On to Plan B. If she couldn’t walk, she could at least plot. She wrapped herself in the ample hotel robe and settled down in front of the fireplace with a map she’d taken from the top drawer of the desk and one of Phinneaus’s legal pads. She knew she was delaying the inevitable—trying to locate Agnete’s address—but decided to make a list of things to buy first, looking for shops close to the hotel and purposefully ignoring her uncertain finances. She dunked a sopaipilla in her coffee and brushed powdered sugar from her lips, the plate of chile-flecked fried polenta, chorizo, and eggs already finished. It might not have been a vacation, but it felt like one. She was on her own, eating strange foods, planning to spend money she wasn’t sure she had, and no one was paying the slightest bit of attention to her. She had fallen down the rabbit hole.
It was easiest to come up with ideas for Saisee, whose pride in her cooking shone in everything she concocted, tossing in a pinch of this and a smidgen of that. Alice had even watched her hold crushed spices in the palm of her hand and blow them gently over the pot. My momma taught me that. Best way to get flavor to every part of the pot. For her there would be white posole and blue cornmeal, a collection of chile powders, and piloncillo, the little cones of unrefined Mexican sugar Alice imagined she might use to make caramelized custard. Frankie wasn’t difficult either. She’d passed a glass case in the lobby gift shop and spied a handsome horned toad fetish on the second shelf. Phinneaus would cluck at her, but she wanted Frankie to have something not handed down, something exotic and unexpected he could instill with powerful childhood magic. That would take care of him, along with some train paraphernalia she’d already purchased at Union Station, since his sole experience of rail travel to date was confined to the treacherous mystery of the story problem.
That left Phinneaus, and the thing she wanted to give him wasn’t easily wrapped. If she could cast a spell, she’d offer him this new, slightly careless version of herself, but that person might easily vanish before she boarded the train again. She’d already chosen one thing for him. It was wrapped and hidden under her bed at home, her old textbook with the beautifully colored plates, Birds of the Northeast. He would know it meant something to her, that she was giving him a bit of her own history, a piece of the person she was before he knew her. And she thought he would find the book every bit as fascinating as she did—the different bird species depicted in their natural environments, claws curling across a slender branch or feet obscured in a tangle of brush, heads cocked, considering a plump cluster of berries, or eyeing grubs inching unaware across the delicate grasses along the bottom of the page. The meticulous drawings of individual feathers: the pennaceous and plumulaceous barbs of the vane, the after-feathers, the intricate patterns of stippling, dotting, and dashing that were as telling to her as a fingerprint. The illustrations of nests with their perfect eggs, some mottled, some speckled, some plain and small as her fingernail.
But since he was the one who had encouraged her to come, it seemed only fitting she bring him something back. There was an article highlighting local artisans in one of the magazines on the desk, and a picture of a cutting board made from alligator juniper. The wood had a tight, beautiful grain, its color running from pink to rose. It may not have been a romantic gift, but besides his honesty, his sensibility was one of the things she most admired; she knew he would appreciate the fine craftsmanship.
Having finished the list, she set it aside and picked up the map again. Her stomach turned queasy at the sudden thought of Agnete, of standing in front of the house where her daughter had lived all the time Alice had been in Tennessee. The address from the returned envelope was on the east side of town, a street called Calle Santa Isabel. She found it on the map, a short stub of a street, the exact width and length of several others. But Alice wanted more than the pale charcoal line on the map. She wanted a life’s history.
The enormity of all she’d missed rolled over her. Had her daughter been happy living on Calle Santa Isabel? The name sounded cheerful enough, but names could be misleading. Had there been trees for her to climb, neighborhood children to play with? Had she decorated her front door with the red pepper Christmas lights Alice saw everywhere? Did she walk to school or take a bus? And had she come home clutching ragged pieces of construction paper in her fist, covered in thick trails of crayon meant to be turkeys and pumpkins and umbrellas? Cutout paper snowflakes? If Alice stood on that street, in front of that house, would she be standing in the dust that had powdered around her daughter’s feet?
Staying in the room thinking was making her nervous. She could probably manage a short walk around the block, just to become familiar with her surroundings. She swallowed a handful of pills and pulled on her clothes, thankful Saisee had packed things easy to get into and out of. The light outside was brilliant, the sky the same crystal blue as the day before. It was warm, and even though there were people out, the sidewalks weren’t crowded. She passed a small café, lingering by the open door to take in the smell of cinnamon and coffee, then made her way down the rest of the block, stopping to look in the window of one gallery or another.
When she turned the corner, she saw a gallery on her left with a bench outside and sat down to rest, positioning herself sideways so she could look in through the window. Inside, a tall man—he must have had to stoop to walk in and out the front door—was gesturing emphatically to a young couple studying a landscape on the far wall. His dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and he was wearing a black jacket and a large turquoise ring, which looked to be in jeopardy of sliding off. Alice could tell by the way the young woman smiled and nodded she was losing enthusiasm; her nods become fewer, her sideways glances at her partner more frequent. Perhaps they had only wandered in and were staying to be polite. It was a process Alice had never understood, the buying of art, especially while on vacation. Would a particular piece suddenly attract you? Would you be drawn to an image or a palette? The situation seemed rife with the opportunity for buyer’s remorse. The couple exited the shop and walked briskly away, arm in arm, as if urging each other out of the gallery owner’s clutches. The man in the gallery, meanwhile, looked out at Alice and smiled, shrugging his shoulders. A moment later he was standing in the doorway, only slightly hunched over, she noticed, holding two cups of coffee.
