After the Leaves Fall

by Nicole Baart

  The atmosphere was warm and dry with an acrid smell that made me skip a lungful of air when it hit the back of my throat. Little puffs of blonde chicks littered the floor, peeping in a chorus of charming soprano notes that sounded remarkably like animated chatter. They ran quickly to wherever they were going on toothpick-size legs and huddled in bunches that seemed to be constantly growing, shrinking, and changing. I loved them all in less time than it took to survey the whole room.

  Grandpa was ankle-deep in the thick of it, adjusting one of the lamps. “Cute, aren’t they?” He grinned at me.

  “May I hold one?” I asked without taking my eyes off the enchanting little birds.

  “Of course,” Grandma said at my elbow, and she bent down to scoop one up. “It’ll probably mess on you, though,” she warned with a little knowing smile.

  “I don’t care,” I whispered and pulled my mittens off.

  The chick was more delicate than I expected—and more fidgety. I had thought maybe she would curl up in my hand like a contented kitten and fall asleep, but she didn’t seem very interested in being held at all. I cupped one hand underneath her and curled the other over the top of her so only her little head peeked out, and after a moment she relaxed enough to let me explore her. Her down was softer than anything I had ever felt, yet it was misleading because it seemed impossible to actually touch. Her downiness simply gave way to the weight of my finger, and underneath was the curve of her firm body, small enough for me to hold completely in my own six-year-old hands. I held her to my face, and she peeped forlornly at me. I kissed the top of her head and put her down.

  “I like the ones with a little brown in them,” Dad said, picking out a chick with smudges of brown on her head and wings. “They have character.”

  “I don’t,” I stated firmly. “I like the really yellowy-yellow ones.”

  “Perfectionist, eh?” Grandpa teased. “I’ll find you the perfect chick.” He stooped down and scattered a few of the groups, passing over one, picking up another, and finally emerging triumphant with a chubby chick grasped in his right hand. “Here you are, Julia.”

  I accepted the chick solemnly and inspected her. She was so softly yellow as to be mistaken for a shimmering white gold and rounder and fuller than the chick I had held earlier. I wouldn’t have even cared if she did mess on me like my grandmother predicted. “She’s beautiful,” I said.

  Dad must have seen the longing in my eyes because he put a hand on my shoulder. “They’re very fragile creatures, Julia. You must be extremely careful with them.”

  “I am being careful,” I defended.

  “How are they doing?” Dad asked, giving me a wink and a squeeze before diverting his attention to Grandpa.

  “Well, I lost a few last night, but I hope they’ll be okay now. One of the heating lamps wasn’t working properly, but I think I’ve got it fixed. And this snow isn’t supposed to last. …”

  “You lost a few?” I asked, still concentrating on the chick in my hands. “How did they get out?”

  Grandpa paused for the space of a heartbeat. “No, sweetie, a few of them died last night. It was too cold.”

  I don’t remember enough of my youth to know what I did and did not understand about death at the age of six. According to how the rest of the story played out, I must have been devastated by the thought that a few of those adorable little chicks had died. Apparently I would not be consoled.

  I can’t fathom the depths or shallows of a first-grade mind, but when no one was looking, I took matters into my own hands and did the unthinkable. I stuck the chick in my coat pocket—I simply couldn’t abandon her to a potentially deadly night in the freezing chicken coop. She fit rather well and didn’t fuss too much, and with a deceitfulness that made me blush even ten years later as I drove recklessly home, I zipped the pocket and quickly bent over to pluck another chick from the floor.

  This part I can recall quite clearly. I remember that my purple quilted winter coat didn’t feel a single ounce heavier for having her in my pocket. I remember that the new chick in my hand squirmed almost uncontrollably and I was thankful when Dad turned around and told me to put her down because it was time to go back to the house. I remember that my heart didn’t quicken a single beat when the adults praised me for listening so well and that I smiled politely when Grandpa assured me that the rest of the chicks would be perfectly safe and sound through the coming night.

