by Cari Noga
“I can see how it would be exciting,” he finally said. “And I’m sure you can appreciate that my wife and I will have to talk about it first.”
Linda. He remembered the Chinese food at home. Probably already cold. “Robby, we need to get going. Where’s Paul?” Sam glanced at the other faces, expecting a nod.
“Not Paul,” Robby said, pointing at the woman. “Paula.”
Sam looked at her blankly.
“Yes, I’m the one who picked Robby up. But when we went out to my car after the meeting, I had a flat tire. Must have picked up a nail or something. I’m right on the way to your house, so if you wouldn’t mind . . .”
“Of course. No trouble,” Sam said automatically, trying to wrap his mind around it. Paula looked like someone they’d hire to babysit Robby, not someone who would become a friend. Did Linda know it was a young woman who had picked him up?
The two of them walked out ahead of Sam, chatting about this hotshot from Ontario.
“I heard him speak at a conference a couple years ago,” Paula said. “You’ll really like him, Robby. He’s not just a birder, he’s a conservationist. He lives on a couple hundred acres up in northern Ontario that he’s worked to restore as a mating reservation. He tracks each one that’s born, banding it, and logging it into his database of migration dates and mileage and all kinds of other stuff. He’s been doing it for years and years.”
“‘Banding’ them?”
Paula nodded. “Yes, he’s able to band the birds’ legs with an electronic chip. So he can track exactly where they are.”
“What if they disappear? Like in the plane crash.”
They were at the car. Paula and Robby got into the backseat. Now Sam was a chauffeur.
“Well, I guess if he loses the signal, he knows something’s happened to the bird. I’m sure he can get geographic data off the chip and figure out where the bird was when the problem happened.”
“So he would know if any of his geese got hit by the plane,” Robby said.
Sam glanced into the backseat. “That’s absurd, Robby. What are the chances—”
But Paula interrupted. “I guess he could look into his database, see if any went missing on that date, and then check the latitude and longitude coordinates on the chip.”
Robby leaned forward into the front seat. “Need to go to Lansing.”
Sam flicked his eyes at his son in the rearview mirror. As usual, Robby’s voice was flat, devoid of inflection and urgency. But he wore his no-compromises face, his jaw set in determination.
“Your mom and I will talk about it, Robby, just like I said back at the church.”
“Need to go to Lansing,” Robby repeated. “Learn about the geese in the plane crash.”
“We’ll talk about it at home,” Sam repeated. “I know you want to go. I know you want to meet this—this goose guru. But the chance that any of the geese he’s tracking were involved in that plane crash are minuscule.”
“I’m not so sure,” Paula chimed in. “He’s been banding and maintaining his database for at least twenty years. He must have thousands and thousands of birds in there now.”
Sam clenched his teeth and ground out a reply. “Thank you for the information. You can see Robby’s very interested in going. His mother and I will discuss it. Now where should I drop you off?”
“Turn right at the second light. Go three blocks, turn left on Springside—”
Robby interrupted, his pitch finally building. “Need to go to Lansing. Need to meet him!” His agitation was rising, too, and he bounced and twisted in his seat, straining against the seat belt.
“Middle of the block on the left. White house with a big porch, but it’s hard to see. Haven’t gotten around to fixing the porch light,” Paula finished. As she finally registered Robby’s anxiety, her voice turned soothing.
“Your dad says you’ll talk about it. Don’t worry. I’m sure Ed’s got his e-mail, too. Even if you can’t go, we’ll get you in touch with him.”
“Need to go!” Robby was visibly shaking in the backseat now. Sam passed the first light and glimpsed the second, still several blocks away. Shit.
Alarmed now, Paula squeezed herself toward the door, as far away as she could from Robby, who was now rocking back and forth, banging his head into the back of the front seat. “Need to go. Need to go,” he chanted, in time to the rhythm of his rocking.
He wasn’t banging that hard, Sam could tell, and the seat cushion muffled the sound to a low thump. Still, Paula’s eyes were as wide as any of the gawking strangers Sam had endured over years of these meltdowns.
