If Birds Fly Back

by Carlie Sorosiak

  “But I couldn’t handle it,” she said. “I didn’t want to see you even the littlest bit unhappy, and I tried so hard not to think about him.”

  “Am I . . . ?”

  “Are you what, cariño?”

  “His only kid.”

  A long breath. “I—I think so, but I don’t know. He said I was his biggest love, but . . . your father was a very complex man, Sebastian, and our relationship was complicated. Even now, I hate him. Absolutely hate him. But I also love him very, very much. I’m . . . I’m going to be honest with you, Sebastian. Dios, dame fuerza.” The Spanish pummels me. God, give me strength. I thought, Why does she need additional strength? What could there possibly be left to say?

  She spoke clearly, enunciating each word. “Your father and I—we kept in contact a bit.”

  My lips moved, but nothing came out but a weak “Whaaaat?”

  “A few times a year,” she continued. “He checked in when he was—well, when he was up to it—but then he disappeared three years ago. The phone calls stopped. And I thought . . . I thought what everyone else thought. I should have told you, but . . . I couldn’t stand the thought of him breaking you.”

  I wanted to tell her I understood. Wanted to forgive her.

  But I just needed time.

  A THEORY FOR UNIVERSE-ALTERING PHENOMENA:

  To minimize the impact of aforementioned occurrences, retreat to earlier times.

  In the living room, I hang sheets between the TV and the couch. Prop up the middle with breakfast bar chairs, erecting the kind of fortress I used to make when I was younger. It’s stupid. I know it’s stupid. But feeling like a kid again—like this can be fixed with a Band-Aid or a chocolate milk shake or a sheet fort—is the only thing keeping me sane.

  On the second day, the front door of the condo creaks open.

  Linny: “Do I need a password?”

  “Nah,” I say, unable to summon any lightness in my voice.

  She finds an opening between the sheets, crawls in on her hands and knees, and sits nearby, stretching out her tan legs to full length. Bouncing her knees against the ground. “Soooo?” she says, and in the same breath: “I almost asked how you’re doing. Stupid question, huh?”

  “Kind of,” I admit. To be honest, part of me doesn’t want to speak to her—this girl who broke my heart—but more words come. “I keep telling myself that out of the 13.7 billion years that the universe has been around, this doesn’t even register. It’s not a big change. It’s not even a blip. Should that make me feel better or worse?”

  Linny shrugs and says, “Both, probably.” Her hair hangs across her shoulder in a braid. She undoes it and immediately begins braiding it again. Nervous fingers. “I’ve been dreaming about him,” she says. “Last night I swore he was sitting across from me in my desk chair, and I kept telling him he should leave, that he didn’t have much time left—that he should run, just run.” She looks up from her braiding. “Does that sound weird?”

  “No.” I blink at her, remembering my own dream. “Did he . . . I don’t know. Did he look happy?”

  Her smile is full of sadness and something else. “Yeah, he did.” A pause while she sucks air into her cheeks, then pops them. Tilting her head back against the couch and sighing—“God, how’d everything get so screwed up?”

  I wish I could trust her completely again. I wish I could love her again—but I don’t know how. So instead I say, “I read The Left-Behinds.”

  “And?”

  “And I understand it. One hundred percent. . . . How does it end?”

  “I’m not sure. . . . I’m not sure I want it to, you know? If it ends, there’s . . . What if there’s nothing left?”

  A pause.

  “Just because it’s the end of one thing,” I say, “doesn’t mean it can’t be the beginning of another.”

  We sit in thoughtful silence for a minute before she nods. “Okay,” she says. “So what do we do now? Turn off the lights and make shadow puppets?”

  I grin a little. “What are we, twelve?”

  “Oh, come on.” She spreads her fingers into antlers. “I do a pretty mean moose.”

  “Not as mean as my soaring eagle.” I lock my thumbs together, flap my hand-wings, let out a ca-caw. It’s stupid. It feels nice.

  Linny switches off the lights and illuminates the flashlight on her phone, a narrow band of light targeting the sheets. For three minutes, we transform the fort into a menagerie: silhouettes of alligators and bunnies and bears. For a few minutes, I forget.

