Sparrow Migrations

by Cari Noga

  “Whatcha doing, Robby?”

  Startled, Robby opened his eyes just long enough to locate the disruption. Without a word of response to his dad, he blinked them back shut, and once more clicked “Play.” The song of the Bicknell’s thrush, which the website said had one of the most restricted breeding and wintering ranges in North America, was extraordinary. Just like Dr. Felk said. Below the audio link it said it was recorded by someone named William H. Gunn.

  “Listening to bird songs?” His father was behind him, looking over his shoulder.

  Duh, Dad. Robby swiveled his chair side to side as he pondered. How did William Gunn get the recording? Did he take a microphone out into the woods and just wait? How did Dr. Felk get his? He said he went to Vermont every year to look for it. The website said the thrush’s conservation status was vulnerable. How hard would it be to find a vulnerable bird? He started to click “Play” again when his dad covered his hand on the mouse.

  “Robby. I’m asking questions so I can learn, too.”

  Instinctively, Robby jerked his hand and swiveled his chair away from the touch. But his dad stopped him, grasping the back of the chair and crouching down next to it, at his eye level. “I want to learn, too. Can we do it together?”

  Robby spit out the sweatshirt string and exhaled deeply, blowing his long dark hair out of his eyes. His dad was different since they’d gone to the Audubon conference in Lansing. He yelled less, and sighed less. Robby couldn’t say why. But it had started there.

  “Bicknell’s thrush,” he said, nodding at the screen.

  “That’s the one Dr. Felk likes, right?”

  Robby nodded, clicking play again. The bright, clear trill filled the room.

  “Pretty,” his dad said.

  “I want to hear it, too.”

  “In real life, you mean?”

  Robby nodded.

  “Vermont’s a long ways away.”

  Robby shrugged. “Still want to.”

  “Hmm.” His dad nodded at the computer screen. “Is there more?”

  “Lots.” The website Dr. Felk told him about, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, had thousands and thousands of calls in its acoustic library.

  “Let’s look for something we can find in Michigan.”

  Robby looked doubtful, glancing back at the gray Bicknell’s thrush.

  “Let’s just see. There must be something interesting here.”

  Robby found a US map and clicked over Michigan. The familiar mitten waved back at them, divided into sections. There was also a list of conservation status search choices: critically endangered, endangered, vulnerable, near threatened, of least concern.

  “Bicknell’s thrush is vulnerable,” Robby said, clicking the word.

  “No results found,” his dad read. “Try another one.”

  Robby clicked near-threatened. Two names popped up.

  “Piping plover and Kirtland’s warbler,” his dad read. “You pick.”

  “Piping plover.” Robby decided, clicking. A bird with a pale brown back and white belly appeared, standing on sand. He clicked the audio link, recorded by Geoffrey A. Keller. The bird’s mid-range peeps filled the room. Unlike the Bicknell’s thrush, the notes didn’t climb up the scale but were all even. A bird that went blah, blah, blah, Robby thought. Boring.

  “I liked the Bicknell’s thrush better.”

  “It’s a beach bird,” his dad said, reading ahead. “It nests up north, along Lake Michigan, mostly in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. I went there when I was a kid.”

  “Did you see any?”

  “Not that I remember.” He read aloud further. “Piping plovers return in late April or early May.”

  “April? This month?” Robby said, feeling more excited.

  “Incubation of the nest is shared by both the male and the female. Incubation is generally twenty-seven days,” his dad finished.

  “That means it takes twenty-seven days for the eggs to hatch?”

  “I think so.”

  “So we could see the baby birds if we went in a month.”

  “You’ll still be in school then. We could go in June.”

  “Don’t want to wait until June,” Robby said. June was too long to wait if they returned by early May. Like seventh grade was so important.

  “They’ll still be there, Robby. It says the females don’t leave until mid-July.”

  Robby felt the anger spreading through his body, stiffening his neck, his shoulders, his arms. His hand clenched the mouse. He shook his head hard.

