Silent Bird (31 page)

The first thing I notice as the airport shuttle crosses onto Long Island is that the leaves are beginning to fall. When the van drops me off a couple of blocks from home I inhale the smells of pine and earth and humidity. The school year is beginning anew; old-fashioned school busses chug along Vet’s Highway to the brick schoolhouse a block away. The shingled houses, the grassy yards, the oaks and spruce trees—so different from the olive and plane trees in the hills around Florence—they all welcome me home. They all ask me to welcome them.

It’s an odd thing feeling alien at home; thinking in French instead of English. It has tied up my tongue, my thoughts. And I had so very much I wished to say! I longed to tell my mother every single thing I’d ever hidden from her, beginning with my own memories of my time away from her—my time in Sark.

First I would
tell her about the ferryboat, how I thought the rocky water would cut it to pieces and make it sink. I’d describe the wallpaper on my bedroom wall on that strange little island: how I used to stare at it when her husband, my father, cried to me for the first time. I would tell my mother about my paternal grandmother with her interminable rules, including the one about not smudging the dining room table with my elbows and hands and even my chin.

I would do all of this, somehow, at the right time and in the right tone, for the right reasons.

Instead, as it turned out, I cut to the chase.

As soon as I got inside the house, as soon as Mom and I hugged hello and sat on the sofa talking trivialities and drinking hot chocolate, I changed the subject.

And I started with
the scenes in the bathtub. For me, the worst part to relive, though I’m not sure why. I guess the most invasive part. Like: here I am a kindergartener being washed squeaky clean by her beloved Papa—and he does
what?

I came straight out and told my mother about how I’d been playing with my toys, my plastic book, my little rubber bird…and the fluffy white towel…and then: his big hands
. I told her how I didn’t even know at first. It was so normal, and yet not. How I felt wrong somehow, and scared, and yet not at all scared because I loved him too, so very much. And how the knowledge, the realization of how not-normal it all was—and
I
was—came upon me, slowly, like a hidden stage-three cancer. I said all of it, as awful and confusing at it still is.

I also told this maddeningly passive, neurotic and yet vibrant
mother of mine that I loved her dearly and always would. Despite everything.

I think
she heard the love part. She got stuck on the other, at least at first. Of course.

“Wh—what?” she said. “
Are you saying that—what
are
you telling me, Pilar?”

A small flash of pain dotted my side; I press
ed my hand over it and said firmly, “I think you know by now. I’ve been as clear as I can be.”

“You mean...”

“
Yes
. Daddy was not the way he should have been. Our family wasn’t. I tried to tell you a million times. When I used to climb into your bed at night. When he came to visit…us. When I was in high school. But you didn’t get it. And I couldn’t—didn’t…”

My shoulders felt so tight that I could hardly move my head.
I remembered how difficult it had been telling Jeannot how I felt about his father. If Jeannot deserved the truth, so did my mother.

“He
molested
me, Mom. For years. Dad did that to me
with you in the house
. Again and again and again. It was—sick. Disgusting. And I was so little, Mom. I didn’t even know. A little innocent kid. If he was still alive, I think I would kill him.”

From somewhere in my brain an
alarm was sounding: she was crying. Of course she was.

We cried together, a bargain
in person instead of at a dollar a minute on a transatlantic call.

I don’t
know how much time passed. For some reason I recalled the game I had hated yet played as a child: when Jane and I used to lie dangerously close to the train tracks to prove that we weren't "chicken." We
were
chicken, of course. It had all been a lie. We had gone near the tracks because of a dare. To prove our worth.

There
were no train tracks here—just love and regret. Suddenly I didn’t feel like crying anymore.

Oddly enough, my mother st
opped at the same time. “My God. Oh, Pilar, my God, I can’t believe—”

“Believe it.
Believe it
. I tried to tell you for years. All those times I screamed for you. The night terrors. The bed wetting.”

We sat there a little longer, saying everything and nothing. Eventually she switched from shocked and sad to angry, though not at me.

Or maybe it
was
at me.

“Is there anything else?
Any more
surprises
for me now that you’re home?”

“No, I think I’m done.”
For now.

“You’ve been home, what, two hours?”

“I’m sorry I had to throw this at you all at once. But, Mom, it was time. Please believe that, too.”

“I know,” she said, her voice abruptly changing again: becoming younger and almost shy, as if she were opening herself up too. “I have a letter. To you. I wrote it to you yesterday. I’ll give it to you tomorrow, when we’ve had a bit of break.”

Our eyes met. Silently she pleaded with me not to push; to give her one more day before more talking.

“Okay, sweetie?” she said.

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

Another moment passed.

“What about Jeann
ot?” she asked. “Have you broken up with him? Is he all right?”

Her concern for the young Frenchma
n she had never met or spoken with made me love her even more.

“I don’t know.
I love him, but I’m not sure if love is enough. I need to think.”

Amazing how logical it all sounded. Were all decisions like this? You struggled with them, they got the best of you, and then you gave up and the answer came back in force, finally clear and inevitable.

