A Catalog of Birds

  She asks him to turn his palm over and back while holding a short length of bamboo. When he keeps dropping it, she tapes his fingers around it. It takes every ounce of concentration he has to turn his wrist over. And back. She pushes him to do ten reps; at six he can no longer make his hand move.

  Every exercise sounds Mickey Mouse until he tries to do it. Sitting at a table, putting his palm on a tennis ball and rolling it away from him and then back again. Trying to touch each finger to his thumb.

  Cindy pushes him on. “We’re trying to reestablish the neural pathways and connections.”

  She presents him with a fat crayon, asks him to print his name with his right hand. He can’t grip it in his fingers; he can’t even fist it. She tells him to take it home and practice. He’d like to take a hammer to it.

  He leaves these appointments exhausted and demoralized. When Cindy jumps up to help him with his jacket, he has to restrain himself from striking her.

  The fact that his mother dropped him off on her way to work because he still can’t drive adds to his fury. He emerges from the therapist’s office not to his own car and independence, but to an eight-block walk to the bus stop.

  The morning is still and rain-hushed, if he cared to notice. Instead of waiting for the bus, he walks the half mile to the Tap Room, the only bar open at 10 A.M. At this hour, drinking is serious business, unmitigated by girls, music, conversation. Even Billy can smell the bitter, sweat-stained air, the reek of piss and ammonia.

  Cheap beer and cheap bourbon and a methodical approach get the job done. He waits for the anger that builds in him each day to explode or expire. He is not alone in this endeavor. Of the six men at the bar, half are Billy’s age, survivors of the same war.

  Harlow Murphy looks up from pumping gas as Billy Flynn walks by the station. He makes change for the college kid in the driver’s seat while craning his neck to see where Billy’s headed.

  The Tap Room. Jesus Christ. So fucking predictable.

  Harlow closes the open bay where he’s grinding the valves on an old Ford truck, locks up the office, and follows Billy down to the boggy bottom of Exchange Street. Tucked into the corner of an old warehouse, the Tap Room is dark and dingy even at high noon.

  He pulls Billy off a barstool and strong-arms him out the door.

  “Not a word until I get some coffee and food into you. Though you can think up some good excuse for why you haven’t bothered to return my calls, you son of a bitch.”

  He steers Billy up the hill to Luke’s. Shoves him into a booth and calls out to the waitress behind the counter:

  “Linda! Three cups of coffee, please. Strong, lots of cream. Line ’em up in front of my friend here.”

  Linda serves coffee, Harlow pours in sugar, stirs, presses the first cup on Billy. Watches him drink.

  “What’s the blue plate, Linda?”

  “Macaroni and cheese.”

  “Two of those. And bring some bread right now, please.”

  He pushes the second cup of coffee in front of Billy. Linda delivers a plate with four slices of bread. Harlow butters them, hands one to Billy.

  Billy takes a bite. “I can’t,” he drops the bread back on the plate.

  “I didn’t close the station to waste my time talking to a drunk.”

  Billy takes another bite.

  “Keep drinking coffee, and get that bread in your stomach to soak up the alcohol.”

  Billy picks up the coffee cup again, his hands shaking. Their eyes meet.

  “It doesn’t work, y’know,” Harlow says. “It’s a waste of time.”

  “You’re the expert.”

  “I’ve been there.”

  “Got out without a scratch.”

  “You and I both know it’s what you can’t see that’ll kill ya.”

  The macaroni and cheese arrives. Billy groans at the sight of it.

  “You’re gonna eat, my friend.”

  “Enough, already.” Billy pushes the plate away.

  “Nope.” Harlow slides it back.

  “I don’t think Linda will like it if we have a food fight in here.”

  “So eat. Or Linda will think you don’t like her food.”

  “It’s not personal. I can’t taste much.”

  “Yup.”

  “You believe me?”

  “Of course I believe you,” Harlow says. “It’s common. Should get better.”

  “Should?”

  “What? I look like a prophet to you? Eat.”

  “You sound like my mother.”

  “I’m offering you a job.”

  “Get outta here.”

  “You can start this afternoon.”

  “No way.”

  “Why not?”

  “There are some things I can’t do.”

  “We’ll focus on what you can do.”

  “You’re relentless.”

  “This? What you’re doing? Is bullshit.”

  “Maybe I don’t want your shitty job.”

  “Don’t be an idiot. We’ll have some fun.”

  “Grease monkey? Fun?”

  “Earn some money. Get your own place. Girls. You get the idea.”

  Billy bursts out laughing.

  “That’s better. And you can learn to pick up the fucking phone.”

  Harlow is miraculously unscathed considering he spent twelve months humping a pack through everything the jungle could throw at him and then survived Hamburger Hill. He and Billy did their best to stay in touch, though neither one is very good at writing letters.

  Discharged from the service, he’d gone to SUNY Binghamton for a few months. The culture shock was so extreme he bounced from elation to despair several times a day. The braless girls, the running paths through the woods, along the Susquehanna and Chenango rivers, a halfway decent track coach, teammates who knew enough to just shut up and run.

