The Blackbird Season

by Kate Moretti

  “Bridget, honey?” Petra Peterson’s voice was smooth as honey. Holden’s mother was made of sugar and just as cloying.

  Bridget shot up in bed. “What’s wrong?” Bridget looked around, the white light slanting in through room-darkening shades, and she realized with a sort of sickening thud that maybe it was actually eleven in the morning. Her mind skittered past thoughts of school and her classes and landed neatly on the word Sunday. She sighed.

  “I’m calling to see if you’re up for lunch.” Her words tilted up insecurely, and Bridget could envision her baring her teeth in the rearview mirror looking for lipstick smudges or maybe a wayward speck of spinach from her morning veggie egg-white goat cheese omelet. She could see her coral pantsuit with the buttons matching her bracelets, matching her earrings. “I haven’t seen you and I’m in the neighborhood.”

  That was a lie. Petra lived more than an hour away in Bucks County, in a suburb of Philadelphia where Holden grew up, ensconced in the tight, beating womb of private school, music lessons, and theater camp on the Main Line. Bridget could hear the roar of the highway in the distance. There was nothing here, the outskirts of a sleepy bedroom town on the edge of the crumbling paper mill industry, not so depressed that the people themselves seemed gray and daunted, but still. This town had never been anything but a repellent to Petra. No, she was in the neighborhood for no discernible reason other than Bridget.

  When Holden had told his mother he’d found a job at Wayne Memorial Hospital as a cardiologist, Petra had balked. He’d thrown a fully paid medical education in her face. She’d wanted Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), Thomas Jefferson, even St. Christopher’s, where one could be philanthropic (but with dignity) because think of the children.

  “Petra, I’m not even up yet.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she squeezed her eyes shut. It was eleven o’clock in the morning; nothing said basket case more than a grown woman sleeping well into the afternoon, which she surely would have done if not for the phone call.

  “Oh, no worries,” Petra said gaily. “You have an hour. Let’s meet at that charming little coffee shop where we went for lunch that time?”

  There was only one charming little coffee shop, which Bridget did not go to because each cup of coffee smelled like Holden on a Sunday morning, sleepy, slightly sweaty, with the distinct air of newspaper ink, and she could see him there, with his glasses resting on the bridge of his nose and last week’s New York Times Sunday puzzle while he asked her for a five-letter word for smidgen (answer: skosh).

  But now Petra would be there, pinked and cheerful, talking about their latest donation to Jefferson in pancreatic cancer research, or maybe the tree they planted (cherry for the blooms but it was just a guess), and maybe the one-year memorial could be at Penn, where Holden had gone to school. Bridget wasn’t ready yet, she wasn’t there. Petra buried her son and cried appropriately, dabbing her eyes with a wet, milky Kleenex and mascara that never ran. Bridget had made a scene, snot on her forearm, clinging to the edge of the casket, an avert-your-eyes kind of scene. A real showstopper. Petra had looked at her with pity, edged in a thin veneer of fear that a person could split so wide open. She’d patted her arm, soft and quick, like maybe Bridget’s grief could spill out, stain her buttercup suit. But Petra had three other sons (three!) who had all done what she’d expected, two lawyers and a doctor (although one of them had gone off the rails into environmental law, so who knows if she even counted poor Thad). Only Holden had gone and married himself a southern hippie schoolteacher.

  Bridget would rather do anything than have coffee with Petra. Anything. She thought about telling her that the stores were still closed on account of the birds and all, but it was too late. She was coming, zooming toward Bridget in a midnight-blue Mercedes to talk about God knows what, and all Bridget wanted to do was sleep. Dreamless, empty sleep.

  Instead, she wound her little Toyota to the Bean Café, fifteen minutes late, and found Petra waiting patiently at a table in the far corner, tucked away and private. The pantsuit was cornflower blue. But the earrings and the bracelet were just as Bridget imagined, and they’d hardly bit into their biscotti before Petra cleared her throat and took Bridget’s hand in hers.

  “How are you doing really, dear?” Petra examined Bridget’s face. Bridget could picture Petra using this exact tone of voice while inspecting a fellow Junior Leaguer’s neck lift. Petra wore her grief like a Girl Scout badge, the sash of Most Grieving Mother draped across her chest, her I’m doing just fine, thank you so much for your kind words voice practiced. Nothing as pornographic as Bridget.

