Sparrow Migrations

by Cari Noga

  “Wonderful. You’ve come to the right place. Follow me.” The old man reached out toward Robby’s shoulder, as if to pilot him, Linda thought anxiously. But no, his hand was merely extended in a beckoning gesture, summoning them to follow him out of the gallery, the way he had entered. Robby trotted along compliantly.

  “Uh, sir? Sir? Excuse me,” Thomas called after him nervously.

  “Yes? What is it, Thomas?” Felk halted and looked over his shoulder.

  “Sir, the computer says we don’t have any Canada geese on exhibit. I did a search.”

  “You did, did you?”

  Thomas nodded. Felk snorted, a sound that turned into a cough.

  “Can’t trust computers to know a museum, Thomas. I’ve been working here thirty-five years. Been through this place top to bottom. Trust me, we have Canada geese. I’ll take it from here.”

  Shaking his head and muttering again, Felk led them to a service elevator and jabbed the down button. “Nobody’s asked about a damn bird in six months. Everyone wants the dinosaurs, the IMAX, the gift shop. You want to see a Canada goose, son? All right, then. What’s your name?”

  “Robby,” said Robby, uncharacteristically responding before either Sam or Linda spoke.

  “Nice to meet you, Robby.” The elevator doors opened. Again, Felk gestured, indicating they should enter first. Inside he pressed the button labeled “B.” “I’m Arthur Felk, chief ornithologist here at the museum. Been in charge of the birds around here since before Thomas back there was born.”

  “Linda Palmer,” Linda said, extending her hand as the elevator lurched downward. “My husband, Sam. We’re visiting from Detroit.”

  Felk shook their hands, but Robby was clearly where his interest lay. “What do you want to know about Canada geese?”

  “Plane crash.”

  Felk’s brow furrowed. “Plane crash? Don’t follow you, son.”

  “Geese make planes crash. Like yesterday’s.”

  “Yesterday’s? That one over in the river?” Another cough.

  “We were on a ferry in the river when it happened. Robby’s been a little, well, obsessed with it since. He has autism,” Linda started to explain. “I don’t know how much you know about autism, but . . .”

  Felk held up his hand, cutting her off. “So they’re saying it was a bird strike? I hadn’t heard that yet. Well, I’ll show you what we’ve got in our collection now. But you might want to come back another day, because it’s likely those engines will be headed this way, once the FAA’s done with them, anyway.”

  “Excuse me?” Sam spoke up. “Why would an engine be of interest to a natural history museum?”

  “Wouldn’t. It’s what’s in the engine they want us to look at. We’ll take it apart, do scrapings for DNA. Try to confirm the species. Cross-reference with known nesting sites in the crash area.” The elevator bumped to a stop.

  Linda’s face pulled back in disgust, but as they stepped out into the museum basement, she read fascination on Robby’s. Felk saw it, too.

  “Pretty neat, right? The more we know about birds, the better we get at preventing bird strikes. There are thousands per year, you know.”

  “Thousands?” Robby’s face clouded, and he covered his ears. “That’s a lot of dead birds.”

  “Far too many,” Felk agreed. “That’s why we keep trying to learn more.”

  Energetically, Felk led them down a long hall. Sam increased his pace to keep up.

  “Look, Dr. Felk, it’s very kind of you to take the time with us. But you must be busy—”

  “I’m perfectly capable of managing my schedule, thank you for your concern,” Felk said. “I’ve got plenty of time for a bright boy like your son, who shows enough sense to take an interest in birds. They’re our most highly evolved species, you know.”

  Sam stopped short. Linda read chagrin on his face. Felk suddenly stopped, too, then pulled out a key ring, inserting one in a door with “Ornithology Archives” etched in a frosted glass pane.

  “Here we are,” he said, swinging it open.

  Deborah turned on the radio as Christopher drove northward. The long-term parking lot at LaGuardia was an hour of silence behind them.

  “. . . the probable cause of the crash is assumed to be a bird strike. The leading cause of crashes occurring within five minutes of takeoff or landing, these strikes are unpredictable. We’ll speak with an expert on bird strikes at the FAA after . . .”

