Sparrow Road (14 page)

Mama came. She came racing up there barefoot still in her pajama shorts and T-shirt. She didn’t say Gray was my father, but she said that he was safe. A friend of Viktor’s who had permission to visit Sparrow Road.

“This man knows Raine?” Eleanor sneered.

“He does.” Mama set her hand down on my head. “And you may go inside now, Eleanor. I’ll take care of Raine.”

“Well, someone should,” Eleanor huffed. “This place! I came to write, but there’s been nothing but distractions. Now I have to supervise someone else’s child!” She let the screen door slam.

“I’m sure sorry I missed
her
at the barbecue,” Gray joked.

Mama laughed a little. “Visitors,” she said. “We don’t get many at the house.”

“I understand.” Gray smiled at me. He had the kindest eyes I’d ever seen. “Like everybody, she’s just watching out for Raine.”

Gray and I decided to have our picnic at the lake. Just like the first night we went walking, we found little things to talk about, things that put us both at ease. I told him about meeting Nettie Johnson at the Blue Moon, and how she’d been an orphan. And Lillian’s poem, the one she wrote for Viktor. Then I told about the attic. Lyman’s drawing. The rows and rows of metal beds. How everything was left—jacks and dust and dirty socks.

“Quite a chapter for this place,” Gray said. He grabbed a toothpick from his pocket. He told me he’d quit smoking seven weeks ago, and the toothpicks gave him something new to gnaw.

“Lillian was an orphan,” I said. “At least I think she was.”

Gray nodded, as if he wasn’t real surprised. I wondered how much he and Viktor talked, how much Gray already knew about the orphanage. Gray seemed to be the only person in Comfort Viktor knew by name.

“Your mama sure can bake.” He handed me a second pumpkin bar. “What about that poetry?”

I opened up to “February.” “Here,” I said. “This is the poem I mean. The one that I was puzzling over this morning when you came.”

“You are a question I will carry,”
Gray drawled. Lillian’s words sounded like a song.
“Through Februaries far into my future.”
When he finished with the whole poem, he tilted back his head and let the sun soak his face. “I guess I got a sense of it,” Gray said. “She’ll be thinking long of somebody. Somebody she must have lost one February. And ’cause she lost them young, she didn’t know how long the missing would go on. Lots and lots of winters.” Gray sat up straight and stared at me. “I had the same hurt in October.”

A wave of heat rushed up to my chest. My birthday was October 17. Gray was talking about me.

“You were my question, Raine.” Gray chewed hard on the toothpick. “’Course I wondered lots of other days. But those Octobers, they reminded me the time was moving on. Year after year, they kept up like a clock. And all the years just added up. I guess those were my Februaries.” Gray dropped his head into his hands. “I know you’re waiting for a story.”

“I am,” I said. I’d been waiting since the day Mama told me who he was. Longer in my heart, but I didn’t think I’d ever hear it. “Mama said you’d tell me it yourself. Where you’ve been. Why you never saw me. Why I didn’t meet you until now.”

“I know I owe it to you, Raine. Trouble is, I wish you knew me better first. The man I am today. Maybe see some good in me before I tell you all the bad.” Across Sorrow Lake, a small fawn stood startled in place. “It’s scared,” Gray said. “Like me.” Then suddenly it turned and darted toward the trees.

“Go ahead,” I said. It was the same thing I told Mama. “Just start at the beginning.”

I had a name now and a face, a man with timid deer eyes and my crooked wolf dog teeth, a man who sang slow songs, a short man with small shoulders. I had all that, but I still couldn’t tell myself the story of my life.

“Well, you know Amsterdam,” Gray said. “Your mama said she told you how we met. Outside of that cathedral. How she was singing on the street for extra cash. Coins people threw into her guitar case. And that day she’d gathered quite a crowd.”

“Mama never mentioned a cathedral.” When it came to Amsterdam, Mama left out most the details.

“No?” Gray said. “Well, it was quite a scene. Your mama barefoot, with those beautiful red curls. People packed together just to listen to her sing.” Gray gave a little whistle. “And from the second that I saw her, heard her, your mama had my heart.” Gray put his hand against his chest. “This probably just sounds silly to you now.”

“No,” I said. I had so little to hold on to that none of it seemed silly.

“You sure?” Gray said.

I liked to picture Mama that first day, a young girl singing on the street, while Gray James slouched along the sidelines, already in love.

Gray tugged his tie loose, yanked it free, and set it on the blanket. “That kind of love, it happens in a snap. Happens without thinking of the troubles up ahead. And I was there on tour with my first album, just a greenhorn from Missouri. So young, I didn’t know Amsterdam from Spain.” Gray gave my tennis shoe a squeeze. “Bored yet?”

“Nope,” I said. “Keep going.” So far I wasn’t even born.

Gray rolled up his sleeves and propped his elbows on his knees. A butterfly landed on his boot. “Pretty place,” Gray said. He watched the lake and waited like he was gathering up courage for a story about more than love and Mama’s songs. “So anyway, time came I had to move on from Amsterdam. That’s how it is with records, you travel place to place. Live out on the road. And your mama, she was drifting too. Living some in France and Spain. Neither of us even owned a phone. Or had a steady address to our names.”

“You lost track of Mama?”

“More or less.” He yanked a fist of grass and let it sift out through his fingers. “Making music didn’t leave much time for love. And some time passed before I found her in Milwaukee. And by then—.” Gray pulled a faded leather wallet from his jeans. “You were in the world.”

“You found us in Milwaukee? Mama never told me that.” All these years I could have known Gray.

