Fly by Night (44 page)

“Was hoping you could tell me more about my dad.”

“Stole the woman I loved.”

Amelia reared back. Stunned by the candid comment.

“Really?” She held the paper towel up to her lips. “I'm sorry.”

“Ain't your fault,” he said, wiping blueberry off his lips with his thumb. “Gloria and I were sweeties—loved her since we was kids. Went off to Duluth, became a nurse. Figured she'd come back and we'd get married, but instead joined the Navy. Shocked the hell out of everyone. Our women didn't do things like that back then,” he said and suddenly looked antsy. “Don't be telling Cherise I said that or she'll kill me. It's different now.”

Amelia nodded, watching him. He paused and sat back for a few moments, as if letting the cake settle and collecting his thoughts.

“Funny.” His eyebrows rose as he chuckled in a pensive way. “Here I had this bad feeling about her going off to the Navy like she'd get killed or something. She was a flight nurse, dangerous job—them choppers crashed all the time back then, not like those Coast Guard ones they got now,” he explained, watching for Amelia to nod. “But something bad did happen.”

Amelia turned her head.

“She came home with your father,” he said and held up the box to offer Amelia the last slice.

She motioned for him to go ahead.

“That must have hurt.”

Whitedeer looked at her. “I got all bitter, angry, like TJ.” Whitedeer gestured in the direction of TJ and Charlotte's house. “Crushed my feelings about everything. Even long after I married somebody else. Was an okay life with Maddy. Had many years where I'd go feeling that if I'da killed her on my wedding night I'd be out by now, but by and by it was good life. Had good kids which made up for all of it, but Gloria and I were always close up until she died.”

Amelia watched as his eyes teared up.

“I'm so sorry,” she said.

“She was the kind of woman you'd never think would die.” He wiped his eyes with his thumb. “It's like she always was, would always be.”

“Sounds like my father ruined it for a lot of people.”

Whitedeer looked at her and didn't say anything for a while.

“You know.” He smiled. “Your father was a good man. He just couldn't live up to all he'd promised,” Whitedeer said. “Some can, some can't. Some do, some don't. You never know it going in; you just hope you can be true to what you say you will.”

He looked at her. She felt him searching for understanding.

“It likened to kill me to see Gloria done like that.”

Both looked at the empty cake box. Whitedeer picked up his fork and began to scrape some of the maple icing and blueberry from the sides.

“I've tried to talk to TJ a bit,” Amelia said.

“Oh yeah?” Whitedeer laughed in a knowing way. “How far'd that get ya?”

“Uhh.” She smiled shyly and looked away, opening her eyes wide in amusement to share in the joke. “Not very.”

“TJ don't talk,” the old man said and sat back on the sofa, picking blueberry skins from his teeth. “I was like that when I was young too, after Gloria married Ted. Drinking too much, fighting, and getting into all kindsa shit. TJ don't do that, but he's always off by himself in the woods somewhere, tracking this or that critter so he don't have to talk to no one.”

She pictured him.

“Mosta us get to a point where we forget why we're angry, why we're hurt,” he said. “All them bottled-up secrets.” He motioned with his hands. “You get too tired to hold on to 'em anymore, but not your brother. Festers in him still.”

Amelia looked at him.

“What secrets?”

“About your dad leaving to New York for six months to work. About Gloria being stubborn, refusing to go with him even after he begged. About him having an affair and the other woman who demanded that you never know about TJ or Gloria, and about your dad giving over, giving in, giving up, betraying his wife, his boy, and all that was sacred.”

Amelia was stunned.

“But why?”

Whitedeer shrugged. They were quiet for a while. “Amelia,” he began. “Sometimes people get wore out. None of us is perfect.”

Amelia thought of the car accident on Crete.

“Did Gloria have a pet bird?”

He looked at her, puzzled.

“A pet bird?”

“Yeah.”

“Never heard of one and we were tight, I'd've known about that. No one's lived there for six years, though.”

She told him about the bird, the way it tapped on the window, looked her in the eye like it knew her, and then roosted on the blanket on top of the divan.

