The Blackbird Season

by Kate Moretti

  She pushed the book across the desk and pointed.

  “Nate. They’re tarot cards.”

  • • •

  Bridget had a cat. A petite gray-and-white stray that she adopted a month after Holden died, an ill-advised decision. She named her Sunny, after the prostitute in Catcher in the Rye. It was her own simple, obtuse memorial to her husband, but also she loved irony. The cat was both gray and grumpy. So, Sunny she was, or more likely, she wasn’t. No one ever got the joke, but then again, most people didn’t get Bridget’s jokes, with the exception of Holden.

  Lord, how she missed him.

  It had been less than a year since his death. Two years since his diagnosis, and ten since they married. Bridget liked to imagine her life in timeline form, and sometimes, if she’d had enough to drink and it was late enough at night, she envisioned it hovering there above her head. A single line with dots, like a subway map, green up to the fall of 2012, red and bloody for that year between 2012 and 2013, and muddy-water brown thereafter with a blinking red You Are Here somewhere along the interminable brown. She couldn’t see anything past today.

  There was a tiny bit of freedom in being alone. She popped a frozen dinner into the microwave, waited the requisite two minutes, and pulled it out with two fingers, dropping it onto a paper plate. She poured white zinfandel into a red Solo cup because she hated doing dishes, and took her dinner to the living room. Holden would have died, had he been alive. He liked expensive cabernet, from certain regions in France—she had no idea which ones. He was also a particular eater and had specific, bizarre notions of what could and should not be eaten together. Steak and potatoes. Pasta and pork. Chicken and rice. Only in those two combinations. In restaurants, she’d feel endlessly irritated at his requests: whole potatoes, not mashed, no garlic, extra pepper.

  Now she could eat whatever she wanted. Strange how she’d welcome back in a heartbeat all the things she used to wish away. When she talked to him, which she did sometimes, not enough to be called often, she didn’t look at his picture or up to the ceiling. She talked as though he was right there next to her.

  “Tomorrow I’ll cook something, H. I promise. Maybe.”

  You never make promises to the dead that you don’t intend to keep. She wasn’t religious, but Mama’s voice often floated up from the swamps of Georgia just to smack her in the head.

  Sunny kneaded at her leg, bucking his head under Bridget’s chin. She ran her nails down the cat’s back, scratching just above his tail. She popped the last bite of gluey mashed potatoes into her mouth, took a deep drink of wine, and reached across the sofa cushions for the journal.

  It was black; many of them were. They could pick their own, a request they’d all initially groaned at. But later they’d come in with leather-bound notebooks that reflected their personalities, handing them in shyly as if a glitter-pink cover or gilded pages revealed something otherwise unknown about their souls. They were teenagers; black and angsty was their jam. The class, creative writing, held both juniors and seniors as an elective. The seniors were edging toward college, the sweet lick of freedom bittersweet on their lips, so they weren’t as moody as the juniors who were stuck in Mt. Oanoke for another eighteen months. The seniors were coming full bloom, all the things that had seemed so confining starting to take on the rosy glow of nostalgia. High school was in their rearview mirror.

  She flipped the pages. Lucia’s journal was erratic, with changing handwriting, drawings, and block letters filled in with pen. She didn’t read all the entries in anyone’s diary. The exercise was more for the idea of journaling, writing down their brainy, brilliant thoughts, just to get them on paper. She didn’t care about the content, just if they were done on time. They’d ask her, did you read mine? For all their complaining, they seemed to crave the approval.

  I’m not a virgin. That’s a joke, right? No one thinks that. I’m a slut. A skank. A witch. A fetish. Never a real person. Except to you. And maybe Taylor, although she’s been flaky. Cares more about Kelsey and Riana and, depending on the day, Andrew.

  I couldn’t care less about any of them. I care about you, though, so there’s that.

  Bridget closed the journal. She’d never heard anyone call Lucia a whore, a slut. Most of the girls steered clear of her with her sharp, red mouth and sharper tongue. She was more likely to be the one flinging names around. The boys mostly avoided her, but some hung around a bit, too. She clung to the edge of the right crowd—Andrew Evans and Josh Tempest—Taylor clicking up behind them, double step to keep up, and Lucia hanging back. Andrew always watching her, his eyes sliding around, his mouth with that sideways smirk that the girls fell all over themselves for.

