She walked three miles every day with the goal of staying the same size she’d been in high school; past Ruby’s salon, past the hardware store, past the bank and the market. Past the post office, where she stopped to pick up mail not delivered to the house—never to the house—because certainly she deserved to have some privacy in regard to her own affairs. (A statement Saisee interpreted as a personal slight.) Past the diner, where she waved to the men perched on stools in front of the window, the same men who looked up in unison from their New Heralds and continued smiling long after she went by before returning to squint at the lines of fine print. Past the cemetery with its fence and scraggly hedge of forsythia and box, and American flags the size of postcards, screwed into the hard ground next to the plainest of markers.
All that walking. Then, two weeks ago, she’d simply dropped while walking from one side of the living room to the other, as if the carpet had gained some severe gravity, pulling her to the floor in a rush. The vase full of blazing star and bellflower and great blue lobelia, cut from the wild edges of their back garden, had slipped through her fingers like it was oiled. It landed with a dull thud on the Oriental, painting a stain of water on the wool, which Alice swore she could still see an outline of. Alice had found her legs more capable of quick motion than she would have imagined possible. On the floor next to Natalie, alarmed by the expression of disbelief on her sister’s face, she’d held Natalie’s hand, forgetting for once to envy the strength of it as Natalie’s fingers locked around hers, encircling her wrist like the talons of a fierce bird.
“Sorry,” Natalie had said, her breath catching in her throat.
Alice bent down, her ear close to Natalie’s mouth. “It’s all right,” she said.
“No. I’m sorry.”
* * *
“Did her fingers curl up?”
“Like mine, you mean?” Alice held out a hand, giving it a blunt appraisal.
“Nah. You can still move your fingers, can’t cha?”
“On a good day, yes.”
“My cousin told me when folks pass, if they don’t want to go, their fingers curl up like they’re trying to hold on to their lives with all their earthly strength. Like they’re clawing to stay where they are.”
“Your cousin’s imagination is more vivid than yours, Frankie, which I find almost impossible to believe.”
Alice had pulled Natalie’s hand away from her wrist to feel for a pulse and finding none, held on to her sister’s hand again. Not yet, she’d whispered. Don’t go yet. But then Natalie’s fingers, the same fingers Alice had known all her life—long and slender, the nails cut straight across, not too short or too long, the polish growing a little dull—had relaxed. The funeral director’s assistant had hounded her for two days until she finally gave in and picked a bottle of nail color, a dreadful, calamine lotion shade called Pinkee Doodle Dandy.
“Miss Natalie would have wanted her nails to look their best,” he’d grumbled.
“You pick something, Albert. I grant you dispensation.”
“Wouldn’t be right. She wasn’t my kin. Family does for family.”
“Albert, I’ve picked out the dress and the shoes, the necklace and earrings you told me she’d need. Can’t you please stop bothering me about something so unimportant?”
“Wouldn’t have been unimportant to her,” he’d said.
In that, he was right. It would have mattered to Natalie, and he knew that about her. The whole town would have known it. Orion, Natalie’s mysterious choice after fleeing Connecticut, was exactly the sort of place where the most critical concern following the loss of a loved one would be the determination of appropriate attire. Natalie had landed them in a town that valued good gossip as much as it did propriety, a place that embraced the long-suffering older sister like a lost lamb in spite of her northernness, and kept Alice at arm’s length, uncertain as to whether she was more deserving of suspicion or of solicitude. All except for Frankie and Phinneaus.
With Albert’s insistence that she “pick out something pretty for Miss Natalie,” Saisee had dumped the collection of nail polishes into Alice’s lap, the diminutive, half-empty bottles with their slick black tops, the sort of thing Alice had never worn when she might have, and couldn’t open now had she wanted to. They were as foreign to her as currency from a tropical island: sunny corals and gummy-looking peppermints, eraser pinks and taffeta ivories, raucous fuchsias that made her think of exotic birds she had never seen but could imagine in all of their screaming plumage. The idea of doing anything to draw attention to her hands, to her fingers, could not have been more unfamiliar to her. The thought of it loosed a dark laugh from her that turned into a melancholy cry.