  Petra turned Holden into a cause, a champion for the fight against an incurable and relentless disease. She made his death glamorous, erasing the six months of urine and vomit and shit and ugly that Bridget couldn’t forget no matter how hard she tried.

  “I’m fine, Petra. Truly.” She set the cookie down delicately on the china plate and blew across her cup of coffee. Her gaze wandered to the walls of the cafe, stacked floor to ceiling with old sepia-toned photos of Mt. Oanoke back in its turn-of-the-last-century heyday. Petra cleared her throat again and the two women avoided eye contact until finally Bridget got sick of wasting her day like this and said, “Why are you here?”

  She didn’t mean for it to come out sour, and Petra sank back against the chair. Her face sagged and she looked ten years older than she had a minute ago. Bridget sighed; when it came to Petra, why was she always the bad guy?

  “We have to talk about Holden’s memorial. I can do it without you but I don’t want to. A year is coming and you weren’t returning my calls.” Her voice softened. “I know you’re hurting, darling, we all are. But it’s expected that we’ll have a one-year memorial of his death. We can do it in the summer, if that’s more comfortable. It doesn’t have to be an exact year. We want to plant a tree. Not now of course, but we should start thinking about it now. Finding the site, planning the event.”

  “What kind?” Bridget asked, only a tiny bit curious.

  “An oak maybe?” Petra twirled her spoon around in her hands. “He was so strong. He always seemed immovable to me.” A tear escaped the corner of her eye, singly delicate as it traversed her cheek. Bridget studied her perfect hair, her lined lips, her spidery made-up eyelashes, and couldn’t help but wonder how she did it. How she got up every day, made salon and nail appointments. Why didn’t it all feel pointless and stupid? The only possible conclusion was that Bridget loved Holden more than Petra did.

  “Plant a maple tree,” Bridget said wearily. Petra looked surprised because she was. She had no idea that once Bridget and Holden stayed at some bed-and-breakfast in Vermont, the home of maple syrup. Holden, in his infinite enthusiasm for almost everything to the point of annoyance, bubbled over the way maple syrup, real maple syrup, tasted different from any syrup he’d ever had in his entire life. Bridget hadn’t thought about that trip in a while, but nothing was more classic Holden than his ridiculous excitement over nothing more than a breakfast condiment. And it was just a thing, a small thing in the grand scheme of all things, but it suddenly felt incredibly important that they plant a maple tree that could be tapped. There were probably different kinds of maple trees, but Bridget didn’t know, so she’d have to do research. Or someone would.

  Petra regarded her with one eyebrow and a dubious look. “This is Pennsylvania.”

  “If you plant a maple tree that can make syrup, I will come to your memorial.”

  “I was hoping we could plan it together, dear,” Petra said quietly.

  Everyone grieved differently, of course. Bridget realized that Petra’s grief looked like fund-raisers, ribbon cuttings, golf-clapping crowds, and planted trees. It was an admirable grief. Bridget knew that people in Mt. Oanoke thought she held too tightly to her sadness, wrapped herself in it like a security blanket, hot and sweating.

  “Tell me what you want me to do.” Bridget sighed and Petra smiled, leaned forward, and patted her hand.

 
• • •

  School was opened again, teachers and kids shuttling between classes like nothing had happened. Bridget told Nate about the tree and the memorial on Monday during their break period. He’d popped in, a few days a week, to chat, catch up, stretched out in the front-row desk, his feet resting up on the desk next to him, crossed at the ankles. Sometimes he gave her leftover bagels, hard from the morning but still soft and doughy in the middle. They’d tear them apart while they talked, her elbows resting on half-graded tests scattered all over her desk.

  Nate bought bagels from the bakery on the corner to keep on his desk. When she asked why, he gave her a funny look, his head turned sideways, his mouth twisting. “Half these kids don’t eat breakfast, Bridge. The rich parents are gone by 5 a.m., trying to beat the bridge and tunnel traffic. The old mill families, well, half of them can’t even afford the weekly groceries.” Nate believed he could rescue the whole bright world.