  A lesson from science class: in nature, the prettiest things are poisonous.

  Bridget was tired. It was only seven thirty, but she was always tired. Sleep was both an escape from the everyday weight on her chest and a possible chance to see him again. Touch his soft stubbled cheek, if only in a dream. It was worth the crushing moment in the morning when she realized none of it was real. Maybe it was worth it.

  The old house brayed and whistled in the wind. She’d moved in hating this house—an inheritance from Holden’s great-aunt—everything it represented, the cold, unforgiving north, the life she’d left behind. They moved, ostensibly to fix it up, sell it. Move back south. Give it one year. If you want to leave in one year, we’ll go. I promise, back to the swamps and the bogs and the heat and the y’all. We’ll go. Then she’d gotten a job as a teacher and they stayed. They met Nate and Alecia and she made the house her own and the year came and went with hardly a whisper. That was almost eight years ago.

  The house sat back from the road, the original farmhouse for the land that had since been developed. Three-acre lots with three-thousand-square-foot McMansion developments on either side. Commuter families, driving to North Jersey or New York City, coming in late in the evening but with hefty paychecks. Unlike when they’d first moved in, when the town was still reeling from the closure of the paper mill. Now they had neighborhoods with kids and bikes and winding cul-de-sacs and neighborhood barbecues. Mommy nights out and golf games and Super Bowl parties and first birthdays.

  There Bridget sat, high above them all. Keeping vigilant watch over a life that wasn’t hers to have.

  CHAPTER 4

  Alecia, Saturday, April 25, 2015

  School was canceled for the rest of the week. The EPA vans came, testing air and water. The Pennsylvania Department of Health collected little black birds in Ziploc bags all over town, mostly from around the baseball diamond—437 at the field alone. People stayed inside, not in any official way—there was no curfew, no police or health official directive—but the eeriness of it all kept people peeking through their curtains rather than sitting on their front porches. The bikes lay in empty lawns, their wheels spinning in the wind.

  Alecia’s phone rang like crazy. Libby Locking, whom she’d met briefly when Gabe attempted preschool and who’d stuck to her like a bur ever since, wanted to know what Nate thought killed the birds.

  “Libby, how would Nate know?” Alecia asked, pushing her hair off her forehead with the back of her dry hand. She was cutting chicken, her fingertips coated slick, and she kept the phone pressed between her cheek and her shoulder as she sliced.

  “Because he’s smart. Ask Nate.”

  “Nate, what killed the birds?” Alecia called into the living room, where Nate was easily on his third hour of SportsCenter.

  “How would I know?” His eyes never left the television.

  “He doesn’t know, Libby.”

  “You know the Marshalls? Earl put plastic on their windows. They think it’s the mill. That the air is poisoned. Isn’t that nuts?”

  “That’s crazy. But Earl’s crazy.” Alecia, distracted, scooped the chicken into a pan of oil and watched it sizzle. She washed her hands, the water burning, turning her knuckles red and pulsing.

  “This whole town is crazy.” Libby clucked her tongue
, a soft click across the line.

  After they hung up, Alecia tucked the phone into her back pocket with the ringer turned down.

  She should have been glad Nate was home. On paper, it seemed easier. She had another set of hands, someone to occupy Gabe, and Gabe’s hero to boot. She could have had a nap, maybe a long shower, gotten a manicure. Except half the town was closed, so forget the manicure.

  But Nate was stressed. School being closed for a week, the first week of baseball, made him batty, pacing around like a caged animal. His phone rang off the hook, and Alecia could hear the panicked squeal of parents through the speaker. With games being rescheduled, even outright canceled, Marnie Evans called almost daily.

  “He can throw eighty-five as a goddamn junior, Alecia. This kid, I’ve never had one like him.”

  She could swear Nate loved Andrew Evans more than Gabe most days.

  Linda, Gabe’s therapist, came every day from nine to noon. Every. Damn. Day. In her house, in their space. Rain, shine, snow, but not ice; Linda never drove in the ice. She’d announce this in singsong because Linda announced a lot of things in singsong. She blew in with bags of stuff, odds and ends, toys and string and plastic figurines and blocks and letters and numbers. She carried it all in giant gingham-checked plastic laundry totes she’d gotten from Argentina (Alecia knew an awful lot about Linda’s life; she talked more than anyone Alecia had ever met).

