The Probable Future

  “How so?” When Stella wouldn’t say, Elinor insisted. She was curious, too. Here was the bargain: if she were to give out information, she wanted some in return. “Go on. I won’t be shocked, whatever it is.”

  “For one thing, I know you’re not well.” Stella began to braid her hair, a worry habit she’d recently begun. “It’s some organ …”

  “Pancreatic cancer.” No one in Unity was aware of Elinor’s illness, let alone its exact nature, except for Brock Stewart. Elinor Sparrow looked closely at her granddaughter to see how Stella might have guessed her secret. All she saw was that there wasn’t a single lie inside the girl. “You can tell me when,” she declared.

  “People shouldn’t know when they’re going to die,” Stella said mournfully. “If you knew when, you’d never accomplish anything. You’d just sit there and wait for the terrible day to come. Maybe you’d even go crazy knowing—every day of waiting would be torture. You’d never read books or build buildings or fall in love. It would just get you in trouble, like what happened when I told my father and he tried to help someone.”

  “It would be different for me. I wouldn’t mind knowing.” Ever since Elinor had finished her treatment and been told there was nothing more that could be done, she’d been waiting. For her, it would be a relief to have a timetable, something final at last. “I’m old. I’m not putting up buildings. I’m not falling in love. I can know when the time will be, Stella, and it won’t hurt me. I have nothing to lose. Tell me.”

  “It won’t be any time soon,” Stella allowed. “It will happen when there’s snow falling.”

  Did Elinor now feel a dread of snow when she heard this prophecy? Most people with her strain of cancer did not last but a few months. She might have considered herself lucky before to have any more time; had that changed? Now when winter approached, would she try her best to flee, to find some place on earth where snow could never touch her, a southern vista where she might live forever? Or would she go to her window when the first flakes fell, grateful for one last glimpse of the cold white sky?

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to see it and I probably shouldn’t have told you. It’s so much better not to know.”

  Elinor understood that the gift someone was given was often the one most difficult to accept. Now, as it turned out, after a lifetime of searching for the truth, Elinor had told a lie herself, for she did indeed have something to lose, and she had already fallen in love with this child.

  “I might as well teach you one thing about Rebecca Sparrow. Something it can’t hurt to know. As long as you don’t tell your mother.”

  Stella followed her grandmother out of the garden, down toward the lake. The air was mottled and cool, fish-light, March-light. The sky was tumbling down, making the lawn appear endless and deep, a lake of new grass, dusky and brown at the edges. Soon enough, they reached the path Hap Stewart had described, the one where nothing grew. The woods on either side were filled with wild cherries and gooseberries, chokeberry and huckleberry, and several of the wild peach trees said to have floated ashore from a shipwreck, which bore the sweetest fruit in the county. Yet on the path they took nothing grew, just as Hap had said. Not swamp cabbage nor milkweed, not nettles nor common grass.

  “Is this where the horse panicked?”

  “That horse was bit by a fly and ridden by an idiot,” Elinor told Stella. “And it was after Rebecca died, so they can’t blame her for that.”

  They had reached the muddy shore where the snapping turtles laid their eggs. The branches of the weeping willows dipped into the shallows; swarms of mosquitoes drifted over the water.

  “Stand right here. My grandmother, Elisabeth, taught me this.” Elinor pointed to a spot on the muddy shore. “Arms straight out. Now close your eyes and don’t move. Don’t even blink.”

  Stella heard them before she saw them: the fluttering of feathers, the chirrup so close to her ear, the sound of the wind, as though the sky were wrapping around her, so near it was falling onto her skin.

  “Stay absolutely still,” Elinor advised.

  Stella felt one bird land, then another. One lit on her left shoulder. One on her right arm, then a dozen or so more. By the time she opened her eyes, something was vibrating in her chest, a bird beating against her rib cage. The sky that began with her and went upward was teeming with sparrows. Her new science teacher had told them that the sky only looked blue because moisture mixed with dust and made it appear that way. In truth, without the blue light, without the dust, space was empty. People saw what they thought they saw, not what was actually there. They made up their reality out of water and dust.

