5

Flight Patterns

Every species exhibits a distinct array of habits and behaviors that are activated by specific stimuli.

—G. Gordon’s Field Guide to the Birds of the Pacific Northwest

Anne dug her toes into the cold sand and listened to the waves lapping the shore, wind in the trees, birds in the woods behind her. Her eyes found Aiden, who was sitting in the sand near the green water of the lake. Above him, the clouds were white thumbprints across the blue sky. It was a beautiful, quiet morning and, after all the preparation to get away from the city for a couple of weeks, should have felt restful. Instead, Anne felt acutely aware that she should be elsewhere.

What would she have heard on a typical September morning on her way to work at Seattle’s Cornish College of the Arts? The hiss of tires on damp pavement, the airy sigh of bus brakes, or someone hollering down Broadway—piss-drunk, mad, or simply late for the bus. The far-off horn of the train approaching the station downtown. The urban bustle of Seattle was not something she’d particularly liked when she’d first arrived six years ago, but she’d grown so used to it that she missed it now or at least felt its absence. Was that the same thing? she wondered.

Normally she’d be in class at this hour teaching Choral Composition I to the incoming freshmen. Or, more likely, she’d be running late to class, having stopped for an emergency coffee at Vivace. Cup in hand, she’d rush down the sidewalk under the broad canopy of chestnut trees outside Kerry Hall, where the large choral classrooms were located. She’d hear someone practicing scales on the grand piano, an opera student warming up, perhaps the pulsing throb of bass from the jazz wing and the traffic jam of a horn section tuning. She’d probably stop in the middle of the sidewalk as she often did, arrested by the cacophony of overlapping sounds, the beautiful accident of music, the ever-changing soundtrack of Cornish. Then she’d be truly late, and slinging her bag over her shoulder and with an apology ready on her lips, she’d hurry inside to greet the new gaggle of young musicians who’d signed up for her course.

But she was most definitely not doing any of that, not this morning and not this semester, as she was officially on leave. That leave had started at the end of spring, but she felt it keenly now, not being there the first week of school. After so many years tied to the academic calendar, first as a student and more recently as an instructor, it was strange to have so much time on her hands on what would normally be a busy fall day.

A plump crow settled atop a piling near the stone seawall with something in its beak.

A second bird landed near, jostling the first.

“Hoak, hoak, hoak,” said the new arrival.

The first crow dropped its prize, and the intruder snatched it up. A chase ensued with a third and then a fourth bird joining in the playful pursuit.

Aiden had commandeered a dock cart and was pushing it back and forth on the beach in front of the house. The soft sand hindered the cart’s movement, but that seemed to be part of the game for Aiden, who was perfectly absorbed in the activity. Well, that was something. Wee heathen didn’t look the least bit tired. Neither one of them had slept well. Aiden was uneasy the first night in a new place and felt the need to check things. Last night he’d climbed out of bed repeatedly and pattered down to the living room. Anne followed, knowing she’d find him peering at the stack of CDs lined up in a tall case there. They were not in any particular order—classical and rock thrown in with jazz and fifties pop. The lack of care with which her in-laws approached their music collection made her anxious, and that made Tim laugh at her. Next thing you knew, she’d be alphabetizing the spice rack, he said. And she laughed too, because she’d already done that.

Aiden had become attached, for some inexplicable reason, to Grandma Christi’s Barbra Streisand CD, a double album of all Barbra’s biggest Broadway hits. Anne knew he didn’t want to listen to it or take it out of the case to look at. He just seemed to need to know it was there. Well, he’d taken it out one memorable time. Last Fourth of July, Christi had left it in the player on repeat for hours. The stereo only held four CDs, so it was Streisand, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Bobby Darin, and the Oak Ridge Boys all bloody day. Anne gritted her teeth each time the cycle started over, and her suggestion that they change the music was lost amid the overlapping conversations of her in-laws and their offspring. At midday, she switched out the CDs with Ella Fitzgerald, Ravel, Debussy, and Nat King Cole. That offered some relief, though Christi eventually put the Streisand CD back in the rotation without comment.

Anne never needed to hear “Some Enchanted Evening” again in this lifetime. And not just because of the repetition. That July night she bolted awake to the song and raced to the living room to find her small son contentedly rocking from foot to foot in front of the stereo. He didn’t respond to her scolding or his grandfather’s when Tim Senior appeared in his bathrobe and threatened a spanking. Aiden had allowed her to lead him back to bed with an air of quiet resignation. The rest of the weekend, he’d steal over to the stereo and just touch the CD cover, then go back to whatever he’d been doing.

