Sparrow Migrations (14 page)

FOURTEEN

R
ichard stood up, swallowing the last of his coffee. “I’ll see you there, then, in an hour?”

“Yes.” Brett sat at the kitchen table, still eating.

“Try to sit up front. You’ve been too far back the last couple weeks. The congregation needs to see you. Especially after those trips out of town. People don’t need any excuse to gossip, you know.”

Brett started, sloshing her coffee. “OK. I’ll look for a better spot.” She steadied her cup with both hands as she watched him pull on his jacket.
Gossip? Did someone suspect something? Did he?

“Good. What’s taking Amanda so long? Amanda!” Backing away, he called down the hall. Since she sang in the choir, Amanda left with him before Brett.

“Richard, do
you
need to see me?” Spoken aloud, her own question surprised her. After all, it didn’t matter anymore, did it?

Her husband looked nonplussed. “What kind of question is that?” Jingling his keys, he looked back down the hall again.

“Amanda! Aren’t you ready yet?”

Amanda appeared in her bedroom doorway.

“There you are. Come on, we’re running late.”

“See you later, Mom.” Amanda reached for her coat as Richard stood with the door open, issuing her instructions. “Remember what I told you before about blending in with the rest of the choir.”

“I know, Dad.” Hearing the resignation in her voice, Brett felt angry. His manufactured family modesty was sabotaging Amanda’s talent. She hadn’t realized herself how good Amanda’s voice was until she was cast in the play as Rizzo, the bad girl opposite Sandy, the female lead. Songs from
Grease
now echoed around the house—at least when Richard was out. He had sighed when she told him about it. Amanda should have had the chance to share that kind of news with her father. Nine out of ten would have been proud and happy. But Richard was the tenth, who would have lectured her just like he was doing now.

“It would be a poor example to the congregation to look like I’m showing off my daughter.”

“I
know
, Dad. You’ve told me, like, a hundred times,” Amanda said, as the door closed.

Carrying her dishes to the sink, Brett stared out at the bird feeder. She recalled her husband’s words.
What kind of question is that?
One seeking an answer that would allow her to stay? Do the easy thing? No. She had to stop stalling. Had to tell him the truth.

But he hadn’t answered her question, either. Were she and Amanda nothing more than props to him, after all? Dutiful wife in the pew, daughter in the choir? Even if their marriage had been reduced to roommate status, he was still Amanda’s father. Brett wanted to know someone could matter to him.

She thought it again at church. Richard held center stage at the pulpit. In her choir robe, Amanda was upstage right. In her Sunday best, Brett sat stage left. Human bookends, propping up the head of
the household. As Richard droned on, with the air of self-righteousness
she had complained about to Jackie, Brett stared out the window.
This
mockery of a family ritual was almost painful. She tried to numb herself, her thoughts drifting.

It was her first night with Jackie. Her first time with any woman. They lay together, the incessant New York traffic muted by the twenty floors between bed and street, and by the white noise roaring in Brett’s head.

“. . . I’m sure I don’t have to remind anyone that Valentine’s Day was this week.” Obligatory chuckles from the congregation barely penetrated Brett’s fantasy.
The white noise was the shredding of the rigid expectations and bigoted beliefs that she had bowed to all her life: that it was wrong to be here, naked, with Jackie.

“Now that the chocolates are gone and the roses are wilting, let us go forward thinking about God’s love for us,” Richard intoned. “God loves us more than we can possibly love each other—our wives, husbands, children. His love is unconditional, all-encompassing, three hundred and sixty-five days a year.”

The white noise was a vacuum, sucking away past fears and future worries. Only the present time and place mattered, only Jackie smiling the smile that matched her voice—warm and lingering.

“But for us to feel that love, to experience that wonderful purity his love offers, we must be pure ourselves. We must ask for his forgiveness for the times we have failed to follow his path. We must bare our true, sinful souls to the Lord.”

The white noise smoothed and buffered Brett’s uncertain, clumsy response as Jackie caressed her bare skin, her soft hands tracing south from Brett’s collarbone, gently, so tantalizingly gently.

“In today’s bulletin you’ll find a selection of Bible verses on truth and falsehood. I invite you to pray over them this week. I believe they will help you find the strength, the courage, to reveal yourself fully. I’d like to share some of my favorites.

