Sparrow Migrations

by Cari Noga

“All one hundred fifty passengers and five crew aboard, including one infant, were rescued unharmed from the frigid waters, estimated at only thirty-six degrees,” she continued. An interview with the mother played.

  Robby shifted restlessly. This was all rehash they’d been replaying since six a.m. Where was the news? From the bathroom, the rush of water stopped.

  “CNN has learned that the probable cause of the crash is assumed to be a bird strike,” the anchor continued. “The leading cause of crashes occurring within five minutes of takeoff or landing, these strikes are unpredictable, but rarely cause as much drama as Thursday’s incident. We’ll speak with an expert on bird strikes at the FAA after this short break, but first this look at some of yesterday’s riveting scenes.”

  Robby’s attention refocused. This was new. “Bird strike,” he wrote in his notebook. The bathroom door opened, and his mom stepped out in a hotel robe. The fan roared behind her. He turned up the TV volume.

  His dad walked over to refill his coffee, clinking the pot against the cup. “Pretty interested in this stuff, huh, Rob?” he asked. “Can I see your notebook?”

  Robby drew it to his chest, leaning over protectively.

  “Please?”

  Robby shook his head and turned away for good measure.

  “OK.” Sam shrugged. “Maybe later.”

  As she combed her sandy hair, Linda watched her husband and son in the mirror. She felt so bad for Sam when Robby shut himself off. They ought to be used to it now. At least enough not to take it personally, seven years after he’d been slapped with that 21st century scarlet letter: “A” for autism. But Sam took it harder, maybe because he had fewer opportunities to try to connect. On events like this trip, times that were supposed to be special, it was even worse.

  Linda sighed. Sam came over.

  “Feeling down?” He slouched against the wall.

  “Hmmm? I guess not. Nothing out of the ordinary, anyway. You?”

  “Nothing out of the ordinary.” He raked his fingers through his hair, then jerked a thumb at their son, lowering his voice though Robby appeared engrossed in the news. “Think we’ll get him out of here today?”

  “We’re not making it an option to stay. We’ll do the countdown, give him the warnings as it gets time to leave. But we’re not going to let a twelve-year-old control both of us.”

  Sam snorted in a half-disgusted, half-mocking way. “Why should today be any different?”

  Linda raised her eyebrows. Sam wasn’t usually sarcastic when it came to Robby. “What’s going on?”

  Sam sighed. His back still against the wall, he slid down to the floor. Looking down at her husband, Linda was startled to see how much gray flecked his brown hair. Does it show up in mine, too?

  Elbows balanced on his knees, Sam held his graying head for a long minute before he spoke. “I was just thinking about dinner the other night, at Tom and Robin’s. How nice it was. How normal. We played basketball before dinner, and it was Tyler’s idea. At dinner I could ask him questions—and get answers. And I could just talk. I didn’t have to think about how to phrase a question, or be sure I’d made eye contact first. I didn’t have to pretend it doesn’t matter to me when I’m ignored.”

  Linda stole a glance at Robby, isolated in the glow of the TV, and swallowed.

  “There were no battles all evening, no hassles. It was just so, so . . . easy.” Sam sighed again, wistfully. “And then watching Tyler on the ice, seeing him lead his team . . . it just crystallized everything that Robby won’t do.” He paused. “Can’t do. Doesn’t do.”

  He glanced at Linda.

  “I’m sorry. I know I’m not helping. It’s just all so different from what I was expecting. That interview they had on a minute ago, that woman who was on the plane with her baby? I felt so jealous of her. She’s still got all her illusions about parenthood. And mine—ours—are just . . .” he gestured in Robby’s direction, shook his head and laid it back against the wall.

  Linda couldn’t speak around the lump in her own throat. Instead, she sat down next to Sam, squeezing his hand. Feeling equal parts guilty, desperate, and stuck, she nodded fiercely, hoping the rhythm would force the tears back.

  Robby came over. “Museum of Natural History. B or C subway line. Eighty-first Street station,” he said, abruptly.

