Sparrow Migrations (6 page)

“Your father probably meant to fill it up but got sidetracked.” She glanced out the window at the feeder, nearly empty again, shaking her head as she hoisted the sack. “I guess someone needs me, anyway. Be right back.”

SIX

T
he instant the security guard at the American Natural History Museum unlocked the revolving door, Robby was inside a compartment by himself, his breath fogging the glass. How typical, Linda thought, watching the back of his head, still cradled in the hood and headphones. They spent their lives going round and round with Robby. And like Sam said in the hotel room, they always followed, always a step behind, always separated from his world.

Inside, Robby didn’t even glance at the dinosaur skeleton dominating the opulent lobby. He aimed straight for two redwood-sized granite pillars that framed the entrance to the interior.

“Robby, wait. We have to pay first,” Linda called as he dodged past a security guard. Grim-faced, Sam increased his stride and caught his son in five paces, taking hold of him firmly, by both shoulders this time, turning him back toward the admission counter. “Third floor!” Robby protested. “Birds! Third floor!”

“Pay first. Then birds,” Sam said, using abrupt sentences, the fewest words possible, as the behavioral psychologist advised.

“Birds!” Robby insisted, freezing his body.

Still holding his shoulders, Sam said evenly, “We pay first. Then see birds. Pay first. Or leave now.” He released Robby’s shoulders and waited.

This time, for his own random reasons, Robby chose to comply. Mutely he followed Sam through the line switchbacks to the admissions counter, where Linda exhaled and the guard watched curiously.

Two regular admission adult tickets and one child—Robby just edged in under the twelve and under limit—cost $48.50. “Good grief,” Sam muttered, putting away his Visa.

“Come on,” Linda said. “If it’s half as good as he thinks it is, this will be the bargain of the vacation.”

Sam shrugged, then turned back to Robby, clapping him on the back. “So, third floor, right, Rob?”

Instead of wincing and shrinking away, Robby merely nodded and fell in step beside them, even removing his headphones, which cheered Linda disproportionately. She hoped Sam noticed.

She needn’t have bothered with the museum map. Robby navigated them expertly to the Frank M. Chapman Memorial Hall of North American Birds on the third floor, where he suddenly looked uncertain.

“This is it, right?” Sam walked in. “Come on, let’s take a look around.”

Robby walked in but barely glanced at the first few specimens on exhibit. He tucked his chin and shuffled his feet.

“What the hell’s the matter now?” Sam whispered. “Robby, we’re finally here. This is what you wanted to see. Take a look!”

Robby remained unengaged through the first two rooms. In the third room they found a display devoted to East Coast migration paths. Robby’s head lifted. He read the entire label. Linda could follow along reading his lips.

Reaching the end of the text, he bounced up and down. “Geese!” he shouted, his voice echoing in the nearly empty hall. “Geese!” He started running from display to display, pausing to scan each, bouncing on his toes, grunting, and flapping his left fist.
The anxiety trifecta.

“This is what I was afraid of,” Sam said. “I didn’t see any geese exhibition listed online.”

“Let’s ask him,” Linda said, pointing to the next room, where a man typed industriously on a keyboard.

“Excuse me, could you tell us if you happen to have any exhibitions of geese?” Linda asked.

“Canada geese!” Robby was suddenly at her elbow. Linda jumped.

“Robby, you scared me. OK, Canada geese, then,” she repeated.

“Let me check.” The man’s name tag said he was Thomas, a volunteer from the Bronx. Typing again, he paused, then responded with the head shake Linda dreaded. “Lots of hits, but no Canada geese showing up on display at the moment.”

“The Museum’s bird collection grew to become one of the greatest in the world and now holds ninety-nine percent of all known species,” Robby said flatly.

“Excuse me?” Thomas looked at them over the top of his glasses.

“It’s something he’s read, probably on your website,” Linda explained.

“I know. I’m looking at it right now. He said it word for word. That’s amazing,” Thomas said, looking Robby up and down.

“So find them,” Robby said, resuming his toe bouncing.

“Find what?”

“Canada geese.”

“We don’t have that type of bird on exhibit now. I just told you.”

