A Charm of Finches

by Suanne Laqueur

  “I’m open to meeting everyone.”

  They held gazes, chests and shoulders rising and falling in an inhale and exhale. Fingertips brushing.

  “I’m having a good time,” Stef said. “I like how this is unfolding.”

  “Same.”

  “Good. Now get out of here. Come back tomorrow. Bring your binder.”

  “For real?

  “No. Just bring you.”

  Jav smiled and Stef’s chest turned inside-out. One last kiss on his mouth and Jav was gone, ambling down 20th Street, looking back once to wave.

  “So who am I meeting?” Jav said the next morning.

  “Lilia’s ex-husband.”

  “The guy from the pictures?”

  “Yes. And his daughter. My sort of stepsister. Stavroula.”

  “Stavroula.” Jav’s eyes swiveled off to the side, as if he’d heard the name before but couldn’t remember where. “That,” he said slowly, “is a great name.”

  “It’s Greek.”

  “It’s a queen’s name.” Jav blinked through another thoughtful moment, then his gaze cleared and he smiled at Stef. “Sorry, I was getting an idea. Where are we meeting them?”

  “At the Bake and Bagel. Which they own.”

  The bakery was often misheard as the Bacon Bagel. Which happened to be the specialty of the house. Their grilled cheese and tomato on the bacon bagel was written up in New York magazine, in a feature article of the top ten rainy-day lunches.

  Stef had never introduced Stav to a guy he was dating. He simply didn’t date guys long enough. Stav’s eyes bulged when Stef walked into the humming bakery in the company of a Latino hunk, tall and built with laugh lines around his eyes and silver threading through his dark hair. When she made her way over to their table with their sandwiches, Stef was positive her underwear was sitting up and begging.

  “Stav, this is Javier,” Stef said. “Jav, this is Stav. Which rhymes with Jav.”

  “Oh, no,” Stav said, taking a seat. “No, no. This is out of the question.”

  Stef thought it was hilarious. “It’s perfect. Stef plus Jav equals Stav.”

  “Dude,” Jav said into his coffee cup.

  “Come on. We should all get married,” Stef said. His mouth was ten steps ahead of his brain this morning.

  “We should avoid each other entirely.” Jav sank teeth into his grilled cheese and closed his eyes. “Christ, that’s amazing.”

  Stav put her cheek on a fist. “You like?”

  “Call a U-Haul, I’m moving in with this sandwich.”

  Stef took a bite of his bagel and all the tomato and cheese slid out the other end. He was a hot mess. When he tried to keep from beaming, he blushed. When he tried to fight off the blush, he beamed.

  Jav, on the other hand, was perfectly chill. The way he got to his feet when Stav’s father Micah came over was unconsciously respectful, as if his DNA were coded to rise in the presence of senior citizens. In particular, an eighty-year-old Holocaust survivor who got up at three every morning to make bagels, drove a van for Meals on Wheels, and took a daily five-mile walk. Stef stood as well and let Micah slap floury handprints on his shoulders and back.

  Micah shook Jav’s hand and set his other on top a moment, sending up another little puff of white dust. He took a chair and accepted what looked like a Dixie cup of coffee from his daughter.

  Jav’s eyes squinted at the hand-lettered quote on one of the walls. “El ke alarga la meza, alarga la vida,” he said. “It looks like Spanish but it’s not. Make the table…long? Make life long?”

  “The one who extends the table, lengthens their life,” Micah said, tearing off the corner of a sugar packet. He tapped about six grains into his coffee and gave the cup a swirl.

  “What language is that?”

  “Ladino,” Stav said. “Sephardic Jews speak it.”

  “And a few goy imposters,” Micah said, patting his chest. “It’s a real mongrel dialect. Medieval Spanish with bits of Hebrew and Turkish and Greek.” The dark eyes under his thick black brows twinkled. “Like Spanish got drunk and had a one-night stand with Yiddish.”

