Fly by Night

by Andrea Thalasinos

  For years Amelia had found it curious that sea horses along the northeast coastline disappeared by the end of August. And while other marine biologists postulated a migration south to warmer waters, Amelia didn’t buy it.

  Sea horses were not proficient swimmers. Their tiny hummingbird-like dorsal fins were better at quick maneuvers than long-distance travel. So rather than journeying hundreds of miles into tropical waters, Amelia theorized about a migration down into the cold quiet depths of the North Atlantic reefs for shelter. Safe from getting smashed against rocky shoals during violent nor’easters or being separated from their lifelong mates, which for sea horses, Amelia had observed, was a fate from which many never recovered. And this had been the basis of her research for the past five years. She, Bryce, and Jen along with her volunteer dive team, had tagged hundreds of sea horses from southern Nova Scotia all the way down through coastal Virginia to determine where they went after the waters cooled and the first few snowflakes fell.

  So far there’d been no sign of the creatures anywhere, until two weeks earlier, before the NSF grant notification when Amelia had received a ship-to-shore call. Their ROV camera had spotted dozens of Amelia’s tagged sea horses lounging about on deep-water reefs in the canyons of the north Atlantic off the coast of Maine.

  At the time Bryce and Jen had danced in the aisles of the lab thinking that such a windfall discovery was a slam dunk. But Amelia had smiled quietly to herself, harboring the knowledge that one had little or nothing to do with the other.

  “Ahem,” Amelia had said at the time, folding her arms and giving them a “get-a-grip” look. “I hate to be the wet blanket here.”

  “So don’t be,” Bryce had said. But Amelia knew well the ways of soft money and so did they. Hard workers with discoveries new to science got the boot just as quickly as lazy asses that did nothing but read newspapers and stink up the lab with their farts and French fried takeouts. No matter how special you thought your work, your mission, your self, no one was immune. One swipe of the Appropriations Committee pen landed many a researcher rinsing out test tubes in some backwater laboratory.

  * * *

  “Mom.” Alex’s voice demanded her attention. “Listen to me; it’s going to be okay.”

  She smiled, picturing him nodding in that overly encouraging way he had of bolstering up the flagging confidence of rookie interns on a first dive.

  They still had funding for summer—the Andaman Islands—from Sea Life Conservation and Ocean Watch. The Andamans were some of the more unexplored islands where they’d previously discovered several new species of sea horses. Just a few days ago she’d been combing through diver applications, on the verge of making contact.

  “Bryce. Jen—” She struggled to finish her thought. “Our stipends … end in a month.”

  Alex was quiet.

  “And after that—”

  Amelia could have kicked herself for getting sucked up into the frenzy at the AA, for not being more cautious.

  She was tired. Maybe find a soft place to fall—pull up a chair at a lab bench somewhere, coast for the rest of her working life.

  Amelia stood and turned, lifting the wrought-iron handle to open the door. It creaked with the same yawning sound it had probably made since the early eighteenth century when the house was built. She stepped inside as light from the streetlamp cast her shadow long on the floor.

  Just then her phone beeped with a low-battery warning. Amelia dropped her gear bag and purse on the threshold where she stood, hoping it wouldn’t die.

  “I’ll—” she started to say, but tears of humiliation, shame rushed at once. She was embarrassed, not wanting him to worry or pity her or to see the soft underbelly of fear that she’d always kept hidden lest he be frightened as a little boy. “… figure something out.”

  “Ma, go ahead and cry, I’m crying.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “Don’t be, Ma, you’re the best. Everyone knows it,” he said. “It’s not fair.” He said it like a little boy.

  Yes, my little Einstein, what is fair? If somebody wins, another loses. Her breath was jagged as she wiped her nose on the cuff of her jacket.

  “Ma, fuck the NSF—something better’s on the way. Maybe it’s time to move on.”

  “To what?”

  “Uh … don’t know,” he said. “Maybe it’s time to find out. Know what I mean?”

  “No, but keep talking.” She liked the sound of hope.

