If Birds Fly Back

by Carlie Sorosiak

  “Kind of.”

  “You never talk about her.”

  “Well, she’s—complicated.”

  “Hmm,” he says. “Okay. Books.”

  “What?”

  “New category: ‘books.’”

  Fast-forward to the next morning. When I wake up, the phone is still in my hand.

  THE LEFT-BEHINDS (SCENE 15)

  LINNY’S BEDROOM

  On the floor of her bedroom, LINNY pores over a book entitled The Art of Growing Wings. Around her are spots of color, although she is still in black and white.

  Closing her eyes really hard as if wishing for something, she feels between her shoulder blades. Nothing is sprouting there.

  30.

  Sebastian

  “Every physicist dreams of that eureka moment.” A Brief Compendium of Astrophysical Curiosities, p. 54

  The sky is still waking up, but it’s going to be a scorcher of a day. Hotter than usual. Linny and I crouch on the curb outside of Silver Springs, clutching our stomachs, waiting for the police to leave.

  “Sucks,” I say. Can’t even muster the This.

  Linny touches my knee. “Let’s just stick to what we discussed. I’m going to pretend that I’ve left something in Álvaro’s room, and we’ll probably get a little while to look around.”

  Tilting my head back to the sky—“And what if we don’t find any clues?”

  She crosses her fingers but doesn’t say another word.

  By 9:30 a.m., the police are gone. As planned, Linny pretends that she’s lost a necklace—“My favorite necklace, Marla. From my favorite, deceased grandmother.”

  So she lets us into Álvaro’s room with “Y’all have five minutes, and then I’m going to need my key back. Good lord, it’s supposed to be my day off! As soon as you finish, I’m going home.”

  His room is messier than yesterday. Toppled piles of typewritten pages are everywhere. Un desastre.

  “Careful,” Marla says, “don’t disturb anything.”

  Disturb anything? How could it be any worse than this?

  Walking farther into the mess, Linny gingerly lifts up a few papers on Álvaro’s nightstand, scattering cigarillo butts. Her back is to me.

  A yellow manila envelope on his desk catches my eye. Fan mail, I think. Except when I turn it over . . .

  “Linny.” I clear my throat. “Linny. Didn’t you say you thought your necklace was over here?”

  She steps across the room and peers at the envelope’s address with me.

  It’s not a package to Álvaro. It’s a package from Álvaro that has yet to be sent.

  In shaky blue ink, it reads: Joe. 112 Seahorse Drive, Miami, Florida.

  Linny and I exchange glances: Joe. Could this be the real address?

  The package is unsealed. Inside: about a hundred scraps of paper. The scraps Álvaro’s been keeping in his pocket, most likely.

  A REVISED RULE FOR SMALL-SCALE OBJECTS IN RELATION TO FATHER-BASED MYSTERIES:

  The aforementioned display a high correlation with eureka moments.

  Linny’s fingers dance on the desktop.

  Room, spinning.

  Head, clouding.

  “Did you find it?” Marla says behind us.

  “You know what?” Linny says, turning around. “I went swimming yesterday at my friend’s house. I bet it’s at the bottom of her pool.”

  Marla eyes us suspiciously, crosses her arms. “Mm-hmmm.”

  “I’ll check this afternoon,” Linny says. “That’s it, then. You coming, Sebastian?”

  We flee down the hall.

  31.

  Linny

  WHO: Actress Doris Clemens, famous for her portrayal of Perdita in The Night Robbers

  WHEN: Shortly after the film’s release

  WHY: No one saw her for seven years. Turns out, she had purchased a large, secluded house in Montana’s smallest town and had her groceries delivered via courier. The only reason she finally left the house, reports say, was a great flood. Someone recognized her distinctive seagull necklace in the lifeboat.

  NOTES: How do I summon floods? (Too much? Desperate times, desperate measures.)

  “My favorite necklace,” I tell Marla. “From my favorite, deceased grandmother. And obviously she can’t get me a new one and I—”

  “Y’all have five minutes.”

  The stench hits me first; Álvaro’s room smells like a damp laundry/old-bacon smoothie. (Yum.) I pick up my feet extra high as I step around the typewritten pages. Somehow the mess is sucking me in, like tornado arms.

