Sparrow

by Mary Cecilia Jackson

  Two beats later, three more dots. She sends the flamenco dancer emoji.

  I swear to God, I almost lose it. A small conversation, big as the starry firmament that arches over me at night. Beau sits up and wags his tail. I bury my face in his neck, and he makes little doggy sounds of joy.

  “Oh, Beau, you wonderdog. She talked to me. She talked to me!”

  Beau licks my ear, like he’s saying, You ridiculous human. I told you so.

  “Lucas! Come down from there! The soup will get cold!”

  Beau looks at me, alarm in his sweet brown eyes.

  “I know, buddy. Granny’s going to throw an embolism if we don’t book it downstairs. Come on, let’s go.”

  In the kitchen, my grandmother is ladling thick corn chowder into her blue ceramic bowls, the ones with the yellow and red flowers around the edges.

  “Thank you for chopping up the tree, Lucas. Was it dry enough? It wasn’t too heavy?”

  “It was dry as a bone. No problem. Not for these manly arms.”

  She smiles and hands me a bowl of chowder. I set napkins and spoons at our places.

  “It gladdens my heart that we were all together, especially this Christmas. It was grand to see your mother again. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed her. And Anna is such a darling. I’m happy you got the stick out of your behind and spoke kindly to her. And to your mother.”

  “Haha, Granny. You’re hilarious.”

  She sets a huge ham sandwich in front of me, then sits down with her own lunch, a small cup of soup and three soda crackers. Old people eat like birds.

  “This was Grandpa Finn’s favorite lunch, wasn’t it?”

  “Your grandfather never met a ham he didn’t like. That’s why he loved you so much.”

  “Wow, Granny. You’re on fire today.”

  She chuckles.

  “I’m just happy to have had you with me all this time. I’ll be very sorry to see you go. I was dreading the holidays, but you made them happier than I thought they could ever be.”

  I look at my grandmother like she’s a real person and not just my grandmother. When I was a kid, I thought she was kind of magical, though maybe that was just the whole Irish thing. It seemed like she was made up of earth and fire. Now she’s all air and water, fragile and small. Like she’s getting tired of carrying the weight of her own bones.

  “Granny,” I say, stirring the soup with my spoon. “Are you okay?”

  “Of course, child. I’m just fine. I’ve had my strong, handsome grandson all to myself for a good, long while, and that’s made me a happy old Irishwoman. How are you feeling about going home? Have you sorted things out?”

  “I don’t know, to be honest. Sparrow just texted me back for, like, the first time since it happened. Maybe someday she’ll forgive me.”

  “What on earth does she have to forgive you for?”

  “For about a thousand things. I said some really ugly stuff to her. Things about Tristan.”

  “Were they true?”

  “Yeah. They were true.”

  “Then you have nothing to be sorry for, Lucas.”

  “But see, Granny, I do. I could have told someone. I could have done something to stop him.”

  “Oh, Lucas.” She sighs.

  She hasn’t touched her soup, but gets up to put the kettle on. She always busies herself with the tea-making ritual whenever she has something she wants to tell me. Usually it’s something I don’t want to hear.

  She stands at the kitchen sink, looking out at the lilac bushes in the backyard, the bare branches heavy with snow.

  “Do you know who I’m named for?” she asks, without turning around.

  “A saint?”

  “No. It’s an old name, from the Ulster Cycle, a group of legends that go back way before Christianity. Deirdre was a beautiful young woman who defied a king to run away with the man she loved. The king had his men search all over the country for them, and when they were found far away from their home, he promised that no harm would come to them if they returned. They trusted him. And of course, as Irish legends so often go, it did not end well.

  “As soon as they arrived, Deirdre’s lover and his men were slaughtered on the spot. Deirdre died of a broken heart. Ever since, she’s been called Deirdre of the Sorrows. I’ve always wondered why my mother named me after the heroine of such a sad tale. And I wonder sometimes—I still do—if a person can be cursed by her own name.”

