Fly by Night

by Andrea Thalasinos

  “The Mediterranean only has a two-foot tidal flow,” she went on. “Not like the ocean. It’s kinda landlocked, the only opening’s at the Strait of Gibraltar.”

  He stared at her.

  “Dad, what?” she asked.

  “Nothing.” Ted shook his head. His gray curls wiggled.

  “Dad. Why are you looking at me like that?” She chuckled, not sure if she’d gotten some of her facts wrong.

  “Nothing, Am.” Her father continued to stare, unnerved by both the depth of knowledge and the authoritative tone in which it was delivered. “You just learn that in college or something?”

  “Sixth grade report.”

  Yet from sixth grade she remembered it in detail, her mind still seeing the illustrations of the shells she’d painstakingly drawn from the encyclopedia.

  Ted looked like someone had cracked him over the head.

  “Dad. What?” Amelia blinked several times and grabbed his arms, shaking him. “Why do you keep looking at me like that?”

  “Because you’re my beautiful daughter and I love you.” He reached to grab and kiss her but she pulled away.

  “Get outta here.” She began laughing along with him.

  * * *

  A week into her parent’s trip there was a knock on the dorm room door at 3:20 a.m. She and her roommate, Kate, had been up until 2 a.m. working to finish a final chemistry project due the next morning. The resident advisor of the dorm opened the dorm door with the master key.

  “Amelia.” The RA had shaken the mattress to rouse her. “Phone call.”

  “What?” She looked up. The hall light stung her eyes.

  Amelia slid her legs over the side of the bed and stood. Shuffling over to the black receiver she lifted it, placing it against her ear.

  “Hello?”

  “Amelia Drakos?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Douglas Donnelly from the State Department. Sorry to wake you at this hour and with bad news. There’s been a terrible car accident involving your parents in Greece.”

  * * *

  She’d stood with her uncle from Boston on the JFK tarmac watching her parents’ coffins being off-loaded along with their luggage. They signed all the appropriate papers from the State Department to claim the bodies and belongings. The rest of the family had come down from Boston for the funeral that week. Her aunts had stayed with her in the house.

  The funeral had deteriorated into a circus. Her aunt Sophie pulled at the lapels of her father’s suit, trying to drag the body from the casket. It had become freakier than death itself. Amelia backed away, slipping into the narthex of the church. By the doors, she tucked herself near the icons and flickering candles.

  Later, after the graveside burial service and the Makaria, the traditional Greek Orthodox fish dinner with wine, everyone returned to Amelia’s house. People would often show up at these events even if they’d never known the deceased, calling around to locate the closest Makaria.

  Her aunts and uncles were passed out, snoring in various configuations in bedrooms or on couches in food comas.

  Amelia crept around the living room, squatting in front of her parents’ suitcases. Unzipping the big one, she felt the silkiness of Penelope’s dresses, the smell of her Avon Cotillion cologne, flat cottony weave of her father’s shirts—smell of Old Spice. She leaned her head on the suitcase and closed her eyes. Then her finger hit a plastic case. She pulled it partway out. Her father’s shaving case. She unzipped it about an inch and felt white toilet tissue. Wads of white toilet paper wound mummy-style around an object. Parting the tissue, she spotted the spiny edge of a Tyrian purple snail shell. She slipped in her hand and counted five, each having been safely insulated so as not to bump against the other. Precious treasures all cushioned and protected, tucked away in her father’s shaving case.

  She pulled out the shaving case the rest of the way, peering around at the sleeping relatives to avoid their questions and dodge another encounter. Slipping into the bathroom, Amelia locked the door and turned on the fan. It rattled like it was filled with street gravel. Sitting down cross-legged on the cold pink tile floor, Amelia unzipped the case to study the five carefully wrapped bundles.

  “Dad.” She broke down before she could get the word out. Joy mixed with sorrow opened into an interior room she’d call The Place of No Comfort. There were no salves, no words, no ocean layers complex enough, no car fast enough to outrun it. She’d learned to sit there until the Place would fade, like the ocean’s phosphorescence does at sunrise.