“Robby. Stop. Get ahold of yourself.” He was watching the rearview mirror more than the road. Sam swung onto a side street and pulled over. Putting the car into park, he twisted around.
“Paula, I need to get back there with Robby.”
Paula needed no urging. She darted out the back door and into the front passenger seat, burrowing into it like a frightened animal. Robby banged against the back again, jolting her forward. She stiffened, sliding herself to the edge of the seat, hunching her shoulders toward the dash. Sam felt a flash of pity. But she could take care of herself.
He slid into the backseat and pulled Robby into his arms tightly, grounding him with the pressure of the embrace, simultaneously mimicking the rocking motion that his son used to self-soothe. “You’re OK. You’re OK. You’re OK, Robby. You’re safe. You’re safe. You’re safe.” he whispered in Robby’s ear, over and over.
“Need to go to Lansing! Need to go to Lansing! Don’t talk to mom. Go to Lansing!” Robby flailed against him.
“You’re OK. You’re safe. You’re OK. You’re safe.” Gradually, the pressure of the hug, the rhythm of the rocking, and Sam’s mantra-like words subdued Robby. Drained of resistance, his body went slack. Sam waited a full three minutes before he released his grip, allowing Robby’s body to slump back on the seat. All three of them were quiet until Sam’s cell phone rang. It had to be Linda.
“Hi.” Sam sat up, one hand still on Robby’s leg, careful to maintain a physical touchstone for him.
“Where are you? Did something happen? It’s been an hour.”
“Yeah, sorry. We just had to pull over. Robby—um, Robby got a little worked up about something that came up at the meeting.”
Linda caught her breath. “Is he OK?”
Sam looked Robby up and down. His son stared out the black window, dazed. “Yeah, I think it’s over. We’re dropping off someone from the club, though, and I think she’s pretty spooked.” He leaned forward to look at Paula, who hunched her shoulders further. “We’re not far from her house. I’ll drop her off and be home in fifteen minutes.”
“OK.” There was a long pause. “I love you,” Linda said.
“Love you, too.”
Back in the driver’s seat, Sam looked over at Paula, speaking quietly. “I know you and the rest of the club mean well. But Robby, he’s got real issues. Real problems that whoever’s responsible for him has to be able to handle.”
He was silent for a few blocks, letting it sink in.
“How many of that bunch that offered to chaperone Robby would still be willing if they’d been in this car tonight?” Sam asked as he turned down Springside Street. “It’s not about wanting to deny him something, especially something that’s important to him. It’s about fear for his safety.”
Paula didn’t answer. They were in front of the darkened house with a big porch. She opened the car door. A dog was barking. She paused for a moment, then seemed to change her mind. “Good night,” she said, slamming the door.
In the rearview mirror, Robby sat stiffly, staring at his reflection in the black window glass, lips moving slightly, seeing something visible only to him.
The magpie ringtone Christopher had set for Deborah burst into the quiet of his office. Calling about the empt
y kitchen with vegetables strewn over the counter, no doubt. He let it go to voice mail, not trusting himself to talk. Two hours researching Huntington’s disease online and replaying the conversation with Matt had tilted the axis of his personal world.
“Didn’t Deborah tell you? Didn’t Deborah tell you?” The disbelief in Matt’s voice resounded in his own head. He couldn’t fathom that she would deliberately withhold that kind of information from him. Not the woman he married ten years ago, when they had plotted their perfect life. Tenure. Professional respect. Financial security. And, yes, at the right time, a family. Perfect.
Had plotted. As a scientist, he was first an observer. One with a blind spot, apparently.
Parenthood was supposed to be one more plot point on their parallel life trajectories. Like everything else, they expected to achieve it with proper planning and execution. Then a year went by, punctuated every month by an increasingly despondent Deborah. Her fortieth birthday was spent researching in vitro fertilization. Renewed optimism and a mutual trust in the experts now guiding them fortified her briefly, but the two failed IVF cycles had taken her the lowest Christopher had ever seen.
