by Chris White
“Well,” Adrian says, chuckling a little, “surgery went very well. Better be quiet now, though, and keep resting.”
“Now they’re gonna radiate me, I guess.”
“That’ll be a piece of cake,” Adrian assures her, and stands, just as two twentyish women creep into the room toward Trisha Browne.
“Mom,” they croon, fatigued, disheveled, picking their way around Adrian, the IV, the monitors, and tray table. They embrace her gingerly, one on each side, and Trisha’s face softens all the more.
“There’s my girls . . .”
Adrian watches and thinks of his mother, of course. He simply didn’t have this, not for the bulk of his life. He didn’t have it, that’s all. He finds he is glad to be making it possible, though, for them—these young women, Trisha Browne, and the rest. This is how he’s made something good of his life.
“This is the doctor,” Trisha says. “An’sthesiol’gist. Came to check up on me.”
“Oh, thank you, Doctor,” says the taller of the two, the one with her hand on her mother’s hair. “Thank you so much.” Adrian nods, respectfully, then ducks out.
• • •
He drives, very slowly, along the nearly leafless streets of Boulder in the warm sanctuary of the Saab. The same attractive women he was so attentive to only days before hold no interest for him as they stand waiting at the flashing corners. The sidewalks and delivery trucks, the cafés and buildings with their tastefully lit entryways, their histories, their architectures—they are nothing more than a muted backdrop. There is only the air, a crystalline mist, shot through with dying sunlight. And, of course, the birds. They stand by, even in the twilight, quiet along fences and rooftops and gutters and electrical lines. Tomorrow they will sing again.
Just as Adrian is pulling up in front of Oma Gertrude’s condo, Jeff calls. He thinks he’ll let it go to voicemail, then at the last second picks up. Concerned, Jeff asks about the funeral, and Adrian assures him he’s all right and everything is done, that he probably needs some normalcy and a few days’ rest.
Jeff says, “I’m with you, buddy,” and hesitates. “I know it’s crazy timing now, but I’m all packed up, if you feel like you still want to go,” a barely contained excitement rising in his voice. Adrian had forgotten. The two of them had planned to fly to California together. He says he’s sorry but that it’s not going to happen, what with everything. Jeff says he gets it, of course, but that if Adrian changes his mind, if he feels it might be a welcome distraction, he’ll be ready.
It is an invitation-only gathering of the most elite birders in the country (“plus one,” Jeff had joked), mostly in memoriam of the late Henry Lassiter but also to salute the swallows who once returned to San Juan Capistrano in droves but now only trickle in by handfuls to nestle into the eaves of highway underpasses. Adrian could use some champagne and a hot hors d’oeuvre or two, but he really wants to be with Zander and Michaela, to ground himself there.
• • •
In moments, he is standing in Oma Gertrude’s pristine dining room, still in his coat, waiting for them to bring down their things from upstairs so they can all go home.
“I made knödel,” says Oma Gertrude, stacking dirty plates on dirty plates.
“Oh boy, knödel,” says Adrian. “Did you guys save any for me?”
“No, I am afraid we did not.”
Gertrude shuffles by with the dishes and flashes him that collapsing scowl of hers. Adrian always felt she was waiting for his marriage to falter, suspicious of him, without apparent cause.
Gertrude’s been in the US for over forty years but judges all things American as though she’s just gotten off the boat from Ellis Island. She had fallen in love with an American soldier stationed in Wiesbaden in her Bavarian hometown of Langensendelbach. She was on her way to pick up wurst from her father’s own butcher shop when she saw this man sweating on the side of the road with his bicycle on its side. He respectfully stopped her to ask directions, this American, and not long after, he offered her a ticket out (asked her to marry him), and she took it. She told Adrian once that she was happy to go because she had wanted to wash away all the “sharp smells” of Germany. God knows what that meant. But when they moved to Nellis Air Force Base in the desert near Las Vegas, Gertrude never wanted to leave the house. She had thought America would be fresh and exciting, but it was bleak, uncivilized, and frightening, or so she has maintained ever since. Every day she is shocked anew by the headlines. Every day she is appalled by the fact that no miniature breadboards can be purchased on which to eat the “evening meal.” When her husband was taken from her too young, she was unsurprised. America has disappointed her, Stella says. Now surely Stella’s told her about Adrian’s affair, furthering her argument, proving it.
