Skyward

by Mary Alice Monroe

  “It’s a long time coming.”

  “I’m afraid, Maggie,” she said with whispered urgency.

  “Don’t be. Hey. What’s to choose?” She tried to sound confident. “He loves you, anyone can see that. Hang in there. He’ll send Fannie packing.”

  Ella sighed heavily and looked over at the vultures. They’d flown up to the roof of the clinic and were picking at the shingles with their hooked beaks. It wouldn’t take long for them to start doing some serious damage.

  Ella stayed in the clinic or the kitchen as much as she could for the rest of the day and into the evening. No pot, tub or appliance was safe from her desperate need to keep busy. She knew what she was doing. She was hiding out, too chicken to step out and deal with the bigger mess that was her life. So she scrubbed.

  Harris returned home in the early afternoon, then he and Fannie had gone on a long walk together. Marion sat on the porch waiting for them like a left-behind puppy. When they returned, Marion ran out to meet them. Ella stood at the window and watched as the child bounded into her mother’s arms and they embraced while Harris stood close, watching his wife and child. They made a charming family tableau against the backdrop of green trees and spring blooms, and Ella knew a desperate sense of foreboding.

  She drew away from the window and busied herself setting the dinner table when they walked into the house. Harris carried Fannie’s black zipped duffel bag and tote. His face looked beleaguered as he dropped the luggage to the floor. Fannie’s eyes were red-rimmed but she was smiling. Marion, of course, was ecstatic.

  Harris looked at Ella and said evenly, “Fannie will be staying here for a few days. Until she gets back on her feet.”

  There was a stunned silence during which Ella swallowed her defeat. “I see,” she replied without a show of emotion. She tried to marshal her spinning thoughts. “Well then… We should see to sleeping arrangements.”

  Fannie laughed with disbelief. “Sleeping arrangements? I’ll sleep where I always sleep. In my own room.”

  Harris shook his head. “Ella is sleeping in our…the front bedroom.”

  “Oh,” she said, rubbing her hands. “Okay. Well, where are you sleeping then?”

  “I’m sleeping in my office.”

  “In the office?” She rallied, shrugging one shoulder. “Okay. I guess I’ll just bunk with you.”

  “No. It’s a single, and anyway, that’s not an option.” His voice was resolute.

  Fannie appeared momentarily frightened by the implication. Then, after mulling it over, she glanced at Ella, her brow raised in speculation. “Oh. I see how it is.”

  Ella didn’t flinch or rise to the bait. She held her hands together and met Fannie’s stare, waiting to see how this scene would unfold.

  “Well,” Fannie said, swinging her arms open in a self-consciously magnanimous gesture. “Hey, no problem. I’ll just go on to the cabin. We can fix it up and I’ll be fine in there. Kind of like my own little house, you know?”

  “That won’t work, either,” said Harris. “There’s someone staying there.”

  “Who?” she snapped, her voice rising with frustration.

  “Lijah Cooper. My bird keeper.”

  “This is ridiculous! Tell him to leave! I need the place.”

  “I won’t kick him out because you’ve suddenly dropped in for a visit.”

  “A visit?” she said plaintively. “A visit? I’ve come home, Harris.”

  His face hardened. “Now who’s being ridiculous?”

  A new voice entered the fray. “You can sleep in my room, Mama,” Marion said as she lurched forward to wrap her arms around her mother in a protective gesture.

  “Aw, thank you, precious,” she replied, bending low to hug her and kiss Marion’s forehead. “I’m glad to know someone wants me around here.”

  “I want you,” Marion cried, burying her face against Fannie’s legs.

  An uneasy silence fell. Harris shifted his weight, then said, “All right. You can stay in Marion’s room.”

  The sky was beginning to darken and the diurnal birds in the med pens were roosting. Lijah liked to sweep the hall at this time of the day, as much to spend quiet time with Santee as anything else. Volunteers didn’t usually come into the pens at this hour so he was surprised when a strange woman poked her head through the doorway. She stepped inside, let ting the door slam behind her.

