The Gravity of Birds: A Novel

by Tracy Guzeman

  * * *

  “Tell me what you’re working on now.”

  “Nothing with birds. I don’t think you’d like it.” His hands skimmed her body with the lightest touch, deciphering the history written on her skin: the ghost stories of childhood scars, flesh that never saw the sun, creases etched from movements of habit. He’d filled the bed with so many pillows it resembled a fort; she was surrounded by down and foam, her joints resting on faded silk rectangles of lavender and buckwheat.

  “How do you decide?”

  “What to paint?” He shifted, pushing away the sheet and circling her waist with his arms, drawing her closer, burying his nose in the cloud of her hair. She could smell his sweat on her body, and on his upper arm, the lingering scent of the shampoo he’d used to wash her hair in the shower, sandalwood and citrus.

  “I don’t usually talk about it. It’s not that I’m superstitious; art isn’t a religion to me. But it’s difficult to put into words.”

  She kept still, pressing herself toward invisibility, as if, forgetting she was there, he might confess something.

  He raised himself up on one elbow. “I suppose I look for what isn’t seen and try to put that on the canvas. Not the negative space, more the essence of a thing, of a place.”

  “What if you were painting me?”

  Thomas ran his thumb along her lower lip. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were fishing for a compliment.” He stretched, a seamless movement that pulled his body a fraction away from hers. “There are some things so beautiful I would never attempt to paint them.” He climbed out of bed and disappeared down the hall. “Don’t go anywhere,” he called back to her. “I have something for you.”

  There was nowhere she wanted to go. With every leaving she waited for the sound of his steps retracing, coming back to her. “I kept this for you,” he said, climbing back into bed, running his fingers down her side, across her breasts. Her skin rose and prickled. She was cold and hot at the same time; parts of her frozen, parts like magma. The book he tossed on the blanket was Mary Oliver’s No Voyage and Other Poems. “You probably owe the library quite a bit of money by now.”

  * * *

  Two days. Three. He had killed her desire for both food and sleep. She only wanted to be awake, in this bed, talking, or not talking. It didn’t matter.

  “Turn the light off.”

  He did, but with the room darker, he seemed to grow lighter. His skin gleamed, pale and cold, like luminous marble.

  “I’d prefer to see you,” he said.

  “Then pretend you’re painting me and close your eyes.”

  * * *

  Dressed in his bathrobe, she peeled the covers away from him. The sun was out for the first time in days and saturated the room with light. She pressed the tip of her tongue to the crest of his hip, tasting the salt of his skin. It was easier to ignore her pain when she focused on something immediate, something she wanted. He squirmed and grunted, only half-awake. She ran her finger down the center of his back, nudging each vertebra—cervical, thoracic, lumbar, sacral—admiring the perfection of his spine, then traced her finger over a pearly ring of scar tissue tattooed on his left buttock.

  “What happened to you?”

  “Hmm.”

  She poked his shoulder. “What happened?”

  “Where?”

  “Here.” She poked him again, circling the scar.

  His voice was unintelligible, thick with sleep. He answered into the pillow. “Neela. Vicious little cur bit me.”

  A memory swam toward her, slow but deliberate, cutting clean through every obstacle she threw in its path. Natalie’s words, yet they were coming from his mouth. Vicious little cur. She tried not to remember the rest, but her sister’s words engulfed her, pulling her down. That didn’t stop her from taking a bite out of Thomas. I’ve seen the scar.

  * * *

  She turned the lock on the door of the guest room. She closed the curtains and tore off his robe, hating the feel of it against her skin, welcoming the sharp stab of pain brought by quick movement. Her own clothes were stiff with muck and still smelled like the lake, but she struggled into them, then sat on the bed with her hands over her ears, blocking out the sounds of him pounding on the door, calling her name, then, later, cursing her. She heard him leave and come back and leave and come back. She heard his perfect back slide down the wall in the hallway. She heard the bottle and the glass, and the sound of his voice gone slack with liquor. She heard his breath and his regret, heard his apologies. Heard him sleep.