  “Why would you think you were cursed, Granny?”

  She comes back to the table with her cup of tea and a plate of sugar cookies for me.

  “Do you know why your mother sent you here? I mean, surely to get you away from all your troubles, but why here? Why to me?”

  “Beats me, Granny.”

  “Because she knew what you had to learn, and she knew I would tell you. You’ll have to learn it over and over in your life, just the way I’ve had to learn my lesson over and over again. Men and women are different. We’re meant to fill in each other’s empty places.”

  “Granny, I’m sorry. You’re talking in riddles. Just tell it to me straight.”

  “All right, then. You men want to fix everything that’s broken in your lives, and in the lives of the people you love. You see a problem, you think you’re the one who can solve it, that you can make everything right again. There’s nothing in the world wrong with that; it’s the way you are. It’s in your blood. But women know that some things need time to fix themselves. And some things can never be mended. I’ve had to learn that lesson many times.”

  “I still don’t get you.”

  “When your father died, you can’t imagine how helpless I felt.”

  “I can, Granny.”

  “No, darling,” she says softly. “You can’t possibly. I was his mother. He was my only child. My one and only beautiful boy, and even though he was a grown man when he died, when he was lying in that hospital bed, all I could see was my baby, the way he was when he was small. I saw his scraped knees and his sweet freckles and the cowlick that always plagued him and the scar he got from falling out of a tree when he was nine. Mothers are supposed to ease the suffering of their children. What kind of mother was I, when I couldn’t fix what was wrong with my boy? When I couldn’t cure him or ease his pain or stop him from dying? What kind of woman was I, if I couldn’t keep my own child alive? I couldn’t fix him. There was nothing in the world I could do.”

  A tear trickles down her cheek, trembling on her chin before it falls into her lap.

  “And you, darling. With your Sparrow. You want to fix her, to make her whole. You want to ease her suffering. But it isn’t yours to do, is it? It’s hers, and hers alone. You cannot do her hard work for her. And if you try, you’ll take something important away from her. You won’t be helping her, you’ll be shielding her, and she needs to face her own truth, in her own time.”

  She takes a sip of her tea, which is probably stone cold by now. The cookies remain untouched.

  “Granny, it was my fault she got hurt. If I’d said something, if I’d ratted Tristan out to her father, then she never would have gone with him that night.”

  “Were you the one who raised your hand to her, Lucas? Were you the one who hurt her?”

  My voice cracks. “No. No, I wasn’t.”

  “Of course you weren’t. There’s only one person at fault here, and it’s that awful boy. As far as Sparrow is concerned, all you can do now is be her friend.”

  “But that sucks, Granny.”

  “Lucas, sometimes we just have to let things go. If you want to help her, then do her the honor of believing she has the courage to mend herself.”

  “But what if she can’t? What if she never gets better?”

  “She can and she will. Something tells me that she’s never had the chance to show anyone how brave she really is.”

  “She doesn’t think she’s brave.”

  “Ah, well, that’s a shame. Maybe she thinks that way because she’s afraid. The trut
h of it all is that you can’t be brave until you’re frightened out of your wits and still do the thing that needs doing. You have to be scared to be brave.”

  “So I just stand around and watch?”

  “You wait for her to invite you in. What you do is up to her, not you. Believe in her. She’s not helpless. She’s a survivor.

  “Now, I know I’m your doddering old grandmother, but have I managed to shoehorn some sense into that thick head of yours?”

  I stand up and put my arms around her. Violets and tea and sugar cookies and face powder.

  “Granny Deirdre, I love you. You know that, right?”

  “I do, darling. I love you too. And I’ll tell you something else, something everyone who loves you already knows.”

  “That I’m a dingus?”

  “Hush now. You are, in every good way, just like your father. My heart has ached a little less with you around to remind me of him. We live on in those who loved us. And your father, my darling boy, lives on in you.”

  She reaches out and strokes my cheek.

  In my granny’s warm kitchen, I feel my dad with me, inside my beating heart.

