Sparrow Migrations (18 page)

Two of the next four didn’t mention husbands. One of those who didn’t was expecting twins. Deborah started to feel a little better. Peach Tank was Kate, pregnant with her first, indeed due August 11. A boy, who would be named in honor of his paternal heritage, Earl Wyatt Montgomery IV. Poor kid. It was her turn.

“I’m Deborah. I’m due in November with my first. I work at Cornell.”

Where did that come from, she wondered. No one else had identified an employer, though she couldn’t believe none of them worked.

“Oh yeah?” Ming Su spoke up. “You’re lucky. They have a great maternity leave policy. My husband worked there in grad school. A woman in his department had a baby and got four months off, then came back to work part-time for two months until summer. She got practically a whole year off.”

“Well, I’m not on the faculty, so I won’t get summers off,” Deborah
replied.

“You might decide not to go back to work, too, you know,” Kate chipped in. “I know I’m not. They’re little for such a short time.” She sighed. “I can’t imagine missing any of it.”

“Me either,” Megan and Stephanie spoke up simultaneously. Kate smiled happily; two more for the stay-at-home side. Deborah felt another flicker of unease. She earned the higher salary, anyway, and now with Christopher out of the picture, she had no choice but to work. She caught the eye of the older woman next to her, who gave the slightest eye roll Deborah had ever seen. She felt a surge of gratitude.

“Let’s move on,” Ming Su said quickly. “We’ve one more to go.” She nodded at the woman to Deborah’s right.

“I’m Julia. This is my first. I’m due August first.”

“Wonderful. Thanks, Julia. Now let’s begin in mountain . . .”

Her voice faded as the pieces clicked in Deborah’s mind. Julia. Julia Adams. The woman who had tried to enlist her in the nonprofit cause at the dean’s picnic. The one whose husband had huddled with Christopher, discussing the grant. The one whose texts she had blown off following the crash. She cast a furtive, sidelong glance. No doubt.

“Now if you ever feel tired, or light-headed or winded, you need to go into child’s pose,” Ming Su’s voice interrupted her nagging conscience. “That’s a resting pose where you’re on knees and elbows . . .”

Beside her, Julia stage whispered. “Child’s pose? The rest of them must have that mastered already. What are we grown-ups supposed to do?”

Deborah’s surprised laugh came out like a snort. God, did that feel good. She glanced at Julia again. Maybe the unreturned texts were no big deal. Her Cornell sweatshirt was faded, like she’d had it a while. Deborah wondered if she was an alumnae, or worked on campus, too.

“Let’s quiet our minds now, please,” Ming Su said sternly. Peering through the curtain of her hair, Deborah saw she was looking at them. “So much for being the grown-ups,” she whispered back to Julia.

“Prepare yourselves to connect with your babies,” Ming Su instructed. “Close your eyes.”

Reluctantly, Deborah did. She hated feeling blind.

“Set aside the world of getting ready, to-do lists, baby registries. This time is about you and your baby. Getting ready to experience birth together.”

Lulled into the idea, Deborah laid her hands against her belly again, then crossed her arms, hands cupping her hip bones, and tried to imagine labor. Tried to imagine her stomach growing as big as Angela’s. Tried to imagine feeling a kick from the inside. The day her assistant began her maternity leave, the baby kicked just as Deborah hugged her good-bye. Angela laughed and apologized. Deborah laughed, too. But privately she had been in awe of the power of that baby’s kick on the other side of her abdomen, now more than three years ago.

Awaiting the sensation now herself was a little scary. She tried to imagine birth, to imagine pushing. Tried to imagine a baby’s head emerging between her legs. Tried to imagine cuddling and comforting it, warm and wet and crying. Bringing its soft, fuzzy head to her breast to nurse. And then Deborah herself was crying softly, tasting salt as the tears ran down her cheeks.

She was scared. She was angry at Christopher. Everything he and Helen had said was true. She had no idea how she would manage alone. The pressure at work was rising. She had two out-of-state trips this month and another in May. She hadn’t yet told Phillip her maternity leave would begin almost as soon as the law school campaign went public. Something brushed her arm.

It was Julia, offering a tissue. “It’ll be OK,” she whispered.

Gratefully, Deborah accepted the tissue. Julia’s was the first voice of empathy she’d heard since February, almost two months ago. A kindred soul offering a kernel of faith. Deborah concentrated on that kernel, seeding it firmly in her own soul.

