Thomas smiled. “Up until now circumstances have prevented me from spending any time in this tranquil community.” He gazed out across the lake. “But now arrived earlier this year, in no uncertain terms, speaking in an emphatic voice that sounded amazingly like my father’s. So I’ve been here since June, using their summer house as a studio. I paint, as you may be able to tell.” He gestured toward his clothes and shrugged. “Not something my father considers a suitable occupation.”
He took a step back and squinted, studying them with his chin down, his arms folded. Alice wondered what they looked like to a stranger. Common enough, she imagined, like any cluster of people you’d see getting off of a train or passing you on the street, with only the vaguest hints that they somehow belonged to each other: the way they smoothed their hair with the palms of their hands; the determined set of their shoulders; the pale skin, easily freckled; a feature echoed here or there—her mother’s pert nose on Natalie, her father’s pale blue eyes repeated in her own face. The sister who was lovely; the other who was smart; a father with an expression grown increasingly somber through the years; a mother who knew how to achieve a certain degree of balance among all of them. They could be any family she knew.
Thomas nodded, his expression thoughtful. “Your arrival provides me with an opportunity. I wonder, would you let me sketch you? All of you together, I mean.”
“Well, I’m not really sure—”
Thomas cut her father off. “You’d be doing me a favor, sir, I assure you. I can only paint this idyllic scenery so many times. Birches, hemlocks, the gulls and woodcocks, boats tacking back and forth across the lake. Frankly, I’m losing my mind.”
Her mother laughed, interrupting before Alice’s father could demur. “We’d be delighted. It’s very kind of you to ask. How exciting!”
“You could keep the sketch. Who knows? Someday it might be worth something. Of course, it’s equally possible that someday it will be worth absolutely nothing.”
Alice could see her father weighing his options, one of which was likely four weeks of her mother’s wrath if he declined Bayber’s invitation. She wondered why he hesitated.
“I suppose if it’s all of us together, it would be all right,” he finally offered. “You’ve already met Alice, our amateur ornithologist. She’s fourteen, and starting ninth grade in the fall. And this is Natalie, our oldest. She’ll be a junior at Walker Academy next month.”
Alice realized then that her sister hadn’t looked up from the dock once, seemingly enthralled with a book she was reading. Odd, considering Natalie was long accustomed to being the center of attention. She had the shiny, polished look of a new toy. Her appearance drew gawky young men to their front porch in droves, each of them hoping to be favored with a task: fetching lemonade if Natalie was warm, retrieving a sweater if she felt a chill, swatting at bugs drawn too close to her dizzying gravity. Alice had less immunity to Natalie than any of them, practicing her sister’s mannerisms in the mirror when she was alone; accepting her hand-me-downs with secret delight; wishing for even a small measure of Natalie’s unapologetic impulsiveness. There was power associated with her sister’s prettiness. Even now, listless and drawn from some bug she’d caught after weeks spent away looking at colleges, Natalie was still the bright sun, the star around which the rest of them orbited. Her failure to attempt to charm, or even acknowledge Thomas Bayber was surprising. Even more surprising was the fact that neither of her parents admonished Natalie for her rude behavior or insisted she say hello. And Thomas Bayber, for his part, seemed equally unaware of Natalie.
* * *
“Hello. Thomas, are you there? It’s Alice.” She knocked louder; the slick doorknob turned in her hand and the door creaked open.
“Thomas?”
Her father was on the skiff, halfway across the lake; Natalie had shunned her invitation to skip rocks, and instead put on her swimsuit, packed a lunch, and said she was going to the beach near town and didn’t want company. Her mother was meeting summer friends for a game of bridge.
“Thomas?”
There was a scrambling sort of noise, and there he was, looming in front of her, blocking out the light. He looked as though he’d been sleeping—sloe-eyed, one side of his cheek creased with little half-moon impressions, his dark hair knotted—though she’d watched him carry the paper bags into the house not quite half an hour ago.
“You look a fright,” she said.