Though all of this is clear, Adrian just moves aside. He buttons the top button of his coat. His consciousness continues to hover safely above any acute awareness of his own distress, just as his patient hovered above hers earlier in the day.
“Come on, guys! Come say goodbye to Oma, and let’s go!” Adrian shouts up the stairwell.
Gertrude brushes by him again and back to the table, which she wipes with a damp cotton rag. There are signs of brown gravy and roasted pork, as well as the potato dumplings. Adrian would usually do most anything for a plate of that food, but the threat of that loss too is manageable.
“The children will stay with me while their mother is gone,” Oma declares.
“Uh, thanks, Gertrude,” Adrian says, mildly, “but they can stay with me when I’m not at work. Stella and I have it worked out just fine.”
“The snow is coming,” she asserts, meeting him at the stairs.
Even for her, it seems a non sequitur.
“Hold on, Dad! We’re almost done!” Zander shouts from upstairs.
“Just get your stuff and let’s get going!”
Adrian moves to mount the stairs, to talk the kids off the old-fashioned typewriter or the game of crazy eights, any one of the things they fall into here that they would never have any interest in at home.
“They stay here,” Gertrude says again, and rolls up the dishrag like a sacred scroll.
“I can’t ask you to do that,” Adrian says. “It’s too much.”
“ ‘Too much’? Am I feeble? Am I not calpable? Are my legs broken?”
“I just don’t want to burden you, Gertrude. It’s not an insult.”
Gertrude moves to block him, her stocky body standing in his path like a wide oak daring the weather. “I’ll tell you an insult,” she says, pointing her finger at him. “Leaving my daughter for another woman. Leaving her children in a broken house. That is an insult. That is a burden. We are fine without you and your birds.”
Adrian takes a deep, conscious breath. He saved someone’s life today. He’s been free of dreams four nights running. The man beside the water is probably quietly celebrating barn owls. Adrian has nothing to prove to Gertrude and, honestly, no need of her forgiveness.
Just then, both kids blast down the steps with their bags in their hands. Michaela throws hers toward the door and hugs Adrian around the waist. He grasps her head with his hands and holds her tight.
“Hi, sweetheart.”
“You okay, Dad?” Zander asks and puts an arm around the two of them. “Did you go to Grandma’s funeral?”
“Yeah. I’m okay, buddy,” Adrian says, and kisses him on the cheek.
“Sorry you had to go by yourself.” Zander looks away, as if a little embarrassed, but this is one of the kindest things anyone’s said to Adrian in days.
“Yes. Much sympathy for your loss.” Gertrude nods. Perhaps she’d forgotten his mother had just died.
Michaela mounts and remounts the bottom stair. “We were playing Hungry Hungry Hippos!”
“Oh, cool,” Adrian says. “Love that game.”
They all stand in a short silence.
“I was winning,” Michaela adds, peering up at him.
Gertrude stand
s waiting.
“Well, I was going to take you guys home tonight, but Oma wants you to stay awhile longer. You wanna do that?”
• • •
Adrian enters the ballroom of a tidy mansion near the Mission San Juan Capistrano in a navy suit and deep-purple tie, with Jeff trailing him, starry-eyed. A larger-than-life photo of Henry Lassiter is projected on the wall beside the fireplace, and birders—bearded liberals, potbellied conservatives, grad students and professors, bankers, lawyers, East Coast conservationists, Texans, Canadians, Californians, Floridians, and Michiganders—all sit in plush chairs or stand attentive at the drink table, listening to Will Marienthal speak elegantly at the podium.
Adrian slides into an aisle seat, pleasantly high. In pressed khakis and a brown wool jacket, Jeff picks his way past Adrian’s knees, looking like a kid who never dresses except for church, and sits next to a young woman with blond hair, natural as a sandbar. Jeff smiles and puts out his hand to her like they’re comrades, and they shake in that awkward fashion where there isn’t really enough distance between them for the transaction. As usual, Jeff’s giddy delight is worth the trip.
