Stork

by Wendy Delsol

I snuck a peek at their table, catching the father reaching across the booth to give Wade an upside-the-head smack. Some words were exchanged, but we were too far away to hear. I turned back quickly, not wanting to be caught staring — and wondering if “odd” was a comprehensive enough adjective.

  “What tragedy?”

  “The death of the little girl, Wade’s sister, years ago.”

  “Really? How?”

  “On a camping trip. She fell down a hillside and hit her head on some rocks. She was only nine.”

  “That is sad.”

  “Wade was with her. Can you imagine anything so awful?”

  “No.” I couldn’t.

  “The grandmother, Dorit, is a hoot. When she’s on her own, she dishes on everyone and everything. That woman can yak, and that woman can obsess. She really loved that little granddaughter of hers, Hanna. I guess because she never had a daughter of her own. Wade’s dad was her only child, so she dwells on the loss sometimes. She was in here this June and just beside herself about it being the first day of summer and the anniversary of Hanna’s death. She really couldn’t have been any sadder. But most times she’s got a lot of spunk, and there’s no mistaking who rules the roost in that family.”

  I took another quick look at their table, where Dorit was talking with a pointed index finger. Even Wade’s father had his head lowered. All righty, then. Order up. Scoop du jour. One big steaming bowl of dysfunction.

  Jaelle folded the to-go bag neatly and handed it across the counter, sighing and rubbing her temples.

  “Are you feeling OK?” I pushed Afi’s twenty across the counter and waited for change.

  “I guess so,” Jaelle said. “Had a little headache since I woke up, but have only myself to blame.”

  So maybe there was a little truth to the tequila rumors. I gave Jaelle a sympathetic look and noticed something above her head. Was it a bug? Did a throbbing headache actually bend air? I must have stared at the spot hard, because Jaelle started patting down her thick black curls. “What are you staring at?” she asked. “Is my hair that bad today?”

  “No. Sorry. It’s me. I’m tired. My eyes can’t focus right.”

  “You stressed out at school again?”

  “Again? That would imply the stress had stopped and restarted.”

  “OK, Miss Semantics. Are you still stressed out at school?”

  “Yes.”

  “Remember. It’s a pit stop.”

  I shoved a wad of bills and coins into my back pocket and made toward the door. “You mean it’s the pits.”

  Jaelle pushed her hands into the pocket of her lace-trimmed apron. “Just don’t let ’em get to you.”

  “I’ll try.” I tucked the paper sack under my left arm. “See ya, Jaelle.”

  Afi waited at one of the checkers tables, technically a row of barrels flanked by rickety wooden chairs, set up for a crew of old-timers who liked to come in and push reds and blacks across a board. The tables had been out on the covered porch all summer, but had recently been moved close to the cast-iron box stove in the center of the store. Afi rubbed his hands in anticipation as I pulled his stew from the bag.

  “Atta girl.”

  I looked around the empty store. “Not too busy, huh, Afi?”

  “Had a couple sales while you were gone.”

  We ate in silence, which was normal. My grandpa was a quiet guy. Amma had been the chatty one. Talked enough for two or three, truth be told. In her presence, Afi’s silent nature hadn’t been noticeable. I wondered what he’d been like with her. Had he always been the ear to her voice, or had she been able to oil his jaw hinge on occasion? He had to have made conversation once upon a time, right? You couldn’t go out with someone — what would have been called courting back then — and then marry them, I supposed, without some chitchat. Then again, I didn’t remember much talk between me and Wade. Ugh. Thinking about that stupid mistake rolled my stomach end-over-end. Afi dipped his corn muffin into the bowl, sponging up the last dribble of gravy. Maybe he just needed a little prompt, and I was curious about what Jack had said last night.

  I leaned back and picked an apple out of the bin. “These any good?”

  “Best in the county.”

  “Jack Snjosson delivered them last night.” I rubbed the apple up and down my pant leg, polishing it to a nice shine. “So what’s the story with him? He seemed all cranked up about that development deal.”

  Afi lifted the paper napkin from his lap and dropped it over the empty Styrofoam bowl. “The Snjosson kid?”