  She looked around the room once before leaving, memorizing details. The dark curtains, the rug in front of the armoire stained with mud, the pillows piled high on the bed, stiff and formal, as if she’d never slept there that first night of the storm. The wire cage on the bedside table. She lifted the cage and ran a finger across the back of the grosbeak again, the deep, endless blue of it. What was it he’d said? I wanted her to feel loss. Alice set the cage back on the table and slid the bird into her pocket.

  SEVEN

  November 2007

  Had he really expected to walk through the door of the summer house and find the two panels hanging on the wall, a large empty space between them? Why not a red X marking the spot for good measure? The man who let them in, Evan, kept his eyes on them continuously. Finch didn’t even see him blink. He requested they both stay in the same room and stood guard at the door, as if he expected they might abscond with—what? The ratty sofa covered with a sheet? The cracked lampshades, yellowed, with enough webbing to hammock a small mammal? He checked the floor for spiders. The Oriental carpet had a larger bald spot than his own head. So much gone to waste, it made his stomach turn. There was no understanding Thomas. He could have sold the house and had enough money to live on for a while or, far less likely but infinitely more practical, paid off some of his debts. Instead it stood empty, concealed by the trees.

  The lakeshore was fringed with ice, the surface a flat mirror that stretched to the horizon. Everywhere he looked, Finch saw nothing but white. The trunks of trees had been blasted with snow, their limbs shrouded in clouds of it. The piers of the dock, the stairs, the roofs of the neighboring cabins, all blanketed in the same. The perfect winter scene, he supposed, but to Finch, it felt claustrophobic.

  “The owner is a friend of mine,” he said to Evan, the watchdog with a crew cut who stood ramrod straight, his back pressed against the door, his arms crossed and resting on the convex suggestion of a gut.

  “Close friend?” Evan asked.

  “Very,” Finch replied.

  “Then you know he’s dead.”

  Finch’s breath caught in his throat for a moment until he realized the man was referring to the elder Bayber. “I see the misunderstanding. Not the parents. I’m a friend of Thomas Bayber. Their son.”

  “He’s not the owner. Never has been.”

  “But if Mr. and Mrs. Bayber are deceased, surely their property would pass to their son?”

  “Not my business. I imagine there’s lawyers enough to sort it all out. Or not. I just watch the house is all. Keep the kids from ransacking it, make sure nothing goes missing.”

  The last was said with slow emphasis, making Finch think he should have forged a postdated note from Bayber Senior, granting him permission to poke around in absentia.

  “Finch. You’ve got to see this!” Stephen’s voice rang out from the end of a long hallway where he’d wandered off on his own, despite Evan’s admonishment that they stay together.

  Finch looked at Evan, wondering if he could take him in a fight. The man couldn’t be much younger than he was. Evan cracked his knuckles before shrugging. “End of the hall,” he said. “Probably the room on your right. I’ll need to check your pockets before you leave, though.”

  “Charming,” Finch mumbled under his breath. The gloom of the place was wearing on him, and he trudged down the hall thinking this had been a mistake, agreeing to join forces with Stephen on what would most certainly tu
rn out to be a fool’s quest. He was confident within the confines of his profession, but this was straining the boundaries. What did he know about tracking down missing art? And what if the whole thing was some dark joke on Thomas’s part? No. He’d had an opportunity to look in on Thomas before they left. While the stroke had left him unable to provide any additional details or offer any explanation, there was hope and expectation in his eyes. It wasn’t a joke.

  Finch stood in the doorway of a large bedroom, peering in. “What is it I’m supposed to be looking at?”

  Stephen glanced over his shoulder. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “You don’t find it the slightest bit insulting that our friend in the other room presumes we’re here to carry out some sort of heist?”

  “You aren’t picking a fight, are you? Good Lord, did you see how the man’s built? His arms are twice the size of your neck, Finch. I mean he’s old and all, but still.” Stephen was juggling the tools of his trade, his digital camera and magnifying glass, while examining a watercolor on the wall. “Notice anything?”