  On good days he ran right into a rhythm of forgetting, found a girl not quite so dedicated to her antiwar stance she’d forgo sleeping with a vet, and then drank enough to numb his nightmares. On bad days he was rendered speechless by fury and confusion. He grew his hair long. Learned never to talk about the war.

  Dropping out of Binghamton, he took over his father’s garage, freeing his dad to concentrate on his side business in gravel and sand. A business that will boom and bust in short order with the Route 5 & 20 connector. Progress and decline all rolled into one highway that allows the world to bypass their hometown.

  He and Billy will breathe some life into the place.

  When Nell gets home from school, Rosie’s car is in the driveway and she can hear Connor and Collin playing in the side yard. It sounds like they’re scalping each other.

  Rosie and Marion are in the kitchen making dinner, deep in conversation. Nell greets them both, but it’s clear she’s interrupting. What’s Rosie doing here on a school night anyway?

  She heads up to her room with a stack of science journals and recent reports from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service for her independent research project. Nell is reading about mercury levels in fish, water, and wildlife. The amount of data is overwhelming, the spread of mercury increasing. United States Fish and Wildlife Service began reporting on mercury in the 1950s. Rachel Carson blew the whistle in 1962, but more chemicals are being introduced and approved each year. Chemical companies tweak an existing product, and the research begins all over again. Proof of harm is the standard, but the burden of proof is on the consumer or the government. How can the research possibly keep up? And why is the legislation skewed in favor of business rather than public health and safety?

  She hears her mother’s raised voice. Walks halfway down the stairs, sits, and listens.

  Marion busies herself with the tomato sauce to give Rosie time to collect herself. She rummages in the overhead cabinet, ho
ping there will be enough spaghetti to feed this crowd. Jack is not a big fan of spaghetti, but he’ll live.

  “No one has the right to harm one single hair on your head,” Marion says.

  “How do you know I’m not the one at fault?”

  “You’re the one wearing the bruise.”

  “Do you think I don’t know how to provoke him?” Rosie asks. “To push and push until . . . ”

  Marion manages to keep her mouth shut for a minute or more.

  “And please don’t tell Dad. Or Billy. Okay?”

  “I’m not going to stand by while this happens to you. I will pull you out of there.”

  “It was just one terrible moment in a good marriage.”

  “Are you sure?” Marion asks.

  “Yes.”

  “One hundred percent sure?”

  “Nick is a wreck right now.”

  “If it ever happens again . . . ”

  “It won’t.”

  “Just tell me what it’s about.”

  “I don’t like telling tales.”

  “I’m your mother, for heaven’s sake.”

  Rosie weighs the desire to tell with her promise not to.

  “Two kids so quick, another one on the way, and we’re just getting started. I’m not sure he should have stayed on with his dad in the shop and now he feels stuck. And I’m part of that somehow.”

  “So get a job. You’re the smartest one in the bunch, if you hadn’t noticed.”

  “And who’s going to take care of the kids?”

  “Your mother-in-law.”

  “Please.”

  “What about a babysitter?” Marion asks.

  “So I should go to work to pay a sitter?”

  “Or you could work part-time. When Nick is off.”

  “And never see him?”

  “And carry part of the burden so he doesn’t feel so stuck.”

  “He won’t see it like that,” Rosie says.

  “Help him see it.”

  “He’ll see it like salt in a wound.”

  “So because he’s stuck, you should be too? And helpless to take action to change the situation?”

  Rosie massages the small of her back, crosses to the window.

  “Mom, you’re right, but you’re wrong. Right about what I could do, wrong about what that feels like to both Nick and me.”

  “Then go to work and save to buy him his own shop. In a town that’s not dying, where you’ve got a chance.”

  “He can’t leave his father.”

  “You’re supposed to leave your family, Rosie. That’s what it’s all about.”

  “You don’t . . . ”

  “Live your lives. Make your own mistakes. What happened to the girl who wanted to go to California, who wanted to write for a newspaper?”

  “I grew up.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “I got pregnant.”

  “Millions of women have children and work.”

  “Not in Nick Bliss’s world.”

  “Talk to him. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “There’s work for you girls. And it’s not all secretaries and teachers and nurses anymore. You could go back to school, you could . . . ”

  Rosie turns from the window, brings Marion’s hand to her belly.

  “She’s moving all the time.”

  “She?”

  “I really want a girl this time.”

  Marion smiles to see the delight on Rosie’s face.

  Rosie holds her breath, waiting to feel movement again.

  “Don’t bury your dreams in your children,” Marion says. “They won’t thank you.”

  They look out at the roughhousing boys. Marion opens the back door: “Get out of my flower beds! That’s your last warning. Am I understood?”

  “Yes, Grandma,” Connor says, cuffing Collin across the back of the head, sending him headfirst into the swing set. A good hard bonk, but no bloody nose.