“
Namaste
, ladies.” Ming Su tipped her head toward them an hour later. “See you next week.”

Side by side, Deborah and Julia rolled up their mats.

“Thanks for the tissue,” Deborah started. “And I’m sorry I never got back to you about your fundraising project.”

Julia dismissed it with her hand. “It’s fine. And I was actually kind of relieved to see someone else get overwhelmed with all this.”

“Yeah? You do, too?”

“Definitely. It’s a huge change, and not very much time to adjust, if you think about it. Nine months to create a creature who’s going to depend on you for almost twenty years. I mean, I knew my husband for five years before we even got engaged.”

“Right.” Deborah wanted to head off a husband discussion. She nodded at Julia’s sweatshirt. “Alumni, too?”

“Alumni. Twice, in fact. Undergrad and master’s in social work. Then I put Michael through his PhD.”

Deborah nodded. Michael was Christopher’s colleague, the other lead on the big grant. Were they friends, too? She decided she didn’t care. Julia seemed like someone who could be a friend. She hadn’t had a real female friend in Ithaca in a long time, since Elizabeth moved down south.

“Listen, I’m sure you probably have plans already, but I could sure go for a cup of coffee. How about you?” Deborah asked.

Julia looked at her watch and grimaced. “Can’t today. After class next week?”

“I’ll be looking forward to it,” Deborah said.

NINETEEN

C
hristopher was barely in time for Baxter’s presentation. He hadn’t slept well. He’d missed his connection out of Detroit and was forced to rent a car to get to Lansing. Then he learned the agenda had changed, and he was now scheduled to present immediately after Donald Baxter, who would suck all the air out of the room. To top it off, he was booked into a room next to a bank of rattling elevators.

Still, it was better than the depressing fellow’s apartment, prefurnished with an ugly ’80s seafoam couch, sagging with worn-out springs, and a coffee table with permanent coffee rings. Plus the baggage of resentment and anger that he had moved in himself.

The conference room was predictably packed. The only seat left was in the middle of the back row, next to a kid wearing a Detroit Lions hoodie. Kids weren’t unheard-of at these kinds of conferences, but one that young was unusual. Hoping he wouldn’t fidget, Christopher squeezed into the row as Baxter was introduced.

Polite applause followed. By consensus Baxter’s reputation was that of an egomaniac at best and insufferable at worst, but most of the
audience, like Christopher, couldn’t afford to miss what he might say.

Today he was tipping more toward his insufferable self. Christopher tr
ied to concentrate on the presentation. It should have riveted him. Baxter claimed to have identified a new flyway between Ontario and South Carolina.

It was one of the shortest durations documented, departing in late December and returning in mid-March. Baxter attributed it to global warming, and it was most common among birds who lived in heat-trapping urban areas. They simply didn’t have to leave as early as they once did.

All of that was well-trodden in the journals. But Baxter’s latest breakthrough showed a profound physiologic impact. With less distance to cover, he had documented nearly a five percent decline in the wingspan over three generations of Canada geese. Meanwhile, the birds’ evolutionary instinct to feed before the long flight south continued undisturbed. With a smaller wingspan transporting the same weight, the task of flying was more taxing.

Takeoffs in particular were harder. The geese required more distance to gain their migratory altitude than they were known to need even five years ago. Nor could they fly as far or as fast without resting. So more takeoffs were required over the course of the migration route, further draining the birds.

The room was buzzing already when Baxter delivered his cliff-hanger.

“Of course, the likelihood of more low-flying flocks in the future has significant implications for humans, especially in well-populated flyways like this one, which includes Toronto, the New York-New Jersey-Philadelphia area, Washington DC, and Baltimore.

“To offer just one example of a consequence, let’s consider the well-documented problem of aircraft bird strikes. Most recently we had the so-called ‘Miracle on the Hudson’ crash this past January.”

Christopher’s head jerked up. Goosebumps prickled his arms.
Brace for impact
. Icy water sloshing over his ankles. Flight attendants shouting. Deborah’s plaintive pleading.

“You heard it here first: When that investigation’s complete it will be Canada geese from this flyway that drove that plane into the river. And we’d better hope for more hero pilots out there, folks, because my data points to many more birds flying into engines.”

The buzz crescendoed. Next to Christopher, the kid in the sweatshirt jumped up and leaned forward, stabbing his finger at Baxter. “You lied!” he cried. “I was right, and you lied.”