“Another beautiful day in paradise,” he said, handing one of the cups to her. It was Styrofoam and easy enough to hold, the warmth spreading through her thin mittens. She smelled the same hint of cinnamon and something spicier she’d caught in the doorway of the café.
“I’m sorry about your sale,” she said.
“There’ll be another. There always is.” He looked at her and cocked one eyebrow. “I don’t suppose . . .”
“Oh, no. It would be wasted on me.”
“You mean to tell me you don’t like art? I don’t believe it. Everybody likes art. It’s just a matter of finding the piece that speaks to you.”
Up close, she could see his face was etched with fine lines. She imagined he’d spent most of his life here, living in the thin air and the warm sun, the desert carving its way into his skin until his face resembled that of a dried apple doll from a craft fair. “You’re probably right. I might be a fan of Audubon, I suppose.”
“Ah, birds. I can tell a lot about a person by the type of art they’re drawn to. You say Audubon, and I think of someone with a meticulous eye for detail. But that’s an easy assumption, isn’t it? Not the sort of thing that impresses someone like you much.”
“Like me?”
“Uh-huh. Skeptic.” He studied her intently, and she was surprised to find herself unaffected, buffered from his scrutiny by her coat and her mittens, her ugly shoes and her padded socks, her warm cup of coffee and her anonymity.
He rubbed his chin with his knuckle. “I would say a person who hangs Audubon on her walls is a person who believes in God, but not necessarily religion. A person who believes in free will, but also in the existence of a natural pecking order, pardon the pun,
in all societies. Aware of it, and accepts it. I would say such a person has the capacity to be awed by nature and horrified by it, in equal amounts. A scientist’s brain, but an artist’s soul. How am I doing?”
Alice smiled. “Remarkable.”
“You’re not impressed. I see I’ll have to up my game.”
He looked at her face, her eyes, and she looked back at him blandly, keeping her sharp corners hidden. She had little practice talking to strangers but embraced the thought that she could play the role of anyone she chose, trying on imagined identities to see what fit: businesswoman here for a meeting, opera impresario, wealthy collector, lover en route to a secret assignation.
“Hmm,” he said, narrowing his eyes while he watched her. “It’s not so much an admiration for the artist as it is for the subject matter, correct? What is it about birds? People envy them the ability of flight, of course, but it must be more. Maybe not just their ability to fly, but to fly away from, is that it? To leave trouble behind, be free from boundaries, from expectations.” He smiled. “I admit to envying them that.”
Was that where it came from? She’d loved birds long before her physical limitations kept her grounded. She’d found a birding diary of her grandmother’s in a trunk in the attic when she was Frankie’s age, and when she asked her father about it, he dug through boxes on a shelf high above her head, handing down a small pair of binoculars and some field guides.
She’d seen her first prothonotary warbler when she was nine, sitting alone on a tupelo stump in the forest, swatting at mosquitoes targeting the pale skin behind her ears. She glanced up from the book she was reading only to be startled by an unexpected flash of yellow. Holding her breath, she fished for the journal she kept in her pocket, focusing on the spot in the willow where he might be. A breeze stirred the branches, and she saw the brilliant yellow head and underparts standing out like petals of a sunflower against the backdrop of leaves; the undertail, a stark white. His beak was long, pointed and black; his shoulders a mossy green, a blend of the citron yellow of his head and the flat slate of his feathers. He had a black dot of an eye, a bead of jet set in a field of sun. Never had there been anything so perfect. When she blinked he disappeared, the only evidence of his presence a gentle sway of the branch. It was a sort of magic, unveiled to her. He had been hers, even if only for a few seconds.
With a stub of pencil—always a pencil, her grandmother had written. You can write with a pencil even in the rain—she noted the date and time, the place and the weather. She made a rough sketch, using shorthand for her notes about the bird’s coloring, then raced back to the house, raspberry canes and brambles speckling bloody trails across her legs. In the field guide in the top drawer of her desk, she found him again: prothonotary warbler, prothonotary for the clerks in the Roman Catholic Church who wore robes of a bright yellow. It made absolute sense to her that something so beautiful would be associated with God.
After that she spent countless days tromping through the woods, toting the drab knapsack filled with packages of partially crushed saltines, the bottles of juice, the bruised apples and half-melted candy bars, her miniature binoculars slung across one shoulder. She taught herself how to be patient, how to master the boredom that often accompanied careful observation. She taught herself how to look for what didn’t want to be seen.
* * *
She set her empty coffee cup on the arm of the bench. “Maybe you’re right.”
He smiled, looking pleased with himself, and nodded. “I told you. There’s one piece of art for everyone.”
What possessed her to ask? Maybe it was because she was thinking about Agnete and she couldn’t think about her daughter now without thinking about him, too. “What do you know about Thomas Bayber?”
