The Birdman's Daughter

“You think he’ll be able to do that?”

His skepticism rankled. “Of course he will. There will be therapists working with him almost every day.”

“Better you than me.” He crushed the beer can in his palm. “Spending that much time with him would drive me batty inside of a week.”

She turned, her back pressed to the counter, and fixed her brother with a stern look. “You’re going to have to do your part, Del. I can’t do this all by myself.”

“What about all those therapists?” He stood. “I’ll send Mary Elisabeth over. She likes everybody.”

“Who’s Mary Elisabeth?”

“This girl I’m seeing.”

That figured. The divorce papers for wife number three weren’t even signed and he had a new female following after him. “How old is Mary Elisabeth?”

“Old enough.” He grinned. “Younger than you. Prettier, too.”

He left, and she sank into a chair. She’d hoped that at forty-one years old, she’d know better than to let her brother needle her that way. And that at thirty-nine, he’d be mature enough not to go out of his way to push her buttons.

But of course, anyone who thought that would be wrong. Less than an hour in the house she’d grown up in and she’d slipped into the old roles so easily—dutiful daughter, aggravated older sister.

She heard a hammering sound and realized it was her father, summoning her. She jumped up and went to him. He’d managed to type a message on the screen

I’m ready for bed.

She wheeled him to his bedroom. Some time ago he’d replaced the king-size bed he’d shared with her mother with a double, using the extra space to install a spotting scope on a stand, aimed at the trees outside the window. Nearby sat a tape recorder and a stack of birdcall tapes, along with half a dozen field guides.

She reached to unbutton his shirt and he pushed her away, his right arm surprisingly strong. She frowned at him. “Let me help you, Dad. It’s the reason I came all this way. I want to help you.”

Their eyes meet, his watery and pale, with only a hint of their former keenness. Her breath caught as the realization hit her that he was an old man. Aged. Infirm. Words she had never, ever associated with her strong, proud father. The idea unnerved her.

He looked away from her, shoulders slumped, and let her wrestle him out of his clothes and into pajamas. He got into bed and let her arrange his legs under the covers and tuck him in. Then he turned his back on her. She was dismissed.

She went into the living room and lay down on the sofa. The clock on the shelf across the room showed 1:35. She felt like a prisoner on the first day of a long sentence.

A sentence she’d volunteered for, she reminded herself. Though God knew why. Maybe she’d indulged a fantasy of father-daughter bonding, of a dad so grateful for his daughter’s assistance that he’d finally open up to her. Or that he’d forget about birds for a while and nurture a relationship with her.

She might as well have wished for wings and the ability to fly.

CHAPTER 2

You must have the bird in your heart before you

can find it in the bush.

—John Burroughs, Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes

and Other Papers

When Karen woke the next morning, she stared up at the familiar-yet-not-quite-right ceiling, then rolled over, reaching for Tom. But of course, he wasn’t here. She sat up and looked around the bedroom she’d occupied as a girl. A line of neon-haired Troll dolls leered back at her from the bookshelves beside the window.

The clock showed 7:25. She lay on her back, sleep still pulling at her. She told herself she should get up and check on her father. The occupational therapist was coming this morning and the nurse’s aide was due after lunch. Today would set the tone for the rest of her days here, so she needed to get off on the right foot. Still she lingered under the comfort of the covers.

When she did finally force herself into a sitting position, she reached for the phone. Tom would be up by now, getting breakfast for himself and the boys.

“Hello?” He answered on the third ring.

“Hi, honey. Good morning.”

“Good morning. How’s it going?”

“Okay, so far. Dad’s not as helpless as I thought. He can’t talk, but he can type with his right hand on the computer, and he tries to help me move him in and out of his chair, though sometimes that’s more trouble than if he sat still. The therapist is coming today to start working with him, so I’m hoping for good progress.”

“That’s good. Don’t try to do too much by yourself, though. Get some help.”

“I saw Del yesterday. I told him he’d have to help me and he volunteered his girlfriend-du-jour.”

Tom laughed and she heard the scrape of a spatula against a pan. He was probably making eggs. “How’s it going there?” she asked.

