Sparrow Migrations (25 page)

TWENTY-SIX

M
oving day, July 3, broke hot, humid, and silent. Richard had left for church. Amanda, whose cool distance had hardened to frozen estrangement over the past weeks, was spending the night at Abby’s. Her heart a crater in her chest, Brett had agreed to the sleepover, brightly promising to call from Ithaca.

Leafing through the newspaper as she drank her coffee, Brett noticed the date. She’d officially begin her new life in Ithaca on Independence Day. Images flashed through her mind. Sailing on the ferry with Jackie. Making the guest room into her own. Stumbling upon the Ithaca job posting. She’d felt giddy, almost intoxicated with freedom. She tried to dredge up a remnant of those feelings, but when it was permanent and final, independence was a lot scarier.

Carrying her coffee cup to the sink, she looked out the window to the bird feeder, hanging empty and still in the thick summer air. The moving truck was due in fifteen minutes. She had only one task left, and then she’d be ready.

When Amanda came home, she found a gift bag on her bed. Inside was a cell phone and an envelope. Her mother’s neat handwriting filled the lined paper inside.

Dear Amanda,
she read
. I know you’re unhappy with me, and scared, and angry. If I could make this easier for you I would, but that would mean more lies.

I’m going to miss you terribly, and I’m worried about you. I’m going to call you often. I got you this cell phone so we could talk privately. You might not want to talk to me, at least for a while, but when you do, you’ll have it.

In the meantime, I’m leaving you something else that helped me all these years, when I was feeling unhappy and scared and angry. You got me the bird feeder for Christmas when you were about four. I’m sure your dad helped you pick it out, but I’ll never forget your face—so excited—when I opened it on Christmas morning.

Filling that feeder all these years, I’ve learned that when someone else depends on you, you take care of yourself. That’s how I coped. I knew you were counting on me to be there.

You’ll always be my daughter. But you don’t need me like that anymore. It’s my chance to spread my wings. I hope someday you can understand why I have to do this now.

Please feed the birds for me, Amanda. I’ll know you’re OK if you’re feeding the birds. I love you.

Mom

Tucked inside the envelope was a twenty-dollar bill with a Post-it note stuck to it, also in her mother’s handwriting.
Wilson’s gets bulk feed in end of September
. And a second Post-it, with two phone numbers.
Mine. Yours.

Clutching the letter in one hand, Amanda dropped onto her bed, her sobs echoing in the empty house.

“Good afternoon, Deborah DeWitt-Goldman.”

Christopher exhaled with relief. After what seemed like half a dozen rounds of phone tag, he was finally speaking to her.

“It’s Christopher.”

“Christopher. Can I call you back? I’m right in the middle of something.”

Her urgency sounded manufactured.
It’s not too late
, Arthur Felk had told him. But it was only getting later.

“No, you can’t call me back. We’ve been talking to voice mail for two weeks now.”

“I’ve been busy. I’ve kind of got a lot going on now, in case you hadn’t noticed.” Deborah was not normally sarcastic. Neither was he, but he couldn’t squelch it now.

“I had noticed. You showed me a picture, in fact.”

“Oh, so you looked at it, then?”

Only about a hundred times since
, he thought but did not say.

“Of course. And I wanted to talk to you about it. But you dropped that picture in front of me and then just left.”

“Kind of like you did, back in February.”

Touché. And ouch. He didn’t know what to say. A pause stretched between them. Deborah spoke again, sounding apologetic.

“This is silly. We sound like children ourselves.”

“I guess so,” Christopher conceded.

“I’m sorry about all the messages. I really have been busy, and I guess I just don’t know what to say anymore.”

Christopher didn’t know either, so he steered the conversation away from themselves. “Dr. Felk wants to meet with you.”

“He already came to see me.”

“He did?”

“Right after your hike.”

“Such as it was.” Christopher thought back to the abbreviated trek. “Did you set up the endowment for him?”

“I’m helping him get started. A joint endowment is complicated. Then after I’m gone, the medical school development staff will take over.”

“After you’re gone?” Christopher sat up.

“On my maternity leave.” He caught a prickly note in her voice again, as if he’d forgotten the main subject.

“But that’s not till November, right?”

“Actually, I’m starting at the end of September. I’ve got vacation and sick time I need to use before the end of the year, so I’m going to take it easy for a bit before she’s born.”

Before she’s born
. There it was again, that feminine pronoun that made everything feel so much more real. And September was next month already. “Phillip’s OK with that?”

“I don’t need him to be OK with it, Christopher. I’m entitled to the leave. It’s policy.”

“And it’s three months?”

“Four. And I’ll be entitled to more vacation at the start of the new year that I’ll tack on. So I expect I’ll be off until at least the first of April.”

“You’ve made a lot of plans, haven’t you?”

Deborah laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Someone has to, Christopher.”

“How’s Helen?” He allowed a note of accusation in his voice. He wanted to remind her. She was as responsible as he for their split, for bearing the burden of planning the future.

He reached for his wallet and found the picture. The black-and-white print had faded to a purplish-brown, like a bruise. The date stamp was three months ago. How much would she have changed by now, his daughter? As much as her mother? As much as him? Less than three months to go now. Was it enough time for him to get over Deborah’s deceit? Could he ever, if she continued to refuse to accept any responsibility for their circumstances?