  Nell goes out to see what all the ruckus is about, comforts Collin, who stands with his back to his brother, shaking with the effort not to cry. Black-haired, bossy Connor taunts: “Crybaby! Crybaby!”

  She gets them playing Red Light, Green Light. The three of them run and holler with abandon in the deepening dusk as swallows and then bats appear and disappear in the massive ivy-covered oak.

  Jack wakes from a deep sleep, a rush of adrenaline pounding through him, instantly drenched with sweat. Every time he gets lulled into thinking he’s through with the nightmares, they ambush him again.

  And then he hears Billy: a haunted, choking cry.

  He opens the door to Billy’s room to find Nell standing at the foot of his bed.

  “It’s all right . . . Go to sleep . . . It’s all right, Billy.”

  It looks like he’s convulsing.

  As Nell begins to sing to him, Billy quiets. Her voice follows Jack down the stairs.

  He stands at the kitchen window, looking down to the lake. Mist floats above the water, a wash of moonlight. He hears pines soughing in the wind, feels a kindred sound rising inside. Turns the light on over the stove, finds the bottle of Scotch, two glasses.

  “Will you join me?” he asks when Nell comes into the kitchen.

  “I thought I’d make some cocoa.”

  “I recommend the Scotch,” he says, pouring.

  She tastes it, makes a face.

  “We need to celebrate your good news. Cornell . . . We’re so proud of you.”

  She pulls her hands inside the sleeves of her sweatshirt.

  “Look, Dad, I know we can’t . . . ”

  “We’ll work it out.”

  “I can delay a year.”

  “No.”

  “Or maybe I could board with Esme,” Nell says. “Earn my keep. Clean her house, learn how to cook a few things.”

  “I’m looking into working at the VA hospital two or three shifts a week. That should about cover it.”

  “You can’t work twenty-four hours a day.”

  “It’d be temporary.”

  “I can help. You have to let me help,” Nell says.

  “You need to concentrate on your studies. The first year is so rigorous . . . ”

  “I’m not some hothouse flower. I can work, Dad.”

  “Your classes will be filled with students like you who were top in their school. It’s gonna be tougher.”

  “I can handle it.”

  “I know you can handle it. This is something we want to give you—the chance to explore, to stay late in the lab . . . ”

  “It’s not forever. Things are gonna get better, right? Let me talk to Esme,” Nell insists.

  “Just talk.”

  “For now.”

  He looks at her white throat, chapped lips, the sheen of her dark hair. “Billy’s nightmares . . . ”

  “I had to learn not to touch him,” she says. “Those bruises a few weeks ago? It wasn’t a fall.”

  “He hit you?”

  “Not on purpose. If you touch him he wakes instantly, scared and fighting.”

  “Does he tell you about them?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Tell me.”

  “He dreams Frank Buckles is sitting in the chair across from his bed.”

  “Buckles?”

  “His copilot.”

  Jack looks into his glass.

  “Did you have nightmares, Dad?”

  “Still do.”

  The minutes tick long.

  “You can’t leave it. You just end up carrying it.” He takes another swallow of Scotch. “I don’t know how to help him,” he admits, shamed to hear the words out loud.

  “Just love him.” r />
  He looks at his daughter again, wishes it were enough, wishes he didn’t know the limits of love and hope, how little, really, can be covered over, hidden away, made whole.

  Saturday morning, Nell sits in the old canoe waiting for Billy. They always go out as early in April as possible. She’d scraped and caulked the bottom the previous week.

  It’s breezy and cold on the lake. Nell hopes the mild April sunshine will do more than just promise some warmth. She has a thermos of hot coffee and cheese sandwiches.

  She’s been planning this outing for weeks. They’ll paddle to their old sit spot south of Dodson’s Point. Just an hour, maybe, listening and watching as they used to. It’s a start.

  Billy grunted at her when she knocked on his door, but there’s still no sign of him.

  Half an hour later, just as she’s about to give up, Billy wanders down the path, a beer bottle in his left hand, Flanagan trailing him, all wag and shake. He fondles her ears. She circles his legs, comes back for more.

  “Go get a jacket.”

  “What for?”

  “I’m taking you to Dodson’s Point.”

  “What makes you think I can manage a paddle?”

  “If you can’t, I’ll get us there.”

  “In this old tub?”

  He takes a long pull from his beer, looks at her like she’s stupid. Billy was never mean. Sharp. Direct. Tactless, even, but never mean. He laughs once, a harsh sound deep in his throat; then walks up the path, not looking back.

  She pulls the boat onto the landing, thinking of when Jack bought the canoe from Bobby Bascomb, a colleague down the lake, a gift to ease the ache of Brendan going off to college.

  Jack brought both kids along to pick up the canoe. Billy begged to paddle it home with Nell. Bascomb encouraged Jack to let them go.

  “How long?” Jack asked.

  “You or me? An hour. The kid? Maybe two,” Bascomb said.

  “I can do it, Dad,” Billy said.

  “It’s already 5 o’clock.”

  “We’ve got hours until sunset.”

  “You good to go, Nell?” Jack asked.