  Quickly, she turned it back off. The crash was now history. She wanted to think about the future.

  “It’ll be Ramsey,” Christopher turned the radio back on.

  “What?”

  “Ted Ramsey. The FAA expert on bird strikes. We’ve had him up a few times. Peter’s hoping to get some grant money out of him.”

  “Christopher, I really don’t want to hear any more about the crash.”

  “Just this interview, Deborah.”

  The anchor returned. “We’d like to welcome Ted Ramsey of the FAA, an expert on bird strikes.”

  “I knew it.” Christopher smiled triumphantly and turned up the volume.

  Sighing, Deborah tuned it out, turning her gaze to the window. It was a brilliant winter day, the sun glinting off the snow-covered landscape. Despite the sun, the day was all hard, rigid edges—the flat plane of cold glass through which the black road sliced through stark white fields that met a cloudless, fiercely blue sky at the unyielding line of the horizon.

  The view mirrored the boundaries confining her own future. Forty-two years old, going on forty-three. Two failed IVF cycles. Three embryos left. A husband drawing a line in the sand. Deborah sighed again as Christopher snapped off the radio.

  “Interesting.”

  “What’s that?” asked Deborah, glad to turn away from the window.

  “Ted’s theory. That as planes age, the metal fatigue of the engines makes them more vulnerable to damage in strikes.”

  “Metal fatigue. I always thought that was such a strange phrase,” Deborah said. “Kind of scary, really.”

  “How so?”

  “It sounds like a contradiction. Metal’s solid. Hard. It’s not supposed to wear out.”

  “Everything wears out, eventually.”

  “Ithaca 100 miles.” The road sign flashed past the window, reminding Deborah that their regular lives lay ahead. She cleared her throat. “It feels like we’re not talking about the engine anymore.”

  “Aren’t we?”

  “I mean, that’s how you sounded in the hotel, talking about the IVF. Worn out. Fatigued.”

  “Definitely,” he said without hesitating.

  “So it’s not that you’ve changed your mind about wanting kids, really. You’re just worn down by the process?”

  “I don’t know that you can separate the two things. And the first doesn’t seem worth the second.”

  “But you’ve never really told me that before.”

  “Not explicitly, maybe, but . . .”

  “You said that it’s been my fixation, my preoccupation, with getting pregnant that bothered you the most.”

  “Well, yeeess.” Christopher stretched out his words. “That and the time passing. I’m forty-five. You’re forty-two. The risks keep getting higher at our ages.”

  “You’re projecting that. Looking at the overall statistics and data, not at us as case studies. We’re both healthy. The specialist in New York said my heart rate and blood pressure and diet and exercise habits put my body at age thirty-eight.”

  “That’s true,” Christopher said, thoughtfully.

  His tone was different. The note of pessimism that had been there since yesterday was gone.

  “So if the real problem is the process, and how I handle it, let’s try to fix that. Not throw the baby out with the bathwater.”

  Christopher was silent. />
  “That’s a joke, Christopher.” She elbowed him gently.

  Obligingly, he turned up the corners of his mouth.

  “What are you thinking? Doesn’t that make sense? Especially since we have the three remaining embryos?” She waited, willing him to see it the way she did.

  “It sounds good. But tell me what it means.”

  “I’ll get rid of all the fertility books. Drop out of the Facebook groups. Take up yoga, maybe. And we’ll have mandatory date nights. After every doctor’s appointment,” she added.

  This time he smiled for real.

  “And I don’t think you give me quite enough credit for seeing the forest. Sure, I wanted to visit Helen and the girls on the trip. But I wanted to go wine tasting and bike riding and bird watching with you, too. I found some good places on the Seattle Audubon site.”

  He exhaled. “That sounds nice.”

  “And last summer I did get out of the house at least once. We went to the dean’s summer picnic. That’s where you and Michael hatched the plan for the big Fish and Wildlife grant. The one that’s pending right now, isn’t it?”

  He nodded.

  “Any updates?”

  “I checked before we left the hotel. Not yet.”