  “Ke is qué,” Jav said. “I get it. And who makes all the pots?” His hands full, Jav’s elbow pointed at the shelves along the exposed brick wall, lined with bowls and jars and jugs and cups.

  Stav raised a finger.

  “You made all of them?”

  “Yeah. I got into pottery as post-divorce therapy. Now it’s like brain yoga. Sometimes people are nice and buy one.”

  “They buy them because they’re beautiful, habibti,” Micah said.

  Stav shrugged. “Mostly they break them by accident.”

  Micah crumpled his cup and pushed back his chair. After another round of dusty handshakes, he went back to his dough-making. Jav went up to buy a half-dozen of the bacon bagels. Stav collected the paper plates together and spoke out the corner of her mouth. “Oh. My. God.”

  “Shh,” Stef said. “Don’t stare.”

  “Is this the guy you called me about the other day?”

  “Yes.”

  “Dude, does he have a brother? Named Rav?”

  “No.”

  “Where did he come from?”

  “The fucking sky. It’s really new and really cautious and fragile and…” His eyes darted sideways to the line at the register and then down again. “Please, just behave.”

  “I’m behaving. You’re blushing.”

  “Shut up and stop looking at him.”

  “That’s like asking me to stop breathing. When did you meet him?”

  “Like a month ago.”

  “Have you slept w—”

  “No. He’s never been in a relationship with a guy.”

  “He’s not gay?”

  “He’s bi, but he never… It’s complicated.”

  “Well, if it doesn’t work out, I get right of first refusal.”

  “Shut up. And stop looking at me.”

  “But you’re so cute. I’ve never seen you like this.”

  He glanced up. He imagined his eyes were both tender and wild. “Neither have I,” he said.

  Jav came back with his paper bag and a small bowl. Or a large, handle-less cup, depending on how you looked at it. A creamy gray on the outside and robin’s egg blue inside.

  “It’s made for coffee,” he said, looking ridiculously pleased. “Look how it fits in your hand.”

  “I love the glaze on that piece,” Stav said. “Enjoy.”

  She blushed when Jav kissed her cheek, and she glared sideways at Stef as if daring him to say anything about it.

  “Where to now?” Jav said outside the bakery, pulling on his shades.

  Stef hesitated. “Today’s kind of an anniversary.”

  “It is?”

  “If you feel like taking a walk, I’ll tell you about it.”

  “I’m in.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “I love stories.”

  They took a cross-town bus to the East Side, then another north along First Avenue.

  “I thought we were walking this story?” Jav said.

  “We are. This is the prologue.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “So once upon a time,” Stef said, turning up his right wrist. Unlike the magnificent sleeve on his left forearm, this tattoo was small and singular. Eight words nestled beneath the heel of his hand:

  Alison, I know this world is killing you.

  “Elvis Costello,” Jav said.

  “Also the unofficial launch of my career in counseling. I volunteered at a suicide hotline in college.”

  Alison was sixteen, home alone with the phone in one hand while the other held a gun to her head. Stef held her on the line three hours. A supervisor sat close by, ready to take over if Stef couldn
’t handle it anymore. He handled it. He talked and listened. Sympathized. Affirmed. Kept listening. Bit by bit, he got her trust. Gently, Stef got her to say her town. Her school. She whispered the name of a teacher who’d always been kind to her. Stef’s supervisor put the pieces together and made the call. The teacher jumped in his car and was at the house in ten minutes. It took Stef another twenty to get Alison to put the gun down and answer the door.

  “I love you,” she said before she hung up.

  “I love you, too,” Stef said, his vision beginning to tunnel. “I’m so proud of you.”

  He disconnected the line and the phone bank burst into applause. Stef stood up and passed out, crashing face first into a row of filing cabinets and slicing open his left eyebrow.

  “I take back what I said,” Jav said. “This beats the knife fight story.”

  They stepped off the bus into the cool October afternoon. Jav didn’t ask questions about the destination, only followed where Stef led and kept listening.

