Homing (3 page)

But that wasn't all, as it turned out. While it was true that Nathan was dead, and that her imagination was overactive, she knew something had changed. She could feel it in the air around her front door. It was sinister and forbidding. She could open the door to get the mail, and she could even venture out onto the porch to bring in the newspaper if she had to. But she felt that same prickling panic if she thought about going any further, leaving her front step. And so she'd snatch up the mail, snatch up the newspaper, dart back inside and slam the door.

But Nathan stayed loose. He didn't come back to her, and the feeling that he was out there somewhere didn't dissipate. And eventually, Leah came to realize that she was going to have to find a way to bring him back, without leaving her house at all.

So when Charlotte told her about the birds, she knew what she had to do. Or, rather, what she had to ask Charlotte to do for her.

The night Charlotte went to get the birds was cold and clear. Darkness was beginning to whisper over the city, though the harbour was still bright as she came across Citadel Hill. She jammed her hands into her pockets and hoped she wasn't on a fool's errand. One-Eyed Carl, for chrissakes. Homing pigeons, of all things. Still, she had only herself to blame. She'd seen the ad for the birds in the
Pennysaver
during a marathon laundry session. She'd mentioned them to Leah. She'd been kidding about the birds being a solution to Leah's problem. She should have known Leah would take it seriously, though. She hadn't, sadly, thought far enough down that particular road to realise that Leah's reluctance to leave the house meant that she herself would have to carry out this errand, but hey, that's what friends are for, right? She smiled grimly, and hoped Carl wouldn't be any weirder than was altogether necessary.

Dim lights shone on the library path. Winston Churchill cast a halfhearted shadow on the lawn before him as Charlotte rounded the corner, her boots crunching on the thin layer of snow that covered the path. A kid in a dirty bandanna and a huge parka stood near the
steps, shifting from one foot to the other in the cold and shrugging his shoulders repeatedly, making the parka jump and slide. “Spare some change?” he said, as Charlotte crunched by.

“Sorry kid,” Charlotte said. “I'm on a mission, with exact change.” Charlotte looked around the library lawn. “I'm supposed to meet up with a guy named One-Eyed Carl. You wouldn't happen to know him, would you?”

The kid wiped his nose with the back of his hand and nodded. “Yeah, but he's not around right now. He's gone to Montréal, to check out the French girls. He said he might have some luck there.”

“Huh,” said Charlotte. “I was supposed to meet him here. He was going to sell me something.”

The kid looked around furtively, nervously, side to side over his shoulders. “Geez lady,” he muttered.

Charlotte laughed. “Oh god, no,” she said. “Pigeons, he had a couple of homing pigeons.”

“Oh, those,” the kid said. “I can help you with those.” He bent down and rustled in the bushes behind him, finally drawing out two cages, a little ball of feathers huddled in each. “Twenty bucks,” he said, “for the two of them, and there's even a bit of birdseed in the cages to get you started.”

“Indeed,” Charlotte said. She pulled a twenty from her back pocket. “Tell me,” she said, “One-Eyed Carl...is that for real? For real he has one eye?”

“Nah,” the kid said. “He just makes us call him that. He thinks it makes him sound tough. You want these birds, or what?”

“Yeah,” Charlotte said, “I want the birds.” She handed him the twenty and picked up the cages. “Thanks man.” She started to turn away, cages in hand, then thought better. “Listen,” she said, putting down the cages and reaching into her pocket. “You smoke?”

“Yeah,” the kid said, “so what?”

“So, here's a cigarette, that's what. And furthermore, you around here much?”

“Every day,” the kid said, his parka bunched up almost to his ears.

“Right.” Charlotte pulled out a lighter, lit the kid's cigarette. “Keep an eye peeled for these birds, okay? They'll be back around here, probably once a day. The guy they're here for, he's...kind of slow. If
you see one of these birds hanging around, you might need to pitch in, okay?”

“Meaning?” the kid asked. The cigarette hung from his lip.

