Sparrow Migrations

by Cari Noga

  She heard Amanda’s door close down the hall. Her daughter walked into the kitchen and opened the pantry without setting down her backpack.

  “Take that off and stay a while,” Brett said, lamely. “I was going to make us omelettes.” She waved at the counter, where diced green pepper, onions, and ham stood in neat piles on the cutting board.

  Amanda finished examining the shelves and emerged with a granola bar. She wrinkled her nose. “We always have those for dinner.” From the fruit bowl, she selected a banana. “Besides, Abby’s picking me up. We’re meeting to go over lines. I’ll just take these.”

  “At least let me toast you a bagel. Lunch isn’t for almost five hours,” Brett said, glancing at the clock. “A banana won’t tide you over till then.”

  “Mom, I’m sixteen, you know. If I wanted a bagel, I’d get it myself.” She set the bulging backpack on a kitchen stool.

  Brett watched her tug the zipper, trying to close the backpack around her snacks. “Here, let me help you.” Abandoning the breakfast argument, she laid her hands over her daughter’s. Amanda jerked hers away.

  “Amanda, sweetie, what is it?”

  Amanda shook her head mutely and yanked the bag, zipper still gaping, off the stool.

  “Look, I know you wanted to go on this trip during spring break. But that just didn’t work. With the play and all.”

  “I don’t want you to go, either,” Amanda said abruptly. “You just got back from a trip, practically.”

  “It’s just for two nights. I’ll be back Friday.”

  “The last trip was supposed to be just two nights. Then it was three.”

  “Just two this time. I promise.”

  “Then a plane crashed.”

  “Oh, Amanda. That was a flukey, crazy, thing. A one-in-a-million chance. I’ll be fine.”

  “But I’m not!” Amanda’s words burst out of her mouth, hanging in the space in between them, like in a comic strip bubble, Brett thought. She stared at her daughter, silenced.

  Abby’s horn honked. Startled, Brett started chattering, as madly as the sparrows gathering at the replenished feeder. “There’s Abby. Now please don’t worry. Everything’s going to be fine. I’ll call you tonight, and I’ll see you on Friday. Love you.”

  Ushered out the door, Amanda tried to quell her uncertainty and fear. To shut it away in a mental vault and barricade the door. To listen to Abby, who picked up the chatter where her mom left off. To believe that everything was fine. That it was no big deal to offer an omelette for breakfast—when most people ate them, after all—when it felt like her mother was trying to make up for something.

  But she couldn’t quash the feeling that everything wasn’t fine, that something was in fact very wrong, something she couldn’t name or describe or explain except that it started the day her mom didn’t come home from New York.

  Christopher consulted the Moosewood cookbook one more time, then closed it, satisfied. He’d followed the recipe to the letter. He’d prep the salad for his Valentine’s Day dinner now. It would all be ready when Deborah got home from work.

  He piled the salad ingredients on the counter and began slicing, soothed by the rhythmic motion of the knife. He was jumpier than he remembered being during either of the other two-week waits. Deborah seemed nervous, too.

  It was only reasonable, he supposed. The course of their lives would alter one way or the other, in seven days. And permanently. There were no embryos H or beyond.

  But having a ready explanation didn’t make it any easier to weather this last limbo period. So Christopher turned to something he could control—cooking. His classes had ended early that day, and restaurants would be jammed on Valentine’s Day. Plus it felt like he owed Deborah. They’d had date nights every week since New York, and actually talked about the things they used to: current events, politics, campus gossip. Over one of the dinners, Michael Adams had texted that they got the grant. They’d toasted—she with sparkling water, he with a celebratory second beer—and he felt almost like the last two years had never happened. His wife was back to her old self. His professional life was peaking. And there was the possibility of fatherhood, too. That still felt surreal. Yet in an idle moment here and there, he’d caught himself imagining hiking with a child through Sapsucker Woods, the sanctuary that surrounded the Lab, teaching him how to observe and identify the flora and fauna, how to leave no trace.

  For now, though, he needed fresh Parmesan for the salad. Where was the grater? The phone rang.