“She’s doing fairly well, all things considered. I’m going out to see her in October, after my leave starts.” The manufactured urgency returned to her voice. “Really, Christopher, I’ve got to get to a meeting now.”

“You’re flying to Seattle? That late in the pregnancy? Is that safe?”

“The doctor assured me it’ll be fine.”

“OK. Well, I . . .” He paused. He’d what? See her later? Talk to her later? Call her later? Soon? Nothing sounded quite right, yet he wanted something that implied future contact.

“I miss you,” he said suddenly.

The words surprised him. There was a long pause. He heard what sounded like a choked-off sniff. Then, “Good-bye, Christopher.”

On her end, Deborah leaned back, one hand still holding the phone, the other splayed over her belly. Her brain and heart reeled in opposite directions.
Leave the door open
, Dr. Felk had implored. Though she had agreed, she honestly hadn’t expected Christopher to knock.

A real rap sounded on her door. Angela peeked in. “Phillip’s waiting for you.”

“Tell him I’ll be five more minutes.” She needed to pull herself together.

“OK.” The secretary nodded, concern in her eyes.

“I’ll be fine, Angela. I just need a couple minutes.” Deborah forced a smile. “Close the door, OK?”

After a soft click assured her of privacy, Deborah laid her head on her desk and felt the tears pool. Lots of plans, Christopher had said. She put up a good front. Even Julia didn’t see the whole truth: That she had no plan for handling the moments of terror, the moments when doubt stained her certainty that protection of the embryos rightly superseded honesty with Christopher, the moments when the quicksand of her culpability in her daughter’s future started to pull her under. No plan for after March, except that she would not be returning to her office here in Myron Taylor Hall. No plan for how she would cope if she lost both Christopher and Helen, who was really not doing well at all.

And worst of all, no plan for her daughter if fate decided that she, Deborah, should have the Huntington’s gene, too.

Peeling off her garden gloves, Linda saw Robby’s phone on the kitchen counter, vibrating with the alert of a new text. “Robby, you’ve got a message,” she hollered.

Robby pounded down the hall from his room, just in time to pick up the phone as it actually rang. “Hello? Yeah, hi, it’s me.”

Linda tried to remember when she last heard Robby talk on the phone. He almost always texted, a giant leap forward for people on the spectrum, removing the mystifying facial cues, vocal tones, and inflections that typically stymied communication. Yet here he was, practically chatting.

“Didn’t get it. Didn’t have my phone. Half an hour?” He looked at Linda. “Can you take me to the library?”

Linda looked at the clock. “I guess so. What’s going on there?”

“OK.” Robby spoke back into the phone. “I’ll bring my laptop.”

“What’s going on?” Linda repeated her question to Robby’s retreating back.

He re-emerged from his room with his laptop bag. “What’s going on?” Linda asked again. For some reason, it felt like Robby was deliberately, consciously ignoring her, not just occupying his zone of isolation.

“Meeting Paula to work on Audubon stuff.” He pulled his Lions sweatshirt over his head and draped his headphones around his neck.

“Paula?” Linda said anxiously. “What do you two have to work on together?”

“We’re running for offices.”

Linda blinked. “You mean for the club?”

Robby nodded.

“What are you running for?”

“Vice president.”

“And Paula?”

“President. We’re meeting to build a website for our campaign.”

“You need a website for that?” Linda recalled a hazy flashback of a high school student council campaign, a speech in the auditorium, hand-lettered posters.

“The club’s site is ten years old and runs on Dreamweaver.” Robby snorted. “No member database, no blogs, hardly any pictures. Building a new one is our top priority. Paula says a campaign site will show people we can do what we promise. Come on, let’s go!”

“Um, sure. Let me grab my keys,”
Robby was running for a club office?
Linda felt like she did when awakened by a phone call, grogginess clouding comprehension.

“What, um, made you decide to run for office?” she asked casually, in the car.

“I need leadership skills,” Robby said, cryptically.

“Who says you do?”

“Cornell.”

“Cornell? You mean for the camp?” After returning from Lansing, Robby moped for a while about being too young to go that summer. But after their trip to see the piping plovers, Sam explained how he could use that experience and this whole school year to improve his chances of acceptance. He had Skyped weekly with the park ranger, Ruth, until they released the captive chicks. They e-mailed that professor, Goldman, who had promised to send a current application as soon as it was available. Meanwhile, Robby had scoured the old one, which he’d found on the Cornell website.

“Leadership potential comprises twenty percent of the applicant’s total score,” Robby now recited. “Vice presidents are leaders, right?”

“Um, yeah.” Not really, Linda thought. “You didn’t want to be president?”

Robby shrugged. “Paula wanted that. That old guy, Ed, he’s the vice president now. She didn’t want to work with him. So she asked me.”

“So everything’s fine now with you and Paula?” Linda asked cautiously, pulling into the library parking lot.

“Uh-huh,” Robby said, opening his door. “She said she’d drop me off later.”

Automatically, Linda started to object, then cut herself off. She could complete her garden work if she didn’t have to return for Robby. Maybe she’d call Sam and see if he wanted to pick up Chinese for dinner, too. Or even go out to the restaurant together. A real date.

“OK,” she agreed, marveling at how light her heart felt. As if it had suddenly sprouted wings.