Sparrow Migrations (19 page)

Christopher nodded.

“Excellent. I’m going to bring by some people this afternoon. Robby and Sam, boy and his dad, from here in Michigan. Met them at the museum back in January. We spent an hour down in the archives. Christopher, this kid’s brilliant. Twelve years old. I’ve never seen so much raw potential.” Felk was visibly excited, his eyes bright, his words rapid. “But it’s raw, you know? I think his parents mean well, but they really don’t have any idea how to help him. So he’s got his local club. And this. The camp could be what cements it for him.”

“Twelve years old?” Christopher shook his head. He hated to disappoint Dr. Felk. “Thirteen’s the minimum age for camp.”

The older man paused, his train of thought interrupted. “Really. I didn’t know that. Well, maybe he’s got a birthday coming up.” He resumed. “Anyway. I want you to meet him. Robby Palmer. We’ll be by in about an hour.”

“I’ll keep an eye out.” They shook hands again.

Absorbed in talking to another prospect, he didn’t notice Felk approach with the Palmers an hour later. So he couldn’t stifle shock when he recognized the kid seated next to him at Baxter’s presentation, the one who had the screaming outburst. Clad in the same oversize gray Detroit Lions sweatshirt, hood up, accompanied by the furious father who had dragged him into the hall.
This was the prodigy?

“Robby and Sam, this is Dr. Christopher Goldman. He’s the one I told you about at lunch. He’s a biologist at Cornell University, the very best in the country. They run a special summer camp for young birders.”

“Hi, Robby,” Christopher extended his hand. He owed it to Dr. Felk to at least give the kid a chance. Robby stared at the floor, not meeting his eyes.

“Go on, Robby.” The dad nudged his son, who reluctantly withdrew a hand from his pocket and wordlessly placed it in Christopher’s.

Felk crouched down to Robby’s eye level. “Robby, it’s OK. Dr. Goldman can help you. He’s an accomplished scientist. He studied with me at the museum years ago.”

Robby’s head lifted to look at Felk. He glanced back at Christopher, reappraising him silently, skeptically, then nodding. Ridiculously, Christopher felt reprieved.

Felk stood up. “Christopher, you’re on.”

“OK. Well.” Christopher handed a brochure to Sam. Robby stuck his hand out and after missing a beat, Christopher handed one to him, too, suddenly wishing he’d let someone else handle this conference. Someone with kids. He didn’t know how to behave around kids.

After last summer’s camp, when Peter has raised the budget alarm and presented this conference as a prime recruiting opportunity, everyone in the department was surprised when Christopher not only volunteered to go, but to help with the summer camp.

Christopher tried to act noncommittal. It had been a sentimental impulse, a way to show Deborah he was trying, too, trying to prepare for potential parenthood. Well, maybe not just to show Deborah. Deep inside he did carry that imaginary video clip, of himself and a child in Sapsucker woods, each with a pair of binoculars. In the first frame he pointed where the child should look. In the next frame he crouched down with his own set level. In the third, he put his hands over the child’s, gently aiming the lenses together. He hadn’t even told Deborah about the camp before everything started happening: the crash, the transfer, the news about Helen, the positive pregnancy test.

Well, he was committed now. Christopher launched into his spiel, still directing his words at Sam. “Cornell’s summer birding camps are considered the premier learning experience available to future generations of ornithologists. Every summer young people ages thirteen to sixteen gather on our campus to spend two weeks—”

Sam interrupted. “Thirteen? Robby’s twelve.”

Christopher nodded. “Thirteen’s the minimum. When’s his birthday?”

“October.”

“Then he could come next summer.”

“Coming this summer.” Robby spoke for the first time.

Christopher shook his head and directed his answer at Sam again. “It’ll be better if he waits a year. Gets a little more mature.”

“This summer!” Robby insisted. Sam and Christopher both glanced nervously at Felk, who seemed unperturbed.

Felk looked at Christopher. “Robby and his family were visiting New York this winter when that plane crashed in the river. The one struck by the Canada geese. They were on a ferry in the Hudson, in fact. That’s when Robby got interested in geese. They came to the museum afterward. That’s how we met.”

“You were on a ferry in the river that day?” Stunned, Christopher looked first at father, then son.

“Yes.” Sam nodded. “It was a pretty pivotal experience for Robby, seeing that. You can imagine.”

“I can.” Christopher nodded. “I was on that plane.” His voice sounded like someone else’s.

“On the plane?” Sam echoed.