“Meaning,” Charlotte said, picking up the cages again, “if you see one of these birds back here, with a message on its leg, you might need to take it off and I don't know, put it —” she looked around the library lawn. “Put it in those bushes.” She gestured to a low stand of evergreens that hugged the front wall of the old stone building. “Okay?”

The kid shrugged. “What's in it for me?”

Charlotte sighed. The things she did. “I'll stop by every couple of days, see how you're doing, and throw you a couple bucks, okay?”

“And cigarettes?'

Charlotte rolled her eyes. “And cigarettes, yes, alright. Jesus Christ.”

“Deal,” the kid said. He put his hand out.

Charlotte gestured, a cage in each hand. “Deal,” she said.

* * *

Henry put his guitar aside, leaning it against the doorframe. When he wasn't holding it, his fingers itched for contact, but sometimes, it was too much. Sometimes it was so intense it burned. And these days, the songs were giving him so much trouble he just had to put the instrument aside now and again and move around a bit. Especially when he'd been playing all day long, the same songs again and again. Times like these he'd roam the length of the house's upper floor and if that didn't calm him down, he'd take the stairs two at a time, up and down, up and down. That usually soothed him enough that he could get back to writing or rehearsing or whatever was proving difficult that day. When the going got particularly tough, he'd resort to smoking. But these days, he was trying to walk it off first.

He was on his third lap of the top floor — bathroom, hallway, landing, study, landing, hallway, bathroom — when the phone rang.

“Thank Christ,” he said, scrambling for the cordless. “Thank Christ,” he said again as he answered it.

There was a moment of silence, then the voice of Johnny Parker. “Man, I don't know who you were expecting, but it's just me, dude.”

Johnny was by no means Henry's oldest friend, but in many ways, he was his most important. It wasn't that Johnny had influence, because he didn't. He was pretty much where Henry was in that regard. But Johnny had something else, and Henry was hard-pressed to name it, exactly. It had something to do with the amount of time they'd known each other. A little under ten years, but they'd been ten formative years. The three years in school and the six or seven since, a couple of long-term relationships each, followed inevitably by as many nasty break-ups, followed, of course, by a lot of drinking and cussing and staying out late, all night if necessary. And a lot of shit-talking and bluster and locker room crap too. They'd get together when they were both in town and exchange road stories, and though on the outside it sounded like the sad bravado of a couple of rootless road-pigs, Henry knew it was really their way of staying connected to each other and to their own sanity. He would never express this, in so many words to Johnny Parker. Hell, he'd barely even describe it to himself in that way. But he knew, at the bottom of his road-pig heart, that it was true. Johnny Parker understood him in a way no one else had or could. Truth was Johnny Parker understood him in a way that Henry longed to be understood. It was understood between them that this was a strictly off-limit topic of conversation, but sometimes, sometimes, Henry longed to say it aloud.

Now, though, he simply said, “How're you?”

“Crazy, man,” Johnny Parker said. “I'm fucking crazy. How're you?”

“Was about to go over the side before you called man. Wanna get a drink?”

“Thought you'd never ask,” Johnny Parker said. “See you there?”

“Damn straight,” Henry said, and clicked off the phone.

He rummaged through the pile of clothes on the bathroom floor and wondered when he'd stop living that way. Damp shirts and pants embraced each other; socks and underwear clung to each other in mildewed clumps. It was horrifying, he knew, and it didn't use to be this way. And even though he knew it would pass, knew he'd get back to his usual slightly-messy-but-not-health-code-violating ways, knew this was just a way of getting back at Tina and sure, at himself, for her leaving, knew, ultimately, that this was just play-acting, that didn't
make it better right now. It didn't make him feel any better about sifting through the fetid pile for the least offensive shirt, the darkest pants so they wouldn't show the dirt, a pair of socks that didn't make him weep with despair. The underwear he'd given up on. He'd go commando, no big deal. There was no way he was putting those grey jockey shorts next to his skin. He imagined himself chucking all the stuff in the big old claw-foot tub, running a warm bath, dissolving detergent in it and just letting the stuff soak all day, but it was too much effort now. Maybe when he got home. Maybe when his edges were a little blunted by alcohol and conversation and proximity to Johnny Parker and a bar full of pretty girls who thought the two of them could show pretty girls a good time. But now? Too much like reality for him.