  Gross. More cigarillo butts on his nightstand. Several land on the top of my right shoe, and as I’m kicking them off, I see it: a sliver of blue tucked into a copy of The Old Man and the Sea.

  Carefully, silently, I slip the photograph from the book, that splinter of blue sky giving way to a family. Colors burst off the image. There’s a woman wearing an orange dress, her black hair pulled into a loose bun. And next to her is Álvaro—the Álvaro I know from his book jacket. He’s young, relatively speaking, and is reaching up to push a stray lock from the woman’s face. On his head is that trademark fedora, tilted up so you can see his entire face. The woman’s looking wobbly eyed at him; Álvaro’s looking wobbly eyed at her. Both are smiling these lunatic grins.

  And there’s a baby in her arms.

  No, it’s not possible—Sebastian said that Álvaro never knew about him, that his mom didn’t tell him. No. This is another baby, another mother. Sebastian must have a sibling.

  My index finger runs along the dimpled back of the photograph. And as I flip it over, my heart runs for cover. In blue pen—in handwriting I recognize—Álvaro has written: Maria, Sebastian, me, South Beach.

  Holy bananas.

  Álvaro didn’t just leave Sebastian’s mom. He left Sebastian. He knows about Sebastian!

  This all happens in a matter of seconds, but my whole body feels like it’s wrapped in gauze. I’m unsettled, can’t quite make out the edges of anything—the lamp on the nightstand blurs out of focus.

  What on earth do I tell Sebastian? Do I tell him? Abandonment is a feeling I know all too well. Why would I put that on someone else?

  “Linny,” he says. “Linny. Didn’t you say you thought your necklace was over here?”

  And in a moment of desperate panic, I stuff the picture into my backpack.

  THE LEFT-BEHINDS (SCENE 16)

  LINNY’S BEDROOM—THE NEXT DAY

  CLOSE-UP—

  LINNY again feels for wings that are not there. . . .

  32.

  Sebastian

  “No matter how much we think we understand a question, we may not immediately comprehend the answer.” A Brief Compendium of Astrophysical Curiosities, p. 77

  Linny insists that bolting this early in the morning—and so soon after a police investigation—looks too suspicious. So we wait, pulling up two chairs in the cafeteria and mulling over our findings.

  “Those scraps must be the notes Álvaro’s been writing to himself,” I say. “And he’s been sending them to Joe? Why?”

  Linny scratches the back of her ear. “I really have no idea. But . . . I think Joe’s really, really important to Álvaro, judging by the way he talks about him. Maybe they did play dominoes every Saturday—even during the three years that Álvaro first disappeared. That makes sense, right?”

  “I guess.”

  “Which means that . . . I don’t know . . . Joe hid Álvaro? Possibly at the address we just found? I’m willing to bet, if that’s right, then Álvaro wandered back to 112 Seahorse Drive.”

  “Maybe. But how can we trust that it’s the right address?”

  She sighs. It could be just me—but I get the feeling something’s bothering her. Something more than Álvaro. “We can’t. But it’s the best that we’ve got.”

  Just after lunch, we fake food poisoning (highly unoriginal, I know, but it works every time) and escape the rest of our shift.

  “Forget our bikes,” Linny says,
bulleting out the door. “And no buses. Let’s take a taxi.”

  We hail one down the street from Silver Springs. Inside I blurt out the address and—vroom—the driver presses hard on the gas.

  Across the seat, Linny grips my hand, but she’s not meeting my eyes. Her nose presses against the window. Puffing clouds that fog up the glass.

  The beach floats by. Then green and pink buildings. Tourists on bikes. Shops selling neon T-shirts and souvenir mugs with naked women on them. Lots of convertibles with people waving their hands in the air.

  Twenty minutes later, we’re starting to hit suburbia: manicured lawns, tire swings, little kids screaming through sprinklers in the street.

  More puffing from Linny.

  When the taxi stops, that’s how I see the property: through a haze. Like it’s emerging from a jungle mist. We’re in the same neighborhood as Agnes’s house, only much farther down the road.

  “Here you go,” the driver says. He swivels around to face us. A hummingbird tattoo sits above his left eyebrow. “You want me to wait around for a little while?”

  Linny says, “No, I don’t think so, probably not.”

  I pull a wad of bills from my pocket, and Linny chips in as well.