  “Is Harris here?”

  She didn’t look like a new volunteer so he figured she was that wife of Harris’s that he’d been hearing about all day. She didn’t seem his type. Her hair was piled high on her head with some sparkly clasp and she put lots of makeup on her eyes. His Martha used to call that type of woman a vamp.

  “Well, now, he was here a while, but he left.”

  “Do you know where to?”

  He’d seen Harris walk off in the direction of the hack box tower not ten minutes earlier. “Can’t say.”

  She sighed with frustration, then narrowed her kohl-lined eyes in thought. When she raised them his way, he thought she had the look of a fox.

  “How about Ella? Seen her?”

  Lijah rested his palms atop the broom and leaned against it. He’d seen Ella race across the yard to meet Harris mid way. He didn’t look at Fannie, but answered truthfully. “I seen Miss Ella in the clinic this afternoon, about three o’clock.”

  She began walking down the hall, peeking between the slats at the birds like some predator picking up a scent. “You know who I am, don’t you? I’m Fannie Henderson. Harris’s wife,” she replied without waiting for an answer.

  “Yes’m.”

  She slanted him a glance, then came to a stop at Med 3. “Is that the eagle Harris has been talking so much about? The one that’s been shot?”

  “She the one,” he replied slowly.

  “Really? She don’t look so sick. In fact, she looks pretty good.”

  “She feeling much better now. Harris and Ella got her in tiptop shape. You won’t see a prettier eagle than Santee.”

  “So how come she’s still here? Shouldn’t she have been set free by now?”

  “I can’t rightly say. Harris wants to give her time to test her wings. He’ll know when the time is right.”

  “I heard that you’re fixin’ to leave when the eagle does.”

  “Yes’m.”

  “You’re the one staying in the cabin, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Since this eagle came. That was about the same time Ella came, too.”

  “I reckon that’s true.”

  “You’ve probably got to be pretty good friends with her by now.”

  “Miss Ella is a fine lady.”

  Fannie twisted her lips and stared back into Santee’s pen, ignoring the restless footing of the eagle that indicated nervous discomfort.

  “That’s my cabin, you know. Harris built it for me.” She spoke calmly but there was an edgy tone to her voice.

  Lijah hadn’t heard that fact before and wondered if it were true. Feeling uneasy, he thought it best not to reply and see where this was heading.

  Fannie turned from the pen to face Lijah squarely for the first time. “That’s my house, too. And I’m home to stay.” She said it as an announcement, as though to dispel any doubt in his or anyone’s mind about her position. She took a final look at Santee before stepping away from the pen and heading toward the door. She paused before leaving, turned and let her gaze wander the nine pens. “You know, it’s getting crowded around here. I think it’s high time we let some of these birds go.”

  Harris leaned against the wall of the hack box and pulled Ella close beside him. It was a quiet and balmy evening with a breeze that cooled the skin and kept the bugs at bay. Ella nestled against his chest, holding tight. He rested his chin on her head, relishing the scent of her hair. It was second nature to him now to feel Ella’s body close to his, to smell her scent, to feel the softness of her skin. They had spent every spare minute together, around the house and at wor
k. Now they had to climb to the hack-box tower to hide away for a few stolen moments.

  They sat high up in the eagle’s aerie during those brief moments between light and dark when the vibrant colors of the coastline rose toward the heavens, leaving the earth in shadows. This introspective time always made him feel caught in a limbo between regret and hope, joy and despair.

  He and Ella had talked for a long time about Fannie, exhausted themselves trying to explain their feelings to each other. Each had tried to be understanding, yet each clung to a position that felt unyielding to the other. To his mind, he’d made his decision to marry Fannie and had, duty-bound, stuck with it. He was not an impulsive man and would not abandon his family, would not leave like his father had—no matter how cruel the consequences. Yet, because of that decision, he faced losing the only woman he’d ever truly loved.

  Ella broke the silence when the sun slipped below the horizon. Her voice was hoarse from the tension of holding back tears. “Harris, it’s getting late. We should get down and back to the house.”

