The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender(30)

The doctors, of course, had their theories, their special labels and terminology for Henry. They had their contradicting diagnoses, their remedies, their medical recommendations.

Our mother had her own ideas. She placed her good china bowls in the yard, and Henry was washed with the collected water every night for eight months because she’d heard that some babies who were bathed in rainwater spoke earlier than others. Though it hardly increased his verbal skills, after a while Viviane noticed that Henry’s skin now permanently shared the crisp wet smell of Seattle rain.

Our grandmother was convinced that Henry had merely been born fluent in a language other than English. She spoke to him in French and in the Italian she still remembered from her life before. It was the most attention Emilienne ever paid to either of us, who, for our part, were much more Roux than Viviane ever was. Perhaps that was the problem. Perhaps my feathers reminded Emilienne of the days when canary feathers collected in the far corners of a Manhattan apartment. Perhaps Henry’s lack of speech reminded Emilienne of the three silent translucent figures still lingering in the shadows.

When we reached the age at which most children typically begin to read, Viviane spent her nights secretly begging the sky to give Henry some form of language, some way to let her know she was doing a good job, some way to make it better. She read to him before bed and obsessed over the attentive way Henry listened to the story. She hired a specialist to come to the house and work with Henry. Still, Henry gave no sign that he knew his numbers or his letters, the word hi from no, or that he knew what the specialist meant when he held up a flash card and said, “This is a house. Can you point to the picture of the house? Henry?”

Everyone eventually gave up hoping. Our grandmother spoke to Henry less intentionally, using the partial-French, partial-English babble she used when she spoke to herself. Our mother continued to read to us every night, usually from books that Gabe brought home from the library — books about carpentry or the wingspan of the southern brown kiwi and other flightless birds. And Henry was still bathed, of course, but in the water that flowed from the bathroom faucet and with charcoal soap to counter his fresh-rain smell. Viviane just came to accept that Henry was different from the rest. As was I.

Our mother decided that the best place for her strange children was within the confines of our house and the hill. My young childhood was spent among the familiar faces of my family: my mother, warm and smiling, a twinge of sadness hidden in the corner of her mouth; my grandmother, stern but beautiful, the grief of her past worn in lines around her eyes. There was Wilhelmina Dovewolf. Gabe, the gentle giant. And Henry, my mute, wingless half.

Some twins have their own language, their own “twin speak.” There are reports of twins sharing the same dreams, of one feeling sympathetic pain when the other is injured. There was even a case of twins who died at the very same time, right down to the minute. I never experienced such a connection with Henry. My twin always lived in his own world — one that even I, in my holy, mutated form, was unable to visit. It felt as though Henry had been born my twin only to remind me of my own constant state of isolation. By the time we learned just how strong the connection between Henry and myself really was, it was almost too late.

There it was again. Fate. As a child, that word was often my only companion. It whispered to me from dark corners during lonely nights. It was the song of the birds in spring and the call of the wind through bare branches on a cold winter afternoon. Fate. Both my anguish and my solace. My escort and my cage.

Before I turned five, the religious stopped paying homage to me in clusters at the bottom of Pinnacle Lane. Eventually very few recalled the references in the local paper to the Living Angel. But what did that mean? Was my safety worth my isolation? It made my mother wonder if I was lonely. Or bored. Which may have been the reason Gabe decided to teach me how to fly.

Gabe spent his days off in a workshop he built behind the house, trying time and time again to build a set of wings with the same wingspan and contours as mine. He studied birds — the ones in our backyard and the ones in the books he borrowed from the elementary-school library. He measured my wings and my growth spurts, and he asked Viviane to collect my molted feathers so he could examine them more closely.

“Do you really think she needs to fly?” Viviane asked Gabe late one night. The two sat in the parlor, Viviane in the wing-backed chair across from the harpsichord, Gabe on the divan by the window. One of our cats sat in Viviane’s lap. A fire crackled low in the cobblestone chimney, the soft light making the highlights in Viviane’s hair glow red.

Now twenty-five, Viviane maintained her youthful appearance by keeping her hair long and applying cold cream to her cheeks with the same diligence she used to preen my feathers. She never got back into the habit of wearing shoes. Not that there was ever a reason to. My mother hadn’t left the hill on Pinnacle Lane since the day she brought us home from the hospital. When she allowed herself to consider why, she realized that she was still waiting. Waiting for Jack to come back for her.

Viviane stole a glance at Gabe, whose own gaze was lost in the fire’s flames. It wasn’t that she didn’t think Gabe was handsome. She did. Sometimes she’d catch herself studying him — the ease in his grasp as he reached for a bowl from the cupboard or the movement of the muscles in his forearms as he sanded the arched leg of a rocking chair — and she’d imagine how his hands would feel on her skin, the strength behind them as he lifted her hips to his. But before she got too far lost in her reverie, she’d remember Jack and the world would crash to the ground once again.