Adrian’s head swivels easily on his neck, as he looks around for the people he knows (most everyone). There’s Shell Eastman on the aisle opposite him, looking down, pursing his lips. Adrian nudges Jeff in the ribs and gestures toward the man, whispering, “Number one,” and raising his eyebrows. Jeff smiles conspiratorially and kisses his fingers in a bunch like he’s doing a bad impression of a satisfied Italian. Adrian shakes his head, unable to contain a grin.
“. . . bridging the gap,” says Marienthal, “between ‘scientists’ and what some of us call ‘field ornithologists.’ Yet none of that really matters today.” He pauses to look out at Lassiter’s fan base. “What matters, Henry used to say, is what you seek. What matters . . . is what you find.”
And that is it exactly, thinks Adrian. This past spring he traveled to Indigenous Park in Key West to tick a vagrant, shy, and unobtrusive Thick-billed Vireo, bringing his number to 863. It was rumored Lassiter was also on his way that day to list the bird. But Adrian never actually saw him there. Who knows? If it still matters, and maybe it does—of course it does—perhaps Adrian can still overtake him somehow (in the mildest possible sense of the word). The way the horizon overtakes the setting sun. Inevitably. Honestly. Without malice or pride. Maybe he already has.
Marienthal is saying something about “shop talk,” his hands gripping the podium. Jeff’s mouth is open like that of a boy awaiting his first dance, the light filtering in dusty blocks across the head and shoulders of the audience, the flower arrangements lush, the ice buckets glittering, Marienthal’s voice lilting like a song—
“. . . as kind a man as you’d ever want to meet.” Then he says, “When it comes down to it, I was just lucky to be the guy sharing his canteen.” Here he pauses long, and Adrian closes his eyes. Everyone in the room feels it. The reason each of them is here. The gleaming thermos, feet in the muck, the brisk or sweltering or misty day ahead in the wide world of the creatures, just one of a species, surrounded by its fellows. Lucky. “We’ll miss you, Hank. God speed.”
Jeff firmly grasps the sleeve of Adrian’s jacket, and together with the group, they repeat, “God speed.”
• • •
“Adrian,” says Marienthal, shaking his hand by the table of fruit and tiny quiche. “Really generous of you to be here.”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” Adrian says, champagne in hand. “He was a wonderful man.”
“Hey,” says Jeff, shaking hands with Marienthal. “Jeff Stutsman.”
“Great to meet you,” the always-gracious Marienthal replies. “Will Marienthal. Did you know Hank, Jeff?”
“Just knew of him,” Jeff answers, as Eastman appears from behind them.
“He was a no bullshit guy,” Eastman says, pulling the knot of his tie away from his throat.
Adrian fills a plate with nothing but watermelon balls, his favorite food to eat when he’s feeling the Vicodin: cold, wet, crisp, sweet. “Shell, Jeff Stutsman.”
“Jeff, Mandrick,” says Eastman.
“So, how’s the list, ace? Did you get that Accentor?” Marienthal asks Adrian.
“Oh. No. Should have called you back.” Adrian smiles. “I saw it, actually, but it was frozen.”
“What?” says Marienthal, pantomiming a jab to his own heart.
“I know, I know. But life is good,” says Adrian, giving Jeff a little nod of inclusion.
“Hank had a pretty good year himself,” says Eastman. “Hell, I guess I can spill it now, and you know this, Will, but in August, Hank got a call from a friend—”
“Unbelievable story,” Marienthal says, popping a rectangle of cantaloupe into his mouth.
Adrian steadies himself against the table, taking in the implications—good year, unbelievable story. “What was it?”
Eastman drops the little bomb. “Eskimo Curlew.”
Adrian’s consciousness twists upward like the lid of a sardine can, from the base of his skull toward his hairline. “Come on,” he says.
“Stinebrickner was with him. From Cornell. Made Hank promise not to post it. Said the curlew couldn’t risk an onslaught so close to extinction. Swore him to secrecy. It was on private property, and the owner didn’t want it either.”
“Did he list it?” asks Adrian. His calculations have been nothing but fantasy. He hadn’t surpassed Lassiter. God knows what other species Lassiter had ticked this year.