  He had long legs and big feet, awkward as an adolescent but with thick thighs and a burgeoning middle that Bridget thought was adorable, but mostly in the way he was newly aware of it, his palms perpetually smoothing the front of his shirt down. She’d always thought it strange that she and Nate were friends first, instantly, the way kids are in elementary school because you both like banana fluff sandwiches or wear matching purple socks, but she’d never felt a thing for him outside of friendship. Once, Holden had asked her in his easy, open way if she’d ever fantasized about Nate and she’d burst out laughing because the idea was so out there, so ludicrous. Holden defended him at the time: he’s a good-looking guy, charming, funny. These things were all true, but Nate was firmly slotted in the brother or close cousin category. Even in her most private moments, Bridget couldn’t imagine kissing him. Holden thought she was lying, covering up for any seedling attraction because men and women cannot be friends, and nothing Bridget could say seemed to assuage him. It would be natural, he insisted, people fantasize, that’s what they do. Until Bridget had narrowed her eyes at him and asked him point blank if he had a thing for Alecia. Blond, organized, angular, type-A Alecia, and Holden snorted a laugh through his nose. There were no two women further apart than Bridget and Alecia.

  Women can tell these things, too. Bridget strongly suspected that Nate held no spark for her, either. He liked his women gangly, and Bridget was all soft curves and curls. Or at least, she used to be.

  “I think a tree is a great idea. Holden loved being outside.” Nate clasped his fingers behind his head and leaned back.

  This was true; he was a hiker, a woods walker, and the twenty-five hundred square miles of state game lands surrounding Mt. Oanoke more than scratched his itch to commune with nature. She told Nate about the maple tree idea and he laughed. “He even gave us one of those small bottles. He gave one to everyone, remember? Nurses, other doctors. He must have bought, what, fifty of them?”

  The real answer was thirty-seven, because it was all they had in the store, and they were four dollars apiece.

  Bridget feigned laughter because she couldn’t do this thing that seemed to come so easily to Nate and Petra, this talking about Holden, remembering him, with a faraway look and crinkled eyes. He still felt too alive. Nate stood up, came behind her, and rested a heavy hand on her shoulder.

  “It gets better, Bridge. I miss him, too.”

  Bridget wanted to say not like me, where the sadness felt interminable and resolute, like a living, breathing person had moved in and made himself comfortable, an overstayed houseguest. Instead, she did what she always did when people offered their “advice”: she nodded and gave a smile, an I can put on a brave face smile, because people want you to rally. They want to think they’re the ones who talked you out of grief, as if grief were something you could be talked out of like a bad pantsuit in a discount dressing room.

  The bell rang and Nate stood aside, his hand still resting between her shoulder blades while students shuffled in. Lucia halted in the doorway, staring hard at Nate and Bridget, shifting her backpack from one shoulder to the other while Nate gave Bridget a quick smile and headed to the door.

  “What are you doing here?” Lucia smiled, but her eyes were narrowed, and Bridget stopped shuffling papers long enough to watch the exchange.

  “Are you in creative writing this period, Lucia?” Nate’s voice was friendly, teacherlike, almost condescending.

  “Of course.” Lucia stepped toward the rows of desks, her back straight with feigned formality. She cocked her head mockingly and Nate rolled his eyes slightly, his chin jutting out. He shook his head a little, laughed, and looked back at Bridget. “Watch that one,” he teased, bringing Bridget in on the joke. Lucia watched him leave; her hand shot out to grab his sleeve, a quick tease for fun. He swatted her hand away, laughing.

  As the students filled into their chairs, Bridget passed out last week’s graded exams. She gave only a few exams a year; the point was to get the students writing, thinking, imagining, not to quiz them on the particulars of grammar and sentence structure. She did, however, instruct them on the craft of storytelling: inciting incident, rising action, subplots, climax, denouement. The tests were easy, for the most part. She paused at Lucia’s chair, setting the D paper flat in front of her, her fingertips tented, pressing down on the desk until her knuckles whitened. She leaned close to Lucia’s ear, “Stay after a bit, okay?”

  “Why?” Lucia’s voice was loud, confrontational, and Bridget faltered, surprised. Not that students didn’t challenge the teachers. They did. But they didn’t usually challenge Bridget. She was too nice, too sad.

  Bridget kept her voice soft. “Because you don’t usually do this poorly, and this test was fairly easy. Let’s just talk.” She hesitated, and against her better judgment added, “See if there’s a way you can bring it up.”

