Sparrow Road

by Sheila O'Connor

  “Raine,” Gray said. “I’m finished with the drinking.”

  “Okay,” I said. I picked up Mama’s picnic basket and threw the checkered napkins in with all the garbage. I was ready for this Gray day to be done.

  33

  When Gray’s van pulled out of the driveway, I didn’t say a word to anybody. I dumped the picnic basket in the barn, grabbed my bike, and took off by myself. I didn’t know where I was going. Part of me wanted to ride back to Milwaukee, to the girl I used to be. The Raine O’Rourke I was before I knew I had a father who loved drinking more than me.

  I rode so far and fast my heart hurt. My father was so drunk he couldn’t see me on my birthday, or send a card at Christmas, or go long enough without a drink to find out how I was.

  When I got tired of riding, I dropped my bike into the weeds, let it fall so hard the fender bent against the wheel. I sat down in the field and cried all by myself. Far away from Sparrow Road, so no one else would see me. I pulled his bronze medallion from my pocket and set it down beside me. One year without a drink. Gray should have quit a long, long time ago.

  I don’t know how long I sat there, but when Viktor’s truck skidded to a stop out on the gravel, I didn’t want him to see my tear-streaked face.

  “Raine!” Diego jumped down from the back end of the truck and waded through the tall grass like a bear. “Raine, are you okay?” He rested his warm hand against my head.

  I hid my face between my knees. “I don’t want to talk to Viktor,” I mumbled through my legs.

  “No,” Diego said. “I understand.” He gave my head a pat. “Raine’s okay,” he yelled to Viktor. “Let Molly know we found her. The two of us are on our way back home.”

  Diego crouched beside me in the grass. “Your mama’s looking everywhere for you. She’s got everybody searching.” Maybe Mama was remembering the day Gray lost me in the park? “Even Eleanor.”

  “Eleanor was searching?” I couldn’t imagine Eleanor looking anywhere for me.

  Diego laughed. “It’s that crazy mother instinct.” It was good to hear his big roar fill the field.

  “Gray drank,” I said. I had to get it off my chest, even though it made me feel ashamed to come from a man that drank like Mr. Earle. “He drank and drank.”

  “I know,” Diego said. “Your mama told me, Raine.” He plucked a long, green weed and let a caterpillar inch off it toward my arm. “But the good news is, he’s been sober since last summer. That’s no small achievement, Raine. It’s like climbing up a mountain every day. Drinking’s not an easy thing to end.” He nodded toward Gray’s bronze medallion shining in the weeds. “It took a lot to earn that.”

  “He lost me at a park. A stranger found me crying in an alley.” The last part made me choke up on new tears. “And he was too drunk to see me on my birthdays, or Christmas, or all the other days I wondered where he was.”

  “All terrible things,” Diego said.

  I let the caterpillar crawl across my skin, touched my fingers to its tiny hairs. Once, Mama hung a cocoon in our front window, but no butterfly ever burst out of the gauzy bubble. It was still hard for me to see how one thing grew out of the other.

  “But for what it’s worth—Gray’s doing well today. And he only has today. And tomorrow, and whatever good he can do into the future.”

  I licked the salty tears off of my lips. I wanted to go home and splash cold water on my face.

  “Your mama’s done a hard, brave thing. She let Gray have a chance with you this summer, because in the end, she wants to do what’s right. And your knowing Gray is right.”

  “But I was happy with Grandpa Mac and Mama.” I knew now why Mama didn’t want to lose the good life that we had.

  “But you would have always wondered. And even with his troubles, Gray James is still your dad.”

  Your dad. Both times Diego said it the words seemed a plain, true fact. Your dad. Like a thing I couldn’t change. Gray was my dad, whether he was the dad I wanted now or not. I let the caterpillar crawl back into the weeds. Then I picked up Gray’s one-year medallion. I didn’t want Diego to think I’d be mean enough to leave it.

  “And pretty soon,” Diego said, “this summer won’t be summer anymore. We all ought to make the most of it, I think.” He lifted up my bike and pulled the fender straight. “Your mama’s waiting, Raine. Climb up on those handlebars, young lady. I’m going to take you home.”