“Hectic, as usual. We’re starting that big job out at Adventist Hospital today, and we’ve still got ten houses left to do in that new development out near the airport.”

Guilt squeezed her at the thought of all the paperwork those jobs would entail in the coming weeks. She was the one who kept the office running smoothly, not to mention their household. “Maybe you should hire some temporary help in the office,” she said. “Just until I get back.”

“Maybe. But I don’t trust a stranger the way I trust you. Besides, you’ll be back soon.”

Not soon enough to suit her. In nearly twenty-three years of marriage, they’d never been apart more than a night or two. The thought of weeks without him, away from her familiar routine, made her want to crawl back in bed and pull up the covers until this was all over. “How are the boys?”

“Matt’s doing great. He’s running a crew for me on those subdivision jobs.”

“And Casey?” She held her breath, waiting for news of her problem youngest child.

“I got a call from the school counselor last night. He’s going to fail his freshman year of high school unless he can pull off a miracle on his final exams. And he’s decided he doesn’t want to work for me this summer.”

There was no mistaking the edge in Tom’s voice. He took this kind of thing personally, though she doubted Casey meant it that way. “What does he want to do?”

“Apparently nothing.”

“Let me talk to him.”

She heard him call for Casey, and then her youngest son was on the phone, as cheerful as if he’d been awake for hours, instead of only a few minutes. “Hey, Mom, how are you? I thought about you last night. Justin and I went to see this really cool band. They write all their own songs and stuff. You would have really liked them.”

It would have been easier to come down hard on Casey if he were surly and uncommunicative, but he had always been a sunny child. She reminded herself it was her job as a mother to try to balance out some of that sunniness with reality. “Dad tells me the school counselor called him last night.”

“It’s all such a crock,” he said. “All they do is teach these tests. The teachers don’t care if we learn anything useful or not. Why should I even bother?”

“You should bother because a high school diploma is a requirement for even the most entry-level jobs these days, and Mom and Dad aren’t going to be around to support you forever.”

“You don’t have to worry about me, Mom. I’ll be okay.”

Okay doing what? she wanted to ask, but didn’t dare. The last time she’d hazarded this question, he’d shared his elaborate plan to become a championship surfer in Hawaii—despite the fact that he’d never been on a surfboard before.

“What are you going to do this summer?” she asked instead. He had only one more week of school before vacation.

“I thought maybe I’d just, you know, hang out.”

He was fast becoming an expert at hanging out. “Your dad could really use your help. Without me there he’s having to do more of the office work.”

“Matt’s helping him. A friend of mine has a job life-guarding at the city pool. He thinks he can get me on there. That would be a cool job.”

Any job was better than no job, she supposed. “All right, if you get the job, I’ll talk to your dad.”

“When are you coming home?”

The plaintive tone in his voice cut deep. “I don’t know. In a few weeks. By the end of the summer, for sure.” Her original plan for a short visit seemed unrealistic now that she’d seen her father and realized the extent of his disability.

“How’s Grandpa?”

“He’s okay. The stroke paralyzed his left side, though with therapy, he should be able to get back to almost normal.” She hoped.

“That’s good. Tell him I said hi. Dad wants to talk to you again.”

Tom got back on the line. “He says he’s going to get a job lifeguarding at the city pool,” she said. “Maybe it would be a good thing for him to work for someone else for a summer.”

“Yeah, then he’d find out how good he’s got it now.” He shifted the phone and called goodbye to the boys as they left for school and work, then returned to their conversation. “What did you tell Casey when he asked how long you’d be gone?”

“I told him I’ll be home by the end of the summer, at the latest.” She didn’t know if she’d last that long, but she’d made a commitment and couldn’t back out now.

“I don’t know how we’re going to do without you here for that long. I was thinking it would only be a few weeks.”

She took a deep breath, fighting against the tension that tightened around her chest like a steel band. “I know I said that, but now that I’m here, I can see that was unrealistic. He’s going to need more time to get back on his feet.”

“Then your mother and brother should pitch in to help. They live right there and neither one of them has a family.”

“They won’t help. Del hardly spent five minutes here yesterday.”

