The Blackbird Season

by Kate Moretti

  So Nate had seen Bridget mad. But never at him.

  Nate had pulled her into his classroom, closed the door so the latch rested against the doorframe, not fully shut. He sat backward on a chair, his thumbs driving into his eye sockets. Bridget stood in front of him, her arms crossed. Waiting. “I’ve been helping her, Bridget. Her dad is MIA, her brother is abusive. He hits her. Maybe worse. She’s cagey about it.” He leaned forward, pushed his palms into his knees. He looked out the window, his breath puffing out. “I don’t know what’s true anymore, but I think she’s being bullied pretty badly.”

  “Bullied? Lucia? She’s more likely to be the bully, Nate.” Bridget saw Lenny, had seen her house, the filth she lived in. Still, at school, she remained untouchable. Kids had whispered for years about her being a witch, her sharp tongue knowing instinctively the weakest points of her classmates. “If she says she’s being bullied at school, I think she’s pulling one over on you.”

  “Not just at school, Bridge. Look, do you know what trichotillomania is?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t, either. She pulls out her hair.” Nate tugged on the end of his blond curls to demonstrate.

  “Where? It looked fine to me just now.” Bridget was trying to be sensitive, but come on.

  “Underneath. If you look underneath, it’s all scabs and bald spots. She was showing me just now. That’s what you saw.”

  “I call bullshit. I saw her kiss you.” Bridget wasn’t an idiot. That smile, so coy, so chilling. Those big red lips stretched across bright white teeth.

  “She did, I’m not denying that. She had her head turned like this.” Nate stood up, took his thumb under Bridget’s chin, turned her head, just so. Bridget could feel his breath on her neck. The warmth from his body. He lifted up her hair, her neck cool and damp. When he sat again, in the chair one seat closer to her, he let her hair fall back down against her back. When Bridget turned her head, they were eye level. “She was showing me her hair, what she’s doing to herself. Then she kissed me.”

  “What did you do?” Bridget breathed out.

  “I stopped her. Of course I did.” Nate stood up, put his hands on Bridget’s shoulders. “She’s confused, that’s all. Don’t make it worse by making this a thing. I’m the only person on earth being nice to her right now. I was comforting her and she got confused.”

  “Nate! This is a thing, whether you want it to be or not. You could lose your job!” She shimmied away from his grasp. “Mt. Oanoke would fry you in a second. These people . . .” She let her voice drop. These people were Nate’s people. Bridget and Alecia were outsiders. City folk, southern folk, same difference. Not us folk. Nate, though, he was us folk.

  “Trust me; do you trust me?” His face looked so earnest Bridget wanted to cry.

  Nate, the Boy Scout, born and bred in the country, his face red and corn-fed round, those bright, long-lashed eyes. He grew up here, the woods hiding a multitude of teenage indiscretions and later, adult ones. His naïveté and arrogance were stunning. Sometimes Bridget thought that the whispers of idle gossip actually powered the town. They’d thrill in stringing up one of their own, maybe even more than an outsider. So much further to fall.

  When Bridget didn’t answer, Nate continued. “She asked me not to tell anyone this. She doesn’t have anyone else.”

  “She has Taylor.” Bridget said, then stopped. Maybe, maybe not.

  “Do you know they call her a witch?” Nate pressed.

  “I’ve heard that for years now. Since she came in as a freshman. It’s the hair, her nastiness.” Bridget sighed. She could have done more to stop it. It was never rampant, just whisperings.

  Josh Tempest had cackled at her once in class and Lucia whipped around and barked at him like a dog. At the time, Bridget hadn’t known what to make of the exchange, but later, she heard in the faculty room that Josh had been caught by Kelsey Minnow’s father over the weekend in a particularly damning sex act, and the barking then made sense. Bridget chalked it all up to the language teenagers spoke and she only sometimes understood and promptly dismissed it. If she was being honest, the witch thing had been around for a while. Lucia didn’t seem especially bothered by any of it. Sometimes, if you asked Bridget, Lucia seemed to use it to her advantage. She liked her own edges sharp.