  Gabe loved Linda. Alecia, on most days, loved Linda. Linda was extraordinarily tall, over six feet, with a loud booming voice and long blond braid down her back that Gabe liked to touch. Sometimes Linda let Gabe touch her braid, tap it to his cheeks, even, grossly, kiss it—truly Alecia almost protested this one—as a reward. Linda could stand to erect a few boundaries.

  Instead of staying or watching or learning, Nate would go upstairs. Away from Linda, away from her singing, her relentless talking, her bubbling theories about Gabe. Maybe it was her sheer enthusiasm, for which Alecia felt profoundly grateful most of the time. Nate seemed to want nothing more than to flee from it. The patter of all the things that would burn his paycheck and maybe only marginally fix his son.

  But today, Linda had come and gone and Gabe was theoretically napping. Alecia stomped around the kitchen as she listened to him pace. Step, step, step, step, a heavy boom at the end where his hand slapped at the wall. Step, step, step, step, boom. Step, step, step, step, boom. Step, step, step, step, boom. For fun, she matched her steps to his, wallowing.

  “Why isn’t he napping? He was up half the night.” Nate was suddenly behind her. She wasn’t sure if he’d crept up on purpose or if she’d just zoned out and didn’t hear him over the patterned racket above their heads.

  “He never really naps. I put him up there to get a break. Sometimes he actually does fall asleep.” Alecia pushed back her shoulders and chewed on her lip.

  “Well, that’s ridiculous. Maybe he’s too old for naps. He’s five.” Nate put his hands on his hips and eyed her. “Should I go take care of him? Maybe he needs more discipline. Tell him if he doesn’t lie down, you’ll take away his toys.”

  Oh my God. “Discipline? Are you crazy?” If he didn’t understand that Gabe wasn’t like other kids, that grounding and punishment and taking away his front-end loaders wasn’t going get him to lie down compliantly and sleep, for the simple fact that he really didn’t seem to know how to sleep unless he was thoroughly exhausted, then she didn’t know what else to do. Step, step, step, step, boom.

  “You’re so soft on him. Too easy. You let him get away with everything.” Nate was getting warmed up; Alecia could hear it in his tone. Saying things he’d been thinking for a while, but hadn’t known how to broach. Then he thought better of it and softened his voice. “Look, I know that Gabe isn’t . . . normal.” God, that got under her skin, even from Gabe’s own father. She could think it, even say it, but no one else, not even Nate. She opened her mouth to cut him off, but he put his hand up. “I know, you hate that. I get it. What I’m trying to say is, I’m not stupid. I know how Gabe is. But what if all he needs is someone tougher? Instead of these hugely expensive, all-consuming therapies you try?” Step, step, step, step, boom. She was getting mad now.

  “Someone tougher than me? Like who?” Alecia started to laugh; she couldn’t help it. Who would that be? Another someone to take care of their son? Who? Nate? Sure. Have at it. She couldn’t stop laughing. “Someone else? Who, Nate? You?” Her eyes were watering and she hiccupped. “You want to take care of Gabe? Leave your precious school and your kids and your stupid Facebook account—I know all about that—and all the drama you think is real but you don’t realize real life is going on three miles away, here, while Gabe shits himself accidentally because he’s so wrapped up with his toys. He’s five years old and he’s so busy playing with toy construction equipment that he shits his pants, which by the way, the size of a shit of a five-year-old is pretty much the same as an adult. And he doesn’t really care if I have to clean it up, because he struggles with empathy. And I have to not get mad at him, because he cares very much about that, because to him, he couldn’t help it, so getting mad would be counterproductive and would push him into silence and the therapist is coming in an hour and I have to be sort-of-kind-of together, because she suggested last time that maybe my shrillness was causing his mild regression?” Alecia could feel her voice climbing, screeching really, until she looked down and her hands were balled into fists. When she unfurled her fingers, she saw half-moons of purple carved into her palms. She took a deep breath.