  Sparrow

  And all my mother came into mine eyes.

  And gave me up to tears.

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Henry V

  34

  Field Trip

  I’m curled up on my window seat, looking out the bay window at the sun shining bright and golden on the high ridges. It’s the last week of February, but even though it’s super-cold and there’s still snow on the ground, tiny brave buds have popped out on some of the trees. The mountains are starting to look fuzzier. Like puppy fur.

  Lucas has been home for a week, and it’s almost like he never left. With my forehead resting on an icy windowpane, I whisper the best part of his poem. It’s in the book he sent me for Christmas. He’d had it for a long time, and the pages are scribbled with notes in the margins, underlines, and snarky comments. I love that; it feels like we’re having a conversation. He marked his favorite with a silver clip, one with a little bird at the top.

  I say the words every morning. For courage.

  Though much is taken, much abides; and though

  We are not now that strength which in old days

  Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

  One equal temper of heroic hearts,

  Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

  To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

  When Lucas pulls into the driveway, Delaney is leaning out the passenger window like a beagle on a road trip. She’s wearing her puffy blue parka and black cowboy hat. She sees me at the window and waves, and I run down the stairs, calling out to Sophie that I’ll be back in time for dinner.

  The heat in Lucas’s Jeep rattles like a smoker’s lungs, wheezing and gasping through the vents. Delaney’s in the back now, not wearing her seat belt so she can scoot up and talk to us.

  “Laney,” Lucas says. “You realize that if I skid or stop suddenly, you’re going to Peter Pan through the windshield, right?”

  “So don’t do that, dork. I’ll put it on in a minute. Bird Girl, are you sure you want to do this?” She’s leaning between the front seats, so close that I can see her earrings. Silver horseshoes, studded with bits of turquoise.

  “Nice earrings,” I tell her.

  “Thanks. I’m asking for a horse for my birthday. I know I swore I’d stop, but that was almost a year ago. One day very soon, my friends, I will wear my parents down and emerge victorious. Now quit stalling, and tell me the truth. Are you sure about this cheerful little field trip?”

  “I don’t know, Laney. Are you sure about those earrings?”

  She sits back and takes off her blaze-orange mittens, glaring at me.

  “Well, maybe you’re sure, bird brat, but I’m not sure, not at all.”

  We’re quiet for a while, looking out over the deep snowy valley on our left, dotted with white church steeples and tiny houses, watching little whirlwinds of snow rise in front of us, a gift from the eighteen-wheelers laboring up the steep incline.

  Delaney says, “So I’ve been writing poems again, right?”

  Lucas points out the windshield. “Look! A giraffe!”

  “That trick worked once, you turd, when we were, like, six, so knock it off. You guys want to hear a poem or not?”

  “Not,” Lucas and I say.

  “You guys suck.”

  “Not as much as some of your poems,” Lucas says.

  “Lucas,” I say, trying not to smile, “that was mean. Tell her you’re sorry.”

  “But I’m not even close to sorry. I speak the truth.”

  It feels good, the three of us together again. The sound of conversation doesn’t terrify me anymore; I’m not freaked out because someone’s sitting too close. I haven’t flinched once when Delaney touches me. I know this could change in a hot second, but right now I feel mostly normal. Like peace is out there in the distance, waiting for me. Maybe happiness is standing beside her.

  Delaney’s cradling her journal in her lap, the one she’s had for years, crammed full of notes and crumbling autumn leaves and pictures torn from magazines—the things that inspire her. Sometimes, when she thinks no one is looking, she runs her hand reverently over the worn leather cover, like the pages are filled with prayers.

  Right now she’s wrestling with the thick rubber band that holds the book closed. Balancing the book on her knee, she snaps the band around her coffee cup, spilling half the contents on the floor. She always takes the lid off. She always spills.

  “Oh geez, thanks for that, you spaz,” says Lucas. “How am I going to get the smell out?”

  “Like you’ll even be able to tell. This ride smells like petrified tacos and feet. I just made it better, so quit whining.”