  She smiled, guessing he’d snuck the shells into his shaving case before Pen had the chance to complain about getting sand in her clothes. Amelia pressed the grains into her index finger, lifting them to study—possibly from a beach in Crete, possibly their last day before the drive, possibly the last thing her father had touched. And he’d touched them. Little treasures he’d gathered for her.

  Amelia zipped up the shaving case, shut off the bathroom fan, opened the door, and searched out her duffel bag in the pile of her relatives’ suitcases. Slipping her father’s shaving case in with her jeans and socks, she said nothing.

  6

  “You’re stalling,” Charlotte announced in that gentle way she had of dropping bombs.

  He looked at her. “With what?” And while he knew better than to play dumb with her, he thought he’d give it a try since like with gambling, sometimes you win.

  He’d bundled all of Gloria’s papers, including her will, into a paper grocery bag and set it against the stone fireplace wall with a yellow Post-it Note that said Mom.

  “That.” She’d gestured to the brown bag with her chin, and an expression that said she wasn’t born yesterday, and then eyed him from where she stood behind the stove browning venison meat with onions in a skillet to add to her spaghetti sauce.

  He looked up at her over his brown reading glasses.

  “We’re a little busy right now, Charlotte,”—he gestured to the papers covering the dining room table.

  She glared back.

  “Mom’s already dead.” TJ then pointed to the paper grocery bag before holding up a legal brief. “These two hundred and one wolves are not.”

  It sounded harsh but it was too late. That’s how he felt. Too stressed out to manufacture a softer tone.

  He felt Charlotte back away from the stove as if to put a safer distance between them.

  “That wasn’t necessary, TJ.” Charlotte stood holding the dripping spatula in her hand as she glared back.

  Court documents were strewn across the kitchen table. TJ was compiling them into an executive summary before meeting with the GLIFWC attorneys to finalize an injunction to block the wolf hunt. The tribes had tried buying up all the wolf hunting permits to stop the hunt but the DNR had gotten wise to the blockade and quickly restricted the number of permits issued to tribal members. Next a discrimination lawsuit was filed against the DNR since no other group of people had been singled out for restriction.

  TJ was planning a last-minute trip to Madison to persuade state judges to uphold the Endangered Species Act of 1973 and file the injunction. The hunt was to begin in November, less than two months away. TJ’s emotions were so riled he could hardly think. His edginess spilled into everything and he found himself resenting sounds of the wind, crows calling to each other—everything was irritating and seemed to break his concentration.

  Earlier that morning he’d been pacing the living room until Charlotte finally said, “That’s it—take out the dogs, walk to Minnesota if you have to. I’m ready to rip out my hair; you’re driving me crazy, pacing like some Frankenstein man tromping around in a bus station or something.” The hanging decorative plates on the wall were rattling with each footstep that seemed to get heavier than the last.

  “A Frankenstein man,” he repeated. “That’s a new one.” That was the only thing that had given him some relief, his mouth agape in a frozen smile.

  “Just go.” She turned away, disgusted. And he’d alread
y walked for almost an hour but it hadn’t helped.

  “Gloria’s attorney called,” Charlotte continued. “He found her e-mail and address.”

  He didn’t look up. “I’m busy.”

  “Everyone’s busy.” Charlotte glared back over the stove. “It takes a minute to write an e-mail.”

  He took a deep breath as if just remembering it was a necessary body function.

  “When will you have time?”

  He turned to face her, wondering if he should say something or not. He could have a rough tongue and would often fight to soften it.

  “What’s the rush?” He raised his hands about to stand in aggravation. “Mom’s house isn’t going anywhere—it’ll be there in November. Don’t you traditionals always wait a year before executing a will?” His voice was sarcastic. “So what’s with lighting a fire under my ass right now?”

  She’d laughed as he’d said it and TJ snorted in an ironic way, not wanting to sound snide. He thought back to the Spirit House they’d just placed over his mother’s grave. There’d been tension between them regarding his mother’s wedding photo.