“John, chapter four: ‘. . . True worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.
’
”

On the hard pew, Brett shifted her hips, imagining Jackie’s hand seeking places, hidden places, farther down her body. Her cheeks flushed. She gripped the hymnal tightly over her lap. Richard’s words ricocheted inside her head. The white noise roared louder, beginning to pulse through Brett’s entire body as Jackie’s phantom fingers swept lower still.

“Proverbs, chapter eight, verse seven: ‘For my mouth shall speak truth; and wickedness is an abomination to my lips.
’ 
”

Their mouths crushed against each other as Jackie’s fingers at last slid to where no woman’s had ever been, strumming urgently, until the white noise of pleasure and release began radiating outward, so
powerful it lifted Brett up to the sky, away from her earthly yokes, toward a joy she hadn’t let herself believe existed.

“Revelations twenty-one, eight: ‘. . . And all liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.
’ 
”

The fiery flush faded from Brett’s cheeks. The white noise went silent. In the sudden quiet of the church, she heard a cleared throat, a restrained sneeze. She lifted her bowed head. Hotel, gone. Bed, gone. Jackie, gone.

Looking past Richard, she found Amanda in the choir. As the fantasy sputtered, the sermon stopped ping-ponging in her head, settling firmly into the grooves of guilt, carved by a lifetime of pretense. A lifetime that Amanda knew as truth.
Oh, God. Could she really do it?

“Only then, when we have honestly asked for God’s forgiveness and committed to live his way, his truth, his light, can we fully experience the grace and peace of the living God.”

Richard’s gaze swept across the congregation, who joined him in fervent conclusion.

“Amen.”

FIFTEEN

T
he bigger one was back again, this time carrying a mouthful of crumbling brown oak leaves. Staring out the window of his last-period study hall, Robby watched the male sparrow return to its nest-in-progress on the sturdy, still-bare branch of the oak outside Charles A. Lindbergh Middle School. He’d noticed the nest yesterday and was impatient all day to get to last period. It was early March, prime nesting time for sparrows in the upper Midwest, according to the Sibley’s guide in the backpack at his feet.

Today the nest was much further along, a cup-shaped wad of dead grass, leaves, and scraps of paper napkin the sparrow must have foraged from the school Dumpster. Sitting in his favorite seat by the window, his notebook open on his desk, he was immediately entranced. He added a soft line with his pencil to the sketch he’d started yesterday.

“Robby. Robby. Pay attention to your work instead of the window, please. Robby. Robby. Are you listening to me?” Mr. Duvall, the study hall monitor and Robby’s math teacher, was calling from his desk at the front of the room.

Irritated, Robby turned his body away from the voice, wishing for his headphones hanging in his locker. He was allowed to wear them in study hall, but he still wasn’t used to having a second one. They’d stuck him here just last week, after reassigning Laura. He could see Mr. Duvall making his way down the aisle, shaking his head. Robby pulled his notebook in close, curling his arm protectively around the top.

The teacher stopped, bodily blocking his view. “Robby, I know you’ve got math homework. This is the time for schoolwork, not window-watching or doodling.”

“Did it.” Robby leaned way to the right, so he could watch the nest-building around the teacher. The sparrow was gone again.

“You finished it? All of it? There were twenty-five problems,” Mr. Duvall said skeptically.

Without taking his eyes off the window, Robby rummaged into his backpack on the floor and brought out two sheets of notebook paper. He thrust them at Mr. Duvall.

“This—this looks pretty good, Robby.” Mr. Duvall said, after a moment. “All right, then.”

He laid the math homework on Robby’s desk, briefly covering the sketches in the notebook. Robby scooped up the problems, shoved them back in his backpack, then leaned over to shelter his notebook again.

“I didn’t know you were taking any art classes. May I look?” Mr. Duvall tried to peer over Robby’s elbow.

“Not art,” Robby said curtly, still looking out the window.

“Not art? But they’re drawings, right?”

Robby nodded.

“Drawings of what?”

“Birds.”

“Would you show me? I’d like to see them.”

Finally, Robby turned his head toward Mr. Duvall, meeting his eyes for a whisper of a moment before, with an exaggerated sigh, he sat back, exposing the notebook pages.