  Sam looked at Linda.

  “Robby, do you want to go to the museum?” she asked, rising from the floor.

  Robby was already putting on his Detroit Lions sweatshirt, pulling the hood up over his head. He bobbed it once. Yes.

  Uncertain, Linda looked at Sam, who shrugged and nodded.

  “I’m starving, though.” Sam glanced at his watch as he stood, too.

  Linda walked to her suitcase. “What’s at the museum, Robby?”

  “Birds.”

  “Birds? What kind of birds?”

  Shrug.

  “You don’t know? Why do you want to go, then?”

  “Gotta find out.”

  “Find out what?”

  “About birds. Come on, Mom!”

  Linda looked at Sam. “We could go in circles all morning. You try while I get dressed.”

  Sam waited until the bathroom door shut behind her. “How do you know there are birds there, Robby?”

  “Internet.”

  Robby’s laptop was propped open on his bed. Sam looked at the screen, open to the “Maps and Directions” page of the American Museum of Natural History. Take the B or C subway line and get off at the 81st Street station. Robby never forgot the details, that was for sure. Sam clicked over to the home page. Nothing about birds. He tried the “Exhibitions” tab. Nothing. He clicked around another moment. Nada. He looked at his son, standing impatiently by the door.

  “Robby, I can’t find anything about birds at this museum.”

  Robby rolled his eyes and stomped over. None too gently, he sidled in between Sam and the computer and typed “Birds” into the site search bar. A list of nearly one hundred hits returned. He looked at his father, eyebrows lifted in I-told-you-so fashion.

  Sam clicked on the first link, then the second, then the third. They all were about rare birds the museum had in its collection, but not ones that were necessarily on exhibition.

  “Rob, c’mere. I don’t know if this is exactly what you think it is.”

  “Want to go. B or C subway line. Eighty-first Street station,” Robby repeated, hanging his headphones around his neck.

  Linda emerged, dressed. “Lin, if we get there and they don’t have what he wants, it’s going to be out of control,” Sam told her. “And we still haven’t eaten breakfast.”

  Linda looked at Robby. He was jiggling the doorknob with one hand, clutching the notebook in the other, humming softly but audibly, signaling rising anxiety. “We can stop at a coffee shop. I think we’ve got to go with him and find out.”

  Deborah sat up in the hotel bed, the remnant of the nightmare that woke her washing away in the undertow of her astonishment at the time on the bedside clock: 9:04 a.m. When had she last slept past six on a weekday?

  She was alone, too, the other mussed bed the only sign of Christopher and their second argument of the night before. Her gaze fell on the room service menu lying next to the clock. A yellow sun and the words “Good Morning!” marched across the top in all capital letters.

  Deborah closed her eyes and flopped back on the bed. On the heels of a bad afternoon and a worse evening, a good morning seemed unlikely. After they checked in, she’d called Helen from Christopher’s phone, let her know they were safe, and said she would see about rescheduling the trip to Seattle right away. As soon as she hung up, Christopher had started to argue against it.

  “Your purse was on the plane. You haven’t got so much as a driver’s license at the moment. I don’t know how you could even board a plane without ID. Plus you don’t
have any clothes, or credit cards to buy more.”

  “You’ve got your wallet. We could buy a few things here at the hotel. And the airline’s got to make some exceptions for all the passengers like us who lost ID and luggage. We could still go,” she countered.

  He shook his head. “This never was a very good time for me, Deborah, so close to the start of the new semester.”

  “Then why did you agree in the first place?”

  He sighed. “I knew it was important to you. And I thought if it was the two of us getting away like we used to, even if we did visit your sister, maybe you could see how good we are, just as us.”

  “Just as us?” Her throat closed. She forced herself to swallow, to say the next words. “I thought you wanted children, too.”

  “I’m open to children, but not at any price. And we’ve paid a lot these last two years, Deborah. You passed up Martha’s job—”

  “Not that again, Christopher.” She closed her eyes.