He smiled at her and ran a hand through his hair. “Alice. What an unexpected surprise.”
“Is it all right?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Where’s Neela?” She’d grown attached to the little dog, carrying table scraps with her in case of a chance encounter. Natalie, on the other hand, referred to Neela as the vicious little cur.
“She’ll bite you if you’re not careful,” she’d told Alice.
“She will not. You’re jealous because she likes me.”
“That didn’t stop her from taking a bite out of Thomas, and he’s her owner.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You should.” Natalie had smirked. “I’ve seen the scar.”
Thomas turned and walked into the main room of the cabin. “Neela’s out visiting friends, I imagine.” His bare feet left marks in a fine dust on the floor, and Alice trailed in after him.
“Damn chalk dust,” he said. “It gets over everything.”
“What are you working on? Can I see?”
“I’m not sure it’s ready for public consumption, but if you insist, I suppose you can have a preview. Stay there.” He sorted through canvases stacked on an easel facing the bank of windows overlooking the lake. Settling on one, he picked it up by the edges and walked back across the room, sitting on an old velvet sofa, patting the cushion next to him.
The sofa was the color of dark chocolate, the fabric stained and threadbare in places, with big tapestry pillows stuffed into the corners. In spite of its condition, a shadow of elegance clung to it. That same shadow cloaked everything in the room. Beautiful books with tattered covers and pages plumped by mildew, a grandfather clock with a cracked cabinet door and a sonorous chime that sounded on the quarter hour, expensive-looking Oriental carpets with patchy fringe—all of it near to ruin, yet perfect in the way that something is exactly as you imagine it should be. The Restons’ cabin, by comparison, was a third the size and designed to look as though its owners were sportsmen, though nothing could be further from the truth. This place was like Thomas, Alice decided: flawed and sad, yet perfectly true.
She settled on the sofa next to him, folding her legs underneath her. He turned the canvas so she could see. It was a chalk sketch of the beach near town, sadly without birds. She recognized the silhouette of hemlock trees against the sky and the lip of shoreline that curled back toward itself after the point. But even though she knew the location, the way Thomas had depicted it made it unfamiliar. The pier was drawn in dark, violent slashes; the trees were leafless, charred spires; and the water looked angry, foaming against rocks and railing against the beach.
“Why did you draw it that way? It scares me to look at it.”
“I should thank you for preparing me for the critics. It’s supposed to do that, Alice.”
“That stretch of beach is beautiful. It doesn’t look anything like this.”
“But you recognized it.”
“Yes.”
“You recognized it even though it frightens you, even though you find it dark and ugly. So maybe those qualities are inherent, but you choose to overlook them. You don’t see the ugliness because you don’t want to. That’s the job of an artist: to make people look at things—not just at things, but at people and at places—in a way other than they normally would. To expose what’s hidden below the surface.”
Alice followed the line of a tree trunk, the tip of her finger hovering just above the paper. When she realized he was looking at her hands, she tucked them under her legs.
/> “Why are you hiding them?” His voice was patient, but firm. “Let me see.”
She wavered before offering them up for inspection. He took both of them in his own, his palms warm and smooth as a stone. He examined them carefully, turning over first the right, then the left. He ran his own fingers slowly down each of hers, circling her knuckles and rubbing the skin there as if trying to erase something, watching her face the whole time. Alice bit the inside of her cheek and tried not to wince, but the pain was sharp and she pulled away.
“Be still. Why are you fidgeting?”
“It hurts.”
“I can see that.” He let go of her hands, got up from the sofa, and walked to the window, resting his sketch again on the easel. “Have you told anyone?”
“No.”
“Not your parents?”
She shook her head.
He shrugged. “I’m not a doctor. I’m barely an artist to some people’s way of thinking. But if something hurts you, you should tell someone.”
“I’ve told you, haven’t I?”
Thomas laughed. “I hardly qualify as a responsible party.”
