Sparrow Migrations (16 page)

And six weeks had passed with the web of lies still intact. She still slept in the bedroom with Richard, eight inches of mattress between their backs.
Still, still, still.
She had visited the job site on the business card Elizabeth had given her, but nothing seemed right.

“Almost done? I see Abby’s car.” Amanda was looking out the kitchen window.

“Done. Here you go.”

“Thanks.” Amanda took the hanger. “Remember, there’s the cast party afterward. At Mrs. Hamilton’s house. You said I could stay all night, right?”

“I did. You can stay all night. I’ll inform your father.” Brett handed Amanda her costume hanger and kissed her cheek. “Have fun. I love you.”

“Love you, too. See you later.” And Amanda was gone, in a swirl of starchy ruffles, flying ponytail and spring air. It was the first warm day of the year, the kind when spring seemed to truly lurk right around the corner, even in Scranton. The kind of day to open up the windows again, Brett thought, leaning over the sink to lift the sash.

Her hands carried her through the motions of making dinner and puttering about the house. Several times she paused in front of Amanda’s empty bedroom. In another year and a half, she wouldn’t have to ask Brett’s permission to stay out all night. Despair filled her at the idea of sharing a home only with Richard. It simply wouldn’t be tolerable. The truth, on the other hand, would set her on a treacherous, unknown course. Not unlike what a pilot had faced a few months ago, his plane falling out of the sky, Brett reflected.

In the costume that night, Amanda was gorgeous as the cast took their curtain call, smiling, clutching one another’s hands, and crying as they clung to the feverish high of the night. Hugging Amanda, handing her flowers backstage, watching her among her friends and Mrs. Hamilton the director—who pulled her and Richard aside, telling them that Amanda had “talent, true talent that deserves to be nurtured, please call me next week”—Brett froze the images of the evening, the last one in the life she had known for almost two decades.

She and Richard walked out into the still-warm night. She rolled down the window to keep the freshness on her face. As he started the engine, she at last told the truth.

SEVENTEEN

I
don’t see Paula,” Robby said, pressing his face to the window as Sam pulled into the parking lot of the Central United Christian Church.

“We’re here a little early. Maybe she’s not here yet,” Sam said. “Let’s go find out what the plan is.”

A half-dozen other cars were already clustered in a far corner, most with trunks open. Sam recognized Ed, the man who had introduced himself at the meeting in February, and another man looking at a map. “It’s a straight shot west on I-96,” Ed was saying as they approached. “We can try to caravan if you want, but there’s really no need.”

“Where’s Paula?” Robby interrupted.

“Hi, Robby, Sam. Glad you could come.” Ed greeted him. Sam analyzed his voice for any trace of false heartiness but detected none.

“Where’s Paula?” Robby asked a third time.

“She’ll be here. She’s paid up and signed up,” Ed said, looking at his list. “We’re still waiting on three others, too. We’ve got some doughnuts here, coffee, juice.” He gestured to a tailgate buffet. “Help yourself.”

The three others arrived, and the doughnuts were down to crumbs when Paula finally showed up. She drove an ancient, rattletrap Toyota. Duct tape covered the taillight and held up a side-view mirror. Exhaust billowed out the back. In the dark parking lot, Sam hadn’t noticed its condition the night when he’d picked up her and Robby. He wondered if Robby had driven with her in that.

“Paula, you’re not driving that thing a hundred miles,” Ed said with finality. “There’s lots of room in other cars. Pick a ride and let’s get going.”

“We have room.” Robby stepped up to Paula’s elbow.

She smiled nervously. “Oh, thanks, Robby. But I don’t want to trouble your dad. I think I’ll ride with Ed.”

“No trouble at all. Plenty of room,” Sam offered.

“Well, but I’ve missed a couple meetings, and Ed and I, we need to talk about some club stuff, don’t we, Ed? It’ll just be easier if I ride with him. Thanks anyway.” Paula tossed her overnight bag into the trunk of Ed’s car and climbed into the front seat.

“All right, then. Everybody got a ride? Anybody need a map? Let’s hit the road. Next stop, Lansing Radisson.” Ed slid into the driver’s seat, the car shifting with his weight, and slammed the door.

Ignitions sputtered to life, but Robby remained standing, watching Ed’s vanishing vehicle.

“Let’s go, Robby.” Sam put his hands on his son’s shoulders, feeling like a cop on a TV show, physically propelling the perp into the squad car. Remembering his own junior-high crushes, though, Sam reflected that Robby was more like the victim.

In the car, Robby put on his headphones and stared out the window, not speaking for almost half an hour. Highway hypnosis was lulling Sam into his own stupor when Robby finally spoke.

