The Gravity of Birds: A Novel

by Tracy Guzeman

  “Phinneaus. I owe you an apology. I’m ashamed of myself.”

  “You should be. There must be better ways for you to spend your time.” He looked at her straight on, his eyes sharp and appraising, as if he’d already decided something about her. “Perhaps we should just admit to having a mutual curiosity about each other.”

  “You were curious about me?”

  He nodded. “Most people here are. Do you find that unexpected?”

  She’d been determined to take what she had coming, but her hackles rose at his tone. “I suppose you wanted to see if the rumors were true.”

  “That I did.”

  Her chin tilted up as she said, “I’m sure they are. Every one of them.”

  “Well, not every one. I can see for myself you’re not cross-eyed. You don’t appear to be the result of a mixed marriage. And you haven’t said much yet, but I don’t believe you suffer from Tourette’s. Although you could still surprise me there.”

  She couldn’t help herself. The absurdity of it burst forth from her in a laugh just short of a cackle. “That’s what they’re saying about me?” She pushed the blanket off and let it puddle on the floor around her ankles, resting her hands in her lap, where they would be visible to him.

  “I see,” he said, more softly, something other than pity in his voice. “Arthritis?”

  “Yes. I can’t offer anything more exotic. That’s the full extent of it, I’m afraid.”

  He motioned to the chair on the other side of the table. “May I?”

  She nodded. He sat down and methodically rolled up the right leg of his pants. His calf was pale as a fish, but muscular in that same way. He winced as he got closer to the knee, and Alice steadied her mouth as the last turn of fabric revealed a jagged wound like uneven joinery—two thick-edged pieces of skin that didn’t quite meet, but shared a crater of dull red and purple scar tissue with a flat sheen. The scar continued, snaking above his knee and out of view.

  “Vietnam.” She stated it as fact.

  “Shrapnel. I was lucky compared to most. On the ground for four hours before the medics came, and the infection was pretty bad, but they still managed to save my leg.” He viewed his limb impersonally, thumping a spot just below his knee like he was knocking on a door. “Not much feeling in it with the nerve damage and all. But the doc told me he’d kept his part of the bargain. ‘I kept it attached to you, Lapine. How well it works is up to a higher power.’ I told him I wasn’t particularly religious. He said it might be a good time to reconsider.”

  “Did you?”

  Phinneaus rolled his pant leg back down. “In a way. I decided God wasn’t going to be willing to save me unless I was willing to save myself first.”

  She sat perfectly still, studying her hands in her lap. “And how does one do that?”

  “One day at a time.” He nodded when Saisee came into the room and asked if he wanted some tea, then settled back in the chair and waited until she left again before continuing. “Maybe you could do me a favor.”

  Her interest was piqued. What sort of favor could she possibly do for him? It had been more than a year since he’d met Natalie in this same room, so the usual request she received from men—introduce me to your sister—could be eliminated. “We still haven’t returned your cake plate. I guess I owe you something. But only if you call me Alice.”

  “All right. Alice. Orion’s the same as any small town. Gossip is currency. Seeing as how we’re neighbors, and we’ve expressed a mutual curiosity in each other, I was thinking you might tell me something about yourself.” He raised an eyebrow and gazed at her intently.

  If he expected her to shrink from the challenge, he’d be disappointed. “So is this payback?” she asked. “Or are you just saying you’d prefer to get the news straight from the horse’s mouth? Fair enough. What don’t you know, aside from the fact I’m not cross-eyed?”

  “I can think of a few things. What’s your middle name, for example?”

  That made her smile. A ridiculous question, but at least unexpected.

  “Katherine.”

  “Alice Katherine Kessler. Were you named after your mother?”

  “My grandmother. Katherine was my mother’s middle name.”

  “Hmm. Well, that might get me a beer at Smitty’s, but not much else. Do you have a favorite tree? A secret crush? A flower you’re partial to?”

