Fly by Night (24 page)

“Is there some place where we can talk?” he asked.

“I'm working.”

“My late mother's will involves you.”

Nothing he was saying made sense.

Her face scrunched into a question mark.

“I'll explain everything and we can be done with this business.”

“What
business
?” She suddenly felt afraid, cornered.

“Please, can we go somewhere private?” He followed her as she backed away toward the Ocean Tunnel. “Or if you could take a few moments.”

There was a sudden lull at the admission desk.

Neither said a thing for a few moments.

“Twelve thirty. Pizza Leanings. It's upstairs to the left.” Amelia pointed to the escalators.

He looked at his watch. “In an hour?”

She nodded, turned, and hurried away. Back toward where she'd left Bryce.

The heavy metal door of the off-exhibit labs shut behind her as Bryce began to gear up to catch the shark again.

“You get canned?” Bryce called up to her.

“No. Weirder.” She climbed back down into the tank, trembling as she tried to shake it off.

“What?” He looked closely at her.

She told him about the e-mails back in Rhode Island, the letter she'd tossed without opening.

“How come you didn't tell me?” Bryce asked.

She flashed him a look. “Uhh, like there wasn't enough shit happening at the time.”

“What's he want?”

She sighed deeply as her stomach jumped.

“I don't know; just grab the head before the goddamned thing bites me.”

*   *   *

Christmas and Chanukah coincided that year and the Mallers who'd worked there a while kept remarking on how unusually packed the place was. You had to wade, not walk down the pathways. And while Bryce had wanted to accompany her to Pizza Leanings, Amelia insisted on going alone.

“There's tens of thousands of people milling about,” she said laughingly through the locker room door as she changed into street clothes. “You think the guy's gonna jump me across the table?”

“It's not so much that—”

“I'm more worried about Minneapolis Fire Department's occupancy codes,” she said. The center courtyard was so packed she worried that if someone fainted there'd be no room to collapse. They had to suspend the line at Sea Life, despite angry parents of cranky children waiting for visitors to cycle through.

“Amelia?” Jen knocked on the door, folding her arms in concern as Bryce let her in. “Bryce just told me.”

Amelia emerged in jeans and a Sea Life polo.

“You should let us come with you.”

Amelia harrumphed as she looked from one to the other. “Only if you both put on the Neptune and mermaid costumes from the interpretative theme room and come along.”

“Stop it, Amelia, we love you, you're making it sound stupid.” Jen raised her voice.

“Fine.” Bryce touched Jen's arm. Together they walked away. “Leave her.”

“I'm sorry,” Amelia called after them as they both walked away, realizing she was angry and nervous at the same time. “That was really bitchy.”

*   *   *

Amelia kept checking her watch. She was more nervous than she'd thought about meeting Ted Drakos Jr.

She'd managed to salvage fifteen minutes to Google Ted Drakos Jr. at her desk. Up came his work Web site, Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, a photo of him standing alongside eight other wildlife and fish biologists. She'd picked him out in an instant, the constellation of her father's eyes, chin, and forehead. Her stomach leaped. Sitting on her desk was the last photo taken of her parents, probably snapped by a tour guide, standing on the steps of the Parthenon days before the accident. She'd kept the photo next to the glass beaker of shells on her desk because she'd never seen her parents look so happy and there was a type of memento mori sentiment about the photo, to keep as a reminder of the transience of life.

She climbed the stairs near Pizza Leanings and saw Ted Drakos Jr. Taller and broader than her father but with more of an ashen complexion, she studied him watching for her. She noticed a gray ponytail wound and tied neatly at the nape of his neck. He wore an unzipped navy-blue winter parka, button-down blue oxford shirt, with a pair of jeans. Up close he was a larger facsimile of her father. Her neck and shoulders tensed, her emotions were wobbly.

“Ted?”

He turned.

“Hi.” He reached to shake. “TJ, please. Everybody calls me that. Thanks for meeting with me,” he said. She motioned for them to sit at the only empty table in Pizza Leanings. A young high school–aged worker had just wiped off crumbs with a damp rag.