  “Don’t want to wait,” he repeated.

  “I promise, we’ll go after school’s out.” His dad spun his chair so they faced each other. “Can you hear me, Robby? I promise.”

  Robby stared over his dad’s shoulder, out the bedroom window. He could see the bird feeder hanging in the crabapple. The first buds were starting to pop.

  “It’s going to be OK. They’ll be there, and we’ll see them in June. It’s going to be OK.” Sounding far away, his dad’s voice was smooth and even and calm. Kind of like the piping plover’s song.

  Robby looked away from the window, back at the computer screen. He inhaled deeply, like his mom was always telling him to do when he got mad. “In through your nose, out through your mouth,” she would say, demonstrating herself.

  It helped. He could relax his fingers enough to click the audio link again.

  The plover’s sequence of clear peeps resounded again. The first three notes did have a slight rise and fall to them, he realized, sounding almost like a series of pairs: up down, up down, up down. Then came the long, repeated even peeps. He clicked it again, looking at the image of the little brown and white bird on the sand. He liked the beach. Liked feeling sand on his feet. Liked to swim.

  A long time ago he’d overheard Megan, the therapist he saw when he was six or seven, tell his mom that swimming was good for him. “The water pressure provides sensory input,” she had said. Robby remembered it because no one had ever explained that water had pressure. It had scared him a little. The next time they went to the pool, he paused on the steps cautiously, waiting to feel the water squeeze around his ankles. He hadn’t felt anything.

  He had stepped in deeper, to his knees. Still nothing. What did Megan know, anyway? He had plunged in then, the water comforting like so few other places, enveloping his body, muffling noise, buoying him like a pillow.

  As he thought about swimming, imagining seeing the piping plovers on the beach, Robby’s anger stopped throbbing. His hands and arms and legs slackened. His dad’s murmur gradually became louder. “It’s going to be OK. They’ll be there, and we’ll see them in June. It’s going to be OK.”

  The plover’s last peep faded. Robby looked at his father. Straight in the eye.

  “OK, deal. In June.”

  Seeing Richard’s car pull into the garage, Brett unconsciously lifted her fingers from her laptop to her lips, biting her nails. Despite his declaration at dinner, Richard had retreated even further into church business as April had become May. Amanda sequestered herself at school as much as possible. Bivouacked in the former guest room, Brett barely remembered the freedom and giddiness she’d felt moving in. Richard’s grace had left her with an abiding sense of nausea. He was opening the kitchen door.

  “Hi.”

  He nodded. He can’t even bring himself to speak to me, Brett thought, noticing how haggard her husband looked. For the first time, sympathy flickered. All Richard wanted was to go back, back to the way their lives were. And it would never happen. Nor was there solace in memories, since he now knew their perfect Christian family had been a mirage. At least she had the hope of a happier future. She was already trying some of Elizabeth’s suggestions, like fresh produce donations, and the meals were running more smoothly and attracting more guests than ever before.

 
Richard walked around the kitchen counter, carefully keeping a perimeter between them, into the living room and dropped into his chair.

  “So, what would you do with two cases of lettuce, eight pounds of carrots, half a case of bananas, and a lot of cherry tomatoes?” Brett twisted on the counter stool, speaking to the back of his head. “Marge just called after produce pickup rounds. That’s tonight’s haul from the restaurants and grocery stores.”

  Richard didn’t reply, staring into space, away from her.

  “Salad, yes, that’s what I was thinking, too. The bananas could be a take-along, or, if they’re really brown, baked into something. I—”

  Richard cleared his throat, turning to face her. “Brett, this isn’t working.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This lifestyle.”

  “It’s not a lifestyle, Richard. You make it sound like—I don’t know—a decorating theme. It’s my life.” That I’m actually living for the first time, she thought silently.

  “That’s what it feels like. We’ve been married for eighteen years. Together for twenty. Now, all of a sudden, you say it’s all been a fraud.”