  A flare of suspicion made her sit up straighter in her chair. What he’d asked was perfectly innocent. But it was like the child’s game of Pelmanism, turning over cards one at a time to find the match. The answer to one question revealed nothing at all. But pair it with the answer to another, and she’d provided him a clue. That was something she had no interest in doing. Let people think what they liked. She wasn’t about to offer up her past as after-dinner conversation.

  “The flowers in the yard are pretty enough. I don’t have a favorite.”

  “Maybe you would, if you got out more.”

  “Now who’s doing the spying?”

  “I wouldn’t rate our offenses as being quite the same. We’re neighbors, after all. I live across the street. You’ve been here for more than a year and yet I never see you in town. Your sister, yes. But not you.”

  Of course he would have seen Natalie. Natalie had taken whatever steps were necessary to ingratiate herself with the people of Orion, aside from inviting them across the threshold. Alice had even noticed her sister watching Phinneaus on occasion, though there was nothing covert about her observations and nothing concealed in her smile when she looked at him. It made Alice want to warn him.

  “Unless you’ve nothing better to do than stare at this house all day, I don’t know how you can be so sure of my comings and goings. Or lack thereof. Did you stop to think I might go out while you’re at work?”

  “No, ma’am. I did not. Of course I work out of my home, which,” he said pointedly, “I imagine you know. Maybe you even have it written down in a notebook somewhere—my comings and goings. But I acknowledge it could be a possibility.”

  “And what is it you do, Phinneaus, when you’re not concerning yourself with my presumed lack of egress?”

  “Your lack of egress?” He grinned, and she knew he’d seen through her feeble attempt to change the subject. “I believe we were speaking of you, Alice, but I’m glad to tell you anything you want to know. Although I warn you in advance, my story won’t even get you a beer. I fix things for people. Help with their taxes, come April. Jack of a few trades, master of one.”

  “What would that be?”

  “It will sound like a boast, but it’s just the truth. I guess God gave me a gift for understanding how things work, how they’re put together. Give me something broken and I’ll figure out what makes it run. It doesn’t matter what the parts are: gears or wires, circuits or levers or an engine. I’m happiest when I have something in front of me to puzzle out.”

  His honesty disarmed her. She could tell it was true by the way his eyes flashed and his fingers twitched when he talked about making things work. His body tightened with a kind of intensity she recognized. He knew how to be still and focus on one thing.

  “You and I have some things in common. You might not believe it from my inexcusably forward behavior, but I’m a private sort of person myself. I settled here after the Army. Most folks in town have been here all their lives, and their parents and grandparents before them. This isn’t the sort of place people come to; it’s the sort of place people grow out of. That’s what makes you and me curiosities. People want to know why we came.”

  She had to admit, there were things about him she wanted to know: why had he come here; where had he lived before; did he have family? He wasn’t much older than she was, and the wound to his leg would have brought him some measure of scrutiny, the sort of wary observation she was used to. They had those things in common. Plus they were both here, in this place. In spite of her reservations, she wondered what it would be like to have a friend. Someone to confide in. T
hough she and Natalie barely conversed, her sister’s absence during the day only added to the emptiness of the house. And as much as she was growing to like Saisee, the woman was wise enough to know who paid the bills, and was scrupulous in getting her work done, leaving her little time to talk. Alice had started to wonder if loneliness would be her undoing, despite the raft of other possibilities.

  “That’s an interesting theory,” she said. “But you’re right, I doubt it’s worth much on the market. What about a deep, dark secret?”

  “I showed you my scar.”

  “We sound like children.” She laughed, the sound of happiness alien to her own hearing. He joined in. “But a scar,” she said. “I’ve got plenty of my own. That’s not enough.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “You have a tattoo.”

  She watched his mouth tighten as though he’d suddenly tasted lemon.

  “That’s none of your business.”

  The sudden reprimand caught her off guard. She wished she could take it back, ask him something else instead. His laughter had opened something inside her, and she realized how badly she wanted to talk to someone, even if the only thing they discussed was the weather. “Maybe I do have something to show you. Will you wait here for a minute?”

