Winter Sparrow (2 page)

Her ridiculous theories did nothing to settle the anxiety twisting in her stomach. Not like theories ever could. If the medication couldn’t settle her, if the therapy she’d endured over the years couldn’t settle her, then what would? Not Joshua’s kind whispers or his affectionate hand stroking hers. Not even a scenario with a proposed happy ending, because Mary knew happy endings were like half-smiles or half-truths. They were pages left unfinished in books she didn’t really want to be a part of, especially when she knew, beneath the façade she had created, that every intruding thought was a cunning politician, and unsure moments like these were when such ugly roots were exhumed.

You’re being too harsh of the situation, Mary
. If anyone could appreciate beauty, an artist like her could, so it wasn’t the fact that it couldn’t ever be beautiful out here. Something else. From a young, impressionable age, Mary had been capable of seeing what was beautiful, even if it wasn’t always there. Most times she could look at a blank canvas and picture the life about to be created by her meticulous, capricious talents. Of course, Dad didn’t think she had it in her to be a painter. In his mind, the pursuit of art as a lifelong ambition was nothing but a romantic dream that could only result in a rude awakening. A consequence of her condition.
After all, so much of an artist’s life is loneliness,
he’d said,
and your mind is too fragile for that
. But in spite of her father’s attempt to keep her caged, whether he knew or didn’t know how his words imprisoned her, she proved him wrong.

Still, judgment and critique did not cease. Dad never thought Joshua was a good enough lover for his complicated offspring either. But he was wrong there as well.
Zero
for two, Dad
, she thought, mentally gloating a bit.

But there was a fear growing with the ugly roots. The fear was strong and relentless. Years of feeling in control had led her here, now so lost with who she was and what she wanted, a delirium swimming in her blood that could not be sedated.

“It’s going to be beautiful out here, promise,” Joshua said, momentarily derailing her train of thought.

Why was it that, when he promised something, he really seemed to mean it? Or at least, she felt able to trust that he meant it. Maybe it was the power each of his words possessed or how he stole a tender glance of her when he spoke the words. Without fail, he had this presence that forced her doubts to be still, if only for a short while. Nothing up until now could calm her, but his words did. Where were these simple words when she was trapped in that filthy high school locker room? Where was he when pompous doctors filled her brain with reasons to be afraid of what she might become as a result of some genetic mistake? 

“I met you too late,” she said, kissing his wrist and smiling as the gentleness of those micro-hairs tickled her mouth.

“What do you mean?” Joshua asked, one second his eyes glued to the road and the next to her.

“I feel so obsolete sometimes. Outdated.”

“You’re not old, if that’s what you mean.”

“No, I’m not. But I feel like my life is passing me by, attempting to leave me…I don’t know…incomplete, unfulfilled.”

Joshua grinned. “Passing? I was under the impression we were about to
begin
our lives together. Most girls would be on cloud nine.”

“And I am. Oh, don’t listen to me,” she said, brushing off her remark as silliness. “My mind just never knows when to keep its opinions to itself, that’s all.”

“Are you having second thoughts about the wedding?”

“No.” 

“About this drive?”

“I don’t think so?”

“That sounded more like a question than an answer,” he said. “What is it? I’m not gonna force you to do anything you don’t wanna do, Mary. I love you.” He paused. “Is it my father’s house?”

She slowly nodded. “I guess.”

“This area will start to feel like home in no time, really. You haven’t even seen it yet.”

“No, I haven’t. But it doesn’t mean I can’t ever get lost out here and have some grungy perv attempt to take advantage of me. What then?”

Joshua rolled his eyes. “You’d probably give said grungy perv a piece of your mind, and he’d run off with his tail between his legs.”

Mary felt her shoulders rise to cradle a chilled neck. She rolled up the window as a slight smirk nudged her lips. “How do you do that?”

“What?” he asked.

“Always make me feel like everything’s gonna be all right. Like I’m this beautiful, courageous person.”

“Because that’s how I see you.”

“I wish we saw the same thing. No one’s as beautiful as you think I am.”

“I’ve known you for years now. I think I’m a pretty good judge.”

“Just wondering if three years is enough time to get to know someone before you rush into something.” She didn’t realize what was coming out of her mouth until it was too late. It was sort of like vomit. The syllables just kept bubbling up out of her. “I didn’t mean…That came out wrong. It’s not you.”

“We’re not rushing, sweetheart. We both have given it a lot of time and thought, and you’ve wrestled with it, I know. But it just feels like the right move.”

Move, like it’s a game of chess. How quaint.

Joshua guided the car around the foot of a great hill. She’d noticed the sky change colors during the trip. It started as an inviting fuchsia, but as night fell, the atmosphere became a grayer shade. Each hour brought change. It was the nature of the world. It wasn’t a nightmare or a reason to be afraid. It just was. At least, that’s what her father might’ve said if he were here. And the tall trees surrounding this winding road weren’t ghastly, looming menaces. They were breathtaking guardians.

A blink. Return to reality.

Maybe that was how she was supposed to think. Maybe these forest mysteries could be easily defined during the daylight. But when the colors shifted into place, when the night dropped out of those moving clouds, everything turned. The sky became less magical. The tress turned into swaying sentinels she had every reason to be afraid of.

