Sparrow Migrations

by Cari Noga

  Linda sighed. “The old power struggle.” She took a bite of her Mongolian chicken. “It’s cold.”

  “Yeah.” Sam said to both comments, stabbing a forkful of his sweet and sour.

  “How did Paula react?”

  “Not well.” Sam took a long swallow of his water. “She was scared. It started when they were both in the backseat. I had her get in the front so I could get back there with him and calm him down. She couldn’t get out of there fast enough.”

  Alarm bells rang in Linda’s head. “Do you think she’ll tell the others in the club?”

  Sam cocked his head. “I hope she does. They need to know who they’re dealing with. Especially if you want Robby to go to more meetings alone.”

  “If I want him to go alone. So we’re back to that. You don’t want him to choose anything you haven’t preapproved.”

  “That’s not it. I’m concerned for his safety.”

  “Oh, come on! He’s twelve years old. Almost a teenager. He needs more than the two of us can give him, Sam. He needs his life to be about more than autism. He needs friends, peers in his life.”

  “Peers.” Sam rolled his eyes. “I was younger than most of the crowd at that meeting.”

  “Stop splitting hairs. People who share his interests. You know what I mean. Why should his autism automatically limit him?”

  “It shouldn’t. But it should be a starting point. It’s a fact of life, Linda, and taking risks doesn’t change that.”

  “All right, then. You go to Lansing with him.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.” Linda’s voice was terse, her face tense. “Robby deserves a chance to explore this. I’m fine with him going with the club. If you think it’s so risky, or they might get scared off because of what this Paula saw tonight, you have to make it happen. Talk to the president. Chaperone if you have to.”

  Détente disintegrated, they glared at each other. In the silence, Robby’s bedroom door opened. Linda saw his computer screen illuminated on his desk. No doubt he’d read the latest news on the crash investigation, whatever that TV reporter had said. He walked up to the table and stood there, idly fingering the unopened chopsticks packets.

  “What is it, Robby?” Linda asked.

  He remained silent, staring at the wall behind them.

  “Robby?”

  He opened one of the packets, rolling a chopstick between his fingers.

  “They got the engine out of the river.”

  “I heard that, just before you got home.”

  “Found a feather inside.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “A goose feather. Canada goose.”

  Linda nodded.

  “They got sucked into the engine.”

  “Well. Yes. That’s . . . that’s pretty much what happens.”

  “His name is Donald Baxter.”

  “Who’s that?” Sam interjected.

  “The foremost expert on Canada geese in the entire province of Ontario. Scheduled to be the speaker for the second morning session, Audubon International Midwest Regional, ten thirty a.m., April fourth, Ballroom C, Lansing Radisson.”

  “You Googled him,” Linda said, rhetorically.

  “I need to go.” Robby unexpectedly pivoted from the wall, aiming this last comment at Sam.

  Sam looked at his son. Robby’s brown-eyed gaze had landed somewhere over his shoulder, but at least it was in his vicinity. His headphones were hanging around his neck. His hair brushed the headband, at its usual weeks-past-needing-cutting stage, because sitting still for a haircut and the touch of the barber was such an ordeal. One hand fidgeted with the chopstick. The other was buried in his sweatshirt pocket, stretching the faded blue Detroit Lions logo.

  Sam remembered the game where they’d purchased it, one of those father-son outings he’d so anticipated. With his headphones on, Robby did OK through the first quarter. The Lions had even been ahead for a change. But then they started launching T-shirts into the crowd for some dumb promotion. One hit Robby on the head, and he panicked. In an attempt to soothe him and salvage the day, Sam bought the oversized, hooded sweatshirt on their way out. Maybe it had worked, since Robby wore it almost every day.

  Sam felt Linda’s brown eyes on him, too, telegraphing a plea. Abruptly, he decided.

  “We’re going, Robby. I’ll take you,” Sam said.