  His expression didn’t change, but he nodded. “If you want.”

  She got up from the chair and started the trek to her bedroom, the act of trusting as foreign to her as running. When she came back into the living room, she stood in front of him. “Hold out your hands. Palms up.”

  “And close my eyes? I know the drill.”

  She watched the blue of it disappear into the well of his hands and took a step back. It was too late to change her mind now. He couldn’t know what it meant to her, but he handled it as though he did, cradling it like something with a beating heart, a piece of sky captured inside his tightly pressed fingers.

  “This is a grosbeak.”

  “Yes.” She was delighted. “You’re familiar with them?”

  “I am, ma’am.”

  Iyammam.

  “I haven’t seen any here,” she said.

  “No, and you won’t. They stick closer to the woods on the outskirts of town. Lots of cowbirds and warblers, too.” He examined the bird carefully. “I’ve never gotten close enough to one to notice the way the wing feathers are stacked. And these little tips of gray on the chest. Have you seen many of them?”

  “No.” She turned her head to the window. “Only this.” A stain of memory spilled into her: a locked bedroom door, the sound of knocking.

  “But you know your birds?”

  “Yes. I know them all.”

  He rubbed one hand across his chin. “Maybe there’s something you could help me with. There’s a scout troop in town, pretty much a ragtag operation, but I’m trying to help the boys get some of their badges. Camping, fishing, rifle shooting. There’s a badge for bird study.”

  “Oh, no. I’d rather not . . .”

  “Just hear me out, Alice. I suppose it seems like a small thing, but it means a lot to them to earn a badge. It won’t be easy for some. They have to be able to label fifteen different parts of a bird. They have to identify twenty species, and keep a field notebook. And of those twenty, they have to identify five by their song or call alone. You did say you knew your birds.”

  So much she’d learned only to store it all away. What good did the knowledge do, cloistered in a dark corner of her brain? Facts swooped like swallows, darting across her mind; there was a rush of pride in things still remembered. Singing was limited to the perching birds, the order Passeriformes. Nearly half the birds in the world didn’t sing, but they still used sound to communicate—calls as opposed to song. Most birds had between five and fifteen distinct calls in their repertoire: alarm and territorial defense calls, distress calls from juveniles to bring an adult to the rescue, flight calls to keep the flock coordinated, even separate calls for commencing and ending flight. Nest calls. Feeding calls. Pleasure calls. Some chicks used calls to communicate with their mothers while they were still in the egg. The thought of it made her heart hurt.

  “I won’t push you. Give it some thought. It would mean a lot to the boys’ families.”

  So he was giving her a lever of her own. Help the children and the parents will have to accept you. He passed the figurine back, still warm from being in his hands.

  “Whoever made that took a lot of care, you can tell. Something handed down to you?”

  “No.” Anticipating a certain pleasure in shocking him, she said, “I stole it. And to think you want me to teach Boy Scouts.”

  “Well, there is a badge for crime prevention.” He looked at her intently, but she kept her face still. Despite his potential as a friend, she’d shown him enough of herself for the time being.

  “Alice Katherine Kessler,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s too bad I can’t tell anybody. Information like that would definitely be worth something.”

  NINE

  November 2007

  “Is this a pity invitation?” The idea that Lydia might consider him someone requiring sympathy was deflating, but her response to his question was a bright laugh, a burst of joy pushing through Stephen’s phone line, and exploding in his dim living room like a flare. At least he could make her laugh. That was no small accomplishment. And at this hour of the morning, too. Nine o’clock and her voice was as limber as though she’d been up for hours. She was probably a whistler. Perpetually cheerful.

  “No, Stephen. This is not a pity invitation. You and my father have been working such long hours on your project, whatever it is, I thought it might be nice for the two of you to do something more social, especially with the holiday coming. Say this Saturday? At seven?”

