“You left school and went home to have the baby.”
“Yes, in the very early spring. I was deliriously happy. I felt good. Strong, even. I didn’t give much thought to how I was going to manage, once the baby came. I had faith everything would fall into place.” Alice stood up slowly and walked to the stove, turning the fire down under the pot. “I was wrong.”
It was unpleasant, this excavating of another person’s life. Stephen might be able to view it dispassionately, as ancient history, but then he wasn’t in the same room with her, seeing Alice glance out the window at her daughter like someone lost at sea who has just spotted land. Watching her flinch at every question as he dredged through her past. When her phone rang and she excused herself, he found he was happy for the interruption.
She came back into the kitchen a few minutes later. Her demeanor had changed; there was a tinge of color to her cheeks and her eyes sparkled. “Phinneaus sends his regards.”
“I assume Phinneaus was the one who told you we were coming to Santa Fe?”
Her body seemed to unspool at the sound of his name; some rigidness went out of her. “He guessed you might be. We’re opposites in that respect. He has a sixth sense; he lets himself be guided by his intuition. I tend to react first, then think about what I should have done once it’s too late. After Stephen pulled you away so quickly, Phinneaus went into the kitchen and sat in the chair where Stephen had been sitting. He saw the notes Saisee had jotted on the calendar.”
“So you had the opportunity to alter your plans, but you didn’t?”
“I decided to leave it to chance, whether you’d find us or not. I was almost hoping you would.”
“I don’t understand. Why?”
Alice looked out the window. “Because I’m a coward.”
“From what little I know of you, Alice, I would have to disagree.”
“Then call it the long-awaited judgment.”
She turned toward the picture in the living room, Natalie holding Agnete as though she were her own child, her arm curled protectively around the girl’s body. Finch recognized something in Natalie’s face, the same unambiguous expression of ownership he’d seen in the main panel of the triptych, where Natalie’s hand gripped Thomas’s shoulder.
“You haven’t seen the other panel?”
“No,” she said. “I knew nothing about the triptych. I only saw this painting a few days ago. He captured her very well, wouldn’t you say?”
“Agnete? Or Natalie?”
“Both of them. It’s the only image I have of Agnete as a child, other than the one I carried in my head. Now that I’ve met her, my imagined Agnete is gone. I can’t seem to bring her back.” She turned away from the painting as if it was physically painful to see. “What were you planning to tell my daughter when you found her?” Alice asked.
He’d rehearsed a speech in his head numerous times since seeing Agnete’s work in the gallery. But it was primarily speculation, with a hefty measure of conjecture and supposition. “Only about Thomas. I would have been guessing at anything more. There were times I felt his right to know trumped everything else, your feelings, and hers. He put me in an untenable position, Alice, I just didn’t realize it when I agreed to help him. By the time I found out there was a child involved, he was already ill. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t write. I wasn’t sure how much he understood. It seemed too late at that point to assign parameters to our agreement.” He paused, uncertain of how to continue. “What does she know about Natalie?”
“Just that her aunt died quite suddenly in September. I told her Natalie was planning a visit in October; that I’d seen her airline ticket. Agnete was very upset. The last time Natalie visited, they’d argued about money. She’d been telling Natalie for years she didn’t need any financial support, but Natalie wouldn’t listen. Agnete finally gave up and started putting the checks Natalie sent into a savings account. She was planning to use the money for Natalie later on, in case she needed it when she got older.” Alice lowered her voice and looked toward the door. “I could tell she felt she was betraying her aunt by confiding in me, but Agnete thought the money was meant to make her feel in some way obligated. When the last check came, she simply returned it. That was the letter Phinneaus found when we went through Natalie’s things. It was marked, ‘Return to Sender.’ We both assumed it meant she’d moved. Luckily, we were wrong.”
Alice shook her head. “Beyond that . . . let’s say we’re cautious with each other. I find my daughter to be amazingly kind and patient. I can’t imagine where she gets those qualities.” She smiled at him, but her eyes were wet. “I know she has questions. And there are so many things I want to ask her. But there isn’t any outline for this discussion, and I desperately need one.” She reached out and touched the sleeve of his sweater. “You said you have a daughter?”
“Lydia. She’s twenty-eight.”
“Then you already know what I am just coming to understand. That a parent will do anything to protect their child.”
Finch let his eyes close for a brief moment and thought of his daughter. She came to him as a child, running to meet him at the door after work, her arms wrapped around his waist, her stocking feet resting lightly on the tops of his shoes as he walked her backward into the living room. “Yes,” he said. “I would do anything necessary to protect her.”
“And if telling her the truth about Natalie, about what Natalie did to me, to the both of us, would only cause her more pain? What then?”
He thought carefully before answering. “Agnete is your child, but she is not a child. She’s an adult. I think you have to trust she’ll come to her own conclusions regarding what you tell her, and make her own judgments of those involved.”
Finch set his portfolio on the table and opened it, taking out the cards Natalie had mailed to Thomas. He handed them to Alice one at a time. She examined them briefly, holding them by the edges as if they were hot. Then she set them down and buried her head in her hands.
“Alice, I think your sister must have been a very disturbed young woman.”