Robby’s head whipped up as Felk spoke. “Christopher, you were a passenger? I didn’t know. My God, what a thing to go through. Was Deborah with you?”

Before Christopher could nod again, Robby cut in. “Did you see them fly into the engine?”

“See the geese?”

Robby nodded.

“No. It all happened so fast, just a couple minutes after takeoff. We were—”

“Did you hear them?” Robby plunged forward with another question. “Hear them get sucked in?”

Christopher blanched, remembering. “Kind of. There were some thuds. Then the engines stalled.”

“The right side first, right?” Robby was bouncing up and down on his toes. “The news said both. But the NTSB report said the right side was hit first. About ten seconds before.”

“You read the NTSB report?” Christopher’s attention was now fully focused on Robby.

“How did you get your hands on that?” Sam asked incredulously.

“Internet,” Robby answered. “It’s unusual for both engines to be taken out. Most bird strikes are single-engine events.” He continued, reciting the report apparently from memory. “Were it not for pilot Sully Sullenberg’s quick thinking, the outcome could have easily been tragic.”

Felk jumped in. “Christopher, I think you can see Robby’s pretty interested in birds. Maybe we can work around that age limit.”

“I’ll check into it.” Christopher felt dazed, transported back to that cold day, so pivotal in his own life.

Another parent-child pair approached the booth. Felk took the cue, shepherding Robby away. “We’ll read through this material. I’m sure there’s plenty online, too. Christopher, how about one of your cards, too, in case Sam or Robby have questions later?”

Christopher had extended his card. As Robby reached for it, he handed Christopher the thumb drive. “Check this out, too.” As their fingers brushed, the momentary touch startled him.

From a dozen steps away, Felk had called over his shoulder. “Meet me in the bar for that drink at six.”

TWENTY

I
n the kitchen, Brett shuttled between sink and stove. Amanda was closeted in her room, Richard in his basement home office. Her only company was a pair of persistent sparrows twittering outside the window as they scrabbled for the dregs under the empty feeder.

Brett scooped the potatoes into a serving bowl. She filled the water glasses and lined up the salad dressings. Then she took a deep breath.

“Amanda, Richard! Dinner’s ready.”

Gathered at the table, she imagined them as a three-part Venn diagram, each one’s edges barely overlapping around the oak dining set. She and Richard had bought it when she was pregnant with Amanda, still suppressing the sensations from freshman year and deluding herself that she might bear the brood that would need a seven-piece set.

Richard started the grace, extending his hands to Brett and Amanda automatically. “Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest. Let these gifts to us be blessed . . .” As she gazed at the chipped purple polish on Amanda’s nails, Brett felt grateful for the hand-holding tradition, the first touch she’d had in a week. Now that she’d thrown away her life script, she was discovering there was a fine line between freeing and floundering.

“Amen,” Richard said, his eyes still closed.

“Amen,” Brett repeated, releasing Amanda’s hand. But on the other side, Richard held on. “Lord, we come to you tonight with heavy hearts, to ask for your forgiveness and guidance to help us find our way back to your path.”

Brett’s head whipped toward her husband. Richard squeezed her hand tighter.

“This path Brett is choosing, Lord, I know it’s unnatural. I know it’s not your way. Help me to help her realize that, Lord. Help us to again be husband and wife, as you intended. Parents to Amanda. A Christian family once again.”

Opening his eyes, he released their hands and picked up his fork. “Pass the potatoes please, Amanda.”

“Richard.” Brett felt ill. “My God. What are you saying?”

“What I believe, Brett. I’ve been praying about this all week. I’m not going to allow our family to disintegrate. We’ve turned away from God. Me too, I’ll admit it. I’ve been swept up with being pastor, spending so much time at church. I’m praying for the strength to change, to be more humble, more fulfilled in my role at home.” He turned to Amanda. “The potatoes, Amanda?”

Amanda looked as shocked as Brett felt, her hand frozen on the serving bowl.

“Richard, your prayers aren’t going to change me.”

“Don’t underestimate the power of prayer, Brett.”

He was so calm, so damn complacent.

“I don’t. I’ve been praying for years for the strength to tell you the truth. Both of you. And I finally did.” Brett’s chest heaved. “John, chapter eight:
‘You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
’
”

“Don’t you twist sacred Scripture. Don’t tell me God played a part in this.” An edge crept into Richard’s voice. “It’s Satan at work. He’s seized your soul, Brett. Lying for all these months. And this—this—sinful behavior.”