The man on the boy’s other side rose, too, pushing his arm down, trying to get him to sit back down. “Robby. Stop it. Sit down.”

“It was my idea, Dad! Mine! I told him yesterday!” Robby’s arm fell, though he remained standing. “He said I was wrong. I knew I wasn’t.”

“We’re leaving. Go, Robby,” his father said, towing him out of the row. “Move it. I mean it. Now.”

Christopher followed them out. He had no desire to sit through the Q & A that was sure to cut into his presentation time. Better to leave and try to collect his own thoughts. The father had taken the boy down the hall, but Christopher could still hear their conversation. Irritated, he pushed the button for the elevator. Apparently he’d have to go back to his room.

Sam faced off with his son.

“Robby, what’s the matter with you? Why are you calling him a liar? When did you even talk to him?”

“Yesterday! When you were looking for me.”

“You were having a conversation with him? What did you have to talk about?”

“His database. I’ve been studying it.” Robby dug into his pocket and held up a thumb drive. “He asked me to tell him more.”

“The conference keynote speaker?” Sam was skeptical. “Really?”

“Ask Paula! She saw him. Told me to follow him. Talk to him. And he stole my idea!”

“Robby, I know you’ve been obsessed with those geese since the crash, but you just can’t go around accusing people . . .”

“Robby! Mr. Palmer!” The door from the conference room burst open, and an older man wearing a short-sleeved shirt with a tie hustled down the hall. Sam crinkled his forehead. The face was familiar, but Sam couldn’t place him.

Robby, though, recognized him right away.

“Dr. Felk!”

Sam blinked. Indeed it was, the bearded, bespectacled ornithologist from the American Museum of Natural History who was so awed by Robby’s instincts. The man responsible for bringing them here, here himself.

“Wonderful to find you here,” Felk said, shaking both their hands. He gave Sam an extra pump and a pat on the back. An attaboy for bringing Robby.

“I heard the commotion and recognized Robby when I looked over. What’s going on, son?”

“He stole my theory!” Robby insisted again. “I used his databases. Yesterday I told him more about the geese in the crash.” His words sputtered, the sentences clipped into fragments. “Late migration date. Fly to South Carolina. No data points since the crash. I was right, Dr. Felk!

“But he said I was wrong. ‘Better luck next time,’ he said.

“Then, in there, he took my idea.” Robby dropped to his knees in the middle of the hall and rummaged in his backpack, pulling out a handful of disorganized, torn flash cards. “I can prove it. It’s all here!”

“Robby, please. Keep your voice down,” Sam pleaded. Some passersby carefully threaded past the hallway tableau, studiously avoiding even a glance. Others watched furtively. Felk was listening intently. He took a flash card, then another. “You did all this research yourself?”

Robby nodded. “It’s here, too.” He held up the thumb drive.

“Are you free for lunch?” Felk looked between father and son.

“Yes. Tell him yes, Dad. Tell him yes!” Robby stood up, staring at Dr. Felk as if at a redeemer.

Sam hesitated. He looked at Robby’s face. “All right. I suppose.”

As Robby walked ahead to the hotel restaurant, Sam spoke quietly to Felk. “He’s so deep into researching this crash. It’s like some complete alternate reality. I’d heard autistic people could get really involved in their arcane niches, but I never expected anything like this.”

Felk nodded. “I had an instinct about Robby back in January. I just want to see where he’s gone with it the last couple months.”

Father, son, and ornithologist sat down in a booth. Robby dumped his backpack out on the table and began reciting again the trends he’d discovered in Baxter’s database of banded Canada geese.

The South Carolina–bound flock with late arrival dates in New York. The lack of data points after January 15. His group of forty-eight most likely victims. His second-tier choices. Felk listened, waving off the waitress multiple times.

After fifteen minutes, Robby finished. He sat back, as drained as after a meltdown. But though his adrenaline was obviously revved up, he’d remained coherent and in control of his body except for the outburst in the lecture hall, Sam realized.

“You’ve been busy the last couple months,” Felk said, pushing the backpack contents around on the table. Flotsam and jetsam, Sam thought. The giant, outdated headphones; the flash cards, dingy from constant handling even before Robby ripped some; the brown notebook; a cheap solar-powered calculator.

