On Little Wings Page 2

  “I thought you didn’t have any relatives.” She took the news so calmly, so characteristically-Cleo.

  “Precisely,” I snapped too harshly. “I didn’t think so either. Until tonight.” I spun around, pleading with my eyes, but I don’t know what I was begging for. “They lied to me, Cleo. All this time. Never a word. Never a hint. They both said they were only children.”

  “Who’s sister is she? Your mom or your dad’s?”

  I knew what she was doing as soon as she asked. She was looking for a place to lay the blame. Not in a mean way. Cleo isn’t mean. Just efficient. She wants to know who’s at fault so a problem doesn’t get weighed down with “nuance” or “complications.” She likes black and white.

  “My mother’s sister. Her big sister apparently,” it all came out in one sagging, heavy breath. Then my throat tightened and my lips pressed together in indignation. “Do you know what I would give for a big sister? Any idea? And do you know what I wouldn’t do with a big sister?” Cleo’s round eyes waited in green curiosity. “I wouldn’t pretend she didn’t exist!”

  “I know you wouldn’t. So start at the beginning. How did this happen?”

  I recounted the first part of the evening easily. I told her about working on Hanshaw’s assignment, thumbing through our family’s books in the living room when I pulled down the copy of The Old Man and the Sea. I pantomimed opening the battered paperback and flipping to the spot where the photo was stuck tightly between the last page and the back cover.

  “I didn’t think anything at first. Just a picture, right? But then I looked closer.” I stopped and stared at the photo in my hand. “It’s the color. The color of her hair. And the freckles.”

  Cleo reclined her head against Maeve Cowling's headstone, listening intently. “So what did you do? How did you find out it was your aunt?”

  “So I just started the biggest fight in the history of my family,” I said bitterly. “I took the picture to my parents and asked ‘Who’s this?’ That’s it. Just, ‘who’s this?’”

  “And?”

  “And World War III. My mom said she didn’t know at the same time that my dad said ‘Your Aunt.’” I pulled in a deep breath of evening air, letting it whistle cold across my front teeth as I remembered my mother’s shocked face. Shock. Betrayal. Anger. Above all, anger. No, that wasn’t quite right. There was something else. Something I couldn’t name. Even after she yelled my father’s name, even after she crashed her hands down on her thighs like a conductor bringing a symphony to an indisputable stop, there was still something leaking around the edges of her anger, dripping into her fiery eyes. I had to tell Cleo everything, but the words were sticking like thick honey to my throat, refusing to slide through my lips. “It was bad, Cleo. Worse than I’ve ever seen them. They never fight. They never yell.”

  “They were yelling?” her usually dismissive eyes betrayed concern.

  “Screaming, really. At least at the end. First I started asking questions. Mostly just “Why?” Why not tell me? Why lie? Why pretend she didn’t exist? I got mad because the answers were ridiculous. Mother was saying that she wouldn’t talk about it. That the conversation was over and she wanted me to forget all about it. Okay, that’s where I started the yelling,” I admitted. My indignation flared all over again. I pulled a lock of my hair over my shoulder and studied the color next to the wheat. It was identical. The same strips of brown and gold and white woven into one color that no one ever named. That eased the pain somehow and I kept talking, keeping my eyes on the swaying stalks.

  “My dad was trying to calm her down and told her that it was time to tell me and stop lying. Then he said that my Aunt Sarah hadn’t done anything wrong.” I shook my head until the memory of my mother’s white face fractured into a nondescript swirl of color. “She just whispered, ‘didn’t do anything wrong?’ like it was the worst thing anyone ever said to her. And then she screamed. Really screamed.” I stopped there. The tears had found me. No more tricks. No more evasions. They burned like acid across my dry eyes. I could finally place the other emotion on my mother’s face. It seemed as plain as day now. Fear.

  “Like just screamed? Like tribal, guttural screams?”

  “No,” I whispered. The terrible image was marching through my head. My father’s voice trying to soothe her. There’s a difference between not telling and lying, Claire. You can talk about this now. Let Jennifer know. Sarah really didn’t do anything wrong.

  For one horrible moment his words had hung in the air like grenades with the pins pulled out. And then it was over. The past, red and raw and shattered, exploded around us.

