“Just another bit of nasty weather. I need… batten the hatches. Tell… Rinkers…”
“Wait. Don’t hang up yet.”
That wind sounded fierce as any predator. It had risen so suddenly. And what had Mama said about being low on rations? And she was all alone. Fear beat up inside Loah. She was making a bad mistake. She should convince her mother to come home, right now. Home, where all was safe.
“Mama, listen. I need to tell you—”
“Loah, sweetie, I love…”
And she was gone.
Again.
Upstairs in her room, Loah looked at the picture over her bed. The loah was so small, so plain. So homely. Her only bit of beauty was the gold on her wings, a patch so small you’d miss it if you didn’t look closely. Leaning closer to the picture, Loah felt the back of her throat close up.
“I need her, too, you know,” she whispered.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Theodore Rinker is in ICU and unable to accept calls,” said the hospital information person. “Would you like to be connected to the nurses’ station?”
“No thank you,” Loah whispered, and hung up.
I see you? She hoped that meant they were keeping a close eye on Theo.
It had taken Loah forever to work up the nerve to call, and now she didn’t know what to do. Miss Rinker’s words sounded in her head: In times of worry, the best thing to do is keep busy. (Miss Rinker believed the same thing was true in times of joy. In fact, at all times in life.) Loah tied on Miss Rinker’s THIS IS WHAT FABULOUS LOOKS LIKE! apron. She scrubbed out yesterday’s oatmeal pot. (Was it really only yesterday?) She fed the fish and checked that its water was clean. She fetched the mending basket and sewed a button onto Theo’s shirt. It smelled like Theo—soap and salt. It had a gummy worm in the pocket. She carefully picked the lint off it, then ate it in tiny bites as she knitted and purled several more rows on the scarf she was making for Mama. Then, seeing she’d dropped stitches, she pulled the rows out and did them over again.
Still no Miss Rinker.
She found a pair of scissors and a ball of twine, tucked them into the pockets of the apron along with both her cell phone and the kitchen landline receiver, and went outside. She started to gather up the twigs and branches the storm had scattered everywhere. Think how surprised and pleased Miss Rinker would be to come home and find the fallen branches tidied into neat bundles.
Something resembling a meteorite lay in the driveway.
A chunk of turret was what it was. That must have been the crash she’d heard last night. It had come loose in the storm and fallen to the ground, where it lay like a giant rotten tooth.
The house was falling to pieces! Her habitat wasn’t just threatened—it was endangered.
Loah, who rarely got angry, felt the flush of what was, definitely, anger.
She marched to the garage and got the wheelbarrow. Hoisting the masonry required strength, which (like courage) she had in only limited supply. But she couldn’t leave it there. A crumbling turret would get a checkmark on Inspector Kipper’s list for sure. Loah pushed the wheelbarrow behind the garage and dumped it out, hoping that, if the inspector came back, he wouldn’t find it. Stepping out into the yard, she’d just caught her breath when something snatched it away all over again.
An enormous bird was perched on the roof. Its beak was hooked, its neck wrinkled, its head bald. When the bird spread its dark wings, they were as wide as Loah was tall.
Turkey vulture, aka buzzard. She’d never seen a real one but recognized it from her mother’s books. Unlike most birds, turkey vultures have a highly developed sense of smell, enabling them to find dead things. Which is what they thrive on. Their heads are featherless, the better to burrow into bloody, messy carcasses and pick the bones clean.
A volt. A group of vultures is a volt. (Who gets to make up these names, anyway? Don’t you wish it was you?)
Thank goodness there was no volt on Loah’s roof. One vulture was more than enough, thank you.
As she watched, the bird folded its wings like a villain pulling his cape close around him. It shifted from foot to foot and uttered a sound somewhere between a groan and a grunt.
“What are you doing here? You’ve made a mistake. There’s nothing dead here.” She flapped Miss Rinker’s apron. “Get! Be on your way!”
If you’ve ever tried to look a bird in the eye, you know it’s practically impossible. Yet this vulture locked eyes with her and didn’t blink.