  And when I remember again, we kill the lights, and Linny brings my head to her chest. I repeat: to her chest.

  As in boobs.

  As in wow.

  In any other situation, great. But since I’m still experiencing the giant-squeezes-heart-in-chest feeling, it’s significantly less awesome.

  She rocks me back and forth, fingers running through my hair. “Sometimes things don’t make sense,” she says.

  I want to tell her that they should.

  That there are rules and laws and theories.

  That everything is explainable.

  But I don’t really believe that anymore. I just squeeze my eyes shut and try to feel okay.

  43.

  Linny

  WHO: Norwegian painter Oskar Thorsen

  WHEN: Three weeks in late 2009

  WHY: His neighbors filed a missing person’s report, and the police scoured Oskar’s small town of Otta, Norway, finding no trace of him. Oskar later reappeared with a colorful new painting in his hands; he’d been holed up in one of his property’s three cellars. “Sometimes bright things only spark in dark places,” he declared to the local newspaper.

  NOTES: Really?

  The night before Álvaro’s funeral, I count sheep with no success. It’s kind of hard to sleep when you feel as fragile as a hollowed-out egg, when you’re mourning and you love someone who may never love you back.

  Around 4:00 a.m., I give up and go downstairs for a glass of milk. The milk carton, I notice just in time, is six days past its expiration date. I’m pouring chunks of Dairyland’s Best down the drain when I notice the flicker at the end of the hallway—a stitch of light beneath the door that leads to the garage.

  Huh? Carton in hand, I tiptoe down the hallway and open the door.

  Oh!

  “God, you scared me,” Dad exclaims, raising his hands in the air like a caught robber. He’s arched—very bizarrely—over a large sheet of plastic wrap, his hair burning silver in the lamplight. “Didn’t think anyone else was up.”

  I want to tell him I haven’t slept for two days, but all I do is shake the empty milk carton. “It’s gone bad.”

  “Ah.” One hand rubs the back of his neck like he’s working out a kink. “Your mother’s been a little lax on the groceries lately.” He means: Your mother hasn’t been herself lately. Your mother has been so disappointed in you lately, she can’t remember to protect her family from potentially deadly milk microbes.

  That’s when I notice the paint cans by Dad’s feet, next to the mound of plastic wrap.

  “None of us is ourself lately, though, are we?” he says, standing straight up and tucking his hands into the pockets of his jeans—the same pair as yesterday? Did he ever go to bed?

  “I guess not.”

  “Here”—beckoning me closer—“I want to show you something.” I set down the milk carton on Grandpa’s woodworking shelf as Dad kneels and pries the lid off one of the paint cans. Wow. It’s so bright, like bottled sun, like a shirt Sebastian would wear. Totally not what I was expecting.

  “According to the man at Ace Hardware, it’s called Laughing Yellow.” He pulls a three-tiered color swatch from his back pocket. “No, my mistake. Giggling Yellow. I tried to”—awkwardly clearing his throat—“match the color you had in your room. Before.”

  Before.

  My room was yellow before it was white. And he remembers that—and he cares? Who is this man, and what has he done with my father
? I surreptitiously bend over and check that my real dad isn’t masked and gagged beneath the Volvo. “And it’s . . . it’s for my room now?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  “Mom’s okay with yellow?”

  Without missing a beat, he responds, “Your mother doesn’t have to preapprove everything.”

  She doesn’t? Could’ve fooled me.

  “But it helps to get a head start on her finding out,” he says, face splintering into a lopsided grin. “I wasn’t going to wake you for another half hour, but now that you’re up”—closing the lid, handing me the paint can—“help me carry this stuff upstairs. Quietly.”

  So together, we creep through the house—as silently as you can creep with paint cans, brushes, tape, and twelve feet of crinkly plastic. Together, we lift my bed on one, two, three and move everything to the center of the room, shrouding it in white cloth.

  After taping off the baseboards and coating the carpeting with plastic, Dad opens the lid again, swirls the paint with a stick, and holds up a clean brush. “Go ahead, kiddo.”