  Dad carried me back to the house since snow had gotten into the top of my boots on the walk out and, after our brief time in the chicken coop, had begun to melt and sting my shins and ankles. I wrapped my arms around his neck and ignored the living creature concealed in my coat because I didn’t want anyone to be suspicious. Besides, I imagined the chick warm and comfortable and napping peacefully, knowing she would be well cared for.

  At one point, Dad tightened his grip around my waist in a brief, tight hug, and I hugged him back because I knew that he would understand when I showed him the chick later. He couldn’t make me take her back when we were home and I had proven that I could be a good mother to her.

  Once we got to the house, the mudroom became a flurry of activity as we removed hats and gloves, boots and snow-dusted coats. Grandma unzipped my parka and helped me out of it before I could think of any reason to keep it on. She hung it on the hook next to the door and gave it a few hard pats to shake off the snow.

  “Coffee?” she asked the men, and they murmured gratefully. “You may have some too,” she said conspiratorially to me. “It’s been a pretty full morning for you.”

  The thought of coffee with the adults erased any worries for my secret chick, and we all ambled into the kitchen to gather around the table as Grandma put the coffee in the percolator. I loved watching the tall pot on the stove and the way the water bubbled up into the glass bulb on the top to release steamy drips and splatters. The smell wasn’t necessarily appealing, but the idea was—especially since I had never been offered so much as a sip of anyone’s coffee before. Apparently it no longer stunted your growth after the age of six.

  Grandma placed a pan of spice cake with maple-butter frosting on the table and set a plate and mug in front of each of us. My mug had a chip on the rim and sported a Farmers Mutual logo that I recognized from a similar magnet on the refrigerator. It was lovely and grown-up and immense to someone who had formerly only drunk out of a miniature juice cup with oranges dancing around the rim. I grasped it tightly in both hands, and my fingers met on the far side.

  I was still holding it when Grandma put her hand over mine and poured out a thin stream of the steaming, molasses-colored liquid until the mug was half full.

  “Blow on it for a minute,” she instructed. After pouring three more cupfuls, she took the milk out of the refrigerator and the sugar bowl from the cupboard by the sink. I watched her unscrew the milk cap and add the whiteness to my mug until the coffee looked like melted caramel. Taking the sugar bowl, she measured out two flat teaspoonfuls and added them to the cup. Handing me a spoon, she directed, “Stir.”

  No one else added milk or sugar to their coffee, but I didn’t mind. Mine was a much prettier color. By the time I took my first sip, Grandpa was already on his second cup. The coffee was lukewarm against my lips and didn’t taste at all like it looked. I expected something smooth and sweet, but it was kind of bitter, and the taste stayed on my tongue long after I swallowed. I tried another sip.

  “How do you like it?” Grandma asked casually when she noticed me trying the coffee.

  “It’s good,” I said unconvincingly.

  “It takes a little while to get used to,” she offered.

  I sat tall and straight in my seat and drank the entire cup between mouthfuls of cake. Grandma was right—by the end it tasted rather good.

  It was an exceptional day because I wasn’t offered coffee again for a very long time, and when I did finally become a caffeine addict, I took my coffee black and strong. But for the width of a few memorable hours, I didn’t feel
like a little girl, even though my feet were tucked beneath me and my coffee was a different color. That morning, they shared their pot of coffee with me and even included me in the conversation from time to time. I was mature and wise, a lady among my peers—or almost.

  The coffee was gone and lunch was ruined after too many pieces of spice cake when Dad finally announced that we should try to make it home before the wind picked up or we got more snow. At the mention of the word home, the facade of my responsible near adulthood melted to the floor, and the image of the perfect little chick nestled in my coat pocket came flooding back to me.

  With a gasp that must have startled my family, I leaped out of my chair and raced to the front porch. Tearing down my coat, I fumbled in one coat pocket and found it empty. Flipping the coat over and ripping open the zipper, I plunged my hand into the opposite pocket and extracted the limp body of a lifeless chick.

