If Birds Fly Back

by Carlie Sorosiak

  We agree to zip our lips, so she begins, “You were right. My dad’s name was Joe.”

  “Was?” Sebastian gulps. “Is he . . . ?”

  “He passed on a few months ago. I think . . . I think you should know something.” She studies us for a painfully long moment. “Álvaro has dementia, most likely Alzheimer’s disease.”

  I blink. Sebastian blinks. We say, “What?” in unison. Our hearts are probably matching beat for crazy beat.

  All his peculiarities—his faraway stares, they way he hoards used napkins in his desk—I assumed were just par for the course. Aren’t all writers eccentric? In the cafeteria that second day, when he was banging on the table, I thought . . . What did I think? That he was just old, and that his new surroundings were reason enough for a momentary breakdown? And the pool—should I have known as we were floating there? Should I have known when he kept asking my name? Thinking back, it makes sense—but Álvaro also seems invincible, like having his words captured in film makes him immortal somehow.

  Marla’s face is a dropped stone, her voice craggy at the edges. “That’s why he disappeared three years ago. Álvaro didn’t want people to know about the dementia. He wanted people to remember him as he was, not what the disease left. So my dad took him in, and he hid out here. But my dad, he and I didn’t speak for a long time, ever since he and my mom split. Did I ever tell you I grew up in Georgia? Went to college there, too—only came to Miami for my job. I didn’t even know my dad lived here. Small world, huh? Last year, he found me in the phone book. The goddamn phone book, like I was a plumber or something! ‘Marla,’ he says, ‘I need your help.’ Just like that. No nonsense. Twenty years go by, and that’s the first thing he says. Well, you can imagine I hung up on his ass. Then he called back and told me he had lung cancer. Stage four, he said it was. He gave me this address, and I went over that afternoon. That’s when I saw Álvaro. He was sitting in the garden, and my dad, he introduces us and lays it all out. Says this is his best friend and domino partner, Álvaro. Met him decades ago in Maximo Gomez Domino Park. Of course I knew who Álvaro was. All of Miami knew who he was.”

  She gazes out to the stone table, where Álvaro is shouting “Bah!” at his dominoes. Unlike the rest of the summer, the noise sends chills up my neck. I glance at Sebastian’s arms—yep, goose bumps, too. A family of starlings settles in the grass, and another “Bah” scatters them.

  “Well,” Marla says, “eventually my dad passed away, and then I took care of Álvaro. Took care of him until I thought I couldn’t anymore. Until . . .” Trailing off, she lets the last word hang in the humidity.

  My stomach inches up my throat. Until what?

  She takes a sip of lemonade, swishes the liquid around in her mouth, and swallows hard. “I tried. Lord help me, I tried, but he just wandered off in the middle of the night, like it was the most natural thing in the world.” Sebastian and I follow her finger as she motions to the back of the property. “I found him the next morning in a park two miles down thataway. Bleeding all over the place. He fell, I think. Tripped on a tree branch or something, landed on a rock. I don’t really know. But I told myself, ‘Marla, you can’t handle hiding someone. You can barely handle this,’” she says, gesturing to the out-of-control garden. “I called a private car company the next day, and—Lord, I had them cart him away, drive him around the block a few times so I could scoot over to Silver Springs and greet him. I thought that if he saw me there, maybe he’d think he was home.”

  “So is he going back to Silver Springs?” I say.

  “He’ll have to, for his own safety. Though the only things he liked there were the food and spending time with the two of y’all. He said you made him feel young again. Only problem now is the police—there’s still a silver alert out, but I don’t want anything to leak, get to the tabloids. I’m contacting Álvaro’s lawyer tonight to figure it all out.”

  As I’m processing this, I fall face-first into a heart-stopping thought. The last scene in Midnight in Miami is from two perspectives of the same moment in time: Agustina is gaping up at her bedroom ceiling, waiting for Eduardo to come back, and fifty miles away, Eduardo is dying in the sand after being shot by a rival spy. He pictures what it will be cast away into that sea, Álvaro writes. All that is left is for him to close his eyes and shut out the sky.

