The Gravity of Birds: A Novel

by Tracy Guzeman

  “Why did you take it?”

  He shrugged. “I wanted to hurt her.”

  “You did it deliberately to be cruel?”

  “Does that surprise you?” He stood up and walked over to the bar, pouring himself another generous glass of brandy. He tipped the decanter in her direction, but her glass was still full and she shook her head.

  “I wanted her to feel loss. The absence of something she treasured. Clearly, that wasn’t going to be her son. I believe she was quite distraught over it. I was surprised to see she could muster that much emotion.”

  He didn’t sound angry, only matter-of-fact and distant, sipping his drink and staring into the fire. A chill skipped across Alice’s skin, this one having nothing to do with the rain or her exhaustion. She rolled the glass back and forth between her hands, watching the liquid spike and draw against the sides, and took another drink. “It sounds as though you didn’t have a happy childhood.”

  “Plenty of people in that club. I wouldn’t let it bother you.” He looked at her evenly while she fought the urge to fidget. “Do you miss your parents?”

  “I miss them every day.”

  He nodded, as if that was what he’d expected her to say. “Yes. Of course you would. I’ve been estranged from mine for nearly eight years now. I don’t feel anything when I think of them. Does that make me a bad person, do you think?”

  “Not that.”

  A thin smile. “Ah. Now we’re getting somewhere. The other, you mean then. That makes me a bad person.”

  Did he think they could avoid falling back into that awful history, when he was here in the same room with her, standing so close she could have reached out and touched the hand that held his glass? The spreading warmth from the brandy lit her insides and coalesced into something weighty at her center, pulling her farther down into the chair’s cushion. She took a deep breath. “You think it makes you a good one?”

  He pulled logs from a wicker basket and threw them on the fire, sending a spray of sparks racing up the flue. “I took a nap after you left that afternoon, Alice. When I came back into this room, I knew you’d seen the drawing. It wasn’t just that the sketches were in the wrong order—I’m not sure I would have remembered exactly how I’d arranged them, aside from the obvious intent not to leave that particular sketch on top. I saw your footprints in the chalk dust. And a thumbprint in the corner of that sketch. You didn’t know you’d left that behind, did you?”

  He stood in front of her and took her wrist. She flinched and tried to pull away, but he didn’t notice or didn’t care, only brought her hand closer to him, circling the pad of her thumb with a finger as if trying to erase something from it before he let go.

  She held her hand against her chest, feeling the heat of her joints bleed through the shirt. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course it matters.”

  “Maybe to you. Not to me.”

  He finished his drink and set the glass down on a table with a dull thud. “You’re a bad liar, Alice. Thank God for that.”

  “No. I’m only tired. I came here to be alone for a while; I didn’t come here for you. I didn’t come here to see you or to hear your voice, and I don’t want to have to remember any of that. It makes me sick.”

  If she were as bad a liar as he said, he’d have seen through her immediately. She felt alone all the time now; she didn’t need to come to the cabin for that. Being with him was a balm, if only because he’d known her parents for those few weeks. She could ask if he remembered her mother being afraid of Neela, or if her father’s grip was strong when he first shook his hand. She could ask him what he saw when he looked at the four of them on the dock that afternoon. Did he remember her father’s toast at dinner the evening he’d finished his sketch? She could see glasses raised in the air, something rosy swaying inside of them, could hear the delicate clink, clink of the crystal, but the words paired with that particular memory had vanished. Everything else in her life seemed broken; she didn’t want her connection to him, however vague or fractured it was, to be another thing counted as lost.

  His face fell with her words. She was surprised to see she’d hurt him. The Thomas of her memory was callous and indifferent, existing to remind her of the meaning of betrayal.

  “So,” he said, “Alice has grown up after all. And in spite of her affliction, quite capable with a knife.”

  She turned away, not wanting to look at him.