  He held her back. “Fannie won’t be here for long. A couple of days. A week, maybe two.”

  “Then what?”

  “Ella…” he said wearily. “We’ve gone over this.”

  “And it still isn’t resolved! You’re asking too much from me.”

  “I want this to work between us,” he said with urgency.

  “But it can’t, not as long as you stay married.”

  “You knew I was married.”

  “I know,” she admitted.

  She sounded so defeated that he wanted to say something to reassure her, but there was nothing more he had the right to say.

  “Fannie’s coming here has changed everything. I can’t stay with Fannie here, you know that! And I can’t stay after she’s left again, because now I’ve met her and she’s real to me. Not some faceless villain out there somewhere. I can’t pretend that she doesn’t exist any longer. She’s your wife. And that fact makes what we share illicit. Immoral. Wrong.”

  “Ella…”

  She looked at him with more tenderness than he felt he deserved, and when she reached up with her small hands to cup his face, he lowered his lips to kiss her fingers.

  “I love you,” she told him. “And I’ll stay for a little while. Not for your sake. For Marion’s sake. She needs me and I won’t desert her. But this is your mess, Harris. I’m not going to clean it up for you.”

  “You want me to divorce her.”

  She took a ragged breath and he saw the answer—Yes!—shining in her eyes. He sat up, running his hand through his hair in frustration. The eagles stirred behind him inside the hack box, startled by his sudden movement.

  “There’s another reason that I’ve held back on divorcing her that’s not so noble.”

  He could hear Ella move behind him, then come to sit be side him, patient and attentive.

  “If I divorce Fannie, as my wife she’s entitled to half of what I own. I’d have to sell the property. I couldn’t afford to buy her out, not with what the property is worth today. I’d lose the center.”

  “Harris, let it go,” she said, and he heard all her desperation and love in those few syllables. “We’ll get more money. You can always build another.”

  He shook his head no. If only it could be so easy. This question cut deep to the very core of him. How could he explain it to her? He looked back at the two eagles sitting beside each other, brother and sister. Bonded by birth but about to fledge. They’d likely never see each other again. But when they chose a mate, that bond would endure for their lifetime. They would nest and remain site loyal.

  “It’s not just about money. I’ve never yearned for material things. As long as I could make enough to provide for my child, my family, I’ve been content. But I’ve always had a deep instinct for home. My mother sold off the family land, parcel by parcel, then died and left me alone, with nothing. Ella, everything I am is here. I’ve made a commitment to this place and with it a commitment to my wife. The two are inexorably entwined.”

  Ella moved in front of him. Her hair hung loose around her shoulders like a luxurious cape and he could barely see her face in the dark shadows.

  “Hold me, Harris. I’m afraid.”

  “I love you,” he said vehemently, holding her close. “I know I have no right to say that to you. That I don’t deserve to.”

  She put her finger to his lips, silencing him.

  He lowered his head, meeting her lips with a kiss that he hoped would convince her of his love. Their kiss deepened with the night around them, and from somewhere near in the surrounding woods they heard an owl hoot. Harris buried his face in her neck and they held each other with a fervency that bordered on desperation.

  Siblicide. This phenomenon occurs in several species of birds. In a wild nest where two or more chicks hatch, the strongest nestlings may attack and kill the weakest. Siblicide allows the surviving chicks to obtain more food from the parents, thus increasing its chances for survival.

  20

  A RECORD-BREAKING HOT SPELL STRUCK THE southeast coast. The only air conditioners in the house were in Ella’s and Marion’s bedrooms, so Fannie and Marion spent their days locked upstairs thicker than thieves. Ella heard the thumping of feet overhead and an occasional burst of laughter. In the evenings, while Ella sweltered in the kitchen cooking dinner, Fannie took Marion swimming in the pond. From the porch Ella could hear Marion squealing with delight and Fannie calling out “whoopla!” before every splash. When the pair returned to the house to change, the stifling air quickly dried the pond’s moisture from their skin, then drew back out beads of perspiration around their foreheads.

