Sparrow Migrations

by Cari Noga

  “There.” Elizabeth smiled. “Now you’re not holding back.”

  “In college I went on a mission trip with my husband. We built a community center. Really built it. Fourteen-hour days wearing hard hats and carpenter’s aprons. That was my first taste of that kind of satisfaction, of helping serve social justice, whatever you want to call it,” Brett went on. “I loved it. But where I am now, this is part of the role my husband—he’s the pastor—assigned. He thinks of it almost like recruitment.”

  “Come for the meal, stay for the sermon.” Elizabeth said dryly.

  “Exactly. If I could run it completely my way, yeah, I’d sign up for another hard hat.”

  “Hmmm.” Elizabeth gave her a long look. “It’s none of my business, but everything points to more to your story than you’re sharing. It’s fine to keep it to yourself. But if you do have the drive, and the ability and talent, you need to use it. There’s a lot of people who can’t do for themselves. Lots of sparrows.

  “So you don’t like being under your husband’s thumb. Plenty of food pantries and meal programs, you know. Maybe it’s time to see what else is out there.” Elizabeth reached into her purse.

  “One of my pet projects has been a little online network. Nobody’s doing anything new here; we’re all feeding hungry people, just finding better ways to do it. Might as well learn from each other. It’s pretty rudimentary right now, but there is a jobs page.”

  She handed Brett a card printed with a website. Eastcoastpantries.org. “When you figure out if you’re ready, check it out.”

  Brett accepted the card. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it.” Elizabeth stood up. “I hope you’ll use it.”

  THIRTEEN

  Withdrawing the needle, Dr. Singh’s nurse pressed a cotton ball on the inside of Deborah’s elbow, secured it with a bandage and lifted her arm in one expert, practiced move. “Keep this elevated. I’ll be right back.”

  Deborah watched her leave with the precious, portentous vial. The whole plodding two-week wait was down to these last glacial minutes, which she would endure alone in the exam room. With a shuddering sigh she closed her eyes, remembering being here last with Christopher, and for the first time questioning whether she’d done the right thing fourteen days ago.

  At home in Cayuga Heights, Christopher remained decamped in the guest room, leaving before she awoke in the mornings, staying late at the Lab in the evenings. After she missed him two mornings, she had set her alarm an hour earlier. Padding into the kitchen, she noticed the cold coffeepot. Making coffee was one of Christopher’s morning rituals.

  “Are we out?” She knew they weren’t. She’d bought a thirty-two-ounce can of decaf.

  He glanced up from his cereal bowl and shook his head. “I was going to pick up something on campus. Early meeting.”

  “Oh.” She crossed her arms, considering his profile. His shoulders looked tense and rigid. Sitting next to him, she laid a hand on his arm. “Christopher, we need to talk about this.”

  Deliberately, he moved his arm away from her touch.

  “I don’t know what there is to say until you get the results.”

  “Until I get the results? Christopher, if the pregnancy test is positive, we’re going to have a baby. It’s going to be ours.”

  He shook his head, pushing away the bowl. “Doesn’t feel that way.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You say it’s ours, but you’re instigating all the decisions.” He ticked off on his fingers. “Trying again. Three embryos. Withholding the information about Helen.” He shook his head again, looking directly at her for the first time in three days. “I don’t recognize you. It’s like nothing I want matters anymore.”

  “You wanted kids, too! You told me. So you could be the father you never had.”

  “I did, but I’d come to terms with the fact that we probably weren’t having a family. Until you maneuvered me into this last try, after the crash.”

  “That’s not fair. I didn’t know about Helen in New York.”

  “But you knew before the transfer. Right?”

  She hesitated, then nodded.

  He stared at her and threw up his hands. “How can you be so cavalier?”

  “I’m not cavalier! I take my responsibility as a mother very seriously. I told you, I couldn’t let anything happen to them.” She’d covered her abdomen.

  “Responsibility lasts a lot longer than nine months. Have you researched Huntington’s? At all?”

  “Helen told me about it,” she said, defensively.

  “She told you about the disintegration of ambulatory function? Followed by the cognitive decline? Dementia? The proportion of patients who wind up needing full-time nursing care?”

  Deborah bit her lip. Dementia? Full-time nursing care?

  “I guess not.” Christopher looked grimly satisfied. “Now say we’ve got a baby, too. You’d both be dependent on me. Until I become a single father.”

  “Single father? Christopher, really, that’s a bit melodramatic.”

  “It’s a risk, Deborah. A real, bona fide risk. One that scares me. Even if you don’t have the gene, the lives we’ve built together are gone. This kind of a breach of trust is foundational.”

  “We’d build a new foundation as a family. We’d have new lives. All three of us.”

  “All three of us,” Christopher had repeated, shaking his head as he stood to leave. “I don’t think I can do it, Deborah.”

  “Good morning, Deborah.” Dr. Singh interrupted her reverie. Startled, Deborah looked up. The doctor’s smile flashed brilliantly, blindingly. “I’m thrilled to tell you, the third time was the charm. You’re pregnant.”