“This good?” she asked. It felt like an awkward first date.

He nodded and sat.

She felt him taking stock and studying her face as carefully as she was studying his.

“You hungry?” he asked.

“Not really,” she said as she sat down. “But please go ahead.”

“Think I'm gonna grab something.” He touched the button on the front of his shirt and then gestured to her. “You sure? Slice of pizza, Coke?”

“Thanks but no.” It felt paternal. Her stomach was clenched.

She watched him up at the counter. The set of his shoulders was so familiar. He turned to look for her. She ducked to check her watch, hoping he hadn't seen.

He returned and sat, placing the cardboard cutout of a Leaning Tower of Pisa in the center of the table, showing the embossed number.

“I have an hour.” Her watch beeped, indicating she'd set a timer. “So, who are you?”

He looked at her but didn't smile. His face was sad, as if about to share bad news. Her mind jumped from her parents who were already dead, to Alex, who'd just texted to ask if he should bring a sleeping bag in case they didn't have a couch, to Jen and Bryce who were down at work.

Green flecks glittered in his eyes. His large hands were clean as he sat with them folded on the table. She guessed maybe five, six years older, though hard to tell.

She watched him hesitate, carefully picking and formulating words. Then he took a deliberate breath before giving up and just saying it.

“I'm a relative,” he said and looked down at his hands.

He looked conflicted.

“Your half brother.”

“My half brother,” she repeated and frowned. She rubbed her brow without realizing. “And how's that possible?”

“Your father married my mother when they were in the Navy, both stationed in Germany, six years before he met yours,” he explained.

He placed a thick white envelope on the table and then was quiet. She recognized it from Rhode Island.

“Okay.” She stared at the back flap of the letter. “So … then they got divorced like everyone else in America,” she said to put an end to the mystery and both of their discomfort.

“No,” he said. “They stayed married.”

“They stayed married—what does that mean?” She leaned back, folding her arms and tucking her fingers into her elbows.

“It means they never got divorced.”

She stared back.

He didn't answer, didn't blink either. He only looked sad.

“TJ?” He turned toward his name and stepped toward the counter.

A woman wearing a hat with a 3-D leaning tower of pizza handed him a tray.

He set it down on the table and Amelia watched as he sat back down.

She felt nothing for this person who didn't fit into her understanding of anything.

“Greek men don't have two wives.” She could smell his shaving cream. It was odd enough to learn of her father having had another family that neither of her parents had ever mentioned.

“He was trained as a mechanic in the Navy, my mother a flight nurse. That's where they met. Married in Germany, moved back here. He couldn't find work.”

TJ looked down at his hands. She could tell there was more to it. He moved the envelope toward her.

“What's this?” She gestured with her chin to the letter.

The food sat untouched.

“My mother just died.” He touched the envelope.

She looked at him.

“The will leaves the property to both of us, Dad's descendants.”

The word “Dad” cycled through her confusion. She reared back a bit.

“There's a house and fifty-four acres,” he continued.

The silence between them felt permanent.

“No one's lived there for years,” he said. “Utilities were cut off since my mother moved in with us. Their will stipulates for the property to pass to us both.”

Amelia said nothing; her chin leaned on her hand, pressing so hard into her palm that her elbow hurt against the table.

“I'm the executor,” he said.

A feeling of cumulative jealousy hit for having shared her father—for her mother, for herself as a daughter. Had this man diverted what had been rightly hers or had it been the other way around? The thought pierced her and she looked at him—such sad eyes.

Might this have been her father's preoccupation while driving on the road in Crete? A momentary lapse in attention where he'd failed to notice an oncoming truck crashing through the median divider? Or heaven forbid a chance for a hasty exit without scandal.

They stared at each other. He looked away first. She started to tremble and couldn't stop. She felt she was going to be sick.

“When are you off for the day?” he asked.

Never.
They sat until Amelia blinked and sat up with a start, having been shaken out of her thoughts.

“I have to go,” she said in a hushed voice, out of breath as she stood.

