On Little Wings Read online

  “No!” I cried, but stepped closer. The colors were astonishing. A deep indigo blue that faded into crimson legs. “He’s got beautiful colors.”

  “She. It’s a girl. The boys hide in the rivers in the summer. You want to keep her for dinner?” he asked.

  “No,” I squeaked. “Throw her back. Just let her go.”

  “Hear that, lady crab? Your luckiest day.” He dropped her with a wet plop back into the water.

  By the time they returned us to the dock my invigorated brain was bursting with the new smells and sensations and sounds, but my body was exhausted just from watching the work. “How do they do it?” I asked Sarah as we drove home. “It’s depleting.”

  “They’re tough. You can’t live in Maine and not have a tough streak in you. It’s a hard place to make a living.”

  “But worth it?”

  “Undeniably worth it,” she affirmed.

  After a dinner of leftovers it was already seven o’clock. My fingertips trembled as I looked over the books, wondering how much to reveal in the passage I picked. I obviously couldn’t read “How do I love thee, let me count the ways …” but I didn’t want to recite about dirt either. Something subtle. Something that hinted. Book after book, it eluded me. It took nearly an hour to decide on a line. Sarah walked through the living room and absently pulled a book of the shelf. After a fast perusal she marked the page and was done.

  I huffed and tapped Charlie on the top of his head with my pencil. The waiting was the hardest. Hardest because it coupled with the fear that he wouldn’t come at all, despite his promise. At eight thirty I heard his steps on the porch and shot up from the couch. No room for pretense. I knew the relief showed plainly on my face when I opened the screen door and stepped out. I could feel it throbbing against my cheeks like a sunburn.

  Nathan’s tanned face never betrayed a blush but a deep red blazed around the collar of his t-shirt. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing and sat down nervously. He opened his mouth to say hello, but then decided on a nod instead.

  “Hi, stranger,” Sarah joined us on the porch and threw Nathan a jolly greeting. “We’ve missed you.” I dipped my head. She had no idea.

  Nathan nodded again and his voice cracked a little when he answered, “Hi, Sarah.”

  “Who is first tonight?” she asked with a clap of her hands.

  “You,” Nathan hastened to answer. I nodded in agreement.

  “All righty. I picked Hermann Hesse. A favorite of mine.”

  “They’re all favorites,” Nathan said in a comic aside. Sarah smiled and ignored him. I was just grateful to see him joke. When he joked I knew he was there. The real Nathan. The open Nathan. Sarah read with gusto, read convincingly,

  “Leave me alone, you unendurably old human grief!”

  Let it all be pain.

  Let it all be suffering, let it be wretched-

  But not this one sweet hour in the summer,

  And not the fragrance of the red clover”

  “It’s from Lying in the Grass.” She finished but I didn’t say a word. My lips made a small O where they parted in the middle.

  “Can I see it?” I asked, taking the book from her hand. “’Not this one sweet hour in the summer,’” I read quietly, tracing the words with my finger. “I like this one,” I whispered.

  “Good! I like it, too. It gives me hope. No matter how terrible life gets (and doesn’t he put it well – “unendurably old human grief”?) there is always a reprieve. A moment of grace.”

  “A sweet hour in the summer,” I said.

  “Precisely,” Sarah agreed.

  I looked to Nathan, only to find him staring at me. We both diverted our eyes.

  “So don’t waste time?” he said in his low, shy voice.

  “Exactly. Not the good time. Put the misery away and enjoy yourself,” Sarah answered. Nathan glanced up again, a hunted look in his eyes.

  “Do you think it makes the grief worse – contrasting it with the good?” he asked.

  “That’s an age old question,” Sarah said. “But no, I don’t. I think it makes the grief more bearable. We need a pattern of hope in life. We need to think we will keep returning to better days.”

  “And what happens when you’ve had your last “better” day?” Nathan asked, a desperate edge to his voice. “What if the best is not ‘yet to be’?”

  “Nathan, you’re eighteen,” I scolded. “You can’t think the best of life is over.”