  Even though I know it will hurt my heart to even imagine it, I have to ask.

  “How’s Swan Lake coming?”

  “You tell her, Laney.”

  Delaney groans. “Oh God. We’re a train wreck. It’s killing me. Caleb, too. We don’t have what you guys had, that magic juice, and it’s bumming us out. Sorry to complain, especially to you guys.”

  It must kill Lucas not to be dancing Siegfried.

  As though he’s reading my mind, he says softly, “I missed way too much. And Caleb and Laney worked super-hard while I was gone. I’m one of the hunting party guys now. It’s all good, Birdy, really. I’m lucky Levkova let me come back. I couldn’t have done it anyway.”

  He turns to look at me.

  “Not without you.”

  “Lucas—”

  “Also, when were you planning to tell us about New York?”

  My face flushes. I haven’t told a soul, but Sophie and my father are singing like canaries in a coal mine. “I was going to tell you later.”

  “Right.”

  “No, I was, seriously. I just wanted to keep it to myself for a while. I only heard, like, three days ago. It doesn’t seem possible. It doesn’t seem real.”

  “Oh, it’s real, Birdy. You got into the summer intensives! Five bucks says you’ll be in the company of the Manhattan Ballet within a year.”

  Talking about what I’ve dreamed of all my life with anyone right now, especially after—after Tristan—is terrifying. I’m afraid someone will find a way to rip it away from me. I put my hand up to my throat, like there’s something stuck there. Lucas sees.

  “Okay, Birdy. No worries. Let’s change the subject,” he says. “So how long’s it been since you were at St. Monica’s?”

  “Not since her funeral.”

  Delaney takes off her seat belt again and breathes coffee breath into my face.

  “Are you serious? You really haven’t visited your mother’s grave in twelve years?”

  “None of us have.”

  “Not even your dad?”

  “I don’t think so. If he has, I don’t want to know about it.”

  Lucas nods. “I mean, s
eriously, why would you? No way I’d go. But are you really sure about today? I can turn around and we can go to Nora’s and stuff our faces.”

  “Actually, I’m not sure. But I’m doing it anyway.”

  “Okay, then. We’re in.”

  “‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers,’” Delaney crows.

  Lucas and I roll our eyes.

  “Shut up, Delaney.”

  * * *

  St. Monica’s looks exactly the way it does in my nightmares. Though I haven’t been here in more than twelve years, I haven’t forgotten a thing. The church is pretty, but creepy pretty, like those Thomas Kinkade paintings. Too perfect, too sweet. My mother should have been buried somewhere dark and Gothic, with pointy arches and flying buttresses splayed out like spider legs.

  Lucas pulls into the empty parking lot. It’s Sunday afternoon, and there are no other cars here. He cuts the engine and looks out at all the gray stone and pristine snowdrifts piled up against the walls. Ivy climbs between the scarlet and blue stained-glass windows, and fresh magnolia-leaf wreaths hang from white ribbons on the red doors. A square bell tower rises into the pale blue sky.

  Behind the church, the graveyard is surrounded by a wrought-iron fence encased in a thick layer of ice. Lucas tugs his Sherpa hat down over his ears.

  “I don’t know about this, Birdy. It’s über weird out here. You should let us come with you, at least.”

  “No, Lucas. I need to go alone. I won’t be long, I promise.”

  Delaney scoots up between the seats again.

  “Lucas is right. It looks kind of sketchy to me.”

  “Guys, it’s a church. We’re the only living people here.”

  “Exactly,” says Delaney, looking over her shoulder at the rear window. “You don’t know what’s out there.”

  I open my door, and biting wind swirls into the car, instantly numbing my face.

  Looking back at their wide eyes and grim expressions, my heart softens.

  “I’m fine, honestly. If I’m not back in ten minutes, you can come get me.”

  “Okay, okay,” Delaney grumbles.

  Lucas says, “Ten minutes, Birdy. Dassit.”