  Dr. Singh was reciting the lines Deborah had scripted when she first imagined this scene two years ago, and her spirit duly soared as the guard she had held over her hope vanished. But this perfunctory, three-second doctor-patient hug was not the next cue. Christopher was supposed to be here, the fact of their fait accompli releasing an emotional dam that would sweep him into the current of joy and anticipation where she waited, and carry them forward together.

  The rest of the appointment was crowded with details—scheduling an ultrasound and choosing an OB and more. None of the teary smiles or locked gazes or fervent kisses of her imagined scene. Now she was walking to her car alone, trying to allow herself to believe it. Well, as alone as you could be when pregnant.

  Pregnant. The two syllables bounced around in her head. She said it aloud. “I’m pregnant.” Incredulously, Deborah touched her abdomen.

  Only one embryo had successfully implanted. Dr. Singh told her that was good. The pregnancy would be less taxing, and she was more likely to carry the baby, most likely G, to term. Still, she felt a pang for the loss of E and F. She tried to push it away, to recapture that first, brief soaring sensation. She had always expected pure joy at this moment.

  Now she had to tell Christopher. She glanced at her watch and turned the key in the ignition. His afternoon office hours began in twenty minutes. Best get it over with. The pang echoed. This wasn’t how she expected to feel, either.

  She drove to campus in a kind of stupor, adrift now that her script was useless. Inside Christopher’s office she removed a pile of folders from the designated student chair and sat, drumming her fingers on his desk. A laptop was on sleep mode. A light on the office phone indicated there were messages waiting. His cell phone was charging on top of a pile of folders set crossways to each other, to indicate some sort of separation, she supposed. Post-it notes with reminders and to-dos were stuck on every conceivable surface. Yet across from the laptop a three-month whiteboard calendar was almost bare except for a notation April 4–5: Midwest Regional Audubon.

  The door opened. Reading while he walked and automatically aiming for his chair, Christopher heard Deborah before he saw her.

&nb
sp; “Pretty slow around here, huh?”

  Lowering the papers, he did a double take. “Deborah. What are you doing here?”

  She nodded at the whiteboard. “Doesn’t look like there’s much going on.”

  He squinted at the whiteboard and shrugged. “My calendar’s loaded on my phone. I don’t even know who wrote that conference up there.”

  “Well, I’ve got another date for you to save. But it’s a little further out than the next quarter.” Deborah scrutinized his face, hoping for something—a nod, an eyebrow lift, a cock of the head—that would show he’d been anticipating this moment.

  Nothing. He was still skimming his papers.

  “And that would be?” He edged around the piles to his chair, rolling to the keyboard.

  “Can you guess?”

  He sighed, sounding impatient. “Deborah, I’ll have students here for office hours any minute. I don’t have time for games.”

  “I’ll give you a hint. Dr. Singh was the one who told me.”

  Christopher looked up. She felt the blood in her temples pound as he removed his glasses and massaged his own temples. She had never noticed before how his hands steepled together when he did that, as if in prayer. A minute ticked by audibly on the office wall clock.

  “And?” He still wasn’t looking at her, his face hidden beneath the slope of his hands.

  “November ninth. Save the date for the birth of your child.” Her voice turned up as she finished the sentence. Like a game show host or a telemarketer, trying to close the deal. The deal of the century. Or a lifetime, anyway. The child’s lifetime. Would it be a life with two parents, or just one?

  “Wow.” Christopher leaned back in his chair, finally dropping his hands to his lap. Did she see the briefest smile? The sudden movement sent his chair rolling backward until it bumped into the window. Maybe not. His face was drained, as flat as the gray day behind him.

  “You had a blood test. There’s no doubt.”

  “No doubt.”

  “You said child. Just one?”

  “Just one.”

  “Wow.” He stood and turned to the window. “I never—I just never expected this to happen to us,” he finished, pressing his face to the glass, steepling his hands again. To Deborah they looked like blinders, shutting her out. Her and their baby.

  “What, you thought this round would fail, too?” Deborah asked.

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Then what? I don’t understand.”

  “After the crash, pregnant or no, I was ready for what came next. Because we were stronger together.”

  Deborah looked at her lap. She could feel his impending accusations—she was wrong, she had deceived, she had betrayed—swirling like a tornado, sucking everything innocent into its path, leaving wreckage in its wake.

  But she had a mighty force within her now, too. Maternal ferocity. After her own muted first reaction, she was grateful to feel some emotion, some energy about the pregnancy. At what should have been a moment of euphoria, he chose to hold a grudge against her and the baby. Based on one decision over more than a decade together, ignoring everything else that was good between them, but most important, ignoring the child.

  “But I never expected you’d deceive me,” Christopher said. “And that’s too fundamental to move forward.”

  “Christopher, I don’t even know what that means. I’m pregnant. We’re going to be parents. This is already moving forward. Nine months and counting.”

  Stalemated, they stared at each other. A knock on the door broke the silence.

  “That’s my first appointment,” Christopher said hoarsely.

  “Fine. We’ll talk at home, then.” Deborah picked up her purse and turned toward the door.

  “I won’t be coming home tonight, Deborah.”

