Sparrow Migrations (12 page)

He had hoped Martha’s retirement, after the first, would divert her dogged determination. The top job in the law school advancement office could provide a different kind of satisfaction, he
suggested.

She hadn’t even asked for consideration, forcing the search committee to go outside and hire Phillip Crandall, a boss she now despised. Simultaneously, she grew more obsessed with pregnancy, scheduling the New York consultation with the most prominent reproductive endocrinologist in the state. Then came the crash and his promise and confession, and her tears and negotiating.

And in the crucible of the crash aftermath, he’d yielded. Let himself be persuaded, let himself be carried away on a wave of ancient memories, against his first instincts. And now he’d been acting like some love-blind college student the last few weeks, while she was deceiving him.

He tossed his glasses on the desk in frustration and rubbed his temples. How could she? For him, trust was the foundation of their relationship. Any relationship. Her deliberate deception, on an issue with consequences of such magnitude, repelled him.

He clung to the hope of a misunderstanding. That Helen had been misdiagnosed. Or that Matt was wrong, and Helen hadn’t told Deborah, after all. If she had, that Deborah had misunderstood Helen. He wished that they had continued on to Seattle after the crash, after all. Flying cross-country with no luggage or ID now seemed minor compared to the prospect of a wife—and, potentially, a child—with an incurable genetic disease.

Sighing, he stood for the first time in two hours. His office window overlooked Sapsucker Woods. The barren trees created a maze of crisscrossed shadows as Valentine’s dusk neared. A month ago it would have been dark. A month from now it would yet be light. But it was today, and the magpie was calling again.

An hour later Christopher sat in the dark garage, listening to the Volvo’s engine shudder into silence. He had blasted the heater against the February chill all the way home from campus, yet he still felt numb. He forced himself to open the car door.

“There you are.” Deborah put down her phone as he entered the kitchen. “I was just trying you again. Didn’t you get my messages? What happened? All this salad stuff left over the counter. Were you planning to cook?”

He nodded, automatically going to close the cookbook he’d left splayed open, facedown next to the vegetables.

“Oh. Well, I was starving so I went ahead and ate some leftovers. Do you think that’s a good sign? Pregnant women are supposed to be hungry all the time.”

Christopher shrugged. So much for the Valentine’s dinner, not that he felt remotely romantic now, anyway. “I wouldn’t know.”

“I guess not.” She smiled. “I think it’s a good sign. This time feels different, Christopher. I think it might have happened.”

Fear sliced through him as he replaced the Moosewood cookbook where it belonged, in between
Molto Italiano
and Wolfgang Puck’s
Live, Love, Eat
. He gazed at her still-flat abdomen underneath the gray wool of her pants, willing answers to the two unknowns. Had the embryos implanted? Did her DNA carry the Huntington’s code? The odds against the former were low, the latter, even. What were the chances both could be true?

“Christopher?” She was looking at him oddly. “Are you OK?”

He raised his eyes to hers. “Matt called this afternoon. While you were still at work.”

“He did?” Her voice climbed higher than the two syllables required. She cleared her throat and turned to the counter, beginning to put away the salad items. “Did he?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll have to call Helen back later. I wonder why he called instead. Did he leave a message?”

“He did, as a matter of fact.” Christopher waited until Deborah turned back to face him. “He wanted to give us the name of a doctor. A specialist, at Columbia. Name’s William Hirsh. He heads up a program they have on Huntington’s disease.”

Deborah’s mouth formed an “O,” and she dropped the salad tongs. They clattered on the porcelain tile, the tile they’d special-ordered when they’d renovated the kitchen five years ago. Quickly she ducked her head as she bent to pick them up, but not quickly enough. A flush rose on her cheeks, igniting the embers of his fury.

“I’ve spent the last two hours at the Lab trying to convince myself you wouldn’t lie to me. Especially about something like this. Tell me I’m not wrong, Deborah. Please tell me.”

Looking down at the tongs, she exhaled for a long minute before she met his eyes and shook her head. “I’m sorry, Christopher. But I couldn’t.”

“It’s true, then.” His voice sounded like a croak. “Your sister’s been diagnosed with a fatal, inherited disease. One you stand a fifty-fifty chance of developing, too.”

“I knew it would be a deal-breaker for you, and I couldn’t abandon them.” She placed her hand on her abdomen.

“And, if it turns out you’re pregnant, one the child could have.”

