The Gravity of Birds: A Novel

by Tracy Guzeman

  “Not anxious. You get older, whether you want to or not.” She shrugged. “Maybe we’ll all be blown up and it won’t matter.”

  “What? You mean by the Communists? I shouldn’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t suppose the majority of them want to blow us up any more than they’d want us blowing them up.”

  Alice nodded, remembering other conversations she’d overheard. “Mutual assured destruction.”

  “I’m shocked at the knowledge you possess. At your tender age I think it might be healthier for you to be less well-informed. At the very least, it would make for better sleeping. You’ll grow up fast enough as it is. One becomes jaded and cynical so quickly.” He tore a filmy piece of vellum from a roll, placing it over the sketch and rolling the pieces into a tube.

  “Maybe one should try harder not to be so jaded and cynical.”

  Thomas laughed and poured himself another drink. “A toast to you, Alice. You’re a young lady wise beyond your years. Wise beyond mine, as well. May nothing, and no one, disappoint you. Now take your drawing and go. I’ve got work to do.”

  “Can I come again tomorrow?”

  “I’ll likely go mad if you don’t. And as you kindly indicated, I need help improving my perspective.”

  * * *

  She was almost all the way down the drive and back to the Restons’ cabin before she realized she’d left her books sitting on the end table next to the sofa. She hadn’t even asked him about the poem. Tomorrow, she thought. But there was a sketch she wanted to finish—the domino-marked bufflehead she’d spotted scooting through the lake’s shallows that morning—and other poems waiting to be read. So she retraced her steps.

  The wind picked up. A flock of grackles darkened the sky overhead, their raucous chatter filling the air like the swing of rusty gates. There was another storm coming in and if she wasn’t quick she’d be drenched, even though the walk back was no more than five minutes. She left the door to the cabin ajar when she went in, calling his name softly, but there was no answer. Work to do most likely meant sleep, she imagined, seeing his empty glass. She hurried into the main room. The doors leading to other parts of the house were closed and everything was quiet. The cabin itself seemed to have stopped breathing, its creaks and settlings absent in spite of the wind outside. She could still see his footprints in the chalk dust on the floor, like a ghost’s, leading to and away from his easel.

  A gust swept into the room and sent the pile of drawings resting on the easel flying. Why hadn’t she thought to close the door? She started to pick them up, intending to put them back before he noticed anything was out of place, but stopped when she glanced at the first piece of paper she touched, a colored pencil sketch. Her breath caught in the back of her throat and her skin turned clammy. She sank to her knees, unable to breathe.

  Even if she hadn’t looked at the face, she would have known it was Natalie. Those were her sister’s arms and legs flung so casually across the sofa, the pale thread of a scar just below her knee from a skiing accident two years prior. That was Natalie’s hair, mussed and wild, like caramelized sand, one long curl wrapped around a finger. That was the necklace from her latest boyfriend, the tiny pearls glowing against the skin of her neck. The tan line crossing the slope of her breasts, the small whorl of her belly button, the pale skin stretched taut between her hip bones, all the secret, private pink of her. And, erasing any hope or possible doubt, Natalie’s knowing smile.

  TWO

  October 2007

  Finch groped for the belt of his raincoat as he got out of the cab, holding his arm up in an attempt to shield his bare head from the late October rain. He crossed the sidewalk in two steps and took the steep flight of stairs, steering clear of the refuse and odors percolating on either side of him, but landing squarely in the puddles that had formed in the centers of the treads. The wet seeped into his socks as he watched the cab disappear. Stranded. He briefly considered calling a car service and returning to his own apartment, a warmly lit, tidy brownstone in Prospect Heights, where, thanks to his daughter, the refrigerator would be well-stocked with wholesome if uninteresting food. Your blood pressure, she would say. Your heart. Your knees. He would ask, How are prunes going to help my knees?, wondering if he had remembered to hide his pipe, and she would simply shrug and smile at him and in that smile he would see for the briefest of moments his wife’s mouth, and his entire perfect world, all as it had once been.