  “Didn’t do anything wrong?” my mother whispered in confusion. “Nothing wrong?” Her voice had twisted the words into a dire accusation. Tortured the syllables into a confession. Something snapped in her eyes, like a smoldering fire combusting. “Maybe you forgot that she killed my mother!” Her sarcastic yell pitched and broke into a shriek.

  “No!” my father demanded, looking over his shoulder at me. “No,” he said softer, and a frantic pleading edged into his voice. “No, don’t say that.” My mother pushed hard against my father’s arms, tears spinning down her cheeks, as he pulled her close and held her in something between a hug and a wrestling hold. “Claire, Claire, it’s okay.”

  I looked up at Cleo’s eyes, so round that they looked like green swamps from a fairytale. I’d whispered the entire thing. Every detail that fit into words. It sounded so much more civilized when I whispered it, when I turned down the volume of the fear and disgust. But horrible things whispered are still horrible.

  Cleo took a fast breath and pressed her fingers against her open mouth. A tear made a clear track down my chin and left a dark gray stain on top of William Cowling’s weathered tombstone where I sat with my knees pulled tight to my chest. The pulse of cricket song radiated through the air and we listened, lost in the chorus. “Did she really kill her mother?” Cleo sounded like she didn’t want me to answer.

  “No,” I sighed, grateful that the truth wasn’t that graphic. “My dad said she didn’t. He said that she wasn’t there when my grandmother had a stroke. That’s another thing. A stroke. My mother always said her parents died in a car crash. Just lies. And lies!”

  Cleo threw some more questions at me, but I didn’t have anything else to tell her. “Mother just collapsed in his arms and cried after that. We didn’t say anything else. We all just sat there. In shock.”

  “So your aunt is still alive?” Cleo asked.

  “Apparently.”

  “Can we find her?” I met her unflinching eyes, thankful for the “we.”

  “I’ve been wondering the same thing. I don’t see why not. Her name would be Sarah Dyer. That’s my mom’s maiden name. Unless she’s married…” A picture jumped from the dark recesses of my mind of a smiling family, children, a girl my age. Never had I considered that I might have an uncle, cousins, a family.

  “So if we find her, then what?” She asked.

  Then what indeed? “I don’t know. Nothing? Maybe call her? Write to her?”

  “Then let’s find her. You should call her.”

  My teeth started chattering like they always do when I am frightened and I pulled my arms around myself. I could almost feel the burden of the phone in my hand. “I can’t. What would I say? What if she hates my mother as much as my mother hates her? What if she hates me because I’m her daughter?” A strong shiver grabbed the back of my stomach and jerked it into my spine.

  Cleo stared at my hand holding the photograph. “I don’t think so. I think we find her number and you call and say…” she paused for an agonizing length of time while her mind went grabbing… “Say, ‘this is your niece, Jennifer.’” The obvious line fell flat.

  “Hi,” I muttered, “I’m your niece, Jennifer. Sorry I haven’t been in touch lately. Hope you don’t hate me.”

  “Or,” she said, ignoring my sarcasm, “I’m your niece, Jennifer. I’m so glad I finally found you.” Her honest
voice added depth to the simple words. I repeated the phrase slowly in my mind. It sounded meaningful when Cleo said it, but she wasn’t the one who needed to say it.

  We couldn’t stay at the graveyard much longer. The day was dimming and a dark walk through the field always has an ominous feel. “Let’s go to your house and see what we find,” I said.

  “Excellent,” Cleo’s face flushed with something akin to victory.

  “Cleo,” I spoke like a parent telling their child that they are going to look at toys, but not buy any. “I don’t know if I can do this. I said I’ll see. Even if we find her I don’t know what I’ll do.” She nodded soberly and I wiped a wet spot on William’s tombstone, smearing it into a dark streak, before standing up. What I said was mostly true. I didn’t know exactly what I would do, but I knew if I found her, I would have to do something. I replaced the tight flip flops that I had removed while we sat and stood, bracing myself against the worn, granite resting place of C.A. Weller.

  CHAPTER 3

  Back at the Douglas house we made it past Stephen and Brett, Cleo’s younger brothers, and took the laptop into her room since the boys had commandeered the living room for their noisy video games. Cleo sat me at the desk in front of the computer and knelt down beside me on the floor.