  I feel dizzy, disorientated, because, am I doing that, too? What if I’m waiting for someone who will never return? Marla forced Álvaro to come back into the world, and he disappeared again anyway. Realization drops on me like a thick, itchy blanket. There’s a possibility that Grace will never come back, and for the first time I’m forced to wonder if I would survive it. How could I live the rest of my life without my sister? How could she?

  Sebastian makes a hitching noise. “Sorry, but—this, this doesn’t make any sense.”

  Marla frowns at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Álvaro’s fine. Alzheimer’s? No. He’s fine. He’s . . . he’s writing a new novel!”

  Rubbing my eyes, stopping a few tears in their tracks, it suddenly strikes me that Sebastian’s channeling Agustina, too. How far into the fog is Álvaro? Forgetting some numbers in an address is one thing. Forgetting your best friend is dead is another. Does he even remember that he has a son?

  And what about the picture in my backpack? Wouldn’t that break Sebastian even more?

  “I’m sorry, honey,” Marla says, “but he’s not fine.”

  Sebastian pushes back his chair and stands. “No. You’ve got it wrong.”

  Marla stands, too, as if prepping for a brawl, but instead of lifting a fist she raises a finger. “There are a few things y’all need to see.”

  THE LEFT-BEHINDS (SCENE 16, CONTINUED)

  . . . and on recognition of her winglessness, LINNY droops her head to the ground.

  34.

  Sebastian

  “Oftentimes, the outcomes astound us. Always prepare for the possibility that nothing is as it seems.” A Brief Compendium of Astrophysical Curiosities, p. 302

  Álvaro is my father. Let’s call that x.

  Álvaro has Alzheimer’s. Let’s call that y.

  x + y = z

  That means z is what happens when you add Dad and Disease. It’s one equation I’d rather not solve.

  Álvaro’s okay. Has to be okay. Because if he loses his yesterdays, I lose my chance at tomorrows with him.

  Marla disappears inside, emerges a minute later with shoe boxes in her hands. “This should explain a few things,” she says, dropping the boxes on the table. “All that stuff in the house? Most of it’s Álvaro’s—he keeps everything. I can barely see my dad’s paintings. That isn’t even all of it, if you can believe that. Some of it I’ve been bringing to Álvaro at night.”

  Linny clears her throat. Motions to the shoe boxes. “So what are—what are these?”

  Marla points to the left one. “Well, that’s all five hundred and sixty of Álvaro’s notes.” Sitting down again, leaning back in her chair—“He sends one package a week. You know how I collect all the residents’ mail? Well, he had the address wrong almost every time, but I knew they were supposed to come here.”

  I ask the obvious question. “What are they for?”

  “More like who are they for. Half the packages were made out ‘To Joe.’ I’ve been trying to work it out, and I think Álvaro writes down what he remembers—random bits, you know—and sends them here for safekeeping. Only thing is, he’s forgot the crucial part.” She closes her eyes. “Lord, he’s been writing to a ghost.”

  The porch spins.

  If Álvaro can’t remember that his best friend died . . .

  No.

  Don’t think like that. He’s fine.

  Because the alternative is too painful to think about. How Álvaro’s mind may not be fixable like the cut over his eye. How the brain cells can’t regenerate back from goop. How, if he was going to know me, I may’ve already lost my chance.

  “But—” I stammer, “what a
bout his new novel?”

  Linny wriggles a sheet from the second shoe box. Scans it. Typewritten words run together and are haphazardly capitalized.

  “This is . . . ?” she says. “Is this . . . ?”

  Marla hangs her head. “Midnight in Miami.”

  What?

  No.

  Realization beats loud. Obnoxious drums in my ears.

  ¡No es posible!

  Words flop out. “He’s . . . he’s writing it all over again?”

  Linny’s jaw drops toward the table as she grabs my hand. Fingertips digging into my skin as the weight of all the evidence drops.

  THE NOTHING-IS-AS-IT-SEEMS PRINCIPLE:

  (This is self-explanatory.)