  Her down was matted against the side of her small body, and her neck sagged against her chest in a drooping curl. The leg that wasn’t trapped under my fingers swung slowly back and forth. I screamed and dropped her.

  Dad’s story never ended with an inconsolable child and an innocent, dead animal. But no matter how earnestly I tried, no matter how many times I relived the story as the sun set in my rearview mirror, I couldn’t see past the moment when my six-year-old stupidity had been exposed. It was inane and just plain naive. The story was a worthless reminder of everything that I truly, deeply, madly wanted to forget about myself and a youth that seemed disconnected to the almost woman I was now. What did the little girl I had been have to do with the person I was today?

  Yet Dad had made it all make sense; he made it all seem right. He had found beauty in something so senseless and sickening that I would have understood if for the rest of my life he used the incident as a lesson—a veritable guidebook for what not to do, adaptable for nearly any situation: maturity, obedience, caution, sensitivity, common sense, responsibility. … He could have had an arsenal of sermons with points of application derived specifically from this one misjudgment in my young life.

  But he didn’t. He loved the story more with every telling, and against all understanding it seemed to make him love me more too. I needed that love. That unconditional, I-don’t-care-what-you’ve-done love. The love that made me realize from that moment on, no part of me could step outside of it even if I tried.

  I needed Dad to teach Thomas how to love me like that.

  I had been driving for over an hour when I pulled into a field driveway and shut off the car. The sun had mostly set and the air was beginning to cool, so I rolled down the window and put my head back and looked across the rolling hills. I was overwhelmed by an urge to stretch myself out, to lie facedown on the ground and just give up, to talk to my father as if he were a spirit hovering over me or maybe talk to God, but I fought it. I was a practical girl, and whether or not Thomas loved me or Dad’s story had lost all meaning, life would go on. I had been through worse.

  As I sat in the silence and listened to the squawking of a flock of crows that had settled on the golden corn in the ditch below me, I determined to derive one lesson, one nugget of truth, from the tale that ran on continuous play in my tired mind. After a day that made little sense to me and that I had yet to deconstruct, it was the least I could expect.

  The sky had faded to amethyst and the sweat on my skin was cool and clammy when I started the car and backed out of the dirt driveway to head for home. The story had been drained of all its garish color in my mind, and I was grateful to put it away and leave it in a place where I hoped I would not soon find it again.

  If I’d had one wish in that long, agonizing evening, I would have wasted it begging my dad to tell me why. Why did he love the story of the chick so? Why did I think of it so obsessively with Thomas fading to gray in the background? Why did Dad never use it to teach me a single lesson? Maybe I would have learned something. Maybe everything would have been different. Maybe I would have been different.

  But answer or no, there was one thing I knew. I would not hold on to Thomas. I wouldn’t fight it or cry any more tears about it or obsess about what I could have—should have—done differently. I couldn’t remember why Dad loved the story, but I was taking a lesson away from it: let go.

  As far as I was concerned, I had begun a new life—not shiny new, just new for me. Different.

  Reconnect

  “IT HURTS ME to see you so sad,” Grandma said one night shortly after Christmas.

  It had been over three months since I had said anything more than a forced hello to Thomas, and as my mind did the calculation, I realized that my life so far had been little more than counting away from the last since. Eight years since Janice left. Fourteen, almost fifteen, months since Dad died. Fourteen and a half weeks since I lost Thomas. How do you keep track of time when there is no devastating point of reference to weigh you down like an anchor and keep you from floating day into day with no thought of where you have been? I wondered how long the counts would stay fresh and clear. How long before my mind had to stop and process how many weeks and months and years it had been? Dad died four, no, five years ago in October. It’s amazing how time flies.

  Grandma’s lined hands plunged into the now-greasy dishwater and pulled the plug from the deep porcelain sink.

