“You at the art center today?” I asked.
“Nope. Elder care. It’s art therapy day. I think we are going to make flowers out of recycled water bottles.”
“Awesome,” I said.
“And you are going to admire the hair of your nemesis,” she said.
I shrugged. “I’m only human,” I said. I put my camera in its case and shoved it next to Warbley’s newest book. “You know, in the last chapter of Birding Bests, Warbley reminds us—”
“Oh, do save it for later. I like to spread out my Warbley wisdom so that my heart doesn’t just overload.”
I gave her my “to love me is to love Warbley, deal with it” face. She threw her “I seriously don’t give a shit about the bird guy” back.
“Have fun at co-op,” she said.
“It’s for the birds. HA! Get it, because I said…”
“Seriously, shut up,” she said.
I clapped her on the back and hopped onto my bike that waited for me on the side of her house. It was going to be a great day. I’d show Ranger Jerry the new Warbley book. At least he’d care.
Or pretend to, anyway.
FIELD JOURNAL ENTRY
MAY 1
Mom was crying in the kitchen.
Must be Thursday, I thought.
“Want some toast? It’s crunchy and delicious!” I said out loud. Sometimes I could lift Mom out of a funk by the sheer force of relentless optimism.
Mom shook her head, two tears skiing down the hills of her cheeks until they collided on her chin.
Aaaaand sometimes I couldn’t.
I pulled out the bread drawer from our ancient kitchen counter. I slid back the metal top and grabbed two pieces of wheat. With enough melted butter, Mom would eat the toast if I put it in front of her. Not even the Drama Queen could resist salted dairy products.
“Chad and I broke up last night,” she said.
Further confirmation that it was, in fact, Wednesday. The breakups always seemed to come midweek.
“Sorry,” I said. I patted her shoulder sympathetically. I could hardly keep Mom’s boyfriends straight. Chad was a tool, that much I knew. He was skinny, bald, and obsessed with hunting. He wasn’t mean to Mom or me. But even after months of seeing Mom, he had still called me Lauren instead of Laurel.
“I just thought he was the one,” she said.
“Why?” I asked. Toast popped out of fiery little slots. I stabbed a knife through the charred tops and flicked breakfast onto a plate.
Mom sniffed. “He just made me feel good.”
I stifled the urge to laugh or roll my eyes. She said that about all of the guys who trolled through the house.
Chet. Mark. Ethan? No—Edgar. Chad. Brad.
Dad.
That last one had walked me to my first day of kindergarten and kept on walking. He sends me cards on Christmas and my birthday and invites me to stay every summer. I’ve thought about going, but I knew it would be like a punch to Mom’s throat.
Many things were like that, though, on a long-enough timeline.
A punch to Mom’s throat.
Sometimes changing the subject worked to cheer her up.
“I know you worked late last night, so I didn’t get a chance to tell you! Gran and I saw a white-winged tern! It’s pretty rare around here! I haven’t had a new one on my life list in months! He was black and white and perfect all over!” Feel the magic, Mom, I thought at her. Breathe in my exclamations of pure bird-induced joy.
Mom blew her nose into a napkin. She inhaled sharply, a sure sign that clouds gathered and tears would soon rain again. I sighed inwardly. There was no winning back her mood today.
I debated my options. Stay here, or use an acceptable excuse to break free of the kitchen soap opera.
I decided on option two. It was an extraordinary spring day, and I should live the fuck out of it. Maybe some of my positivity might filter through the air to Mom somehow.
“I want to check in with Gran before co-op. Hang in there. You are beautiful and I love you,” I said to Mom. I backed out of the kitchen as fast as possible and grabbed my backpack. I biked to Gran’s cottage on the edge of the woods. I found her in the little garden behind her house. Most of the fruits and vegetables were starting to sprout and bloom and peek out from their winter sleep.
“Laurel,” said Gran. “To what do I owe the early morning visit?”
“Mom broke up with Chad.”
“I thought his name was Brad.”
“No, that was the last guy. I think. This one was definitely Chad.”