He had hoped Martha’s retirement, after the first, would divert her dogged determination. The top job in the law school advancement office could provide a different kind of satisfaction, he suggested.
She hadn’t even asked for consideration, forcing the search committee to go outside and hire Phillip Crandall, a boss she now despised. Simultaneously, she grew more obsessed with pregnancy, scheduling the New York consultation with the most prominent reproductive endocrinologist in the state. Then came the crash and his promise and confession, and her tears and negotiating.
And in the crucible of the crash aftermath, he’d yielded. Let himself be persuaded, let himself be carried away on a wave of ancient memories, against his first instincts. And now he’d been acting like some love-blind college student the last few weeks, while she was deceiving him.
He tossed his glasses on the desk in frustration and rubbed his temples. How could she? For him, trust was the foundation of their relationship. Any relationship. Her deliberate deception, on an issue with consequences of such magnitude, repelled him.
He clung to the hope of a misunderstanding. That Helen had been misdiagnosed. Or that Matt was wrong, and Helen hadn’t told Deborah, after all. If she had, that Deborah had misunderstood Helen. He wished that they had continued on to Seattle after the crash, after all. Flying cross-country with no luggage or ID now seemed minor compared to the prospect of a wife—and, potentially, a child—with an incurable genetic disease.
Sighing, he stood for the first time in two hours. His office window overlooked Sapsucker Woods. The barren trees created a maze of crisscrossed shadows as Valentine’s dusk neared. A month ago it would have been dark. A month from now it would yet be light. But it was today, and the magpie was calling again.
An hour later Christopher sat in the dark garage, listening to the Volvo’s engine shudder into silence. He had blasted the heater against the February chill all the way home from campus, yet he still felt numb. He forced himself to open the car door.
“There you are.” Deborah put down her phone as he entered the kitchen. “I was just trying you again. Didn’t you get my messages? What happened? All this salad stuff left over the counter. Were you planning to cook?”
He nodded, automatically going to close the cookbook he’d left splayed open, facedown next to the vegetables.
“Oh. Well, I was starving so I went ahead and ate some leftovers. Do you think that’s a good sign? Pregnant women are supposed to be hungry all the time.”
Christopher shrugged. So much for the Valentine’s dinner, not that he felt remotely romantic now, anyway. “I wouldn’t know.”
“I guess not.” She smiled. “I think it’s a good sign. This time feels different, Christopher. I think it might have happened.”
Fear sliced through him as he replaced the Moosewood cookbook where it belonged, in between Molto Italiano and Wolfgang Puck’s Live, Love, Eat. He gazed at her still-flat abdomen underneath the gray wool of her pants, willing answers to the two unknowns. Had the embryos implanted? Did her DNA carry the Huntington’s code? The odds against the former were low, the latter, even. What were the chances both could be true?
“Christopher?” She was looking at him oddly. “Are you OK?”
He raised his eyes to hers. “Matt called this afternoon. While you were still at work.”
“He did?” Her voice climbed higher than the two syllables required. She cleared her throat and turned to the counter, beginning to put away the salad items. “Did he?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll have to call Helen back later. I wonder why he called instead. Did he leave a message?”
“He did, as a matter of fact.” Christopher waited until Deborah turned back to face him. “He wanted to give us the name of a doctor. A specialist, at Columbia. Name’s William Hirsh. He heads up a program they have on Huntington’s disease.”
Deborah’s mouth formed an “O,” and she dropped the salad tongs. They clattered on the porcelain tile, the tile they’d special-ordered when they’d renovated the kitchen five years ago. Quickly she ducked her head as she bent to pick them up, but not quickly enough. A flush rose on her cheeks, igniting the embers of his fury.
“I’ve spent the last two hours at the Lab trying to convince myself you wouldn’t lie to me. Especially about something like this. Tell me I’m not wrong, Deborah. Please tell me.”