  All of a sudden. Brett stood and walked into the living room, facing her husband, her fists curled on her hips. “Do you think I would throw twenty years away on a whim, Richard?”

  “Not the Brett I married. But the Brett I married wouldn’t have lied for years, either.”

  “Richard, you’re making this impossible!” Brett threw up her hands. “You’re angry about me lying, but you don’t want to hear the truth, either. I can’t win for losing.”

  “I guess that’s how you would see it. All about you,” Richard said.

  Through Brett’s tears, his face blurred. He was so wrong. So unfair. For twenty years it had been about nothing but him. And Amanda.

  “You know, you’re not the man I married anymore, either. The man who took me on a mission trip, taught me about servant leadership and social justice, he disappeared years ago,” Brett said hotly. “All you care about is being on the marquee in front of the church. Pastor Stevens. You admitted it yourself at dinner.”

  Richard looked chagrined, then shrugged.

  “It wouldn’t matter if I was just the same, would it? You’re the one who says it’s nature, not nurture.”

  Brett was silent. Richard nodded with grim satisfaction.

  “Well, fine. I’m washing my hands of it. You’ve made your decision. It’s between you and God now. But I’m not tolerating sinfulness under my roof anymore.” He shook his head, leveling her with his eyes. “You move back upstairs. Or out.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  OK, Deborah. Hop up on the table.”

  It was her third appointment with the OB and the first ultrasound since her pregnancy was confirmed. She hadn’t been in this room yet or had this technician, whose scrubs top was covered with scattered rainbows.

  Deborah wondered if Dr. Dunn required cheerily themed attire as a subconscious positive reinforcement. At the end of this first trimester, she was almost ready to allow herself to believe she would finally become a mother. Almost ready to believe it wouldn’t be taken away again. Still, fear vied with anticipation as top of mind. She wanted to see the baby. Yet indulging would destroy her last fig leaf of protection. If something went wrong from here on, after she’d seen her baby, Deborah didn’t know whether she could recover.

  The technician pushed the power switch on a large flat screen TV angled toward the exam table.

  “I’m Kristy,” she introduced herself briskly, settling herself on the wheeled stool. “Just lean back now and pull up your shirt and unbutton your pants for me, please. I’m going to tuck this paper liner in here so we don’t get any of the gel on your clothes.” She rolled away from Deborah on the stool to the counter and pulled on rubber gloves, then took up the tube of gel.

  Deborah looked down at her belly, which had thickened but not yet swelled. “This will be a little cold,” Kristy warned as she squirted, then smeared it around. “All right. Let’s see what we can see.”

  Holding a wand that looked like a tire gauge to Deborah, she began moving it in slow circles around Deborah’s belly. The wand felt warm through the thick gel. The television screen changed from black to a pulsing, grayish-blue hue. “Is that the baby?” Deborah asked, leaning forward.

  “Lean back, please. I need you to remain still.” Deborah leaned back, her eyes never straying from the screen. “That’s your uterus. I’m trying to find the baby inside. Let’s try a little lower.”

  Deborah felt her pants tugged down farther, the wand brushing just above her pubic bone. “Ah. There we are.”

  A white, comma-shaped blob floated onto the screen. Instinctively trying to see better, Deborah sat up again. The picture flickered and disappeared. She leaned back before Kristy could correct her. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Can you get it back again? Please try to get it back.”

  “Relax,” Kristy resumed the wand’s slow motion. The blob reappeared, larger and closer this time. Deborah could see tiny webbed fingers and toes protruding from what looked like stunted arms and legs. “Ah, she’s giving us a profile. Good girl,” Kristy murmured.

  “You can tell it’s a girl?” Deborah asked. Kristy paused and squinted.

  “Well, I don’t see anything that would indicate a boy. How far along are you, again?”

  “About twelve weeks.”

  “Right. Too early to say officially, then. I guess that was just a reflex. You seem like you’re going to have a girl. Working here, you get a feeling for these kinds of things.”

