Things I Want to Say

by Cyndi Myers

  You’re wrong, I wanted to say. You deserve better. We all do.

  Alice crawled back under the covers, tucking them carefully around her thin frame. “Now that we know what my future looks like, what about yours?” she asked.

  “I talked to Frannie this afternoon,” I said. “I told her I won’t be returning to Bakersfield to live.”

  Alice’s eyes widened. “How did she take that?”

  “She wasn’t happy. She couldn’t understand why I’d want a different life from the one we’ve had.”

  “She’ll be okay. Frannie’s a strong woman.”

  I wasn’t so sure my sister was strong in the right way, but I didn’t argue the point. “I hope she’ll be okay. It’s up to her now if she is or not.”

  “What about your flower shop?”

  “I’ll sell it to Yolanda. She’s said for years she’d like to have her own place.”

  She nodded. “Then what?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I haven’t gotten that far.”

  She smiled. “You know what I think?”

  I returned the smile. “No, but I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

  “I think you should take Grandpa Elvis’s advice. Find a place you think you’d like and make a space there where you’ll fit.”

  I nodded. “Good advice.”

  “You’re a lucky person, you know.”

  “I know.” I didn’t have cancer. I wasn’t in jail for murder. I’d had a lot of luck in my life and, until now, had taken it all for granted.

  “Not too many people get a chance to really start over and get things right,” Alice said. “I can’t wait to learn how it all turns out.”

  My gaze met hers, questioning. Did she mean she intended to stick around to find out?

  She winked at me. “Don’t worry. Wherever I end up, I’ll be checking up on you. I’ve been nosy my whole life—I can’t see cancer or anything else stopping that.”

  I smiled in spite of my sadness. “I can’t wait to see how it all turns out, either.” For Alice and Frannie and most of all for myself.

  Epilogue

  A string of brass bells behind the door chimed as I entered the flower shop, and the familiar sweet-spicy smell of carnations and roses surrounded me. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, taking comfort and courage from that rich perfume. It smelled like home. Exactly where I belonged.

  “Hello, may I help— Ellen!”

  Martin rushed from behind the counter, then drew up short a few steps away from me. “You haven’t been returning my calls,” he said.

  I nodded. “I know. A…a lot has happened. I wanted to try to explain.”

  He nodded, still cautious, arms folded across his chest.

  “Alice is in a hospice in California. Her cancer has come back.”

  All the stiffness went out of him, and he held out his arms to me. “Ellen, I’m so sorry.”

  I stepped into his embrace, and it was like coming home. To a real home, full of love and warmth and all the things I’d longed for all my life. I struggled to compose myself. “There’s more, but I can’t talk about it now.” I would tell him everything later. He deserved to know the truth, but first, I wanted to enjoy this closeness. This acceptance.

  I stepped back a little, though he still didn’t completely release me. “I notice the space next door is empty now,” I said.

  “Yes.” He looked toward the empty storefront. “I guess it’s too small of a space to be practical for most businesses. The tax service that was in there outgrew the place and no one else has been interested.”

  “When I was here before, you were talking about expanding,” I said.

  “Well sure, I’d like to.” He shrugged. “Can’t quite talk myself into taking the financial risk, though.”

  I nodded and tried to look everywhere but at him. But I found his brown eyes mesmerizing and my gaze was continually drawn back to him. “Have you thought about taking on a partner?” I asked.

  He took his time answering, a curious light in his eyes as he looked me up and down. I forced myself to stand still, to pretend to be unaffected by his scrutiny, though in truth it was all I could do not to fidget and fan myself like an over-wrought teenager.

  “Do you have someone in mind?” he asked at last.

  I took a deep breath, trying to remember the speech I’d rehearsed on the way over here. “I sold my business in California,” I said. “I’m thinking of relocating.”

  “And Sweetwater, Kansas, is on your list?”

  “Right now, it’s the only place on my list.”

  He grinned. “Then maybe we should talk.” He checked his watch. “Where are you staying?”

  “At the La Quinta out on the interstate.”

  “I close up at six. Why don’t we have dinner tonight and talk.”

  I let loose the smile I’d been holding back. “I’d like that very much.”

  We were doing the movie thing again, standing there grinning at each other. I decided to give in to the lighter-than-air feeling that surrounded and filled me. I breathed in the floral perfume of the shop and noted the fine lines that fanned out from the corners of Martin’s eyes, and the way the blue of his shirt set off the rich chocolate of his eyes. I listened to the muffled traffic on the street outside and admired the brilliant red of a blooming hibiscus and the deep green of the Boston fern by the register. I inventoried every sense and filed away every image like a photograph.

  This was a memory I wanted to keep forever, of the moment when I’d started over. All those things I wished I’d done, all the things I wished I’d said—here was my chance to act and speak, suffer the consequences and receive the rewards. All I had to do was get started and see how far I could go.

  The Birdman’s Daughter

  Prologue

  There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousand truths, which come about us like birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing a while upon the roof, and then fly away.