  “Holy shit,” I say. “Shit.” Blood rushes to my face, so many things hitting me at once. Dialing back the summer, I try to remember Álvaro mentioning Midnight in Miami explicitly. He didn’t. Not once. It was always “my next novel.” He doesn’t have any idea that he’s already written it.

  “Does he remember he’s famous?” Linny asks.

  I stumble over more words. “This is like . . . this is like . . .”

  This is like he’ll never know me. This is like I could tell him why I’m in Miami, and he could forget the next day.

  After all my theories, it’s so disastrously simple.

  He didn’t disappear into another dimension.

  He wasn’t stuck in a parallel universe.

  He’s not a time traveler.

  He’s just an old man with a common, horrible disease. Nothing astrophysical about it.

  Marla says, “Oh honey, I know y’all have grown attached over the summer. But you must’ve thought something was wrong, right?”

  “I noticed,” Linny says, “but I didn’t think that . . . Well, what happens now?”

  “I know he wants to be here. Kind of like a homing mechanism. Is that what it’s called? With the birds? But even if he’s wandering back here, I can’t let him stay. I can’t watch him all the time—and it’s too dangerous for him to be on his own.” Pause. “You okay, honey?”

  Who, me? Oh, fine. Muy bien.

  I’m just an atom that’s splitting.

  A little-known fact is that Einstein originally thought the big bang theory was crap. He couldn’t imagine a world without any yesterdays. I can’t imagine a world where Álvaro doesn’t have any yesterdays. I’m 100 percent unprepared for any of this. Like I’ve been jettisoned into the thermosphere without a space suit, and micrometeorites are pelting me in the face.

  Because words refuse to exit my mouth, Linny fumbles through an explanation. “Sebastian is . . . well, he’s . . .”

  It explodes out of me. “I’m Álvaro’s son!”

  Marla clutches her heart with both hands. All three of us whip our heads toward Álvaro, who must’ve heard.

  But no. He’s engrossed in his dominoes.

  And then Marla’s grabbing my head and dragging it to her chest, where she rocks me. “Honey, I had no idea. Oh, honey.”

  “He doesn’t know,” I say softly into her shirt.

  She hugs me tighter, because he never will.

  In another taxi, Linny’s front teeth pinch her bottom lip. “I don’t know what to say,” she whispers eventually. “I didn’t—if I’d thought about it for even a second, I never would have been so gung ho about his new novel, never would’ve—”

  “It’s okay.”

  The air’s warm. Sticky. So are her hands when she grabs mine. “No, it’s not.”

  She has the driver take us to Zoo Miami, because it’s near Marla’s house. And neither of us wants to go home. Although it’s an hour and a half before the zoo closes, Linny insists, “This is the best time to visit. Tourists usually leave by lunch.”

  At the gates, we purchase two passes. Hold hands as we meander toward the elephants. (And try to avoid the elephant in the room.) “Did you come here a lot as a kid?” I say.

  She tilts her head from side to side. “Not a lot, but sometimes. Grace didn’t like it. All the cages.”

  We stop in front of a large enclosure where two African elephants are spraying their backs with water. “But there aren’t any cages,” I say, wiping sweat from the back of my neck.

  “All this space is deceptive. Look at them, though. They’re not exactly free.” She does the same—swiping away a bead of sweat balancing on her forehead. Then she fixes her glance on me. “Your neck hasn’t stopped twitching since we left Marla’s.”

  “Oh.” I grip a hand to my throat as if that’ll stop it. “Didn’t notice.”

  An elephant trumpets. Linny’s right—a lot of the tourists are gone, the paths nearly empty. It feels like it’s just the animals and us.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Linny asks.

  I shake my head no, but when I do, words come out. “I keep replaying everything Marla said, and it makes sense but it doesn’t.” I puff out a long stream of air. “At least all the secrets are out now.”

  Linny coughs. “Yeah. Thank goodness for that.” But her words sound flat. Distant. Like the tide is dragging her voice out to sea. “Let’s look at the big cats next, okay?”

  “Sure. Okay.”

