The Gravity of Birds: A Novel

by Tracy Guzeman

  “This is ridiculous,” Phinneaus had said. “You should be flying. I don’t know why you won’t let me get you a ticket. You could be there in four hours instead of forty.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to be there in four hours.”

  “No, you’d rather jostle your aching joints around for a couple of days. That makes perfect sense. Alice, you can’t do this.”

  She’d wished for the ability to hit something, hard, without her body suffering the repercussions, understanding the something would be him. “Don’t. That’s what Natalie would have said, had I ever given her reason to. You can’t do everything for me, Phinneaus.”

  He’d looked shell-shocked, and she was almost sorry she’d said it. Comparing him to her sister was inexcusable, but in this case it was true.

  “Except for the hour’s drive to the physical therapist’s office, I haven’t really traveled anywhere since college. I can’t deal with getting on a plane in one state, and just a few hours later, getting off five states away. I need more time to figure this out in my head before I get there.” She’d felt guilty saying it, knowing the implication was that she planned to meet Agnete and talk to her. In reality, finding her was the only challenge she’d actually considered.

  At the station in Newbern, he’d grabbed her arm, making a last-ditch effort to get her to change her mind. His skin was pale and the hollows under his eyes a faint purple. “Alice, I’ve pushed you into this. Even the doctor said it probably wasn’t a good idea for you to go alone. Of all the things to be stubborn about, please don’t choose this.”

  “Probably.” She was giving a lot of weight to that one word. “Phinneaus, you have to let me do this my way. I’ll call you when I get to the hotel in Santa Fe. I promise I’ll be fine.” And if I’m not, at least you won’t have to see it.

  An odd time to become an optimist, she realized, swaying back and forth in the Sightseer Lounge. She’d planned to sleep her way across the plains, but her internal clock had other ideas, so she stared out the long window, seeing nothing in the dark but her own reflection. She’d never been good at sleeping when she was supposed to, not since she’d been a little girl. Always up before the sun, lying in bed and listening to the house come slowly back to life, its predawn creaks and groans so different from those when it settled into itself at night. Did Agnete have the same habit? Not something she was likely find out, only watching her from a distance.

  On the surface, the plan was simple enough. Barring any complications, she’d be in Lamy in the early afternoon and after a brief shuttle ride, arrive at her hotel in Santa Fe. She’d rest for a few hours, have an early dinner, get a good night’s sleep, and then, in the morning, take a cab to the address on the returned envelope in hopes of finding out where Agnete had gone. That was the extent of it. She’d been aware from the beginning there were several inherent flaws in the plan, and Phinneaus was probably aware of it, too, one reason he’d been dead set against her traveling on her own. Inquiring after her daughter’s whereabouts was in itself problematic. Who would she ask? Neighbors? She pictured herself going door-to-door, asking if anyone knew Agnete Kessler and would they mind telling her, a complete stranger, where Agnete had gone. There was no guarantee Agnete would have told anyone, and even if someone knew, what would compel them to pass that information on to her? The one thing working in her favor was her apparent frailty. At least no one’s going to mistake me for a stalker.

  But inspiration came when she realized the odds favored any neighbor of Agnete’s knowing Natalie as well. All those years of visits would have counted for something. In spite of everything Natalie had stolen away, she’d given Alice an unplanned gift in her passing: not only knowledge of Agnete’s existence but a reason to contact her. The envelope served as proof of her connection and allowed her to maintain the anonymity she desired. She could be anyone—a family friend, a close relative—coming to deliver the news in person, knowing how close Natalie had been to her niece. She was shocked by how quickly she’d sacrificed her principles and was willing to shade the truth, if not discard it all together, first to Phinneaus and Saisee, then to strangers; possibly to a daughter she’d never met. I owe that to you, Natalie. I should have paid closer attention. Imagine what else I might have learned.

  Her thoughts wavered and shifted in the glass in front of her. Imagine what else I should have known. With a jolt, her own culpability came into sharp focus. Natalie and Thomas. Natalie’s inability to have a child; Alice’s inability to care for one on her own. Had she honestly expected her sister would help her raise her child without knowing who the father was; that there would be no repercussions?