“Bayber? I know if I owned anything of his, I wouldn’t have to work. Not here or anywhere else. My pockets aren’t that deep, and besides, there’s nothing more to be had. His paintings are all in museums, except for a few pieces in private collections. New York or Miami, I’d guess. Maybe Japan.” He seemed puzzled she’d asked. “I didn’t peg you for a serious collector. And here you led me to believe you’d never had much interest in art.”
“Not serious so much as curious. I know the name is all. Not much about the artist. He’s talented, then?”
“An understatement. He was.”
A dull wave shifted across her, and she closed her eyes, making her fingers into fists inside her mittens, waiting for the familiar stab of a sharper pain to take this one away. She’d never considered the possibility. The Thomas she knew was frozen in his midthirties, cocksure and indefatigable. He would have been in his early seventies now.
“When?”
“When what? Oh, no, I don’t believe he’s deceased. But he stopped painting twenty years ago. Dropped completely out of sight. Rather mysterious, considering he was fairly prolific up to that point. But I see! That’s why you asked about him, because of the birds! You were just testing me, then? Not that I object. You wouldn’t want to work with a dealer who wasn’t experienced and knowledgeable. You know your art.”
It was her turn to be puzzled. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“Wait here. I’ll be right back.” He dashed inside the gallery, and when she looked through the window she could see him shuffling through a pile of large books, turning over papers, fumbling for something under a desk. When he came back outside he had a large volume tucked under his arm, The Art of Thomas Bayber by Dennis Finch. He sat down next to her and rested the book on the bench, flipping through pages until he got to the middle, a section of colored plates. He read a paragraph of text to her.
“In 1972, Bayber’s work underwent another metamorphosis, yet refused to be defined by or adhere to any specific style . . . There is nothing fragile here, nothing dreamlike. No protections are offered, not for the artist himself and not for those viewing his work. All is called forth in a raw state, human values finessed on the canvas, softened and sharpened, separated and made aggregate. While there are certain motifs in these works—often a suggestion of water, the figure of a bird—and various elements are repeated, aside from an introverted complexity, the context in which they appear is never the same from one piece to the next. What ties these works together is the suggestion of loss, of disappearance, and of longing (see figures 87 to 95).”
“Nineteen seventy-two. He stopped painting fifteen years after that. But look at this plate. Can you see the bird, there in the corner? They’re not always easy to find. It’s that patch of blue.”
She didn’t have to hear the year repeated again to guess the reason for Thomas’s metamorphosis. And she didn’t have to look at the picture of the painting to be able to identify the bird. What have I done, Thomas? What have I done?
“Blue grosbeak,” she said.
“I don’t know my birds as well as you do, so I’ll take your word for it. He was incredibly talented. It’s a shame he stopped painting.”
There was more than enough shame to go around. Alice rose to her feet with effort, swaying unsteadily. “Thank you for the coffee. I’m sorry to take up so much of your time.”
“On the contrary, I should be thanking you. I hadn’t thought about Bayber for quite a while. It’s a great pleasure to look at his work again, even if it’s only in the pages of a book.” He stood up and tipped his head toward her. “I hope you enjoy the rest of your day. Maybe we’ll see each other again if you’re in town for a while.”
“Maybe so.”
Her only thought was to get back to the hotel room. She maneuvered past the tourists pausing by shops and the couples strolling hand in hand; steered clear of café tables set on the sidewalk and the large sculptures near the fronts of souvenir stores. The hotel elevator was slower going up than it had been going down; the door to her room took longer to unlock, the small red light above the handle stubbornly refusing to turn green. Once inside, with the dead bolt turned behind her, she walked over to the wooden luggage rack holding her suitcase
and ran her hand underneath the clothes she hadn’t unpacked, patting her way along the bottom until she found the heavy, thick sock. Tugging it out, she reached inside of it and worked her hand down toward the foot until she felt cool porcelain beneath her fingers. She pulled out the figurine of the blue grosbeak and sank to the floor.
* * *
He hadn’t aged. He sat on the edge of one of the leather chairs in her room and whispered her name. “Alice.” Then, “Are you awake?”
She was sure she had been and squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting to see him, only to find they were already closed.
“Alice.” His voice was more urgent now, more demanding.
“I didn’t know.”
“You hid her from me.”
“No, I would never have done that. I didn’t know she was alive, Thomas. I’ve missed as much of her life as you have.”
He was standing over the bed, staring down at her. He reached out a hand, and she shrank away from him, but he only touched her cheek, and she felt the warmth from his fingers move across her face like a tide. His hands were as long and slender as she remembered, their paleness a beacon in the dark room.
“You didn’t trust me enough to tell me?”
“You wouldn’t have wanted to be a father.”
He sat on the bed next to her, and she moved over so he could lie down. He cradled her face between the palms of his hands. “Did you know me so well?”
She shook her head. It was something she could never fix, and that was what made her cry, a deep sob she choked on. With one decision she’d altered the lives of three people, cracking them into jagged, separate pieces. Had she wanted to hurt him so much? “I should have told you.”
The Gravity of Birds: A Novel Page 27