  That was what happened when the three boys from town saw Rebecca standing in this exact same place on the shore, with dozens of birds perched on her outstretched arms. The frightened boys decided what they were seeing: something unnatural, that was their fatal estimation. Something as impossible as a sky that wasn’t really blue. Rebecca was only a girl, given over to the washerwoman when no one else wanted her, a child whose hands were ruined by the time she was ten, cracked by lye and grease. The shopkeepers didn’t like her in their stores, touching the silk or the biscuits, for her hands often bled from the work of doing their laundry. Girls her own age looked right past her, as though she were nothing more substantial than a pile of the ashes from which she made her soap. Men gazed at her and thought she’d be a pretty thing someday, if she had the chance to grow up without first being felled by fever, or hunger, or the thousand sorrows she’d be prey to before she was a woman. Women pitied her, but went on their way; they had their own troubles to attend to, and mercy was a scarce commodity.

  But to those boys who were crouched down in the chokeberries on that day in March so long ago, it suddenly seemed that Rebecca was something more than a washerwoman’s girl. With her long black hair flying and her eyes shut tight, she looked as though she were dreaming, as though she were ready to rise up from the shoreline of the lake that was bottomless, as endless, some people said, as the sky up above. Soon there were so many birds, the boys could barely see Rebecca. She’d all but disappeared right in front of their eyes. Up to then, she’d had no name but Rebecca, given to her by the town fathers when she appeared out of the wilderness not speaking their language, wearing her silver star. Now, the boys gave her a second name. Rebecca Sparrow, they whispered, naming her then and there.

  It was fearsome in some deep way to see her poised there, so unafraid. Other girls in town ran away from sparrows, as they did from bats and crows; such things, after all, were bad luck, bound to get tangled in your hair and bring death to a household. The girls in Unity didn’t go barefoot, as Rebecca did, the soles of her feet hardened by stones. Their hands didn’t bleed at the end of a day. They couldn’t call creatures out of the sky, without a single word, without a sign.

  The boys began to whisper what all this might mean, first among themselves, then to anyone willing to listen. Gossip spread like fever, before there was time to take precautions. Soon enough, every boy in town had hidden in the chokeberries to watch Rebecca wash laundry, and every one swore he had spied a thousand birds perched on her shoulders as she hung yards of homespun and linen out to dry. Before long the women in town said a prayer whenever Rebecca brought baskets of clean, starched clothes to their back doors. They called her Rebecca Sparrow right to her face, and she didn’t seem to mind her name, not any more than she minded that her feet had been hardened or that her hands were so rough she could reach into pots of boiling water.

  Rebecca took on her name the way she accepted the rest of her fate, and she never once complained. In time, she hoped to leave this place where the boys spied on her and threw rocks, where everyone thought they were better than she. One day, she might just fly away, and then they’d all be surprised. If she were fortunate, if she didn’t give up hope, if her wishes all came true, she might truly feel nothing at all.

  III.

  MATT AVERY had lived alone for eleven years, ever since his mother died,
far too early, everyone agreed, for Catherine Avery was a kind soul who deserved an easier end to her life. There wasn’t a day that went by during her last miserable weeks when Catherine didn’t have at least one visitor, a neighbor, a ministering angel from down the street or across town who had brought over a pan of macaroni and cheese or a chicken potpie along with their warmest regards. These kind folks—Eddie Baldwin and his family, the Harmon brothers, Iris Elliot and her half-sister, Marlena Elliot-White—all insisted Matt take the opportunity to go get himself some rest while there was someone else to watch over Catherine. Matt would gratefully sink into his bed for a few hours of a deep sleep so crammed with realistic dreams—dreams of bread and butter, of washing his hands, of mowing lawns—that he sometimes awoke thinking he’d dreamed up his mother’s illness as well. But, no, there she was when he went back to the living room, still in a hospital bed, still in pain, doing her best to appear cheerful, insisting to Matt that she was fine, when it was clear she was dying.