  —Henry Ward Beecher

  For a man who’d spent his child hood on the arid plains of west Texas, the jungle was a place of magic. Martin Engel had hardly slept the night before, anxious to be on the trail again, completing his quest. He’d roused his companion on this trip, Allen Welch, from bed at 3:00 a.m. “We’ve got to be there before dawn,” he’d reminded Welch. “We’re going to have good luck today. I can feel it.”

  Martin’s intuition was seldom wrong. Some people complained that he’d had more than his share of good luck in his pursuits, but Martin preferred to depend on hard work and experience. Over the years he’d taught himself everything there was to know about his quarry.

  Still, there was something mystical about the hunt, a point in every search where he found himself locked in, putting himself on a different plane, trying to think like the ones he sought.

  Martin was a birder. Not a backyard hobbyist or vacation afficionado. He was an acknowledged champion, a “big lister” who had seen more different kinds of birds than only a handful of people in the world.

  Seven thousand, nine hundred and forty-eight. Today he was trying for seven thousand, nine hundred and fifty. On this trip he planned to clean up Brazil. When he got on the plane to head home to Texas, he would have seen every bird that existed in this country’s jungles and plains. The promise of such an accomplishment made him tremble with excitement.

  He and Welch were at the trail head by three-thirty. Welch slugged coffee from a thermos and stumbled over roots in the path, while Martin charged forward, eyes scanning the canopy overhead, bin oculars ready. Even at this early hour, the air was thick and fetid around him, the ground beneath his feet spongy with decay. His ears filled with the whirring of insects. Insects meant birds.

  He reviewed his quarry in his mind. The Pale-faced Antbird, Skutchia borbae, with its dark rufous head and black eye patch; the Hoff man’s Wood creeper, Dendrocolaptes hoffmannsi, with its straight blackish bill and t
he brown to rufous-chestnut upperparts; and the Brown-chested Barbet, Capito brunneipectus, with its distinctive chunky silhouette. They had haunted him for months now, taunting him with the blank lines beside their names on his list, lines where he would record the date, time and location of his sighting of them.

  He’d seen the Pale-faced Antbird his first day out this trip. He and Welch had scarcely stepped onto the jungle path when it flashed by them, lured by the sounds of a Pale-faced Antbird call Martin had played on the tape deck strapped to his pack. The other two had been more wary. He’d hunted three days for them, scarcely noticing the sweat drenching his clothes or the hunger pangs in his belly or the cotton in his mouth.

  Only two more names and he would have cleaned up Brazil. Only fifty more birds and he would have his eight thousand, within reach of the record as the most accomplished birder in the world. And he’d done it all on his own, while working and raising a family. No fancy paid guides to point out the birds for him. He’d taught himself to recognize them and tramped out to hunt on his own.

  People talked about the ecstasy of drugs or spiritual quests. For him that feeling came when he spotted a new bird to add to his list. The flash of wing, a hint of color, the silhouette of a distinct form against the sky was like a glimpse of the divine. He, Martin Engel, un remarkable middle son in a large family of accomplished athletes and academics, had been singled out for this privilege. With each new sighting, his heart raced, his palms grew clammy and his breath came in gasps. When he was certain of his quarry, he’d been known to shout and pump his fists. A new bird added to his list was the equivalent of a grand slam in the World Series. He’d done what few in the world had ever accomplished. Some times guilt pricked at him—guilt over spending so much time away from his family. But more often than not, he didn’t think about them. When he was out there, hunting, it was all about the birds and the numbers.

  He’d awakened this morning with the sense that this would be the day he’d see the other two birds he needed. But as the morning dragged on, his certainty faded. The trees were filled with Variegated Antpittas, Fuscous and Boat-billed Flycatchers and White-throated Hummingbirds—all birds he’d seen before. As if to taunt him, a second Pale-faced Antbird darted across the path in front of them. But no sign of the Wood-creeper or the Barbet.

  “We should stop and rest,” Welch said, coming up behind Martin when he stopped to train his binoculars on a bird over head. A Glittering-bellied Emerald, its iridescent blue and green feathers shimmering in a beam of sunlight.

  “Just a little farther,” Martin said, letting the binoculars hang loose around his neck again. “We’re close.”

  “It’s like a steam room out here.” Welch wiped at his neck with a crumpled bandanna.

  “Is it?” Martin hadn’t noticed.

  He’d known this feeling before, this sense that the bird he sought was nearby. He only had to look at the right location at the right moment and it would be his.

  And that was how it was again. He turned his head slightly, prepared to argue with Welch, and he saw the flash of color in the trees. He froze and brought his bin oculars up to his eye, his spirits soaring as he zeroed in on the distinctive straight black bill. “That’s it!” he shouted, adrenaline surging through him. “I told you it was here.”

  But the last words came out muddled, and the next thing he knew, he was sinking to his knees in the thick forest muck, the world whirling around him, until he was staring up at a wavery patch of sky framed by leafy branches. Welch was saying something to him, something he couldn’t hear. All he could think as he slipped into black ness was Only one more bird to go….

  1

  Life is good only when it is magical and musical… You must hear the bird’s song without attempting to render it into nouns and verbs.