  “You remember what you told me about the birds, right?” Nate asked.

  “Yes.” Bridget pressed her fingertips into her thighs, an exasperated sigh in her throat. “It’s nonsense, really. I mean, how many dead animals do you see? Birds that fall out of nests, squirrels on the side of the road. Deer, for goodness’ sake. I don’t take it as an omen.” It was Pennsylvania, deer were more than abundant—they were a destructive force. “You hardly take note of it. It just is.”

  “I hear you. But listen, a couple years ago, she left one. On Andrew Evans’s doorstep.”

  “Oh God. Why?” Bridget fanned her hair up, her eyes big. Her patience was waning.

  “She was angry. Hurt. Rejected maybe? She says she wanted to scare him. They called her a witch, it was like a fuck you.”

  “Nate, they call her a witch because she does things like that. It’s not a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Bridget said. She thought, then, about Lucia’s journals, the entries that called out to Taylor, a desperate sort of grasping, like the slick edge of a cliff. So different from her angry, scribbling entries, so different from her childlike ones, memories and poems. Bridget couldn’t know, or even understand how many different sides there were to Lucia, to anyone really, but she could at least acknowledge there were things she couldn’t understand.

  She was so close to saying all this when Nate spoke, his voice hushed.

  “It’s so obvious to me, but maybe not to you.” Nate swallowed twice, his blue eyes shining, blinking. “We all become what people expect us to be.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Alecia, Thursday, April 30, 2015: 9 days after the birds fell

  When Alecia finally did ask Nate to move out—temporarily, she claimed, although she was never sure if she meant it—it was without fanfare. He agreed to it as though he’d been expecting it, which made Alecia want to kick and scream. Nate never made a scene about anything, ever. He’d certainly rarely bucked her or disagreed with her, with the exception of lately where he picked sulky fights at any opportunity. He sighed and packed a single duffel bag and Alecia stood in the doorway to their bedroom watching him, thinking this was someone else’s life, out of a movie, certainly not hers.

  “Tripp said I could stay there for a while.” He stood staring at the closet with his back to her and Alecia wondered what he’d pack now that he didn’t have to go to work anymore. She felt like scum, like dirt, making him leave when the whole town was against him and he had no job. But having him there was too disruptive, too awful, the anger burning hot and bright under her skin, making her jumpy. She snapped at Gabe, her patience fried by Nate’s shoes in the hallway, his cereal bowl in the sink, his thereness.

  “I just need you to go away so I can think,” she said lamely, and he shrugged like he either understood or didn’t care. He packed jeans, sweats, polo shirts, a button-down shirt. Casual, but not what he’d wear to work.

  He didn’t look at her when he started talking. “Is this it for you? I feel like you’ve made this decision in your head, that our marriage is over and I have no choice and nothing I could say to you would matter. You think I’m a liar and a cheat.”

  He folded his shirts, his socks, his underwear he’d pulled from the crumpled clean basket at the foot of the bed. It struck her then that after he’d left, she’d still be folding his blue plaid boxers, putting them away in a drawer that may or may not be his anymore. Stay. She mouthed the word but did not say it.

  “No. It’s not it for me. Nothing about this is simple or easy. I don’t even think we can afford a divorce and keep Gabe in therapy. But I’m just so . . . I can’t even look at you. I’m too mad at you—for lying. For whatever you may have done”—she held
up her hand and turned her head away, willingly blind to his open-mouthed protest—“and I just need to think without you here.”

  They each had gone around and around this so many times it just felt like words now, loose and unattached, clattering buttons in a tin. They’d gone through the yelling and the screaming and the crying the night before, Gabe huddled in his room, his hands cupped over his ears, until Alecia (and only Alecia, she might add) thought to go comfort him.

  He finally looked at her, his eyes bluer than Alecia had ever seen them, shiny and wet and blinking.