  “Christopher? Hi. It’s Matt.”

  “Matt.” Christopher hesitated a half second before he placed the voice as his brother-in-law’s. He could count on one hand the number of times they’d talked unattended by Deborah and Helen. “Good to hear from you. How’s life in Seattle?”

  “We’re doing all right. As good as you can expect, I guess. The girls have been really pitching in. We’ve got another appointment at the university next week. I just hope Helen’s not too tired to keep it.”

  “Mmm-hhhm.” Christopher mulled Matt’s statement idly. The university. Could Deborah’s nieces be old enough now to be making college visits? He hadn’t thought so, but he didn’t keep close track. Matt was talking again.

  “So did you guys find anything out yet?”

  “Not yet. We’re in the middle of the two-week wait. Should know by next Friday.”

  There was a pause, then Matt started speaking just as he did.

  “Shall I have Deborah call back when she gets home?” Christopher asked.

  “Two weeks? We got our results in two days,” Matt said, sounding puzzled.

  Another pause. Christopher spoke first. “I didn’t know you and Helen did in vitro.”

  “Huh?” Matt sounded impatient. “I’m talking about Helen’s genetic tests.”

  “Helen’s had genetic testing done? Why? Whatever for?” Deborah’s sister was the epitome of health. The whole family was. Last year’s holiday cards featured their smiling quartet bearing sequential running bibs from some local charity 10K.

  Christopher heard Matt draw in a deep breath. “Because she was feeling like shit, that’s why. Didn’t Deborah tell you?”

  Christopher frowned, feeling like his students sometimes looked: half a step behind his lecture, brows furrowed, shoulders hunched as they strained to see the projection screen, wishing they could catch up, but mostly trying not to fall further behind. “I don’t know anything. Is something wrong with Helen?”

  “Wow.” Matt exhaled deeply. “She really didn’t. I just can’t—and you’ve gone another round with the IVF?”

  “A week ago. Transferred our last three embryos.” Christopher felt panicky, like the freshman who realizes she’s now just one of a hundred and fifty high school valedictorians in the lecture hall. “What’s going on with Helen?”

  “All right.” Matt’s voice took on a doctor-to-patient tone. “Helen’s been feeling like crap since last fall. She had a bunch of nonspecific symptoms. Fatigue was a big one. Achy muscles. She took a couple falls that banged her up. She went to her GP, who sent her to a specialist. He sent her to another, at the University of Washington. That doc recommended genetic testing.”

  “And?” Tension laced Christopher’s voice.

  “Helen tested positive for the gene that causes Huntington’s disease.” Matt paused. “It’s an inherited neurological disease that usually doesn’t show up until middle age. Muscle coordination goes first, then your mind. Most people eventually wind up needing round-the-clock care.” His voice shook. “There’s no cure, not even many treatment options.”

  “I’m so sorry, Matt.” The words came automatically, but he meant them. There would be no more running bibs on the holiday cards. Life-altering news for a couple still in their forties. Like him and Deborah. His mind wound back to one word.

  “You said inherited. Helen got—ahhh, a
cquired—this from their parents?”

  “That’s what they tell us. We don’t know which one, though Helen thinks she remembers her dad getting a little shaky at the end, before the car accident.” Matt’s voice grew thoughtful. “Who knows. There never was a good explanation for that accident. Daylight, good weather. Maybe Mr. DeWitt had deteriorated more than anyone ever knew.”

  “Is there . . . is there a chance Deborah would have inherited it, too?” Christopher asked.

  “A Huntington’s-positive parent has a fifty-fifty chance of passing the gene on to a child,” Matt sounded like he was reciting. “So Hannah and Mariah are both at risk now, too.”

  Fifty-fifty? His wife had returned to her old self just in time to be threatened with losing it again? And if she were pregnant—He stopped himself.

  “I’m so sorry, Matt.” Christopher repeated. “You said you have another appointment soon?”

  “Yeah. Next week. I almost forgot, that’s why I called. Helen told her doc about Deborah. He knew a specialist on the East Coast. At Columbia. I’ve got his number if you want it.”