  At the lion enclosure, she pulls her camera equipment from her backpack. “Do you mind?”

  “No, go ahead.” Pointing to a bench nearby—“I’m just going to sit down for a minute.” I take her backpack off her hands. “Here, it’ll be easier for you to shoot without holding on to this.”

  For a split second, her feet are cemented to the ground. She tugs at an earlobe. But then, rolling her shoulders back—“It’ll only take a sec.”

  I ease in the bench, drop the backpack by my feet, and cradle my head in my knees. I can’t stop thinking about Álvaro, how he will never know me like I want. How, under a microscope, his nerve endings must look like exploding stars. Maybe they’ll develop a cure soon? Like, in the next couple of weeks.

  No. Probably not. But there’s nothing like a sick parent to make you wish for miracles.

  I’m still in this position—head tucked between knees—when I notice that the backpack has yawned open. In it, I see: three years’ worth of change. Hair ties.

  And something flat, tucked into the interior pocket.

  Almost like one of those microfiches (micro-fishes?) that Linny and I gathered clues from at the beginning of the summer. Did she take one or something?

  Curious, I grab the edge and pull.

  Blink.

  My heart lurches into my mouth, because it’s a photo. It’s a photo of my mom and dad—my parents—together. Mom’s in bright orange; Dad’s touching her hair. They’re smiling at each other.

  And I’m smiling at them.

  I know it’s me. At one week old, I already had a full head of chestnut hair.

  It’s Murphy’s Law. When things can get screwed up, they will. (I would like to propose a revised version: when things can get worse, they will do so exponentially and with all the force of a kick to the balls.)

  So . . . my heart splutters. So . . .

  He knew about me.

  I picture a parallel universe. The three of us in the backyard we could’ve had. Álvaro and Mom are holding hands, desperately in love, beneath a maple tree that the three of us planted together.

  Then I see the shit world as it is: Mom, crouching by my knees last month, telling me a story. “I never told him about you, Sebastian. He left before I could.” That’s all it was—a story, something she invented to shut out the stupid truth. No truer than the stories I’d invented. Álvaro’s no more a good dad than he was a tuna fisherman.

  He left us. Not just my mom. Me.

  This whole summer, I’ve been plotting how to tell him. How to say it just right. I never thought that seventeen years ago, he’d already decided he wanted nothing to do with me.

  More images come: the first time I saw Álvaro, in the cafeteria. The first time I told him my name. “Saint Sebastian,” he’d said. “Patron saint of arc
hers and dying people, no?” At the time I didn’t think much of it. But did he know then, by my name, by my eyes that look so much like his? Did it ever cross his mind, even once, that the little bundle of joy in the photo grew up to be me?

  Mijo. Mijo. Mijo.

  The corners of the photo are dog-eared. Fingerprints are on the gloss. Álvaro’s? Linny’s?

  Linny.

  Linny knew. Linny knew? How long? Did she know when we were . . . ?

  I raise my head from my knees and look at her. Viewfinder pressed firmly to one eye. Filming a lion stretching its paw.

  Should I sprint up to her so she can tell me it’s all an elaborate misunderstanding? Martians framed her. I will gently shake her shoulder, and she’ll smile at me and say, “Yes, Sebastian. Of course aliens planted that photo in my backpack.”

  But what if that doesn’t happen? How can I love someone who lets me be the last to know?

  I try to re-wedge my brain back into place. Fail.

  Knuckles, quickly turning white.

  Breath, steady as an earthquake.

  In A Brief Compendium of Astrophysical Curiosities, Dr. Mangum discusses a space roar: “This radio signal from outer space is six times louder than NASA predicted. Why is this so?” The first time I heard the term space roar, I imagined Atlas the giant bellowing. His voice echoing. Forceful. Loud. Filling the farthest corners of the universe. This is the kind of roar I have in me now.

  I want to shout until another galaxy hears it.

  But I can’t. . . . I can’t do this.

  AN INVERSE MODEL FOR THE SUCCESS OF SPACE ROARS:

  The greater the desire to emit such a sound, the greater the possibility that it comes out as silence.