An Exaltation of Larks

by Suanne Laqueur

  “I know you’re not allowed to be at her house when her parents are asleep,” Jav said. “I turn more of a blind eye when you’re sneaking into our apartment to screw. Oh, don’t look at me like that. You think I was born yesterday? Hide your condom wrappers deeper in the trash next time.”

  Ari banged the door open with his shoulder and chucked his sneakers aside. “This is bullshit.”

  “These are the rules, kid. And they suck sometimes but they keep you safe and they keep the world in order.”

  “You fucking ruined everything.” Ari slammed his bedroom door. Jav almost slammed his but remembered his age and closed it quietly. He leaned back against it with a pained exhale. “I’m only starting to ruin your life, kid.”

  Early the next morning, Jav sent a group text to both Alex and Val:

  I have to talk to both of U. Not about us. It’s about Ari and Deane. I found something I need to show U. Pls give me 10 minutes in Celeste’s.

  He brought the papers downstairs, ordered coffee and took a small table. When Alex and Val arrived, he got straight to the point. He gave the certificate to Val, who passed it to Alex.

  “Exaltación de las alondras,” Alex said. “I would’ve seen it right away.” He folded the document along its creases and put it on the table. “Holy. Shit.”

  Val was pale, her eyes circled. “What do we do?”

  “Where’s Roger?” Jav asked.

  “Nova Scotia.” Alex looked around the table, chewing on a lower lip. Then he took out his cell phone. “Fuck me,” he said, dialing. He put the phone to his ear and crossed the other arm tight over his chest. “Hey man. Yeah, I know it’s early, I need to talk to you. No, nobody’s dead. Fine, go pee. I’ll wait.”

  Val took out her phone and snapped a picture of the certificate. “I’ll email this to him so he can see.”

  “Hey,” Alex said into the phone. “So… Weird question, but it’s important. The nurse from Lark House. The one you puked on when you broke your arm. Yeah. You had kind of a thing with her, right? Yeah, and then you headed out. Okay…” He glanced at Jav, then looked up at the ceiling. “Do you remember her name?”

  Jav’s heart was throwing itself against the wall of his chest.

  “Naria?” Alex said, looking at Jav.

  Jav closed his eyes and nodded into the dark.

  “Do you remember her last name?”

  Jav opened his eyes. Alex was nodding. “Naroba Gil deSoto. Yeah, it’s pretty. Listen, Rog… Val just emailed you something. Go look at it.”

  They waited, drumming fingers, jiggling knees. “You see it?” Alex said. “Alondra means Lark. Yeah. I know. Jav figured it out. I know. It’s crazy. Look. Rog. You need to come home.”

  A few more words were exchanged then Alex hung up. “He’ll wrap a few things up then come home. It was her. He’s shocked. Said he had no idea. None.”

  “He and Ari met at Thanksgiving,” Val said. “Then all the time up in Vermont. Either Roger didn’t know or he’s the greatest actor in the world.”

  “I don’t think he knew,” Jav said. “Why else would my sister have disguised his name?”

  “Why didn’t she tell him?”

  Nobody ventured an answer. Air dwindled out of three pairs of lungs.

  “Shit,” Alex said.

  “Talk about staging a coup on someone’s life,” Jav said.

  Alex took off his glasses and tossed them on the table. “This is unbelievable,” he said, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

  Jav saw no need to prolong things. He gathered up the papers. “I guess I’ll go break the news.”

  “Shouldn’t we wait for Rog?” Val said, looking between the two men.

  “No,” Alex said. “He said Jav should tell him. And I agree.” His eyes met Jav’s. “Ari belongs to you.”

  Jav drew a long breath. “Listen, about last night.”

  “Right,” Alex said, taking a sip of coffee. “We had it out with Deane already. She and Ari broke rules. He’ll be restricted from coming over for a week.”

  “Does it even matter now?” Val said.

  “Yes, it does. The cousin thing…will be a separate issue.” Alex looked at Jav. “A separate coup.”

  “That’s fair,” Jav said. “But I wanted to say…”

  Both Lark-Pendas stared at him now. “What?” Alex said.