  When he’d arranged for the Williamsburg apartment for Thomas Bayber five years ago, the neighborhood was in what the smiling real estate agent termed “a period of transition.” Finch had considered it an investment, optimistically assuming it would transition for the better, but gentrification had yet to make its way this far south. He peered through a grimy, cracked pane of glass. He could barely open the front door, swollen from all the rain, and when he pressed the buzzer for 7A there was, as always, a comedic interlude when buzzer and buzzee could not coordinate their efforts and Finch yanked impatiently at the elevator door several times, always managing to turn the knob just as the lock reengaged. After three thwarted attempts and much cursing under his breath, he turned down the hall and headed toward the stairs.

  He made it as far as the fifth-floor landing before he stopped, sitting down on a step and rubbing his throbbing knees. These persistent fissures in the machinery presented themselves with stunning diligence. His head ached, whether from guilt or anger, he couldn’t be sure. He only knew he didn’t enjoy being summoned. There was a time he might have chalked this visit up to a responsibility of friendship, stretching the very definition of the word. But he had moved beyond the requirement of an explanation and now saw things for what they were. He was useful to Thomas at times, less so at others. It was as simple as that.

  His wife would not have wanted him here. Claire might even have surprised him by voicing the words she’d kept tied beneath her tongue for so many years. Enough is enough, Denny. She would have been right. Even the elaborate funeral spray Thomas had sent to the church—Finch couldn’t help but wonder whether he’d paid for that expression of Thomas’s largesse as well—wouldn’t have appeased Claire. Nor had it been of any particular comfort to him. Thomas, or things regarding Thomas, had consumed too many of their hours together to be balanced by one obscene display of orchids. A wave of grief washed over Finch, and he was overcome with her absence. Eleven months was not long—he still found the occasional sympathy card in his mailbox—but time had expanded and slowed. His days swelled with the monotony of hours, piling up in colossal heaps before and after him, the used the same as the new.

  He shuddered to his feet and grabbed the stair rail, reminding himself to be thankful for this diversion. Would he have otherwise left the house today? This week? It was far more likely he’d have barricaded himself in the brownstone, surrounded by dissertations and examinations, half-listening to Vaughan Williams’s Tallis Fantasia and allowing a sharp red pencil to float just above the surface of a paper. The text would waver in front of his eyes and he would lose interest in whatever thought his student had been struggling to express, instead becoming maudlin and drifting in and out of sleep, his head snapping to attention before sinking again to his chest.

  Even the small distraction of teaching might soon be behind him. Dean Hamilton had strongly suggested a sabbatical at the beginning of the new term next year, a suggestion Finch had opted not to share with his daughter or anyone else. “Take some time, Dennis,” Hamilton had said to him, smiling as he stuffed wristbands and racquetball goggles into a shiny gym bag. It was all Finch could do not to throttle the man. Time. There was too damn much of it. If only he could wish it away.

  When he was younger, he had often wondered about the kind of old man he was likely to become. His father had been a well-grounded person, amiable and easygoing with strangers, though rigorous with his own son. Finch assumed when he reached his own waning years he’d likely be the same, perhaps slightly more reserve
d. But in the void left by Claire, he found himself morphing into someone less agreeable. It was apparent to him that while they’d been together, he’d viewed people through his wife’s far more generous lens. The neighbors she’d always insisted were thoughtful, he now found prying and meddlesome, cocking their heads with an expression of concern whenever he passed, clucking noises of pity escaping from their mouths. The woman across the street, for whom Claire had cooked unsettled, custardy things, seemed helpless and completely incapable of the smallest task, calling on Finch whenever she needed a lightbulb changed or her stoop swept. As if he were a houseman. The general rudeness, the lack of civility, the poor manners—all of humanity appeared to be crashing in on itself, exhibiting nothing but bad behavior.