  “Was she in your room while I was there that day?” She hadn’t meant to ask, but now the words were out, she realized it was what haunted her most, the idea of her sister listening to their every exchange, burying her face in a soft pillow to keep from laughing. Maybe it was a vestige of Natalie’s perfume she’d smelled in the guest room, Natalie’s potent presence able to withstand even the ebb and flow of eight years.

  “If that’s what you think then you wouldn’t believe anything I’d tell you.” His face was red, from the fire, from the drink. “It’s amazing. Years have passed and yet I still feel compelled to defend myself. Maybe because your high opinion was one of the few things that mattered to me.”

  “The opinion of a fourteen-year-old girl? That seems unlikely. When I think of how my parents trusted you . . .”

  “Your parents were far from saints, Alice. It would be generous to say they were ordinary people who made some very serious mistakes. Don’t make them out to be perfect. That’s too thin a wire for anyone to be able to keep their balance. And as for Natalie . . .”

  She rose unsteadily from her chair, fueled by alcohol and fury. “Don’t say her name. I don’t want to hear it.” Alice threw herself against him with all the force she had, arms flailing, hands useless, pounding against his chest anyway. Every hit sent shock waves spiraling across her body, a hammer to her bones.

  He stood perfectly still and made no effort to defend himself. The rage left as quickly as it came and she sank to the floor at his feet, her useless ankles buckling under her weight, her forehead resting against his knees. She was breathing so hard she thought she might choke, and between gasping sobs, she said, “I’m afraid. I’m afraid of everything. All the time.”

  He touched her head, patting her awkwardly. She remembered how he was with Neela, the way he’d held the dog in his arm and rubbed the top of her head with his knuckles until her eyes closed and her tail thumped slow and heavy against his chest. But now his hand was stroking her hair, his fingers weaving themselves into her curls, his thumb barely skimming the side of her face.

  He sat down on the floor next to her. “There’s ample evidence to the contrary.”

  It struck her as hilarious. He was the only person she knew who actually said things like that—ample evidence to the contrary. “Can’t you talk like a normal person?”

  “I only meant that if you’re really afraid of everything, you hide it well. You haven’t let this disease . . .”

  “RA. You have to say it out loud. Rheumatoid arthritis.”

  “And you’re still interrupting, I see. You haven’t let RA stop you. You haven’t let what happened to your parents stop you. You’re finishing your education, you’re . . .”

  “Quitting. I left school. That’s why I came here. Everything is getting too hard. I can’t do it anymore.”

  “Can’t do it? Or can’t do it perfectly?”

  “It’s the same thing.”

  “Not for most people.”

  She let her head fall against his shoulder and leaned into the smell of him: damp wool and dust, smoke and the heady fragrance of grapes turned to must. His hand moved to her foot, his thumb tracing the curve of her instep, a spot where her skin still felt like silk. She wondered whether anyone else had touched her there, other than with a clinical hand, turning her ankle this way and that, asking her to describe her pain.

  She closed her eyes and when she opened them, looked up at the ceiling. She’d had this view before, remembering the afternoon she’d seen the sketch of Natalie. She pul
led her foot away.

  “Alice.”

  “No.”

  “It wasn’t what you think.”

  “Don’t insult me. I never thought of you as being predictable, Thomas, so don’t say what anyone else would—that nothing happened.”

  “You think I slept with her? A teenage girl?”

  She swallowed hard. “Yes. I think your ego would allow you to do almost anything and find a way to justify it.”

  He turned away from her, but his hand remained on her shoulder, the tips of his fingers exerting a gentle pressure there.

  “Natalie was what? Seventeen? That would have been illegal, Alice. To say nothing of amoral.”

  “I saw the sketch. No one’s imagination is that good.” She thrust her chin out stubbornly and shook his hand from her shoulder. “Or that accurate.”

  “She posed for me, yes.”

  “In the nude.”

  “Naked as a jaybird.”

  “You think this is funny?”

