The Gravity of Birds. Tracy Guzeman
had waved and shouted after her, Don’t be a bother and don’t overstay your welcome. In that moment she realized what it was to be Natalie, to know what you shouldn’t do, and to do it anyway.
The paint on the door was tired brown fading to gray, cracked and buckled as alligator hide, chunky flakes of it falling to the ground as she brushed against it. She folded up the right sleeve of her shirt to hide the damp cuff she’d let dangle in the lake while reading. The wet of it soaked through, cooling a patch of her skin, but the rest of her body felt like a thing on fire, all twitchy and skittering. She rocked on her heels, holding her books to her chest. When she touched the doorknob it felt electric in her hand, hot from a shaft of sunlight slicing between the pines. She held on to it, letting it burn against her palm.
A breeze shifted across the lake, carrying with it the echo of gulls and the pungent smell of alewives rotting onshore after last night’s storm. Alice looked up through the maze of branches knotted overhead, to the bright washed sky. Her head swam, and she held the doorknob more firmly in her hand.
Feel free to visit whenever you like, he’d said. At the time of the invitation her mother nodded hesitantly, eyeing Bayber’s dog as the animal sniffed and scratched its way from plank to plank. Her father pulled himself up from the weathered Adirondack, causing the dock to sway slightly beneath them. With that unexpected movement something shifted, and Alice felt they were suddenly different people from the family they’d been only moments before.
‘Felicity Kessler,’ her mother said, offering her hand. ‘This is my husband, Niels. We rent the Restons’ cabin every August. You must know Myrna, Mrs. Reston?’
‘My family doesn’t let me out very often.’ He winked at her mother, and Alice was appalled to see her mother’s cheeks color. ‘Myrna’s—Mrs. Reston’s—name may have come up in conversation, but I haven’t yet had the pleasure.’
‘Lucky you, on that count,’ her father said.
‘Niels!’
‘I’m only joking, of course. As my wife will tell you, Mr. Bayber, it can be useful to have the acquaintance of someone so … well-informed.’
‘Please, I only answer to Thomas.’ He was wearing a dark sweater unraveling at the cuffs with a white button-down beneath it and paint-spattered khakis. A wicker basket piled with grapes swayed in one of his hands. ‘Here,’ he said, handing the basket to her father. ‘Our property’s thick with them. It seems criminal to let them go to waste when they’re ripe.’
When no one replied, he forged on, undeterred by the guarded look on her father’s face.
‘Consider them a peace offering. An apology for Neela, here. She and I have a great deal in common, chief being that, according to my mother, we’re both completely untrainable.’
That was the moment Alice liked him. Up until then she’d merely thought him strange, with his paint-spotted clothes, unruly hair, and eyes the same gray as the morning lake. Too sure of himself and too tall. And he stared at them—something her mother constantly admonished her not to do—but nonetheless there he was, staring at them quite deliberately and making no attempt to hide it, as if he could see past their fleshy outlines and deep inside them, into the places where they hid their weaknesses and embarrassments.
She wasn’t used to people speaking so directly, especially not at the lake, where adult conversations were burdened with enthusiasm and insincerity. We must get together while you’re here! You must come over for cocktails! What charming, attractive children you have! I’ll call soon! With August stretched out before her, she’d been sure her only excitement would be found in the books she’d brought. Living next door to someone completely untrainable sounded like salvation.
‘I’m Alice,’ she said, reaching down to pat Neela’s head. ‘What sort of dog is she?’
He towered over her. His eyelashes were black and as long as a girl’s and his hair was black and long as well, curling up around the pointed ends of his collar.
‘Alice. Pleased to meet you. Well, no one seems sure of her parentage. I have my suspicions, but, being a gentleman, one hesitates to make accusations. There’s a border collie and a Yorkie we usually see sitting on the porch of the market in town. Neela starts up with an earsplitting racket whenever we drive past. I’m quite sure they must be relatives of hers.’
Alice shielded her eyes from the sun in an attempt to get a better look at him. ‘So you and Neela come here often?’
He laughed, but it was a dry, cracked sound without a trace of happiness. ‘Lord, no. My parents have owned this property for decades, but have too much leisure time on their hands to actually vacation. Relaxation is very hard for the rich. There’s always something that needs to be watched, some event requiring an appearance.’ He glanced at her mother before adding, ‘Mrs. Reston may have mentioned they’re quite wealthy.’
Alice watched her mother’s throat work as she swallowed slowly and looked down to examine the planks of the dock. Her father choked on his Bloody Mary before laughing and slapping Thomas Bayber on the back. ‘And you said you’d never met the woman. Ha!’
Thomas smiled. ‘Up until now circumstances have prevented me from spending any time in this tranquil community.’ He gazed out across the lake. ‘But now arrived earlier this year, in no uncertain terms, speaking in an emphatic voice that sounded amazingly like my father’s. So I’ve been here since June, using their summer house as a studio. I paint, as you may be able to tell.’ He gestured toward his clothes and shrugged. ‘Not something my father considers a suitable occupation.’
He took a step back and squinted, studying them with his chin down, his arms folded. Alice wondered what they looked like to a stranger. Common enough, she imagined, like any cluster of people you’d see getting off of a train or passing you on the street, with only the vaguest hints that they somehow belonged to each other: the way they smoothed their hair with the palms of their hands; the determined set of their shoulders; the pale skin, easily freckled; a feature echoed here or there—her mother’s pert nose on Natalie, her father’s pale blue eyes repeated in her own face. The sister who was lovely; the other who was smart; a father with an expression grown increasingly somber through the years; a mother who knew how to achieve a certain degree of balance among all of them. They could be any family she knew.
Thomas nodded, his expression thoughtful. ‘Your arrival provides me with an opportunity. I wonder, would you let me sketch you? All of you together, I mean.’
‘Well, I’m not really sure—’
Thomas cut her father off. ‘You’d be doing me a favor, sir, I assure you. I can only paint this idyllic scenery so many times. Birches, hemlocks, the gulls and woodcocks, boats tacking back and forth across the lake. Frankly, I’m losing my mind.’
Her mother laughed, interrupting before Alice’s father could demur. ‘We’d be delighted. It’s very kind of you to ask. How exciting!’
‘You could keep the sketch. Who knows? Someday it might be worth something. Of course, it’s equally possible that someday it will be worth absolutely nothing.’
Alice could see her father weighing his options, one of which was likely four weeks of her mother’s wrath if he declined Bayber’s invitation. She wondered why he hesitated.
‘I suppose if it’s all of us together, it would be all right,’ he finally offered. ‘You’ve already met Alice, our amateur ornithologist. She’s fourteen, and starting ninth grade in the fall. And this is Natalie, our oldest. She’ll be a junior at Walker Academy next month.’
Alice realized then that her sister hadn’t looked up from the dock once, seemingly enthralled with a book she was reading. Odd, considering Natalie was long accustomed to being the center of attention. She had the shiny, polished look of a new toy. Her appearance drew gawky young men to their front porch in droves, each of them hoping to be favored with a task: fetching lemonade if Natalie was warm, retrieving