His teacher’s eyes swept the pages, then glanced outside, at the nest-building scene he’d been depicting from his indoor perspective, then back to the sketchbook. His eyebrows lifted.

“Wonderful detail. Nice proportions.”

He flipped a page, to a sketch of birds in flight. Robby dropped his arm over the notebook again, jabbing Mr. Duvall’s hand with his elbow.

“Ow.” Mr. Duvall flinched, rubbing his hand. “Sorry. I should have asked before I turned the page, right?”

Robby grunted.

“But thanks for showing me. I’m really impressed, Robby. Those drawings are really good. You should show Mr. Marshall.”

Across the room there was a sudden yelp. Mr. Duvall looked up. “Hey, Trevor, Brody, Justin. Knock it off.” He strode across the room.

Relieved, Robby fiddled with the pencil, finishing the window and adding a few more strokes to the nest. Why did teachers always want you to show things? He didn’t need Mr. Marshall, the art teacher, or anyone else to see it. He was perfectly content to draw in his notebook and keep it to himself forever.

His parents were like that, too, especially his mom. Then after looking at it, they always wanted to talk about it. Why had he drawn that bird, that way? Was it real, or something he had seen in a book, or imagined? Why didn’t he add some color? Would he like some paints or pastels so he could? Was he sure?

It was exhausting, especially since to Robby, the answers were so obvious. Everything he drew was real. Everything was drawn exactly as he saw it. He chose pencil because it worked and was readily available. Pencil was perfectly adequate for the task, so why bother with a bunch of paints and other extra stuff?

The bell rang. Robby winced. Preoccupied with his drawings, he had forgotten to keep an eye on the clock, bracing himself for the piercing peal at 3:04 p.m.

He stuffed his notebook into the backpack and waited to merge with the rest of the class before filing out past Mr. Duvall, to minimize the chance the teacher might try to resume conversation. He wasn’t a bad teacher. Robby was relieved to wind up in Mr. Duvall’s study hall instead of Mrs. Russell’s. She taught English and was always talking about books and discovering the author’s intention and stuff that didn’t make any sense at all. Still, talking was talking and Robby preferred quiet.

His strategy worked, and Robby got downstairs to his locker without speaking to or looking at anyone in the teeming halls. Spinning the combination, he opened the locker and immediately clapped his headphones over his ears. The ringing echo of the bell stopped. His body relaxed. The school ordeal was over for another day.

Now he could go home, get on his computer, get back to those bird websites Dr. Felk had given him at the museum. And Donald Baxter’s site. His Canada goose database, going back to 1984, was built on an open-source platform and universally downloadable. Robby spent hours sorting and sifting the columns, testing Paula’s idea that the geese in the crash were from Baxter’s Ontario reservation. It was looking more and more plausible, but he still hadn’t been able to tell Paula about his discoveries in the data. She wasn’t answering any of his texts.

The next Audubon meeting was tonight, though. Maybe she’d be there. Robby tripped down the steps of Charles A. Lindbergh Middle School, a silent island in the flow of bedlam around him, absorbed by the surprisingly pleasant thought of talking to Paula.

Outside, he walked along the west wall of his school. He wanted to look at the nest he sketched in study hall from the ground.

A bus passed him, exhaling a dingy cloud. Robby glanced at the number on the door: 657, his bus. His mom didn’t know it, but he always blew off the bus ride home. He had to take it in the morning, since it arrived before she left for work. But in the afternoon, he had nearly an hour alone before she got home. One day, sometime before Christmas, he’d realized that he could simply skip the noisy, unpredictable, frightening ride with the rowdy bus crowd, walk home, and still arrive before she did.

He rounded the corner to the south side of the building. This was the teachers’ parking lot and already mostly deserted. Robby stepped through the dirty lumps of melting snow. It was an unseasonably warm day, the kind of day that made you think spring might finally be here. Craning his head back, he searched the oak’s branches. There it was. The sparrow was gone again.

Robby liked the new perspective. Eyeballing the distance from nest to ground gave him an appreciation for the risk the birds took, placing their eggs so high. He envied the privacy, too. One nest per tree. Plus wings to escape, to fly far, far away if it ever did get too crowded.