  “Not at all. I was just hoping you might appreciate the avian reference. Evidently not. But I have to admit, it makes me wonder how well you know your sister.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “No one could accuse Natalie of being inhibited. I never asked her to take her clothes off. She came over one afternoon and asked if I would do a sketch of her. She told me she wanted to give it to her boyfriend. I agreed and went to get my sketch pad and pencils out of the back room. When I returned, your dear sister was standing there with her dress around her ankles. Sans vêtements. She wasn’t happy when I told her I wouldn’t sleep with her.”

  “You’re trying to tell me that she asked you?”

  He looked pained. “Yes, Alice. She asked me. Natalie was angry, about a lot of things. She was very disturbed. I think she wanted to sleep with me to make a point.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Don’t you?” He looked at her closely as if trying to decide something, then shook his head and closed his eyes. “Then it’s not my place to tell you. Anyway, who knows? Maybe Natalie suspected I’d say no and was testing her powers. Or maybe she just wanted something she couldn’t have.”

  “Natalie? That’s hard to believe.”

  “Haven’t you ever wanted something you couldn’t have?”

  “What do you think?” She held up her hands, afraid to imagine how she must look to him. The monstrous angles of her fingers, her knotty, swollen joints. Like she’d been constructed from a box of spare parts. In her head was a “want” list of things she would never say out loud, never acknowledge to anyone else for fear they might think she felt sorry for herself. I want to be able to hold a dissecting knife again. I want to walk in the woods alone. I want people to stop asking how I’m feeling, how I’m coping, how I’m doing. I want to forget the name of every doctor and nurse I’ve ever had, and the names of their spouses and their children. I want to buy clothes that fasten with buttons, and shoes with narrow toe boxes. I want everyone to stop telling me to lower my expectations.

  “I shouldn’t have asked you that.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have. You don’t know anything about me, or my life. You don’t know what it’s like to worry you’ll start to despise the people who help you, the ones you should love, because they’re healthy and you’re not, because they’re kind and you’re this angry, frustrated . . . thing. When you know you’re not going to get better”—she paused, the unspoken words only worse hanging in the air between them—“you become halfway invisible. People stop noticing you. No one likes to have to consider the specifics of illness too carefully.

  “I’ve found I still serve a purpose. I remind people to pray, to calculate the odds, to thank the fates, the gods, good karma, whatever it was that made this happen to me and not them. I’m in the worst sort of club. The one no one else wants to be in.”

  He looked at her, aghast. “Alice.”

  “Just leave me alone. Please.”

  “I can’t.” He stood up and held out his hand. When she didn’t move, he reached down to pull her toward him. He picked her up and carried her over to the love seat, then sat next to her, drawing small circles on her upper arm with the tip of his finger, barely touching her skin. Everything inside of her felt weighted down and heavy, as though someone had tipped her head open and filled her to the brim with stones.

  “What’s the worst thing?”

  “Don’t ask me that.”

  “You said I didn’t know you. I want to. I want you to tell me the one thing that’s worse than all the rest, something you’ve never told anyone else.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m asking, Alice. I’m trying, and I usually don’t try. I want to know.”

  Sleep pulled at her edges. Her lips moved against the skin of his neck.

  “I worry there’s nothing left of the person I was supposed to be, beyond the pain. Sometimes I can’t separate myself from it. I think about how when I’m gone, then the pain will be gone, too. We’ll have finally canceled each other out. Maybe it will be like I was never here at all.”

  Then, because she couldn’t stay there any longer without wanting him to touch her, she pulled away from him, stood up slowly, and said good night.

  * * *

  She came out of the guest room in the morning wearing a large denim shirt she’d found in the closet and managed to pull over her head, and the same loose pants. He was sitting in one of the chairs by the fireplace, where a pile of powdery ash remained from the night before. An easel with a medium-size blank canvas was set up in front of the chair.