  “No. Not me. I’m talking philosophically. What if someone wakes up and realizes that they have already lived the best part of their life? What do you do with that?” He leaned forward, waiting for an answer, looking to Sarah and me.

  “Then you have time to savor it, I suppose,” Sarah offered.

  “Is that good enough?” Nathan asked.

  “Not really. But we make do,” Sarah said.

  “You say it like it’s fate, Nathan,” I interrupted. “Like God deals the cards and if you already played the ace, then too bad for you.” They both looked at me thoughtfully, the intelligent spark in Nathan’s eyes almost blinding me.

  “So how do you see it then, if that’s wrong?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. You just … you …”

  “You pull a new card,” Sarah finished for me. I looked at her with a grateful, knowing smile.

  “Exactly. Just deal again,” I said.

  “So what did you bring tonight, deep thinker?” Sarah asked Nathan.

  He leaned back and rubbed his lower back, wincing. “Okay, well, you know it.” He said to Sarah, “You’ll be sick of it. But I’m saying it anyway.” He turned to me. “Every New England child has to recite this one in school at some point. It won Frost the Pulitzer, called Nothing Gold Can Stay.”

  “Nature's first green is gold,

  Her hardest hue to hold.

  He kept his eyes steadily averted while he read but when he came to the last two lines his gaze fell on me. He said it like he meant me to understand something.

  “So dawn goes down to day.

  Nothing gold can stay.”

  I met his stare, frozen by the new intensity in his voice, and tried to find the meaning in the slope of his searching eyes.

  “So we’ve gone from ‘enjoy the moment’ to ‘accept that the moment can’t last’,” Sarah stated.

  “That’s the problem with great truths,” Nathan said in frustration as he turned away from me. “There’s always a contradictory great truth. How can that be?”

  “I don’t think they contradict at all,” I offered. “One says that nothing good lasts forever. The other one says to put our griefs away and appreciate our happiness. They go together. Maybe we appreciate joy …”

  “Because it is finite.” Nathan finished.

  “Exactly.” My soul expanded and settled into a quiet smile on my lips. He finished my sentence. He finished my thought. I took it for a sign. I can’t say a sign for what, precisely, but a good sign, nonetheless.

  “That kind of sucks,” he groaned.

  “Beautifully and artfully put,” Sarah admonished with a twist of her eyebrow.

  “Sorry. I find that to be a frustrating and unsatisfying concept,” he didn’t mask his sarcasm, but Sarah ignored it.

  “Better,” She approved.

  “Lots of things last,” I said. They’re not all finite. Some things really are enduring.” Sarah looked at me with encouragement in her bright eyes.

  Nathan’s frown turned from surly to thoughtful. “But the poem,” he said, “did you notice in the poem that nothing gold can stay. Nothing of real value. It’s the good things that leave you. Doesn’t that upset you?”

  “A frog can’t complain he’s green, Nathan,” Sarah interjected. “We’re mortal. Life passes. Things go. Happy people make peace with that.”

  “I never claimed to be a happy person,” he muttered. He looked at me and I remembered his mouth on mine. He had been happy in that instant. I tasted it on his lips. I brea
thed it in the air. Whatever emotions followed, I knew he acted effortlessly when he kissed me. Seeing that moment in my head and then looking back to his serious face overwhelmed me with embarrassment.

  “What did you bring tonight?” he asked me.

  My heart on my sleeve. A million questions. The need to touch you. “A poem by Thomas Moore,” I said. I found my page and read.

  “Oh! think not my spirits are always as light,

  And as free from a pang as they seem to you now,

  Nor expect that the heart-beaming smile of to-night

  Will return with to-morrow to brighten my brow.”

  Nathan opened his mouth and I held up my hand, beating him to it, “I chose that one tonight because I was thinking of things that don’t last.” All three of us laughed together.

  “Must be something in the water,” Sarah said.

  “One track minds,” I agreed.

  “So I was thinking of saying goodbye to Jennifer. What brought it on for you two?” Sarah looked to us, her wide hazel eyes innocent of the position she put us in.