“My behavior is not your concern anymore.” Brett felt like her words might singe the air, she was so angry. She saw Amanda’s head swiveling between them. She looked torn between wanting to run to her room and not daring to miss a word. Watching her, Brett didn’t notice Richard’s clenched fist on the table until he banged it.

“Amanda, go to your room.”

“Richard, she’s barely started her dinner.”

“This isn’t a conversation for a child to hear!”

“Then why did you start it?” Brett asked, as Amanda interrupted.

“I’m almost seventeen, Dad!”

“Start it? I haven’t started anything! It’s you.” He stood up, a condemning finger pointed at Brett. “
You
who have placed this family on the precipice.” Pushing his chair back so hard it toppled over, Richard stormed out.

Bleak silence draped the dining room. Wordlessly, Amanda stood and left, too. Brett sat alone, feeling a black hole open inside her. Even the sparrows outside had deserted her.

Friday afternoons the Lab was always sparsely used. On days like today, the first to flirt with seventy degrees since last September, it was deserted. So the knock interrupted Christopher’s concentration. He looked up from Donald Baxter’s website.

“Peter. Come in.” He turned away from the computer to greet the lab director.

“Thanks.” Peter Hawkins removed a pile of folders from the lone visitors’ chair and settled his lanky frame. “Came by to thank you for the nice job in Lansing.”

“How’s that?”

“Just got a call from
Audubon
magazine. They’re planning a major feature on bird camp.”

“Is that right?” He remembered talking at the Expo with a woman who identified herself as the Midwest editor for the nation’s most widely circulated ornithology periodical. At the most he’d expected a blurb. “A big piece, huh?”

The director nodded. “They’ll be on campus this summer to shoot the art. It’ll probably run in the November issue. So it won’t help enrollment this cycle, but it should really goose the numbers for next year.”

Christopher smiled dutifully at the feeble pun. “Great. Glad I could help.” He knew this was important to Peter. He was the Lab’s most budget-conscious director ever, and had vowed to turn the camp from a break-even enterprise into a revenue stream.

Enrollment was too highly concentrated in the northeast states, he said. That was why he approved the Lansing conference, though travel budgets in general were being chopped across campus. The upper Midwest states and Ontario were close enough to upstate New York that parents could drive their kids to camp, meaning they wouldn’t automatically rule out the program as “too far” or “too expensive” because of an airfare tacked onto tuition.

Distance and cost were all relative, Christopher thought, his mind jumping to Deborah. He remembered attending a birding conference in New Zealand several years ago—before the travel budget cuts—his first in the southern hemisphere. A presenter referred to the “fall migration north.” Though it was entirely logical, his northern hemisphere–trained brain couldn’t wrap itself around the fact. Now, living less than a mile from Deborah in the vacant fellow’s apartment, he felt as far away and befuddled by her as he’d been at that conference in Christchurch. Hawkins was talking again.

“What’s that you’ve got up there? Donald Baxter’s site?” Peter leaned forward, frowning, gazing at the monitor behind Christopher. “I heard he was in Lansing, too.”

“Uh, yeah.” Christopher felt irritated at the intrusion, and at his own instinct to justify what he was doing.

“Humph. Waste of your time, if you ask me.” He stood up. “I’ll keep you posted on the piece. The reporter will probably want to talk to you again.”

I didn’t ask you,
Christopher thought. “Fine,” he said aloud, only wanting Peter Hawkins out of there. “Have a good weekend.”

“You, too.” The director finally left, his footsteps echoing.

Christopher leaned back, removing his glasses to massage his temples. Opening a drawer, he removed the thumb drive that kid gave him in Lansing. Dr. Felk’s protégé, Robby Palmer.

It was practically full and an organizational nightmare. Pdfs, Excel files, notepad files, JPEGs. Except for the file extensions, the names followed no protocols Christopher knew. He sighed, exasperated.

But though the research appeared haphazard, after what Dr. Felk told him over their drink in the hotel bar, Christopher knew the contents of the drive were organized to an almost military degree of meticulousness—just Robby’s own brand.

Felk was seated before a glass filled with ice when Christopher had entered at 6:05 p.m.

“What’s that?”

“Scotch on the rocks.”

“Make it two,” he told the bartender, settling onto the stool next to the older man. Wearily he rubbed his temples.

“Long day?”

Christopher nodded, then straightened up. He didn’t want to tell Felk the whole story about himself and Deborah.
Steer the conversation away.
Reaching into the pocket of his tweed jacket, he laid the thumb drive on the bar. “I need you to take this back to the boy.”