  “Absolutely.” Christopher hung up and grabbed his keys, leaving the vegetables still on the counter, the door banging only slightly behind him but the realization hammering in his head: Deborah had deliberately deceived him.

  In the sanctuary of his office, he Googled the name. William Hirsh, MD, head of the Huntington’s Disease Center of Excellence at Columbia since 1998. He oversaw five observational studies and three clinical trials. The site confirmed Matt’s statistics on the chance of inheriting the disease. He read further.

  “An estimated ten percent of all HD patients do not know about HD in their family.”

  Christopher tasted bitterness. What percentage knew and not only withheld the information from a spouse, he wondered, but went ahead with in vitro fertilization, putting another generation at risk?

  His call to Hirsh’s office rang through to voice mail. It was after five. Damn. He needed information, craved data.

  Christopher clicked back over to the symptoms list. Difficulties with speech, swallowing, balance, walking. Difficulties with speech? Deborah, who could talk a donor into doubling their intended donation? Deborah, who balanced everything on her plate and made it look easy? Cognitive impairment. Psychiatric symptoms. Deborah, whose sharp mind was what made her the most attractive woman he’d ever met?

  A vision of Deborah in a wheelchair flashed into his mind. Her head lolled as she sipped from a straw he held to her lips. On the periphery of the vision, a faceless child screamed from a high chair for attention and food, too.

  Dimly, he heard the rumble of the custodian’s rolling bucket down the hall, headed his way. The vision dissolved, but Christopher felt his own lunch rise in his throat.

  Sam pulled out of the florist’s parking lot, jammed on this damp, chilly Valentine’s evening. Usually he and Linda didn’t do much—a card, maybe a movie if the stars aligned and they found a babysitter. But this year, ratcheting up the romance seemed in order. Ever since the New York trip, things had been tense. Like Robby, Linda regarded that ornithologist from the museum, that Dr. Felk, as some kind of infallible genie in a bottle who would magically reveal all the answers to their struggles.

  Sam wasn’t so sure, at least at first. So Linda had indulged Robby’s every whim solo: chauffeuring him to Audubon meetings, hanging out a bird feeder, ordering field guides. Sam stood by, waiting for Robby to tire of birds. But after a month, he had to consider that Felk might have been right, pegging Robby as a budding ornithologist. Dammit. Some dad he was.

  It had always been an effort to engage Robby, to persist when his face stayed blank, when his brown eyes looked past them, when he retreated into hood and headphones. But the belief that one day they would stumble upon the thing that would lure Robby from the bunker of his brain also bonded him and Linda. Now, apparently, it was Dr. Felk who had uncovered it. Some dad, all right, Sam thought again, pulling into the garage.

  Like its driver the last few weeks, Linda’s car was dark and quiet. Inside, Sam expected to find her in the kitchen and Robby playing video games. But the TV was off, Robby was nowhere in sight, and Linda was curled up with a book on the couch in the adjacent family room.

  “Hi.” Sam stepped into the kitchen, forgetting, in his surprise, to hide the flowers. “Where’s Rob?” He had been dropping the “y” on Robby’s name lately, his subconscious way of prodding him into growing up a bit. Robby was mostly unresponsive to it, but Sam didn’t know if that was because he disliked the name or because he was usually unresponsive.

  “At the Audubon club meeting,” Linda looked at him over the top of her book. The Boy Who Loved Windows, Sam read. Under the title, the image of the back of a boy’s head dominated the cover. Even from the back, he looked like Robby.

  “Another one?”

  “They meet every other week.”

  “You’re not there, too?”

  “Someone offered him a ride. Robby wanted to go, so I let him.”

  “Really?” Sam was dumbfounded. “Someone just offered? Do they know about him?”

  “Sam, didn’t you hear me? A friend offered a ride and Robby wanted to go. It’s the first social engagement he’s shown interest in, well, maybe ever. I coached him on greetings and thank-yous, all the usual stuff, but of course I let him go.” Linda crossed her arms.

  “OK, I get that, but we’re still responsible. Does anyone in that club know about him?”