  “We’ve got the entire summer in the Andamans.” She knew how excited he was to be on his first dive as her colleague. “It’s gonna be great.”

  “It will be.” She mustered up enthusiasm.

  “Well the offer’s good,” he said. “One call, I’m there. Word.”

  “I know you mean it. You’re the best kid a mother could have.”

  “And you’re the best mom a kid could have, I mean it.” She loved when he’d still say it after all these years. He was her prize. When so many people had tense or distant relationships with their children, she cherished theirs.

  “Love you.”

  She hung up thinking of the e-mail from his dead grandfather and felt the same panic she’d feel when silt from the ocean floor stirs up, blinding one to all sense of direction. Years ago she’d disciplined herself to remain calm, breathe, and follow the stream of bubbles to the surface. She clung to the feeling of safety from Alex’s voice.

  She shut the front door. No matter how hard you’d slam it, nothing shuddered. Amelia had always attributed the Rev House’s soundness to the New England shipbuilders who’d built the entire block for their families.

  * * *

  When people would ask who Alex’s father was, she’d often answer Poseidon, the Greek God of the Sea. When Alex was twelve she’d told him the story, although there hadn’t been much to tell. A young, vulnerable girl who’d just lost her parents in a car crash on Crete and an older professor who knew how to play it.

  Amelia set her phone on the floor alongside her gear bag and stood, at a loss for what to do next.

  The darkened living room reminded her of all she didn’t have. Stepping into a trapezoid of light from the street, she switched on a lamp by the couch.

  The Revolution House had its own cave-like atmosphere—damp and cool even in summer. Aside from added electricity, heating, indoor bathrooms, and a kitchen from several families ago, the living room’s gas insert fireplace was her only break with authenticity. The walls were made from horsehair and wet straw to form plaster that bowed throughout the oldest parts of the house. The heavily wooden-beamed ceilings and doorways were low. As Alex grew taller he’d had to duck but for her the height was perfect. Many of the windows had the original tiny squares of wavy glass panes like the bottoms of vintage Coke bottles. Underwater mortgage. She’d be lucky if she could sell it and walk away with a pair of underwear and a bra.

  For a single mother, living on five-year soft money grants, buying the Revolution House had been a gutsy move. She’d swung it with a small but dwindling inheritance from her parents, never worrying about the lack of a permanent faculty position. She’d so believed in the mission of her tiny Sea Horse and Shoreline Ecology Lab that she and Bryce had cobbled together an assortment of funding to keep it afloat.

  This coupled with a discovery by two Long Island fishermen ten years ago when they’d snagged a pair of sea horses in their seine nets, the first ever recorded presence that far north. After that Amelia believed the discovery had put her work “on the map.”

  At the time, the New York Department of Fish and Wildlife had called her down to confirm the presence of Hippocampus erectus. She’d caught the next cross-sound ferry and within two hours was standing on that very same dock, watching the sea horse pair cling to strands of seaweed floating in a white plastic bucket like monkeys from a jungle tree branch. La-de-da-ing without a care in the world, the pair intertwined their tails as they performed love dances, not giving a care as to who was watching.

&n
bsp; “Yep,” Amelia had confirmed all the holy shits, and no freaking ways from the department authorities. Later that year she’d gone on to discover permanent colonies as far north as Nova Scotia. Grant money poured in like crazy from private organizations like the Sea Life Conservation, Ocean Watch, and others tasked with investigating the health of the world’s busiest coastal waterways—New York, New Jersey, and New England. A lesson in science: what one doesn’t seek, one won’t find, and the lab had provided a good, long run as her own protective reef, sheltering her and Alex for the better part of their lives.

  * * *

  Still in her coat, Amelia sunk into the leather couch. It was scuffed and well-worn like an old bomber jacket from a generation of Alex’s friends horsing around. They’d beaten the crap out of it with their late-night video games and sleepovers, with their floppy boat-sized sneakers. She’d loved every minute of the happy chaos. Even the throw pillows still smelled of her son’s hair. Friends would sink into the crack couch as they’d called it, making jokes about never being seen or heard from again.