  The walls of the Spirit House were two feet tall; it had a slanted roof for snow to slide off, and openings on either side for Gloria’s spirit to come and go until prepared to make the final journey. There was a small internal shelf where Charlotte had placed her mother-in-law’s favorite coffee cup, quilt, and photos of the boys. But then TJ had spotted his wife slipping in the framed wedding photo of his father and mother from Gloria’s fireplace mantel. He’d stepped in to intercept the photo but Charlotte faced him down. Their eyes locked. He backed off. She’d won that one. Hands clasped behind his back he’d walked away, noting the surging green grass that would always sprout with the abundant autumn rainfall and cooler temperatures. He was no match for her.

  “Not everyone waits a full year and you know it, Niinimooshe.” She called him sweetheart to defuse the situation, and snickered at being caught at her own game. She tilted her head, watching him as she stirred the meat.

  He loved it when she mixed this term of endearment with a twinge of sarcasm. It was their long-standing joke.

  Their eyes smiled into each other’s as if calling a draw.

  The smell of cooking venison was intoxicating. TJ stood and scurried over to grab a spoon from the dish drain. Barging in front of her he reached under Charlotte’s arm to steal a scoop of meat as she tried to block him. They both started to laugh as he managed to fill his spoon.

  It was almost an apology, a sign of affection as he tangled with her at the stove. Blowing on the spoon, he gulped it down and went in for another.

  “Stop it.” She play-slapped his hand away with the spatula that splat on his arm. “There won’t be enough for the sauce, you know how Elton hates it when you gobble up all the meat—he likes a meaty sauce.”

  His uncle Elton was coming over for dinner. They hadn’t seen him since Gloria’s funeral and TJ was going to pick up the old man who no longer drove at age ninety-one.

  He stood holding the empty spoon, the salty taste of meat on his lips.

  “Attorney says she’s in Rhode Island.” She looked at him.

  He controlled his face.

  “Oh.” He knew.

  “At the university there.”

  “Really.” He knew that too.

  “I have her e-mail address,” she said.

  “I told you, after the injunction is filed.”

  “Why not now?”

  “Charlotte.” He was no longer playful.

  “Charlotte, what?” She glared back. “It would take you a minute.”

  “No, it won’t.”

  She sighed with exasperation.

  “That,” he tossed the spoon in the sink with aggravation, “can also wait a coupla’ weeks.”

  “Stop playing this game with me.” She blocked the doorway with the spatula in her hand. He could tell she was losing patience.

  “You know what’s at stake.” He squeezed past her and rustled up the reports and affadavits from the table, quashing them against his chest as he hurried off to his garage/office with an abruptness that made Charlotte turn.

  He’d considered leaving it to the attorney. Have him contact her, get Amelia to sign off on the sale of the house, property, and then split the proceeds. Why Gloria hadn’t rewritten the will he’d never know and hadn’t asked. The property, house, and all its contents had been left to the descendants of Ted Drakos Sr., which included him and Amelia, providing no one else stepped forward.

  TJ hurried through the living room and out the back as the screen door slammed on its own momentum. He’d apologize later.

  He’d been grateful for Charlotte’s patience for the past few weeks while the wolf hunt was pending before the state legislature. He’d walk the floors like a departed soul looking for absolution or an entry point into the next life. For weeks there was a cool empty spot beside her in bed as testament to his restlessness. The lives of animals he’d known better than family members were in peril and he was powerless, there was nothing anyone could say or do to make it not be so.

  But what Charlotte hadn’t known was that thirty years ago in graduate school, TJ had found Amelia. He’d never told anyone. It felt a bit pervy and voyeuristic but he’d kept it secret nonetheless.

  There’d not been much to know aside from her address and phone number, but once the Internet had exploded he’d discovered Amelia’s Sea Horse and Shoreline Ecology Web site and would visit several times a month, careful to do so only when alone. Following their travels and findings, TJ uploaded videos from their site and knew Bryce and Jen’s credentials by heart. He was current on all of their latest publications and fancied himself an armchair expert on their work.

  Charlotte knew nothing. It felt like cheating and the longer it went on the more difficult it became to divulge. A few times he’d been on the verge of coming out with it but chickened out at the last second.

  “What?” she’d ask, smiling as he’d start the one sentence he could never finish. “Out with it.”