  Momentarily, Robby’s gaze flickered to his face. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  Robby stared a moment longer. Captivated by the rare moment of eye contact, Sam willed it to continue.

  Then came the manna from heaven. Robby smiled. “Cool. Thanks, Dad.”

  Back in his room, Robby closed the door feeling happy. He was going to the conference in April. He would meet Donald Baxter. He would learn exactly what had made those geese fly into the plane engine. Then something could be done to change it. The plane engine modified. Or the airports. Or the geese. Something.

  He sat down at his desk and spun his chair. Ah, that felt good. Closing his eyes, he pushed off the floor with his toe again, circling counterclockwise, allowing the rotations to reverberate up though his spine, his body swaying slightly in the seat. The chair slowed. Robby pushed himself off again, clockwise this time. Around and around, the revolutions lulling and soothing.

  When the chair stopped again, he was facing the desk. He pushed aside his notebook and the thick Sibley’s guide. He was learning a lot. He cringed now, recalling the email he’d sent Dr. Felk right after their trip, all worried about goslings orphaned by the crash. Duh, January wasn’t breeding time. He wouldn’t make a mistake like that now. Still he had a long way to go to catch up to Dr. Felk and Donald Baxter.

  He scrolled through Donald Baxter’s website again. Like Dr. Felk, he had gone to Cornell University, where he was something called ABD in biology. That was where his academic path ended. His dissertation was going to be on the reservation in Ontario, but running the place left him no time to write. When journals rejected his submissions on the grounds that he needed a PhD, at least as a co-author, Baxter in turn rejected the field.

  All this was posted in a screed on his site that scorned peer-reviewed ornithology journals as “snobbish, unoriginal, ego-boosting echo chambers.” Baxter now published all his work on his own website. As much as the scoffed-at peers would have loved to find fault with it, Baxter’s work was always meticulously documented and his data replicable when the peers tried it on their own samples. That’s what he said, anyway.

  Robby liked that. He could relate. His favorite subject at school was biology. Technically it was supposed to be taken in eighth grade, but his mom made the school let him take it a year earlier, since the seventh grade general science class was so boring.

  At first, the other, older kids were nice. That led to coaxing him to share his homework or test answers. When he refused, they made fun of him. When he didn’t respond to that, they ignored him. “Ostracized. Outcast,” he’d seen written on his report cards.

  But like Baxter, Robby didn’t care about his status with peers. He always was engaged in his head, and the questions and conversations that others, mostly his parents and teachers, used to try to draw him out were so silly and irritating that he’d never even wanted to pursue friendship with anyone.

  But Paula, from the Audubon Club, was different. She was interested in birds, too. And she offered to give him rides to the meetings and stuck up for him about going to Lansing. He had her number. He would text her that he could go to Lansing, after all.

  “Can come to Lansing,” he typed. Waiting for her reply, he thumbed through the Sibley’s, pausing to brush a finger across several of the delicate sketches and paintings that were the guide’s trademark. He wished he could draw like that.

  “Robby? Is that u?”

  “Yeah. So I’ll meet Donald Baxter.”
<
br />   “??” came back.

  “The geese expert. i found him online.”

  “Oh. Cool.”

  “Can u ride there with us?”

  “To Lansing?”

  “Yeah. Me and my dad.”

  After a long pause the phone beeped back with Paula’s reply.

  “Not sure I can still go. Might have to work.”

  Robby frowned at his phone.

  “U didn’t say that before,” he typed back.

  “I forgot.”

  Robby thought for a moment before he typed back.

  “Can u change it.” Another long pause.

  “I don’t know. Gotta go. C u.”

  A knock startled Robby. He turned to see his mom. “Hey, Robby. Can I come in a minute?”

  Robby shrugged. Instinctively, he folded his arms, hiding the phone under one elbow.

  “What are you doing?” She stepped into the room and removed another pile of bird paraphernalia—more field guides, the Sears binoculars—clearing a space to sit on the bed. Reluctantly, Robby held up his phone.