  “Are you ready?” she asked.

  Most of me answered in the negative: my moist palms, my shivering stomach, the faint, indefinable feeling that I was doing something wrong. I propped Sarah’s picture up against the corner of the screen and studied it, hoping for . . . I don’t know what. Cleo didn’t interrupt or even move. She peered at the picture with a thoughtful frown and a fervent glint in her eyes. I’m convinced her expression propelled me onward. If Cleo wanted to know her - Cleo the Standoffish, Cleo the Suspicious, Cleo, the wisest judge of character I knew – then I could hardly argue.

  Having no better ideas we opened up the main search page and started with the only information we had: Sarah Dyer. I clicked the keys slowly, watching the black letters appear against the glowing screen, looking so official. I paused, studying the name for the first time in my life, feeling the length and weight of it, memorizing the sight of it. I noticed how the slants of the y and the r in Dyer appeared to fight against each other, as if they couldn’t stretch far enough apart. And then, sensing Cleo’s impatience, I hit ‘enter’.

  The results flew up too quickly. I didn’t have a chance to collect my thoughts before the screen filled with Sarah Dyers. The name flashed from several different web addresses and pictures filled the space under ‘image results’. A girl with white blonde hair holding up a book annoyed me because she looked so impossibly different from the Sarah in the picture. There were too many. My tense fingers hovered over the mouse while I stared at the page. “Which one?” I breathed quietly. Cleo gently pushed my hands off the keyboard as her fingers took my place, clicking.

  “Here’s a bakery in New Hampshire owned by Sarah Dyer. That’s not far from Maine. A bakery sounds like something an aunt would do. Here’s an artist from Texas. That’s a nice painting.” She prattled on as the screen flashed from website to website.

  I could barely stand to look, so I stared at the screen itself, not paying attention to individual words. We scanned through the images, quickly discarding anyone under forty, over fifty, and easily picking off the rest because they didn’t look anything like the picture at the corner of the screen. After several tense minutes of picking through the results and constantly reminding each other that Dyer may not be her last name anymore, Cleo closed the browser. For a moment I thought she was quitting and I felt nothing but relief and the need to take a shuddering breath. Then she opened a fresh page.

  “Start over. Phone book. We need to try the phone book.” That jolted me out of my nervous haze. It seemed ridiculously simple. Why didn’t I think of the phone book? I nodded at her, a fever rushing under my skin. Cleo clicked in the name and selected Maine, U.S.. It took only a blink before eleven Sarah Dyers in Maine filled the screen. Almost all of the Sarahs were spelled without an H and I realized that I didn’t know how Sarah spelled her name, but I somehow assumed she would have the H.

  “Do you know the town?” Cleo asked as my eyes scanned the directory. New Gloucester, Belgrade, Glenburn, Brunswick, Smithport. Smithport. I stared at the listing. I knew that word, though I couldn’t remember mother actually mentioning the name of her town. Sarah Dyer, 12 Haven Ln, Smithport, Maine, followed by a phone number. I interlaced my fingers and pressed my locked hands against my mouth.

  “I think that might be her,” I whispered.

  “Which one?” Cleo asked, pushing her face closer to the screen.

  “Listing number five. Smithport. I think that’s where Mother grew up.”

  Cleo’s face flushed an odd blue color in the light of the screen. “Found you.”

  I turned to Cleo, my expression paralyzed. “I don’t think I can do it.”

  Her face looked almost as nervous as mine. “I didn’t think we would find her so fast,” she admitted.

  “We still don’t know if we did. I might be remembering wrong.”

  “Jennifer!” Mrs. Douglas called up the stairs, fighting the high, twangy noise of lasers from the video game. I jumped, my stomach careening up to my throat at the sound of her voice, and Cleo slammed down the lid of the laptop, as if we’d been caught doing something shameful. Mrs. Douglas shouted, “Stephen, turn it down!” and then, “Jennifer!” again.

  “Coming,” Cleo answered for me and we rushed from the room, stopping on the landing where we could see her upturned face below us.