“Our child.” She looked less sure of herself now. “Our child. Right?”

He opened his mouth to answer. To hurl angry, biting, savage words at her—words he’d never said to any woman before, let alone his wife. The vision from his office flashed into his head. Feeding Deborah in a wheelchair while a faceless child screamed from a high chair. He rushed to the bathroom off the kitchen, where this time he did retch.

Light-headed and weary, he rinsed his mouth and washed his face. Laying down the towel, he met Deborah’s eyes in the mirror. He could read worry now, and fear.

“Christopher?” she said tentatively.

“I’m sleeping in the guest room tonight,” he said.

ELEVEN

L
inda set the table for their late, now-cold Valentine’s dinner automatically. From the family room she could hear the TV news.

“. . . we’ve got an update today on the cause of the ‘Miracle on the Hudson,’ that plane that was ditched in the Hudson River last month, resulting in the safe evacuation of all one hundred fifty-five passengers and crew. Kimberly Jones is standing by in Washington. Kimberly?”

Intrigued, Linda walked to the living room.

“Thanks, Bob. I’m here at an NTSB warehouse where the evidence from Flight 1549 is being collected. Investigators are telling us today that inspection of the engines, fished out of the Hudson in the days after the crash and transported here on a flatbed, is now complete and the remnant of a single feather tangled in one confirms initial suspicion that the crash was indeed caused by a bird strike. I spoke with lead investigator Barbara . . .”

The door opening from the garage interrupted the reporter. Hastily, Linda clicked off the TV. Best keep Robby away from anything to do with the crash and birds for the rest of the night.

“Come on in, Robby. Here we go. Mom’s home, let’s just go in and relax now.” Sam was talking himself through the motions of the meltdown recovery as much as he was leading Robby.

“Hi, guys,” Linda said cautiously, looking between them for clues. Sam looked wrung out but grimly victorious. Robby wore a defeated, hunted look. He barely looked at her, let alone greeted her, and went straight to his room. Linda’s stomach sank. Why was it always them vs. him?

In the kitchen, they scooped the rice and divided egg rolls, distributing packets of soy sauce and sweet and sour silently, their memorized preferences like marital fingerprints.

“How you doing?” Linda finally asked.

He shrugged. “All right. Mostly drained. You know.”

“I know.” They sat down at the table. Linda hoped Sam noticed she had put his roses in a vase, an unspoken act of détente.

“So what set him off?” Linda asked.

“Some big upcoming meeting in Lansing. Do you know about this?”

Linda pondered. “I don’t think so. An Audubon meeting?”

“Yeah. A regional meeting of all the clubs in the state, plus a few more. In early April. There’s supposed to be some expert in Canadian geese there. They were really talking it up tonight. Robby wants to go.”

Canada geese
, Linda thought.
Not Canadian
. She felt like she imagined Robby must often, irritated at Sam’s imprecision. But rather than correct him, she just nodded.

“Sounds OK with me.”

“Really? Just like that? Our twelve-year-old autistic son wants to venture a hundred miles from home, and that’s enough detail for you?”

The roses visible from the corner of her eye, Linda bit back her defense. “I take it you’re not OK with it, then.”

“They hit me with it as soon as I walked in the door. I felt ambushed. I tried to put them off politely, saying we’d discuss it. But that wasn’t enough for them, especially this woman who gave him a ride tonight. Paula. She just wouldn’t let up, going on and on about this geese guru. I kept telling Robby I wasn’t saying no, but that you and I had to talk about it first. But that wasn’t good enough. He just lathered himself all up, and that was it.”

Linda sighed. “The old power struggle.” She took a bite of her Mongolian chicken. “It’s cold.”

“Yeah.” Sam said to both comments, stabbing a forkful of his sweet and sour.

“How did Paula react?”

“Not well.” Sam took a long swallow of his water. “She was scared. It started when they were both in the backseat. I had her get in the front so I could get back there with him and calm him down. She couldn’t get out of there fast enough.”

Alarm bells rang in Linda’s head. “Do you think she’ll tell the others in the club?”

Sam cocked his head. “I
hope
she does. They need to know who they’re dealing with. Especially if you want Robby to go to more meetings alone.”

“If
I
want him to go alone. So we’re back to that. You don’t want him to choose anything you haven’t preapproved.”

“That’s not it. I’m concerned for his safety.”