  “Texting?”

  Robby nodded.

  “With who?”

  “Paula.”

  “The girl from the Audubon Club?” Another nod.

  “Is she a friend of yours?” Robby nodded again, then shrugged.

  “You don’t know?”

  Robby shook his head. “She said she was going to Lansing. Now she says she has to work.” He could feel his worries creeping back. He spun his chair again.

  “Oh. I see.” His mom thought for a minute. “Well, maybe she forgot.”

  “That’s what she said.” He paused. “I don’t forget things.”

  “You don’t. But lots of people do. That doesn’t make them bad. Just forgetful.”

  “Yeah.” Robby sighed, then yawned.

  “It’s getting late, Robby. Time to get ready for bed.”

  “First I have to check the feeder.”

  “OK. Go ahead.”

  He yawned again as he pulled up the blinds. The half-empty feeder hung from the crabapple just outside his window.

  “You’re really getting a lot of birds,” his mom said. “Didn’t you fill it just this morning?”

  Robby nodded, pleased with himself. “I started a yard list.” He held up a notebook. Just as quickly, the smile disappeared. “No geese, though.”

  “No. Well, they migrate, you know.”

  “Sparrows, mostly.” His face suddenly turned mournful. “If somebody fed them in New York, maybe the geese wouldn’t have crashed into the plane.”

  “Oh, Robby.” His mom sighed. “A bird feeder couldn’t have saved them. Geese don’t go to bird feeders. They were migrating, heading south. It’s what they’re programmed to do.” She reached for one of the field guides in the pile, rifling through the pages, as if looking for words to back her up.

  Robby looked out the window. “What about sparrows?”

  “What about them?”

  “Do they—” he paused, afraid of the answer. “Do they migrate?”

  “No.” His mom hesitated. “I’m pretty sure they don’t, anyway. Sparrows just stay.”

  “They just stay.” Robby nodded slowly, satisfied. He gazed out the window. “We better get more birdseed, then.”

  TWELVE

  The wake-up call jarred Brett out of a fitful slumber at the Charlotte Airport Hampton Inn. Airport traffic and somersaulting emotions—sadness over Jackie’s decision, fear about telling Amanda, uncertainty about her future—had kept her tossing and turning much of the night. She turned the water to cold before stepping into the shower. She was meeting Elizabeth the wunderkind grant writer for coffee at nine and wanted to be as alert as possible.

  She was a cup ahead when Elizabeth arrived, the caffeine working as intended. “Thanks for taking the time. I understand you’ve got a very busy schedule.”

  “You’re welcome.” Elizabeth sat down. She wasn’t at all what Brett had expected—short, more than a little overweight, with glasses and short curly hair. “What can I do for you?”

  Harriet had said she would get right down to business. And Richard would expect her to report on next steps back at home. This was her chance to get answers. But beyond asking her to move to Pennsylvania, Brett couldn’t think of specifics.

  “I’m not sure how to answer that,” she said, slowly. “I want to move my church’s operation to something like what you’ve done here. But it seems overwhelming. We’re one church in Scranton. We don’t have the network that you have to share the workload. We don’t have money or anyone with skills like yours to help us get it.”

  “Hmm. So what do you have?” Elizabeth asked, tilting her head.

  “We’ve got a lot of hungry people,” Brett said, after a moment’s thought.

  “I meant the singular you. What do you, Brett, have to bring to the table? For starters, do you have the desire to build it from the ground up? From scratch, networking with the other churches, trying and failing and trying again to get money, all the while still showing up to get dinner on the table every night?”

  “I think I’ve got to build it,” Brett answered, feeling like they were talking in circles.

  “But do you want to build it? Is that how you want to spend your time and energy? From the sound of it, all by yourself, at least for now, and possibly for the next several years? Because if you don’t, then don’t waste your time trying.”

  Elizabeth took a sip of coffee, her eyes never leaving Brett’s.

