.
Smithport
. I stared at the listing. I knew that word, though I couldn’t remember mother actually mentioning the name of her town. Sarah Dyer, 12 Haven Ln, Smithport, Maine, followed by a phone number. I interlaced my fingers and pressed my locked hands against my mouth.

“I think that might be her,” I whispered.

“Which one?” Cleo asked, pushing her face closer to the screen.

“Listing number five. Smithport. I think that’s where Mother grew up.”

Cleo’s face flushed an odd blue color in the light of the screen. “Found you.”

I turned to Cleo, my expression paralyzed. “I don’t think I can do it.”

Her face looked almost as nervous as mine. “I didn’t think we would find her so fast,” she admitted.

“We still don’t know if we did. I might be remembering wrong.”

“Jennifer!” Mrs. Douglas called up the stairs, fighting the high, twangy noise of lasers from the video game. I jumped, my stomach careening up to my throat at the sound of her voice, and Cleo slammed down the lid of the laptop, as if we’d been caught doing something shameful. Mrs. Douglas shouted, “Stephen, turn it down!” and then, “Jennifer!” again.

“Coming,” Cleo answered for me and we rushed from the room, stopping on the landing where we could see her upturned face below us.

“Jennifer, your dad is here,” she told me. My eyes traveled a few feet past her to the open front door where he stood apologetically on the entrance mat. I nodded mutely and went downstairs. My anxiety made me clumsy on the stairs. Cleo followed me to the next landing and stopped, leaning against the wall and looking down at the brown carpet. Dad’s smile had more to do with politeness than happiness, and he fidgeted, fighting for some casual words in front of our friends.

Mrs. Douglas gave us a calculating look and jumped in. “I’ll be right back. I’m just in the middle of something in the kitchen,” she said in a forced cheerfulness and disappeared.

Dad waited until I was close enough to hear his low words. “Are you okay?”

He asked so kindly that I reigned in the sarcastic voice that yearned to answer. “I guess.” We both shifted our weight and he didn’t seem to know what to say so I continued, “Are you and Mom all right? Is she still mad?”

He blew loudly between his lips, but spoke softly, “She’s mad, but we’re fine. You probably want to talk…” It’s odd how much I wanted answers, and how little I wanted to talk. He watched me closely and put a hand out toward me before closing his fingers and sticking them back in his pocket.

“I do… but later. Could I stay here tonight?” I asked him as I looked up to Cleo for permission. She nodded fervently and I turned back to Dad. He smiled and pulled his other hand out from behind his back, holding a plastic baggie with my toothbrush inside.

“I figured Cleo would have everything else.” His gentle eyes hugged me. My mother couldn’t stay mad at him. No one could. “Amy said it was fine,” he added. (Amy being Mrs. Douglas, but I got a verbal beating at age four for calling an adult by their first name and I never tried it again.) I nodded thankfully at him and after a brief look at Cleo, took his hand and led him outside, letting the glass door close behind us. The fact that he knew I wouldn’t want to come home made me feel a certain pact between us, like we were on the same team. Though I cannot say what we were playing, or fighting, for.

A storm was hanging in the air, refusing to fall, but blacking out large patches of the sky. We stood in the sickly yellow glow of the porch light and I swatted a bug back from my face. “Do you know her, Dad – Sarah?” I spoke in an undertone.

“No. I don’t.”

“So how do you know she didn’t,” I paused, unable to say ‘kill,’ “do what Mother said?”

“Oh,” his face looked a little stunned, “she didn’t mean that literally. You are not related to any murderers. Your mother thinks that some things Sarah did kept your grandmother from recovering from her stroke.” Then he added hastily, “I don’t think that’s medically possible.”

“What things?” I asked, turning my eyes away from the erratic, white path a moth was cutting through the air.

“Jennifer, I don’t know how much to tell you. I think your mother should have a chance to speak for herself, now that you know.”

“Fine. But you don’t know her at all? You don’t know where she lives?

“I spoke to her once on the phone, years ago. But that didn’t go over well with your mother, either.” He slumped heavily on one leg, his other lanky leg resting casually. My father has horrible posture and a remarkable face.

“You talked? What is she like?” I asked gently, hoping to gather the truth softly so it would not fall too fast and crush me.

“She seemed very nice to me. Just like your mom.”

“Then why won’t Mom talk to her?”