  Elinor Sparrow came to call once a week. Then, as time wore on and Catherine’s health disintegrated further, she stopped by more often. She brought bay laurel, which grew wild around Cake House, and bunches of Fairy roses; she brought a book of fairy tales, which were the only stories Catherine wanted read to her. Catherine’s mother had read such tales to her when she was a girl, but now the stories came alive for her. As it turned out, Elinor Sparrow, who had never bothered to read to her own daughter, had a talent for voices. She was as believable a fox as she was a sheep. An excellent princess, a wonderful shepherd, a witch so convincing Catherine had to be given an extra dose of morphine in order to get to sleep after certain tales were read.

  It was an unexpected friendship, considering the women’s history. Both were grandmothers of a granddaughter they never saw, both had lives which had been trampled by Will. Matt was frankly shocked at how much his mother looked forward to Elinor’s visits. He thought it might be the roses Elinor brought, or the stories, or perhaps it was their shared regret. He guessed the women spent their time together discussing Will and his many failures, or were they reminiscing about the Unity they had known growing up, a smaller, slower town than the one they lived in now? Then, one day, Matt peered into the living room during one of Elinor’s visits, now a daily occurrence, the primary event of Catherine’s day, and he saw they weren’t discussing anything at all. Elinor was holding Catherine Avery’s hand, seeing her through her agony.

  I’m here with you, he heard Elinor whisper to his mother. You don’t have to hide your pain from me.

  Ever since, Matt charged Elinor half what he should when he collected fallen wood from her acreage, which he chopped into neat fireplace-sized logs. Not that Elinor Sparrow would ever notice this courtesy or ever think to thank him. Still, Catherine had shown Elinor something she couldn’t reveal to her own son: how hard it was for her to die, how much she wanted, even on the worst of days, to hold on to a world where there were roses, and neighbors, and a boy who had grown up to be a man like Matt Avery, someone who knew when to back away and when to step forward. Someone she could depend on.

  Will returned to town a few times that year, quick visits that clearly took a great deal out of him. Jenny never accompanied him; when asked, he told people Jenny stayed in Boston because Stella, then two, needed her at home. But the truth was, he never bothered to tell Jenny about these trips to Unity until they were over. She would have been one more burden, one more person whose feelings he had to consider, one more pile of stones, dragging him down.

  It came as no surprise that Will wasn’t comfortable with illness. The sojourns to see his mother were predictably brief. He had always run from any problem, and that behavior didn’t stop now. He was so unused to giving of himself, so unable to place another’s needs before his own, that he broke out in hives whenever he approached the town line. This was what he didn’t want Jenny to see: the red welts on his skin. The panic he held close. The way he’d break into a sweat when he drove down Main Street, so that all the damned bees in town would gravitate toward him and he’d have to keep all the car windows closed, or risk being stung, which, because of his allergy, would surely put him in shock.

  How do you do it? he’d said to Matt when he came to visit their dying mother. How do you sit here and watch her die without going crazy?

  Several times, Will had stopped at Hull’s Tea House, where he fortified himself with caffeine and sugar and a few kind words from that good-natured Liza Hull, who always gave him a slice of apple pie, made from a secret family recipe that had won a prize at the county fair on two separate occasions. But in the last month of Catherine’s life, Will didn’t even bother to stop at the tea house. He didn’t come to town at all. He missed every visit he vowed he would make. The last time that he phoned with his regrets, he’d given Matt such a flimsy excuse—some nonsense about music exams and a flurry of snow that had been predicted—that Matt had let his brother have it. Had he not a shred of mercy for their mother? Not an instant of kindness? He called Will every name he could think of and then he just stopped. He had no more curses left inside, and no understanding of Will. Matt had every reason to be angry, left to be the one to tell his disappointed mother Will wouldn’t be coming by, yet again, when there might not be a next time. Every day was measured into hours, then minutes, then seconds ticking by. But Matt had actually stopped raging because he’d taken pity on his brother. No one would want to be that selfish, not if they could prevent it, not if they had a choice in the matter.

  In the end, Matt had told Will, It’s all right if you don’t drive out. She understands.