Pick out something pretty. Pretty. The word stuck in her throat, the odd syllables trapped in the wrong mouth. That was a word she had eliminated from her vocabulary a long time ago. The words she could claim for herself had steelier tones: whip smart, pigheaded, distant, determined.
Before, there had always been Natalie to war against, always Natalie to bring out her sharpest teeth; to force her into battle over the smallest slice of life to which she could still lay claim. Her determination to hold her own against her sister was the strong motivation that allowed her to get through each day. Now that Natalie was gone, Alice felt something else moving in to take her place: the anxious embrace of defeat, always waiting its turn.
“Phinneaus says we should eat dinner with you tonight,” Frankie told her, the croaky rasp of his voice bringing her back.
“I didn’t realize inviting yourself over for dinner was mannerly.”
“Phinneaus says you could use the company. That you shouldn’t be alone right now, Miss Alice.” His eyes widened. “Are you scared?”
“Scared? What would I have to be scared of?”
Frankie lowered his voice, and though she knew it wouldn’t be worth the pain, she bent her head closer to hear his answer.
“Haunts.”
“Haunts? You mean ghosts? Frankie, what in the world are you talking about?”
His eyes were fixed on her feet. “Miss Natalie.”
Would Natalie take any pleasure in haunting her now? The only reason for haunting would be if there was anything left unsaid between them. Haunting, taunting. The words somersaulted back and forth across her brain, the opposite ends of a baton. No, she decided. There were ghosts enough to fill up the rooms of this house, all of them. There wasn’t space for another.
“You tell Phinneaus if it’s all right with Saisee, then yes, I think it would be nice to have the two of you join me for dinner.”
“Saisee doesn’t have to cook. We’re gonna bring the food to you.”
“Unless your uncle’s suddenly become a master chef, I’m not sure that’s anything to look forward to. But as for the company, well, I don’t see how I can refuse an offer like that, do you, Saisee?”
The housekeeper sniffed and smoothed down the pleats of her skirt. “I’m not sure how I feel ’bout someone else cookin’ in my kitchen. There’s nothin’ wrong with my hands.”
“You’re invited, too, Saisee,” Frankie piped up. “I forgot to say.”
“Just because Miss Natalie’s gone, no reason for everything round here to fall to pieces. I still got work to do.”
But for how long? Alice wondered. Yesterday hadn’t been a day to think about money, neither was today. But soon. Soon she would have to ask Phinneaus, who eschewed the convenience of a calculator, to sit down with his sharpened pencil and review her finances with her. She would watch him print on ledger paper, the numbers meticulously scratched in one column, then transformed by a horrible alchemy, only to appear much larger in another. The resulting sum was a crystal ball, hinting at her future—where she would have to go, what she would have to leave behind, when she would need to start doing without. She envisioned her available funds dwindling like her own fragile architecture until there was nothing left after all the subtractions: the cost of her medicines, the doctors’ visits, Sai
see’s salary, the property taxes and the water bill and the electric bill and the food. Death leaned over her shoulder, breathing Natalie’s breath, making Alice feel reckless. I could leave it all, she thought. I could stop trying to be better, stop trying to outwit my disease, stop being tired. I could just stop.
But there was Frankie, sitting at her feet, looking up anxiously.
“This grand feast of ours,” she said, stroking his head. “What will we be having?”
“I can’t tell a thing. I swore.”
“Well, in that case, I won’t tempt you to break your word.”
He scrambled to his feet, all awkward limbs and clumsy edges, and lucky, freckled-boy health. “I got to tell Phinneaus.” He looked back at her before pushing the screen door open. “I could say we’re havin’ somethin’ cold. That’s just a hint, not a whole tell.” He winked at her, clearly pleased with himself, and the door slammed behind him, his feet clumping down the porch steps and echoing across the walk as the noise of him pushed out into the world.
“Saisee, you should join us.”
“I’m gonna pack up some of her things, Miss Alice. No use leaving them out now. Don’t want nothin’ callin’ her back here.”
Alice shook her head. “Not you, too? I know for a fact you don’t believe that. Natalie’s gone and she’s not coming back, not as flesh or haunt. You hear me?”