“Paula doesn’t like me anymore.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Hmmm?” Sam stalled, glancing over. Robby had taken off his headphones.

“Paula doesn’t like me. Not anymore.” He turned away from the window and looked at Sam. “How come?”

Shit
. Sam scrambled for a good answer. An adequate answer.
Any answer
. Autism evidently didn’t affect puberty. Linda had said that Robby needed more than the two of them could give him. Paula’s age put her out of bounds as a girlfriend. But they did have birds in common. Maybe he could help Robby understand some of the rules of relationships, romantic or platonic.
Linda was right
, Sam admitted. Protection could no longer be his first priority for Robby. If autism was the elephant in their lives, he deserved to know how to handle the beast.

“Robby, I think Paula does like you, actually. But I think she’s scared, too.”

Robby frowned. “How come?”

“Do you remember the night we gave her a ride home after the meeting? Back in February, when they first told you about this Lansing trip?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What happened that night?”

“We gave her a ride home. She lives on Springside Street. In a white house. With a big porch. The light was broken. Her dog was barking.”

“Right. That’s her house exactly. But what happened in the car that night, Robby? What happened when we drove Paula home?”

Robby thought silently for a moment. “She told me about Donald Baxter. That he would be at this meeting.”

“Right. And what else?”

Robby lapsed into a longer silence. Finally he shrugged. “Don’t know.”

“You don’t remember?” He could remember the details of a barely visible house he’d visited one time, but not the all-systems meltdown. Sam still found it stunning how his son could recall the minute, but not the monumental.

“Uh-uh.” Robby shook his head.

“OK.” Sam took a deep breath. “You got upset in the car that night. You were all excited about this trip and maybe meeting Donald Baxter and learning more about the geese and the plane crash. And I didn’t say right away that you could go.”

“Why not?”

“Well, your mom and I needed to talk about it first. And I tried to explain that. But you couldn’t see past wanting to go on this trip. And so you got mad. And you got like you do when you’re mad. You yelled. You cried. You rocked. You banged your head on the front seat,” Sam felt transported back to that night as well.

“You and Paula were both sitting in the backseat, and she didn’t know what to do when you got like that. When you get fixated on something like that, Robby, no one can reach you. No one can pull you back from the edge. It happens to people with autism.” Sam glanced over at Robby, who was fidgeting with the headphones in his lap.

“But she didn’t understand that. That’s why she got scared. In about two minutes she saw you go from a regular boy, someone she liked, to this frightening, out-of-control kid, over something simple like me telling you, ‘we’ll see.’ That’s not how a normal person—” Sam hesitated, then edited himself. “That’s not a normal
reaction.
And that was scary. Paula knew something was wrong. Really wrong. But she didn’t know what.”

They rode in silence for several minutes. “Do you remember now?” Sam asked.

“Yeah.” Robby hung his headphones around his neck. “Autism makes me get like that?”

“Yes.”

“But that’s not my fault.”

“No. Autism is something that affects your brain. Makes it work differently. You can’t change it, or fix it. You just have to deal with it.”

“I don’t want to scare people. I didn’t mean to scare Paula.”

Sam blinked. He couldn’t recall Robby ever expressing a desire to positively impress someone else. “Good. That’s really good to hear, Robby.”

“What do I do now?”

“What do you mean?”

“How do I make her like me again?”

Shit. Back to the unanswerable.
“I’m not sure, Robby. She was pretty scared.”

“But you said it wasn’t my fault.”

“She doesn’t know that, though.”

“Maybe I could explain?”

“Maybe.” Sam thought about Robby trying to explain his own autism to a neurotypical. “I guess you could try.”

He thought of something else, though he knew Linda would disapprove. She always said the NTs needed to walk halfway, too. That it was only fair those off the autism spectrum do their part to bridge the gulf toward those on it. But fairness was an irrelevant ideal to a twelve-year-old boy navigating a first crush, or whatever this was. If Paula wasn’t going to walk halfway, Robby would have to go all the way.

“It might help if you apologized, too.”

“OK.” Robby hooked his headphones over his head. “How long till we get there?”

Brett waited in the kitchen for Amanda to open the door she’d exited not twenty-four hours ago. And a lifetime ago, too, Brett thought. Because life as Amanda knew it was now over.

Brett had spent the morning modifying their guest room into her bedroom, the first step in a transition to—well, she wasn’t sure yet what was next. But her part in the charade was over.