  Stef told how he went to Skidmore, majored in psychology and minored in art. He got a masters degree in social work from NYU and went into clinical therapy. He dabbled in Buddhism and was drawn to meditation and the early field of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. From the start, he showed an aptitude, an instinctive gift for working with trauma victims.

  He and Jav reached the entrance to the Queensboro Bridge’s pedestrian walkway.

  “I’ve never been on this bridge,” Jav said. “Or Roosevelt Island, for that matter.”

  “Fun fact,” Stef said. “You can walk out the front door of Scores East in Manhattan, walk over the bridge and through the front door of Scandals on the Queens side. With a little discretion, you can take your drink with you.”

  “And how would one come to know this fascinating piece of strip club trivia?”

  Stef chuckled. “One may have done it during his bachelor party.”

  “Sounds like an epic night.”

  “I don’t remember much of it. Anyway. I walked a lot on this bridge after my divorce and my parents’ divorce.”

  A mild depression had gripped him for the better part of a year. He felt lost and ashamed. Unworthy of love and cynical of its existence. Worse, he felt he wasn’t doing what he was supposed to be doing. He was a good therapist, but something wasn’t quite right. If his career was a pair of shoes, he had them on the wrong feet.

  “I did a lot of walking during that time,” he said. “A lot of sketching. Trying to pin down some elusive vision and figure out what the hell I was doing with my life. I’m walking across one evening, nine years ago today, to be exact. And I see a woman swing a leg over the railing…”

  Alison? he thought.

  Of course not. But she was someone like Alison. She was here and so was he.

  He approached on gentle feet. “Hey,” he said, just as a car slowed, the passenger window rolling down. “You need help?” a man called.

  Stef turned his chin enough to make eye contact. “Nine-one-one,” he mouthed, and then gave a flick of his hand to signal the car to move along. Traffic was starting to slow down. He ignored it and stepped closer to the railing.

  “My name’s Stef,” he said. “Is it okay if I stand here?”

  The woman stared straight out, brown hair whipping across her face and eyes.

  “I’m only going to stand here,” Stef said. “You don’t have to talk. I’ll just keep you company.”

  He counted the Doppler swoosh of passing cars for a good five minutes.

  “He took them this morning,” the woman said.

  “Who?”

  “My ex-husband. He took the kids. They gave the kids to him.”

  “I see.”

  “He declared me unfit. I can’t see them.”

  “That’s shitty.”

  “He’s moving with them to Florida.”

  “I’m so sorry. Tell me more.”

  Privately, he named her Ally. He listened as she described a life of addiction and abuse and bad decisions. A life no longer worth living.

  When the police arrived, Ally grew agitated, wobbling on her perch. Stef stood completely still, didn’t change his voice or manner, didn’t break eye contact. Two officers approached and Ally became hysterical, screaming to be left alone.

  “Sir?” one cop said quietly. “Are you comfortable handling this?”

  “I’m a clinical psychologist,” Stef said. “I have a masters in social work. I run mental health clinics at Bellevue and volunteer with NYC Suicide Prevention. Please give us some space.”

  The police retreated a careful distance and Ally’s wild eyes met Stef’s for the first time.

  “Stay here,” she said.

  “You bet. Will you come back on this side?”

  “No.”

  “Can you tell me your name?”

  “No. You just stay right there.”

  “Sure. Do you mind if I draw?”

  “Draw?”

  “I have a sketch pad in my pocket. I draw when I’m upset.”

  She blinked a few times, wincing as the ends of her hair whipped her eyes. “What are you going to draw?”

  “You.”

  Resting the pad on the railing where she could see, he started to sketch her, with simple horizontal lines indicating the railing. “Tell me more about what’s going on,” he said.

  As she talked to him, he tried to illustrate the pain. Give shape to the despair and dimension to the hopelessness. In the background, he drew the ex-husband. The two young children. The violence. The drugs. He made the paper woman as ugly as the real one believed she was. Then he tore the page out of the book and showed it to her.