“Ninety-nine percent of all known species are here, and you don’t have that one?” Sam asked, catching on to Robby’s unspoken argument. “That does seem kind of odd. It’s not like a goose is some rare, exotic thing.”

“Well, no, but that’s what the computer says,” Thomas said defensively, pointing at the screen.

“Canada geese!” Robby interjected again, his voice shrill as he yanked on his sweatshirt strings. His downward spiral was accelerating.

“Isn’t there someone else we could ask?” Linda said.

“Well, I could call down to the ornithology offices, I guess,” Thomas said, a note of doubt in his voice. He consulted a phone list and dialed. He hung up almost immediately. “Busy.” He picked it up and tried again. “Still busy.” Linda heard Robby’s low moan of frustration. She hoped Thomas hadn’t.

He was dialing a third time when a short, bearded older man walked quickly into the room. He passed their clustered quartet without a glance, intent on something across the room.

Spotting him, Thomas hung up. “Dr. Felk! I was just trying to reach you.”

“Canada geese. Where?” Robby’s voice was so loud.

Dr. Felk pivoted. “Reach me? Who are you? Thomas?” He lowered his gaze as he retraced his steps, squinting at Thomas’s name tag through the bottom of his wire-framed bifocals. “I’ve met you before, right?”

“Yes, many times, Dr. Felk,” the volunteer said. “These visitors here—”

“Canada geese! Canada geese!” Robby’s pitch and intensity were increasing.

Dr. Felk turned away from Thomas, taking a long look at Robby. Bushy gray eyebrows rose just above his glasses, then dropped as he took in her son, whose hood was not only up but tight around his face, from tugging on the strings. Now one hand tugged while the other plucked nervously at the headphones around his neck.

“Visitors. I see. Yes. You’re interested in Canada geese, young man?”

Mutely, Robby nodded.
Hang in there
, Linda thought.

“Wonderful. You’ve come to the right place. Follow me.” The old man reached out toward Robby’s shoulder, as if to pilot him, Linda thought anxiously. But no, his hand was merely extended in a beckoning gesture, summoning them to follow him out of the gallery, the way he had entered. Robby trotted along compliantly.

“Uh, sir? Sir? Excuse me,” Thomas called after him nervously.

“Yes? What is it, Thomas?” Felk halted and looked over his shoulder.

“Sir, the computer says we don’t have any Canada geese on exhibit. I did a search.”

“You did, did you?”

Thomas nodded. Felk snorted, a sound that turned into a cough.

“Can’t trust computers to know a museum, Thomas. I’ve been working here thirty-five years. Been through this place top to bottom. Trust me, we have Canada geese. I’ll take it from here.”

Shaking his head and muttering again, Felk led them to a service elevator and jabbed the down button. “Nobody’s asked about a damn bird in six months. Everyone wants the dinosaurs, the IMAX, the gift shop. You want to see a Canada goose, son? All right, then. What’s your name?”

“Robby,” said Robby, uncharacteristically responding before either Sam or Linda spoke.

“Nice to meet you, Robby.” The elevator doors opened. Again, Felk gestured, indicating they should enter first. Inside he pressed the button labeled “B.” “I’m Arthur Felk, chief ornithologist here at the museum. Been in charge of the birds around here since before Thomas back there was born.”

“Linda Palmer,” Linda said, extending her hand as the elevator lurched downward. “My husband, Sam. We’re visiting from Detroit.”

Felk shook their hands, but Robby was clearly where his interest lay. “What do you want to know about Canada geese?”

“Plane crash.”

Felk’s brow furrowed. “Plane crash? Don’t follow you, son.”

“Geese make planes crash. Like yesterday’s.”

“Yesterday’s? That one over in the river?” Another cough.

“We were on a ferry in the river when it happened. Robby’s been a little, well, obsessed with it since. He has autism,” Linda started to explain. “I don’t know how much you know about autism, but . . .”

Felk held up his hand, cutting her off. “So they’re saying it was a bird strike? I hadn’t heard that yet. Well, I’ll show you what we’ve got in our collection now. But you might want to come back another day, because it’s likely those engines will be headed this way, once the FAA’s done with them, anyway.”