  Reaching the sixth floor, he realized it was easy enough to shift all the blame to Thomas. The man made himself an obvious target. But with each step, he recalled some slight, some other way he himself had no doubt hurt his wife over the years. The gallery openings and the parties, any occasion where Thomas held court, his arm snug around the waist of a lovely young thing. The girl would be draped in fabric that clung to her sylphlike frame; hair polished and floating about her shoulders, buoyant with light; lips stained dark and in a perpetual pout, close to Thomas’s ear. These were the girls who looked off to a point just beyond Finch’s shoulder, never at his face, never interested enough to pretend to commit anything about him to memory. In spite of these offhanded dismissals, how many times had he casually unlaced his fingers from Claire’s or let his arm slide, almost unbidden, from her waist to his side? How many times had he taken a half step in front of her? Created a meaningful wedge of distance by gently grasping her elbow and turning her in the direction of the bar or the nearest waiter? As if she wasn’t quite enough, not in this situation, not with these people. His head throbbed and a slow burn flickered and ignited somewhere near the base of his spine as he forced himself up the final flight of stairs. She had been more real than anything else in those carefully ornamented rooms, the chill so prevalent he could almost see his own breath.

  There was something more he alone bore responsibility for, the thing he knew must have cut her to the quick. It was the way he’d inferred that Thomas’s talent was beyond her understanding, that to be in the presence of such a rare thing was reason enough to allow oneself to be subjugated, to play the lesser role. He’d struggled against using the very words you just don’t understand on more than one occasion. But she’d understood well enough. She knew this was as close as he was ever going to get to adulation and success on a grand scale and he’d done more than just succumb to the temptation. He dove in, headfirst, with a great splash, causing a swell that threatened to upend everything, and everyone, in his life.

  * * *

  Forty years ago, Finch was teaching art history and struggling to support his young family on what the college considered generous recompense for someone of his age and limited experience. A colleague suggested he pad his meager funds by writing reviews for exhibition catalogs, which in turn led to his writing newspaper articles on various gallery shows. He was fair and open-minded in his appreciations, a stance that engendered neither an ardent following nor vocal detractors, but kept the work coming his way. He was temperate with his praise, anxious to encourage interest in an artist he felt deserved it, but never overly enthusiastic, staying well back from the precipitous edge of fawning. Then, a simple request from a friend in the English Department. A young man, quite gifted she’d heard, had a small showing at a gallery uptown. Would he stop by? The father was wealthy and well-connected, had contributed generously to the college. Could he just take a look? Finch mumbled under his breath before reluctantly agreeing. Days later, halfway home before he remembered his promise, he turned around in a disagreeable state and made his way to the gallery.

  At first he’d thought Thomas was the gallery owner. He was too well-dressed for a young artist, not nearly as nervous as Finch would have expected for someone giving his first solo show. He stood in a corner, towering a head above the tight circle of women surrounding him. Occasionally one would sacrifice her spot to fetch another glass of wine or a plate of cheese, returning only to find her place taken. Finch noted with humor the jostling for position. These women were all purposeful elbows and withering glances. When he parted the waters and forced a hand into the circle to introduce himself, Thomas barely smiled but grasped his hand firmly and pulled himself toward Finch as if he’d been thrown a life preserver.

  “How long do I have to stay, do you suppose?” he asked. He pushed a dark curl away from his face, and Finch gauged that they were of a similar age, while acknowledging this was the only physical quality they shared. Thomas would certainly have been thought of as striking: his thin nose, unsettling gray eyes, and skin with the same pallor as a blank canvas. His shoes were tasseled and uncreased, as if purchased just for this occasion. His clothing looked flawlessly tailored and expensive, and made Finch immediately conscious of the haphazard nature of his own appearance—slightly rumpled verging on disheveled.

  He shook his head, not understanding. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Here, I mean. Do I stay until the drink is gone or until the people are? I certainly know what my preference would be.”

  Finch smiled, disarmed by the man’s honesty. “You’re not the gallery owner.”

  “Afraid not. I’m the one with all the stuff on the walls. Thomas Bayber.”

  “Dennis Finch. Happy to meet you. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I should probably excuse myself.”

  “Ah. Critic, heh?”