  I almost start crying because I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t “Marilyn.”

  He waggles the brush at me until I take it, dip it into the yellow, and run a streak across the nearest wall. Dad picks up a roller, and we work silently side by side until the first wall, then all the walls, are giggling out loud.

  He suddenly says, “I had this idea that maybe we’d even paint the ceiling. Too much?”

  “Maybe a little much.”

  “Well, I bought plenty of extra cans, in case we change our minds.”

  Outside, morning is rolling in. Chirping robins replace a symphony of crickets and frogs.

  Dad says, “Today is going to be—”

  “Hard,” I finish for him.

  “Yes. Hard.” He blinks a few times, swipes his eyes with the backs of his hands, and makes a weird noise in the depths of his throat, like he decided to clear it again but then changed his mind. “This whole week has been hard.”

  He means because of me.

  He means I toppled the tripod.

  “And I just want to let you know,” he says, “how unbelievably proud of you I am. For holding up during such a hard time . . . and also for reminding your mother and me . . .” He trails off. “I’m very sorry, Linny. So very sorry.”

  “It’s okay, Dad.”

  “No, it’s not, because you and your sister are truly talented, and I apologize for not telling you sooner. We should be telling you every day. We should’ve told her every day.”

  I must be looking at him like paint’s pouring from his ears, because he adds, “I saw your documentary, the one about Grace.”

  “You did?”

  He nods. “I was a little late coming from the practice, so I had to get a back-row seat. But I watched it from start to finish. And the entire time I couldn’t get over it. My daughters.”

  “But—” I stutter. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  He peers down at his hands, which are giggling, too, but decides to curve an arm around my shoulders anyway. When was the last time he hugged me? When was the last time I let him? Has he been trying all along?

  “Because I’m human,” he says. “And because I’ve wanted things for you and Grace for so long, I never stopped to consider if you wanted them, too. But I will. From now on, I promise I will.”

  I lean into his side, close my eyes, and nod.

  “Can you just promise me something?” he says.

  “Anything.”

  “I let it slide once because you were having a hard time already”—clearing his throat again—“but no more boys in your closet.”

  Mortified as I am, I laugh. “Yeah, okay.”

  Together, we quietly stare at the walls.

  “You know what I just thought of?” Dad says. “Yellow. The color for missing people.”

  Two hours later, Dad dons a suit and tie, and I iron my only black dress. Paint flecks are in our hair.

  THE LEFT-BEHINDS (SCENE 17, CONTINUED)

  LINNY watches GRACE for several moments. The wind picks up.

  Over LINNY’s right shoulder, a crack in the sky comes into focus. It’s almost indistinguishable—like two bits of fabric joined together. Around it are flecks of color.

  44.

  Sebastian

  “No one knows how gamma ray bursts originate. These energetic explosions are brighter than anything else in the universe and are often followed by an afterglow, which is longer than the original event.” A Brief Compendium of Astrophysical Curiosities, p. 67

  “You’ve grown,” Mom says. “You know that?”

  Ana picked her up from the airport last night, and we ate a painfully silent dinner. (I made Cuban sandwiches. Hard to eff up.) Mom’s making an attempt at conversation now. Scooping her waves into a loose bun directly on top of her head. She’s wearing a standard black dress.

  I, on the other hand, didn’t pack for a funeral. Mom offers to take Ana’s car and drive me to the mall, “pick out something nice” for the service.

  Don’t care if it’s nice, I tell her. My only stipulation is that I’ll never have to wear it again.

  In the end we buy a fairly average gray suit. (Not black. It may be a funeral, but it’s still early August in Florida. Things are shit enough without absorbing a billion photons of light, roasting me like a pig on a spit.) A wide silk tie rounds off the look. It’s Álvaro’s. Marla dropped it off—so I’d have something of his. Although it’s approximately twelve shades too purple, it still smells of cigarillos. So I obviously have to wear it.

  “That’s festive,” Mom says.