“What about a nursing home? Or a rehab facility? His insurance would probably even pay for part of it.” Tom was in problem solving mode now. For him, everything had a simple answer. But there was nothing simple about her relationship with her father.

“It would kill him to be in a place like that. To have strangers taking care of him. You know how he is about his privacy. His dignity.”

“I know he’s never gone out of his way to do anything for you. And we need you here.” The no-nonsense tone she admired when Tom dealt with vendors and difficult customers wasn’t as welcome when it was aimed at her.

“I know you do,” she said, struggling to keep her temper. She’d been away from home scarcely twenty-four hours and he was already complaining. She’d wanted sympathy from him. Support. Not a lecture. “Right now, Dad needs me more.”

“What are you going to do if your father doesn’t recover enough to look after himself again?” Tom asked.

“I don’t know.” Having him come live with them in Denver was out of the question. The doctor had already told her his lungs couldn’t handle the altitude. She sighed. “If Dad doesn’t improve by the end of the summer, we’ll probably have to put him in a nursing home. But give me this summer to try to help him, please.”

“I’m sorry.” His voice softened. “I don’t mean to pressure you. I just…it’s hard to think about dealing with the business and the boys without you. Casey’s not the only one in this house who didn’t realize how good he’s got it.”

She laughed, as much from relief as mirth. “You keep thinking like that. And see when you can get away to come see me.”

“I’ll do that.”

They said their goodbyes, then she dressed and made her bed, and went to get her father ready for his first therapy appointment.

What she hadn’t been able to say to Tom was that she needed to stay here right now as much for herself as for her father. She needed to see if being forced together like this, they could somehow find the closeness that had always eluded them before.

That afternoon, Casey lay on his bed and tossed a minibasketball at the hoop on the back of the bedroom door. If he aimed it just right, the ball would soar through the hoop, bounce off the door and sail back to him, so that he could retrieve it and start over without changing positions.

Matt was in the shower in the bathroom next to the bedroom they shared. Casey could hear the water pounding against the tile wall, and smell the herbal shampoo Matt liked. He was getting ready to go on a date with his girlfriend, Audra. Were they going to have sex? Casey knew they’d done it because he’d caught Matt hiding a box of condoms in the back of his desk drawer, where he thought Mom wouldn’t find them. Casey had given him a hard time about it. “You’re nineteen, for Christ’s sake,” he’d said, while his older brother’s face turned the color of a ripe tomato. “You shouldn’t have to hide something like that.”

Matt had shoved the box back in the drawer. “Right. Mom would have a cow if she knew.”

“Mom’s always having cows. She’ll get over it.”

He smiled and tossed the ball again, remembering the exchange. The trick to handling Mom was to smile and nod and let her go on for a while, then give her a hug or a kiss and continue as you always had. She was really pretty easy to handle once you knew the secret.

She’d sounded all worried and sad on the phone this morning. Maybe she was upset about Grandpa. That would be pretty rough, seeing your dad in the hospital, all helpless and old. That had probably freaked her out. Mom pretended to be all tough sometimes, but she was still a girl.

He caught the basketball on the rebound and launched it again. What would it be like to have a stroke? Mom had said Grandpa couldn’t use his left side. Casey lay back and stiffened his left arm and leg, pretending they were useless. He imagined trying to walk, dragging his paralyzed leg behind him. If you tried to eat, would you get food all over yourself?

He relaxed and let his mind drift to other topics. Mom had said she’d talk to Dad about the lifeguard job. That was cool. He knew he was a disappointment to his dad, who wanted him to be more like Matt. Matt was the perfect son. He was going to college and would take over the business someday. Cool, if that’s what he wanted, but couldn’t they see Casey didn’t want anything like that?

Trouble was, he wasn’t sure what he wanted. Still, he was only sixteen. He had plenty of time to figure it out. Whatever he ended up doing, it wasn’t going to require going to school for years and years. Maybe he’d be a musician or an artist. Or he’d invent something fantastic that would make him tons of money.

Maybe he’d be a writer. He’d like that. For as long as he could remember he’d kept notebooks full of his writing—stories, poems, even songs.

Matt came out of the bathroom and threw a wet towel at him. “I need to borrow your hair gel,” he said.