  His sentence was like a blade, slicing through her. She turned back.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I need some space. Some time to think.”

  “Think about what?”

  “Whether I can do this.”

  Another knock filled in for Deborah’s silent shock. “Professor Goldman? You in there?”

  Christopher stood up, opened the door and motioned the student in. “I’ll call you in the next couple days.”

  FOURTEEN

  Richard stood up, swallowing the last of his coffee. “I’ll see you there, then, in an hour?”

  “Yes.” Brett sat at the kitchen table, still eating.

  “Try to sit up front. You’ve been too far back the last couple weeks. The congregation needs to see you. Especially after those trips out of town. People don’t need any excuse to gossip, you know.”

  Brett started, sloshing her coffee. “OK. I’ll look for a better spot.” She steadied her cup with both hands as she watched him pull on his jacket. Gossip? Did someone suspect something? Did he?

  “Good. What’s taking Amanda so long? Amanda!” Backing away, he called down the hall. Since she sang in the choir, Amanda left with him before Brett.

  “Richard, do you need to see me?” Spoken aloud, her own question surprised her. After all, it didn’t matter anymore, did it?

  Her husband looked nonplussed. “What kind of question is that?” Jingling his keys, he looked back down the hall again.

  “Amanda! Aren’t you ready yet?”

  Amanda appeared in her bedroom doorway.

  “There you are. Come on, we’re running late.”

  “See you later, Mom.” Amanda reached for her coat as Richard stood with the door open, issuing her instructions. “Remember what I told you before about blending in with the rest of the choir.”

  “I know, Dad.” Hearing the resignation in her voice, Brett felt angry. His manufactured family modesty was sabotaging Amanda’s talent. She hadn’t realized herself how good Amanda’s voice was until she was cast in the play as Rizzo, the bad girl opposite Sandy, the female lead. Songs from Grease now echoed around the house—at least when Richard was out. He had sighed when she told him about it. Amanda should have had the chance to share that kind of news with her father. Nine out of ten would have been proud and happy. But Richard was the tenth, who would have lectured her just like he was doing now.

  “It would be a poor example to the congregation to look like I’m showing off my daughter.”

  “I know, Dad. You’ve told me, like, a hundred times,” Amanda said, as the door closed.

  Carrying her dishes to the sink, Brett stared out at the bird feeder. She recalled her husband’s words. What kind of question is that? One seeking an answer that would allow her to stay? Do the easy thing? No. She had to stop stalling. Had to tell him the truth.

  But he hadn’t answered her question, either. Were she and Amanda nothing more than props to him, after all? Dutiful wife in the pew, daughter in the choir? Even if their marriage had been reduced to roommate status, he was still Amanda’s father. Brett wanted to know someone could matter to him.

  She thought it again at church. Richard held center stage at the pulpit. In her choir robe, Amanda was upstage right. In her Sunday best, Brett sat stage left. Human bookends, propping up the head of the household. As Richard droned on, with the air of self-righteousness she had complained about to Jackie, Brett stared out the window. This mockery of a family ritual was almost painful. She tried to numb herself, her thoughts drifting.

  It was her first night with Jackie. Her first time with any woman. They lay together, the incessant New York traffic muted by the twenty floors between bed and street, and by the white noise roaring in Brett’s head.

  “. . . I’m sure I don’t have to remind anyone that Valentine’s Day was this week.” Obligatory chuckles from the congregation barely penetrated Brett’s fantasy. The white noise was the shredding of the rigid expectations and bigoted beliefs that she had bowed to all her life: that it was
wrong to be here, naked, with Jackie.

  “Now that the chocolates are gone and the roses are wilting, let us go forward thinking about God’s love for us,” Richard intoned. “God loves us more than we can possibly love each other—our wives, husbands, children. His love is unconditional, all-encompassing, three hundred and sixty-five days a year.”

  The white noise was a vacuum, sucking away past fears and future worries. Only the present time and place mattered, only Jackie smiling the smile that matched her voice—warm and lingering.

  “But for us to feel that love, to experience that wonderful purity his love offers, we must be pure ourselves. We must ask for his forgiveness for the times we have failed to follow his path. We must bare our true, sinful souls to the Lord.”

  The white noise smoothed and buffered Brett’s uncertain, clumsy response as Jackie caressed her bare skin, her soft hands tracing south from Brett’s collarbone, gently, so tantalizingly gently.

  “In today’s bulletin you’ll find a selection of Bible verses on truth and falsehood. I invite you to pray over them this week. I believe they will help you find the strength, the courage, to reveal yourself fully. I’d like to share some of my favorites.

  “John, chapter four: ‘. . . True worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.’”

  On the hard pew, Brett shifted her hips, imagining Jackie’s hand seeking places, hidden places, farther down her body. Her cheeks flushed. She gripped the hymnal tightly over her lap. Richard’s words ricocheted inside her head. The white noise roared louder, beginning to pulse through Brett’s entire body as Jackie’s phantom fingers swept lower still.

  “Proverbs, chapter eight, verse seven: ‘For my mouth shall speak truth; and wickedness is an abomination to my lips.’ ”