He managed to scrape together a shirt that, though damp, smelled only slightly, and a pair of black jeans that seemed to be alright. Socks, socks, socks were a problem. It was too cold to go without, so he grabbed a pair of thick grey work socks and turned the hairdryer on them. They sailed out in his hand like nubbly flags, and the warm blowing air felt nice against his skin. Once the socks were toasty, he pulled them on his feet and shoved his feet immediately into his boots. If he just didn't think about what was going on in there, he figured he'd be okay. He grabbed his leather jacket off the newel post at the bottom of the stairs and slammed out the door to meet Johnny.

* * *

The teacups rattled on their shelves as Leah waited for Sandy to come home. She flinched at the sound, imagining the delicate bone china she'd inherited from her grandmother shifting and chipping in the cabinet. She wasn't sure which neighbour it was who kept doing that, but if she ever left the house again, she planned to give him a piece of her mind.

She was on the couch in the living room wrapped in blankets and afghans. The window was open upstairs against Sandy's return, and the house was chilly. Leah was loath to crank the furnace up though. She could hear her father's voice in her head: Close the door goddamnit; we can't heat the whole neighbourhood. She wished she had a fireplace or a woodstove or less guilt about just firing up the
heat, but there it was. Two pairs of socks, a sweater so thick she could hardly move her arms to turn pages, and a pile of blankets weighing on her legs like a fallen tree pinning her to the couch.

She'd been reading through her stack of home decorating magazines, but none of them had what she was looking for. Not that she expected to find plans for an urban aviary, necessarily, but you never knew, these days, and besides, she figured she could adapt some other project from the glossy pages. If only she had an attic, she thought, she could leave the window open up there, insulate the ceiling like crazy and make sure the opening was tight as a drum.

Sadly, there was no attic in the house, and she was getting tired of freezing her ass off. It was fine during the day, especially the days, like this one, when she managed to work. She'd spent the morning and most of the afternoon testing a particularly tricky cheese soufflé recipe, and refining an oatmeal and apricot cookie recipe. The house filled with comforting odours, and the heat from the oven and Leah's own raised temperature, from actually moving around, chopping and stirring, made it easy to forget that upstairs, a window was open to the wintry afternoon. In fact, if the recipe was particularly challenging, Leah could forget, for a moment, for the time it took to mince an onion, say, or clarify a stick of butter, that things were not as simple as adding flour to melted butter and stirring to make a roux, and then adding stock and watching it thicken. In real life, in her real life, equations were not that simple. Not that straightforward. Definitely not that dependable.

Once the day's cooking was done, once the soufflé was sitting on the counter, waiting for Charlotte to come over and eat it, once the cookies were packaged up and put in the freezer in the hopes that some day soon Leah would feel like eating them, once the sun started to sink in the western sky, that's when Leah felt it the most. Felt the cold streaming in through that open window. Felt the exhaustion that came not with a day well spent on hard work, but rather with the endless fretting and planning and scheming she did around the notes, and the birds and the whole damn project.

What she was really doing, she knew, what was really wearing her out as she lay there on the couch, was simply waiting for Nathan to come back or go on. Waiting for it to happen, waiting to know it had.
Straining to feel him around her, or feel him leave. She knew, by now, that he was at the library. Knew it the way she'd known he was missing in the first place. She wished she could be sure he was getting the messages — that he was receiving them and understood what they meant. She wished he'd send just one note back, just one word, even, scrawled on a piece of cigarette package, a grease spotted paper bag that had once held french fries, anything that would let her know she was hitting the mark, that he understood she was sorry, that he understood what he was and what he had to do. But there had been no message from him, and so far, there was no way for her to know if she was getting through to him. She closed her eyes and concentrated, but still, she felt nothing. Eventually her breathing turned deep and even and she was asleep again.