  “Saying good-bye,” I repeated softly.

  Nathan shook his head. “Don’t know,” he mumbled.

  “Come on, Nathan. Nothing Gold Can Stay? That’s elementary stuff for you. Something made you read it tonight,” Sarah pushed.

  “Sometimes there’s no reason,” I interjected. As nice as it would be to hear his true feelings, I couldn’t bear the trapped look on his face.

  Nathan nodded in deference to me as if saying “see, there!” to Sarah.

  “If you say so,” she relented.

  “Saying good-bye and something else,” I returned to my first answer, mustering my courage. “The way people change. The way everything seems fine one day and entirely different the next.”

  Nathan cleared his throat. When we looked at him he stood hastily and cut off my words. “I’m gonna get going now.”

  “What? Already?” Sarah asked. “We were just getting started.”

  I looked at him, baffled. He turned away from both of us. “Yeah, sore back. I filled in rock beds today. I’m beat.”

  “Well, take it easy, then, I guess. Good night,” Sarah said reluctantly.

  “Yeah, no problem. ‘Night.” He smiled at me, but the grin didn’t reach his eyes.

  I watched him turn, a panic rising to my throat. I’d collected nothing. Nothing comforting to remember as I fell asleep. Nothing to add to my memories of him. He stepped down the stairs and walked away. I don’t recall deciding to stand. My legs rose of their own accord. And then I was following him, catching him at the side of the house. “I’ll walk you home,” I told him as he halted.

  “No. Don’t worry about it,” his eyes shied away from me.

  “Why?” I whispered, so Sarah wouldn’t hear. I looked toward the porch and he did the same thing. He took my arm and pulled me firmly, but gently into the backyard.

  “I’m really sorry about last night.” he said in a voice I had to strain to hear.

  “Sorry?”

  “I don’t know what I was thinking. It was crazy. Stupid.”

  “That’s … insulting. A person has to be crazy and stupid to kiss me?” There was no anger in the words – just confusion.

  “No,” he said, directing me even farther from the house. “Did you tell Sarah?” he asked in a fervent whisper.

  “Of course not! Why?”

  “Her line. It seemed like she knew something,” he looked behind us like he expected her to materialize in thin air.

  I dodged into his line of vision, forcing him to look at me. “What is there to know, Nathan?”

  “Nothing. There’s nothing to know, except that I was rude. I don’t just run around kissing people. It was late and I was cold and you were being nice and I might have been experiencing mild hypothermia …” he babbled on with dogged determination.

  “So you wish it didn’t happen?” The words came out crooked and strange.

  His head tilted, his mouth paused, open. “Well, I wish I hadn’t been so impulsive. Not that kissing you isn’t nice,” a mortified expression crossed his face, “but I imagine you only want that from someone interested in…” his bumbling words started tripping, falling in unexpected place. “Well, in you.”

  The blow of his last word sent my mind reeling. I nearly reached out to him to steady myself and caught my mistake just in time, pulling my hand back to my side. “So you’re …not?” I didn’t recognize my voice.

  “I’m sure it’s mutual,” he said graciously. “We live so far apart. We’re practically cousins, since Sarah’s like family to me and . . . I just didn’t want to offend you by being so stupid. It’s one of the dumbest things I’ve done,” He lifted one side of his mouth in a guilty grin. If he meant it to reassure me he failed miserably. I looked down at my shirt, nonplussed to see how solid the fabric looked. I’d been sure he could see my wrenched heart through an open window in my chest. I cannot imagine what my face looked like. I cannot even say what I felt like. Every nerve froze. Waited. Swallowed the poisonous words. “I guess I should get home now,” he finished. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  I felt my feet on the sandy earth, rocked back on my heels. Do I smile? Do I agree? I was so far beyond dignity, so far beyond salvaging the moment that I just turned and walked. I don’t remember getting back inside my bedroom. Don’t remember what I said to Sarah. I just remember the cool, brass knob under my hand as I shut my bedroom door firmly.

  “I’m not your cousin,” I choked to the empty room. And then came the tears. Hot tears that washed the numb away. The numb I would give anything to get back.