“Are you...” She cleared her throat. “Were you happy there in France? I mean, happier?”

“Sometimes I was very happy. Though I didn’t always know it.”

“Will you go back? Later?”

“I think so. Hope so.
If I can. First I have business to take care of.”

“What business?”

“I’m going to visit Grandma. Then I’ll decide the career part.”

Mom looked at me shrewdly. “You won’t be discussing anything with Grandma. You know that, right? I told you how it is.”

“I know. She might not remember me. She might not even notice I’m there.”

“Right. You can’t…b
ring up the past. Unless she does, I guess.”

“I know.
But I can hold her hand, can’t I? I can sing to her.”
In Ladino
, I thought. I still knew how to do that.

“Yes, she always loved your voice,” Mom said sadly, and she leaned her forehead against the palm of her hand.

I put my arm around her, and she wrapped her arms around my waist. We hugged like that for a long, long time. I don’t think we cried. We just held on as hard as we could as long as we could.

And i
t felt good. When she released me, I left the room to fetch my sketchbook. I brought it back, open to the first page.

“I’d like to show you my art tonight, if you don’t mind
,” I said. “Here are all of my cartoons and children’s stories, including one about a giant…”

I began
this
story, an intensely personal story, for the most precious young adult in my life, by giving you advice. So here’s some more advice for you whether you want it or not (
not
, right?).

If you ever return to a foreign country that you’d lived in with your lover only six months earlier but a lifetime ago, don’t despair—for time is a relative thing. Three months can seem like three years, or six months like six decades. But then, in one moment, every second of those six months can disappear or transform—or not.

I think you know what I mean. When a person is changing and growing as fast as you are now—and I, then—nothing is as inflexible or predictable as it seems.

At age twenty-five, I was still impulsive. I knew, for example, that r
unning across the plazas of Montpellier—where it was impossible to tell if half a year or half a millennium had passed—with my backpack and soiled clothing, my hair unbrushed for twenty-four hours, my breath smelling like the underbelly of a French train, was not the best way to do this. I was “not beautiful,” to quote a dear friend of mine. And maybe I would never care much about my appearance, but I did care a little more than before.

So here it is: my last image. See me, Pilar Russell, wearing
grubby but nicely fitted jeans and a colorful sweatshirt and sneakers, with my hair pulled back into a twist and not a stitch of makeup. Grandma’s blue stone hanging around my neck and extra money shoved in my pocket. My sketchbook in my bag, of course, and my heart in my mouth.

Six months can split the world in half, or reunite it. Or change all the definitions so that you need a dictionary just to figure it out no matter what language you speak.

I reach the little plaza, the one that looks like a disarming old photograph. Madame Nony is nowhere in sight though the Radio Fun umbrellas are. The trees seem extra bare, but it is winter after all. Skeletal branches point the way across leaf-strewn cobbles, through the heavy doorway, even up these lovely old stairs that smell of something baking, chicken maybe.

I can’t wait to get there already but my gut is churning. Not the impending doom of an anxiety attack; rather an empty stomach flip-flopping for good cause. The problem with surprising someone is, of course, that you might end up being surprised. And I can’t think of a word to say, or what to say first. I can hardly think in French anymore—in just six months! Is that possible, too?

I’m sure it will come back to me if I need it. I hope I will. But unannounced visits can be fickle, frightening, unwise.

Impulsive is risky. Every kid learns that.

The ancient door of this timeworn building looms before me, looking just the same. Faint sounds from within. A chilly corridor; no sweet wafting summer air. Montpellier gets cold in winter. Like New York.

I am shivering more than a little. But he is home. He’s home.

Unless…could it be...he doesn’t live here anymore? That he returned to his village right away, and never came back? He may have given up his music, his dreams. Who knew what was happening with his crazy family, or what’s-her-name.
Thérès
e
.

He could be here with her, or someone else. I don’t know. In any case, it’s not pretty to think about.
This trip to Montpellier might break my heart, my finances, or my plans. Or all three.

But I knock on the door.

Footsteps, and a fluttering of notes—the piano! Then, with a familiar weighty sound, that grand old door swings open.

Jeannot appears…and time morphs again. His face rapidly changes from relaxed to startled to shock. He even jolts an inch back; protecting himself?

Then disbelief flashes with…pleasure? His cheeks flush; his eyes grow dewy—yet he can’t seem to close his mouth or use it to form words. Maybe
he’s
forgotten how to speak French, too.

It’s…strange.
His hair—a darker blond already?—is cut short. He wears jeans and a sweatshirt, like me. His feet are bare. No socks.

His eyes are crystal clear, dark chocolate brown.

“
Mon Dieu
,” he says finally, and swallows hard. “Pilar? You are
here
? In
France
?” And now his voice hints of that same break of pleasure, a fault in the rock.

Six months of a life without me. And me without him.

I see the pulse ticking in the base of his neck, and smell his apple shampoo from the across the doorway.

And I reach out my hand.