“He knew she was alive. He knew, and I didn’t.”
It was what Finch had suspected, but it seemed too cruel to contemplate. He would not have thought Natalie, or almost anyone, capable of such a thing had he not seen the expression on Thomas’s face when the four men first looked at the triptych panel two months ago.
“Would Thomas have made a good father, do you think?”
Finch thought of the dark, smoke-filled rooms, the empty liquor bottles, the squalor. How hard had Thomas tried to find the two of them? He and Stephen had stumbled their way to the treasure, albeit with a good deal of luck, in a few months.
“Perhaps he’d be a different man than he is now.” It was a roundabout way of answering the question. In spite of everything, he still felt some loyalty to Thomas. Who else was there to defend him?
“That seems like an awful burden to put on a child, the responsibility of bringing out the best in a parent.” She wiped her face. “Parent, child, daughter. I have a new vocabulary, words I’m not used to using, at least not in regard to myself.”
“Does it really make a difference, finding out he knew about her from the beginning?”
“Each of us only knew what Natalie wanted us to. But I had a chance to tell him at the first, and I didn’t take it. I can blame her for almost all of it, but not for that. Had I not thought Agnete was . . .”
Alice clearly had trouble thinking of her daughter as being anything other than vibrant and alive. “I’d like to think I would have told him after she was born, that I could have swallowed my anger and given him the opportunity to know her. To become a different person, as you suggest. I’m not sure I know how to make peace with that.” She ran her fingertip over a spot on the table, trying to erase it. “It’s the second thing I’ve stolen from him.”
“The second?”
She turned in her chair and reached into the pocket of the sweater resting across the back of i
t. “I wonder if you would give him this when you see him.”
She held her closed hands out in front of her. He saw the knuckles, swollen and red; the wayward position of her fingers, the fatigue of years carved into the skin. He held out his hands, and though he’d thought there was nothing left to surprise him, he had not expected what she put there.
“I was so angry when I left the cabin that day. He’d done something I didn’t think I could forgive. I wanted to hurt him in return, but the truth was I didn’t know how.” She ran a crooked finger across the back of the bird in Finch’s hands. “This belonged to his mother. In spite of how she and his father rejected him, he kept it. I thought it might mean something to him, so I took it. Even when I thought I’d never speak to him again, I’d always intended to return it.”
“You could give it back to him yourself.”
She shook her head. “No. I meant it when I said I was a coward.”
The Doughty figurine was warm in his hands. He examined it, the careful details of its coloring, its anatomy. “I don’t believe Thomas ever had much experience with rejection, Alice. Adulation, adoration, yes. But aside from you, and his parents, I can’t think of anyone else who ever chose to leave him. He doesn’t give people that opportunity, you see. You walking out must have been a unique experience, one he preferred not to repeat. If you wonder why he didn’t try harder to find you and Agnete, maybe it’s because he believed you didn’t want to be found. At least, not by him.” He reached into his briefcase and pulled out the packet of letters, all of them addressed to her, all of them marked, in Natalie’s hand, “Return to Sender.”
She was still, looking at the envelopes but making no move to touch them. “Natalie succeeded, didn’t she?”
“She didn’t stop him from thinking about you. You’re in every piece of work he did, from the time he found out about the baby until he stopped painting. Am I wrong to tell you?”
“You mean the birds.” She stared at her hands and smiled. “I didn’t know about that until I came here. If I hadn’t stopped to rest outside a gallery, I don’t know if I ever would have.” She reached across the table and rested her hand lightly on his. “I don’t think those images were meant for me, Professor. I saw him in a dream the night before I found Agnete. I think he meant them for her.”
“Alice, I’d like to help your daughter, if you think she’ll let me. I still have some contacts in New York, a few gallery owners I know, and it appears I may have some time on my hands. Her work is very special.” He waited for a sign of approval, uncertain as to whether he’d made the offer to please her, or because he felt a spark of a kinetic energy when he viewed Agnete’s work, something that hadn’t happened in years. Regardless, his offer was sincere.
“She has his talent.”
“She has her own talent.”
He hesitated, then asked, the last thing he intended to do on Bayber’s behalf. “Have you forgiven him?”
Stephen and Agnete were still outside, bumping against each other, racing toward the back door. He thought how young they were, the blush of red high in their cheeks, their long limbs, their dark hair.
“We’ve made our peace,” Alice said.
* * *
They pushed through the kitchen door together, jostling each other in a race to the house, then fell into the two remaining chairs around the table, laughing, shaking their hands to break the chill.
“Alice,” Stephen started, reaching across the table for the bowl of crackers. “Is it all right if I call you Alice?” He went on without waiting for an answer. “I wonder if I could get a picture of you and Agnete standing beneath the painting. I don’t mean for you to think I’m presuming anything, but I did promise my employer I would keep him up-to-date. Regardless of the outcome, I’d like him to know we’ve found one of the missing panels.”
Stephen saw a look pass between Alice and Finch before she answered.
“The painting isn’t mine, Mr. Jameson. But, if it’s all right with Agnete, it’s fine with me.”
“After dinner,” Agnete said, her tone, Stephen noted, a caution to him. If you expect anything from me, don’t push her.