  Alice’s sole attempt at manipulation—telling George Reston, Jr. that Natalie had mentioned him—had been the start of her undoing. George would have eagerly filled in any blanks once Natalie started asking questions: what reason did George possibly have for speaking with Alice? Why had she called him? And when was she at the cabin? With a shudder, Alice realized her sister must have known Thomas was the father of her child from the start; she had met Alice’s burgeoning perimeter, her dense, selfish joy, with a tortured silence. All this hell Alice had blithely called down upon herself, for once choosing to be completely unaware, not only of her surroundings, but of everything that had been written on Natalie’s face.

  The few travelers hoping to spend time in the observation car took one look at her and kept moving, their eyes fixed on the door at the opposite end of the car. Her inability to atone for her past actions was transmitted in hollow cries, in waves of tremors. No one stopped to ask whether she was all right or if she needed help. It must have been clear, even to strangers, that no simple comfort was going to provide redemption.

  Alice was worn down to nothing, raw and empty, by the time night gave up its turn to dawn. The Southwest Chief had crossed into Colorado just as the sun was coming up. The high prairie caught fire with the advancing light; dusty ranchlands took the place of dusty farm fields, clots of cattle stood together as the train sped past. The scrappy blocks fronting the rail line could have belonged to any town: strip shopping centers and gas stations, a stucco maze of storage units, an auto yard, the boarded-up skeleton of a pancake house, all relegated to the monochromatic landscape paralleling both sides of the tracks. But between La Junta and Trinidad, the scenery changed. She noticed the ragged outlines of mountains in the distance, the scraped tabletops of mesas. After the low-speed climb up Raton Pass, she entered a different world. The train headed toward Glorieta, then spilled down into Apache Canyon, the closeness of the canyon walls taking her by surprise; she sat back in her seat. The train was moving too fast to see much beyond the pines stepping up rock walls, but she knew from memory the bird species that would be endemic. She could picture the colored plates in her textbooks—the greater roadrunner, with its shaggy pompadour crest; the yellow eyes of burrowing owls; the shiny, jet-black plumage of the phainopepla, which gobbled up hundreds of mistletoe berries a day.

  She’d missed the Festival of the Cranes by only a few weeks. How tempting, to find herself just hours from Bosque del Apache and the Rio Grande. She imagined lying on her stomach, binoculars trained on the sandhill cranes and snow geese in their winter quarters, watching in wonder the mass morning liftoffs and evening fly-ins. It was an old desire, but even now, though she knew the impossibility of it, it persisted; the world as one giant aviary she ached to see, all of its feathered inhabitants in their natural environment, a thousand times better to hear their cries dampened by verdant jungle foliage or echoed across the wells of canyons than to listen to abbreviated bits of captured songs emanating from a machine. It was infinitely easier to consider all of this than to think of her daughter, the engine pulling her closer to Agnete with every S-curve of track.

  In Lamy, the attendant took her bags down and helped her off the train, pointing her in the direction of the shuttle stop. Once the train departed, Lamy looked like a ghost town, and even though the air was fresh and the sky a pale washed b
lue, she was relieved to see the shuttle pull up shortly after. She was the only passenger, and the young woman driving the van was friendly, anxious to find out Alice’s plans, to recommend restaurants, and to suggest which galleries she might want to visit.

  “Are you interested in Native American art? Contemporary Hispanic? Photography? American modern?” She rattled off a few more options, but Alice lost track of the conversation, watching the land roll away from the van’s shaded windows, the arroyos, the ghostly skeletons of aspen among the pine, the Sangre de Cristos. The girl was wearing a western-style shirt in a floral print, and her plump braid of blue-black hair bounced as the shuttle jounced. Bounce. Jounce. Alice’s joints rebelled, but the girl’s voice was resolutely upbeat, hypnotic in its cheerfulness. For the first time since she’d left, Alice thought of Thomas and how odd it was Agnete had ended up here of all places, in a town with as many art galleries as restaurants. Her hands were shaking. How had she thought she could do this?