Even with humans, Loah was terrible at staring contests. With a vulture she had zero hope. Dropping her bundle of sticks, she hurried back inside. Where, at last, the landline rang. She fumbled it from the apron pocket.
“Hello? Hello?”
“Theo had an event,” said Miss Rinker.
This seemed good news. Loah imagined a birthday party or wedding reception. Though who’d hold an event at a hospital?
A cone of silence descended.
“Miss Rinker? Did you attend the event, too?”
“In plain English, his heart stopped.”
Loah’s did, too.
“A machine got it going again,” Miss Rinker said. “He’s in ICU—the intensive care unit.”
This was why she hadn’t come home! Loah’s thoughts spun to the vulture. Many cultures believe birds have the power to foretell events. Vultures, she was pretty sure, were not good omens.
“Is he all right? How could that happen?”
“The doctors say the scarlet fever scarred his valves.” Miss Rinker sounded as if she were reciting from a text. “They’re narrowed and leaky and…” All at once she interrupted herself. “Just think if we’d stayed home instead of coming here!” She sounded furious. “The doctors say we’d have lost him.”
“No!”
“We’d have lost him!” Miss Rinker repeated, enraged. Who was she angry at? “He wouldn’t have survived!” She ranted and fumed some more until, like an engine sputtering out of fuel, at last she whispered, “It’s my fault.”
Loah had never seen Miss Rinker cry, and she was glad she couldn’t see her now, because just listening was terrible enough.
“He’s always been frail.” Miss Rinker gulped, and when she spoke again, her voice was small as a child’s. “I knew he was getting weaker. I was afraid something was wrong. But I’ve always taken care of him. I thought I still could.”
“Miss Rinker, you have taken care of him! Very, very good care. It’s not your fault.”
Miss Rinker wept.
Ever since she was younger than Loah, Miss Rinker had taken care of other people. First her brother. Now Loah. When Dr. Londonderry was home, Miss Rinker looked after her, too. Who’d ever taken care of Miss Rinker? No one, Loah realized with a shock of sorrow. Miss Rinker’s mother had abandoned her. Nearly all her life, she’d had nobody to watch over her, to help and comfort and protect her.
“Miss Rinker, why don’t you sit down? I know you hate tea, but you need to keep hydrated. Have you eaten? Maybe they have saltines in the vending machines.”
“They want to put him under the knife,” said Miss Rinker.
“The knife!”
“Open-heart surgery.”
Woozy, Loah leaned against the wall.
“Are… are the doctors sure?” she asked. “Couldn’t they just give him some medicine?”
“They said I could get a second opinion, but they are nothing if not sure.” Accustomed to being in charge, Miss Rinker sounded emptied out, like a dried-up seedpod rattling in the wind. She blew her nose. She cleared her throat. “I hope you don’t think I was crying just now.”
Outside the kitchen window, a ruby-throated hummingbird hovered at Theo’s feeder. A hummingbird beats its wings eighty times per second, which is such hard work, its heart has to be enormous, compared to its body.
Theo’s heart was a hummingbird heart.
After she and Miss Rinker said goodbye, Loah set the phone down gently, as if it were alive and she might injure it. Everyt
hing felt breakable. The phone, the table, even the air.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
When Loah was small, her mother told her bedtime stories about the snow goose, which lines its nest with down plucked from its own breast, and the emperor penguin, which doesn’t eat anything for the entire two months it cradles its egg atop its faithful feet. She told Loah about birds that migrated for thousands of miles and birds that lived their whole lives in sight of the tree where they hatched. (You can guess which Loah would have been.)
Sometimes Loah asked for a story about a princess or a cat instead. But Mama was such a good storyteller—her voice round and warm, the words tumbling over one another in her eagerness—that every story was wonderful. Loah’s eyes would grow heavy, but she’d fight to stay awake till the end.
There was one story they both loved best of all. Old as Loah was now, Mama would still snuggle down beside her and tell it.