“Robby.”

“Yes. Robby. It would be a conflict of interest for me to look at his research before he applies. If he applies. You must know that. It would be unfair to the other—”

“Christopher.” Felk held up his hand. “Keep the drive.”

“Really, it’s not appropriate—” Christopher began to protest again, but Dr. Felk’s face stopped him. Almost translucent it was, the wrinkles and bifocals and thin lips belying his inner radiance. Christopher had seen that face before. In the crowd after his PhD commencement, a ceremony that his own father didn’t bother to attend. The card with the Phoenix postmark had arrived two weeks late, and he had let Deborah open it. He sipped the drink the bartender brought, remembering. So he’d hear him out.

“So. You’re convinced he’s exceptional.”

Felk nodded. “That morning we spent in the archives, he was a sponge. Anything to do with geese, with
Anserinae,
he just devoured. Pictures, specimens, charts—”

“If he’s spending hours on Baxter’s website and reading NTSB reports, he does seem to have the curiosity,” Christopher said slowly. “But there’s something about his manner, the way he presents himself. It’s—it’s off-putting,” he concluded lamely.

“That’s what I want to talk to you about.” Felk shifted in his seat. “Robby has autism.”

Christopher frowned. “I don’t know much about that. It’s neurological, right?”

“Right. Inhibits communication and social abilities, typically. People on the autism spectrum—and it is a huge range—also typically exhibit preoccupations with very narrow interests. Robby’s is the geese that struck the plane.”

“What about the hood? The wishy-washy handshake? The outburst at Baxter’s presentation?”

“Sensory issues, most likely. Kids on the spectrum have sensitive systems that get overloaded easily, and they shut down. The Baxter thing was because he felt wronged. He doesn’t know an appropriate way to handle it, so it came out like it did.”

Christopher rattled the ice in his glass. “You think a boy with all that going on can handle bird camp?”

“Absolutely.” Felk bored his gaze into Christopher’s eyes. “Cognitive deficits can accompany autism. But in high-functioning kids like Robby, more often it masks intelligence. Between you and me, I’m guessing that thumb drive will show he was a least a little justified about tearing into Baxter, too.”

“Why are you so interested in him, Arthur?”

Felk sat back. A long moment passed. “I had a brother who was autistic. Retarded, most people called him. No one had ever heard of ‘the spectrum’ back then—in the forties. He was pretty severe. Benjamin. He was four years older than me, and I talked before he did. Doctor advised my parents to put him in an institution. They agreed. With five other kids to take care of, they were overwhelmed.

“But it killed my mother. Literally.” Felk stared over Christopher’s head now, looking years and miles away from the bar. “The institution was probably a hundred miles from our house. She visited every chance she got and when one visit was over, she was counting the days till the next. One December a blizzard was forecast when she was scheduled to visit. Dad tried to convince her not to go, but you’d have had to lock her up to keep her from Benjamin, especially right before Christmas.

“She made it for her visit.” Felk paused for a long swallow. “But she never made it home. Police never could say for sure why. The storm was over by the time she left the next day. Day was clear. Of course, they didn’t plow like they do now. Maybe she was going too fast. At any rate, her car skidded off the road, into a snow bank, which buried the car. If she wasn’t dead when she hit it, she was buried alive. The officer brought us her pocketbook. That was all.”

“I’m sorry,” Christopher said softly.

His words pulled Felk back to the present. He sighed deeply and looked at Christopher. “It broke my dad up. He started drinking. He was dead in less than ten years, his liver destroyed. So before I was out of high school, I lost both my parents, and my only brother, to the institution. And all because people were afraid of Benjamin. Afraid because he was different.”

“I’m sorry,” Christopher said again. He thought about Deborah, still in the early stages of her pregnancy, and the baby’s hidden, developing DNA strand. Was the Huntington’s gene there already? If so, would it remain dormant and benign? Or would it bide its time until the ominous threshold of thirty-five?

What about autism? The little he knew surmised a genetic role, too. His mother’s cancer, too. These were the kinds of risks having children posed. He shuddered involuntarily and drained his glass.

Felk nodded, accepting his inadequate rote sympathy. “There’s a happy ending, though. When we got old enough, my sisters and I transferred Benjamin to an adult group home in New Jersey. It became home for him. He lived there for more than thirty years. He got a job stocking grocery store shelves. He learned how to take the bus.