  “I rang that bell to upset you. I knew it would. I could’ve waited until morning but I didn’t. It was…shitty of me. And I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah,” Val said, her circled eyes narrowing. “It was shitty.”

  Alex put his hand on Val’s wrist. “One coup at a time. He didn’t shoot the dogs. Nobody disappeared.”

  Val exhaled roughly. “And nobody got thrown down the stairs.”

  “Today’s going to be a shitty enough without piling on all our other shit.”

  “Our shit,” Jav said, rubbing his forehead.

  “I told you, he does we,” Val said.

  Alex stood up. “I’ll punch you out later if it makes you feel better.”

  “A two-by-four might do the trick.” Jav stood as well. “Into the shitshow we go.”

  “Good luck,” Val said. Her eyes were soft on Jav now, slightly ironic and resigned to a greater cause.

  “Thanks,” Jav said. “You too.”

  Upstairs he made more coffee—platinum strength. When Ari shuffled out, silent and sullen, Jav poured his nephew a cup, showed him the papers and translated the name Rogelio Alondra.

  Still sleepy, Ari shrugged and tossed them back across the table. “I don’t get what you’re saying.”

  “Roger Lark is your father.”

  Ari stared. “Bullshit,” he half sang. “Are you fucking with me, T?”

  “Alex called Roger. He confirmed it.”

  Ari dragged the birth certificate toward him again, squinting at his fingertip on the names. A hundred different things went through his face. Jav waited it out.

  “He’s my father? For real?”

  “For real.”

  “Fucking A.” Ari’s mouth twisted. “Wait, he confirmed it? He knew?”

  “No—”

  “The whole fucking time at Thanksgiving and then skiing, he knew?”

  “I’m telling you everything I know. Alex called him. I was sitting right there. Alex didn’t tell Roger what we’d found, he only asked if Roger remembered the name of the nurse he used to date at Lark House. And he did. Then Alex explained the rest. Rog was shocked.”

  “Or acted shocked,” Ari said, crossing his arms.

  “He didn’t deny it. And he’s coming here to talk.”

  “What if I don’t want to talk to him?”

  “You don’t have to. But he’s coming. Look, I don’t know him all that well, but from the little I do know, I’m inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. But if you don’t want to see him, you don’t have to.”

  Ari scrubbed his face vigorously. “Jesus Christ, this is like a bad soap opera.”

  “I wouldn’t make it up in a book.”

  “Rog is my father?” Ari picked up the certificate again. Put it down again. “So… That means… Val and Trelawney are my aunts?”

  Jav nodded.

  The twist became a tentative smile. “Oh. Well, that’s cool, I guess.”

  Jav’s nodding head slowly became a side-to-side shake. “It’s kind of a problem.”

  Ari’s chin tilted, his eyebrows furrowed. Then his face smoothed out, expanded with alarm.

  “No,” he said.

  “Ari, I’m sor—”

  “No.”

  “Deane’s your cousin.”

  “No.” Ari’s hands went for his head, raked back through his hair, pulling the follicles tight along his forehead.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Ari got up. “No. No, I don’t care. No.” He paced around the apartment, much as Jav had paced the night before. “God fucking dammit…”

  “I’m sorry, Ari.”

  “Why’d you fucking
have to tell me? I swear to God, you ruin everything. Fuck…” Ari swept a side table and sent a stack of books to the floor. “I don’t care, T. I don’t. I didn’t know. I’m in love with her. I can’t switch it off.”

  “I know you can’t.”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Great. Thanks. Fucking ruin my life and tell me you don’t know.”

  “I couldn’t not tell you.”

  “Sure you could. What the fuck difference does it make?”

  “It makes a huge fuck of a difference if you get her pregnant.”

  “I have no intention of getting her pregnant now. I’m fucking eighteen years old.”

  “Exactly. Ari, you have a whole life in front of you.”

  “I don’t care what’s in front of me. I want what I have now and I want it with Deane.”

  “You’re too young to know wh—”

  “Don’t fucking tell me what I know and want, Jav. I don’t take life advice from a whore.”

  Everything froze, even the air.

  Jav stared at his nephew a long moment. “I bet that felt good,” he finally said. “You’ve been saving it for a special occasion. I can tell.”