“Well, of course he listed it,” says Eastman.
Jeff chimes in, “Of course he listed it!”
Adrian gives Jeff a look, then manages, “Hey, Shell. Hank saw that vireo, right? In Key West, last spring?”
The muted crowd spikes in patches—unrestrained laughter here, animated gesticulating there. A woman’s shawl swishes by the drink table, a spray of paper napkins lift, then spread across the floor.
“Nope, he never did. The curlew was the only bird he ticked this year,” Eastman says, glancing at Adrian, looking truly puzzled by what he sees: a grown man in a nice suit with his fingers over his mouth like a pinup girl.
The only bird he ticked this year.
Adrian takes in a deep breath, lowers his hand, and shakes his head. “That’s a shame,” he says. “Not that it matters. Hank’s a superstar.”
The men make noises of agreement. Jeff nods along with the greatest birders in North America. Adrian means everything he says: Hank was a superstar, not only because of the birds he’d seen but because of who he was—his kindness, his leadership, his contribution to conservation. But none of that negates the additional stunning fact. He and Lassiter are tied; Adrian needs only one more bird.
Eastman finally properly acknowledges Jeff, who’s selecting a half-dozen baby quiches from the table. “What do you do, Jeff?” he asks.
“I’m uh,” Jeff says, looking up, startled, “working on a book.”
“Oh, yeah? Excellent. What about?” asks Eastman, sucking on his bourbon and ice.
“Not sure yet, actually,” Jeff says, nonsensically. “It’s freelance. For Dummies.”
• • •
“I was your wingman,” spits Jeff, happily drunk, his knees nearly up to his chest in a low chair at Hermanos Bar and Grill.
“You weren’t my wingman,” Adrian retorts, laughing. “A wingman gets you laid!”
“I mean, straight man, right? I was your straight man.” Then in singsong hip-hop: “Played the fool, you got the four-one-one.”
“Close enough!” Adrian laughs, eyes gleaming, raising his Manhattan to Jeff.
“Man, I cannot believe I got to hang with those guys. After all the stories for all the years. It’s like being at the Oscars. You guys are celebrities.”
“Glad to have you along. I wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t for you.”
“Shouldn’t have said I was working on a book,” admits Jeff.
“Nah, you are working on a book. You’re
working on working on a book.”
“Yeah. Did it seem like I was lying?”
“Come on, man,” Adrian counsels, patting him on the shoulder. “You just got nervous.”
Jeff looks at Adrian with an open-mouthed grin. Shakes his head. “Conversation for Dummies,” he says, “that’s what I should write. No, Dumbass Conversation for Dummies. I’d be all over that.”
They had left the memorial just when the crowd started to wane, then had woven their way out of the mansion and into the little pub on the outskirts of town to resume drinking. “Brothers,” Adrian had said, when they’d approached the sign.
Now he says it again. “Hermanos. You’re more my brother than my brother ever was.”
At this, Jeff looks him squarely in the eye, then down at his hands open-palmed on the table. “I am honored, my friend. Humbled.”
“And toasted.” Adrian chuckles and Jeff shakes his head. They both look out into the dim room. The waitress is weighed down with cheap silver and turquoise, unloading her tray at the table across the floor, friendly and unassuming.
“How is your brother?” Jeff asks, clearing his throat.
“Oblivious.”
“Really? To what?”
“To the suffering of others. To the possibility he may not have all the four-one-one.”
“Right.”
“Doesn’t matter. Probably won’t see him again for another fifteen years.”
“Come on. You don’t know that.”
Adrian nods in agreement, allows the last bit of alcohol and sweetness in his drink to trail along his glass to his lips.
“How’s Stell? She still mad about nothing?”
Adrian shifts uncomfortably in his seat. He blinks his eyes, dry and tired now.
“I was seeing someone else. She wasn’t mad about nothing.”
Jeff is speechless for once. He looks saddened, embarrassed. He makes a little floweret with his lips.
“It was only a couple of times. I’m not proud of it.”
Jeff breathes another moment, then says, “Man, I didn’t know things were that bad. I mean, I knew you left her at the gas station—”