  With a red laser pointer, she indicated the baby’s eye socket and ear. A throbbing white dot was the heartbeat. Deborah could see the bump of the nose, and a big belly. Then, after freezing the image on the screen, Kristy wiped the gel off.

  “You’re all done. How many prints would you like?”

  “Excuse me?” Deborah’s eyes were fixed on the screen, but her mind was thinking about Christopher. She had imagined this moment so many times, sharing their first glimpse of their child. It was never supposed to be her first glimpse of their child. But Christopher knew nothing of the appointment; she was meeting Julia at the smoothie shop afterward to debrief. He would say that was another consequence of her unilateral decision to go ahead with the transfer. But hadn’t he acted just as unilaterally in moving out?

  “How many prints would you like? People usually want a few, for family members.”

  Deborah winced. So far, she was the only family her child was assured. Christopher would point out even that wasn’t guaranteed, given Helen’s diagnosis. “Two will be fine,” she said, still watching the screen.

  “Two it is.” Kristy peeled off her gloves and regarded Deborah with her hands on her hips. “OK. You need a few more minutes to look at your baby. We’re not busy. You go ahead. I’ll be right back.”

  “Thank you,” Deborah whispered, dimly aware of being left alone. She slid off the table and approached the screen, thoughts of Christopher fading. Her baby was real. Her baby. The image was like a magnetic field, drawing her inexorably toward it. There in black and white, curled up on a forty-inch screen, was a baby she could recognize, even without Kristy’s guided laser tour.

  With her palm she could cover the magnified image of the head. She traced along the spine, and then rested her finger over the tiny hands. It was a crystalline moment, one that captured the essence of motherhood: to protect and nurture and love, ferociously and unconditionally. Physically, the baby looked almost alien. Yet Deborah felt instantaneous attachment. Christopher should be here, she thought. Seeing is loving, no matter what secrets were within the invisible double helix that twined inside.

  “Hello, baby girl,” she said softly. “I can’t wait to meet you.”

  At the reception desk, Kristy handed her the pictures. “We’ll probably see you aga
in in another six weeks or so. Be able to tell if I was right about a daughter by then.”

  “I’ll be here,” Deborah said.

  Her cell phone rang as she stepped outside with her two-dimensional treasures.

  “I’m running late. Be there in fifteen minutes,” Julia said.

  “OK.”

  “How did it go?”

  “Perfect.” Deborah answered. She carefully stepped around a puddle, not wanting to disturb the cluster of sparrows splashing there. “Just perfect.”

  “Welcome to Ithaca, Brett. We’re so glad to have you here.”

  “Thank you.” Brett shook hands with Pastor Susan Ellis. “Call me Pastor Sue,” said the chair of the Ithaca Interfaith Alliance board of trustees, who had posted the Alliance’s director position on Elizabeth’s website.

  “This is Julia Adams, another board member and volunteer,” Pastor Sue continued. “She’ll be participating in the interview today, too.” Brett shook hands with a very pregnant woman who looked to be in her late thirties.

  “Pleased to meet you both. I’m glad to be here, too,” Brett said automatically. How long had it been since she’d done a job interview? Years, no question. But she didn’t feel as nervous as she’d expected around these two. They were in Pastor Sue’s office, a cramped cinder block box that reminded her of Richard’s.

  Still, there was plenty of adrenaline pumping. This job seemed so perfect. Foreordained, even. She’d visited the website a few times without luck before this posting came up, within two weeks of Richard’s ultimatum. Ithaca was barely a hundred miles from Scranton. An easy weekend drive for Amanda, who was at driver’s training at that very moment. And in the state of New York, home to a host of drama schools.

  “We appreciate you taking the time to come up,” Pastor Sue said. “We’ll talk here, then go over to Immaculate Conception—that’s the Catholic church scheduled to host tonight’s dinner—so you can see some of our operation. Hopefully we’ll have you back on the road home by seven.”