The Language of Sparrows (15 page)

At home, he thought and prayed until he had knots in his shoulders. He couldn’t solve this for her. She needed to solve it for herself, if the solution meant anything. But somehow he had to talk her through it.

He hadn’t asked about her personal life. He knew she had some grief to overcome. But he also knew, he just
knew
if he could help her find a home for that mind of hers, the girl would take off. Maybe not socially. Maybe not emotionally. Not at first, but they would follow.

An idea began to beckon to him, but he didn’t like it. There was one person who had welcomed Sierra. And Sierra felt understood by him. A ferocious lump grew in his chest at just thinking about talking with his old man about Sierra. He’d have ideas. But hand them over to Nick? Not a chance. Every constructive word with his father had to be fought for, while a dozen other words, said or not, waited in ambush, ready to undo every step of progress they made.

Friday evening he found Dad in the back of his house painting a little picket fence for his garden. It was sunny enough. It had even been warm earlier, but with twilight hovering close, the temperature was dropping, and a cold wind blew through the nearby pine trees.

“You shouldn’t be out of doors, Dad.” He didn’t mention his father’s deep-chested cough that lingered after the pneumonia.

His old man shot him a look of disgust and kept painting.

“I came to talk about Sierra,” Nick said.

That earned a response. His father swabbed the paintbrush on the sides of the can and laid it across the top. Rocking back on his heels, he looked up, silent. Why did it irritate Nick so much that his filial concern earned a glare, but the very name of Sierra grabbed his father’s full attention?

Nick pulled up a patio chair. “She’s brilliant.”

His father nodded, as if this were old news to him.

“Not just smart. You’ve seen her writing and it’s beyond what I’d expect out of a teenager. She taught herself Spanish from television. She’s fluent enough to read
The Count of Monte Cristo
and
Les Miserables
in French from a couple of high school classes, and in three months of online courses, she can more or less converse in Romanian.”

“Ah.” His standard invitation to keep talking.

“But she’s barely passing her classes.” Nick waited, giving his old man a dose of his own silent treatment before continuing. “I think she’s bored out of her mind. She’s boxed in at school.”

His father rose and took a chair next to Nick.

“Why do you come to me? I am not fit to speak with the girl, your friends at the school say.”

“I wasn’t the one to say it.”

His father gave him a steely stare. He never accepted Nick’s omissions or half-truths. They both knew Nick could have made the school understand. He could have intervened with April if he’d wanted to.

“She needs help, Dad, and you know her better than any of us.”

After a long bout of silence, his old man turned to face him. “She needs to be set free. I knew this when I first met her.”

“Set free?”

“You cannot expect such a mind to stay within the confines of a school, especially such a poor school as yours.”

Nick ignored the criticism of his job. “How do I let her out of the confines?”

“Tell the girl to study literature. Any kind of literature she wishes, from the ancients to the moderns. Tell her she must write to you about what she is learning. It is all she needs.”

Nick sat rigid. His father was right. She would gulp down novels and poetry and biographies. She’d overflow with essays and creative responses far beyond his expectations. She could probably read the whole western canon in the original languages. But it didn’t solve anything.

Cindy Velasco couldn’t get away with assigning Sierra different work from everyone else in her class. There wasn’t a chance he would be able to convince anyone else to give her an individualized curriculum, even if her work soared above the rest of their students.

And even if they would tailor the assignments for her, she would still be required to sit, suffocating, through classes all day long.

He had the answer. It just wasn’t a workable one.

Nick rubbed his chin. “I don’t think so. The school would never let her manage her own education.”

“I did not speak of what the school will or will not allow Sierra to do. I spoke of what she needs.”

Nick looked evenly at his old man. It was obscure statements like these that made conversation impossible between them. Reality never influenced his father’s words. Everything and everyone, including Nick, was judged against the perfect standard in his father’s imagination.

“Thanks anyway, Dad.”

But as he drove away, his father’s words,
set her free
, sank their teeth into him and wouldn’t let him go. There had to be a way to set her free.

Chapter Twenty

Just before dawn, in bed and with a throw wrapped around her shoulders, April held her open Bible on her lap. She flipped through verses she’d highlighted in better days. “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

She let the pages flutter close. She couldn’t tell Sierra the truth. If Sierra knew Gary had taken his own life, what might she do? It just wasn’t a truth her daughter needed. Not now. Maybe not ever.

The truth in that verse was about Jesus anyway, not Gary’s death. April closed her eyes and leaned back against her pillows. She could try to convince herself the verse didn’t apply to her situation. But if Jesus’s truth meant anything, so did every bit of truth, including hers.

