The Language of Sparrows

by Rachel Phifer

  “What kind of plan?”

  Sierra just shook her head. “I won’t break into anyone’s home or anything. You’ll see.”

  Sierra’s eyes blazed, and her whole face filled with determination. This was the girl, the one who could not only survive the heartbreak life threw her way but who could take the pain and mold it into something else. April wasn’t going to ruin the moment by crying or getting syrupy. She just said, “I guess I will see. Let me know if I can help.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  April sat on the park bench. The park was quiet. An elderly couple strolled hand in hand on the jogging trail, and a mother helped her daughter down the slides.

  “April.”

  Nick stood in the sunlight. Just the sound of his voice warmed her. She’d gone too many days without hearing it.

  He took a seat at the other end of the bench. He was thinner, and dark circles under his eyes gave evidence of lost sleep. But the haunted look she’d seen in his eyes last time was gone, replaced by stillness.

  What was Luca thinking? Nick was a man without a job, and his job had fueled his passion for life. This was no time to discuss her feelings for him.

  She looked off to a wide patch of grass, wondering if he remembered meeting her here last fall. She’d been unable to take the picture of the men performing Tai Chi, and he’d taken her to his friend’s to look at the photos in the back of the carpet shop.

  “How’s Sierra?” Nick asked.

  “She’s doing well. I know she’s still got some dark days ahead, but I think she’s turned a corner.” The memory of talking with Sierra last night still left her in awe.

  That snippet of news pleased him, but he let the conversation drop. He was here at her invitation, so he waited.

  “It’s Truth or Dare time again,” April said softly. “Are you up for it?”

  “I’ll take truth for a thousand, Alex.” He was quick on the uptake, references to Jeopardy and all, but despite the dry humor, his face remained guarded.

  “How did I know you’d pick truth?”

  Nick smiled. “In love and war …”

  “I was really hoping for a dare. I’m not much with the truth.” She let out a nervous laugh. Did he read the pain in her eyes, because his was spilling out for anyone to see.

  A crow landed at their feet and began to peck at the grass. A runner sprinted by. She’d rehearsed what she would say to Nick, had alternate backup versions even, but her mind drew a blank. All she could think of was the space between them.

  “I’m so sorry, Nick. The truth is hard for me.” She slowed her breathing. “I don’t know why I asked you to come here. You’ve already got so much stress. You don’t need mine.”

  He reached his arm along the back of the bench. “It’s okay, April. If you want to talk, I want to listen.”

  She took a deep breath. “I don’t do truth. Painting rainbows over rainstorms. That’s been the rule of my life. Fourteen years of my husband going in and out of hospitals and trying one drug cocktail after another, fighting a life-sucking, mind-altering depression I didn’t even know existed. And I smiled and I said, ‘It’s going to get better’ like a never-changing chorus, and I acted as if I believed God would make sense of our pain.”

  Her voice trembled and Nick slid close, taking her hand, enveloping it in both of his.

  “I never once said, ‘There’s no hope left.’ I wouldn’t even allow myself to think the words. The only time I let my guard down was to encourage Gary to go to the history conference in Italy. He was doing better. I didn’t say I needed him to leave me and Sierra alone for a couple of weeks because I was suffocating waiting for the latest treatment to stop working as they always did. But I guess Gary had learned to decode my words by then, because he went to the conference even though he knew he wasn’t ready for it. He went to the conference. And he came home in a casket.”

  A muscle twitched in Nick’s cheek, and his hands around hers grew tight. She looked out at the pond, gathering herself.

  “So that night you kissed me last winter,” April went on, her voice growing thick. “You were so alive with strength and goodness, and I just wanted you to hold me. But I told myself with all our family issues, we’d break each other’s hearts and Sierra’s and your dad’s in the mix. I told you it would never work between us. I tried to find something sweet to soften my rejection of you and what was happening between us, so I said you were like family. I couldn’t even tell myself the truth.”

  She looked up at the sky. “I can’t let you love me, Nick. And I can’t love you back. How can I? My husband is dead because of me.”

  He put his arms around her and rested his face against the top of her head. He didn’t need to speak. His presence was enough. For now she let Nick’s arms surround her and savored his comfort, the way a drunk must relish his last drink before going sober.

  Nick kissed her temple, kissed her lips so briefly she ached for more, but he drew back. “April, you couldn’t have stopped him. If your husband had stayed in town with you, and you kept painting rainbows for him and giving him that golden smile of yours, eventually, he would still have killed himself. You know that.”

  She looked into Nick’s eyes, trying to hold on to that thought.

  “You couldn’t give him what the medicine and the doctors couldn’t.”

  She drew a ragged breath.

  “Some things aren’t in your power. Your husband’s condition was one of them.”

  April nodded, numb. It was true, but it didn’t feel any more real.

  Nick took her face in his hands. “I’ll tell you one more thing that’s not in your power. Me. You can’t tell me I can’t love you, because I do.” He leaned in to kiss her forehead. “April, sweet April. You were right all along. Our lives are complicated.” His voice grew rough. “We each have our own grief. Maybe we would add more rips to each other’s lives. Maybe we’d hurt each other and Sierra and my dad.”