“Not a thing wrong with my hearing.” Saisee balanced a basket of linens on her hip and sashayed out of the room. But like Frankie, she stopped in the doorway to give Alice a parting word. “I know she was your sister. I know it’s a sin to speak ill of the dead. But I’m glad she’s gone. You can send me away for saying so, but I mean it clear to my bones. I’m glad she’s gone. Always criticizing, always holdin’ you down. Trying to keep you afraid. Your sister never wanted nothin’ more than hurt for you.” Saisee turned and walked into the kitchen.
“Don’t say anything against her, Saisee.” Alice’s scold was no more than a whisper and the housekeeper was already out of earshot, but Alice felt compelled to defend her sister anyway, even if it was only to the still air in the room.
It would have been less painful had Saisee used Natalie’s name, providing Alice with the smallest amount of emotional distance. Sister was the person of her childhood. Natalie was the other, the one who’d taken that sister’s place so many years ago. Alice waited, hoping to feel indignation or anger rise up in her on Natalie’s behalf, but there was nothing other than the sad knowledge that Saisee was right. Alice heard Natalie’s familiar voice over the years, delivering venom laced in her adopted drawl: I saw Phinneaus at the dance last night. I didn’t know he was seeing a redhead. You wouldn’t believe the way that girl moved. I’d say indecent, but people couldn’t stop applauding. Phinneaus will be needing a wife to help him now that he’s got that boy. Someone energetic enough to run after a three-year-old, don’t you think? Do you really need a new dress when you never go anywhere? I’m not sure we could afford it anyway, not with the cost of all of your prescriptions.
There had been small fissures in their strained relationship, occasions when something just beyond civility was called for, birthdays and holidays, meals shared in the presence of others. But then there were other things, unexplained. A night years ago when she’d been unable to sleep. The thought of what she’d lost suddenly stormed her defenses without reason. It had not been a particular date, or time of year; no trigger she could put her finger on. Maybe it was the quiet that invited the thing in, that called it down upon her. The shock of loss rolled over her as if it was brand-new. She doubled over, crying, the force of her sobs rattling the bed against the wall. She couldn’t stop. The sudden touch of Natalie’s hand on her shoulder was so foreign, the anguish in her voice so real when she said, “Alice.” Alice threw her arms around her, listening to Natalie’s cracked voice start, then stop. Then try to start again. “Alice, I need to . . .”
“Don’t say anything. Just stay with me.”
“Shhhh. I know.”
“You don’t know. You can’t understand. Just stay. Please.” She’d fallen asleep like that, half sitting up, her arms wrapped around Natalie.
The next morning, when Alice stumbled into the kitchen for coffee, Natalie was leaning against the refrigerator, a glass of juice in her hand.
“Natalie, thank you for—”
Natalie interrupted, holding up her hand in response. “I don’t know, remember?”
The sister Alice longed for had vanished overnight; Natalie had carefully folded her back up and secreted her away in some unknown place. But those rare instances had given Alice hope; they had led her to believe her sister was there, buried beneath something she did not have the strength to move.
* * *
Thanksgiving came and went with minimal fanfare, and the night of reckoning descended shortly thereafter. Phinneaus arrived carrying his tools: the sharpened pencils, legal pads, the calculator she’d bought for him as a present before she knew him well, which he always carried but never used. After dinner, Saisee and Frankie stayed in the kitchen to clean up and to practice his vocabulary words. Alice and Phinneaus retreated to the dining room. She lapped the dining room table with her stuttering walk and pushed aside the curtain, peering out the window into the dark.
“I miss winter.”
“We have winter, Alice. Some snow most years. You know that. You’re stalling.”
It was a gift, having someone who knew her so well. “I know. But it’s true. Sometimes I miss northeast winters. Still. After all this time.” The promise of quiet, the blanket of solitude stretched out over everything and everyone at once, expected, but still surprising when it came, the sky shaking off its feathery coat. How the rest of the world slowed, for a month or two, to her own hesitant pace; everyone taking care, moving with greater caution, pushing forward into a battering wind that pushed back. How much closer she felt to normal then.
“Something on your mind?”
She wasn’t good at hiding anything from him, but this, especially, seemed so visible. Not just to him, but to anyone who looked at her.
“You love your sister, don’t you, Phinneaus?”