  “Yeah. Jack.”

  “Lars was supposed to deliver them.”

  “Well, he sent his grandson.”

  “Son,” Afi corrected.

  “Whatever. What difference does it make?”

  Afi took a long time, even for him, to answer. “It doesn’t really, but do me a favor. Don’t mention the Snjosson kid to your mom.”

  “Why not?”

  “Just an old bit of family business. No big deal, but your mom’s got enough on her plate these days.”

  Wow. That was more than I may have ever heard my afi speak on any topic. And of course it got me thinking that the “old business” was why Jack expected me to know him already. “What old business?”

  I could see the topic close in Afi’s squinty eyes. “Never mind about that.”

  I knew better than to press. But maybe if I came at it from a different angle . . . “Jack is definitely against that development deal.”

  “He’s entitled to his opinion.”

  “What’s yours?”

  “Gonna sell if I can.”

  I cracked a bite out of the apple. Tart, just how I liked them. “Then what would you do?”

  “Rest. Find me a view over some water.”

  Afi started to gather the trash. Either Amma had been way better at crowbarring information out of the old guy or that was as much as you got. Period.

  “Would they really level all of Main Street?”

  “Oh, that’s just one of about twenty different plans floating around. I’ve been to enough of the city council meetings now to understand that the whole thing is a mess. All I know is that this old building and little scrap of land is mine, and I can sell it to whomever I darn well please.”

  Another long oration from Afi. Quite the occasion. He yawned and stretched his legs. I knew I wasn’t going to get anything else out of him for the night. “You want me to close up again for you, Afi?”

  He looked up at me with milky blue eyes. “You wouldn’t mind?”

  “No.”

  “You OK driving in the dark?”

  So far the only good thing about Minnesota was that I got a car. A little used VW Bug, but I wasn’t complaining. Now that I had my license, the real thing, not some bozo learner’s permit, I had a newfound sense of freedom. “I’m a good driver. Besides, it’s not far.”

  My mom had rented a house from a colleague who was on sabbatical. It was about a mile out of town and close to the highway my mom took to work. The house was nice enough. I could still hear my mom trying to sell it to me: two floors, three bedrooms, kitchen with granite countertops, formal dining room, hardwood floors, and a yard that backed onto a city park. And trees. She’d been over the moon about bushy, leaf-dropping, color-changing trees. I was just glad it wasn’t old and smelly. The agreement was that we’d give Minnesota a year, see how we liked it. And then talk about where I’d do my senior year. I wished I’d gotten that one in writing. Two weeks in a row I’d caught my mom with a highlighter and the Sunday real-estate section of the paper.

  “Why don’t you go ahead and walk home, Afi?”

  He yanked on his thick lopi sweater with the patterned circular yoke. With his tufts of white hair, ruddy cheeks, and wiry build, he looked like an old fisherman. All he needed was a net thrown over his shoulder. Afi came from a long line of seafarers — mariners, as he liked to call them. Fishermen, whalers, boatbuilders, merchant traders, and explorers with a lineage going back to t
he Vikings.

  He left, and I took my usual spot up at the front register. I pulled out my sketchbook, envisioning a costume for Kay, the boy character in The Snow Queen. At Hulda’s, I’d seen a bolt of russet brown suede which would be perfect for a field jacket. I instinctively looked across the street to where the material was shelved, and a flicker of light caught my eye. It wasn’t the overhead lights, the way it had been yesterday. It was more like a lantern or flashlight moving through the store.

  I froze, a confusion of emotions. My logical side had told me to ignore the store entirely and had talked myself, deeper and deeper, into an illness theory, possibly stress-induced and with very strange symptoms. This logical side, I discovered, to a combination of dismay and thrill, had a counterpart that was highly curious about all things mystical. What if I hadn’t been dreaming? What did “Icelandic Stork Society” mean, exactly? How had I been chosen? How on earth could they possibly influence who a baby was placed with — and not with really, more like in!