“For a dollar.”

“What?” Matt glared at him.

“You can borrow my hair gel for a dollar.”

“You’re crazy.” Matt turned away.

Casey didn’t argue. The problem with Matt was that he carried the honest, upstanding young man thing too far. If it had been Casey, he would have used his brother’s gel without asking and chances were, Matt never even would have noticed.

“Here, loser.” Matt turned back and tossed a dollar bill toward the bed.

Casey reached out and caught it, smiling to himself. He knew big bro would pay up. He probably hadn’t even thought long about not doing it.

Mentally, he added the dollar to the stash in his backpack. He had almost two hundred dollars now. Not bad for a guy without a job. He made money other ways, like writing love notes to girls for their boyfriends, or blackmailing the jocks who smoked out behind the gym. Dangerous work, but so far he’d managed to charm his way out of harm.

It was a gift, this ability to smile and talk his way out of tricky situations. A man with a gift like that could go far, no doubt.

“So are you going to work with us this summer?” Matt studied Casey in the dresser mirror as he rubbed gel through his hair.

“No, I’m going to get a job as a lifeguard at the city pool.”

“You can’t make a career out of being a lifeguard.”

“Why not, if I want to?”

“For one thing, what’ll you do in the winter, when the pool closes?”

“Maybe I’ll move to Florida, or California, where the pools never close.”

“You are such a loser.” Matt pulled a shirt over his head, sneered at his brother one last time, then left.

Casey sighed and lay back on the bed again. Why did people think if you weren’t just like them, you had to be wrong?

He thought about Mom again. Had she sounded so sad on the phone because she was worried about him? He’d tried to tell her she had nothing to worry about, but she probably couldn’t help it. Worrying was a mom thing, like the way she told them, every time they left the house, “Be careful.”

“No, tonight I think I’ll be reckless,” he always answered. She pretended not to think that was funny, but her eyes told him she was laughing on the inside.

He missed her. She’d sounded like she missed them, too. He sat up, put the dollar in his pocket, and decided he’d take a walk downtown, to see what was going on.

While Martin worked with the occupational therapist, an energetic young woman named Lola, Karen took inventory of the refrigerator and pantry and made a shopping list. When the nurse’s aide came this afternoon, Karen could slip out to buy groceries and refill Dad’s medications.

She was disposing of half a dozen petrified packages of frozen food in the outside trash can when a red minivan pulled into the driveway. As she waited with her hand on the garbage can lid, a plump blonde in pink capris and a pink-and-white striped sleeveless shirt slid from the driver’s seat. The blonde propped her sunglasses on top of her head and waved.

Karen broke into a run, laughing as she embraced Tammy Collins Wainwright. “Look at you, girl!” Tammy drew back and looked Karen up and down. “I guess living up there in the mountains and working at that landscape business is keeping you young and trim.”

“Denver isn’t really in the mountains, but I guess it does agree with me. And what about you? You look great.” Except for a few lines on her forehead and around her eyes, Tammy hadn’t changed much since their days behind the wheel in driver’s ed class at Tipton Senior High School. The two girls had been pretty much inseparable after meeting in that class. They’d worked behind the counter together at the Dinky Dairy, and had double-dated whenever possible.

Tammy had been the matron of honor in Karen’s wedding, having already married her high school sweetheart, Brady Wainwright. While Karen had moved to Austin and later Colorado, Tammy had stayed in town to raise four children; her youngest, April, was ten.

Tammy’s smile faded. “I’m so sorry about your dad,” she said. “It must be just awful for you.”

Karen nodded, not quite sure how to respond. It was much more terrible for her father, after all. And it wasn’t as if he’d died.

Or was Tammy referring to the fact that Karen had left everything she knew and loved to come take care of a man she wasn’t even sure liked her?

“I brought a cake.” Tammy reached into the van and pulled out a yellow-and-white Tupperware Cake Taker. “I remember how Mr. Martin had a real sweet tooth.”

“And his daughter inherited it.” Karen took the cake carrier from Tammy and walked beside her toward the house. “Did you make this yourself?” She couldn’t remember the last time she’d made a cake.