  “You don’t let me think, that’s all. Every time I turn around you’re pleading your case. And then it turns into this fight. Just . . . for a few weeks. Please.” Alecia didn’t even know what she was saying please to.

  “It will look bad,” Nate said, but he said it blandly, like he didn’t care. And then, like he’d just heard it. “Weeks?”

  “Who will know?” Alecia whispered. “I won’t tell, will you?”

  When he didn’t answer, she said, “Is it a conflict of interest? For Tripp?” Tripp Harris was Nate’s best friend and a Mt. Oanoke police officer. He wasn’t assigned to the investigation, but there were only a handful of cops in Mt. Oanoke. Tripp would have access to Nate’s case.

  “Ah, I don’t know. I don’t think so.” Nate shrugged, relieved to have something official to discuss. “I’ll come back at the end of the week. To see Gabe, get more clothes?” His voice tilted up insecurely, even though it wasn’t actually a question.

  Alecia nodded. She thought it was odd, unexpected, that this is how it would go when your husband was moving out. These desperate words tangled up in the everyday business of ending your marriage. Maybe ending your marriage.

  He stood in front of her, his bag hanging down at his side, his fist flexing and unflexing. She moved to the side to let him pass and he paused, unsure of what to do. He hadn’t left the house in ten years without kissing her good-bye, even when fighting. Sometimes the kiss was so quick, so perfunctory, it felt like steel against her cheek.

  He leaned down and brushed the side of her face with his lips. He didn’t say good-bye. Neither of them said I love you.

  Alecia stood in the upstairs hallway until she heard the downstairs door click open and shut.

  • • •

  Day one and day two didn’t feel that different from life before Nate left. Alecia hunkered down, her house a cocoon, only leaving to take Gabe to occupational therapy and then on day three, a doctor’s appointment. The only change in her routine was not texting Nate after to tell him that Gabe lost two pounds and wonder together if they should be worried. She singly decided they should not, and went about her day.

  She felt so good she turned right to go to the A&P instead of left to go home. From the back Gabe whimpered, his hand jamming up against the window as he watched his street pass him by. Pushed out of his routine, his distress grew and he flat palmed the window, slap, slap, slapping. He rocked forward until he knocked his forehead on the seat in front of him, which happened to be Alecia’s seat. Her head thrummed with Gabe’s rhythm.

  “Gabe. Gabey. Gabe.” She said over and over, waiting for him to calm, for the moment to pass. She didn’t sense a full-on meltdown coming, but she might have been blinded by her earlier euphoria. Alecia turned up the radio and flipped to a classical station; sometimes the only thing that calmed Gabe down was a little Beethoven. His window slapping and head bobbing slowed and Alecia circled the A&P parking lot with an eye in the rearview mirror. Typically, she’d wait until Nate got home at night to go grocery shopping, but if this is how things were going to be, and she barely dared to think permanently, then she needed to get Gabe used to it. What better day than today, when she felt so damn capable?

  With Moonlight Sonata blaring in the speakers, and a Dum Dum lollipop in her hand, she parked and climbed into the backseat.

  “Gabey, here. We’re just going to the store. I should have told you, but I didn’t and we’re here now and everything is okay, okay?” Alecia gently pushed his arms down to his sides—sometimes he let her, sometimes he fought back, once even blackening her cheekbone right below her eye—and held him there, rocking him side to side in his booster seat. He fought only once and then melted against her, his body hot and limp. She kissed the sweaty patch above his ear, her hand pressed on his back.

  “We’re okay. We’re okay,” Alecia murmured until Gabe finally stopped, his breathing leveling out to a few hiccups. She pulled him back, looked into his dark brown eyes, eyes that seemed as deep and black as the peak of night, and smiled. “We’re okay?”

  He looked past her out the window and she waved the lollipop in his field of vision, looping it around her head until he made eye contact with her. She nodded once at him and said firmly, “We’re okay.” He nodded back, his hand outstretched.

  God, if anyone knew how many Dum Dums she went through in a day they’d be appalled. All the sugar. The Red Dye Brigade would kill her.