He’d done the same last night. He’d touch the Streisand CD case with one small finger, whisper something to himself, and scuttle back to bed on tiptoe. Anne followed him, tucking the blankets around his narrow shoulders each time and returning to her room with Tim across the hall. Just as she began to doze off, she’d hear Aiden’s small feet in the hallway and follow him back to the CD collection and back to bed. Over and over it went. She knew from experience that nothing—not scolding, restraining him, or pleading—could stop it. His fixation was like a little tempest. It would boil itself up and wear itself out. Around 4:30 a.m. she surrendered the idea of sleep and went into the kitchen to make tea. The lake came to light as the sun rose over the hillside at the back of the house. The water went from black to silver to shimmering green. Aiden stayed in bed for a couple of hours more, and Tim appeared later, stretching and crowing about how well he slept at the lake house.

“Well, I feel like I’ve been run over by the lorry that is your son,” Anne said wryly. “Looks like you’re on breakfast duty, love.”

Tim was taking forever in the kitchen, but this was a rare opportunity to sit still in the morning and she told herself to try to enjoy it. She could hear him banging around like the Anglo-Norman invasion was afoot, not pancakes and eggs. She glanced at the house behind her. It was a beautiful old place in many ways. The exterior reflected the elegant era in which it had been built. While the adjacent homes retained their charming screened-in porches, her mother-in-law had had theirs deconstructed ten years ago, wanting a more modern look. The couches and chairs scattered about the patio matched the interior decor of the house, a sort of beachy casual that looked like it came directly from the Pottery Barn catalog, because it had, and was far too purposeful to convince. Nothing about Christi Magnusen was casual. Christi liked new things and redid her Seattle home completely every three to five years. The lake house had escaped notice for as long as a decade, partly because Christi came up so rarely now that her children were grown and, Anne assumed, because of the inconvenience of the location.

She closed her eyes and listened to the morning air around her—gossiping gulls, wind in the trees, waves lapping the shore. The cart’s wheels squeaked in the sand and the dock clanked in a gentle wake. An unseen crow rattled and cackled in the woods.

Anne thought of her childhood home and how the island would sound in the morning—larks singing out of the heather, the neighbor’s cows lowing. The wind murmuring and whistling as it blew down the bluff and hummed sorrowfully along the power lines. Whenever she walked to the dock to fetch her father, she’d hear the sea crashing against the foot of the cliff and the crying of gulls, which were not unlike the gulls here. Near the harbor, the water-washed stones of the beach rattled and hissed under the pull of the outgoing tide. There was the clamor and clang of the boats in the harbor and the sound of men’s voices, her father’s among them, calling to each other as they came in with the day’s catch.

She opened her eyes. Now her lovely boy had seated himself next to the cart. A crow landed upwind of Aiden and squawked.

“Wok! Wok! Wok! Wok!”

Aiden turned to the bird, then back toward the lake.

Tim appeared behind her and dropped a kiss on her head.

“Last batch is on the griddle,” he said.

He sat in the low chair next to her. Another crow had joined the first and was pacing about in the wet sand near where Aiden sat with his hands tucked inside his life preserver. A third, smaller crow flew down and joined the other two. The biggest crow hopped sideways and fluffed its wings, croaking. The smallest crow laughed a call and Aiden watched them.

Anne told Tim about the crows’ chase and those she’d seen at the ferry terminal in Seattle dropping mussels on the ferry off-ramp.

“Clever, don’t you think?”

Tim frowned at the birds, which jostled each other.

“Maybe smart, but they’re also trouble. There’s a big flock living near Phinney Ridge by the zoo. The ‘Zoo Murder,’ everyone is calling it. They’ve become a nuisance, and the neighborhood association is pestering the city to do something about it.”

“Nuisance how?”

“You know—roosting in trees, crapping on cars, making lots of noise.”

Ironic that the same neighborhood that took such pride in its lovely collection of caged animals would begrudge a gathering of wild birds, Anne mused.

“You know how people are,” Tim said. “They want their wildlife curated. I think we’ll do an article soon. Maybe when we get back, you and Aiden can wander by the zoo and collect some ideas for me?”

She felt a flash of anger. Was he trying to help her fill her newly empty days?

Now Tim was talking about the paper. His father and the board wanted to expand into other parts of the region. That was why they’d come up to the lake. Partly anyway. Family time, yes, but Tim Senior had also asked his eldest son to evaluate the new potential markets—Portland and Ashland in Oregon as well as Spokane and Richland in eastern Washington. Spokane was actually bigger than Seattle until the 1930s, Tim was saying.

“The population now is about 185,000, but it looks like there’s lots of room for economic growth, mainly in tech and healthcare.”

The smallest crow yanked the tailfeathers of one of its companions, which squawked in complaint.

“They have an opera house in Spokane and a proper symphony,” Anne said. “Patrice took the graduating class to a workshop out there last fall.”

“Well, the arts are never really part of the financial picture, you know,” Tim said. “So much of that stuff is run on grants and donations from the wealthy. It’s small potatoes. Dad wants to look at core markets that—shit! The pancakes!”