  “I’m just here for a short stay. I’ll probably try to see a little bit of everything.”

  “That’s a good plan if it’s your first time here. You probably want to take it easy for the rest of the day anyway, to let your body adjust to the altitude. It can give you a killer headache, if you’re not used to it. By the way”—the girl fished a business card out of the ashtray and handed it over her shoulder—“I do massage if you’re interested. Shiatsu, Thai, hot stone. Craniosacral therapy. The works.”

  “I’ll keep it mind,” Alice said, discreetly slipping the business card into the crack of the seat cushion.

  Her hotel room smelled of piñon. The adobe walls were dun-colored, the furnishings in somber tones: a brick-red sofa with cocoa-colored pillows, a Navajo-patterned throw, and two chocolate leather chairs, all a welcome respite from the bright outdoor light. There were several pieces of Indian art on the walls and a carved bear fetish in an arched niche near the door. After the bellman left, having told her where the ice machine was and how to turn on the gas for the beehive fireplace in the corner, she crawled into the large bed, not bothering to undress, and pulled a rough blanket up over her shoulders. There was a strange atmosphere, something she couldn’t put her finger on until she scanned the room again and realized what was missing: the presence of another person. She was alone.

  She hadn’t been alone since the day they’d come to Tennessee. There had always been Natalie or Saisee to start with, and then later Phinneaus and often Frankie. The majority of her life had been spent in the company of caretakers. No matter how self-sufficient she wished to be, she had, to a great extent, been dependent on the kindness of others. Could you help me lift this? Could you just open that? Would you mind holding the door, taking my coat, carrying my books? Being completely alone felt as strange to her as visiting the North Pole. The shimmering silence was cold and clarifying, absent the dialogue of assistance she was accustomed to.

  What is the worst that could happen? She cataloged her body parts, acknowledging the tenderness of this, the flame of that. It was, for once, a dispassionate appraisal. I could die. That seemed melodramatic; a remote possibility since she was ensconced in a comfortable hotel room with a telephone a mere arm’s length away. But it was a relief to think the thought without the usual burden of guilt that accompanied it. At home, it would have seemed sinful to contemplate such a thing, no matter how disloyal her body, when there were people fluttering around, sacrificing their time; their ministrations part of a daily ritual undertaken for her benefit. But in this atmosphere of mysticism and enchantment, to consider she might choose at some point to let go of the tether binding her to earth was not so alarming.

  The music coming from the CD player on the bedside table was an ethereal combination of pipe, didgeridoo, chanting, and percussion that sounded like shakers and rattles. All of it lulling her into dreams of flight. As she slipped into sleep, she thought she heard the repeated high howl of a wolf or coyote outside her window and couldn’t tell if she was in Tennessee, dreaming of New Mexico, or in New Mexico, dreaming of Tennessee. The bed was the only place that didn’t seem foreign, and she clutched a small corner of the sheet in her hand, rooting herself to it.

  * * *

  She woke up, disoriented, in a dark room. She couldn’t remember where she was at first, fumbling to find her glass of water, her familiar clock; her feet had already swung over the side of the bed, searching for her slippers. It was only after she bumped her shinbone against the table that she remembered and stuck out her hand, feeling for the lamp. Nine o’clock. And she hadn’t called Phinneaus. She punched his number into the phone, thankful there was only an hour time difference between them. His voice when he answered was stilted, the distance between them expanding as she talked.

  “I fell asleep.”

  “I called. Did you have your phone turned off?”

  “I must have.”

  “And the Do Not Disturb sign on the door? I couldn’t get anyone to put me through to your room.”

  She couldn’t remember hanging anything on the door, in fact, could remember little about her arrival other than that she was here now, and in the dim light of the bedroom lamp, the room seemed strange and immense, odd shadows flickering on the walls, music wafting up from the courtyard below.

