Winter Loon(86)

“What is that?” I asked, pointing to the corner as I got up from the table.

Aveline turned in her chair. “I’m sure you recognize it. Your dad made that for me.”

Three willow branches stacked like rungs on a ladder turned gently on the end of fishing line hung from a hook on the ceiling. Stuffed sparrows and chickadees balanced on the ends, bobbing in a slow circle as I touched each branch of the homemade mobile. The birds’ feathers were dusty, but the amateur taxidermy had held up pretty well.

“Elizabeth can’t stop herself from killing birds,” I said quietly.

I remembered my mother screaming at my father. She’d say, “Make her stop that!” and my dad would laugh and tell her he couldn’t stop Elizabeth, that it was in her nature to go after the birds.

“You can’t stop a thing from doing what it was meant to do, Val,” he’d said, picking up the dead bird, which he then wrapped tightly with gauze and stuck in the freezer until he could get to the business of taking its innards out and stuffing it full of batting instead.

“Well, you can’t keep it in the freezer. It’s probably covered in germs. It’ll get all over the food.”

“What food? Nothing in there but ice. It’s fine,” he’d said, then tossed the bird in with the others and closed the freezer door, which ended my recollection.

I turned to Aveline. “He’d put them on a string or on the end of a stick and tease her with them. I’ve never seen anything like this before, though.” I touched the birds and they bobbed around, one teetering while the other tottered. Then I remembered similar mangled remains I’d collected from the road years earlier.

She stood and was close enough to me now that I could smell her perfume and something else, something clean and mineral. I suspected she’d hung her clothes out to dry on the line and that I was smelling the sun and the air behind her house. She touched one of the branches, sending the birds around again. “He wanted me to have the birds so I could think about flying.”

We watched the flight slowly come to a rest.

“He’s dead, isn’t he? I could tell by the way you were talking to your mom. My father’s dead.”

Aveline stepped to the sink and held onto it, pulling back like she was trying to settle a team of horses. She dropped her head between her outstretched arms, then stood up straight and turned her head to me.

“He’s not dead. Not as far as I know. I’m gonna kill him, though.” She filled a red kettle with water from the tap and put it on the stove to boil. “I’m sorry, but will you please tell me how you ended up here? I need to know.”

“This came in the mail. Last summer. I only just got it, though.” I handed Aveline the envelope, worn now from my handling of it. She took the letter out, and the folded money fell to the floor. She held it in her hand, leaned against the counter, and read the letter. She turned the paper over to the blank side, then seemed to read it again. She placed the money back in the letter, folded it, returned it to the envelope and the envelope to me. Her lips tightened, the dimple filled with fury and disappeared.

“What kind of a person . . .” Her voice trailed off. She walked out of the kitchen. The pot whistled on the stove. I turned the knob off and waited. I was bound to the knowing, to the finding out. I had no interest in running from it anymore.

I looked out the window into a backyard surrounded by a fence woven together like a basket. There was a small bare garden plot, an apple tree with a rope swing, flower beds filled with dirt. In the summer it would look like something from a picture book. Whose life was this?

She came back into the kitchen. “Can you stay for a while? Please?”

I nodded.

“Good,” she said. “Good. I need to get changed. And the bus will be here soon.” She hesitated on that thought, something in it brought both calm and sadness. She bunched her lips together and smiled at me. Her face was like a dimpled heart, and I imagined my father in this kitchen falling in love with that woman and that face.





CHAPTER 25

THE BUS HORN beeped three times, followed by the sound of footsteps, small feet running up the walk, the front door opening and slamming shut. Mrs. Blue clapped and sang out, “There she is.” I followed the voices and saw a girl, white-blond hair done up in braids like antennae on a bug, hugging the old woman’s neck. “You’ll squeeze the stuffing out of me,” Mrs. Blue said.

“Oh, Gram! You’re not stuffed.”

Aveline came down the hall in a T-shirt and jeans. “Wes,” she said. “I got someone I want you to meet.”

I knew what was happening. I knew the moment I looked at that little girl who she was and who she was to me. I let Aveline lead me like I was a child, too.

“Hey, Mama,” the little girl said, smiling like Aveline right down to the dimple. She caught sight of me a breath later and twisted her smile sideways and dropped her eyebrows. “Who’s that?”

“This is Wes. Wes, this is my daughter, Annaclaire.”

I put out my hand. “Real nice to meet you, Annaclaire. That’s a pretty name.”

She put one hand in mine, the other on her hip. “Who are you a friend of?”

I looked at Aveline, not sure how to answer the question.

“He’s a new friend, miss.”