  He raised her hand and kissed her fingers. “But it’s too late to worry about breaking my heart. You’ve broken it already.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Two days later, April got out of the car with her camera, taking each step into the park carefully, as if she carried a bomb that would explode if she took a wrong step. If a person wanted to live in the light, they needed to get in the light, so she came to the park and, on an impulse, had brought her Nikon. It was early still, cool, and the park appeared empty.

  Sierra and Carlos had been busy this week setting their plan into motion. Tomorrow would tell whether it would succeed or fail.

  She found the bench, hers and Nick’s now, and sank onto the seat. She was in the light, but she didn’t feel the light.

  Sierra was making progress.

  Luca had told his story and appeared stronger, physically and mentally.

  Ms. Baines had already put one of her photos on the gallery wall, and several customers had shown interest.

  But April had felt so bruised since her talk with Nick. Talking about Gary hadn’t brought healing. It had brought a terrible, soul-deep ache. Maybe it had been there the whole time and she’d been smiling too hard to notice.

  She closed her eyes. A soft whisper seemed to carry on the breeze. There is a time to tear and a time to mend.

  The Bible verse didn’t bring much comfort. She’d been waiting for mending for so long, and every time she hoped, the fault line in her life only seemed to tear deeper into the surface.

  The breeze continued to sift around her, ruffling through the grass, tattering the flags at the park entrance. A profusion of Indian paintbrush grew on the levee, and rushes lined the banks of the pond. Meadow green and petal scarlet and sky blue. How long had it been since she’d seen the colors around her—really seen them? The world had browned like a sixty-year-old photo the day Joe called to say Gary had killed himself.

>   The colors practically bathed over her now. It was so beautiful, so incredibly easy. She looked up into the cloudless sky as if she might catch the hand that had painted it all still at work.

  A woman jogged on the trail with her dog. She stopped and kneeled down to untangle a knot in the leash, looping her arms around the husky’s neck, burying her face into his fur, the way someone might give an affectionate hug to a young child. April couldn’t help herself. She raised the camera, zoomed, and clicked. The woman stood and was gone.

  April tilted the screen to avoid the glare. It was all there on the camera: the woman’s patent loneliness, how she poured her life into a simple dog because almost certainly he was the only one to love her back. It was an image of loneliness and love, sorrow and affection. The pixels told the truth.

  She aimed once more, taking a picture of the rushes on the pond, bowed in the wind, and the water rippling to the center.

  A bit of poison drained from her. The ache wasn’t gone, but it was a moment—His promise that life would not be filled with thorns forever. One day there would be pine tree instead of brier. Color would replace dullness. Moment by moment, she would lay Gary to rest and life would return.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  It was 8:00 a.m. again, and the first tardy bell would be ringing. Nick went to his knees at the windowsill. “If not this, then what, Lord?”

  He couldn’t imagine a future without students strutting into his class, masking the fact that they were only kids who needed somebody to care.

  The doorbell rang and he sighed, wondering if he should let the visitor move on. But he gathered himself and descended the stairs. He didn’t bother to comb his hair, and he was re-wearing yesterday’s T-shirt.

  Downstairs, Nick closed and opened his eyes, as if the sight outside might go away like the bizarre dream it appeared to be. Outside his window, a crowd of kids had gathered, and more wound down the driveway. Cars lined the curb. He smoothed a hand through his hair and opened the door. Ryan Brannigan stood in front of him, but there were more than a hundred kids behind him. At least half, maybe more, of all his students.

  Ryan stepped forward. “Mr. F., the sub isn’t teaching us anything. We decided if you couldn’t come to the mountain, we’d bring the mountain to you.”

  Nick stepped onto the porch. His students. The greater part of his classes somehow had transported themselves ten miles down the road. For him. They’d come for him. But he had to say the practical thing. “Look, guys,” he said loudly enough for them all to hear, “I can’t tell you how much this means to me. But I can’t let you do this.”

  They turned belligerent faces toward him.

  “If what I taught you means anything, then you know you have to stay in school. You have to get your diploma, and you can’t do it by skipping class.”

  Behind Ryan, Teresa Muñoz stepped forward. “We’re not skipping class, Mr. Foster. We’re having a walkout.”

  “It amounts to the same thing.”

  “That ain’t true,” she protested. “You said sometimes you got to stand up for something. Like Atticus Finch in the mockingbird book, right? Well, we say it ain’t right for them to take your job away for protecting someone. And we’re going to stand up and take the consequences.”

  How could he argue with that? He’d be arguing with himself. He pushed open the door and stood out of the way. Students crammed into his living room, onto the stairs, into his kitchen, and still there wasn’t enough room. The rest crowded onto the porch and the sidewalk.

  Elena called from the stairs. “So what are we going to learn today, Mr. F?”

  He opened his palms. “I don’t have a lesson prepped.”

  They laughed, because they all knew he never followed the lesson anyway. He looked toward the books on his coffee table to scan them for ideas, when he noticed some of the kids weren’t current students. Some of them were too old.