  The initial suck of draining water startled me out of my daze, and I considered how long I had stood in silence with my hands wrapped in a flour-sack towel around a bone-dry plate. I added the chipped Corelle dinnerware to its mate and looked at the forlorn little stack of two. Ten of the twelve in Grandma’s collection hadn’t been touched in more months than I cared to remember.

  But she had said something to me and was hoping for a response. Was the correct answer yes or no?

  “Mm-hmm …?” I mumbled noncommittally and stole a sidelong glance at her sweetly wrinkled profile.

  She turned to me and caught me in her sharp brown eyes. They were just like Dad’s. “I said it hurts me to see you so sad,” she repeated.

  Hearing it again I realized that mm-hmm had not been an acceptable reply. So I said, “I’m not so sad, Grandma.”

  Her smile told me that we both knew I was lying, and my lips faintly mirrored hers, if only for a moment.

  “What would make that smile stay?” she asked, and I cringed at the concern in her face.

  “It’s not nearly so serious,” I said consolingly. “Life is a series of ups and downs, right?” I attempted a smile again and willed it to be sincere. “Wait until the weather gets nice; I just have a good case of the winter blues.”

  Grandma looked utterly unconvinced. “It’s December, Julia. Spring is a long way off.”

  “Then I need to spend more time with friends,” I quickly replied and immediately regretted it. It would be too pathetic to admit that I didn’t have any friends, but the naked truth was that I really didn’t.

  I hadn’t existed anywhere but in Thomas’s shadow almost since the night we met over the stolen stop sign. We had had mutual friends, I suppose, but somehow without the person to stand in the light and cast it, a shadow quickly disappears. People I had peripherally known through Thomas either graduated or simply failed to remember me. Not that they were mean—I think they just forgot. And not that I cared. It was hard to cry tears over something that never really was.

  School wasn’t my only possible outlet. I guess I had quasi relationships with the people at the movie theater, but they were the stunted, shallow friendships of the occasional coworker. The schedule was always changing, and the conversations never progressed past chitchat about the latest movie and gossip about whoever had the night off and wasn’t around to defend against the often glitzy accusations. Did you know Alex caught Meredith and some guy making out in an empty theater after the late show last week? Don’t tell anyone this, but Jackson didn’t quit—he was fired after someone told Brad that he was stealing candy bars from the concession stand.

  And that was it. My two aven
ues for friendship were dead ends and my weekends reserved for a good book and Jeopardy! with Grandma. Funny thing was, I didn’t really mind. But she did, and I had just opened the door to the one conversation I did not want to have.

  Grandma was looking at me apologetically, and I knew that she was trying to come up with a way to broach the topic.

  I decided to make it easy for her. “I don’t have any friends,” I said, laying my hand on her arm to let her know that it didn’t really matter.

  “I wasn’t going to say that,” she murmured.

  “I know. But it’s okay. I’m not offended or anything.” I shrugged. “I just spent so much time with Thomas I didn’t have any left over for anyone else.”

  “You have time now,” she said quietly.

  “So I do.” I paused, then added, “I’ll try.” I tried to sound optimistic, like I was genuinely ready to embark on a new journey in my life. One without Thomas and with endless possibilities for other friends and opportunities. But more than anything, I just wanted this conversation to be over. I wanted to retreat to the warmth and comfort of the living room and curl up in the overstuffed armchair with the latest Harry Potter. Never mind that I had already read it twice. But a feeble promise to try harder and simply snap out of the funk I was in was not enough for my heartsick grandmother. It struck me that the lines under her eyes were more likely than not caused by me. Was she losing sleep over me?

  “You could have some people over here,” Grandma offered hopefully. Her gaze flicked around the kitchen and through the double-wide arch into the living room beyond. It was obvious she was trying to assess it and even more obvious that the sweet little farmhouse built in the late forties didn’t pass her scrutiny. Pea-soup green carpet in the living room and brown-striped wallpaper with raised strips of faded velvet were a far cry from the glamorous decor that lit up our television on a regular basis. She sighed, and I knew it meant she never expected to see a laughing knot of teenagers crowded around her table.