  And perhaps she did. Kindness had come easily to Catherine, after all. And kindness, Matt grew to understand during the course of his mother’s illness, came in many forms. The neighbors, for instance, many of whose names he couldn’t recall, who brought over so many casseroles that the food lasted for months, long after the funeral. The single women in town still laughed about how full the freezer at the Avery house was; each and every one of them had thought they might have a chance with Matt once he was left on his own. Matt had dated a girl from Monroe for a while, and he had a girlfriend in New York that he visited on weekends, but that all stopped when his mother fell ill. Even when she had passed on, Matt was distracted; not that he was heartless, but his heart was taken up with something and had no more room for anyone else. He was big, and handsome, and half a dozen women in town would have taken him home, even if it was just for the night, but there was no way to win over a man like Matt Avery. Not with love that lasted a few hours, not with home-cooked meals; he liked things simple, a can of soup, some beans and toast, a bowl of noodles, lukewarm and covered with cheese. He preferred staying away from whatever could hurt him most. He’d become a bachelor, set in his ways, interested in his studies. If he wasn’t pleased with his solitude, he was comfortable with it all the same. If he hadn’t settled for his lot, then he’d come to accept a life that was nothing like the one he once wished to have.

  Whether or not he was living in accordance with his true nature, he had no idea. He had simply followed fate to this place: meals taken alone, nights at the library, mornings in a house where the only voice he heard was his own as he chatted with the birds outside his window. He was supposed to go to NYU, but that was years ago, when his mother first took ill, and his plans hadn’t worked out. Instead, he attended the state college in Hamilton, taking night classes, eventually earning his bachelor’s degree. Soon, he would have his master’s in history, if he ever finished his thesis, a study of Colonial life in Unity. Matt was well aware that the state college wasn’t Harvard, but he’d be willing to wager that he knew a hell of a lot more about their hometown than his brother ever would, despite Will’s high-priced education. He knew, for instance, that those peach trees which had naturalized all through the county had initially been shipped to Farmer Hathaway, along with two bolts of silk and a silver-plated mirror. All of it had been carried on an ill-fated ship called The Good D
uck, which went down fast after hitting a stretch of rocks in the marshes in the days when there was still deep water and sturdy docks as far as a man could see. There were plum trees from China onboard as well, and rosebushes bound in twine; there were bales of green tea left drifting over the mallows and pickerelweed. One thing Matt knew for certain: his brother wouldn’t know a peach tree from a plum, black tea from green, truth from self-serving dishonesty.

  Matt had gone up to Harvard once, to visit Will and Jenny after they’d married and moved into an apartment in Central Square. He was a junior in high school, and Will and Jenny had seemed so much older, so sophisticated, cut off from their families and living on their own. Most college students, even when married, lived in the dormitories, but not Will. Will, who’d been accepted despite his laziness, due to phenomenal SAT scores, was a spoiled brat in Matt’s opinion. He needed his space; his lifestyle demanded better. He had a grand piano he’d finagled from Lord knows where, and such a thing would never fit in student housing. Even back then, Will’s neighbors complained about him, whether he was practicing Brahms or letting go with some boogie-woogie at 2:00 A.M.

  What Matt remembered most about his visit to Cambridge were the hours he spent in Bailey’s Ice Cream Parlor, where Jenny was working. He’d gone back, years later, but the place was gone, and he couldn’t quite recall exactly where on Brattle Street it had been. What Matt did remember was that even though Jenny had only been a year and a half older, she had seemed like a woman, while he was still a boy. She’d already been promoted and was the manager at Bailey’s, and was therefore free to fix Matt complimentary ice cream sundaes all day long. He had them for breakfast, for lunch, and for dinner. Butterscotch, hot fudge, strawberry, marshmallow swirl. He couldn’t get enough. After two days of this diet, he was shaking from the sugar, yet he couldn’t seem to stay away from Bailey’s. He’d set out for the Fogg Art Museum or Blodgett Pool, but he’d always wind up walking back to Brattle Street. He had usually followed Will and Jenny around back in Unity, but it wasn’t until the visit to Cambridge that he realized why this was so.