Читать книгу The Birdman's Daughter - Cindi Myers, Cindi Myers - Страница 8

Life is good only when it is magical and

musical… You must hear the bird’s song without

attempting to render it into nouns and verbs.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Works and Days”

When Karen MacBride first saw her father in the hospital, she was struck by how much this man who had spent his life pursuing birds had come to resemble one. His head, round and covered with wispy gray hair, reminded her of the head of a baby bird. His thin arms beneath the hospital sheet folded up against his body like wings. Years spent outdoors had weathered his face until his nose jutted out like a beak, his eyes sunken in hollows, watching her with the cautious interest of a crow as she approached his bed.

“Hi, Dad.” She offered a smile and lightly touched his arm. “I’ve come home to take care of you for a while.” After sixteen years away from Texas, she’d flown from her home in Denver this morning to help with her father for a few weeks.

That she’d agreed to do so surprised her. Martin Engel was not a man who either offered or inspired devotion from his family. He had been the remote authority figure of Karen’s childhood, the distracted voice on the other end of the line during infrequent phone calls during her adult years, the polite, preoccupied host during scattered visits home. For as long as she could remember, conversations with her father had had a disjointed quality, as if all the time he was talking to her, he was thinking of the call of the Egyptian Goose, or a reputed sighting of a rare Hutton’s Shearwater.

Which of course, he was. So what kind of communication could she expect from him now that he couldn’t talk at all? Maybe she’d agreed to return to Texas in order to find out.

He nodded to show he understood her now, and made a guttural noise in his throat, like the complaining of a jay.

“The doctors say there’s a chance he will talk again.” Karen’s mother, Sara, spoke from her post at the end of the bed. “A speech therapist will come once a week to work with him, and the occupational therapist twice a week. Plus there’s an aide every weekday to help with bathing and things like that.”

Karen swallowed hard, resisting the urge to turn and run, all the way back to Colorado. A voice in her head whispered, It’s not too late to get out of this, you know.

She ignored the voice and nodded, smile still firmly fixed in place. “The caseworker gave me the schedule. And Del said he got the house in order.”

“He built a ramp for the wheelchair and put hand-rails in the shower and things.” Sara folded her arms over her stomach, still looking grim. “Thank God you agreed to come down and stay with him. Three days with him here has been enough to wear me out.”

“Mom!” Karen nodded to her dad.

“I know he can hear me.” Sara swatted at her former husband’s leg. “I’m sure it hasn’t been any more pleasant for him than it has been for me.” Sara and Martin Engel had divorced some twenty years before, but they still lived in the same town and maintained a polite, if distant, relationship.

A large male nurse’s aide filled the doorway of the room. “Mr. Engel, I’m here to help you get dressed so you can go home.”

“Karen and I will go get a cup of coffee.” Sara took her daughter by the arm and pulled her down the hallway.

“You looked white as a ghost back there,” Sara said as they headed toward the cafeteria. “You aren’t going to get all weak and weepy on me, are you?”

Karen took a deep breath and shook her head. “No.” It had been a shock, seeing Dad like that. But she was okay now. She could do this.

“Good. Because he’s not worth shedding any tears over.”

Karen said nothing. She knew for a fact her mother had cried buckets of tears over Martin at one time. “What happened, exactly?” she said. “I understand he’s had a stroke, but how?”

“He was in Brazil, hunting the Pale-faced Antbird, the Hoffman’s Woodcreeper and the Brown-chested Barbet.” Sara rattled off the names of the exotic birds without hesitation. Living with a man devoted to birding required learning to speak the language in order to have much communication from him at all. She glanced over the top of her bifocals at her daughter. “If he found those three, he’d have ‘cleaned up’ Brazil, so of course he was adamant it be done as soon as possible.”

“He only needed three birds to have seen every bird in Brazil?” Karen marveled at this. “How many is that?”

“Seven thousand, nine hundred and something?” Sara shook her head. “I’m not sure. It changes all the time anyway. But I do know he’s getting close to eight thousand. When he passed seven thousand, seven hundred and fifty, he became positively fanatical about topping eight thousand before he got too old to travel.”

Ever since Karen could remember, her father’s life—and thus the life of his family—had revolved around adding birds to the list. By the time she was six, Karen could name over a hundred different types of birds. She rattled off genus species names the way other children talked about favorite cartoon characters. Instead of commercial jingles, birdcalls stuck in her head, and played over and over again. To this day, when she heard an Olive-sided Flycatcher, she could remember the spring morning when she’d first identified it on her own, and been lavished with praise by her too-often-distracted father.