“Ah, I see. Did we like this one?” she asked.
“Nope, not even a little,” I said. “But she wasn’t going to be cheered up, so I thought I’d come over here. Just to. Um. You know.”
Just to go to the one place where I felt really at home. Gran smiled, as if she knew what I was thinking.
“See the tern again yesterday?” I asked.
“Nope. He left. Louise was so mad. She says it doesn’t really count if I didn’t see him where he lives, but whatever. I’m now fourteen birds ahead of her. Bitter birders are the worst.” Gran chuckled. “Get any new shots?”
“Nope. The art left, too,” I said.
“Hang in there, sweetheart. It’ll come.”
“Maybe I should branch out,” I said. “I only ever do around here.”
Gran considered this. “Maybe. There are a lot of state parks around here. But don’t underestimate what’s right under your nose. Your pictures of the pond at dusk and dawn are some of the best I’ve ever seen,” Gran said.
I believed she felt that way. Twelve of my pond pictures hung around her small cabin. She said she paid less in heating bills because all my framed pictures served as insulation.
“But I’ve done it all! The trees! The water! The flowers! Your garden, even.”
“Try more animals. Or the birds, then.”
“Birds stay in one place for a second. All I get is a blurry mess,” I said. “The movement of their wings is so freaking fast.”
“True. But keep trying. These kinds of things are much about patience. And maybe a little luck or magic.” Gran winked at me. She got up and dusted off her dirty jeans. “Help me bring my stuff to the storage bench.”
“Maybe I could…,” I started, but was interrupted by a shrill call from one of Gran’s trees. I looked up but couldn’t see anything. “What was that?” I asked. The blank look on Gran’s face seemed to show that she didn’t know, either.
The call erupted again. Two short, high-pitched bursts and a longer, more melancholy song.
“I’ve never head that one before,” I said, excitement blossoming in the tips of my toes. It spread like wildfire through my body. Two new birds in one week! I fucking love spring.
“Me either,” Gran said. She looked like a kid on Christmas. “Laurel, we have to find him. Maybe it’s a pet that got out. Or maybe it’s a second rare find! Louise is going to hate me. Let me get my binos!”
Gran ran into the house to find her high-power binoculars. I dug my camera out of my bag and aimed it toward the tree, hoping to snap an image I could enlarge. I didn’t have my best lenses, as they made my camera harder to transport, but I did what I could. Gran emerged from the house and shoved a pair of binoculars into my hands. “You are going to be late for co-op, so hurry. Go to the other side of the trees.” I did as instructed and saw a few sparrows and a dove. The call echoed above my head, until it moved farther into the forest. Gran came up beside me and we stood for minutes in the silence.
“The one that got away,” I said. The wildfire of excitement slid down my legs and slunk back into my feat, barely more than a spark now.
“Today.” Gran nodded. “But there’s always tomorrow.”
“Yes!” I said. “And you need to text me if you hear it again. I’ll play hooky for this one.”
“You’ll do no such thing.” But she shot me a mischievous grin. “Of course I’ll text you,” she whispered.
&nbs
p; Good ol’ Gran. She knew my heart like no one else. Even if Dad had left and Mom seemed to barely remember she had a kid half the time, Gran was my constant in this world.
“Promise you won’t try too hard to see it without me,” I said. “I know how you feel about Louise’s competition.”
“Pfft. Please. Louise barely knows her binos from her butt. And you know I’ll always wait for you, Laurel. Now go to co-op before Jerry tells the truancy office to cart me off to the pokey,” she said.
“That’s not even a thing.”
She shooed me out of her yard toward my bike. “Don’t argue with your elders,” she said.
Hours later, the sky darkened and the rumble of an approaching storm kept distracting me from the unschoolers identifying different specifies of fungi. Soon the weather caught up with us, and within minutes, increasingly dramatic gray sheets of rain filtered through my shoes and socks until I decided enough was enough. I hustled my restless group of ponchoed children back to their parents.