Whitedeer looked down at the empty bakery box, shaking his head. He licked the fork clean and then tossed it into the bakery box, nodding as he smiled.

“That was her.” His eyes softened as he studied her face. “There's a lot you don't know about us, our culture, our lives.”

Amelia closed her eyes and bent over. She so clearly saw the bird's face in her mind's eye.

“I wasn't afraid.”

“Of course not,” he said. “That was Gloria. An undefended heart. That's why we all loved her, that's why she hurt so bad.”

Both sat thinking, lost in the flames of the stove as a sap pocket in one of the logs opened up and began sputtering and popping. Both pups startled awake from where they'd dozed off in her lap.

“Spirits come to us in many forms,” he said. “To teach or show us something.”

“What was she trying to teach?”

The old man looked into her eyes. “You tell me.”

“It's about the house, isn't it?”

Whitedeer shrugged with a funny expression, not giving her a hint. But his eyes said that she'd guessed.

“Why she never changed the will,” Amelia said. “Why she left half the house to me.”

He smiled at her and pointed at her. “I knew you were a smartie.”

She shook her head with slow realization.

“Because she loved her son,” he said. “Because TJ was so bitter about you, and became worse after your father died. Never wanted to meet you, wouldn't even mention your name. ‘She who took my father away,' or some other nonsense like that. Maybe it was through her death she believed he would make his peace.”

Amelia looked into the fire.

“She tried,” Whitedeer said, “but could never get through that thick skull of his.” He rapped his knuckles on the wooden coffee table in three quick successions. “Figured by making him face you, he'd face himself.”

Amelia looked away, thinking about it. Maybe so. And maybe it was her place to reach out to TJ, get him to talk, tell her what happened, to help relieve him of such bitterness as Charlotte had said. And while she wasn't one to reach out to broken souls, TJ was different. Tonight she'd try. She'd been invited for dinner around five. The temperature was mild. Maybe she'd try to convince him to go for a walk.

“So why's TJ such a tight ass?” She looked directly at Whitedeer.

The old man shrugged. “Maybe because he's just a tight ass.”

 

35

Amelia told Charlotte she'd bring a salad. She'd gone all out with feta cheese, Greek olives, and any vegetable she could rustle up with the slightest bit of color in the downtown IGA grocery store.

It was late afternoon as she headed out to their place, having just talked with Bryce, telling him about meeting Whitedeer, Peter Holmgren, and the possibility of finding work through the Department of Natural Resources and Lake Superior. For the first time she felt excited as she drove along the lake toward Red Cliff. Looking out at the frozen lake, she couldn't wait to get out there, hoping Peter was serious about inviting her along for the fish count.

“Gosh, you sound so much better, Am,” Bryce had said. “Can't wait to be there.”

“Three more days.” Her voice lilted with the words as she twisted a strand of hair.

“I know,” he said. “It feels like more like a—”

“—month.” Completing each other's sentences and thoughts was taking on new meaning.

“Yeah,” he said. “Wanna meet Peter and especially Whitedeer. Guy sounds like a hoot.”

Out in the bay the ferry was ice-breaking its way across to Madeline Island. Maybe when Bryce arrived they'd drive over on the ice road or else hike the few miles on the frozen surface. Upright Christmas trees were frozen into the surface, denoting the safe place for cars to follow although it was “travel at your own risk” for those who wanted to forgo the ferry ride.

Even though it was early January Amelia noted more little bits of lingering daylight each evening, each one adding up to longer days. A subtle shift in seasons that she'd smelled that morning, freshness to the air that had people chattering on the line at the IGA.

The pups were riding in the wire crate in the back of her Jeep. This would be their first trip back to Charlotte's since that first night with Bryce.

*   *   *

“So how you doing out there?” Charlotte asked as they passed the spaghetti and meatballs. The pups were barricaded in the kitchen once the dinner was ready.

“So far so good—day two, I'm still alive,” Amelia joked and turned to TJ as she passed the bowl of sauce. “I discovered that we had the same kid's desk and chair.”