  “How’s your room?”

  “It’s what you’d expect, I guess.” Then she remembered the care he’d taken in booking it for her—not next to the elevator but not too much of a walk; on a low floor, but not the ground floor; a corner room if possible, with a fireplace; a view onto the courtyard or the square, but not the parking lot. She quickly amended her statement. “It’s lovely. I just haven’t had a chance to get used to anything yet. It’s odd for me, being alone. No Natalie, no Saisee. No you.” She paused, waiting for him to say something and when he didn’t, added, “It feels different than I expected it would, Phinneaus. I feel different.”

  “Not sure if you mean that to be a good thing or a bad thing.”

  “I mean I wish you were here. Not because I need something. Just because I wish you were here.” It was ridiculous even to try. She’d never been good at explaining her feelings, too used to keeping things to herself. This was more painful than the adolescent crushes exposed at recess.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “Sitting on the edge of a very large bed.”

  “Don’t bother flirting with me when I’m too far away to do anything about it. Is there a door leading out to a deck?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Throw a blanket on and go outside. Tell me what you see.”

  She climbed out of bed and walked across the room to the French doors. The afternoon had been so warm the cold air took her by surprise, but it cleared her head and she felt immediately awake, and transported. “Phinneaus. It’s beautiful here.”

  “Tell me.”

  The deck wrapped around the building. The trees in the empty courtyard were studded with white lights, and there were fire pits with licks of blue flame curling up from under their copper caps, surrounded by Adirondack chairs. A single guitarist stood next to the fire pit on the far side of the courtyard, strumming softly and singing something in Spanish, stopping occasionally to rub his hands together, his voice a bell in the dark. The air was scented with resin, and when she turned the corner and walked to the other end of the deck, it was dark, stars dotting the sky overhead.

  “I see Ursa Minor,” she said, her breath a puff of fog.

  She heard a door slam on his end of the line, followed by a booming crash. “Uh-huh. I see Ursa Minor, too. We can’t be all that far apart then.”

  “Phinneaus Lapine”—she laughed—“it’s raining there. I’m not a fool, I can hear the thunder. Tell me the truth. You can’t see anything at all, can you?”

  “To be perfectly honest, no,” he said. “But I imagine the stars are still where they were the last time I looked.”

  His voice was everything she equated with home. She knew he would
try to understand, even if she made a decision other than the one he would have made. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. Maybe no one will know where she’s gone and I won’t be able to find her.”

  “But you’ll have tried.”

  “You think that will make a difference?”

  He hesitated before answering, then said, “Yes. But the more important thing is that you think it will, too.”

  If she was standing on the edge of a cliff, her decision to take a step backward would have seemed perfectly logical. But he wanted her to throw herself off into a free fall, and enjoy the view on the way down.

  “Alice? You still there?”

  “Hmm. Still here.”

  “Don’t stay away too long.”

  “I miss you,” she said quickly, then hung up before he could answer and huddled down in one of the chairs on the deck, looking out into the dark.

  * * *

  She stayed in bed, dead to the world, waking to the sound of a vacuum cleaner in the hallway. She knew she’d overslept even before looking at the clock. Already late morning. She’d planned to walk around the square early, map in hand, to get her bearings before the streets were filled with clumps of tourists, objects to be negotiated around and avoided. She got out of bed and hobbled over to the window, regretting she hadn’t thought to put on socks before her outdoor conversation with Phinneaus. She bit her lip as she pulled the curtain aside.

  The courtyard was a flurry of activity, grounds people clipping bushes and planting trimmed pines in large terra-cotta planters before stringing them with lights and ropes of small red chiles. Christmas. She’d almost forgotten the holidays and realized she should pick up something for Phinneaus, Frankie, and Saisee while she was here. She ordered room service and ran a bath, dumping the contents of a package of bath salts into the deep tub and inhaling the scent of cedar and sage while swirling her hands back and forth in the warm water. The trip had taken its toll, and she barely had the energy to dress. Walking around town would be out of the question.