“You were due in two weeks, and I still didn’t know what to name you. Your father died before we’d decided, and I guess I was waiting for some kind of sign. Maybe from him? Maybe from the universe? We’d only just moved into this house when he died. I hadn’t realized how big the place was. How very, very empty it could feel. I was so sad and lonely. My heart was lost and I couldn’t find it.”
Mama would pause, and Loah would lay her head on Mama’s chest. She’d feel the steady beat of Mama’s heart, and couldn’t imagine it ever being lost.
“It was a chilly, gray, ugly day. I’d canceled my classes at the university, and I was trying to find the energy to make some tea when you… What did you do, Loah? Do you remember?”
Loah would smile. “Of course not!”
“I do. I was used to feeling you move, but this was different. It wasn’t a roll or a poke or a kick. It was more of a… a hug. An inside-of-me hug. How did you do that?” She’d wind one of Loah’s curls around her finger. “That hug made me feel so much better. I got my tea and went to my desk, determined to do some work. No sooner did I open my computer than I read about the first sighting of a loah in over thirty years. It was unofficial and blah blah blah, but my heart—my heart didn’t care.”
Snuggled close, Loah would feel that heart beat faster.
“I studied the blurry photo, and I could see it on her wing: that unmistakable streak of gold, like a shining ray of hope. Like a promise that everything wasn’t over, and the world was still a place brimming with surprise and wonder and beauty for the finding. I got so excited. And I guess you did, too, sweetie. You decided you couldn’t wait a moment longer and had to hatch that very night.”
When Loah looked up, Mama’s eyes would be bright with tears.
“As soon as I saw you, I knew your name.”
By the time Miss Rinker came home from the hospital, it was late. Purple circles ringed her eyes, and her shoulders were bent like old clothes hangers. She allowed Loah to unlace and pull her shoes off, which was a little terrifying, since Miss Rinker’s feet resembled root vegetables, and since she’d never before admitted she needed help. When Loah fetched her slippers, Miss Rinker stared as if she had no idea what they were. Loah slid them onto her feet.
“Just rest. I’ll make our supper,” Loah said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Miss Rinker. But she didn’t stir from her E-Z Boy.
Loah mashed overripe bananas. She arranged the rest of the liverwurst on a plate and spooned pickled beets into a bowl. She set the table with silverware, dishes, and HAPPY NEW YEAR! napkins from Bargain Blaster, and together they ate.
Afterward, they climbed to the second floor. At the foot of the rickety attic steps, Loah kept watch as Miss Rinker, hand gripping the railing, slippers shuffling, climbed up, growing smaller before Loah’s very eyes.
When she turned, her eyes fell on the turret door at the end of the corridor.
Dr. Londonderry wasn’t here. Neither was Theo, and Miss Rinker was a shadow of her former self. If Loah didn’t take care of things, who would?
Drawing a breath, she forced herself to walk the length of the corridor and test the turret door. Shut tight, just as she’d left it. Yet she stood there a moment, listening.
Something listened back.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Loah wanted to see Theo, but the hospital scared her. Other than being born, she’d never been inside one. She wasn’t the kind of child to break a leg or stuff a marble up her nose. She’d seen enough shows, though, to know that there’d be doctors rushing bloody patients down the corridors, PA systems blaring Code Blue!, people weeping in waiting rooms. Loah might get so upset she’d start to cry. When she cried, Theo got so upset they wound up having to comfort each other, and that surely was not what Theo needed now.
In the morning she helped Miss Rinker put on her shoes, then hunted for the car keys, which had vanished. She finally found them in Miss Rinker’s dresser drawer. (Miss Rinker’s underwear was a sight Loah had never expected to see and hoped never to see again.) Hat on her head, Miss Rinker paused by the door.
“You might go shopping. Last night’s dinner was a bit… spare.” She coughed. Her caterpillar eyebrows gave a startling twitch. “Go to the store and buy something you’d like. A frozen pizza, maybe.”
Miss Rinker might as well have suggested Loah buy herself a pony. Alarm bells clanged. Was there something she wasn’t telling Loah? Was Theo even worse than she’d let on? Goose feather quivering, Miss Rinker hurried out the door.