At the bottom on the pile, Felk’s fingers brushed more ripped paper—larger than the flash cards, the sheets unlined, hastily crumpled. Seemingly idly, Felk’s fingers smoothed the wrinkles. Sam leaned over to see better.

It was a sketch. A bird perched on a branch, building a nest. Done in pencil, like the flash cards. Unlike Robby’s sloppy penmanship, though, the lines of the drawing were finely done, from the precise edges of the bird’s beak to the variegated shading of its feathers.

Next to him, Sam felt Felk sit up straighter. “Mmm-hmm,” he said, setting aside the sketch and returning to the pile, sifting through the papers more urgently now. He found another crumpled sketch, this one a close-up of the nest. Then a third of a bird in flight. He turned them to face Robby. His son ducked his head, pushing the sketches back into the larger pile.

“Robby, did you do those?” Sam tugged them back out, amazed. Linda mentioned Robby doing some drawing, but he’d never imagined anything this good. “They’re wonderful. Why are they in the bottom of your backpack, crumpled up?”

Robby looked at his lap, then at the sketches sticking out of the pile. He shrugged. He looked at Felk, who held the gaze a long moment before he spoke.

“Your dad’s right, Robby. Those sketches are excellent. They show attention to detail, accuracy, and skill. And they show the most important thing. Far more important than the data on your flash cards, believe it or not, or even whether you reached the right conclusion before Baxter did. They show passion.”

A strange look crossed Robby’s face. Embarrassment? Confusion? Both? Sam couldn’t tell.

“I see your passion for birds in these sketches, Robby,” Felk continued. “And that’s the piece that an ornithologist must have. It’s not just about the mystery of flight, the aerodynamics, the fascinating ancestry of birds that makes people dedicate their lives to studying them. There has to be a passion. A personal one.

“For me, it’s hearing the rare songbirds, like the Bicknell’s thrush. For the last thirty years, every spring, I go to Vermont, hoping to hear one. For Baxter, it’s establishing a sanctuary on his reserve up there in Canada, providing safe haven from all the threats we humans impose.”

Robby nodded slightly, his brown eyes lifting to look at Felk.

“I don’t know what it is yet for you. But looking at these sketches, I know you’ve got that passion. You’ve got the head for the data, that’s for sure, not to mention the intellectual curiosity. But think about these past two months. What kept you at your computer, querying that database every which way till Sunday?”

“I could imagine how they felt.” Robby seemed to be talking to himself. “I saw them from the ferry. Flying along the river. Not bothering anyone.”

Felk nodded. “Go on,” he said, softly.

“Just there in the sky. Their home.”

Felk nodded again.

Robby cleared his throat, his voice getting a bit louder. “Then comes the plane. Invading. The birds don’t have a chance.”

Watching the tears form in Robby’s eyes, Sam felt dampness in his own.

Robby looked at Felk. “I thought if I learned about them, maybe I could help them.”

Felk smiled. “You will, Robby. I would stake my recording of the Bicknell’s thrush on that. And after lunch, I’m going to introduce you to someone who can help you with the first step.” He looked around the restaurant. “Do you suppose we could convince the waitress we really do want to eat?”

Flagging down a waitress, he waved for Robby to order first. Sam caught Felk’s eye. “I think you mean the second step, right?”

Felk’s brow furrowed. “How’s that?”

“You said you’d introduce him to someone who can help him with the first step.” Sam held Felk’s watery blue gaze. “Robby met that man three months ago. And it’s past time I thanked you.”

“Christopher! Christopher Goldman. Is that you?”

Christopher turned and smiled, the voice lifting his low spirits. Class of ’56, Arthur Felk was one of Cornell’s most venerated biology alumni and an institution himself at the American Museum of Natural History. The summer internship he offered there every year was one of the most competitive at Cornell. He had mentored dozens of greenhorn students who didn’t know the difference between a crest and a cap into confident, credible scientists—including Christopher.

Lately Christopher wondered whether the man’s age was catching up with him. Last year, he’d caught a few methodology mistakes in research Felk asked him to review before journal submission. Still, his lifetime stature was towering.

“Dr. Felk! I didn’t know you were going to be here. Why didn’t you get in touch? Can we meet for dinner later? A drink?”

“Arthur, please, Christopher. You know to call me Arthur now. Sort of a last-minute decision, my boy. Later, yes, indeed, we must meet. But there’s something else first. You’re on your way to the Expo, yes? Staffing the camp table?”