Dad stared at me as if telling me to refer to his last answer. He didn’t want to say more than necessary. “Where does she live?” I persisted, thinking of that black address against the white screen.

Dad scanned my face critically. “Why?”

I knew he knew why. Honesty seemed the only thing left. “I want to call her.”

He looked down and swore very softly, his hands crammed forcefully into his pockets. The fabric of his jeans moved up and down as he flexed his strong fingers inside his pockets. “It didn’t go well with your mother when I did it and I think it will be worse for her if you try. She’ll feel abandoned.”

My set face didn’t change. “I want to talk to her.”

Releasing one hand into the air, he pushed it through his feathery, black hair where it delicately recedes on the side of his forehead. I wondered, not for the first time, how my level-headed father got stuck between two emotional women. It seemed to be taking its toll tonight. “She was still in Smithport,” he conceded almost angrily.
So I did remember the name correctly.
“I guess I can’t stop you, but I’m starting to regret that I started this mess. It’s getting beyond me. I don’t know what to do next.” His dark eyes and heavy black eyebrows sagged in worry and it made me almost ill with sympathy.

I reached out and put my hand on his wrist. “I won’t make it worse. I’ll be careful.” He didn’t seem reassured so I changed topics. “Would she like me?” I asked.

His lips straightened, and then lifted. The sorrow left his mouth and seeped deeper into his eyes. “You have no idea.”

That is the exact moment I knew she really existed. His assurance of her reaction made her step from the dim pages of my imagination into the world of the living. I suddenly pictured her for an exquisite moment, smiling, sitting on a porch railing and holding her dark, golden arms out to me.

Then a June bug zipped uncomfortably close to my face and I ducked, losing the image. I couldn’t get it back. When I tried to imagine her again she was sitting on a couch with a bowl of popcorn, pajama-clad and lonely, glancing at her phone, wishing I would call. Only my imagination got it all wrong because she looked just like my mother. When I tried to replace her with the face from the photo she was suddenly a teenager again, sitting on the hood of a brown Buick, wondering why I was calling her aunt.

Dad pulled me gently to his side and held me there a moment while he looked up at the sky. “I need to get back to your mother.”

“Is she still crying?” How callous that my only thoughts had been for how much I wanted to meet Sarah and not for my mother’s grief.

“She’s not talking,” he answered with hesitation. “We’ll have to wait it out. Give her a little space.”

A person needing space could not be in a better place than Constance, Nebraska. We could almost see the curve of the earth as our plains dropped into the horizon. I peered past the houses into the night sky, thinking of the strange roads and scenery between the bent Harrison street sign at the corner and 12 Haven Lane, Smithport, Maine. And then I thought of the phone lines, climbing up the impossible cliffsides, curving around the lakes, traversing thousands of snaking miles and ending innocently as a jack in the wall. The wall upstairs. I shivered and squeezed my father a little harder.

“Why don’t you get out some clean sheets for the trundle bed,” Mrs. Douglas told Cleo when I came back inside. To her credit, she didn’t ask a single question, despite the motherly curiosity that blazed in her eyes. I climbed the stairs behind Cleo, waiting until we were back in her room and stretching her childhood purple sheets over her spare bed to speak.

“Does your mom know?” I asked her.

“No. I just told her your mom was upset over a relative. She didn’t pry.” The word ‘pry’ came out as a grunt because Cleo could not force the last corner of the old, shrunken sheet over the mattress.

“Give it to me,” I told her as she let go in frustration. I pulled, smoothly looping it around the thick mattress. Cleo didn’t look surprised, just mildly entertained. She gives respect where respect is due, and most people find my physique impressive.

Looking at Mother and Dad, one could never explain my athletic build. Mother is thin, but not at all sporty, and my father is a beanpole. Nevertheless, I’ve had sleek, defined muscles since I was barely more than a toddler and though I am slim, inch for inch, I am stronger than most of the boys in our class. My gym teacher always pulls down the twenty foot rope whenever any particular boy needs a lesson in humility. Only two boys in our class can match my time to the top. Nine seconds. Consistently. It doesn’t win me anything, but every now and then, when my amber ponytail is swinging and my arm muscles are straining as I climb up, the boys tear their devoted eyes away from Cleo and look at me with residual admiration. It is surprisingly gratifying. I might not fawn over the boys, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know they’re there.