  Ari stared back, open-mouthed like he couldn’t believe what came out. “T…”

  “Twenty-three years,” Jav said. “No one ever called me that. Not to my face, at least.” He shrugged with a chuckle. “It’s a small but significant accomplishment.”

  “T, I’m sorry.”

  “What for? I am a whore. You can dress it up as escort, but whore’s accurate. I sleep with women for money. Been doing it since I was twenty-one.”

  Jav crossed his arms and leaned against the counter, feeling strangely liberated. “You know, you’re right. Don’t listen to me. I’ve never been in love. My cousin put his hand down my pants and before I could figure out how I felt about it, I got thrown out of the house. A woman liked the way I behaved with people and she paid me to come home with her. Love and I were never friends. Cash was my friend. I needed money and all I had for sale was myself. Women wanted what I was selling. I did this and they gave me that. It’s made me who I am but that was my choice. You have a choice, too. I don’t know what to tell you. All I can do is promise that whatever your decision, I won’t throw you down the stairs or cut you off. I might not know much about love, but I know it means you don’t turn your back on family. Not in my definition.”

  “I never judged what—”

  “Forget it, we’re not talking about me anyway. And I’ve got editing to do. Where’s my hat?”

  Ari blanched. “I left it at Deane’s.”

  “Oh, now you’re pissing me off.”

  “Calm down, it’s just a hat.”

  “You think? I was in love with the guy it belonged to. I let him slip through my fingers because I thought there was time. Instead he boarded an airplane on Nine-Eleven, crashed in a field in Pennsylvania and we never got to talk about it.”

  Ari stared.

  “When I flew to Santiago, I didn’t do it for Alex and Val. I did it for you. To make sure Deane came back to talk about it the way Flip didn’t. I didn’t let you wear his hat just because you looked good in it. I did it because you got your conversation. You got the second chance I didn’t.”

  “T,” Ari said. “I…”

  “Aarónito, I love you. But if you lose that hat, it’s going to be really fucking unpleasant around here. So I suggest you man up, take your ass over to your aunt’s house and get it.”

  Ari manned, took and got. Jav poured his third cup of coffee when all he wanted was to lie down and pass out. But he manned up as well, took his ass to the computer and got some words down.

  Ari came back in and set the hat on the desk by Jav’s elbow.

  “Thank you,” Jav said, putting it on. “Sorry I brought my shit into it. It’s an emotional subject. I probably should’ve told you the first time you borrowed it. I should’ve told you a lot of things, I guess.”

  “No, I get it. Sorry about the whore…thing.”

  Jav went on typing but Ari lingered.

  “Don’t read over my shoulder,” Jav said. “You make me nervous.”

  “I’m not.” Ari picked up the framed picture of Jav and Naroba as children in Queens, studied it, then set it down again. “I was thinking… I mean, it kind of hit me… I’ve never heard a male relative say I love you.”

  Jav smiled at the screen. “I’d bet all my money Nick Seaver loved you.”

  “Yeah, but…” Ari’s voice fractured. “It’s different. Because…”

  Jav took his glasses off and set them down. “Estas la verdad de mi sangre.”

  “Truth of…my blood?” Ari said. “Blood truth?”

  “Trueblood.”

  “Yeah. You’re my Trueblood.”

  His face crumpled. Jav got up so fast, the chair fell backward and the hat fell sideways. Ari stumbled against Jav’s chest and Jav held him tight. “I got you,” he said.

  Ari shook in his arms. Into Jav’s shoulder he pushed the heartbreaking sob of a boy who didn’t want to cry, but couldn’t hold it in anymore.

  “It’s all right,” Jav said. “Let it go.”

  One sob led to another. Then a chain of them. Hard, damp huffs of air gouged out of Ari’s throat and flung against Jav’s shirt.

  “I got you,” Jav said.

  “I can’t take losing anything else.”

  “I know.” Jav kissed Ari’s head. “I know.”

  “I always think…” Ari’s voice was bubbled up with pain and despair. “I wouldn’t have met Deane if my mother hadn’t died. Everything that happened put me on a trajectory to this place. It helped make sense of it. Deane gave me a reason. And if I lose her, T, it’s like my mother fucking died for nothing.”