She knew something was wrong; she’d known for a while now. She limped when she got out of bed in the morning, not every morning, but often enough that she wouldn’t be able to blame it on something random much longer: a twisted ankle, a stone bruise, a blister. Fevers came on like sudden storms at night, leaving her flushed and dizzy, then vanished by the time she got up and went to the medicine cabinet for an aspirin. Rashes dotted her trunk and disappeared along with the fevers. Her joints warred with the rest of her body, using tactics that were simple but effective: flaming the skin around her knees to an unappealing red, conjuring a steady, unpleasant warming that annoyed like an itch. She’d never been blessed with Natalie’s natural grace, but lately she was wooden and clumsy. Balls, pencils, the handles of bags—all fell from her fingers as if trying to escape. She stumbled over her own feet, even when staring at them. At night, time slowed to the point of stopping, each tick of the clock’s minute hand stretching longer as she tried to distract herself from the pain in her joints.
She’d said something to her mother, but only in the vaguest of terms, making every effort to sound unconcerned. Her mother’s reactions tended toward the extreme and Alice had no interest in finding herself confined for the entire summer. But her mother, who’d been getting ready for a dinner party at the time, had answered absently, “Growing pains. They’ll pass. You’ll see.”
“Sometimes my hands shake,” she told Thomas.
“Sometimes my hands shake, too. That’s when a little whiskey comes in handy.”
She couldn’t help smiling. “I don’t think my parents would approve of that.”
“Hmm. I imagine you’re right. Do you think you could sit still for a bit?”
“I suppose so. Why?”
“I just want to do a quick sketch. That is, if you don’t mind.”
“You already did the drawing of all of us.”
“I know. But now I just want to sketch you. Is it all right or not?”
“As long as you don’t draw my hands.”
He rolled up his shirtsleeves and shook his head. “Don’t start hating parts of yourself already, Alice; you’re too young. I won’t sketch your hands if you don’t want me to, but they’re lovely. Hold them up. See? Your fingers are perfectly tapered. You could hold a brush or play a musical instrument more easily than most people because of the distance from the middle joint of your finger to the tip. Ideal proportions.”
He picked up a pencil and sharpened it against a small square of sandpaper. “Why do we lack the capacity to celebrate small bits of perfection? Unless it’s obvious on a grand scale, it’s not worth acknowledging. I find that extremely tiresome.”
“Birds are perfect. Yet most people completely overlook them.”
“Well, if birds are perfect, then you are as well. And I can’t imagine anyone failing to notice you, Alice. Now, hold up your hand. I want you to study it.”
She was suddenly self-conscious, aware of her unruly hair, her dirty feet. She held up one hand and stared at the back of it, wondering what it was she was supposed to see, while Thomas went to the phonograph in the corner of the room and thumbed through a stack of albums before taking one from its sleeve. He set the needle down on the record, then poured himself a drink and lit a cigarette. The voice that filled the room was French and mournful, the singer entirely alone in the world.
“Are you concentrating on your hand? Do you see that river of blue running just beneath your skin? It’s a path begging to be followed, or a stream running over a crest of bone before dipping into a valley. Now sit still and let me sketch you. I’ll be quick.”
“Who is that?”
“Edith Piaf.”
“She doesn’t sound happy.”
He sighed. “You’re going to have to stop talking. Your expression keeps changing. She’s called the Little Sparrow—ah, something bird-related! If she doesn’t sound happy it’s because she hasn’t had reason to be. Married young. Got pregnant. Had to leave her child in the care of prostitutes while she worked.” He paused and looked up from his easel. “Am I shocking you?”
She shook her head, secretly alarmed over the woman’s circumstances, but thrilled with the image that formed: an insignificant brown-gray bird with a stubby beak breaking forth into magnificent, sorrowful tones.
“The little girl died when she was just two years old from meningitis. Piaf was injured in a car accident and became a morphine addict. Her one true love died in a plane crash. She’s quite a tragic figure. But her history flavors her music, don’t you think? She’s haunted. You hear it in her voice.” He hummed along, apparently pleased with his macabre story.