“Oh, come on! He’s twelve years old. Almost a teenager. He needs more than the two of us can give him, Sam. He needs his life to be about more than autism. He needs friends, peers in his life.”

“Peers.” Sam rolled his eyes. “I was younger than most of the crowd at that meeting.”

“Stop splitting hairs. People who share his interests. You know what I mean. Why should his autism automatically limit him?”

“It shouldn’t. But it should be a starting point. It’s a fact of life, Linda, and taking risks doesn’t change that.”

“All right, then. You go to Lansing with him.”

“What?”

“You heard me.” Linda’s voice was terse, her face tense. “Robby deserves a chance to explore this. I’m fine with him going with the club. If you think it’s so risky, or they might get scared off because of what this Paula saw tonight, you have to make it happen. Talk to the president. Chaperone if you have to.”

Détente disintegrated, they glared at each other. In the silence, Robby’s bedroom door opened. Linda saw his computer screen illuminated on his desk. No doubt he’d read the latest news on the crash investigation, whatever that TV reporter had said. He walked up to the table and stood there, idly fingering the unopened chopsticks packets.

“What is it, Robby?” Linda asked.

He remained silent, staring at the wall behind them.

“Robby?”

He opened one of the packets, rolling a chopstick between his fingers.

“They got the engine out of the river.”

“I heard that, just before you got home.”

“Found a feather inside.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“A goose feather. Canada goose.”

Linda nodded.

“They got sucked into the engine.”

“Well. Yes. That’s . . . that’s pretty much what happens.”

“His name is Donald Baxter.”

“Who’s that?” Sam interjected.

“The foremost expert on Canada geese in the entire province of Ontario. Scheduled to be the speaker for the second morning session, Audubon International Midwest Regional, ten thirty a.m., April fourth, Ballroom C, Lansing Radisson.”

“You Googled him,” Linda said, rhetorically.

“I need to go.” Robby unexpectedly pivoted from the wall, aiming this last comment at Sam.

Sam looked at his son. Robby’s brown-eyed gaze had landed somewhere over his shoulder, but at least it was in his vicinity. His headphones were hanging around his neck. His hair brushed the headband, at its usual weeks-past-needing-cutting stage, because sitting still for a haircut and the touch of the barber was such an ordeal. One hand fidgeted with the chopstick. The other was buried in his sweatshirt pocket, stretching the faded blue Detroit Lions logo.

Sam remembered the game where they’d purchased it, one of those father-son outings he’d so anticipated. With his headphones on, Robby did OK through the first quarter. The Lions had even been ahead for a change. But then they started launching T-shirts into the crowd for some dumb promotion. One hit Robby on the head, and he panicked. In an attempt to soothe him and salvage the day, Sam bought the oversized, hooded sweatshirt on their way out. Maybe it had worked, since Robby wore it almost every day.

Sam felt Linda’s brown eyes on him, too, telegraphing a plea. Abruptly, he decided.

“We’re going, Robby. I’ll take you,” Sam said.

Momentarily, Robby’s gaze flickered to his face. “Really?”

“Really.”

Robby stared a moment longer. Captivated by the rare moment of eye contact, Sam willed it to continue.

Then came the manna from heaven. Robby smiled. “Cool. Thanks, Dad.”

Back in his room, Robby closed the door feeling happy. He was going to the conference in April. He would meet Donald Baxter. He would learn exactly what had made those geese fly into the plane engine. Then something could be done to change it. The plane engine modified. Or the airports. Or the geese. Something.

He sat down at his desk and spun his chair. Ah, that felt good. Closing his eyes, he pushed off the floor with his toe again, circling counterclockwise, allowing the rotations to reverberate up though his spine, his body swaying slightly in the seat. The chair slowed. Robby pushed himself off again, clockwise this time. Around and around, the revolutions lulling and soothing.

When the chair stopped again, he was facing the desk. He pushed aside his notebook and the thick Sibley’s guide. He was learning a lot. He cringed now, recalling the email he’d sent Dr. Felk right after their trip, all worried about goslings orphaned by the crash. Duh, January wasn’t breeding time. He wouldn’t make a mistake like that now. Still he had a long way to go to catch up to Dr. Felk and Donald Baxter.

He scrolled through Donald Baxter’s website again. Like Dr. Felk, he had gone to Cornell University, where he was something called ABD in biology. That was where his academic path ended. His dissertation was going to be on the reservation in Ontario, but running the place left him no time to write. When journals rejected his submissions on the grounds that he needed a PhD, at least as a co-author, Baxter in turn rejected the field.