“Me and Betty Crocker.” Tammy threw her head back and let out peals of laughter.

Lola met them at the door, her “bag of tricks,” as she called her therapy equipment, in hand. “He did very well for his first day,” she said. “He’s worn out, though. I imagine he’ll sleep for a couple of hours or so. Just let him be and feed him when he wakes up. And I’ll see you Thursday.”

Karen thanked her, then led the way through the house to the screened back porch. This side of the house was shady, and two ceiling fans overhead stirred the slightly cool air. “Do you mind if we sit out here and visit?” she asked. “That way we won’t disturb Dad.”

“That would be great.” Tammy settled in one of the cushioned patio chairs. “I wouldn’t say no to a glass of iced tea.”

“Coming right up. And I thought maybe we’d try this cake with it.”

“I shouldn’t, but I will.”

Karen returned a few minutes later with two glasses of iced tea and two plates with generous slices of the lemon cake. “I already stole a bite,” she said as she sat in the chair across from her friend. “It’s delicious.”

“Thank you.” Tammy took a bite and moaned. “Ooooh, that is good, isn’t it?”

“So tell me what you’ve been up to,” Karen said. “How are Brady and the kids?”

“They’re doing great. April is going into fifth grade in the fall. Brady’s still racing. Our twenty-third wedding anniversary is next month and we’re going to San Antonio for the weekend.”

“That’s great. Congratulations.”

“I’m pretty excited. I can’t remember the last time we went anywhere without the kids. Which is why I shouldn’t be eating this cake.” She pushed her empty plate away. “I want to still be able to fit into the new clothes I bought for the trip.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Your twenty-third is coming up soon, isn’t it?”

Karen nodded. “This fall. I can’t believe it’s been that long.” It seemed like only yesterday she’d been working as a receptionist at the new hospital and Tom had been hired to do the landscaping work. He caused quite a stir among all the young women when he took off his shirt to plant a row of shrubs along the front drive. They’d all wasted countless hours admiring his bronzed muscles and tight blue jeans. When he’d asked Karen to go out with him, she’d been the envy of her coworkers.

“We’re thinking about renewing our vows for our twenty-fifth. You and Tom should think about that. You never had a big wedding. This would be your chance.”

Karen and Tom had eloped. They’d gone to Vegas for the weekend and been married at a chapel there. It had been very sweet and romantic, though at times she regretted not having the big church wedding with the long white dress, et cetera. She pressed the back of her fork into the last of the cake crumbs. “Did I ever tell you the real reason we eloped?” she asked.

Tammy’s eyes widened. “Were you pregnant?”

She laughed. “No. It was because I was afraid my father wouldn’t show up for the wedding and I wanted to save myself that humiliation.”

“Oh, honey!” Tammy leaned over and squeezed Karen’s hand. “Of course he would have shown up for your wedding.”

She shook her head. “He wasn’t there for my high school graduation. He was in the Galapagos, bird-watching. When Matt was born, he was in Alaska, and when I had Casey, he was in Guatemala.”

“But surely your wedding…”

“I didn’t want to risk it.”

Tammy sat back and assumed an upbeat tone once more. “Well, it doesn’t matter how you got married. The point is, it took. Not many couples can say that these days.”

She nodded. The fact that she and Tom had stayed together all these years was pretty amazing, considering they’d known each other all of three months when they decided to tie the knot. She had been only eighteen, trying to decide what to do with her future. She’d liked Tom well enough, but when he’d told her he planned to move to Austin at the end of the summer—over two hundred miles away from Tipton—she’d decided to throw in her lot with him.

She’d latched on to him as her ticket out of town, but stuck with him because he’d showed her a kind of love she’d never known before. Now he was the rock who supported her.

“So how is the birdman?” Tammy asked, using the name the townspeople had given Karen’s father long ago.

“Cantankerous as ever.” Karen sipped her iced tea, then cradled the glass between her palms, letting the cold seep into her skin. “That’s good, I guess. He’s a fighter. He’ll fight his way back from this, too.”

“They did an article on him in the paper last year. Said he was one of the top ten bird-watchers in the whole world.”