  “You’re a sloth,” he said. “I never would have guessed that about you. I’ve been waiting for hours for you to stir. But you sleep on, oblivious to the smell of coffee and the sound of cooking.”

  “That was cooking? I thought we were being bombed.” She lingered in the doorway, lured by the familiar ease of his teasing. Seeing him again had brought something distant back to her: a love of conversation, the joy of easy banter. But it felt strange to be in his house at so early an hour. The room, a warm refuge last night, was weighted with the formality of morning, and she hesitated, unsure whether she should stay or go.

  “Come here.”

  She walked over to him, and he pulled her down gently into his lap. There was a scarf resting under his right wrist, draped over the arm of the chair.

  “I may be unable to do some things, but I am still capable of standing, you know.”

  “Pills,” he said, ignoring her and pointing to a collection of bottles on the end table. “I brought all of them. And there’s French toast if you need to take them with food.”

  She wasn’t sure whether to be more disturbed by the thought of him rummaging through her things or by the fact she’d evidently slept through his comings and goings. “Weren’t you worried Evan might object?”

  “Evan and I are old friends. He takes care of most of the houses along the road here during the off-season. Besides, I didn’t want to give you an excuse to leave. Now, which of these do you take in the morning?” She sorted through the bottles, and he handed her a glass of water, shaking his head at the mosaic of pills nestled in her palm. She gulped them down self-consciously.

  “Put your arm on top of mine.”

  When she did, he pressed his knee lightly against their arms, pinning them in place, and with his left hand, loosely tied the ends of the scarf around her wrist, joining it to his own.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Experimenting. Watch.”

  With his left hand he placed a paintbrush between their fingers. Then he moved his right hand toward the palette, grabbing up a deep navy with a neat back-and-forth motion. He brought their hands toward the canvas and stopped.

  “Now, you’re going to steer.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Of course you can. Don’t overthink it, just close your eyes. What would you paint, if you could paint anything?” He stopped and laughed. “A stupid qu
estion. Birds, of course. Oiseau. Uccello. Vogel. All right, imagine a flock in flight. Don’t think of what you’re seeing. Think of what it feels like when they surprise you, when they take your breath away. Think of what you’re feeling, here.” He placed his left hand at the base of her throat for a moment, then wrapped his arm around her waist. “That’s what you want to draw.”

  His mouth, so close to her ear. She envisioned a field of blackbirds rising up in a dark curtain against the sky, their calls swelling into a chorus that obliterated even the sound of her own heartbeat. Her hand moved back and forth in a steady rhythm, floating on his, weightless.

  “There. Open your eyes.”

  She peered through one eye first before opening both, astonished by what she saw on the canvas: a watery sky interrupted by brushstrokes that suggested birds in flight. “We drew this?”

  “You did.”

  She was delighted to have created something, however rudimentary, as opposed to only examining something or documenting it. “Let’s do more. I want to paint your house. The way I saw it yesterday from the lake, in the rain.”

  “I’m glad to see you’re tempering your ambitions. We can paint anything you like, of course. It’s just I’d hate for you to spend all of your energy on one endeavor.”

  He untied the scarf from their wrists, and it floated to the floor. He whispered her name over and over until it sounded exotic, like it belonged to a stranger. She was the stranger, she realized, behaving in a way completely foreign to her, abandoning her usual efforts to conceal herself, to fade into the background. She pressed into him, feeling his ribs against her back. His breathing was fast; his fingers worked at the raised seam on the cuff of her sleeve. She turned toward him, resting her head against his neck. He’d already showered; his face was fresh and smelled of shaving cream, his breath with the dull echo of coffee and rum. She kissed the line of his jaw, wanting to touch him first. The color of his skin shifted just there, like a cleft in a dune. She slipped her hand inside his shirt, hiding it, and tilted her head back. Her neck was one part of her that was still fluid, still in its original condition. His thumb found a beating pulse point there and pressed against it, and she felt herself unraveling.