“You’re not happy. Are you haunted?”
He peered at her from the side of his sketch pad before setting the pencil down on the easel tray. He was scowling, but one corner of his mouth curved up, as if she’d amused him. “What makes you think I’m unhappy?”
It was a fault of hers, telling people exactly what was on her mind. You should practice the art of subtlety, Natalie had told her once.
“I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Alice.”
She bit the inside of her cheek before answering him. “Unhappiness is easy to see. People try so hard to hide it.”
“Very astute. Continue.”
“Maybe you hide it by the way you look at people. You only focus on their bits and pieces. Like you don’t want to get to know them as a whole person. Or maybe you just don’t want them to get to know you. Maybe you’re afraid they won’t like you very much.”
He stiffened at the last. “I’m finished. I told you I’d be quick. It’s an interesting theory, especially coming from a fourteen-year-old.”
“You’re angry.”
“With someone as precocious as you? That would be dangerous.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“You don’t like it? It’s meant as a compliment.”
“It’s not a compliment.” A flush of heat swept her cheeks and her eyes started to tear. She was miserable realizing she’d said the wrong thing. “It only means you know more than adults think you should, and that you make them uncomfortable. They’re not sure what they can and can’t say around you. Besides, it sounds too much like precious. I hate that word.”
He walked over to the sofa and offered her a handkerchief crusted with paint, but she pushed it back toward him, blinking in an effort not to cry. Thomas chuckled. The thought that he was laughing at her made her furious, and she started stammering until he put a finger under her chin and turned her face up to his.
The air in the room grew warm. The sound of her own heart startled her, the racing thump of it so obvious, so loud in her ears. How could he not hear? It drowned out the Little Sparrow, roaring over her words, her melancholy cry. The contents of the room twisted and Alice’s mouth went dry. She couldn’t get enough air
into her lungs. Soon she’d be gasping to breathe, a fish flailing in shallow water. Her eyes darted from his feet, to the cuff of his sleeve, to the needle of the phonograph, gently bobbing along the surface of the record. Her skin tingled. There was no help for it. She had to look at him and, when she did, his expression changed from mock remorse, to concern, and then to understanding. Her face burned.
He dropped his hand and stepped back, studying the floor for a moment before looking at her again. “Fine. From this point forward, I will eliminate both precocious and precious from my vocabulary. Am I forgiven?” He made a face and pressed his hands together, as if praying.
He was making fun of her in a kind way, or else trying to make her laugh. The world righted itself as quickly as it had been thrown off its axis. He was sorry he’d hurt her feelings. He wanted to be forgiven. A small current of power coursed through her.
“Yes. I forgive you. Besides, I’ll bet if I asked your parents, they’d say you weren’t very mature yourself. You can’t be that much older than I am, Thomas.”
This time he didn’t smile. “Subterfuge doesn’t suit you, Alice, and I hope it’s not something you’ll grow into. If you want to know how old I am, just ask. Although I wouldn’t recommend it as a common practice. Most people would take offense. Fortunately, I am not most people.” He bowed at the waist. “I’m twenty-eight. Worlds older than you. Ancient.”
“You don’t seem ancient.”
“Well, I am. I was born old. My mother told me once that I looked like a grumpy old man from the moment I was born—wrinkled, pruney face, rheumy eyes. You’ve heard the expression an old soul? I was born with a head full of someone else’s failed dreams and a heart full of someone else’s memories. There’s nothing to do for it, I suppose, although if I knew I was going to turn out this way, I would have preferred to choose whose memories and heartbreaks I’d be saddled with.” He looked at her. “And you? I suppose, like most people your age, you’re anxious to be older.”
She ignored the pointed people your age. She didn’t want to admit that whatever serious plans she’d made for herself changed depending on the day of the week, or on the book she’d just read, or whether she felt strong from a full night of sleep or weak from a fevered one. The future was a dark cave yawning just ahead, beckoning her to enter.
The Gravity of Birds: A Novel Page 2