  Alecia had already gone through the food allergy phase with Gabe. Lactose? Sure. Red dye? Not so much. Which meant she’d burn through the whole damn bag if it got Gabe to look at her, really look at her. Nate had admonished her once, waving his smartphone in front of her face like he’d invented it. They linked red dye to autism, flashing an article he read on Facebook. It’s all those lollipops you give him. She couldn’t do anything but laugh and wave him off. He’d been diagnosed well before she started feeding him lollipops anyway. Welcome to my life a year ago, Nate. I mean, really, didn’t he ever listen to her? When she kept notebooks of his food, charting his tantrums (and meltdowns, and documenting how tantrums and meltdowns differed), what he ate that day: lactose, milk, sugar, wheat, gluten, red dye, organic, pesticide-free, free-range, I mean, God, didn’t he ever just listen to her?

  If she thought about it, right in the parking lot of the A&P, she’d lose her shit all over again. She herded Gabe toward the “fire truck,” a cart with the front painted red that Gabe could ride in. It was huge and had a wide clasping belt. It also had a horn that annoyed everyone in the store, but Gabe was seventy pounds. He no longer fit in a cart.

  “Fire truck!” Gabe yelled. Two white-haired ladies turned their heads and smiled at Alecia. One waved to Gabe. He didn’t wave back. “Fire truck fire truck fire truck!” His voice screeched up, excited. As if the scene in the car had never happened. Alecia gritted her teeth at how easy it was for him to switch gears when he wanted to. She firmly planted a toy metal construction vehicle in each hand. Stay busy, she mentally pleaded.

  They got through produce and dairy before Gabe started to fidget, but Alecia fished another Dum Dum out of her pocket and passed it up to him. He happily pawed at it and stuck it in his mouth.

  Alecia kept her head low, avoiding the eyes of other shoppers. Everyone knew everyone, and if people were whispering about her, she didn’t want to witness it. She wanted to order her pound of Swiss cheese and be done with it.

  “Hi, Alecia,” said a mild female voice. Alecia tensed as she turned.

  Jennifer Lawson. The mother of a student of Nate’s, Taylor Lawson. Taylor’s brother had played baseball years before, earning a scholarship from it. To say Jennifer loved Nate would have been an understatement. She curled around him like a cat whenever she saw him. She might have done that to everyone, though.

  Jennifer was a yoga instructor, her bouncy hair in a perpetual ponytail. The only time she’d ever seen Jennifer out of Lycra was the Tempests’ Christmas party three years ago, when she wore a bright red dress cut up to here and down to there. The memory of that night took her breath away, so sudden and unexpected. It was back before Gabe was diagnosed and Alecia and Nate still did those things. Socializing had been Alecia’s favorite thing to do, when she was clinging to the idea of being one of them: a future playdate and PTA mom. Whether the exile from the soccer circles was real or self-induced was something Nate liked to debate. But Jennifer Lawson—Jenny, as Nate called her—was the l
ast person Alecia wanted to see.

  “How are you holding up?” Jennifer was ballsy, Alecia would give her that. Surely anyone else at this juncture, this close to the scandal, mere days from the article’s release, would turn their heads and look away, pretend to be searching for the perfect Brie. Jennifer’s voice was honey sweet.

  “I’m fine, thank you.” Alecia ducked her head, tucking the plastic bag of cheese under the eggs and bracing her fingertips on the cart.

  “I heard you kicked Nate out? Good for you.” Jennifer leaned forward, her French-manicured nails resting proprietarily on Alecia’s cart. Alecia stared at her long, tanned fingers, devoid of rings. Her husband left years ago, a scandal at the time in its own right, involving embezzlement of his company and his secretary. Alecia wondered what happened to Burt Lawson and shook off the urge to text Nate to ask.

  “Jennifer, I didn’t kick Nate out. We’re . . . I don’t know what. Trying to figure out the truth.” It sounded lame, even to Alecia, and Jennifer’s mouth opened in an O, her red lips almost laughing.