  There it was again, a flash of light moving slowly. I sat paralyzed with fear. I finally wrenched my eyes away, covering my face with my forearm and taking big gulping breaths of air. After a few minutes, I lowered my arm by a mere fraction of an inch. I’d take one last look and then close early, exiting through the rear. Afi wouldn’t want me to go crazy all for the sale of a dozen eggs and a gallon of milk.

  Holy cow! Hulda was pressed against the front window staring right at me and waving a lantern back and forth.

  I tried to swallow, but my mouth was dry as chalk, and tasted like it, too. At least in LA you knew the basic shape of your worst fears: a drive-by, a carjacking, home invasion, or Zoey Simmons showing up to Mark Hall’s party in the same alice + olivia batik print blouse as yours. This, however, had a whole new eerie supernatural side to it, and made riots and earthquakes and wardrobe malfunctions seem mundane. With an upright bolt, I steeled my shoulders. The woman was old, BC old. And small — heck, there wasn’t enough of her to stuff a pillow. Just spooky with all her “The cap is a sign” ramblings, but not dangerous. It was time to get to the bottom of this. I grabbed the key out of the drawer, locked up the store, and marched across the street.

  Hulda opened the front door and looked furtively up and down the street. She pulled me inside with a finger pressed to her lips. “Follow quickly” were her only words.

  I trailed the swinging lantern to the back of the store. Hulda shuffled quietly between the rows of fabric. I let a finger brush over their surfaces: nubby wools, cool silks, plush velvets. Once again, Hulda led me through the door marked OFFICE, down the rickety stairs, and into the chamber with the oval table. She motioned for me to sit. I went for the closest seat, but Hulda flapped and clucked and puffed until I scooted over to the second chair. And I had thought my ninth-grade biology teacher was uptight about assigned seats.

  Hulda sat in the high-back she’d occupied the night before, the Owl’s chair. Everything about this room gave me the willies. The carved back of my chair was jagged and uncomfortable, the lit candles cloyed the air with the smell of smoke and burning wax, and I had always disliked windowless spaces, basements in particular. I shifted in my seat, glancing down at the wooden arm, which was now carved with only robins, judging by their painted red breasts.

  “Uh, Fru Hulda, is it me, or is this a different chair than I had last time?”

  Hulda looked at the figures of robins perched among branches in the bloom of springtime. “Ah, so you will be our Robin. How appropriate.”

  “I thought I was kattugla, little owl.”

  “The chair picks the bird for each member of our society. Though there is symbolism to be heeded from the little-owl reference, you are, from now on, our Robin.”

  Sounded better than puffer or peacock, anyway.

  Hulda straightened her skirt. “It is highly unusual for us to meet outside of the council.” She looked around like we were being watched, which did not help my overall feeling of unease. “There are those who would disapprove. We never like to arouse suspicion. But I could think of nothing else all day, and I knew we were destined to connect. When the bones ache, there’s a friend to make.”

  Afi’s bones hurt, too; he called it arthritis. But whatever, at least she used the word friend. I relaxed enough to breathe, though only one quick ragged intake.

  “Tell me. Have you noticed anything unusual?” Hulda clamped bony fingers under my elbow.

  Yeah, I thought — you, for starters. “Uh. Not really.”

  “You will. Your powers will grow. You will be contacted.”

  “By?”

  “By the essence awaiting birth.”

  “Could you be a little more specific? Contacted how? Phone? Text? FedEx?”

  “The child always comes as a dream.”

  I rubbed my cheeks. “I’ve pretty much convinced myself that you are a sickness-induced dream. So that would be a dream within a dream.”

  Hulda finally released the hold she had on my arm with a soft tap. “I know this must be very difficult for you. Especially in these modern times, so many have forgotten the ancient ways.” She looked at me with such furrowed intensity that her long gray spiky eyebrows rose like antennae. “Tell me, do you believe you have a soul?”

  Nobody had ever asked me about my soul before. I’d had conversations about God, angels, ghosts, UFOs, and even the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot — but not my soul. It felt somewhat personal, but I didn’t hesitate to reply. “Yes.”

  “And do you believe in fate?”

  A little trickier. A master plan for this spinning ball of billions? “Just for the big stuff, I guess.”