  “It’s more than just financial.”

  “Of course it is! It’s emotional, it’s instinctive—”

  But Christopher kept talking. “A pregnancy was already risky when we started. Now you’re forty-two. If you got pregnant today, you’d be forty-three when you delivered.”

  “And so?” Deborah couldn’t hide the tremor in her voice.

  “You know as well as I do how the risks increase at this age. Pregnancy complications. A C-section birth. Down syndrome.”

  “I passed all the screenings just fine,” Deborah said defensively.

  “Two years ago you passed them. And it’s been two stressful years, with these cycles that become so all-consuming. Last summer, after the second time, I don’t think you left the house for the whole month of July. We go to the doctor more than we go out to dinner.”

  The room fell silent as they faced each other. Deborah folded her arms.

  “So what are we talking about, really?”

  He paused, turning to gaze out at the city lights that winked between the drapes for a long moment. “I guess—I guess I’d like to move on,” he said, turning back to look at her. “Move forward with our lives. We tried. I wish it had worked out differently, too. I had some dreams about being a father. The kind of father I never had. But it’s overshadowed everything long enough.” He sat down beside her, covering her knee with his hand. “I’m sorry.”

  The impact of his words crashed inside Deborah’s head. She didn’t know what to say. She, who always knew what to say. When the donors shook their heads and said, “Sorry, not this year,” she was always the one who still managed to walk away with a check. She clung to one word—wish.

  She stood up, moving away from his touch. “What about the embryos we have left?” She couldn’t believe she was asking, that it was possible to leave three orphans without ever experiencing parenthood.

  He lifted his shoulders. “I don’t know. I’m sure the clinic has some kind of policy about that.”

  “What kind of policy?”

  “They’re probably donated for research.”

  Deborah’s stomach heaved as she imagined E, F, and G on microscope slides. “Research? Christopher, how cold can you be? We’re not talking about a study at the Lab.”

  “Maybe they’re offered to other couples. For adoption.”

  “Adoption? This is our potential child. Children. Ours!”

  Her voice broke on the last word, and so did her body, crumpling at last under the stress of the entire day. She collapsed on one of the beds, her back to the other, curling her knees up to her still-aching ribs. “I can’t talk about this anymore.”

  “Deborah, I love you. I’m sorry. I never wanted to hurt you.” Christopher sat behind her, touching her shoulder.

  “And I never thought you would,” Deborah said woodenly, contracting more tightly into her fetal position, away from Christopher.

  The click of the door opening roused her from the memory. Christopher appeared, carrying two Starbucks cups.

  “Morning.” He sat on the bed he’d slept in and pushed one cup across the nightstand to her.

  “Dark roast, black.”

  “Thanks.” Deborah took a sip.

  “Sleep OK?”

  She shrugged. “I’ve had better.” She suddenly recalled her nightmare, of the baby she’d seen with his mother on the wing. In the dream he was in the water instead of his mother’s arms. He seemed fine, smiling even, trying to swim to Deborah. She reached out, but the waves carried him away. Unable to swim, she was forced to watch the smiling baby bob up and down, just out of her reach.

  “Me too.” Christopher looked at his cup.

  “Is the coffee a peace offering?”

  He took a long sip. “I guess you could say that.”

  “I want to know what you would say.”

  He set his cup down and reached across the gap between the beds for her hand.

  “It’s a peace offering. But I don’t know what to say after that. It’s not like this is something we can compromise on. We’re in two different places.”

  “Are we? You said yesterday that you wish it had worked out differently. We could be in the same place.”

  He sighed. “I don’t know if I can go there again. If it didn’t—”

  “If it didn’t, then we would be done. Right now, we still have the last three embryos.”

  He looked wary. “So what are you suggesting, exactly?”

  “One more try. All three embryos. Just like the specialist said. If it doesn’t work, then we’ll be done. I promise.” She squeezed his hand, as if she could imprint the pledge.