  —Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Works and Days”

  When Karen MacBride first saw her father in the hospital, she was struck by how much this man who had spent his life pursuing birds had come to resemble one. His head, round and covered with wispy gray hair, reminded her of the head of a baby bird. His thin arms beneath the hospital sheet folded up against his body like wings. Years spent outdoors had weathered his face until his nose jutted out like a beak, his eyes sunken in hollows, watching her with the cautious interest of a crow as she approached his bed.

  “Hi, Dad.” She offered a smile and lightly touched his arm. “I’ve come home to take care of you for a while.” After sixteen years away from Texas, she’d flown from her home in Denver this morning to help with her father for a few weeks.

  That she’d agreed to do so surprised her. Martin Engel was not a man who either offered or inspired devotion from his family. He had been the remote authority figure of Karen’s child hood, the distracted voice on the other end of the line during in frequent phone calls during her adult years, the polite, pre occupied host during scattered visits home. For as long as she could remember, conversations with her father had had a disjointed quality, as if all the time he was talking to her, he was thinking of the call of the Egyptian Goose, or a reputed sighting of a rare Hutton’s Shearwater.

  Which, of course, he was. So what kind of communication could she expect from him now that he couldn’t talk at all? Maybe she’d agreed to return to Texas in order to find out.

  He nodded to show he understood her now, and made a guttural noise in his throat, like the complaining of a jay.

  “The doctors say there’s a chance he will talk again.” Karen’s mother, Sara, spoke from her post at the end of the bed. “A speech therapist will come once a week to work with him, and the occupational therapist twice a week. Plus there’s an aide every weekday to help with bathing and things like that.”

  Karen swallowed hard, resisting the urge to turn and run, all the way back to Colorado. A voice in her head whispered, It’s not too late to get out of this, you know.

  She ignored the voice and nodded, smile still firmly fixed in place. “The case worker gave me the schedule. And Del said he got the house in order.”

  “He built a ramp for the wheelchair and put hand rails in the shower and things.” Sara folded her arms over her stomach, still looking grim. “Thank God you agreed to come down and stay with him. Three days with him here has been enough to wear me out.”

  “Mom!” Karen nodded to her dad.

  “I know he can hear me.” Sara swatted at her former husband’s leg. “I’m sure it hasn’t been any more pleasant for him than it has been for me.” Sara and Martin Engel had divorced some twenty years before, but they still lived in the same town and maintained a polite, if distant, relationship.

  A large male nurse’s aide filled the doorway of the room. “Mr. Engel, I’m here to help you get dressed so you can go home.”

  “Karen and I will go get a cup of coffee.” Sara took her daughter by the arm and pulled her down the hallway.

  “You looked white as a ghost back there,” Sara said as they headed toward the cafeteria. “You aren’t going to get all weak and weepy on me, are you?”

  Karen took a deep breath and shook her head. “No.” It had been a shock, seeing Dad like that. But she was okay now. She could do this.

  “Good. Because he’s not worth shedding any tears over.”

  Karen said nothing. She knew for a fact her mother had cried buckets of tears over Martin at one time. “What happened, exactly?” she said. “I understand he’s had a stroke, but how?”

  “He was in Brazil, hunting the Pale-faced Antbird, the Hoffman’s Wood creeper and the Brown-chested Barbet.” Sara rattled off the names of the exotic birds without hesitation. Living with a man devoted to birding required learning to speak the language in order to have much communication from him at all. She glanced over the top of her bifocals at her daughter. “If he found those three, he’d have ‘cleaned up’ Brazil, so of course he was adamant it be done as soon as possible.”

  “He only needed three birds to have seen every bird in Brazil?” Karen marveled at this. “
How many is that?”

  “Seven thousand, nine hundred and something?” Sara shook her head. “I’m not sure. It changes all the time anyway. But I do know he’s getting close to eight thousand. When he passed seven thousand, seven hundred and fifty, he became positively fanatical about topping eight thousand before he got too old to travel.”

  Ever since Karen could remember, her father’s life—and thus the life of his family—had revolved around adding birds to the list. By the time she was six, Karen could name over a hundred different types of birds. She rattled off genus species names the way other children talked about favorite cartoon characters. Instead of commercial jingles, birdcalls stuck in her head, and played over and over again. To this day, when she heard an Olive-sided Fly catcher, she could remember the spring morning when she’d first identified it on her own, and been lavished with praise by her too-often-distracted father.

  “He’d just spotted the Wood creeper when he keeled over right there in the jungle.” Sara continued her story. “Allen Welch was with him, and he’s the one who called me. He apologized, but said he had no idea who else to contact.”

  Karen shook her head, amazed. “How did you ever get him home?”

  “The insurance paid for an air ambulance. All those years with Mobil Oil were worth something after all.” Martin had spent his entire career as a petroleum engineer with Mobil Oil Company. He always told people he kept the job for the benefits. They assumed he meant health insurance and a pension, but his family knew the chief benefit for him was the opportunity to travel all over the world, adding birds to his list.

  They reached the cafeteria. “I’ll get the coffee, you sit,” Sara said, and headed for the coffee machine.