Any word from the mystery bird? I texted Gran from inside the Nature Center.
Do you work, she replied.
That had to mean no.
I dropped into the Nature Center office after lunch.
“Don’t drip on the new posters,” said Jerry.
“Glad to see you are feeling better, boss,” I said.
“I mean it. Dry off before you laminate them.”
“Yes, sir. Oh, Risa asked you to sign her hours sheet. It’s on your desk.”
“Saw it. Go dry off.” Jerry was all business, all of the time.
No one came for a bird walk and talk, or tree tour, or our afternoon Fungi with a Fun Guy program because of the weather. I sometimes wondered if that last one was because everyone knew Jerry was a grumpy mushroom expert at best, and that our advertising threw off spores of lies. But the weather made the most sense.
“Maybe next week,” I tried to console him.
Jerry grunted.
I stood on the small porch of the Nature Center watching the angry clouds. I glanced at my ride chained to the covered bike rack. But then my phone buzzed.
Car is in your lot. Dropped it off for you. Got a ride with neighbor Stella. You’re welcome.
Okay, maybe Mom could be pretty cool.
I’m going out with Chad tonight for closure. Leftovers in fridge.
Never mind.
I almost wished I had taken the bike path home anyway. The road back to my house from the pond snaked around the mountainside. I crept along at about twenty miles an hour, noting how there was really only a narrow silver guardrail between a precipitous drop and me. Or at least I was pretty sure the guardrail was still there. It was hard to see through the near-horizontal waves of drops assaulting Mom’s vehicle.
Halfway home the dreary canopy parted a little, and sunlight peeked through. It was still raining and slick, though. I rounded the bend where the hillside hiking trail followed the highway a bit. I saw a familiar bright orange poncho on the gravel berm. I slowed down even further and rolled up to Gran. I beeped. She looked over and waved at me. I rolled down my window.
“Don’t stop here, Laurel. Cars come around mighty fast.”
“Yeah, no kidding. Maybe get off the road, then?”
“I am off the road,” she said. “Well, mostly.” She moved over a few inches.
“Get in the car. I’ll drive you home,” I said.
“Nah.” Gran pointed to something over the guardrail. “I have stuff to see.”
“Mystery bird?”
“No. But I’m pretty sure a black-backed oriole was at one of my feeders until a squirrel scared it. I heard him call a few times and figured I might as well get my weekly hike in.”
“It’s awful out!” I said.
Gran shrugged. “Go on, now,” she said. “Go home.”
“Promise me if you hear—”
“Yes, yes. Of course. I’ll always wait for you. Go away.”
I shook my head at her, but I rolled up my window and shifted into gear again. Gran often walked up the hill just to get some exercise, or to get a better view. There was a trail that led back to her house that joined the main path not far from here. She was in her bird zen mode, where she preferred to be alone. But it seemed like a bad idea for her to be out in this weather. I had barely spotted her by the side of the road, and I was practically walking the car around the bend.
Though. Gran was seventy-four. Obviously the woman could take care of herself.
FIELD JOURNAL ENTRY
MAY 2
NOTABLE LOCATION: THE END OF THE WORLD
Even though I went to school for two hours every Thursday so they could make sure I was being a responsible co-op student, I didn’t mind because both of those hours were spent with Sophie in the Art and Media lab. The rain had stopped, so I joyfully locked my dry bike in the rack and nodded at a few of my classmates milling around on the sidewalk in front of Greater Shunksville High School. The “Greater” part of the school always struck me to have been a joke on the part of the builders, since only a few thousand people and mostly migrating birds called Shunksville home. Blink and you’d miss most of downtown entirely. I’d gone to school with the same kids for the better part of my life, until a few years ago, when a new manufacturing plant opened and new families started moving in. Since Mom was a teacher’s aide at the dinky elementary school, she complained daily about the overfull classrooms and lack of space for the kids to play.
The familiar scent of turpentine and canvas greeted me as I swung the door open to the art room. Ms. Rizzo, the Art and Media lab teacher, smiled over at me.