  “How can I see anything when you’re standing right in front of whatever it is I’m supposed to be looking at?”

  Stephen moved to the side, and the first thing Finch saw was a gold filigree cage on the bedside table. “This was deserving of such an enthusiastic summoning? Thanks to you, we’re going to have to go through a thorough pat down.”

  “It’s the cage in the painting.”

  “Yes, I can see that, although I’m not sure what significance you’re ascribing to it. The grandfather clock in the main room is in the painting. So is the love seat. And I’m guessing the moldering atlases on the coffee table are the ones in the painting, as well.”

  Stephen didn’t say anything, only raised his index finger and tapped the wall. Finch moved in closer to look at the watercolor Stephen had gestured toward, and though it hardly merited a quickening of the pulse, he was still pleased to find himself excited by the unexpected. “Dorothy Doughty? What is it? A study for one of her models?” He took the magnifying glass from Stephen and worked his way meticulously across the painting from top to bottom, right to left, as if deciphering an ancient Chinese manuscript.

  “Look at the text above the signature.”

  “Letitia. That was Thomas’s mother. But I don’t recall this bird—do you know what it is?—ever being released by Royal Worcester. There were thirty-six pairs of American birds and three individual models done. Then nineteen British birds . . .”

  “Twenty-one, actually.”

  Finch took a breath, imagining his hands circling Stephen’s slim throat. Old, he’d said? Old enough to know better, Claire chided him. He swallowed hard before coughing politely. “Yes. Twenty-one British, but those weren’t put into production until after Doughty’s death in 1962.” He stared at Stephen over the top of his glasses, feeling the muscles between his shoulder blades contract. “I imagine you have them memorized?”

  “Redstarts on gorse in ’thirty-five. Goldfinches and thistle in ’thirty-six. Bluebirds and apple blossom, also in ’thirty-six, then Virginia cardinals and orange . . .”

  “My point being, this isn’t one of her later pieces. Thomas’s mother grew up in England, in Cornwall. The Doughty sisters lived in Cornwall until after the war. It’s more likely they would have known each other then, when Dorothy was doing the series of American birds.”

  “Maybe you’re right about that. So the cage is in both paintings, this watercolor and the central panel of our triptych. But what’s more interesting is what’s not here.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “The inscription, Finch. It says, ‘One model to another,’ doesn’t it? And the bird painted in the watercolor is inside of a cage. This cage.”

  “You’re wondering where the bird is? How do you know the gift wasn’t just the watercolor?”

  “Look at the table, Finch. Right here. You’ll need my magnifying glass.” He handed it to Finch while rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. Finch held the glass close to the table and noticed several fine scratches. Stephen had already pulled a plastic bag and cotton swab from his case, and when Finch straightened up, the younger man swooped toward the table, quickly moving the swab across the surface.

  “If the bird in the watercolor was a prototype and never went into production, then we can assume it wouldn’t have been on a plinth, likely only resting on its base. I can test this residue to determine its chemical blueprint and compare it with similar output from the company’s factory around that time. If it matches, we can be fairly sure that Dorothy gave Mrs. Bayber a bird in addition to the painting.”

  “Stephen, I don’t mean to be a killjoy, but let’s assume you’re right, and there was a Doughty bird here at one time. What does that have to do with finding the other panels? Anything could have happened to it. Letitia could have taken it to France, Thomas might have it; maybe it was sold or donated to a museum. All we would know was that it was here at one time. Besides, there must be at least two decades of grime on everything in this room. Would you be testing residue? Or dust?” He watched Stephen’s spirits shrivel a bit.

  “You can’t know for sure, Finch. Even if it doesn’t have anything to do with the paintings, it would still be a find of some interest. It could be important.”

  “Well, you have the key words down. It would only be important and interesting if you could find it.”

  Stephen stubbed the toe of his shoe against the rug, and Finch could easily see him as a child, on the outskirts of every group, struggling to find something he possessed that would let him into the circle. A spark of guilt tripped through Finch’s internal wiring. “I suppose the best idea would be to test it and see what you come up with.”