  “Not interested,” Lucia said, her voice cut with acid, and Bridget stepped away, to the next student, the next test fluttering in her fingertips. But she paused.

  “That’s your choice,” Bridget said nonchalantly, but her voice wobbled, and Lucia raised an eyebrow.

  Bridget took her usual spot, on a stool in the front of the classroom, the vibe being that of a poetry slam or an improv class. It had always been successful, but today the air in the room crackled, hot with electricity. The students shifted in their seats. She smiled, a quick bright beat, a nervous twitch to her lips. “Today’s topic? Anyone?”

  The students always suggested the topics for a twenty-minute writing session. Some would then read their entries out loud followed by a discussion, and that was the class, three days a week. The other two days were craft. Bridget liked the flexibility of her days. It was fluid and she felt the palpable relief of the overachievers, allowed for once to slump their shoulders. Close their eyes. Daydream.

  “How about change?” Ashlee Williams raised her hand in the back of class. “I’ve been thinking about this, because we’re graduating soon . . .” Her voice drifted off, hesitant. Ashlee was quiet, a good girl. Her journals were all about her boyfriend and fumbling attempts at sex in the dark while her parents watched Wheel of Fortune a floor below.

  “I like that, anyone else?” Bridget shifted, crossing her feet at her ankles. Her crinkle skirt made a whoosh sound and it seemed unreasonably loud. The kids thought she was a fuddy-duddy with her long dresses, but with bare legs, she’d felt so exposed, so raw, a purplish spider vein winding around the hot crook of her knee.

  “What about family?” Josh Tempest, a senior, piped up. Josh was baseball jock with a surprising interest in poetry—Bridget knew so many of their secret sides. “We haven’t done something on family in a while.”

  Bridget nodded. The seniors were starting to lose their adolescence, staring down the barrel of college and independence, both exhilarating and terrifying. Their future stood, shiny as a beacon, but far in the black, fuzzy distance, and they looked at their parents with a new measure of humanity.

  “What about reincarnation?” The room got very quiet; eve
n the fidgeters stopped and Bridget felt the hair on her neck stand up.

  Lucia chewed on the end of her pen, the black plastic between her teeth reminding Bridget of a cat with a bird. Her smile was sideways, her eyes narrowed.

  “Interesting suggestion, Lucia. Care to elaborate?” Bridget picked imaginary lint off her skirt and waited. Someone in the back coughed and tittered nervously.

  “When you die, what will you come back as?” Lucia challenged her, never wavering, never blinking, those black-rimmed eyes, flat and dry, outlined with that bright blue eyeshadow. And that hair, wild around her face. Her lips, painted with foundation, moved slightly, as if she was whispering.

  “Do you think you have a choice?” Bridget asked, clasping her trembling fingers together. It’s not that she was unable to think about death, she just seemed unable to do it objectively anymore, and Lucia seemed to enjoy prodding the wound with a hot poker. The idea that her student, this eighteen-year-old girl, could so casually exploit her weaknesses and enjoy it made her sick and slightly sweaty. Everyone waited, Ashlee smiling kindly and Josh Tempest averting his eyes, feigning interest in something out the window.

  “I’ll come back as a blackbird. I already know that.” Lucia shrugged, and Bridget thought of her tarot card drawings and her poem. From the back, Josh coughed the word witch. A titter went through the room. Lucia ignored them, her eyes narrowed. “Not everyone comes back. I’m sure you have nothing to worry about.” Her voice lowered to a whisper, a hoarse rumble. “Good people come back. Teachers, nurses . . . doctors.”

  Bridget felt hot, then cold. She cleared her throat. “I think,” her voice came out strangled, and she tried again. “I think we should do the family one.” Everyone began to open their journals, but Lucia just stared that blank stare, her lips moving ever so slightly.

  Bridget stood up, dusting her hands off on her knees, official and businesslike, and avoided Lucia, who hadn’t moved. Bridget wrote on the whiteboard: Free Writing Topic: Family, 20 minutes. Some of the kids stared off out the window or into the hallway, looking for the words that Bridget always hoped would come—although sometimes they didn’t—while others hunkered down, furiously scribbling. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Lucia watching her. She didn’t open her journal, never took that pen out of her mouth; she just stared. Bridget avoided eye contact and sat at her desk, clicking through emails and pretending to read but watching the clock.