  “Yep,” I respond as I adjust the knot. Keep adjusting it. Spend the fifteen-minute drive to City Cemetery alternating between too tight and too loose. The only sound in the car is the pssssshh of the air-conditioning and Mom clearing her throat, preparing for the conversation we won’t have. Every few seconds, Ana side-eyes me from the driver’s seat. Probably checking to see if I’ve hurled myself from the vehicle. (Thought about it. Couldn’t bring myself to do it.)

  Ana switches off the engine and softly ruffles my hair. For once this summer, I don’t hate it.

  Outside, a mass of black is assembling—hundreds of people who heard about Álvaro’s death on the news, online, in a newspaper—all coming to pay their respects. I even spot a few residents from Silver Springs. No reporters so far. At least I can be thankful for that.

  We exit the car and follow them down a low hill, toward the graveside. Palm trees flank the rectangular hole in the ground. Seeing the casket (monstrous, shiny, blue) tugs at all the strings I have left.

  My legs become spaghetti. Knees: knocking together. Es un milagro I’m stilling standing.

  All of a sudden Linny appears by my side. Yellow speckles her forehead, her cheeks, her eyelids. “You look like solar activity,” I tell her, noticing a long, golden streak on her arm. “What happened?”

  She shrugs away a smile. “Long night . . . I think someone’s waving at you.”

  Opposite us, peeking out from the crowd, is Micah.

  Micah?

  Wearing a suit jacket over a black Metallica T-shirt (hey, at least it’s black), he waves once more and makes his way through the throngs of mourners to bear hug me.

  “How’d you find out?” I say after I regain oxygen.

  “Your mom called mine. Plus, I saw it on the news. I just didn’t know he was your—”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  He runs a hand through the front of his hair, which has grown a solid three inches over the summer. “You could’ve told me, man.”

  “I know. Sorry, I—hey. Aren’t you missing orientation at Berkeley?”

  “Don’t worry about it, dude. Besides, how else was I going to meet this chica right here?” He faces Linny and extends his hand. “Micah. I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about me. You’re even prettier than on Facebook.”

  “Ha,” Linny says, shaking his hand as my face turns red
. “Thanks.”

  A minute later, the priest begins to speak about how “it was Álvaro’s time.” Two things about those words crawl under my skin: 1) how he makes it sound like there’s a giant stopwatch in the sky, waiting to beep when it’s time to die, and 2) how it’s past tense.

  Was his time. (Was it?)

  Was a good person. (Was he?)

  Was ready for the next life. (What about finishing this one?)

  THE AFTERGLOW PARADOX:

  A person’s brightness increases after they are gone.

  Then mourners are laying white flowers on the coffin. Except me. From my pocket I toss a packet of cigarillos on the pile.

  They lower him down. Mom scatters a fistful of dirt into the hole. Then Ana and Marla do. Then I do. Plink, plink, plink.

  Almost everyone is leaving, hauling grief back into cars.

  We wait until the cemetery workers begin shoveling in the dirt. Plinks turn to plops.

  In fifth grade, Micah told me to hold my breath in graveyards. “It’s not polite to breathe when others can’t,” he said. I guess the same applies to speaking.

  No one speaks. No one has to.

  The day after the funeral, Micah and Linny team up to keep me distracted. Micah—who’s leaving for the airport tonight—unpacks his Xbox 360 from his suitcase because, as he says, “Wouldn’t dream of going anywhere without it.”

  Turns out, Linny is a Dark Ops Resolution master. Even better than Micah.

  “Bastards!” I shout at the TV screen, although part of me is stoked that Linny’s the one kicking my ass. Judging by the river of blood cascading from my player’s every artery, he should be deader than dead. “Remind me! How the hell is this supposed to help me cheer up?”

  “Get up!” Micah screeches, by way of answering. “Up! Or she’ll shoot you again!”

  “I AM DYING MICAH HOW CAN I GET UP?”

  “You are seriously off your game, man.”

  “I’ve been a bit distracted lately!”

  “Nah. That’s not it. You’ve always sucked, and I think this summer has only increased your suckage.”

  Classic Micah.

  Wanting to rise to the challenge, my player resurrects himself for three final seconds and places a shot exactly right—dead center in Micah’s player’s right butt cheek.