  “You’ve been waiting for what, like, three months?”

  He nodded. “And it was three months of writing before that.”

  “Which could also be contributing to your stress and fatigue, right?”

  He nodded again.

  “So. Let’s finish what we started. Try one more cycle. If it doesn’t work, then we’ll stop. I promise.”

  She couldn’t bear to watch him decide and turned her gaze back to the window. The landscape had softened as they approached Ithaca. She watched a flock of birds soar through a cleft between the hills.

  Christopher was silent for another frozen mile, then finally spoke. “All right. Make the appointment with the clinic. We’ll try again. One last time.”

  SEVEN

  Robby stroked the black wing of the taxidermied bird. The feathers felt so sleek. And it was so big. Dr. Felk said it was a male. So that made it a gander, not a goose. Watching from a distance, he never would have thought one could be so big. Their neighbors at home, the Petersons, had a little dog, Trixie. She was one of those yappy dogs that tore all around the yard a lot. This gander was way bigger than Trixie.

  “Look at the time. I told your parents a half hour, and here it’s past an hour. They’ll think I’ve apprenticed you.” Dr. Felk glanced at his watch. “We’d better go.”

  Robby kept his hand on the gander. “Don’t want to go.” The archives were crowded with shelves stuffed with bird skulls and models of wings and boxes of books, papers, maps, and more that they had barely begun to explore. Old dust hung thick. Even the city’s noises were muffled here below the street. He hadn’t needed his headphones once.

  Dr. Felk adjusted his glasses, gazing around the room.

  “I know. Heaven down here, isn’t it?”

  Robby nodded. The gander’s beady eye seemed to meet his. Wouldn’t the geese have seen the plane? Couldn’t they have diverted?

  “Robby.” Dr. Felk’s hand touched his shoulder, and he flinched involuntarily. “I’ve enjoyed having you here. I wish we could stay longer, too. But you live in Detroit. If I’m going to help you learn more long-distance, I have to talk to your parents. Convince them. You understand—” A coughing spasm seized the rest of Dr. Felk’s sentence.

  His parents, Detroit, home. All far away.

  “You understand, right, Robby?” Dr. Felk stifled another cough and leaned forward, not touching him this time. Robby sighed. He didn’t want to leave. But he liked Dr. Felk. He bargained. “Fifteen more minutes.”

  Dr. Felk scratched his gray beard. “Ten. Deal?”

  “Deal,” Robby agreed.

  Watching him with a faraway look in his eyes, Dr. Felk reached for his cell phone and dialed. “Jim? Arthur Felk. How’s everything in DC?” He coughed again. “Sorry. Listen, I need a favor.”

  In the museum food court, Linda swallowed the last of her second cup of coffee.

  “Do you think we should go look for them?” she asked Sam. “It’s been an hour.”

  He glanced up from his New York Times. “Has it?” His eyes moved over her shoulder. “Here they come now.”

  Relieved, Linda turned. In the twenty paces to their table, she saw Robby nod, smile, and gesture. Compared to his usual blank expression, he looked animated, she thought.

  “This has been the best morning I’ve had at work in a long time, thanks to this young man,” Felk announced as they got closer. He put his hand on Robby’s shoulder, drawing him alongside. Robby flinched, Linda noticed, but allowed the touch. And he positively glowed.

  “Robby, why don’t you get a drink or a snack. Tell them to charge it to me. I want to talk to your parents,” Felk said. Sam opened his mouth, but Robby nodded and disappeared.

  Felk sat down. “Mr. and Mrs. Palmer, I must tell you Robby is a prodigy. He’s got a wonderful curiosity. Asks good questions. Amazing memory. Truly amazing. He’s got all the makings of a scientist.”

  “You think so?” Linda, who clung to the hope that Robby’s autism cloaked genius, wanted to believe him. Desperately, she wanted to believe him. “Biology is his favorite subject in school.”

  Felk nodded. “I think he just needed to find a subject that would capture his interest. Today I think he might have found it.”

  “You mean birds?” Sam asked, sounding skeptical. Felk nodded emphatically.