  Stephen brightened. “Well, if you think I should.”

  “I imagine Cranston will want us to explore every avenue. Is there anything else here we should be looking for? I was hoping there might be papers, maybe something with an address, but the desk’s been cleaned out. Whoever shut the place up did a thorough job.”

  “I’ll just take a few quick shots of the main room,” Stephen said, a third of his face disappearing behind his camera. “Unless you want me to try to collect fingerprints?”

  “Can you do that?”

  “Well, technically no. I suppose this means we’ll have to get back in the car.”

  The thought of jettisoning the gloomy house and leaving the eerie, snow-muffled landscape behind put Finch in a better mood. “Providing we’re able to get past security with our dignity intact, I know a nice place in Syracuse where we can have dinner. They used to serve a lovely roast pork with spiced apples. Hot food—that should perk you up. We’ll get a good night’s sleep and start for the Kesslers’ first thing in the morning.”

  * * *

  As far as Stephen could tell, weather conditions had no impact on the way Finch drove: too fast, with too little attention paid to the rearview mirror and too much emphasis placed on passing cars observing the speed limit. He clutched the armrest when the wheels caught black ice and sent the rear of the car fishtailing.

  “You need to remember, Stephen, when skidding, take your foot off the gas, avoid the brake, and steer in the direction you want to go.”

  “I want to go home. What direction is that?”

  “Good! A sense of humor helps the driver remain calm in adverse driving conditions.”

  “I would have thought not driving in adverse driving conditions would help the driver remain calm.”

  Finch seemed to be suffering from the delusion that Stephen planned to take up driving at some point in the future, when in fact, each minute spent in the car reinforced his affection for the public transportation system. When Finch finally pulled into the hotel parking lot, Stephen scrambled out of the car. His knees buckled. Fear, frost, a failure of his fibula; none of these negated the blessed fact he was standing on solid ground.

  Over dinner, it took them all of five mi
nutes to review what they’d found. Why would Bayber have wanted them to start at the cabin if there was nothing there? Stephen hadn’t expected it to be easy—or had he?—but he had hoped there might be a smattering of clues along the way. Before they’d left for the cabin, he’d spent hours searching the Internet for some indication of where the sisters might be, but had come up with surprisingly little information. Natalie and Alice Kessler. Parents deceased in 1969, no living relatives. Two young women, ages twenty-six and twenty-three, and in 1972 they’d vanished from Stonehope Way in Woodridge, Connecticut. Two attractive young women, which made it all more likely they’d have been noticed by someone.

  “We can’t go back empty-handed,” he said to Finch. The waiter had tried removing the breadbasket from the table while there was still a heel left, prompting Stephen to wrestle the basket away from him, while noting the consequences that removing food prematurely would have on his compensation. He gnawed on the crust while doodling across his napkin.

  “You realize that’s not paper,” Finch said. Stephen stuffed the napkin in his pocket, and Finch shook his head. “Stephen, let me ask you something. What is it you expect to find?”

  “The other two panels, of course. Don’t you?”

  “Not really, no.” Finch leaned back in his chair and signaled the waiter for the bill. He took a sip of coffee while holding up a finger toward Stephen, then patted his upper lip with his napkin. “I know Thomas. He wants something.”

  “He wants us to find the other pieces of the painting.”

  “Why?”

  Finch’s question rattled Stephen. He far preferred to focus on the task at hand, finding the two triptych panels, as opposed to trying to intuit Bayber’s motivation. “I suppose because they’re a part of his legacy. Imagine the worst-case scenario, Finch. We find the Kessler sisters and they don’t want to sell the paintings.” This really was the worst thing Stephen could think of, since it put him on the fast track back to his office, appraising doll collections and relics from the Civil War. “At the very least, they become authenticated works in his oeuvre. Maybe that’s what’s critical to him now. To have everything he’s created in his lifetime accounted for.”