All this was posted in a screed on his site that scorned peer-reviewed ornithology journals as “snobbish, unoriginal, ego-boosting echo chambers.” Baxter now published all his work on his own website. As much as the scoffed-at peers would have loved to find fault with it, Baxter’s work was always meticulously documented and his data replicable when the peers tried it on their own samples. That’s what he said, anyway.

Robby liked that. He could relate. His favorite subject at school was biology. Technically it was supposed to be taken in eighth grade, but his mom made the school let him take it a year earlier, since the seventh grade general science class was so boring.

At first, the other, older kids were nice. That led to coaxing him to share his homework or test answers. When he refused, they made fun of him. When he didn’t respond to that, they ignored him. “Ostracized. Outcast,” he’d seen written on his report cards.

But like Baxter, Robby didn’t care about his status with peers. He always was engaged in his head, and the questions and conversations that others, mostly his parents and teachers, used to try to draw him out were so silly and irritating that he’d never even wanted to pursue friendship with anyone.

But Paula, from the Audubon Club, was different. She was interested in birds, too. And she offered to give him rides to the meetings and stuck up for him about going to Lansing. He had her number. He would text her that he could go to Lansing, after all.

“Can come to Lansing,” he typed. Waiting for her reply, he thumbed through the Sibley’s, pausing to brush a finger across several of the delicate sketches and paintings that were the guide’s trademark. He wished he could draw like that.

“Robby? Is that u?”

“Yeah. So I’ll meet Donald Baxter.”

“??” came back.

“The geese expert. i found him online.”

“Oh. Cool.”

“Can u ride there with us?”

“To Lansing?”

“Yeah. Me and my dad.”

After a long pause the phone beeped back with Paula’s reply.

“Not sure I can still go. Might have to work.”

Robby frowned at his phone.

“U didn’t say that before,” he typed back.

“I forgot.”

Robby thought for a moment before he typed back.

“Can u change it.” Another long pause.

“I don’t know. Gotta go. C u.”

A knock startled Robby. He turned to see his mom. “Hey, Robby. Can I come in a minute?”

Robby shrugged. Instinctively, he folded his arms, hiding the phone under one elbow.

“What are you doing?” She stepped into the room and removed another pile of bird paraphernalia—more field guides, the Sears binoculars—clearing a space to sit on the bed. Reluctantly, Robby held up his phone.

“Texting?”

Robby nodded.

“With who?”

“Paula.”

“The girl from the Audubon Club?” Another nod.

“Is she a friend of yours?” Robby nodded again, then shrugged.

“You don’t know?”

Robby shook his head. “She said she was going to Lansing. Now she says she has to work.” He could feel his worries creeping back. He spun his chair again.

“Oh. I see.” His mom thought for a minute. “Well, maybe she forgot.”

“That’s what she said.” He paused. “I don’t forget things.”

“You don’t. But lots of people do. That doesn’t make them bad. Just forgetful.”

“Yeah.” Robby sighed, then yawned.

“It’s getting late, Robby. Time to get ready for bed.”

“First I have to check the feeder.”

“OK. Go ahead.”

He yawned again as he pulled up the blinds. The half-empty feeder hung from the crabapple just outside his window.

“You’re really getting a lot of birds,” his mom said. “Didn’t you fill it just this morning?”

Robby nodded, pleased with himself. “I started a yard list.” He held up a notebook. Just as quickly, the smile disappeared. “No geese, though.”

“No. Well, they migrate, you know.”

“Sparrows, mostly.” His face suddenly turned mournful. “If somebody fed them in New York, maybe the geese wouldn’t have crashed into the plane.”

“Oh, Robby.” His mom sighed. “A bird feeder couldn’t have saved them. Geese don’t go to bird feeders. They were migrating, heading south. It’s what they’re programmed to do.” She reached for one of the field guides in the pile, rifling through the pages, as if looking for words to back her up.

Robby looked out the window. “What about sparrows?”

“What about them?”

“Do they—” he paused, afraid of the answer. “Do they migrate?”

“No.” His mom hesitated. “I’m pretty sure they don’t, anyway. Sparrows just stay.”

“They just stay.” Robby nodded slowly, satisfied. He gazed out the window. “We better get more birdseed, then.”