  “Jennifer, your dad is here,” she told me. My eyes traveled a few feet past her to the open front door where he stood apologetically on the entrance mat. I nodded mutely and went downstairs. My anxiety made me clumsy on the stairs. Cleo followed me to the next landing and stopped, leaning against the wall and looking down at the brown carpet. Dad’s smile had more to do with politeness than happiness, and he fidgeted, fighting for some casual words in front of our friends.

  Mrs. Douglas gave us a calculating look and jumped in. “I’ll be right back. I’m just in the middle of something in the kitchen,” she said in a forced cheerfulness and disappeared.

  Dad waited until I was close enough to hear his low words. “Are you okay?”

  He asked so kindly that I reigned in the sarcastic voice that yearned to answer. “I guess.” We both shifted our weight and he didn’t seem to know what to say so I continued, “Are you and Mom all right? Is she still mad?”

  He blew loudly between his lips, but spoke softly, “She’s mad, but we’re fine. You probably want to talk…” It’s odd how much I wanted answers, and how little I wanted to talk. He watched me closely and put a hand out toward me before closing his fingers and sticking them back in his pocket.

  “I do… but later. Could I stay here tonight?” I asked him as I looked up to Cleo for permission. She nodded fervently and I turned back to Dad. He smiled and pulled his other hand out from behind his back, holding a plastic baggie with my toothbrush inside.

  “I figured Cleo would have everything else.” His gentle eyes hugged me. My mother couldn’t stay mad at him. No one could. “Amy said it was fine,” he added. (Amy being Mrs. Douglas, but I got a verbal beating at age four for calling an adult by their first name and I never tried it again.) I nodded thankfully at him and after a brief look at Cleo, took his hand and led him outside, letting the glass door close behind us. The fact that he knew I wouldn’t want to come home made me feel a certain pact between us, like we were on the same team. Though I cannot say what we were playing, or fighting, for.

  A storm was hanging in the air, refusing to fall, but blacking out large patches of the sky. We stood in the sickly yellow glow of the porch light and I swatted a bug back from my face. “Do you know her, Dad – Sarah?” I spoke in an undertone.

  “No. I don’t.”

  “So how do you know she didn’t,” I paused, unable to say ‘kill,’
“do what Mother said?”

  “Oh,” his face looked a little stunned, “she didn’t mean that literally. You are not related to any murderers. Your mother thinks that some things Sarah did kept your grandmother from recovering from her stroke.” Then he added hastily, “I don’t think that’s medically possible.”

  “What things?” I asked, turning my eyes away from the erratic, white path a moth was cutting through the air.

  “Jennifer, I don’t know how much to tell you. I think your mother should have a chance to speak for herself, now that you know.”

  “Fine. But you don’t know her at all? You don’t know where she lives?

  “I spoke to her once on the phone, years ago. But that didn’t go over well with your mother, either.” He slumped heavily on one leg, his other lanky leg resting casually. My father has horrible posture and a remarkable face.

  “You talked? What is she like?” I asked gently, hoping to gather the truth softly so it would not fall too fast and crush me.

  “She seemed very nice to me. Just like your mom.”

  “Then why won’t Mom talk to her?”

  Dad stared at me as if telling me to refer to his last answer. He didn’t want to say more than necessary. “Where does she live?” I persisted, thinking of that black address against the white screen.

  Dad scanned my face critically. “Why?”

  I knew he knew why. Honesty seemed the only thing left. “I want to call her.”

  He looked down and swore very softly, his hands crammed forcefully into his pockets. The fabric of his jeans moved up and down as he flexed his strong fingers inside his pockets. “It didn’t go well with your mother when I did it and I think it will be worse for her if you try. She’ll feel abandoned.”

  My set face didn’t change. “I want to talk to her.”

  Releasing one hand into the air, he pushed it through his feathery, black hair where it delicately recedes on the side of his forehead. I wondered, not for the first time, how my level-headed father got stuck between two emotional women. It seemed to be taking its toll tonight. “She was still in Smithport,” he conceded almost angrily. So I did remember the name correctly. “I guess I can’t stop you, but I’m starting to regret that I started this mess. It’s getting beyond me. I don’t know what to do next.” His dark eyes and heavy black eyebrows sagged in worry and it made me almost ill with sympathy.