  Christopher exhaled deeply, removing his glasses to massage his temples. Deborah held her breath, recognizing the habit from when he did his most serious thinking.

  “All right,” he said at last. “I’m not promising anything right now. But I’ll think about it.”

  Deborah called Helen from Christopher’s phone after they checked out, while he went to the airline’s command center in the hotel ballroom to fill out paperwork. As her call traveled west, skipping across the Great Lakes, the Great Plains, and the Rockies to the Pacific coast, it comforted Deborah to picture a phone ringing crisply on Helen’s nightstand or kitchen counter, somewhere in the scenery of her sister’s blissfully normal, mundane life.

  “Hello?” The voice was a bit breathless. At this hour on the West Coast, Helen was probably on her treadmill for her usual morning workout.

  “Hi, Helen. It’s me.”

  “Deborah! I keep seeing coverage of the crash. I still can’t believe you were on that plane. Have you talked to anyone else? Are you and Christopher really OK?”

  “We are. Really, we’re fine.” Physically, anyway. Her bruised psyche was something else again. “But, Helen, we’ll have to figure out another time for a visit. We’re going home to Ithaca. I don’t even have my purse. No ID, no money, no clothes.” She recited Christopher’s arguments into her sister’s ear. “I wish I could convince him to still come, but he says it’s a bad time. And it’s not a good time for us to be apart, either.” She lowered her voice, not wanting to say it aloud herself.

  “He’s talking about wanting to stop the IVF.” Her sister had been a confidante during the past two years, buoying her with optimism at the ebbs. “You’ll be such great parents,” she said during every conversation, her use of the future tense a gift.

  Not today, though. “Oh, Deborah, I’m so sorry.”

  “Thanks.” Deborah blinked against the tears.

  “He was probably pretty shaken up by the crash, right?”

  “I hope that’s all it is.” She sighed. “Now tell me what’s going on with you. What did you need to talk to me about so badly yesterday?” The phone’s low battery signal beeped. “Damn it. Helen, I’m about to lose you. I’ll call you again from home.”

 
“OK.”

  “I’m sorry. I really wanted to see you and the girls.”

  “Don’t worry. It’ll be fine. I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” Deborah said bleakly, and the phone went dead.

  FIVE

  They climbed the stairs from the West 81st Street station, Robby two steps ahead. At sidewalk level he wheeled around, searching for a street sign. Spotting one, he took off at a near-sprint, scattering a flock of pigeons foraging by a wastebasket. Linda panted, trying to keep up. “Is this the right way, Sam?”

  “I’m going to trust he knows what he’s looking for. Take your time. I’ll stay with him.”

  Sam trailed behind his son up the museum’s stone steps. The doors were locked. “Museum hours: ten a.m. to five forty-five p.m.,” Sam read. He glanced at his watch. “Rob, it’ll be open in another half hour. Let’s go get some breakfast first.”

  “Wanna wait here.” Robby plunked down on the steps. Linda caught up, breathless.

  “We’ve got a half hour before they open, and I’m pretty hungry,” Sam said. Linda nodded. They scanned the block, spotting a diner on the corner. “Come on, Robby, let’s go get something to eat. We’ll get you a doughnut,” Linda coaxed.

  Robby shook his head. “Gonna wait.”

  “Robby, don’t be difficult. It’s cold here. You’re not going to get in any sooner, and the birds will still be here if we go have some breakfast first.” Sam bent down and put his hand under Robby’s armpit, trying to lift him up. He was heavy, heavier than Sam expected.

  Robby jerked back his arm, shaking off his father and dropping his notebook. Off balance, Sam staggered back, stumbling down several steps. Ignoring him, Robby scooped up the notebook and tore up the remaining steps to the vestibule doors, yelling as he ran.

  “No, no, no, no! No breakfast. Staying here. Staying here!” At the locked doors he wedged himself into a corner, clamped his headphones on, jammed his hands into his pockets, and glared down at them.

  A dozen steps below, Sam punched the air. He swore, then looked guiltily at Linda. She shook her head and shrugged.