He didn't answer as he spooned sauce onto his plate.

“TJ?” Charlotte said.

He looked up. “Oh.”

Charlotte signaled with her eyes for Amelia to keep talking.

“How is it we got the same desk?” she asked.

“How do you think?” He looked at her and then set down the bowl, his face without expression. “Is this what you really want to talk about?”

It stymied her. She didn't know what to say. Her feelings smarted. Maybe it wasn't possible to clear a path to this man and maybe there was no right thing to say. But why was she even worrying about what to say—like a bad boyfriend.

Charlotte motioned with her chin to keep going. Amelia didn't want to.

“Well, I thought it might be a starting point,” she said. “Was wondering why I never knew about you.”

He set down the basket with garlic bread and watched her with a stillness that was as calm as it was frightening.

“The vinyl contact paper in your mother's kitchen drawers, also the same as ours,” she said, knowing he didn't give a shit about it and probably didn't know what contact paper was.

“How come you never came to New York to visit?” she asked again.

He stood and walked out, leaving his plate.

Amelia waited until he was out of earshot.

“Guess I messed that up.” She folded her hands in her lap and then moved to tuck each under a thigh for warmth. “Don't know how to talk to him.”

Charlotte said nothing. “Few do.”

“Think I pushed too hard?”

“Keep pushing.” Charlotte stood up, motioning her to follow through the house to the door that led out to his office.

He was sitting at his desk chair looking out into the woods.

“Hi.” Amelia crept in and snatched the Tyrian purple snail shell from his desk before sitting in the opposite chair. She felt tethered with an invisible cord as annoying as it was strong.

Closing her hand around the shell she squeezed its spiky points. A bird's song made her turn toward the window where TJ was watching, listening to the hopeful sound of spring.

“You know,” she began, turning the shell over to examine it. “My life hasn't exactly been a walk in the park either.”

He didn't respond.

“I get this sense that you think everything's come up roses for me.”

He looked at her with a smile she couldn't read.

“He mailed it to me from Greece,” TJ said.

She nodded and raised her eyebrows, surprised he'd offered up a piece of information like that.

TJ looked out to the woods. “Let me tell you about the day he left.”

Without realizing it Amelia pulled up her chair.

“I was eight,” he began. “They'd fought for months; was too young to know why.”

He turned toward her and then back to the edge of the trees, scanning the clearing as he watched for animals. Two crows chased each other as snow toppled from powdery branches like smoke the instant their feet touched.

“He'd wanted us to move to New York, but my mother refused, saying that he'd promised in Germany to make this home,” he said. “They had for years, until I was eight. Then something changed, not sure what.

“I remember him on the phone about his old job in New York, my mother angry, and then him leaving later that March, not long after trying to persuade my mother to come along.”

TJ stood and stepped closer to the glass as he watched a deer tiptoe out from the edge of the woods toward a salt lick that Charlotte had just set out.

“The day he left…” He folded his arms, setting them on top of his belly. “My mother hadn't wanted me to see him off.” TJ began to recount how Gloria had barred the front door to keep him inside.

“But I'd pushed her aside.” He remembered the force with which he'd done so, recalling how Gloria had almost fallen, how slight she'd felt and how sorry he was but even sorrier for missing his father.

“I'd flung open the door, ran uphill to the road.” He paused, seeing it all again. “I remember the urgency, it spurred me to run.” TJ sighed deeply and rubbed his face, his whiskers made scratching noises. “Maybe I knew we'd never be together again as a family,” he said, watching as the deer began to feed on the cube of nutrients. “I remember my coat sliding off and not caring, not wanting to waste the seconds it would take to shrug it back on, seconds that might cause me to miss my chance.”

“Your chance?” Amelia asked.

“My chance to call him back, to tell him I wanted him to stay, as if that would change his mind.”

How well he remembered his feet gripping the soggy March ground; his legs fighting gravity as he strained to reach the summit just in time to see the taillights of his father's truck drive off.