  “Nothing,” he’d say.

  “What?”

  “It’s just that I can’t believe how incredibly lucky I am,” he’d say and then stop.

  “You’re so full of shit.” Her eyes would glint with a mixture of worry and whimsy and they both knew a secret kept them separate.

  Even when hiking through forests searching out wolf scat and evidence of a new den, he’d imagine Amelia at her work. Diving, swimming along in endangered coral reefs somewhere in places he’d never get to see, reflecting on how odd it was that their livelihoods had shared similar purposes—the love and stewardship of nature and the passionate desire to protect.

  And then seven Octobers ago while in Boston attending a National Wildlife and Natural Resources Management Conference, TJ had gone so far as to rent a car and drive to the University of Rhode Island. He’d sat outside the marine biology building for the better part of an hour, watching the comings and goings of students changing classes, researchers and staff leaving work, hoping to catch a glimpse of her.

  He’d wondered how one goes about meeting a sibling and not have it become TV talk-show crazy? As soon as he’d drummed up the courage to park and go inside, a campus security vehicle had pulled alongside, “Hey buddy, you in the fire lane.” That was all the encouragement he’d needed to get the hell out of there and drive back to Boston.

  Months before, after Gloria had first taken ill, he’d phoned the Sea Horse and Shoreline Ecology number on their Web site, letting it ring long enough to hear Amelia’s voice.

  “Hi, this is Amelia Drakos. You’ve reached the Sea Horse and Shoreline Ecology Lab. Please leave a message: for Bryce press 1, for Jen press 2, for me, Amelia, press 3.”

  It was disappointing. He’d expected her voice to trigger some sort of genetic memory or recognition, but it hadn’t and he’d felt stupid for even expecting such a thing. It was just some East Coast stranger-woman’s clipped accent.
It had bothered him just how ordinary she sounded. He hadn’t called back.

  As a boy, during his father’s summer visits he’d always count heads in the approaching car, hoping for a second, shorter one in the backseat, primed for a surprise. But the surprise never came. The closest he’d come were new photos of Amelia and he’d been too shy to ask why his father never brought a camera to take photos of him.

  “Does she know what I look like?” TJ’d once asked in a very quiet voice, not sure his father had heard, even less sure he’d wanted the man to hear.

  He had a collection of Amelia’s photos up until her high school graduation, all safely hidden in the garage office, tucked under files. Birthday photos of Amelia, one of her smiling with a space between her front teeth after she’d mastered riding a bike.

  TJ lived with the feeling that Amelia had been the grand prize. The girl who lived near the place of Great Salt Waters had prevailed.

  The Sea Horse and Shoreline Ecology Web site filled his laptop screen. He hadn’t checked it in months, since their last summer dive project offshore of Phuket, Thailand, in the Andaman Sea.

  TJ was so wrapped up in the updates to Amelia’s Web site that he didn’t hear Charlotte’s footsteps.

  Chin resting in his hands, TJ leaned on the desk studying the updated photo of Amelia in a Zodiac, with wet hair, in a wet suit. Her eyes looked different. Maybe it was just getting older but there was something of her father there. Signs of age crept into that perennially young face that he’d only known in two-dimensional form. Gray threads wove into her hair, gentle wrinkles around her eyes and bracketing her mouth, a softening around her cheeks, no longer as angular as they’d once been. Amelia’s sea-green eyes were the same color as his.

  Older images had shown an intensity and drive about them—excitement while holding a sea horse in her hand, or on a Zodiac with her face mask set up on her forehead, talking into the video recorder, explaining the new species they’d found just offshore.

  But this latest expression he couldn’t read. Fatigue or loss of heart; her face looked tired or resigned. Something had changed. Maybe he was reading too much into it in the week since Gloria’s death and the pending wolf hunt. Many years’ worth of images had shown her flashing a smile with large white teeth with a slight gap in between the front two, there’d been an unself-conscious happiness and ease about her. This smile was more measured and circumspect, as if her mind was many other places rather than focused on the camera. Even those teeth in her infectious smile were concealed by lips that gave only a hint that wasn’t reflected in her eyes.