  “Afraid so.”

  “Oh, nothing to be afraid of, I’m sure. Everyone seems to think I’m quite brilliant.” He motioned to a passing waiter for a drink and holding up two fingers, tilted his head toward Finch. “I’ll look forward to reading your review. The Times?”

  Finch liked him a little less. “For a first show, that would be unlikely, Mr. Bayber.”

  “Please. Call me Thomas. No one ever calls me Mr. Bayber, thank God.” He put an arm around Finch’s shoulder as if they were conspirators. “Perhaps at our next meeting we will both be in slightly more elevated positions.” Thomas pointed in the direction of a group of canvases. “As I said, I look forward to your review.”

  It was as close as Finch had come to deliberately disliking something before seeing it. Criticism with malice, he thought, as he made his way across the room. Hubris was a quality he found hard to stomach; respectful deference had been drilled into him by both his parents. But standing in front of the work, it was impossible not to see the talent behind it, and not to be shocked. The series of surrealistic portraits was unlike anything Finch had seen, managing to look new at a time when most said the movement was dying down. There was boldness in the way Bayber used color—it made Finch feel as if he were being shouted at—and an intimacy that made him almost ashamed to study the canvas closely. People pressed in all around him, stunned into collective silence. He felt the need for air. He tried taking notes, but quickly scratched out the few words he put to paper, unable to adequately describe what he was seeing. Something pricked at his skin, tightened in his throat. He turned. Bayber was staring at him with a smile.

  * * *

  At the seventh floor Finch paused and wiped his face and the back of his neck with a handkerchief. Four o’clock in the afternoon and he was exhausted. He stood outside Thomas’s apartment and wondered why he hadn’t bothered to inquire as to the purpose of this visit. When he knocked on the door, it opened. The curtains were drawn and what little afternoon light filtered into the room was filled with swirling motes of dust. The ceiling was the same pale ivory as always, but in the year and a half since his last visit the walls had been painted a deep shade of pomegranate. Finch looked more closely and realized the paint had been applied directly onto the wallpaper, already flaked and bubbling in spots. Chairs were everywhere, turning the space into an obstacle course. As his eyes adjusted to the dim, he noticed Thomas
sitting in an overstuffed wing chair against the east wall, spiraling remnants of wallpaper cascading down on either side of him. Thomas’s eyes opened and closed slowly, those of a lizard king in a drugstore comic. He was dressed entirely in black except for the scarf around his neck, a plaid of dirty colors, and though Finch was used to his appearance, today it stuck in his craw. Damned annoying affectation. It certainly wasn’t cold in the room; the heat and smells of liquor and sweat washed over him in waves, and he looked for someplace to sit down.

  “Denny! Come in. Make yourself comfortable, why don’t you? Don’t hover in the doorway like some sort of salesman.” Thomas’s eyes narrowed and he leaned forward in his chair as if trying to satisfy himself of something. “You don’t look well.”

  “I’m fine. Couldn’t be better. But I can’t stay long, I’m afraid. I’m having dinner with Lydia. Some new bistro she and my son-in-law have discovered.” Finch despised lying in others as much as in himself, but he offered this up without a pang of remorse. Much easier to lay the groundwork for taking his leave sooner rather than later. He chose one of the small chairs and instantly regretted it, first hearing the squeak of springs and then feeling an uncomfortable pressure against his backside.

  “How is your daughter?”

  “Lydia is fine, thank you, although she fusses over me to no end. It’s almost like having a babysitter.” He paused, realizing how disloyal he sounded. “I’m lucky to have her.”

  “Indeed you are. I question whether anyone really knows their own good fortune before it’s too late.” Thomas gave Finch a rueful smile. “Too late to enjoy it or exploit it, one of the two.”

  Thomas appeared at odds with himself. His hands worried the fabric at the ends of the chair arms, and Finch found himself growing nervous. He couldn’t remember the artist ever seeming so distracted, so undone. Thomas muttered something under his breath and looked up at Finch, as though surprised to see him still standing there.