“Here.” Gray slid out a yellowed snapshot. “First time we got to meet.”

I stared down at the picture. It was me back as a toddler; me held tight in Gray James’s arms. Me, in that blue corduroy jacket with a bear patch on the chest. I still had it with my keepsakes. Beneath the photo in the border Gray had printed
Raine and me.

“We met? Before the barbecue?” I wished I had one memory of Gray, one memory of us together in Milwaukee. I wished I had that snapshot for myself.

He nodded, then slid it back into his wallet. There didn’t seem to be much in there besides us and a couple dollar bills. “That snapshot means the world to me.”

“But what happened after that? Didn’t you ever visit me again?”

“I did,” Gray said. “Or I tried a couple times. But by then, your mama didn’t much want me in your life.” Gray took the toothpick from his teeth and snapped it straight in two. Then he stuck another in his mouth. “Thing is—” Gray dropped his head, let his shaggy bangs cover his eyes. “By then, I had a problem with my drinking. A big, big problem. I wasn’t really fit to be a father.”

“You drank?”

“I did.” Gray kept his head hung. “So much, I wasn’t worth much.”

The only man I knew who had a problem with drinking was Mr. Earle, Tessa’s horrible dad, who lived in 303. Mr. Earle, who staggered down our hallway. Mr. Earle, who passed out in a snowbank Christmas Eve and Grandpa Mac had to help him to his door. Mr. Earle, who hit Tessa in the head so hard it left a bruise over her eye. Once, in the middle of the night, I had to give my bed to Tessa and her mother because Mr. Earle was drunk. And the next day, Tessa and her mother moved away. Gone for good. With money Mama and Grandpa Mac had given them. And Mr. Earle was still drunk on our steps. Still mean. I always wished he’d been the one to go. “You drank?” My stomach turned. I didn’t want a man like Mr. Earle to be my father.

“Sad to say,” Gray said. “But the truth is that I did. And your mama only let me see you when I was sober. And back then, I wasn’t sober all that much.”

“Never?” I said. “Not in twelve whole years? You weren’t ever sober on my birthday? Or Christmas? Or any ordinary day when you could have known me?”

“I wish I didn’t have to tell this to you, Raine. But you’re looking for an answer. And I know I got to tell the truth before we can move on.”

I stared out at the lake. I wasn’t sure I was moving on with Gray—not with a man who drank like Mr. Earle.

“The last time that I saw you,” Gray said, “I was performing in Chicago and I drove up to your place. I was in good shape that day, good enough that your mama let me take you to the park. I had a dream to push you on the swing. Listen to your stories. You sure could talk at three.” A quick smile lit up Gray’s guilty face. Then he tore a patch of grass down to the dirt.

“But going to the park that day, I saw a bottle in a window. And I stopped into a store, bought something that I shouldn’t. I only meant to take a couple sips, but I couldn’t stop.” Gray squeezed his eyes shut tight, like there was something in the memory he couldn’t bear. “Somehow I passed out on a park bench.”

“You passed out in a park? With me?”

He gave a sad, slow nod. “And I didn’t wake until I heard your mama screaming. Calling for you, Raine. But by then, you were long gone.”

“Gone?” This didn’t seem like a story from my life. Grandpa Mac and Mama had always kept me close. No wonder Mama was afraid I’d disappear. “How long was I missing?”

“Too long,” Gray finally said. “No one’s really sure. After a while someone found you crying in an alley. Called up the police. Of course, after that—” Gray hesitated, but he didn’t need to finish off his sentence. I knew what happened after that. Mama would never want me to be with Gray James again. “I hate this story, Raine. It’s a shame I’ve had to live with.” Gray hung his head, but I didn’t care. He should have been ashamed. “I wish I had another truth to tell.”

“And even so you kept up with the drinking? Even though you lost me?” Somehow I had the answer in my heart. If Gray had quit, I would have known him before now.

“After that, the drinking just got worse. There were days I hardly knew my name.”

Blood thrummed in my ears. “You could’ve quit.” A fire burned inside my throat.

“I tried.” Gray frowned. “I did. Lots and lots of times. But trying isn’t doing. And the music life I lived, singing place to place, there was always someone buying the next drink. It wasn’t till last year—” He reached into the pocket of his shirt and pulled out a kind of coin, bronze, the size of a half dollar. “I finally woke up, Raine.”

He pressed the metal coin into my palm. “It’s not a fancy thing. But it’s worth a lot to me. I earned it for one year without a drink.” In the center of the coin was a circled number 1. “One year,” he said again. He pointed to some words written on the edge. “Shakespeare,” he said. “ ‘To thine own self be true.’ And so I have to be. And true to you as well.”

Gray’s one-year coin didn’t mean a thing to me. No one ever gave Mama or Grandpa Mac a medal for not drinking. Or for taking care of me. Gray should have given up the drinking, coin or not.

“It’s late,” Gray said. “I know that, Raine. And I’m sorry for all the bad that happened. All the years I’ve been away. Sorry for that day I lost you in the park. Let your mama down.”

Yahoo.
Maybe Grandpa Mac was right. I handed back the bronze medallion. Gray’s drinking story only made the years I missed him worse. All that wonder, and Gray was getting drunk.

“No.” He shook his head. “I earned it for you, Raine.”

I dropped it in my pocket; I wanted Gray to leave. “I should go.” I stood up and swept the dried grass from my jeans. Just those words made me almost cry.

“Raine,” Gray said. “I’m finished with the drinking.”

“Okay,” I said. I picked up Mama’s picnic basket and threw the checkered napkins in with all the garbage. I was ready for this Gray day to be done.