  As we step onto the sidewalk, the clouds start turning a threatening shade of gray. Like the night sky in Dark Ops Resolution.

  Peering up, I say, “That’s promising,” and Linny says, “This definitely seems like the place. Don’t you think? The real place.”

  She’s probably right. It’s set way, way back from the other houses. Overgrown orange trees abound. You can barely see the house from the sidewalk. The yard’s humongous. Wild. Like whoever lives here has surrendered it to nature.

  “Wouldn’t this be so scary on Halloween?” Linny says, bending down to pick up a decaying orange. “I bet they don’t get a lot of trick-or-treaters.”

  It’s the perfect place to hide and never be found.

  “You ready?” she says.

  “No.”

  A pause. “How about now?”

  “Not even close, but let’s go.”

  Fending off orange tree branches, we follow the broken slate pathway to the front door. (One hundred steps. Holding my breath the whole time.) On the exterior, yellow paint peels in wide strips.

  “Do you want to knock,” Linny says, “or should I?”

  “You do it.”

  Slowly, she raps twice on the door. Maybe no one’s home. Or maybe someone is home and doesn’t want visitors?

  Mierda. It’s raining. Drip, drip in increasingly large beads. A crack of lightning splits through the sky.

  “Did you know,” I ask Linny, “that forty-nine Americans a year die from lightning strikes?”

  Her tank top is already clinging to her skin. (Not that I mind.) “Well, I do now.”

  Just then headlights peek through the sheet of rain, through the orange trees. Investigating, we rush back along the slate path in enough time to see a silver Honda slow to a halt in front of the mailbox. Out steps a woman with a bag of groceries in her hands. She trots around the car before she sees us.

  And absolutely freezes.

  WTF THEORY:

  Even if you understand the question, the answer may punch you in the gut.

  33.

  Linny

  WHO: Richard Walker, animal behaviorist and presenter for The Magnificent World of Birds

  WHEN: Two days in January 2011

  WHY: His prized owl, nicknamed Lucy, flew out of sight during a controlled hunt in northwest Scotland. Richard ditched his camera crew and began to look for her; he returned when Lucy did not come back.

  NOTES: Sometimes I wonder if Álvaro and Grace belong in the animal kingdom.

  In the cab, I almost blurted out everything to Sebastian. It was right on my tongue—a bird about to take flight. There is a picture in my backpack! Your dad knew about you all along! Instead, the words built and built until they buried me.

  Keeping secrets is wrong, but is telling him worse? How do you protect the boy you love when what you know will break him?

  And now doesn’t feel like the best time to mention it, as we’re standing in the pouring rain, realization knocking us off our feet. You know in movies when, right before a character receives life-altering news, someone says, “I think you’ll wanna sit down for this?” Well, I wish someone had forewarned me and offered a chair.

  Even though her paper grocery bag is quickly collapsing, even though the rain’s slicking down her hair, Marla casually clears her throat. “Miss Marilyn. Sebastian. What are you doing in this part of town?”

  Us? What are you doing here?

  Rain drizzles into my mouth as I stutter, “There—there was a package in Álvaro’s room. It was made out to this address.”

  Marla shifts the weight of the grocery bag to her left hip. “Huh. Sure it was this address? You know Mr. Herrera, he gets—”

  “Confused sometimes,” Sebastian says. “We know.”

  Her mouth tightens into a straight line as she sucks on her teeth.

  I plunge my hands into my pockets. “Sebastian and I have been looking for this address all summer, and . . . well, we just want to know what’s going on.”

  She squints at us. “What’s going on with what?”

  Everything I’ve written about Álvaro in my journal scrolls through my mind, along with everything we’ve discovered today. Think, think, think, Linny. Exchanging a quick glance with Sebastian, who looks equally rocked, I sift through the possibilities and sum up a final theory. “We just wanted to know where he went, three years ago, and why he came back. Maybe . . . maybe . . . I’m not sure why Joe hid Álvaro, but I think that he did . . . and this is Joe’s house?” I must’ve stumbled onto something, because she goes even more rigid—full-on oak tree. “Is Joe your . . . um . . . brother or dad or something?”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see a mixture of confusion and anguish invading Sebastian’s face. “Is Álvaro here?” he asks.