Loah researched open-heart surgery. Or tried to. No sooner did she get to the phrase “chest incision” than she became too woozy to read any further and had to shut her laptop.
She took money from the sugar jar (you didn’t think they had sugar in there, did you?) and though the sun shone, not a cloud in sight, she put on her poncho. This was silly, as babyish as keeping a baby blanket under her pillow, but the poncho made her feel more secure. As if Miss Rinker and Theo were with her, watching over her.
Outside, she plucked fallen leaves and twigs from the birdbaths, topped off the feeders, and filled the hummingbird feeder with nectar. Then she rode her bike to the store, where she bought two frozen pizzas and set them in her basket. She was determined to pedal straight home before they could defrost, but no sooner did she climb back on her bike than her head swam with pictures of Ellis. Her many freckles. Her expressive big toe. Her laugh like a little underground stream bubbling up. Ellis watching the purple butterfly lift into the sky. Ellis saying, I knew you’d come back.
Loah twisted her handlebars back and forth. Ellis was like a new star or an unmapped continent. Something wonderful that had always been there, waiting to be discovered.
Her front wheel had made a pattern in the dust, and Loah traced it with her shoe. She forced herself to remember what had happened last time when, instead of going straight home the way she was supposed to, instead of returning to Theo who was sick, she’d taken the side road.
Disaster. That’s what.
Home. That’s where she belonged.
Keeping her eyes straight ahead as best she could (the weak one kept tugging), she pedaled home.
Where the vulture lurked on the roof.
It spread its drab wings. It shifted its scaly feet. Loah, who was far from beautiful, tried never to judge others on appearances, but vultures were ugly. Hideous. It was hard to believe that even another vulture could love one.
“You are in the wrong place! Shoo!” She windmilled her arms. “Get out!” She flapped the poncho.
The other birds ignored it. As long as they were alive, they had nothing to fear. The dead—that’s who vultures were interested in.
“There’s nothing dead here. There never was and never will be, I promise! Find someplace else to haunt!”
The bird locked eyes with her. It was trying to tell her something, something Loah was sure she did not want to know.
She grabbed the frozen pizzas from her bike basket and scurried inside. Later, when she cautiously checked, the roof was vulture-free.
&n
bsp; That night when Miss Rinker got home, Loah asked permission to turn on the stove and use a knife. She baked a pizza and whipped up instant mashed potatoes. She sliced a cucumber. Though she’d never cooked a thing in her life, it all turned out well, and she felt proud as she set the food on the table. Miss Rinker ate two helpings.
Loah fed her goldfish, who did several thank-you laps around its bowl. The fish grew peppier with every day. It was getting used to its new environment, maybe even feeling happy here. Loah sprinkled in more food. Who knew feeding others was so satisfying? She was already thinking about what she’d cook next when Miss Rinker folded her hands on the table.
“The surgery is scheduled for tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? You mean… tomorrow?”
Loah had been hoping the doctors would discover they’d made a mistake. Theo only needed rest, not surgery. A bowl of soup and a good, long nap and his heart would be just fine. His hummingbird heart.
The look on Miss Rinker’s face told her how childish that hope had been.
“The surgery will take at least three hours but maybe more. It depends on whether there are… complications.” Miss Rinker grabbed a BE MY VALENTINE napkin. “I’ll have to go very early. I’ll call you as soon as it’s over.”
“Over?”
“Not over over. I didn’t mean…” Miss Rinker began to shred the napkin. “You know what I mean.”
Because of the trees, night fell earlier here than in the rest of the world. By now, the kitchen windows were black rectangles. Loah could see their reflections wavering on the glass, while on the other side, the darkness tried to get in. Much as the hospital scared her, how could she let Miss Rinker go there all alone?
“I could come with you,” she said. “I mean, I want to. We can wait together.”
Miss Rinker looked up from her napkin shredding. A smile flitted across her face, but was gone as quickly as it came.
“A hospital is no place for someone who gets light-headed at the mere mention of blood,” she said.
The Most Perfect Thing in the Universe Page 7