“Amelia.” He reached to touch her arm as she stood.

His sad eyes were her father's.

Grabbing her wallet, she rushed off, leaving the envelope. Practically knocking over an elderly couple as she dashed toward the flight of stairs down two levels, her feet moved like Fred Flintstone pedaling a Stone Age vehicle that with one misstep would send her tumbling down the travertine steps to the main level. Glancing back, she checked to make sure he wasn't following. She elbowed her way through the crowds in the main courtyard, looking to the safety of the Sea Life sign and escalators.
Oh, thank God.
She struggled through the people, to get away from him. She cut ahead of customers standing in a line near the down escalator.

“Excuse me, sorry, excuse me.” She contorted to slip through. “Pardon me, sorry.” She squeezed by, hurrying down the collapsing metal steps past the entrance sign and rushed into the facility.

“Hey, Amelia,” a few of the interns greeted her but she rushed through the family photo station, not saying hi and high-fiving as she normally would.

She needed to be underwater. Had to grab her gear, feel the water on her face, in her hair.

“How'd it go?” Bryce turned with a starfish in his hand; he and Jen had been ribbing the interns about something. “Amelia?” He set down the starfish and followed her into the back office.

“What happened?” The latex gloves were still on his hands. Amelia paced as she pulled her lower lip. “Talk to me.”

Jen hovered behind Bryce on tiptoes, straining to see over his shoulder.

Amelia slid out her gear bag from under the desk and rushed toward the changing room. She shut the door and locked it.

“Amelia? What the fuck? Talk to me,” he said, knocking on the door. “Am,” he called. “What happened?” He began knocking on the door with open hands. “Are you okay?” There was panic in his voice like she'd never heard but she couldn't reassure him of anything.

Stripping off her clothes, she heard something tear. Kicking off her pants, clogs, she pulled down her underwear, pushed down each sock with the other foot. Wriggling up her bathing suit in a blind frenzy, both shoulder straps not quite in place; she wrestled into the wet suit and grabbed her snorkel and fins out of the bag. Opening the door, she rushed past Bryce as he followed.

“Hey, hey, slow down.” He grabbed her elbow.

“Let go.” She yanked free. Her voice convulsed as she held up both hands to ward him off. Angry at Bryce too, angry at everyone, everything in her path. Missing the Revolution House, Narraganset Bay, the tank with sea horses.

Grabbing her fins, she pulled open the heavy examination room door like it was nothing and rushed down the corridor toward the ladder into the saltwater tank. Pulling on her face mask, she sealed it around her eyes and bit into the snorkel's mouthpiece. Climbing up to the deck, she slipped into her fins and slid into the water like a sharpened knife. The coolness of the water barely registered on her face and scalp as she sank.

People paused in the Ocean Tunnel, watching in wonder as they snapped images of her with their phones as she swam by. Her long hair pulsed behind with each advancing movement like the dangling tentacles of a jellyfish.

How she longed to be in the limitless ocean, to be able to swim without boundaries, borders, walls, just as the captive fish and mammals she fed and cared for each day must feel.

Once out of public view, Amelia headed for the larger saltwater tank for marine animals. Surfacing to fill her lungs, she drew a deep breath before grabbing on to her knees, tucking into a cannonball position, and drifting down to settle on the bottom of the tank. Crabs scampered past. A sand shark brushed her shoulder as she dipped her head, staring off into nothing as her hair floated up around her in dark swishes.

 

21

“Char.” TJ had phoned just as he turned onto the ramp for I-35 on the way back up to Bayfield.

The divisions and passions at the conference had risen to such a flashpoint that it had felt like one spark might make the whole place go up. Some in the pro-wolf hunting groups had spat at the biologists at GLIFWC, heckled his presentation, and hurled epithets at the tribal position on wolf hunting. And if that wasn't enough, his meeting with Amelia had clinched his decision to pack it in and head home a day early. He'd finished his two-day presentation and had claimed that pressing business was calling him back to Red Cliff. He was tired, shaken up, and needed to see the lake, the North Woods, and his wife's beautiful smile.