“He’d just spotted the Woodcreeper when he keeled over right there in the jungle.” Sara continued her story. “Allen Welch was with him, and he’s the one who called me. He apologized, but said he had no idea who else to contact.”

Karen shook her head, amazed. “How did you ever get him home?”

“The insurance paid for an air ambulance. All those years with Mobil Oil were worth something after all.” Martin had spent his entire career as a petroleum engineer with Mobil Oil Company. He always told people he kept the job for the benefits. They assumed he meant health insurance and a pension, but his family knew the chief benefit for him was the opportunity to travel all over the world, adding birds to his list.

They reached the cafeteria. “I’ll get the coffee, you sit,” Sara said, and headed for the coffee machine.

Karen sank into a molded plastic chair and checked her watch. Eleven in the morning here in Texas. Only ten in Colorado. Tom and Matt would be at a job site by now and Casey was in math class—she hoped.

“Here you go.” Her mother set a cardboard cup in front of her and settled into the chair across the table. “How are Tom and the boys?”

“They’re fine. This is always a busy time of year for us, of course, but Matt’s been a terrific help, and we’ve hired some new workers.” Tom and Karen owned Blue Spruce Landscaping. This past year, their oldest son, Matt, had begun working for them full-time. “Did I tell you Matt’s signed up for classes at Red Rocks Community College this fall? He wants to study landscaping.”

“And he’ll be great at it, I’m sure.” She sipped her coffee. “What about Casey? What’s he up to these days?”

Karen’s stomach tightened as she thought of her youngest son. “Oh, you know Casey. Charming and sweet and completely unmotivated.” She made a face. “He’s failing two classes this semester. I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll ever get him out of high school.”

“He takes after his uncle Del.” Sara’s smile was fond, but her words made Karen shudder.

“The world doesn’t need two Dels,” she said. Her younger brother was a handsome, glib, womanizing con man. When he wasn’t sponging off her parents, he was making a play for some woman—usually one young enough to be his daughter. “Are he and Sheila still together?” Sheila was Del’s third wife, the one who’d put up with him the longest.

“No, they’ve split up.” Sara shrugged. “No surprise there. She never let the boy have any peace. Talk about a shrew.”

“I’d be a shrew, too, if my husband couldn’t keep his pants zipped or his bank account from being overdrawn.”

“Now, your brother has a good heart. People—especially women—always take advantage of him.”

No, Del had a black heart, and he was an expert at taking advantage of others. But Karen knew it was no use arguing with her mother. “If Del’s so good, maybe he should be the one looking after Dad,” she said.

Her mother frowned at her. “You know your father and Del don’t get along. Besides, for all his good qualities, Del isn’t the most responsible man in the world.”

Any other time, Karen might have laughed. Saying her brother wasn’t responsible was like saying the Rocky Mountains were steep.

She checked her watch again. Eleven-twenty. At home she’d be making the last calls on her morning’s to-do list.

Here, there was no to-do list, just this sense of too much to handle. Too many hours where she didn’t know what lay ahead. Too many things she had no control over. “Do you think he’s ready yet?” she asked.

Her mother stood. “He probably is. I’ll help you get him in the car. Del said he’d meet you at the house to help get him inside, but after that, you’re on your own.”

“Right.” After all, she was Karen, the oldest daughter. The dependable one.

The one with sucker written right across her forehead.

Of course Del was nowhere in sight when Karen pulled her father’s Jeep Cherokee up to the new wheelchair ramp in front of his house. She got out of the car and took a few steps toward the mobile home parked just across the fence, but Del’s truck wasn’t under the carport and there was no sign that anyone was home.

Anger gnawing a hole in her gut, she went around to the back of the Jeep and took out the wheelchair her mother had rented from the hospital pharmacy. After five minutes of struggling in the already oppressive May heat, she figured out how to set it up, and wheeled it around to the passenger side of the vehicle.

“Okay, Dad, you’re going to have to help me with this,” she said, watching his eyes to make sure he understood.

He nodded and grunted again, and made a move toward the chair.