Setting his backpack down, Robby groped for the brown notebook and a pencil. The male sparrow came back with the female, chattering loudly. Robby pulled his headphones down to hear better. He had to beat his mother home, he remembered after they flew away again. As he tucked the notebook away, a shout startled him.

“Hey! You over there!” It was the troublemakers from study hall: Justin, Trevor, and Brody. Though he never spoke to them, Robby knew their names, like he did for all the kids in each of his six classes. He fumbled with the backpack zipper.

“You’re the one Mr. Duvall was hanging all over today. He’s a big fag, you know. Are you, too?” Justin, the biggest, spoke first.

The other two laughed loudly.

“Are you?”

“Yeah, are you?”

Robby tried to smile. He shook his head, trying to sidestep the three of them. Justin deftly slid with him.

“And how come you get to wear headphones, when nobody else does?” Justin was crowding closer, way too close. He grabbed the headphones from Robby’s neck and stretched them wide, wider. Robby grabbed vainly as Justin slapped them around his own neck.

“You must be somebody’s little boy. Somebody’s doing favors for you. What are you doing for them?”

“How come you never talk?” One of the parrot sidekicks came up with an original line.

“Yeah, how come?” the other echoed.

“Maybe he writes everything down in his notebook,” Justin suggested. “He’s always scribbling in that. What are you writing? Maybe . . .” he grinned with inspiration, “maybe he writes little love notes to Mr. Duvall.”

“Yeah!” Trevor yelled.

“Love notes to Mr. Du-vaall,” Brody mimicked.

Robby couldn’t comprehend the sarcasm, but he knew the situation wasn’t good. Cornered, neither fight nor flight viable escapes, he wrapped his arms around his backpack, huddling behind the nylon shield.

“Let’s see,” said Justin, seizing the backpack from his arms.

“Mine!” Robby reached for it, but Justin easily tossed it to Trevor.

“Find that notebook.”

“Sure.” Yanking the zipper, Trevor dumped it upside down. Loose papers, the Sibley’s guide, textbooks, and the brown notebook bounced onto the damp dirt. Robby scrambled for the notebook, but Justin snatched it away. “Gimme that, pussy.”

He flipped through several pages. “You don’t talk, you don’t write much, either. Just draw. What is all this shit?”

“What, Justin?”

“Pictures of birds. Birds! What the hell? Page after page.”

“Birds are pretty gay,” ventured Brody, his first original remark, looking hopefully at Justin for approval.

“Yeah, birds are gay. Birds. Jesus H. Christ.” Justin flipped through the rest of the notebook and tossed it to Trevor. “This what you and Mr. Duvall talk about?” He sneered.

“Hey, Justin, this picture’s of a nest. I think it’s right up in this tree,” Trevor looked up. “Yeah, there it is! Right outside the study hall window.”

“That’s what you guys were talking about today, weren’t you.” Justin’s voice got louder, angrier. He snatched the book from Trevor and ripped the sketches out. “Knock it down.”

“No!” Robby shrieked, grabbing again for his notebook.

“Yeah!” Brody searched the ground and hurled a big stick. It fell well shy of the nest.

“Let me try.” Trevor tossed it up. He got closer, but the nest remained safe.

“Pussies,” Justin grabbed the stick and threw it a third time. He, too, missed the nest, instead hitting the school window. “Shit.”

In a moment, Mr. Duvall’s face appeared. He opened the window. “What’s going on down there? Robby? Is that you? Justin, Trevor, Brody? What’s the problem?”

“Bail,” Justin instructed. He flung the notebook face down on a pile of snow, then crumpled the sketches and let them fall, too. “Get out of here and don’t bug me no more.” He pointed a finger at Robby as he backed up. He tossed the headphones next to the notebook, then turned and fled with his minions at his heels, laughing.

From above, Mr. Duvall spoke. “Robby, I’m coming down there. Don’t leave.” He pulled his head in and shut the window.

Quickly Robby gathered the books and papers and notebook and clamped his headphones back over his ears. He was shaking, but being seen with Mr. Duvall would clearly only make it worse. He zipped his backpack and ran down the sidewalk. Away from Charles A. Lindbergh Middle School and the neurotypicals who ruled there—the bullies and the well-meaning. Ran and ran until he was safe, at home.

When his mother came home to drive him to the Audubon meeting, Robby said he had a stomachache and didn’t want to go.