Fly by Night (7 page)

TJ had even heard that Petersen Foods, the reservation grocery store, had locked its doors for an hour so that staff could attend and the Spirit gas station a block away had stuck a note on the door,
Be back in an hour.

Tears finally stung his eyes. For the life his mother almost had but didn't and for both of their fires that may have burned brighter had his father kept his promise. Sadness radiated down into his fingertips—a woman with a broken heart who by proxy had broken his for the better part of his life. And he'd been powerless to unbreak it though there'd been nothing more that he'd wanted to do—an unbreakable love that had broken her.

Gloria had carried her sadness quietly for the rest of her life, hoping that no one would notice. Wrapped around her like a blanket for all of her eighty-six years, wanting neither pity nor remembrance, but TJ knew. He could see it by the turn of her head or in the motion of her hand to brush away a wisp of hair from her eyes.

After the funeral he'd said to Charlotte, “I feel cleansed, at peace—like after a downdraft blows the ground clean.”

“You mean the downdraft that comes right before the storm?” Charlotte had laughed in a menacing way.

A flare of anger had clutched at his chest—a little boy's undefended heart—as they'd driven out of the cemetery. A surge of dread followed in the form of a whisper, saying that all he'd been hiding would soon be exposed.
She whom his father had preferred.
And before getting out of the truck at home, he was a seven-year-old boy again. Running after his father's car in the red cloud of road dust, yelling for him to come back.

“Don't leave it to the attorneys,” Charlotte had said, staring at him as he glanced away. “You know what you have to do. Find her. Do it or I will.” His wife climbed out of the truck and closed the door. “I'm sick of living with ghosts.”

TJ sat for a few moments longer.

Just then a gust of noodin, or wind, blew through the needles of a white pine, making clacking noises like chattering disembodied voices. Another breeze blew through the drying leaves of an oak tree, tricking him to look for the sound of rushing water.

TJ looked up. It was only the tree. He'd lived there all his to know there was no running water. His mother's spirit breathed into the wind and was gone.

“Bye, Mom.” He mouthed the English words; there were no words for good-bye in Ojibwe.

 

5

Her nose was always in a book. Amelia would sort through the different species of dolphins and squid, and riffle through the piles of library books that littered her childhood bedroom floor as she contemplated the composition of seawater vs. brackish water. Thick glasses from second grade on had made two semipermanent dents on either side of her nose. Well into adulthood she would smile through closed lips, concealing teeth that were slightly bucked, noticeable enough to elicit “Uhh, what's up, doc?” Braces had been out of reach.

And while Amelia hated the mall, she'd beg to be taken back to the New York Aquarium in Brooklyn.

“Can we go again, please, Mom?” she'd bargain. “I'll even clean the toilet.”

“Tell your father to take you on his day off.” Pen would push back her bangs as Amelia sensed her mother's patience was shot after a long day.

Then a teacher of Amelia's called one day after school.

“Is this Mrs. Drakos? Amelia's mom?”

“What'd she do?” Pen put the dishrag down and sat at the kitchen table primed for a good story.

“Nothing—I mean everything's fine,” the teacher reassured. “I want to talk about Amelia.”

Pen paused. “So what about her?” she asked, hoping to hear some juicy story about Amelia getting caught smoking in the girls' bathroom or with makeup, anything to peg her daughter as normal.

“Amelia has a very keen mind.”

“Yeah, so?”

The teacher was quiet.

“With your permission, I'd like to put her in the school science club with some of the older children.”

“How much older?”

“Seventh graders. Two years older.”

Pen imagined her underdeveloped daughter, always on the low end of the pediatrician's growth charts, surrounded by older children. Amelia was vulnerable, yet impenetrable. How could a child be both?

“Umm … will there be boys?”

“It's all boys.”

There was a long pause. It might not be bad, depending on the type of boys who would be in a science club.

“I'll have to talk to my husband about it,” Pen said.

“But she'll be able to learn more,” the teacher advocated. “Plus the New York Aquarium is running their annual contest for students to win a spot in their four-week summer camp.”