  Marla examines us for a long moment, threads of hair sopping against her forehead, and then puffs out a gust of air that blows us back. “Who else knows about this?”

  “Just us,” I say.

  “In that case, you better come inside before we get swallowed up by this rain.” Following her, we duck underneath the orange trees and hurry toward the front steps, where Marla passes Sebastian the grocery bag and fumbles with her keys, hands trembling. She unclicks the lock, tries to push the door open, fails—and then presses her full weight against it, like she’s attempting to break it down. “Gets stuck sometimes,” she explains.

  Stepping inside, I can see why.

  Holy bananas to the extreme.

  Behind the door is a pile of paperwork that could eclipse the sun, and behind that is its mother. You can tell that at one point the house had an open floor plan, but now it’s . . . Okay. Have you seen the TV show Hoarders, where people accumulate so much stuff that it threatens to eat them? Like, they’re crawling on their hands and knees over piles of empty cereal boxes and tuna fish cans? This isn’t far from a TLC special, not far from the creepiest-yet-coolest place I’ve ever been—think Aladdin’s cave; think Álvaro’s room at Silver Springs times ten.

  But that’s not all: I haven’t even mentioned the paintings, just visible, hanging on each wall: twelve-foot-tall oils in the brightest colors I’ve ever seen. They’re of a garden. Eden? Wherever it is, I want to go there now.

  Sidestepping several paper pillars, we follow Marla into the kitchen, where Sebastian thunks the bag on the only empty space on the counter. I drop my backpack on the linoleum—the picture of Sebastian and Álvaro calling out to me from the interior pocket. Ugh, what am I going to do about that?

  “So if we’re going to talk about this,” she says, “we need some lemonade.”

  I almost laugh. “Yeah, okay.”

  And in a voice with no laughter in it, Sebastian says, “Where’s Álvaro?”

  “Out back,” Mar
la says. “He knocked on my door right after my shift. Almost gave me a heart attack. Lord, I’m telling you, I was glad to see him. Not so glad he wandered off again, but glad he came here. I should’ve known he would.” She pauses. “I’ll get y’all some towels. Go and sit on the porch. I’ll be right there in a minute.” She points us down the hall to a ginormous screened-in porch with double fans, overlooking the garden from the paintings. Now I feel as if I really have been struck by lightning. How many times can you say whoa before it becomes redundant? Because: whoa, whoa, whoa.

  Once I saw a photo series of an abandoned wedding in the middle of the forest. Trees grew right through the chairs, and every year for twenty years, someone came back to repaint the furniture. The garden’s like that: spooky and beautiful at the same time, as if I’ve stumbled on some nobleman’s hideaway from the past. The sky’s turned after-storm pink. Light breaks through the lush orange trees as the rain tails off, illuminating the knee-high grasses in scattered light. It must be three, maybe four acres of land—enough to wander without getting lost.

  I almost don’t notice him at first.

  In the center of the garden is a stone table with two seats, grasses fanning around them like crop circles. Álvaro is perched on the left seat, spreading dominoes on the stone. He doesn’t look any worse for wear, considering the scare he’s given us.

  “Álvaro!” Sebastian shouts across the yard. “Álvaro!”

  Álvaro twists his neck in the direction of his name, catches our eyes for an instant, and then resumes his one-person game. It’s unsettling how detached he appears—like that day at the pool when he looked at us like we weren’t people at all.

  Sebastian’s eyebrows inch together until a ridge sprouts on his forehead. He presses his fingers against the screen; I see his Adam’s apple bob up and down three times.

  Footsteps sound down the hallway. After a moment, Sebastian and I take seats at a wicker table on the porch as Marla plunks down three glasses of pink lemonade and hands us towels. I wring out my curls; Sebastian’s hair is spiky and standing on end, and I resist the urge to comb my fingers through it.

  Marla collapses into one of the chairs and crosses her hands over her belly. “Here’s the deal. You can’t tell anybody. I mean no one. Álvaro doesn’t want strangers peeking into his life, you understand? All those reporters who were sniffing around? Oh yes, they’d have a field day with this one. Picture it in the National Enquirer.” Her hands make a swiping motion like she’s buttering the air. “‘The Secret Life of a Cult Writer.’ He won’t like it one bit. You wouldn’t think it, for how famous he was, but he’s a very private person. He likes keeping to himself, just being home.”