“Excuse me?” Sam spoke up. “Why would an engine be of interest to a natural history museum?”

“Wouldn’t. It’s what’s
in
the engine they want us to look at. We’ll take it apart, do scrapings for DNA. Try to confirm the species. Cross-reference with known nesting sites in the crash area.” The elevator bumped to a stop.

Linda’s face pulled back in disgust, but as they stepped out into the museum basement, she read fascination on Robby’s. Felk saw it, too.

“Pretty neat, right? The more we know about birds, the better we get at preventing bird strikes. There are thousands per year, you know.”

“Thousands?” Robby’s face clouded, and he covered his ears. “That’s a lot of dead birds.”

“Far too many,” Felk agreed. “That’s why we keep trying to learn more.”

Energetically, Felk led them down a long hall. Sam increased his pace to keep up.

“Look, Dr. Felk, it’s very kind of you to take the time with us. But you must be busy—”

“I’m perfectly capable of managing my schedule, thank you for your concern,” Felk said. “I’ve got plenty of time for a bright boy like your son, who shows enough sense to take an interest in birds. They’re our most highly evolved species, you know.”

Sam stopped short. Linda read chagrin on his face. Felk suddenly stopped, too, then pulled out a key ring, inserting one in a door with “Ornithology Archives” etched in a frosted glass pane.

“Here we are,” he said, swinging it open.

Deborah turned on the radio as Christopher drove northward. The long-term parking lot at LaGuardia was an hour of silence behind them.

“. . . the probable cause of the crash is assumed to be a bird strike. The leading cause of crashes occurring within five minutes of takeoff or landing, these strikes are unpredictable. We’ll speak with an expert on bird strikes at the FAA after . . .”

Quickly, she turned it back off. The crash was now history. She wanted to think about the future.

“It’ll be Ramsey,” Christopher turned the radio back on.

“What?”

“Ted Ramsey. The FAA expert on bird strikes. We’ve had him up a few times. Peter’s hoping to get some grant money out of him.”

“Christopher, I really don’t want to hear any more about the crash.”

“Just this interview, Deborah.”

The anchor returned. “We’d like to welcome Ted Ramsey of the FAA, an expert on bird strikes.”

“I knew it.” Christopher smiled triumphantly and turned up the volume.

Sighing, Deborah tuned it out, turning her gaze to the window. It was a brilliant winter day, the sun glinting off the snow-covered landscape. Despite the sun, the day was all hard, rigid edges—the flat plane of cold glass through which the black road sliced through stark white fields that met a cloudless, fiercely blue sky at the unyielding line of the horizon.

The view mirrored the boundaries confining her own future. Forty-two years old, going on forty-three. Two failed IVF cycles. Three embryos left. A husband drawing a line in the sand. Deborah sighed again as Christopher snapped off the radio.

“Interesting.”

“What’s that?” asked Deborah, glad to turn away from the window.

“Ted’s theory. That as planes age, the metal fatigue of the engines makes them more vulnerable to damage in strikes.”

“Metal fatigue. I always thought that was such a strange phrase,” Deborah said. “Kind of scary, really.”

“How so?”

“It sounds like a contradiction. Metal’s solid. Hard. It’s not supposed to wear out.”

“Everything wears out, eventually.”

“Ithaca 100 miles.”
The road sign flashed past the window, reminding Deborah that their regular lives lay ahead. She cleared her throat. “It feels like we’re not talking about the engine anymore.”

“Aren’t we?”

“I mean, that’s how you sounded in the hotel, talking about the IVF. Worn out. Fatigued.”

“Definitely,” he said without hesitating.

“So it’s not that you’ve changed your mind about wanting kids, really. You’re just worn down by the process?”

“I don’t know that you can separate the two things. And the first doesn’t seem worth the second.”

“But you’ve never really told me that before.”

“Not explicitly, maybe, but . . .”

“You said that it’s been my fixation, my preoccupation, with getting pregnant that bothered you the most.”

“Well, yeeess.” Christopher stretched out his words. “That and the time passing. I’m forty-five. You’re forty-two. The risks keep getting higher at our ages.”