  She grabbed the gas fireplace remote from where she’d dropped it last night. One click and flames pulsed in a whoosh. She loved the sound. It was a kind of power, albeit man-made. Picking up her laptop, she logged into her university e-mail. She looked at the Ted Drakos e-mails. Her mother always said that bad luck comes in threes. Where would the third come from?

  “Thanks, Penelope,” she mumbled a memory. Quit while you’re behind another of her aphorisms. “You always knew how to make a bad situation seem worse.”

  Her stomach rumbled. Eating meant she’d have to get up. Right now it felt like she’d been hit by a couch. There was plenty of ketchup and mayonnaise but no ice cream. Instead she tugged at the corner of the down comforter draped on the back of the couch. With little effort it slid and landed on her in a heap.

  She clicked on Ted Drakos’s e-mail again. “If you are the Amelia Drakos…” At the bottom of the e-mail was an electronic signature: Ted Drakos, Fish and Wildlife Manager, Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, Bayfield, Wisconsin. “If you are not that Amelia Drakos, please disregard this e-mail and I will not bother you again. Thank you for your time.”

  She stared at the name. There was no cousin Ted. Immigrant families knew everyone. She hit reply and sent: “I’m not sure who you are but I have no relatives up in Wisconsin and can be of no help. Good luck in your search.”

  Her mind started racing. She could rent out a couple of bedrooms to grad students to help make the mortgage.

  She rearranged the throw pillow under her head. Amelia began to relax until she heard the screen door open, the pinging sound of the rusty springs reverberating.

  A knock on the door. She sat up and looked at her watch. It was after eleven.

  “Nothing good comes from late-night visitors,” more words of wisdom from Penelope.

  “Shit.”

  Bryce? No. He would’ve yelled her name as he did his comic knock of tap tap tap tap tap in rhythmic succession, waiting for her two knocks back to complete the sequence. Jen did the same thing. It was their “High Sign,” as they called it, used in some of the more obscure if not dangerous parts of the world.

  A second knock.

  Motionless, her eyes darted to the front windows. Damn, she’d forgotten to flip up the shutters. Someone could see right in.

  She sighed with exasperation and let her head drop. “Damn it, Jen,” she whispered. Maybe she’d phoned Myles, giving him the news and encouraging him to stop by.

  Amelia rolled off the couch and onto the floor like a ninja, only her foot snagged the electric cord of a Tiffany-style lamp, dragging it with her as it toppled over, the shade bonking her in the head just as she caught it before hitting the slate floor in the foyer.

  “Fuck,” she whispered in relief.

  She set the lamp upright, as gently as one would place a live fish back into the water after accidentally being caught in a net.

  Crawling over toward the window-seat ledge in the darkness, her elbow then bumped a potted Christmas cactus plant, knocking it over. But as she went to catch the pot she knocked it farther, hearing the clunk of the clay pot as it broke apart on the oval braided Colonial rug.

  “Oh shit.” She’d forgotten about having moved the plant earlier that morning to get more sun. Amelia tried to scoop the clump of damp soil with her hand from the braided Colonial rug. It smelled like the backyard in spring. Why not use a piece of the broken pot, but then she stopped, annoyed at feeling like a fugitive in her own home.

  Then a type of slap-happy giddiness set in, the type that’s as uncontrollable as it is scary, a one-way ticket on the crazy train. She was bowled over with hysterical laughter, unable to stop or catch her breath until it had run its course. She sighed and looked at the dirt.

  “Jeez.” She looked around, wondering what she’d wreck next and snorted a short laugh.

  Stepping back to the window, she looked for signs of Myles’s car but there was nothing. His Lexus was too long to park behind her Jeep so typically he’d park on the street.

  As she sat down on the window ledge a burst of freedom warmed through her. Unbidden in its lightness, she was buoyant as if just having dived off the starboard side of a ship when in an instant the heavy dive gear becomes weightless, once the forces of gravity are suspended, leaving one’s body to be as light as a chiffon scarf.