  He held the old bike steady while I settled in the center, face forward, the metal handlebars hot inside my hands. “Hold tight,” he said. We wobbled. We teetered and careened. “Fear not!” Diego yelled into the wind. “You’re in good hands with me!”

  Before we made it to the driveway, Mama scooped me off the handlebars and squeezed me to her chest. She was trembling so hard I felt like I was smothered in an earthquake. “I didn’t know where you went or how I’d ever find you. You can’t just leave Sparrow Road without a word.”

  “Molly, Raine is safe,” Diego said. Then he left us standing there alone.

  “Raine, I was so worried.” Mama kissed my hair. I knew she was remembering that park and how Gray almost lost me. No wonder all these years Mama feared I’d disappear.

  “I know about the drinking.” Just saying it sent the tears back down my face. “And how Gray passed out in that park. And how he just couldn’t quit. Not even to see me.”

  “Oh, Raine,” Mama whispered. “I wish I could have given you the kind of dad that you deserve.”

  I thought of Tessa and her bruises. Mrs. Earle and Tessa sleeping in my bed. “Was Gray like Mr. Earle? Was he mean?”

  “Mr. Earle?” Mama gasped. “Oh no! Gray’s nothing like him, Raine.”

  “You’re sure?” I reached into my pocket and brushed my fingers over Gray’s medallion. “But did he drink like that back when you fell in love? In Amsterdam?”

  “No,” Mama said. “We were so young in Amsterdam, and Gray wasn’t drinking then. He was shy. Sweet. Pretty much the way he is today. But the music life, the crowds, performing place to place—all of it took a toll on Gray.”

  “I wish he’d never changed,” I said. “I wish he hadn’t started drinking.”

  “Me too,” Mama said. “I’ve wished that for so long.”

  34

  When I woke up the next morning, a folded scrap of paper had been slid beneath our door. R—Come see me bright and early in my shed. J.

  Before Mama got a glimpse, I tucked the note into my bag. She’d never let me visit Josie’s shed. “I’m off to write,” I said. It wasn’t quite a lie.

  “No breakfast?” Mama frowned.

  “Nope,” I said. Since yesterday with Gray, my stomach had felt too sad for food.

  “Okay.” Mama gave a worried smile. “But stay here on the grounds. No more sudden bike trips by yourself.”

  I kissed her on the cheek. “Don’t worry. I won’t leave Sparrow Road.”

  Inside Josie’s shed smelled a little bit like Christmas, a mix of peppermint and pine. Cinnamon. It felt like dreams were floating in the air. Cloth scraps were scattered on the floor. Memory patches were tacked along the walls. Our root beer float. The two of us in our rowboat on the lake. A tiny velvet square of Lyman’s snowy drawing. It seemed impossible that Josie could make a memory come alive on just a scrap of fabric. I wished I had my own quilt full of memories, so I could still have Sparrow Road years and years from now.

  “Morning, Raine Cloud, grab a seat.” Josie swept a clearing with her hand. She sat there in the center of the floor, her patchwork skirt bunched up around her knees, her big black boots thrown over in the corner.

  “But Viktor?” Out the window, the meadow had the emptiness of morning. Still, I didn’t want him to catch me in the shed.

  “Hopefully asleep,” Josie said. “I’ve never seen the Iceberg out this early.”

  I closed the door, turned the little lock. It felt like I was entering some kind of holy space, a little messy church full of someone else’s dreams.


  “How’s the heart today?” Josie asked.

  “So-so,” I said. A kind of tear fog hung over my head. Mama said swallowing Gray’s truth might take a little time. More than just a single night of sleep.

  “I’ve been on a roll all night,” Josie yawned. “I had to have some company before I lost my mind.” On the floor, surrounded by the scraps, Josie looked like she’d already lost her mind. “I want to show you something.” She rummaged through a mound of fabric. “Shoot,” she said. “I thought it was right here.” Josie’s shed was messier than my bedroom in Milwaukee. “Eureka!” She pulled a hand-stitched doll out of the scraps and handed it to me. “Look! It’s my own brilliant invention. The Eureka Doll.”