“Thwatchingsirds?” a voice asked from under a table.
“What?” I said.
“How’s the bird watching?” Sophie said more clearly.
“Superb,” I said.
“See anything good?”
“No. Heard a new call, though.”
“That’s good?” She got up and straightened her headband.
“Indeedy. What are you doing on the floor?”
“Finding my artistic muse. Also, my damn brush rolled into a crack and I had to bust it out. This one cost me three hours cleaning the garage.”
“Understood,” I said. I pulled my portfolio from the rack and spread out my (fucking unoriginal) heron pictures. Ms. Rizzo basically let the advanced juniors do what we wanted during our extended “A Block” days, so we could work on our co-op portfolios. I was living my best nature photographer life.
Still life was my forte, even though I wished it were birds. Trees. Rocks. The occasional wildflower. I’d tried to mix it up because Sophie was also a sculptor and had convinced me to try to branch out artistically freshman year. I tried 3-D stuff like clay (doves) and (raven) jewelry making to mix it up. After burning myself and setting fire to Soph’s second-best sketchbook with my soldering iron, I’d decided (well, Ms. Rizzo vehemently suggested) that the camera was my true calling. I’d gotten a lot better at birds this year.
“These are all just herons,” I said to my portfolio.
“I told you. Go shoot the steel mill or a mine or something. Post-industrial Gothic. Find weeds growing out of pipes and things. People will love that stuff,” Sophie said. “Didn’t your ex-girlfriend photograph that kind of stuff?”
“The lines of those places haunted me. You start noticing how everything is a square or a triangle and how many right angles add up to your life. Can’t do it. Also you will recall that I was together with the ex you mentioned for about a week, probably not unrelated to her art.” I shook my head for emphasis. “As the master Brian Michael Warbley says, ‘Nature is my canvas.’”
“Yeah, ’cause that’s normal for a photographer, to get stressed out by the fact that the world is made of shapes. I thought you moved past that after they stopped trying to get you to watch Sesame Street with us in Ms. LaPlaca’s class.”
“Squares are everywhere. Lurking. Squares are brutal. Literally. Brutalist buildings…”
&nb
sp; “Nature is shapes, Laurel. Mountains. Animals. Birds,” she said.
“Soft shapes. These are all circles and curves. Jagged rock faces freak me out. When have you seen a rectangular crow?” I said. “As Brian—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it. Loser,” she said, but the bell drowned her out.
I smiled at my digitally manipulated herons. When I was in a bad mood or upset about the state of the world, I liked drawing little stick arms on them.
Sophie was right—I needed to do something new. Something exciting. Something that would move the judges to accept me over all the other Brian Michael Warbley wannabes in the world. But what was that?
I got out my laptop and scrolled through pictures of the rust belt, a dirty line that sliced up the eastern part of the United States, in which Shunksville sat firmly in the middle. It wasn’t as rusty as it could have been, maybe. New jobs had brought a bunch of stores and stuff nearby, but to me, we still seemed like a place nature was taking back. The cracked seams of earth on a mountain once erased of green by mines had grass peeking out in many places again. Wildflowers (which purists might call “weeds”) were persistent little shits and found ways to grow in soil where they had no earthly business surviving. Even the rocks that sat next to abandoned railroad tracks grew moss in shades of sage and juniper and parakeet.
Nature. Gotta hand it to her.
An hour passed and all I had managed to do was decide I hated both buildings and boulders.
“This is pointless,” I said to Sophie.
Sophie looked up and turned her sketchbook toward me. “Would it help to know that I’ve been very productive?”
I cocked my head at Sophie’s drawing of me. Paper me smiled at my computer, hunched over in thought. Lines fell in dark waves from my scalp to my shoulders.
“You made my hair look really good,” I said.
“I made your hair look like it looks.”
“No, you made it look better.”
“Did not.”
“Did, too.”
“Making good use of undirected study, girls?” said Ms. Rizzo from her desk.
The Confusion of Laurel Graham Page 2