  “Wow.” She stretched her legs. How had a kernel of excitement worked its way in on the heels of such despair?

  “Thank you, Alex.” She looked toward her phone. Had the battery not died she’d have called him back and thanked him. Maybe she didn’t need to know what came next.

  Amelia then sat down on the rug and rolled over onto her side. Her cheek rested on the woolen braid, recalling the immortal lives of jellyfish. Turritopsis dohrnii in particular, when threatened, begins to age in reverse, cycling away from death and back to the moment of its birth. Though brainless with only sensory organs, the creature knew enough to begin the process of repair until refreshed and ready to take on the ocean anew.

  The smell of wool, dirty adolescent feet, and soggy ranch-flavored Doritos mashed into the spaces between the rug’s braids—strange how she’d never been this close yet had vacuumed the rug more than a thousand times if she’d done it once. Gazing into the space under the sofa there were paper clips, white plastic caps from soda bottles, a misplaced sock, and all the little indistinguishable objects that had gone missing over the years.

  She eyed her dead cell phone on the floor next to her bag in the foyer, wishing she’d kept her landline despite Alex’s reasoning.

  The screen door’s old rusted springs pinged again, indicating someone was still there.

  Amelia sat up and crawled over. Resting her ear against the inside of the door, she listened. Someone was shuffling. Myles’s shoes made a certain clicking sound on hard surfaces. She wasn’t sure. Sometimes there are no second chances.

  The screen door then banged shut. Her skull absorbed the bang. She scrambled up and over to the window to catch anyone walking away but saw nothing.

  He’d given up after two knocks. She frowned. That was Myles, alright. Persistence was not his strong suit. What a disappointment yet a relief at the same time.

  “Jerk,” she mumbled, rubbing the side of her head. You can’t fire me, I quit. “Shoulda dumped your ass first.”

  But it wasn’t true. It hurt to say it, hurt even more to feel the bitterness of it all and she wished her heart would calcify like an exoskeleton, impervious to the whims of love.

  Tiptoeing to the front window, she then flipped the louvers shut and settled back into the crack couch.

  The brightness of the fireplace’s flames helped dim her thoughts. Kicking off her clogs, she tucked her feet under the down comforter and began to drift.

  Once asleep, she dreamed of her father, carrying the red-and-gold-plaid aluminum beach cooler by the handle into the darkened Jones Beach tunnel at F
ield 4. Loaded with ice chips and drinks they marched out to the ocean beaches on Long Island. She was eight. The silhouette of her father’s shoulders was outlined in the darkened tunnel by light from the other side. She glimpsed his long strides as he moved toward the water.

  Suddenly she was falling backward off a tall pier at the Captree State Dock at the tip of Jones Beach, backward into the water.

  Amelia bolted up; catching herself with such a start she could have vomited. Covering her mouth she thought to run to the kitchen sink as she tried to catch her breath. Her head pounded in time with her heartbeat.

  “Shit.” She breathed through her nose, trying to calm down; maybe the fireplace was too warm.

  But even as she settled, in her mind’s eye was the shadow outline of her father’s form, remembering the feel of cool, damp sand under bare feet on the tunnel’s cement walkway as she followed him, advancing toward the water.

  “Dad,” she said into her hand and started to cry.

  4

  The tree wasn’t nearly as heavy as they’d first thought and between the three of them the shaggy-bark birch was easily loaded into the back of TJ’s dusty black truck.

  They’d headed off to old man Whitedeer’s sawmill just on the other side of Red Cliff. The sound of truck tires on the old man’s gravel driveway brought Whitedeer shuffling out in his bed slippers to see who was there.

  “Whatcha boys got there?” Whitedeer called out before they’d come to a complete stop. “That for Gloria’s Spirit House?”

  TJ didn’t answer. His sons were equally as quiet as they unloaded the tree, TJ still uneasy about going against Gloria’s wishes for a simple burial without all the hocus pocus, as she used to call it.