  The Eureka Doll was the size of Josie’s giant hand, maybe a little bigger; her face was blank, her body made from little fabric odds and ends. Patchwork, like most of Josie’s things. “Patent pending.” Josie gave me her widest gap-toothed grin. “Want to know the magic?”

  “Sure,” I said. I could tell this doll was another one of Josie crazy schemes.

  “You put a question in its belly, and while you’re sewing, while you’re bringing your Eureka Doll to life, your answer will suddenly appear. Eureka!” Josie shouted. “Which really means aha!”

  I squeezed the spongy stomach; I couldn’t feel a question. “What’d you ask this one?”

  Josie shrugged. “That’s the beauty of it. After a while, even the question disappears. I swear this to you, Raine.” Josie made an X across her chest. “In Detroit, I’ve got an entire group of wayward kids who all sew these after school.” Someday I wanted to see Josie with the tough kids she taught.

  “So how long does it take?”

  “Oh,” Josie said. “You never know. You just sew and sew and suddenly an answer will appear. A couple days. A week. Could be longer. All these tiny scraps take time.” She passed a sewing basket overflowing with supplies. “Want to give the doll a try while we hang out?”

  “I don’t have a question,” I said. “At least not one the Eureka Doll could answer.”

  Josie grinned. “One will come. Just grab some scraps, choose fabrics that you like.”

  I cut the body from a paper pattern Josie gave me. The starting out was easy; I could sew it with the simple stitches Mama taught me back when we used to make clothes for my dolls. “Just don’t sew it closed,” she warned. “You need space for the stuffing. And for a question, when one pops into your brain.”

  We worked there in the quiet, Josie cutting large scraps of fabric into shapes I’d never seen. Not squares or circles or triangles, but wild puzzle pieces she must have imagined in her mind.

  “Is that your piece for the Arts Extravaganza?” I asked.

  Josie said we’d all have artwork to show the people at our party, but Josie’s project looked like a big velvet sheet with blobs. And I still wasn’t sure what my art would be; Lyman’s story was mostly bits and pieces. Nothing I could show.

  “It is,” she said. “Don’t worry, Raine. The worse the mess, the more I get to wonder.”

  I poked the needle through the fabric, stitched another scrap. There was a kind of steady rhythm to the sewing that gave me time to think. I thought of Gray. I thought of yesterday, the way he’d stood slump shouldered in the driveway, a toothpick in his teeth, looking like he’d let me down in more ways than he could count.

  When he finally said, “I’ll see ya?” he said it like a question, like he was waiting for a yes or no from me. I didn’t know what to tell him, so I turned and walked away.

  I’ll see ya? Was that a question I could sew into a stomach? “Can it be someone else’s question?” I asked Josie.

  “You bet,” she said. “No rules. The doll is yours; you own it, heart and soul.”

  I looked down into my doll’s blank face. Her body was a scrap of worn bedsheet.

  I’ll see ya? I printed on a scrap of old white felt. When my doll was nearly finished, I’d stick it in her stomach, the same place Gray’s final question was sitting hard in me.

  “So,” Josie said. “I need your help here, Raine.” She stared up at the sheet. “I keep dwelling on those orphans.” She pinned a paisley curl onto the velvet. “And I keep thinking about poor Nettie Johnson’s story. How long she waited for her dad to come back from the army.”

  “Long,” I said. I couldn’t imagine watching from that broken attic window for Gray James to walk over those hills. Sometimes when I was little, I used to wonder about strange men I walked by on the street. But it wasn’t the kind of lonely wait an orphan would have had. “A kind of lonely that won’t go,” I said. “That’s a line from one of Gray’s sad songs.”

  “That’s it. A lonely that won’t go,” Josie said. She pinned up another scrap of fabric. “But here’s what I don’t know. Do you think those orphans were better off without their parents? I mean, what if Nettie Johnson’s dad hadn’t been the dad she dreamed?” Josie stretched a long black ribbon down the center, then moved it to the side.

  “If she comes to the Arts Extravaganza you can ask her.” I didn’t get the feeling we’d see Nettie Johnson before that.