  The steamy humidity didn’t break as the sun lowered. Fannie and Marion liked to stretch out on the sofa to watch television as a fan whirred and stirred the thick air around them. Ella moved from kitchen to living room setting the table, pausing with a stack of plates in her hands to gaze at the pair lying side by side. She couldn’t help but notice the strong resemblance between mother and daughter. Their blond hair was exactly the same hue and Marion had Fannie’s delicate bone structure. They looked like fairies with their hair frizzled around their heads and their cheeks pink and glowing.

  They were bound together by blood and bone, Ella thought, and she felt the distance between herself and Marion widen. The child didn’t even notice whether or not Ella was in the room. Ella tugged the towel from her waist to wipe the sweat from her brow and dab at her eyes as she returned to the kitchen.

  Dinners were the worst. The rest of the day they could move about like planets in a solar system, each in their own, separate orbit. But at dinner they were forced to sit together and be civil. For the first few days since Fannie’s arrival, Ella had escaped the ritual of mealtime grace by pleading kitchen duties. She played the role of nurse, nanny, cook and housemaid. Tonight, however, the ruse had worn thin and Harris pulled her aside in the kitchen and compelled her to sit with the family at the table.

  “Who says grace tonight?” Harris asked when they assembled.

  “Let Mama!” Marion volunteered.

  “Why, okay, precious.” Fannie wiggled her brows. “It’s been a long time, though.”

  When they reached out to hold hands, Ella cringed at the thought of having to hold Fannie’s hand. Fannie, however, thought the prospect very amusing and her eyes glittered. Ella looked over to Marion and instantly zeroed in on the streak of what looked like chocolate on her palms.

  “Marion, what’s that on your hand?”

  Marion jerked her hand back under the table. “Nothing.”

  “It’s chocolate, isn’t it?”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  Ella’s gaze met Harris’s over the table.

  “Let me see your hand,” Harris said.

  Marion swiped her hand against her pants, then held out her palm. Harris grabbed it, brought it to his nose and sniffed. “Where’d you get the candy?”

  Ella looked directly at Fa
nnie. “I told you Marion couldn’t have sugar. It’s not good for her.”

  “The kid was starving! Besides, what’s one little piece going to do?” Fannie replied. “Lighten up, you guys.”

  Ella was too furious to reply. She turned to Marion and said in a firm voice, “You’ll have to give me the candy. You know you can’t have it. You’ll get sick.”

  “No!” she shouted, pink-faced with fury.

  Ella caught sight of the silver wrapping of a Hershey’s Kiss slipping out of Marion’s pocket. She reached for it, but Marion, seeing what was happening, was faster and grabbed it first.

  “It’s mine! My mama gave it to me.”

  “Marion, give me the candy.”

  “I don’t have to. You’re not my mama!”

  “Marion…” Harris said, his voice stern.

  “You take everything from me,” Marion cried, targeting her anger at Ella. “You never let me have any fun. You’re mean and ugly and I hate you. Here!” She threw the chocolate piece at Ella and clambered from her chair. “I wish you never came here!” she screamed.

  “Marion, honey, don’t,” Ella said, reaching out to stop her. Marion skirted away and ran from the room, sobbing.

  Her footsteps pounded on the rear stairs and her crying, hysterical with exhaustion from the day’s excitement, was at a fever pitch. Ella ducked her head to hide her pained expression and picked the melting chocolate candy from her lap with two fingers. A blotch of chocolate stained her white blouse where she’d been hit.

  “Don’t you ever give that child candy again,” Harris ground out, jabbing an index finger in Fannie’s face.

  “I won’t!” she said, backing against her chair with a short laugh, her palms up in surrender, making light of the situation. “Jeez…”

  “I’m serious, Fannie,” he said, his voice rough with fury. “This is life or death for Marion and I won’t have you screw up her blood levels. Whatever Ella says goes, have you got that?”

  Fannie’s smirk dropped and she appeared very contrite. “I’m sorry, Harris. I didn’t realize. Honest, I didn’t. It won’t happen again. I promise.”