Looking down at the tongs, she exhaled for a long minute before she met his eyes and shook her head. “I’m sorry, Christopher. But I couldn’t.”
“It’s true, then.” His voice sounded like a croak. “Your sister’s been diagnosed with a fatal, inherited disease. One you stand a fifty-fifty chance of developing, too.”
“I knew it would be a deal-breaker for you, and I couldn’t abandon them.” She placed her hand on her abdomen.
“And, if it turns out you’re pregnant, one the child could have.”
“Our child.” She looked less sure of herself now. “Our child. Right?”
He opened his mouth to answer. To hurl angry, biting, savage words at her—words he’d never said to any woman before, let alone his wife. The vision from his office flashed into his head. Feeding Deborah in a wheelchair while a faceless child screamed from a high chair. He rushed to the bathroom off the kitchen, where this time he did retch.
Light-headed and weary, he rinsed his mouth and washed his face. Laying down the towel, he met Deborah’s eyes in the mirror. He could read worry now, and fear.
“Christopher?” she said tentatively.
“I’m sleeping in the guest room tonight,” he said.
ELEVEN
Linda set the table for their late, now-cold Valentine’s dinner automatically. From the family room she could hear the TV news.
“. . . we’ve got an update today on the cause of the ‘Miracle on the Hudson,’ that plane that was ditched in the Hudson River last month, resulting in the safe evacuation of all one hundred fifty-five passengers and crew. Kimberly Jones is standing by in Washington. Kimberly?”
Intrigued, Linda walked to the living room.
“Thanks, Bob. I’m here at an NTSB warehouse where the evidence from Flight 1549 is being collected. Investigators are telling us today that inspection of the engines, fished out of the Hudson in the days after the crash and transported here on a flatbed, is now complete and the remnant of a single feather tangled in one confirms initial suspicion that the crash was indeed caused by a bird strike. I spoke with lead investigator Barbara . . .”
The door opening from the garage interrupted the reporter. Hastily, Linda clicked off the TV. Best keep Robby away from anything to do with the crash and birds for the rest of the night.
“Come on in, Robby. Here we go. Mom’s h
ome, let’s just go in and relax now.” Sam was talking himself through the motions of the meltdown recovery as much as he was leading Robby.
“Hi, guys,” Linda said cautiously, looking between them for clues. Sam looked wrung out but grimly victorious. Robby wore a defeated, hunted look. He barely looked at her, let alone greeted her, and went straight to his room. Linda’s stomach sank. Why was it always them vs. him?
In the kitchen, they scooped the rice and divided egg rolls, distributing packets of soy sauce and sweet and sour silently, their memorized preferences like marital fingerprints.
“How you doing?” Linda finally asked.
He shrugged. “All right. Mostly drained. You know.”
“I know.” They sat down at the table. Linda hoped Sam noticed she had put his roses in a vase, an unspoken act of détente.
“So what set him off?” Linda asked.
“Some big upcoming meeting in Lansing. Do you know about this?”
Linda pondered. “I don’t think so. An Audubon meeting?”
“Yeah. A regional meeting of all the clubs in the state, plus a few more. In early April. There’s supposed to be some expert in Canadian geese there. They were really talking it up tonight. Robby wants to go.”
Canada geese, Linda thought. Not Canadian. She felt like she imagined Robby must often, irritated at Sam’s imprecision. But rather than correct him, she just nodded.
“Sounds OK with me.”
“Really? Just like that? Our twelve-year-old autistic son wants to venture a hundred miles from home, and that’s enough detail for you?”
The roses visible from the corner of her eye, Linda bit back her defense. “I take it you’re not OK with it, then.”
“They hit me with it as soon as I walked in the door. I felt ambushed. I tried to put them off politely, saying we’d discuss it. But that wasn’t enough for them, especially this woman who gave him a ride tonight. Paula. She just wouldn’t let up, going on and on about this geese guru. I kept telling Robby I wasn’t saying no, but that you and I had to talk about it first. But that wasn’t good enough. He just lathered himself all up, and that was it.”