  “Your husband will be there?” What was the man’s name? He recalled an effusive handshake and overly warm palms. Warm, that was it. Something about temperature or the Protestant Reformation. Which was it? Hmmm, definitely temperature. Fahrenheit. Celsius. Rankine. Kelvin. That was it—Kelvin, with a null point of absolute zero. An appropriate description. Zero. Why were women drawn to men with such white teeth?

  “Since I’m inviting you to dinner at our home, yes. Kevin will be there.”

  “Oh.”

  He counted the seconds of the pause that followed, getting to the far edge of four before she asked whether “oh” meant he would join them.

  “Yes. It means yes I will. I don’t eat spinach, though. In case you were considering it.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. You know, I can see why you and my father get along, Stephen. You have a great deal in common.”

  Did they? He contemplated the possibility after hanging up the phone. He liked Finch, and he supposed Finch deserved some of the credit for Lydia, whom he had become infatuated with the first time he met her at Finch’s flat, so they did have that in common. She’d come bearing food, a warm and spicy curry, telling Finch she’d read turmeric helped reduce inflammation and treat digestive problems. Finch had rolled his eyes, but Stephen was smitten, the impediment of a husband notwithstanding. He contented himself with worshiping her from afar, at least until she came to her senses and lost her less-than-significant other.

  As to their project as she’d referred to it, he wondered why Finch hadn’t told her what they were working on. Of course he’d changed the subject himself when his mother had asked the same question over Thanksgiving dinner the week prior. And what are you working on these days, Stephen? He’d started to tell her, but then stopped, recognizing that, whatever it was he and Finch were up to, there was an element of the clandestine about it he quite enjoyed. If he told her he’d met Thomas Bayber, she would either clamor to know the details, in which case he would become exasperated with her frequent interjections, or she would be completely uninterested, in which case he would be insulted. In addition to which, any discussion of painting would make them both think of his father, and the holiday meals they shared were awkward enough with
out him sitting at one end of the table watching his mother’s concerted efforts not to cry.

  Saturday, the first of December, was five days away, which meant there was a good deal of time needing to be occupied before seeing Lydia. A hostess gift would be important. Soaps, maybe. Women liked little soaps; they seemed to act as some measure of a woman’s achievement in the art of gracious entertaining. There was an assortment of intricately wrapped and beribboned soaps in a bell-shaped jar in the guest bath whenever he visited his mother. He wondered what became of them after a single use—were they discarded? Rewrapped? It seemed wasteful to him, but of greater concern was the thought that such a gift would give Lydia the impression he found her to be either less than hygienic or deficient in entertaining skills. Maybe a bottle of perfume? But there was the Kelvin to contend with, and Stephen imagined a gift of scent wouldn’t be looked on favorably.

  * * *

  Stephen had agreed, albeit reluctantly, with Finch’s suggestion they divide in hopes of conquering, or at least in hopes of unearthing something that would prove useful. Finch committed to spend the week reviewing the file of personal correspondence Mrs. Blankenship had collected for him, admitting to Stephen that his initial evaluation of such things had likely verged on perfunctory. Stephen was to focus his attention on the main panel of the triptych. They planned to meet on Sunday to share their respective findings.

  In an attempt to put a date to the painting, Stephen spent the first part of the week poring over details of Bayber’s previous works, committing them to memory, looking for aberrations, noting anything that seemed unusual or out of character: a difference in the way Bayber used negative space, places where his brushwork seemed crabbed and intentional, the introduction of a new color into his usual palette. By Thursday morning, he was itching to leave the confines of the library and get back to the lab.

  Realizing the potential windfall for Murchison & Dunne, to say nothing of the prestige that would accompany bringing a Bayber to market, Cranston had coughed up a princely sum to allow Stephen access to a private, state-of-the-art forensic lab with the sort of equipment that made his pulse race every time he passed his security badge in front of the sensor pad: hyperspectral imagers to analyze historic documents; multispectral digital imaging cameras to inspect works of art; a gas chromatography machine to identify oils, resins, and waxes; even a new X-ray machine with lovely, long grenz rays.