  “But he sees birds every day. He never expressed any special interest before. Why all of a sudden?” Linda scanned the cafeteria line, seeking Robby’s hooded head.

  “The plane crash. You know, of course, living with Robby, how it is with autistics. They’re in their own world. Sometimes it takes something very dramatic to penetrate that, to make an impact. I think the plane crash may have done that for Robby.”

  “You’re familiar with autism?” Linda leaned forward. “When I mentioned it before, you said you weren’t.”

  “I didn’t say whether I was or wasn’t. I just didn’t want you to go ahead and tell me everything you think you know is true about Robby because somebody, somewhere, told you that.”

  Sam spoke up, sounding irritated. “Now wait a second. What do you know—”

  Chagrined but curious, Linda placed her hand on Sam’s arm, cutting him off. “Tell us more.”

  Felk nodded at Sam. “I don’t mean to claim I know Robby, or what’s best for him. But I know some of his characteristics would allow him to flourish in a scientific environment.

  “For a scientist, the ability to recall details is critical. Robby excels at it. On the elevator ride back up I asked him to list some of the species in Anserinae, which are in the same family with Canada geese, as well as swans and other geese. Though we spent only a few minutes looking at those images, he answered perfectly. In that archive room we’ve got records dating back before the museum’s founding, in 1869. I have no doubt that, if given free rein to roam in there for, say, a week, Robby would be able to transfer whatever was relevant to his interests to his own head.”

  “He does have a photographic memory, doesn’t he, Sam?” Linda’s voice swelled with hope.

  “And then there’s his curiosity. That’s the most encouraging part. Rote memory and how the pieces work individually isn’t his goal; he wants to know more and put the whole picture together.

  “The plane crash is key. He wants to know more about that, about how it affected the geese, how the geese affected it. I don’t know much about aviation, but I called a friend who works at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. He’s probably not the guy, either, to be honest. But he could refer you to someone at a place with more modern aircraft. Maybe on an air base.”

 
“An air base?” Sam echoed in disbelief. “Are you kidding?”

  “You’re doing all that for Robby? Why?” Linda said simultaneously, her eyes shining with fledgling hope.

  Felk shifted in his seat, regarding them. He started to reply when Linda glimpsed Robby bearing a wobbly tray in her peripheral vision. She turned, holding her breath. The unfamiliar cafeteria was a sensory minefield.

  Teetering with an unbalanced load of notebook, doughnut, and chocolate milk, Robby stared at the red plastic rectangle as if it were a map back to their table when the metal leg of a stray chair thwarted him. Tray, milk, doughnut, and book clattered to the tile floor, turning heads from all corners.

  Sam touched his forehead to his palm, closing his eyes and shaking his head. Robby snatched the notebook away from the brown stream of the milk, then sat right down on the floor, backing away. Clucking in dismay, Linda leaped to assist. Felk followed her, but brushed past them to the cashier, who nodded and spoke into a radio.

  Felk returned to the spilled milk and pointed Robby back toward the cafeteria line. He removed the wad of napkins Linda was swabbing the brown puddle with and ushered her back to their table.

  “I’m so sorry. Crowded places are so challenging for him. I’m so sorry.”

  “Please. It was an accident. The custodians will take care of it.” He dropped the napkins into a trash can. “Now where were we?” He sat back down heavily.

  “The air base,” Sam said skeptically. “I’m not seeing the point of that.”

  Felk looked surprised. “Why, it would be a place for Robby to learn about planes, of course.”

  “Of course.” Sam repeated, heavy on the sarcasm. “Robby has significant auditory sensitivities. You must have noticed the headphones. I can’t think of a worse place for him.”

  “Sam, let’s just hear him out, for heaven’s sake!” Linda said.

  “Mr. Palmer, I’m not telling you what to do with your son,” Felk said. “I’m just offering options. Robby’s got an instinct for birds and their behavior. I should know. I’ve spent my professional career with some of the most illustrious ornithologists in the field. I am one of the most illustrious. In my opinion, it would be criminal not to indulge that interest.”