Agnete’s responses to his questions in the backyard had been clipped when he strayed from the topic of art in general or her sculptures in particular. Finally, he stopped following her around and perched on the cold edge of a wrought-iron love seat in the courtyard, waiting until she realized she’d lost her audience and wandered back to him.
“Are you tired? Or just tired of hearing me talk?” she’d asked.
“I’m trying to understand how this must be for you. First your mother, who you’ve never met, shows up at your door with news your aunt has died. A few days later, two strangers claim to want to see your work, which is very impressive by the way, which I wouldn’t say if I didn’t mean. My good opinion of it would have meant something a few years ago. Now, I’m afraid it’s just my good opinion, but at least it’s an opinion based on experience and knowledge, if that’s any consolation. Which, I acknowledge, it may not be.”
“Stephen, you must have lost track of what you were originally going to tell me by now. I certainly have.”
“I’m trying to let you know it’s not just because I want something. I’m sincerely interested in your work.” Stephen gestured to the various pieces of sculpture in the yard. “It intrigues me.”
Agnete had walked over to one of the taller works, the school of fish, and fingered a small piece of metal slightly darker than the others, its shape not quite as symmetrical as the rest of the pieces swimming through the air in swirling, upward drifts. Upon closer scrutiny, Stephen saw she had changed the spacing of this one piece of metal in relation to the others, as well as the weight of it. When the wind blew, it did not move in the same pattern as the rest; instead, it twitched and wavered in a way that suggested it was swimming harder, against the tide, in an effort to catch up.
“I’m that fish,” she said. “I grew up in this house. It’s the only place I’ve ever lived, and I love it here. But everyone in town knew that Therese, even though she raised me, wasn’t my mother. Everyone knew that whoever my father was, he wasn’t around. I survived adolescence by convincing myself I didn’t care; I told myself being different didn’t make me any less.” She pulled her hair away from her face, and Stephen was struck by her resemblance to her father. He could feel Bayber’s hand, an iron clamp squeezing his wrist. Her father, had he been around, would likely have scared away anyone brave enough to come within five feet of Agnete.
“I made this piece because I’ve always had a feeling of being separate from everyone else, which I was fine with, but at the same time, a fear of being left behind. Does that make sense?”
Her explanation resonated with him, though he’d have been hard-pressed to articulate it as clearly. He’d stared at the ground, scowling in concentration, unable to say more than “Yes, I understand what you mean. Maybe I’m that fish, as well.”
“Then there are two of us. We’ll be our own school.”
“Agnete, what did Natalie tell you about your mother? About Alice, I mean.”
“That’s a rather insensitive question.”
Stephen bit his lip, but couldn’t stop from smiling.
“Something funny?”
“No. You sound like Finch, is all. He likes to remind me that I’m a rather insensitive person, so your conclusion seems reasonable.”
Agnete looked up at the sky and squeezed her eyes shut. “Alice is exactly the way I imagined her.”
“From your dreams?”
“From everything Natalie told me. She talked about Alice whenever we were together. She said she wanted me to know her the way she did.” She shook her head, then opened her eyes wide, as if the world might have changed during those few brief seconds. She held up a hand and ticked qualities off on her fingers. “Smart. Tenacious. Driven. Honest. Too cautious. Loyal to a fault. Natalie said she could always count on Alice to take her side when they were gro
wing up; that Alice was like her other, better self.”
“But . . .”
“She told me that my mother died during childbirth.”
Stephen’s image of Natalie as the fascinating, beguiling outsider dissipated. Agnete looked up at the sky again, blinking rapidly.
“Something in your eye?”
She looked at him in disbelief before breaking out with a laugh that was as bright as Lydia’s but more resonant, warmer. “I’m trying not to cry.”
“Right. Good.” He slapped his hand against his knee, adding an exclamation point. “So, you hate your aunt. Perfectly understandable.”
Agnete dug the toe of her boot into the ground. “What would be the point?” She reached out and touched the sleeve of his jacket. “You don’t have permission to judge her, Stephen. That’s reserved for me. And for Alice. Anyway, I’m trying very hard to believe that, for whatever reason, Natalie made a decision in the spur of the moment to tell me something that wasn’t true. She just couldn’t figure out how to take it back once she’d said it.”
“You’re defending her?”
“Of course not. But people always do things they hadn’t intended to do. You’re angry. You allow yourself the luxury of considering a horrible thought. You don’t have any intention of acting on it, of course, but you’ve given it a home in your head. It burrows in, pays attention, waits for an opportunity. And in the moment when something requires a decision, it’s right there, seeming just as viable as the saner option, the morally correct response. So you choose. And with one decision, you’ve become a different person, capable of doing something so reprehensible, you convince yourself it’s completely justified. Because why else would you be doing it? And if, no, when you start to doubt, you can’t see your way back to making it right, so you just keep moving forward, making it wrong over and over again.”
He stared at her fingers, imagining them coaxing life into a piece of clay. “I find it curious you can be so kind.”
“Kindness doesn’t have anything to do with it. I want to give her some peace. Natalie was haunted.”
The Gravity of Birds: A Novel Page 33