  Nate thought she was losing her mind, or maybe that she’d already lost it. Alecia could see it in the way his eyes had grown wider during her tirade. It was her fault, really; she’d had a tendency to keep the small details from Nate. The “shitting day,” as she’d come to call it in her mind, wasn’t all that worse than a lot of other days, although many days were much better. The day of the baseball game had been a good one until all those birds. He’d surely asked her how she was and she probably said “eh” and told him the broad strokes, something vaguely innocuous like Gabe had an accident.

  Or perhaps she was suppressing things. Admittedly, as she scrubbed adult-size shit out of Mutant Turtle underwear, she was checked out. In the throes of a bad day, she was elsewhere: a beach, somewhere far away with a drink in her hand and nothing but the sound of the rolling, whooshing waves and the tinkling of ice. Sometimes she’d remember being a child, when her mother would bring her tea and soup in bed, tucking her into the soft folds of a hand-knitted afghan. She’d remember the feel of her mother’s cheek on her forehead or the way her small, agile fingers brushed hair back from her eyes and tucked it behind her ears. Then she’d think about how she should call her mother and she’d come to, on her hands and knees scrubbing at something on the kitchen floor with Gabe pacing in front of her saying sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry for whatever she was cleaning up. He didn’t say sorry because he was, he said sorry because it made her better, less mad, and also sometimes he just got stuck on the word and she’d have to say hours later, Gabey, it’s okay, you can stop saying sorry until she wanted to pull her hair out but couldn’t act even a little annoyed because then it would get worse before it got better.

  Nate touched her elbow. “I’m sorry. I know it’s hard. I know you’re alone a lot. I’m sorry.” Alecia cocked her head, waited for the but. “Why do you keep things from me?”

  “You don’t want the details, Nate. You don’t. Your eyes glaze over. I see it all the time.” Tears pricked at her eyelids and she squeezed her eyes tight.

  “Mama! Look!” Gabe stood in the doorway, a configuration of wood in his outstretched hands. Alecia hadn’t even noticed the pacing had stopped.

  “Gabey!” She took the thing from his hand and studied it. “You did it! You finished it!” She turned the wooden crane one way, then the other, and she couldn’t believe it, it was perfect. A little wobbly while the glue set, but darn near perfect. She handed it back to him. “Show Daddy.”

/>   He handed it to Nate, who took it reluctantly. “This is cool!” He exclaimed with forced enthusiasm. Alecia resisted the urge to snatch it away from him.

  “Gabe, tell Daddy. We found model kits for construction equipment. I don’t know the names of everything. Tell him.” That was a lie, she could rattle off construction equipment in her sleep, but this way, Gabe was forced to talk.

  “A crane, a front-end loader, a lorry, a road roller, and an excavator.” He rattled them off quickly, the words mushing into each other. The first kit she bought him had been manufactured in the UK, so he now he defaulted to the British terms for construction equipment.

  “Slower, Gabe, say it again. We don’t know as much as you do.”

  He beamed. “A crane. A front-end loader. A lorry. A road roller and an excavator. That one is last.” His tongue found each syllable, proud of himself.

  “How come?” Alecia prompted.

  “My favorite.” His eyes slid sideways but he gave her a smile.

  “Gabe, we’ve been trying to figure out that crane for a week. Does it move?” She went to tap the bucket on the end but he snatched it away.

  “When it dries.” He maneuvered a slipped wooden dowel back into place with surprising light grace. “Don’t touch.” He wandered away, back upstairs to put the crane in its rightful place, wherever that might be.

  Alecia shook her head at Nate in wonder. “Seriously, that thing was so hard. I barely understood it. I’ve been thinking all week it might have been a mistake. He was getting frustrated with me hovering over him, directing him.”

  “I’m not in your club, Alecia.” Nate said it simply, but his voice was quiet. Lost. “You and Gabe, you have a little club. I show up once in a while, do a little song and dance, but mostly, I don’t fit in here. I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “Maybe that’s not my fault,” Alecia said.

  “Maybe not. Do you think it’s enough that I want to be in your club? I want to know more about what goes on here.” He spread his hands wide, as though “here” were someplace grand: a castle, a vast garden, somewhere other than their small, cramped, barely together kitchen.