“I said I'll talk to my husband,” Penny said.

“Alright, Mrs. Drakos,” the teacher said. “Can I speak to Amelia about it?”

“I told you I'll talk with my husband first.”

“Alright then.”

Each of Amelia's childhood friends was just like her. Amelia's mother would sigh and shake her head, at a loss as to how to spice up the life of a child who found her own birthday embarrassing. Who would marry such a girl?

“Jesus, she's that smart?” Ted asked later that night after Amelia had gone to bed. “Sure she's mine?”

Pen punched him hard in the arm as he feigned having the wind knocked out him.

“Let her do the science club for Christ's sake, Pen.”

“But don't you think it'll make her—weirder?”

He chuckled. “Hey—Amelia's Amelia. She's not you.” He got up and reached for her, pinching Penny's buttocks on the chair until she squirmed, playfully slapping away his hand, acting disgusted yet still delighted after all these years.

“You were probably sexy even at that age.” Ted moved to pinch her inner thigh.

“Oh, stop already.” She slapped his arm again, this time with a different meaning.

*   *   *

At eighteen years old Amelia was awarded a full scholarship to State University of New York at Stony Brook's prestigious School of Atmospheric and Marine Sciences. To her parents' delight they could instead spend their savings for her education on a trip to Greece.

“We're taking our second honeymoon,” Penelope announced while driving Amelia to the freshman dorm that fall. In reality they'd never taken a first. The couple had gotten married on the fly with Amelia well on the way—her mother's growing abdomen camouflaged by creative fabric draping on the bodice of her wedding gown.

Amelia's father, Ted, had worked as a pressman, running building-sized machines that spun rolls of newsprint into daily newspapers. Penelope, or Pen as they called her, worked as a product assistant in a pillow factory in Long Island City typing, filing, and placing orders for fabric.

Amelia was quiet like her father, an anomaly to an ebullient mother who frequently exploded into tears, laughter, or fighting words. Often, her mother wouldn't even know if her daughter was home.

“Am?” Her mother would pause, calling after hearing a few indiscriminate noises. “That you?”

“Yeah, Ma, it's me.”

Amelia did everything she was told without complaint, though often her mother would try to provoke a reaction, just to check that her daughter was human.

“What can I say?” her mother would remark to Ted, throwing up her hands in response to a daughter who coveted the
Encyclopedia of Marine Life
more than experimenting with makeup or getting her ears pierced. “All this kid does is read,” she whispered.

“So what, Pen?” Ted would say over the top of the
Long Island Press
newspaper. “It's not heroin.”

“I know I couldn't ask for a better daughter,” Pen would qualify, murmuring just loud enough for him to hear. “Dear God, help me raise this strange child
.
”

“Hey—we're all different.” Ted would raise his voice. “You wanna believe the stork fucked up, then go ahead and believe it.”

*   *   *

Before her parents' trip to Greece in November, they'd let Amelia use the car while they were gone, providing she came home to drive them to JFK Airport. What luck to take other students along to the more obscure saltwater tributaries along the easternmost sections of Long Island's South Shore to look for puffer fish.

Amelia had never seen her mother as happy as the day she dropped them off at Kennedy Airport. The day before they'd left, Penny had come in and sat down on Amelia's bed, smiling eagerly as she nodded. “You want a gold bracelet from Greece? A necklace?”

Instead Amelia had handed over a detailed list complete with descriptions and drawings of seashells from the Aegean Islands where they were headed.

“Look for this one.” Amelia pointed to one drawing as her father listened in the doorway.

Her mother had already lost interest and stood to leave.

“This is the important one.”

“What's so important about it?” he asked, replacing Penny in the spot on her bed.

She began to read. “‘The Tyrian purple snail has long been prized for its dye dating all the way back to the Phoenicians and Hebrews.'” She'd looked up. “Dad. You listening?”

“Uh-huh,” he hummed.

“‘Long prized for its purple color that does not fade,'” she looked up again, “‘… but rather becomes brighter with sun exposure.'”

“Okay,” her father said. “So where do I find them?”