“Wait, let me unbuckle your seat belt. Okay, put your hand on my shoulder. Wait, I’m not ready…well, all right. Here. Wait—”

Martin half fell and was half dragged into the chair. Sweat trickled down Karen’s back and pooled at the base of her spine. She studied the wheelchair ramp her brother had built out of plywood. As usual, he’d done a half-ass job. The thing was built like a skateboard ramp, much too steep.

In the end, she had to drag the chair up the ramp backwards, grappling for purchase on the slick plywood surface, cursing her brother under her breath the whole way. At the top, she sagged against the front door and dug in her purse for the key. A bird sang from the top of the pine tree beside the house.

She felt a tug on her shirt and looked over to find her father staring intently at the tree. “Northern Cardinal,” she identified the bird.

He nodded, satisfied, apparently, that she hadn’t forgotten everything he’d taught her.

Inside, the air-conditioning hit them with a welcome blast of cold. Karen pushed the wheelchair through the living room, past the nubby plaid sofa that had sat in the same spot against the wall for the past thirty years, and the big-screen TV that was a much newer addition. She started to turn toward her father’s bedroom, but he tugged at her again, and indicated he wanted to go in the opposite direction.

“Do you want to go to your study?” she asked, dismayed.

He nodded.

“Maybe you should rest first. Or the two of us could visit some. I could make lunch….”

He shook his head, and made a stabbing motion with his right hand toward the study.

She reluctantly turned the chair toward the back bedroom that none of them had been allowed to enter without permission when she was a child.

The room was paneled in dark wood, most of the floor space taken up by a scarred wooden desk topped by a sleek black computer tower and flat-screen monitor. Karen shoved the leather desk chair aside and wheeled her father’s chair into the kneehole. Before he’d come to a halt, he’d reached out with his right hand and hit the button to turn the computer on.

She backed away, taking the opportunity to study the room. Except for the newer computer, things hadn’t changed much since her last visit, almost a year ago. A yellowing map filled one wall, colored pins marking the countries where her father had traveled and listed birds. Behind the desk, floor-to-ceiling shelves were filled with her father’s collection of birding reference books, checklists and the notebooks in which he recorded the sightings made on each expedition.

The wall to the left of the desk was almost completely filled with a large picture window that afforded a view of the pond at the back of his property. From his seat at the desk, Martin could look up and see the Cattle Egrets, Black-necked Stilts, Least Terns and other birds that came to drink.

On the wall opposite the desk he had framed his awards. Pride of place was given to a citation from the Guinness Book of World Records, in 1998, when they recognized him as the first person to see at least one species of each of the world’s one hundred and fifty-nine bird families in a single year. Around it were ranged lesser honors from the various birding societies to which he belonged.

She looked at her father again. He was bent over the computer, his right hand gripping the mouse like an eagle’s talon wrapped around a stone. “I’ll fix us some lunch, okay?”

He said nothing, gaze riveted to the screen.

While Karen was making a sandwich in the kitchen, the back door opened to admit her brother. “Hey, sis,” he said, wrapping his arms around her in a hug.

She gave in to the hug for two seconds, welcoming her brother’s strength, and the idea that she could lean on him if she needed to. But of course, that was merely an illusion. She shrugged out of his grasp and continued slathering mayonnaise on a slice of bread. “You were supposed to be here to help get Dad in the house.”

“I didn’t know you were going to show up so soon. I ran out to get a few groceries.” He pulled a six-pack of beer from the bag and broke off a can.

“You thought beer was appropriate for a man who just got out of the hospital?”

“I know I sure as hell would want one.” He sat down and stretched his legs out in front of him. “Make me one of them sandwiches, will you?”

“Make your own.” She dropped the knife in the mayonnaise jar, picked up the glass of nutritional supplement that was her father’s meal, and went to the study.

When she returned to the kitchen, Del was still there. He was eating a sandwich, drinking a second beer. The jar of mayonnaise and loaf of bread still sat, open, on the counter. “I’m not your maid,” she snapped. “Clean up after yourself.”

“I see Colorado hasn’t improved your disposition any.” He nodded toward the study. “How’s the old man?”

“Okay, considering. He can’t talk yet, and he can’t use his left side much at all, but his right side is okay.”

“So how long are you staying?”

“A few weeks. Maybe a couple of months.” She wiped crumbs from the counter and twisted the bread wrapper shut, her hands moving of their own accord. Efficient. Busy. “Just until he can look after himself again.”

“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.