The anxiety returned suddenly and drove needles up her forearm. Mary hoped Joshua didn’t catch her weighing every breath. She shut her eyes, wishing to be free from the insatiable thoughts. But the gesture didn’t help much. The car was still bending her, pulling her toward a certain unknown destination, possibly an end if the numerous statistics she’d perused in several magazines proved correct.

To her fiancé, Mary knew this wasn’t anything close to an end. Rather, it was a beginning. A new life.
Maybe my second chance
, she eventually mused, and then she kept that thought spinning in her mind for a while.

SHE WOULD NEVER FORGET THE
unpleasant feeling of stepping out of the car and walking up to the house her parents had decided was going to be their new home, like it or not. But a home was more than the walls. It was more than a building. It was the people in it.

“Right,” Mary had said with rolled eyes before her mother had the chance to finish her rant. The home possessed an aura she hadn’t before sensed in any other house. Then again, she’d only ever lived in two houses. She didn’t even count their three-month stint in the grungy apartment back in Missouri as living. It was a brief episode she pretended never happened. 

Mary was fourteen for a moment. She was so sure of who she was. Or, at least, she was sure of the kind of girl she
wanted
to be. The kind that grows wings and flies into a brighter existence. Maybe she had acquired that trait from her old man. Dad, with his unflinching demeanor and eyes that had more determination than any rugged guy she’d ever day-dreamed about, had been the reason they always moved from place to place. The luxury of being the daughter of a third-class factory worker.

But that’s the way things look when you’re young. Things happen because they have a
reason
to happen. People do because something pushes them in that direction. A reason. A poem where human beings and the hopeless, romantic mistakes create each miserable stanza. Was it his selfish plan or his ambition that drew them to the house of her teenage years? The house she swore she would hate with every footprint she left behind on the uneven wood floors or for every stroke of her palm against the sloppily painted drywall. Yes, this was who she wanted to be. The girl who had a reason to be frustrated, discontent. Left behind like footprints. Mary knew who she was becoming, even then. But nobody else had a clue.

“I’ll grow wings all by myself,” she scribbled into the bed frame one night. It was remarkable what one could accomplish with a twisted paperclip and a splinter of light creeping in. Her little sister, Jamie, never even stirred while she scratched and scratched away. “I’ll grow wings.”

The quiet tap of the rain on her passenger side window brought back the rusted memory. The truth of it was that it did indeed taste like metal, if memories could taste like anything. She  remembered seeing a sparrow that day her family transported her to a place far from any home she wanted to think about. Perhaps some of the finer memories were dead, hidden away in that subconscious closet of hers. If a thought were left alone long enough, could it too grow wings and fly away?

Get a grip, Mary. It’s just a house,
she thought, the realism of these adolescent moments flooding in.
It will be your new home.
She was back in the car with Joshua, knowing full well that it wasn’t as simple as giving the place a name. Mary’s home or Joshua’s home. Or Joshua’s father’s home. What were possessions anyway, if not things to be given and taken and named? And was that all she was to him? A possession? Something to be had, here and now, to be carried to some distant, secluded house, away from the world she knew she needed to be in?

What, then, was the reason for this drive? Surely she wasn’t prepared to walk down the aisle. She didn’t have the shoes, the dress, and if any of her family members could see her now, they’d point and laugh. So nervous, hands shaking to a panicked melody, eyes fixed on the darkness that lay behind the tall trees. She hadn’t bothered to apply any makeup either, icing on the tasteless cake. All the gook in the world couldn’t mask the uncertain glow in her stare.

“What if we didn’t see it?” she offered up quietly. Joshua had been listening to the soft music he enjoyed during long car rides. Mozart or Beethoven; she wasn’t good at distinguishing between the two.

Her fiancé lowered the volume. “What, baby?”

“I said, what if we didn’t see the house right now?”

“We drove all this way. It wouldn’t make much sense to turn back now. You are acting so strange today.” The car kept pulling her closer. Where were her wings? She thought that by now they’d be developed, tugging their feathered way out of her shoulders. Real. Strong. “Mary, don’t look so bewildered. We’re safe here. I told you, this house has been in my family for generations. My father has given it to me, and I want to give it to you. Don’t mind the woods.”

“What if I don’t want it?” She felt guilty for how those words just dropped off her tongue.

“You’ll like it. Trust me.”

Trust.
Maybe that was why she’d gotten in this car. Maybe that was why she didn’t beg him, even now, to slam on the brakes and let her run back, ever waiting for the wings to carry her into the pale clouds and back to the city.

She sat in silence. There weren’t any more memories during the car ride. She was thankful for that. Seeing her parents’ faces again in her mind’s eye had been disconcerting, especially now, when all she really wanted to see was a light amidst so much black.

“We’re finally here,” Joshua said with excitement nearly an hour later. He couldn’t help nudging her lethargic legs a half a dozen times, awaiting her reaction.

The car eased up the small crest and entered a dirt-and-pebble passage that cities and suburbia would never have called a driveway. Joshua stopped in front of the porch. The lawn, or what was supposed to be a lawn, was overgrown with weeds. And there was a tarnished, broken-down tractor that looked to be from her grandfather’s day half taken apart and sleeping beside a massive willow tree. Judging by the bumps that sent vibrations through her seat on the slow drive in, she surmised that the rocks and unsympathetic roots were responsible for killing the massive mechanical beast.