“Low tide. Near caves.”

“Can't promise, but I'll look.”

“The Mediterranean only has a two-foot tidal flow,” she went on. “Not like the ocean. It's kinda landlocked, the only opening's at the Strait of Gibraltar.”

He stared at her.

“Dad, what?” she asked.

“Nothing.” Ted shook his head. His gray curls wiggled.

“Dad. Why are you looking at me like that?” She chuckled, not sure if she'd gotten some of her facts wrong.

“Nothing, Am.” Her father continued to stare, unnerved by both the depth of knowledge and the authoritative tone in which it was delivered. “You just learn that in college or something?”

“Sixth grade report.”

Yet from sixth grade she remembered it in detail, her mind still seeing the illustrations of the shells she'd painstakingly drawn from the encyclopedia.

Ted looked like someone had cracked him over the head.

“Dad. What?” Amelia blinked several times and grabbed his arms, shaking him. “Why do you keep looking at me like that?”

“Because you're my beautiful daughter and I love you.” He reached to grab and kiss her but she pulled away.

“Get outta here.” She began laughing along with him.

*   *   *

A week into her parent's trip there was a knock on the dorm room door at 3:20 a.m. She and her roommate, Kate, had been up until 2 a.m. working to finish a final chemistry project due the next morning. The resident advisor of the dorm opened the dorm door with the master key.

“Amelia.” The RA had shaken the mattress to rouse her. “Phone call.”

“What?” She looked up. The hall light stung her eyes.

Amelia slid her legs over the side of the bed and stood. Shuffling over to the black receiver she lifted it, placing it against her ear.

“Hello?”

“Amelia Drakos?”

“Yes.”

“I'm Douglas Donnelly from the State Department. Sorry to wake you at this hour and with bad news. There's been a terrible car accident involving your parents in Greece.”

*   *   *

She'd stood with her uncle from Boston on the JFK tarmac watching her parents' coffins being off-loaded along with their luggage. They signed all the appropriate papers from the State Department to claim the bodies and belongings. The rest of the family had come down from Boston for the funeral that week. Her aunts had stayed with her in the house.

The funeral had deteriorated into a circus. Her aunt Sophie pulled at the lapels of her father's suit, trying to drag the body from the casket. It had become freakier than death itself. Amelia backed away, slipping into the narthex of the church. By the doors, she tucked herself near the icons and flickering candles.

Later, after the graveside burial service and the Makaria, the traditional Greek Orthodox fish dinner with wine, everyone returned to Amelia's house. People would often show up at these events even if they'd never known the deceased, calling around to locate the closest Makaria.

Her aunts and uncles were passed out, snoring in various configuations in bedrooms or on couches in food comas.

Amelia crept around the living room, squatting in front of her parents' suitcases. Unzipping the big one, she felt the silkiness of Penelope's dresses, the smell of her Avon Cotillion cologne, flat cottony weave of her father's shirts—smell of Old Spice. She leaned her head on the suitcase and closed her eyes. Then her finger hit a plastic case. She pulled it partway out. Her father's shaving case. She unzipped it about an inch and felt white toilet tissue. Wads of white toilet paper wound mummy-style around an object. Parting the tissue, she spotted the spiny edge of a Tyrian purple snail shell. She slipped in her hand and counted five, each having been safely insulated so as not to bump against the other. Precious treasures all cushioned and protected, tucked away in her father's shaving case.

She pulled out the shaving case the rest of the way, peering around at the sleeping relatives to avoid their questions and dodge another encounter. Slipping into the bathroom, Amelia locked the door and turned on the fan. It rattled like it was filled with street gravel. Sitting down cross-legged on the cold pink tile floor, Amelia unzipped the case to study the five carefully wrapped bundles.

“Dad.” She broke down before she could get the word out. Joy mixed with sorrow opened into an interior room she'd call The Place of No Comfort. There were no salves, no words, no ocean layers complex enough, no car fast enough to outrun it. She'd learned to sit there until the Place would fade, like the ocean's phosphorescence does at sunrise.