  “About his autism?” Linda shrugged. “Everybody there has their own bird they’re crazy about. Woodpeckers, ducks, hummingbirds. Or the list they’re building, counting all the birds in their yard. Or the state. Whatever.” She shrugged again. “With his geese thing, Robby fits right in.” She stood up. “Were you bringing those for me?”

  “So now we’ll layer OCD on top of autism. Great.” Sam spoke almost to himself, looking confused at Linda’s question before he remembered the roses he was still holding. “What? Damn. Yes. I mean, happy Valentine’s Day.” Frustration swelled. “Shoot. I feel like we’ve been—off—ever since the trip to New York. I wanted to do something special this year.”

  Linda came into the kitchen. “And you did. They’re beautiful. Thank you.” She put her arms around him. Gratefully, Sam hugged her back. They embraced silently until Linda pulled away and studied Sam’s face.

  “You know, Sam, Robby isn’t ever going to get over autism.”

  Sam stepped away, folding his arms. “I know that.”

  “I think you know it intellectually. Until New York, that’s how it was for me, too. But since then, since we came home and started doing this”—Linda waved her hand—“this bird stuff, something’s changed. I really accept it now.”

  “You think I haven’t?” A Valentine’s Day attack. Nice.

  “Not completely, no. I’m not blaming you,” Linda added quickly. “I think you’ve resigned yourself. ‘My son has autism.’ That’s how I looked at it, anyway, until New York.”

  “And then we met the fantastic Dr. Felk, and suddenly it all got better, right?” Sam couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact.” Linda walked around the kitchen counter, back to the family room. They faced off over the Corian.

  “Look, Sam, why are you so mad? We’ve wished for years that Robby would find his thing, his spectrumy thing, that he would obsess about and drive us crazy talking about, but be his. His bridge to the rest of the world. Now he has. So it’s birds. So it took someone else, a stranger, to figure it out. So what?”

  “You’re right. You’re right. I don’t know.” Sam clasped his hands together on the countertop and bent forward, touching his forehead to them. Guilt nearly gagged him, but he forced out the words. “Maybe it was that dinner at my brother’s. With Tyler. A hangover of wishing.”

  “You’re still hung up on t
hat dinner from a month ago?” Linda smacked the counter. “That’s exactly what I’m trying to tell you. You’ve got to get past resigning yourself that our son is on the spectrum and start owning it. For yourself and for Robby.”

  “But—” Sam opened his mouth. Linda shook her head.

  “These are our lives,” she said, stabbing a finger on the counter. “Silences. Meltdowns. Headphones. Now birds. All of it. Things have been this way for seven years now. This is the way they’re always going to be. Don’t waste any more time wishing and regretting.”

  “Put on a happy face, and it’ll all be better, huh?”

  Linda exhaled harshly. “Forget it. I’m tired of arguing.” She flopped onto the couch, her back to Sam, but he saw a tear glisten on her cheek.

  How romantic, Sam. He followed her into the family room. “I’m sorry. I’ll try harder.” He scrambled for a way to get back on track. “You want to order Chinese?”

  “No, thanks.” She paused. “Well, I could use the fresh air. OK. I’ll pick it up.”

  Moments after Linda left, her cell phone rang on the kitchen counter. That showed how upset she was. She never left the house without her phone. Robby’s number was illuminated.

  “Hello?”

  “Mom?”

  “No, Robby,” Sam forced himself to say the whole name. “It’s Dad. Your mom’s out.”

  “Oh.” Long pause. “I need a ride.”

  Of course. He’d probably irritated whoever he had ridden over with. “OK.” He could call Linda to get him after she picked up the food. No, wait, Sam was holding her phone. He’d have to go. “I’ll come get you, then. Where are you?”

  Another long pause.

  “Big church. Monroe Street. Paul needs a ride, too.”

  “Paul? Who’s Paul?” But Robby had hung up.

  Big church on Monroe Street. That would be the Central United Christian Church. Sam scrawled a note for Linda, leaving it next to his forgotten, forlorn flowers, and headed back to the garage.

  TEN