  “And would one’s birth be included in your list of big stuff?”

  “Sure.”

  “Finally, then, would you allow that there are those among us with special powers?”

  Crossing Over with John Edward was one of my favorite shows. “Yes. I suppose. But not me!”

  “Why not you?”

  “It’s just, I’m not . . .”

  “Not what?”

  I wanted to say special. I wasn’t special. At least not in that way. Maybe in other ways. Right? Everyone thought they were. Or was made to believe so, anyway, by those who loved them. My amma, my personal cheerleader, had always made me feel exceptional about anything and everything — ironically, even my childhood fascination with birds. From a very young age, I’d sketched them, pulled books about them from the library shelf, and made up stories about their winged adventures. That much I remembered. My amma liked to tell stories about my childish claims to understand them, translate their chirps to language. That part I didn’t remember, but knew she had been quite amused by — even boastful of — this purported bird-whispering skill. Though I wondered what she ever made of my professed love for and intentions to marry Big Bird, the hottie of Sesame Street. Regardless, I’d outgrown such flights of fancy and delusions of grandeur a long time ago. “Not interested,” I said.

  Hulda sat back in her chair with crossed arms. “Not interested, you say. Your pupils are large, your breathing is rough, your cheeks are flushed, and your ears are ringing.”

  “How do you know my ears are ringing?”

  “Same way I know you don’t like clowns.”

  That helps. I exhaled loudly. My ears were ringing, and it was very annoying. Plus nobody really liked clowns, right? “Fru Hulda, do I have a choice?”

  “No.” Hulda’s answer was kind, but definitive.

  I lowered my head to the table and tapped my forehead lightly against its rough hewn surface. So many questions. So confused. So totally bummed it wasn’t a serious illness. I sat up.

  “So let’s say I have a dream about some soul, or essence, or baby, what then?”

  “Then, if they haven’t already through the dream cycles, the vessels who are candidates will be made known to you.”

  “Made known how?”

  “Is different for everyone. For me, is always smell. When a woman is a prospec
t, she smells like crushed arnica root.”

  Right, that’s a big help, I thought, because when you crush the arnica root, that makes all the difference.

  “Fru Grimilla feels vibrations,” Hulda continued. “Fru Birta sees candidates in colors, red too hot, blue too cold. She looks for something in a very specific shade of yellow-green.”

  Which at least explained Birta’s chartreuse wimple — the color, anyway.

  I was still unsure of the timing of the whole process, though it seemed a fairly delicate question. “So, the essence gets assigned, for lack of a better word, when exactly?”

  “Two weeks after.”

  “After?” I asked.

  Hulda looked at me impatiently. “Coupling during ovulation.”

  “So assignment comes right about the same time as . . . ?” I thought I knew the answer, but it wasn’t like I had committed the whole reproductive cycle to memory.

  “A woman’s menses. No essence, she menstruates. An essence, the pregnancy continues.”

  “Does every soul require a meeting and vote? I’m not sure I have the time. I’ve got homework, a social life.” Technically I did not have a social life, but what did she know?

  “No. Only those in need of guidance.”

  “And what is the significance of second chair? Fru Grimilla made it sound important.”

  “Second chair is second-in-command and makes decisions when the first chair is not present.”

  Forget baby on board, more like baby at the wheel. “Fru Hulda, I’m not ready to be second chair.”

  “You will learn quickly. This I know. And what’s done is done. Besides, I haven’t missed a Stork meeting in twenty years. You will have plenty of time to observe.”

  I’m sure my mathematician mother had a formula to calculate the likelihood of an event after a prolonged — say twenty-year — period of inactivity. Kind of like ninety-nine years without a hundred-year flood. At least Hulda looked healthy, for her age, anyway. “What if I have more questions? Can I get ahold of you?”

  Hulda took a deep breath. “For one so young, I must make an exception.” She reached a leathery hand into the pocket of her long gray skirt, producing a large old-fashioned key, which she handed me. “This will open the back door. Wait for me inside, but do not open the door to the office. I will come along soon.” Hulda, again, looked side to side as if under surveillance. “Something else. It’s important.”