  First, he recognized Jade Miller who left his class, what—four, five years ago? She grinned when his gaze landed on her. “I thought you might have more to say than my professors at Georgetown, Mr. F.”

  He looked out the open door. Amy Romero, who provided him with boxes of books from the bookstore she managed now, waved from the sidewalk. Robert Balderas, who was a reporter on the local news, spoke to someone in the doorway. Some of the students went back fourteen years, to the beginning of his teaching career. His kids had grown up. They’d rallied for him, even flown in from other parts of the country for him. He raked a hand across his jaw. He couldn’t take it in.

  And then someone walked through the crowd who was too old to have ever attended his class. Students stepped aside and made way for him to take the stool at Nick’s feet. “I thought also I might learn from you today, Nicu. I would make a better student than a father, it seems.”

  Something caught in Nick’s throat. Was that an apology from his father?

  “And I have heard, of course, that you are an excellent teacher.”

  And a compliment?

  He looked into the kitchen where Sierra and Carlos huddled in a corner. He looked around, hoping for another who’d never attended his class, but April was nowhere to be seen.

  “I don’t know what to say,” he said in a choked voice.

  “That’s a first,” someone called from the kitchen, and everyone laughed.

  “You guys are the best. You’re ready to teach the lesson yourselves.” He looked over the crowd. “Who set this up?”

  Dad nodded toward Sierra. “It was her idea. She has been on the telephone constantly this week.”

  Sierra withdrew into the corner as all eyes turned to her. He thought of the determination, the conversations it must have taken to get all these people here. And for a girl like Sierra. “Turned a corner,” April had said. “A core of steel,” Nick had said. She’d proven them right.

  “Thank you, guys.” He gave them a rueful smile. “A few days ago I told God I’d walk away from teaching if that was His will, and I meant it. But I won’t say it doesn’t burn. Teaching … it’s a grueling job, but it’s who I am. I can’t picture myself doing anything else.”

  He let his gaze sweep the crowd. “I wouldn’t change a thing. Seeing every one of you guys here, knowing what you’ve made of your lives, or will …”—he looked at Sierra—“and seeing her safe. I’d do it ten times over.”

  He said nothing about what a tough lady Liza was. Having a school walkout would hardly sway her in his favor. But they’d taken a risk for him, and he wanted them to feel their power, if just for a day.

  He gave his kids the floor. The lesson of the day turned out to be what his kids had learned in his class. Some touched on a favorite novel or how they learned to appreciate the power of putting their thoughts on paper. Others talked about sticking it out when life got tough.

  Katie Stelling stood up and told how, at fifteen, pregnant and ready to drop out of school, she’d found herself in his classroom. She was a second-grade teacher now.

  Marc Hernandez, an IT student in college, thanked Nick for helping him get diagnosed with dyslexia. He’d been lost in a sea of underachieving students, and, before Nick, all of his teachers assumed he was just one more kid who didn’t see the value in school.

  Still others spoke of lessons he didn’t realize he’d taught.

  Jesse spoke through the open window. “Mr. F. taught me you got to know people. You got to look them in the eye and let them know you see who they are before they’ll listen to you.”

  All day long students came and went, keeping the downstairs full and the sidewalks jammed. Early on, pizzas were delivered, and a few people showed up with takeout, but when word got out about the gathering, the family of one of his students drove up with a catering van and set up a makeshift buffet outside his window. There were tacos, quesadillas, and sopapillas. No one went hungry.

  It was after four wh
en Robert Balderas stepped into the living room. “Mr. F., you’ll be on television tonight. We’ve recorded a special. It’s airing just before prime time.”

  Nick took a step back, alarm creeping up his spine. “Robert, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I can’t let you do it. This isn’t about going head-to-head with my school. It wouldn’t help anybody—not the school, and not me.”

  Robert blinked, but he stayed where he was. “The special’s taped and set to air, Mr. F. It would be impossible to pull it at the last second like this. Besides, it’s about time Houston knows what you do for the kids who come through your classes.”

  Robert inclined his head toward the doorway, and a cameraman walked in. “We left a thirty-second spot open for your comment.”

  Nick put his hands behind his back. He needed to make this good. He cleared his throat.

  The cameraman put up his fingers, going from three to two to one, and Robert spoke into Robert’s microphone. “Mr. Foster, what is your response to your suspension and possible termination?”

  Nick ignored the camera and looked at Robert. “I’m not going to hide the fact that I violated the school rules. I put the school at risk for legal action and loss of reputation. I didn’t keep the principal informed. She was entirely within her rights to suspend me. My only complaint is facing termination on ethical grounds. I believe it was ethical to leave my class in order to protect a student from an assault and to keep her identity private so that her mother could be with her when she informed the authorities.” He turned to the camera. “That’s all I have to say.”

  Robert and his cameraman left, and over the next hour, Nick’s townhouse emptied until only the instigators were left: his old man, Sierra, and Carlos. Nick collapsed onto the sofa. The joy and strain of the day almost made him feel as if he were back in the classroom.

  He leaned back against the cushions, ready to relax, until Sierra stood and silently crossed to him with several papers in her hand.