  CHAPTER 33

  I lost the next day. When I took too long coming down to breakfast Sarah tapped on my door and asked if I was feeling all right. I didn’t have the mental strength to conjure up an explanation so I seized on her excuse. I told her I felt sick and fell immediately back into a dreamless sleep. By lunchtime I was still wretched and I looked repulsive but I was also starving and bored. I made my way downstairs, keeping the quilt wrapped around me. Something about it comforted me. I liked studying the tiny squares, imagining my grandmother’s sharp needle stabbing in and out of the fabric, deliberately, undaunted by the mountainous task. I would have ended up with a potholder.

  Sarah jumped up from the couch, her face full of concern, bordering on fear. “You’re awake! Are you cold? Are you getting a fever?” She put her hand on my forehead. “You feel cool,” she searched me over, looking for a visible symptom. “You don’t look well, Jennifer. I thought you might be coming down with something last night. Does anything hurt?”

  More than I ever knew I could hurt. I kept my symptoms vague, saying I felt tired and achy. Sarah said that she would call Claude and cancel our lunch plans and let Nathan know we weren’t doing lines. When she looked back to me, her panic rose again. “You are so pale. And your eyes are watering! What can I do?”

  “I’m hungry,” I told her weakly, swiping my tears before they could fall. That excited her. I think she knew it couldn’t be anything too terrible if I still had my appetite. She asked if she should make some Jello or start a crock of soup. I shook my head and told her I would warm up some leftovers. Only after I finished a plate of Hawaiian chicken and sweet potato casserole and chocolate cake did my hunger subside.

  “You weren’t kidding!” she said after she watched me finish my second large glass of apple juice. “You must be trying to get your strength back.”

  “I suppose. I’m getting tired again.”

  “I should call my doctor,” she said, her fingers flitting nervously, looking for something to do. “So help me, Jennifer, if anything happens to you here. Claire …” The scenario was too dreadful to elaborate.

  “Don’t worry. Just a bug. It’s not that bad. Maybe I got sea sick yesterday.”

  “After the boat?” Sarah tilted her head in doubt.

  I shrugged and told her I would camp on the couch and watch television. It was a m
indless day. When night came I felt nothing but relief. I laid in the darkness and thought of flights home. I could leave immediately. Surprise my mother. Get far away. And as tempting as it was to run, to put a thousand country miles between myself and this pain, I knew the truth – I couldn’t outrun my own chest. The hurt would pace me, stalk me. And when I got back to Nebraska I would lie down in my bed and be a thousand miles from him. I turned onto my stomach and groaned into my pillow. If I scream could he hear me? Now the question distorted in my mind, sneered caustically, if he heard you, would he care? I fell into a troubled sleep.

  The next day I made myself shower and dress. In the early morning hours Little’s face crossed my fitful dreams. I longed for a dose of her gruffness, her toughness. Maybe it would rub off on me. I managed to escape Sarah’s scrupulous care by saying I wanted to take a walk to get some fresh air. I made a rush for Pilgrim’s Point as soon as I was out of the backyard. The closer I came to her tiny house the more my hands started to shake. What would I say? What excuse could I give for being there in the first place? How could I explain the sudden tears that welled up for no reason, with no warning?

  I stopped in her backyard, bent over the stitch in my side, and tried to breathe deep to deter the sob that wanted to break free. I probably looked like I’d just run a marathon instead of jogging across the cove.

  Several ragged breaths later Little yelled out from her back door. “What happened to you?”

  I brought my head up, looked at her, and then dropped it again. “Nothing,” was the brilliant reply I finally gave.

  “You want some baklava?” She asked.

  “What?”

  “I got some baklava, if you want some. My Nephew sent it. He gets my birthday wrong every year, poor idiot!”

  I shook my head, feeling half asleep. Seeing her in her blue house dress, waving a butter knife, made me feel like I was wandering around in one of those dreams where any character could say anything and it would still make sense. Somehow.

  “Bakla-what?” I asked as I straightened.