  “This is a lot of hard, hard work that doesn’t provide much of a paycheck. So you’ve got to be willing to take your pay in other ways. Sure, you’ll get lots of thank-yous. You’ll see people feeling good, and that can make you feel good. And if you’re jumping into someone else’s operation, that might be enough.

  “But if you’re the one building it, you need more. You need drive. You need commitment. You need passion. And it has to come from within.”

  Brett was silent, recalling Richard’s edict to get more involved at Fellowship of Hope. She picked the meal program as her project because it fulfilled some of her own ideals about charity and service. But fundamentally, she was doing it because it was expected of her as the pastor’s wife. Though how much longer would that be true?

  Momentarily, the rhetorical question shocked her. But yesterday she’d been planning how to come out to Amanda, hadn’t she? Divorce would logically come next.

  “Wheels turning, I see,” Elizabeth said.

  “I’m sorry. I’m probably wasting your time.” Brett tried to focus. Her heart was racing, and she felt light-headed. She could do it. Break free. Live her own life.

  “Not at all. I don’t have another meeting until eleven, and I’d certainly rather do this up front than have you waste a whole lot of your own—and probably mine, with e-mails and phone calls—only to discover in ten, twelve, eighteen months that this really isn’t your cup of tea.”

  She took another sip of coffee. “And don’t guilt yourself into it. It’s not a bad thing if this isn’t what you want to do. Just be honest.”

  Be honest.

  Brett thought back to the conversation with Jackie. She’d told her she was done pretending. She had monumental truths to tell Amanda and Richard. Might as well start with Elizabeth.

  “That’s a lot to think about. And not what I expected to hear,” she started. “I thought you’d give me a whole list of websites on grant writing and some boilerplate advice, like ‘start small.’ ”

  Elizabeth smiled. “I surprise a lot of people. But it doesn’t do anyone any good if a food pantry or a meal delivery or any other service like it starts out for the wrong reasons. People start to rely on it. Then whoever runs it burns out. People are worse off than before, because they’ve become dependent. ‘Consider t
he sparrow.’ My personal motto.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The Gospel verse. You know. The Lord watches out for the least of his creatures. Believe me, they’ll flock to you, too. So you’ve got to be sure you’re ready first.”

  “I see,” said Brett, though she didn’t really.

  “You’ve surprised me, too. I’ll tell you, from what I heard about you from Harriet, I thought you’d say you’re ready to sign on to build this thing with your two bare hands.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. She said you asked smart questions. Were good with the folks at last night’s dinner. Not patronizing. Helped out with cleanup even though you didn’t have to. But now it seems like you’re holding back.”

  “That’s all true.” Brett pondered. “I think I am committed to the cause. Meal nights are the highlight of my week.”

  “Tell me about that. Tell me why.”

  No one had ever asked her why. For Richard, it was enough that she did it. Turning her coffee cup as she groped for words, Brett saw her face reflected in the dark-brown circle. She imagined what that fluid woman, untethered from the ties that bound her, would say.

  “Part of it is that I think I’m good at it. It’s not much different than what I’ve done at home all these years, taking care of my daughter. It’s just on a bigger scale.”

  “And you enjoy that kind of caretaking?”

  Brett frowned, thinking. “Enjoy’s not quite the right word. Especially since, as a mother, I don’t have any choice. But doing it for Amanda, I’ve learned the value in it. The importance of it. And at the food pantry, when I’m doing it voluntarily—for people who don’t have anywhere else to get a nutritious meal, or a warm place to sit or a kind word—it just feels right. Like I’m doing what I’m meant to be doing.”

  Brett looked up from her reflection, at Elizabeth, her words gaining momentum.

  “There was this mom who came in a few weeks ago. Young, probably only twenty-one, twenty-two. She had two kids, both of them coughing and sneezing. She didn’t have any insurance, no doctor. I gave her directions to the local free clinic, gave her some bus passes. Last week she was back, both of the kids doing just fine.”