He jumped up and ran into the house.

Aiden tiptoed up the beach toward the crows. He was getting so big, losing his baby softness and becoming such a sturdy little boy.

Tim reappeared.

“Disaster averted,” he said. “Your breakfast awaits, my queen.”

He pulled her up with both hands. Down the beach, Aiden had nearly reached the crows, which watched him closely but hadn’t moved.

“Aiden! Time for breakfast, son!” Tim called.

The birds considered Tim, but Aiden did not. Tim called again, and still the boy didn’t respond. Tim sighed and strode down the sand toward him. Anne tensed and moved to follow but stopped herself.

At Tim’s approach, the crows lifted off and flapped down the beach. Aiden watched them go and ignored his father. Tim squatted down next to the boy and said something. Aiden tipped his head back and smiled. They came back across the sand together, and Anne’s heart heaved with relief.

After breakfast Tim went into the sunroom, which he was using as an office, promising to work only until noon. Anne and Aiden went back outside to the beach. Aiden had brought his wee book of fairy tales and paged through it for a time. Then he found a garden spade and began filling the dock cart up with sand. When Anne tried to join in, he made it clear it was a game he wanted to play alone. She returned to the chair and tipped her hat to shield her face from the sun. She pulled out her notebook and her syllabus from last semester and put on her glasses. Her department chair, Patrice, had suggested she use her leave to consider any changes she’d like to make to her core classes. Anne looked at her notes for the course she’d intended to teach this fall before her leave had been scheduled. “Amhráin Aoibhneas, Cumha, agus Lullaby: Songs of Joy, Lament, and Lullaby,” she’d called it. The syllabus promised to introduce students to the Irish language as well as various classic ballads from the last three centuries.

Her mind wandered as she looked over the pages. If the lake felt warm enough, she wanted Tim to take Aiden swimming later. The boy loved water and they spent hours at the local YMCA in Seattle. But it nagged at Anne that he hadn’t learned how to swim properly, just as she hadn’t as a child. She’d berated her mother about it her first summer home from university after discovering that most of her classmates had learned as children.

“And how would we have gone about that, exactly?” Margaret had asked. “Toss you off the pier with a quick Hail Mary?”

Her parents couldn’t swim either. Most locals couldn’t, and all of them fishing families. It exasperated her. It was true that the rough waters of the island were inhospitable. All the more reason one should know how to swim, Anne argued. She’d taken lessons at uni as a first year. Hearing the instructor’s lecture on hypothermia, she’d thought of her fisherman father.

“At water temperatures below four degrees Celsius, you’ve no more than fifteen minutes to exit the water,” the instructor told the class, pacing the pool deck, as they stood shivering in the shallow end.

Da surely knew that, though, didn’t he?

She’d passed the swim test on the first try but never felt relaxed in the water. Tim had grown up with his own pool and agreed that Aiden needed to be a confident swimmer. She watched Aiden tip the cart over on its side and empty the sand back onto the beach. He stood next to the one exposed wheel and spun it with the flat of his hand.

She blinked, growing sleepy in the warming sun, and tucked her glasses in her pocket. Her notebook flopped shut in her lap. Aiden righted the cart and pushed it along the wet sand near the water. The wheels sank in the damp, and he pulled it backward onto higher ground. He crouched low, picking up rocks and stuffing them into his pockets. He glanced at her and away. Her heart filled and ached. She wanted to scoop him up and cuddle him and bury her face in his soft little neck and cover him with kisses. But she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. She knew better than to try that. Not now.

Aiden straightened and looked up the beach. Anne followed his gaze to the crows hovering on the light breeze above the waterline. Their wings caught a thermal and they rode it, adjusting their bodies ever so slightly to hang in place.

Her thoughts drifted to her classroom, her students sitting around her at the piano, sunlight streaming in through the windows. A song threaded its way through her brain.

Oh, if I was a blackbird, could whistle and sing.

I’d follow the vessel my true love sails in.

And in the top rigging I would there build my nest.

And I’d flutter my wings o’er his lily-white breast.

She heard her students join in with harmony. She heard Gran’s voice. Then Katherine’s.

She fell into a doze listening to the cart moving back and forth in the sand and the waves lapping the shore. The teasing squawk of the crows.

It could have been a minute or an hour. She didn’t know, but she jolted awake to a different sound, her heart racing and her palms sweating. Up in the woods behind the houses, the sound repeated, and the earsplitting echo of gunshots rebounded off the hillside and over the water. The crows voiced a chorus of complaint.

“Karr! Karr! Karr! Karr Karr!”

Anne struggled to her feet and moved toward her son. The cart was on its side, a small pile of rocks neatly stacked on top like an elegant cairn, a milepost, a way marker.

But Aiden was nowhere in sight.