“Sean, why do you ask?”
“A report for school.” He pretended to change the subject. “Do you know when the birds come back in spring?”
She attacked her pie. “When the weather's warm enough. A week or so, middle of March. I've seen robins in a snowstorm around here, so maybe they get fooled and come back earlier.”
He longed to tell her about the incident on the bridge, and the boy who froze in the middle of the monkeybars, the march of the animals, that afternoon when the sun refused to set, the origami birds, the balancing toy, her command of the crows and sudden appearance in two places at once and all the signs and wonders in his life since Norah arrived, but he felt that his confession would cause only greater troubles. His father was disappearing beyond reach, and even if Sean could find him, he would not share such secrets now. Teachers were out of all consideration. Classmates would make a joke of the evidence, or worse, torture her with their teasing. Norah was the only soul he could tell his troubles to, but the trouble was Norah.
Later, in the sanctuary of his room, Sean heard an airplane pass overhead, and though he had never flown anywhere, he longed to be up in the air and press his face against the glass above the mountains and the forest, the river and the bridge, the fading rooftops and toy cars, the ant people heading home, the doors and windows of the houses, and he would see through his own window and into his own dark eyes. When Norah said jump, he would leap off the bridge, he would fly. The falcon that first morning had stopped in midair, spread its wings, and floated still, riding the steadying current, and then, on a pendulum, tipped one feather, swept across the sky, and hurtled mercilessly toward the earth.
13
“Poor old thing, she's exhausted. We were up talking till three in the morning, and what with the trip out here and so emotional.” Erica kept her voice low. “She's in the back still asleep. And tell the truth, I'm not so hot myself.”
Maya dumped the leftover wine down the sink, into the red-stained metal, the glasses rimmed with lipstick, and the dishes caked with rice and beans. Shaking two fingers under the running water, she waited for the cold stream to change temperature.
“Leave those. I took a long shower this morning, and it'll be a couple hours for that old water heater to work.” Erica let the dogs out, and they crossed the patio into the open studio. Cold air filtered in through the ajar door. “I should have told you long ago, Maya, what brought me here. This boy and I ran off from home when I was still in high school. We were headed west to this … cult. To join the revolution, but the revolution never came. The Angels of Destruction were going to save the world by destroying all that was evil, but we got lost along the way. We had some trouble with the law. And later, I found out I was pregnant in Albuquerque, but he had split. Abandoned me with a couple of dollars in a strange place. I felt like an alien landed in the middle of nowhere. A knocked-up Martian.”
She crossed to the refrigerator, filled a glass with carrot juice, and drained it in one swallow. Maya sat at the kitchen table, the light filtering through her fine hair.
“I couldn't have the baby. I wasn't even eighteen, and I couldn't go home, because of what we did on the road. We did a horrible thing, and that's why I'm here, why I changed my name. My real name is Erica Quinn, like she told you.”
“So she's here to take you home?”
“I can't go back. If the police knew I was there, they'd arrest me. Lock me up in jail, or worse. I couldn't even risk contacting my friends, my mom and dad—” With a sigh, she stopped herself and waited for the feeling to pass. “My aunt told me he died about five or six years ago.”
“That boy?”
“No, yes. Him too. But she said my father is dead, just like that. You sit in a spot and don't realize everything you left is changing too, and you think that maybe someday you'll get the chance, but then it's too late.” A tear rolled down her cheek and she wiped it away with the back of her hand. When she was a child of five, Erica thought her father a giant, for he could circle her wrist between his finger and thumb. The last time she saw him, she had to bow slightly to kiss him goodnight on his whiskered cheek.
“You miss him, Mary?”
“When I left home I was furious with him for all he withheld, terrible secrets, but time goes by, you see them from a different perspective, what they had to do just to live their lives while hiding it all, even from themselves. He was right, at least, about Wiley.”