He twirled the pencil between his fingers before drawing tic-tac-toe squares on a blank piece of paper. “I think what you mean to ask is, do I love my sister still, even though she stole from my folks and broke their hearts and abandoned her child to her broken-down older brother without thinking twice about it. Even though she’s reckless and irresponsible and a criminal and a junkie. Even though I don’t think she’ll change. I believe that’s what you mean to ask me.”
“Well, do you?”
“Hell, nobody’s perfect.” Phinneaus grinned at her, and marked an x through the middle square, sliding the paper across the table toward her. She didn’t respond, and he tried again.
“Yes, Alice. I still love her. I know that doesn’t make it any easier for you.”
“But how can you?”
He wasn’t someone who found it necessary to explain his opinions or his actions, and most of the time she was content to fill in her own interpretation. But not now. She’d hoped for a different answer, one that would allow her to justify her own feelings. “How can you?” she asked again.
He sat back in his chair and let the pencil roll across the table. “I spent a lot of time hating people, Alice, during the war, and after. It was a useful emotion—let me do things I’d have never thought I could bring myself to do. I hated governments and politics. I hated the food and the weather and the noise. I hated the men I was fighting against, and half the time I hated the men I was fighting next to just as much. Every time I used the word, every time I thought it, it deadened me a little more.”
She remembered. He’d gotten to Orion two years ahead of her, but had been almost as dead to the world as she’d been upon arriving here. It was five years before he told her about the tattoo on his upper arm, a bow bisected by a flaming arrow, and that had happened only after he’d stu
mbled across their front yard late one night when Natalie was gone on one of her biannual vacations, drunk and talking to himself, cursing when he fell into the boxwood hedge along the front walk. She’d shooed him around to the back of the house, started a pot of coffee, and let him talk, gradually piecing together a story from his few coherent sentences. It was why he’d come to Orion, he said. His best buddy in his unit had been a local boy, always talking about his idyllic childhood. He’d died holding on to Phinneaus while they both waited for the medics to come, the same medics who later saved Phinneaus’s leg. The friend had a little brother, one of the itchy, grimy boys in the first scout troop Phinneaus helped. But no one knew he and the man had served together, and he meant to keep it that way. I promised him I’d do what I could, Phinneaus had told her that night, but no one’s gonna make me tell his momma about his last hours on this earth. Bow and arrow. Orion. The hunter. Those were his last words before his eyes closed and he fell asleep on the kitchen floor. He was gone before Saisee arrived the next morning and avoided Alice for a good two weeks after. The look he flashed her the next time she saw him was all the warning she needed, and she’d never said a thing about it to another soul.
“When I found out about Sheila dumping Frankie, I thought it would push me over the edge, the way she’d left him. I wanted to hate her. But the moment I saw him—he was, what, three years old?—there wasn’t any hate in him, no matter he’d been passed around from one relative to the next ever since he was born. He didn’t hate his momma. I don’t know why, but he never has. And if he didn’t, then how could I?”
Phinneaus had changed when Frankie came into his life five years ago. Up until then, he and Alice had been equally reticent, content to inhabit the fringe of Orion’s small society. She was the one who tutored the town’s children, awarding a feather for a right answer. She was the one who peered from the window at Halloween, watching Saisee dole out candy, occasionally nodding to the watchful parents on the sidewalk. She was the one who ambled around the block in the early morning or just after dusk, preferring to limit her exposure to adults to the gray hours of the day, be the living ghost they acknowledged but didn’t speak of outside of polite inquiry, in deference to her sister. And Phinneaus was . . . Phinneaus. Plainspoken and private, he had little need of conversation or attachments with adults, but was a champion of the town’s children. There’d been little about him to dislike, so people let him alone, as he clearly wished. But with the arrival of Frankie, he turned into a de facto parent. He fretted and bragged, laughed and scolded, taught and learned in equal parts. He joined the PTA, coached Pee Wee football, threw birthday parties for Frankie with water balloons and garter snakes and do-it-yourself ice cream sundaes that made the boy the envy of his friends. He left Alice behind in some small way, yet she was happy for him. Now he had Frankie to care for, she didn’t need to worry his sense of nobility would make him feel somehow responsible for her.
The Gravity of Birds: A Novel Page 19