  “Yes,” she said, face crumpling. “Yes. That’s me. That’s how I feel. That’s my life.”

  “Take it,” he said.

  She did.

  “Now let it go,” he said. “Let it fall. Let her jump for you.”

  Ally’s fingers unfolded and the paper blew away. Of course it didn’t plummet. It floated and wafted. Blown about in the cold gusts from the river and the hot bellows-breath from traffic.

  “It can’t fall,” Stef said, watching. “Most it can do is just fly away. And come down when it’s ready to.”

  But then.

  The perfect gust. The perfect updraft and downdraft and side draft. The paper came back. With an almost joyous thwack it wrapped around Ally’s head. Slowly she peeled it away and her tear-streaked face, full of clarity, was a beautiful thing.

  “I think she wants to stay with you,” Stef said.

  “Maybe,” she said. She held the paper to her breast. “Can I… I think I want to get down now.”

  “All right.”

  “I’m so tired.”

  “You must be.”

  “Help me?”

  “You got it.”

  He never learned her name. Once she was taken away in an ambulance, Stef sat on the deck of the bridge in a cold sweat, fighting off a mean nausea and shaking uncontrollably. The police brought water and a blanket. A young officer crouched down, hands on Stef’s upper arms, breathing with him.

  “You did an amazing thing,” he said. “You brought her back. Now you have to come back, too. A part of you is on the other side of the railing still. You come back to us now.”

  

  “A month later,” Stef said, “I was back in grad school. Getting a master’s in art therapy. Every October thirteenth, I come back to the bridge. Mostly to mark the occasion of figuring out what I was meant to do in life. But partly because I wonder if she marks the day, too. I wonder if maybe one year, I’ll see her.”

  Jav was quiet for a long time. They stood close together, forearms crossed on the railing. Their upper arms and hips touching.

  “My cousin,” Jav finally said. “The cousin who kissed me on
the rooftop. He jumped off the George Washington Bridge. I hadn’t seen him since I left home. We grew up like brothers but then I never saw him again and I never knew why he did it. But I always wondered…”

  “Wondered what?”

  “If he was alone when he jumped. Or if someone came along and tried to stop him. If anyone even saw him. Cars driving by. Another pedestrian. If one person in Morningside Heights glanced out their apartment window and saw him. I mean, it’s the freakin’ GWB. It’s never alone. Someone had to have seen him.”

  He shook his head, breaking out of the reverie. “I don’t mean to make it about me.”

  “You’re not,” Stef said.

  This is about us.

  “Thanks for showing me,” Jav said. “And telling me. I’m touched.”

  “I’ve told people about it but I’ve never taken someone with me on the day.” He glanced over at Jav. “You’re making me do a lot of things differently.”

  Their eyes held. Slowly their heads inclined until their brows touched. They were still then, breathing together.

  “I think I get what you mean about it being something you lean on,” Jav said. His finger drew along the ring on Stef’s middle finger, shaped from two wings.

  Stef laughed under his breath, thinking the moment felt decidedly bi-romantic.

  He leaned a little more and the moment gave way to his weight. His blue and Jav’s red overlapping to make a third, dark purple shape.

  He kept the thought in his head. Saying it aloud was too big a bridge to jump from. And too long a fall.

  They arrived back at Cushman Row tired. Stef popped them each a beer and Jav put on ESPN. They watched a little of the EUFA qualifying rounds but soon they were both nodding off.

  “We’re sleeping together,” Jav said.

  “Funny how it happens.”

  Jav yawned big. “I didn’t sleep much last night,” he said. “In a good way.”

  “Same.” Stef clicked off the TV, got up and headed toward his bedroom. “Anyway,” he called back. “Isn’t siesta some kind of Latin American tradition?”

  “It’s an institution.”

  Stef came back out with two pillows. He tossed one to Jav and lay down along the long side of the couch. His feet to Jav, who lay on his stomach with his head in the corner.