  “But that will be too late.” Josie pulled another straight pin from her pocket. “I need it for this piece. I need to know what emotion to convey. What the orphans felt living in that attic. I can’t tell if it’s longing or relief. Because maybe being an orphan was better than being with bad parents? Parents who were too poor or sick or mixed up to take care of their kids?”

  I thought of Lyman and his drawing; how I imagined he felt a lot like me. How he looked into the mirror to see his father’s face. I knew what he would say. “No,” I said. “No matter what, those kids still wanted their parents.”

  “You know,” Josie sighed. “That’s exactly what I think.”

  35

  “I always dreamed of my own doll,” Lillian said, running her hand over the fabric. Sometimes instead of reading I just sat with her and sewed. Three days had passed since Gray had left me with his question, and bit by bit the scraps were turning to a doll. I still didn’t have an answer, but the steady act of sewing gave my heart some peace.

  “We can make one for you when I’m finished,” I offered. “Or I’ll sew you one myself.”

  “Really?” Lillian’s face lit up. “You could sew a doll for me?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll ask Josie to bring a box of scraps up from her shed. You can pick out your own colors.” I knew Josie would want Lillian to have a doll to keep.

  Lillian stroked my cheek. “You’ve made Sparrow Road your home.”

  “Home?” I said.

  “You’ve settled in. Made up your mind to stay. Stopped waiting. I can always tell when the new children reach that point. If you’d like, we could begin your piano lessons; it seems to me you’re ready for those now.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But there isn’t a piano in the house.”

  “Perhaps you should ask Viktor. He’s in charge of music lessons now. You know, he is a genius. A child prodigy. I saw that from the start. The Berglunds plan to send him to Austria to study.” Lillian made a little frown. “I’m afraid that’s far away for a young boy.”

  “Did Viktor live here, Lillian?” I thought about his symphonies, the way they sounded more like suffering than songs. The gingerbread he said Lillian baked each Christmas. All those nights he sat beside her on the porch. The way he let her break the silence rule with me. “When you used to teach piano?”

  “Viktor is a Berglund.” Lillian stared down at her hands.

  “But why was he the question that you carried? The question that you carried so far into the future?” It was Lillian’s poem that started Gray on telling me his story, but in all that talk of drinking I’d forgotten what he said about the poem. Something about lots of years of missing someone gone. “The one you dedicated to V.”

  Lillian lifted her face like she was rising out of water. “Yes,” she said. “No matter what, we miss the ones we love.”

 
; I still don’t have an answer to Gray’s question, I wrote Lyman. I was upstairs with a flashlight and my sketchbook, writing before I fell asleep. Outside Mama and Diego were talking on our swing. My Eureka Doll was nearly done; tomorrow I’d stuff her full of batting, slip the question in, and finish the last stitch. Nothing, I said. I still don’t know what to say to Gray’s “I’ll see ya?”

  Lyman smiled. He was standing at my window, staring at the moon. I never heard of an answer coming from a doll.

  No, I said. Me either. But somehow all of Josie’s crazy notions seem to happen.

  But if it did, Lyman said, I know the question I’d stuff into the stomach.

  What? I asked.

  Why didn’t you ever find me?

  Your dad? I asked.

  Yep, Lyman said. ’Cause drinking or no drinking, you’re lucky yours found you.

  It was the next day, underneath the willow with nothing but the silence, that I opened up my sketchbook and wrote my thoughts to Gray. First, I wrote down all the mad and sad and letdown that weighed heavy on my heart. I started with all the things Gray missed: every single birthday, my first communion, ice-skating, sledding, the father-daughter Girl Scout breakfasts, father-daughter camping, the science fair, the ribbons that I won on field day, school concerts, every Christmas, every Easter, every Halloween he didn’t see me in my costumes or go with me trick or treating.

  He never tucked me into bed at night or waited mornings while I got on the bus. I said I couldn’t forgive him for the day he got so drunk I ended up with the police. And that he looked too happy on that album with his beer and cigarette, and that after twelve long years of nothing it was late for him to want to know me now. I wrote it all and then I ripped it up.

  When I started a fresh page, I didn’t know what more I had to say until I said it. I only knew I still had other feelings pressing on my heart.