Once he found out she had no intention of trying to leave with Amanda, Richard’s reaction seemed more a preacher’s than a husband’s, saddened that she would “choose an unnatural path.” But he showed little hurt or betrayal. That was perhaps the saddest thing of all. Both of them had vowed to love and to cherish each other until death did them part. And both had failed to live up to those vows.

But the absence of an angry scene carried relief, too. Now with the truth out, maybe Richard could find someone else to fulfill the vows with. Or maybe he would dive further into being pastor. Brett was utterly ambivalent about what Richard would do next. For the moment, she wasn’t even worried about what she would do next. She felt like she did on the ferry before the plane crashed, circling Manhattan with Jackie. Free. A little crazy. Alive.
Happy.

She had emptied the birdseed sack into the feeder that morning. Springtime now. Time to fend for yourselves, she thought, shaking the last seeds out. It felt good to throw away the scratchy, heavy burlap sack.

She was puttering with the dishes when Amanda walked in, still wearing her pajamas under her jacket. She carried her costume, wrinkled and crooked on its hanger, and an armful of carnations and roses, still wrapped in the cellophane in which the enterprising lobby vendor sold them.

“Have fun at the party?” Brett recognized the pink roses she had presented backstage. Amanda dropped everything in a heap by the kitchen counter and slid onto a stool.

“Oh, I had a great time. We stayed up till, I don’t know, like five in the morning. Mrs. Hamilton has this great house, with a walk-out basement, and a bunch of us took sleeping bags out to her patio and slept on the lawn chairs.”

“Wasn’t it a little cool? It’s barely April.”

“Oh, a little, but not too bad. Most everybody else fell asleep, but Neil and I stayed up talking all night long. He played one of the T-birds, do you remember him?”

“Hmm. I don’t think so.”

“He’s tall. Dark brown hair, brown eyes.”

“Are some of those flowers from him?”

Amanda blushed but nodded. “Anyway, he’s a senior. He said he was really glad that I tried out, and he got a chance to meet me.” She sighed happily.

“I’m glad you had a good time, sweetheart. You were absolutely fantastic. Mrs. Hamilton told both your father and me that you’ve got real talent. For both voice and drama. Talent you should think about cultivating in college.”

Amanda looked away. “She told me that, too. But the best drama schools are all out of state. New York, mostly.”

“And?”

“They’d probably be too expensive, us living here, out-of-state.”

“That’s your dad talking. Don’t get too far ahead of things, Amanda. College is a year and a half away. Let’s just see what happens between now and then.”

“OK.” Amanda slid off the kitchen stool. “Guess I’d better put this stuff away.”

“Leave it there for a minute, would you? I want to show you something.” Brett’s heartbeat accelerated. So far, the conversation was almost assembly line, the same kind of small talk she and Amanda shared every day. Now came the moment to cast the monkey wrench into the machinery.

“All right.” Amanda followed her down the hall to the door opposite her own, the door to the little-used guest room.

Brett watched her look around, taking it all in. The treadmill that had sat unused for years was gone. The bed was cleared of the wrapping paper and Christmas decorations that had been piled there since New Year’s. The formerly bare nightstand now was outfitted with a lamp, an alarm clock, a picture of Amanda as a baby, and one of her most recent school portraits.

Amanda looked confused. “What happened in here?”

Brett’s hopeful smile wobbled. This was it.
Jackie was right
. It was far easier on the phone and in her imagination. She cleared her throat. “This is going to be my bedroom now.”

“Your bedroom? But what about Dad?”

“He’ll stay upstairs.” Brett stared at her daughter earnestly, willing her to understand.

“I don’t get it,” Amanda said.

The monkey wrench glanced off a gear as Brett took a deep breath.

“You remember my trip to New York in January? Seeing me on the news?”

“Yeah.” Amanda crossed her arms, visibly defensive. “What’s that got to do with anything now?”

“Do you remember seeing the woman on the boat with me?”

“The one from the food pantry conference? The one you visited in Charlotte?”

“Right. Her name is Jackie.” Brett exhaled slowly, then breathed in again. The room felt closed in and tight. She could see Amanda’s face changing, the flush of excitement from the play fading, a furrow in her brow appearing.

“I actually met her at that conference I went to last year. There wasn’t any conference in January.”

“There wasn’t?” Amanda looked totally confused.

“Jackie and I arranged to meet in New York, just the two of us.” Avoiding Amanda’s eyes, she plunged ahead with her confession.
No more secrets
. She wanted everything out now.

“Jackie and I just wanted to . . . to see each other. When we met last year, there was a . . . a connection between us. It wasn’t anything we planned. It just happened. It was something that I had felt before, with others—other women—but always repressed.”