  He cried like a child, his hands scrabbling to hold onto Jav’s shirt. Jav’s eyes were dry and his arms were strong. His heart full of a fierce love for this tough kid, this vulnerable boy, this magnificent sister-son given into his care.

  He’s a Lark. But I am his Trueblood. And my excellent job is to navigate him out into the open sea. And if he flies too high, I help get him down.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “I’m with you. No matter what.”

  Deane was shattered, but took the week-long restriction on seeing Ari harder than she took the news about being related to him. “A week?” she said. “How does that make any sense?”

  “You knew what the deal was,” Val said. “You knew what would happen if we found him in the house in the middle of the night.”

  “But what’s it matter at this point?” she cried. “How can you do this to me right now? I need to see him.”

  No sooner had she calmed down when Ari showed up, pale and anxious, looking for the hat he’d left upstairs. Deane ripped open like a fresh wound when Alex wouldn’t let Ari in, and she sank on a kitchen stool in a sobbing rage while Alex went upstairs and got the hat.

  This is ridiculous, he thought, brushing the brim off. He’s my nephew. This is Roger’s child. How can I not let him into my house?

  He sighed and looked at the window. A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth and he had a hard time holding it back. “I’ll be damned,” he said under his breath. He leaned on the sill and scanned the yard, mapping how Ari had scaled the oak tree to the top of the porch, then climbed up onto the main roof, slipping past the gables and through Deane’s window.

  If that wasn’t love, what was?

  He turned to look at his daughter’s bed. A strip of red paper lay on the floor by the wastebasket: the unmistakable ripped-off top of a condom wrapper.

  He’s my daughter’s lover. Which isn’t allowed in my house after lights-out.

  “You were her lover first,” Alex said, sighing. “So that rule comes first.”

  Out on the porch, Ari took the hat and even managed a second of respectful eye contact. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “It’s purely for b
reaking one of our rules,” Alex said. “It has nothing to do with what we’ve just found out. I don’t even know what the rules are for that yet.”

  Ari gave a short nod and went down the porch steps. Alex returned to the crime scene in the kitchen.

  “This is so stupid,” Deane said through her teeth, clenched fists hitting her legs. “Dad, you don’t understand.”

  “I do,” Alex said, trying to reach for her but she was having none of it. “Nobody saw this, cosita. Nobody guessed, nobody had any idea. We’re all stunned. A little bit of distance will be good.”

  “No, it won’t,” Deane said, her voice soaked and mushy. “You don’t have a fucking clue what’s good for me.”

  “Hey,” Val said, getting an arm around Deane’s shaking shoulders. “It’s all right.”

  “No,” Deane said, chopped apart with sobs. “No, it’s not all right. I won’t let you… I’m going to see him. I’m eighteen. You can’t stop me.”

  Alex felt his temper flare behind his eyes as he stared her down. “Soy tu padre y yo puedo. Cachai?”

  “You,” Deane said, spitting the word at Alex’s feet. “You’re the one who—” The breath squeaked out of her as Val’s hand closed around her upper arm.

  “Don’t even,” Val said. Her face was composed, her tone pitched low, but her fingers pressed indentations into her daughter’s bicep. Deane gulped and sniffed back whatever she was going to say.

  “I know you’re upset,” Val said. “But if you disrespect your father, you’ll lose your phone and your car keys. Do you understand?”

  Deane nodded, her mouth a tight, crooked line.

  “Go put cold water on your face. Take a few minutes alone.” Val released Deane’s arm and the girl ran out of the kitchen.

  Val slumped on a stool. “This is surreal.”

  “This is fucked up,” Alex said, slumping on another.

  “Parenthood. It ain’t for sissies.” She rubbed her face hard, then lifted her gaze and looked at Alex a long time. The kitchen clock ticked, followed by the muffled rattle of ice cubes falling in the freezer.

  “Hey,” she said.

  Alex smiled. “Hi.”

  Chin on her hands, she smiled back. “How about I take your phone and car keys too? Go lock myself in the bathroom.”

  “I’ll just kick down the door.”