“You don't believe?”
“Don't mess around with matters of faith, amigo.” From under the blankets, she pulled out ?En Espanol!, an old high school Spanish textbook with Erica & Wiley inked on the deckle edge of the pages. “I'm practicing my Spanish in case Aunt Diane quizzes me on New Mexico. And see—” On the sketchpad, she had drawn a large brown bird with a dead lizard hanging from its sharp beak. When he inspected the drawing more closely, Sean could see in the lizard's lifeless eyes three reflections of the sun.
“That's good,” he said. “What is it?”
She flipped the pad around to her lap and added, with the edge of her pencil, a shadow cast by the bird's tail. “A roadrunner, see? You're probably thinking of the cartoon, but the real thing looks nothing like it. Only it is fast. Very very fast.”
“Meep, meep.”
Without lifting her head, she rolled her eyes and stuck out her tongue.
“The part I like best,” he said, “is when the coyote is tricked by the roadrunner into chasing it over the edge of the cliff. When he realizes he's standing on nothing but air, he looks at us—for just a second—before he falls. Just long enough to hold up a sign that says ‘Help!’ And when he falls it's always a long, long way down.” He whistled the sound of a falling bomb. “Then a puff of smoke at the bottom of the canyon, and then he comes climbing out of a coyote-shaped hole all dirty and wobbly.”
Norah picked up his story. “If he was standing on a rock teetering on some impossibly pointy point, that rock is going to fall too. But coyote falls faster than the rock, so that just as he climbs out of that hole, looking like a wreck and stars going round his head, just that moment, wham.” She slapped her hand on the pad. “Wham, it crushes him again.”
They both laughed at the memory.
“Just like life, amigo.”
The furnace kicked on with a bang, and hot air curled through the registers, cooking the scents in the room—warm flannel and baby shampoo. The smell of her hair brought memories of his mother leaning over the bathtub, sleeves rolled to the elbows, working his scalp and then supporting the back of his head as he arched beneath the running tap to rinse, her hands caressing the last suds from his hair. He wanted to tell her about the crows, about seeing her in the woods, but he felt that she would just make fun of him.
“What do you know about her?” Norah asked.
“My mother?”
“No.” Norah crossed her eyes. “What did you find out about my mother?”
“As far as I can tell, she ran away from home with a boy. And your grandmother still misses her. When she ate the cherries, she felt happy again, but not for long or for good. Your mother was very pretty.”
“That's it? That's all? You need to find out more.” The sheets snapped as she whipped them from her legs, and she slid out of bed to pace the floor, carrying on an internal monologue, gesticulating wildly, trying to contain her fury. Sean waited patiently for her to speak, but she spent her anger by pounding her bare feet upon the wooden floor. At a spot near the window, the floorboard creaked with her every footfall, and he amused himself by anticipating the sound with each turn about the room. He did not look at her but merely listened, and when she became aware of what he was doing, Norah stopped and stared at him. “What about her boyfriend? Did you learn anything about him?”
Sean hung his legs from the edge and pointed his toes to the floor. “He was darker and had long hair. And he liked the peace sign. And he was in love with your mother when she was a teenager.”
“Did she tell you what happened to him? Did she say why he never came home?”
“No, I don't know. I guess our plan didn't work out so good.”
She glowered at him. The furnace shut off and the ducts ticked as they cooled. Norah sat close beside him on the bed, keeping time with the pendulum of her leg. He watched her kick, vaguely disturbed by the nakedness of her feet and ankles. Because of her glasses, she did not look at him head-on, but craned her neck about thirty degrees to the right. He followed the angle, twisting to meet her eyes, and challenged her. “Why don't you just ask your grandmother yourself?”
“Because she already thinks that I am hers.” When she parted her lips, the scent of gingerbread filled the space between them. “And I might just want to stay here with her.”