That morning, she scrubbed the house down. She vacuumed. She dusted. She cleared the kitchen counter of junk mail. “A clean house, a clean mind,” her father used to say.

Her father knew about positive thinking. Her mom’s spells were mild and infrequent compared to Gary’s, but Dad was always there, pouring sunshine into their lives, keeping them active, and focusing their attention on the rainbows, not the mud puddles. He’d had the will to keep April and Hillary from following Mom into the darkness when she went into one of her moods.

Her parents were gone, but Dad’s words still saved April’s sanity often. A clean house, a clean mind indeed.

She carried a pile of papers to the trash can but stopped midway through the living room, spying Sierra outside talking to the boy who worked on the grounds. A good-looking kid. He stood with his feet planted firmly and his shoulders held high. As he talked to her, Sierra laughed. She laughed!

But a doubt sprouted. He looked a little cocky. And Sierra was so fragile.

April slid the curtains open wider, letting in the sunlight. “Be good to my little girl,” she whispered. “Help her keep that smile.”

Mr. Prodan had been in the kitchen when April arrived at his house on Monday.

April stood in the doorway. “I hope you don’t mind my stopping by. You seemed so pale at Christmas, and I just wanted to make sure you’re getting on after the pneumonia.”

“Yes, yes.” His voice still held a tinge of hoarseness, but his color had returned.

He invited her in, and they made small talk as he rolled out dough. With his wounded hands, he held the roller at an awkward angle, as if he couldn’t quite make his thumb rest on the handle. The man always seemed to be cooking, and yet never had a spare ounce on his frame. Did he even eat the meals he made?

“Call me prejudiced, Luca, but I had this idea that European men didn’t cook.”

He chuckled. “I did not even put a kettle on to boil until I was thirty. I was a scholar and much too important to cook. But after my time … my time apart from my family, I needed a simple occupation. A kind woman invited me to work in her bakery, and I found I enjoyed the simple pleasure of forming a piece of dough or of cooking a puree to just the right thickness.”

She leaned against the counter and for a time they talked about his favorite subject: books. She told him about the gallery and the types of art she sold. He asked intelligent questions. They didn’t speak of the day at Blue Ziti’s. They didn’t speak of Nick or Sierra. It was an unspoken pact to stay on safe topics.

As she looked around the room, she noticed something. Everything was practical—a clock, cooking utensils, a filing tray of unopened bills. There were no mementoes of Romania, no anniversary knickknacks, no pictures of his wife or of Nick in his youth.

Even with her mixed feelings about her memories of Gary, she kept pictures of him around the apartment.

Sunlight poured through the window over the sink, lighting Luca’s frazzled curls and his skin. As he began to cut pastries out of the dough, she greased a pan for him.

Maybe Luca’s decision to stay on safe ground had robbed him and Nick of too much already. She couldn’t forget the hard look in Nick’s eyes on Christmas Day. He didn’t know the truth. His father wouldn’t even discuss his past. It wasn’t her business. And yet she found herself broaching the subject.

“Luca, don’t you have any pictures?”

“Pictures?”

“You know—photos of your family.”

“Yes, of course.”

She looked around her as she washed her hands under the faucet. “Where?”

He smiled faintly. “In a drawer.”

“I don’t want to interfere.”

“And yet you will.” He was amused.

“I see your son’s pain. I see yours.” What right did she have to talk to anyone about erasing the past? She sighed. “I can’t do anything about my own family’s pain, but it doesn’t keep me from wanting to do something about yours.”

He put the pan of pastries on the counter and turned to face her. “Our situations are not so very different. There is nothing to be done. What time can heal, it will. What it can’t must be endured.” He pursed his lips and gave his European one-shouldered shrug, as if the matter were settled.

“I can’t admit that kind of defeat.” Her voice sounded hollow, even to her own ears. “I can’t. I know Sierra will have her father’s suicide—”

She stopped. Luca blinked. Her throat was suddenly parched. How did that slip out? But she’d started it. She needed to finish it.

“His suicide,” she went on, “the one she doesn’t know about but I suspect will be part of her life until the day she dies. I’m not willing to admit that my only prayer is for time to heal a little of her sorrow.”

He didn’t speak, but the compassion in his eyes reached out to her. April felt as if she’d been holding her breath and hadn’t realized it. Since moving to Houston, she’d only spoken to Hill about Gary’s suicide. And the crazy thing was, it never occurred to her she needed to say those words aloud.

“My husband … My husband ended his own life after years of fighting severe depression.”

His face went soft, as if some invisible barrier had been let down. “I wish I could give you a better hope. Your daughter is young. Perhaps, perhaps. But my experience has only taught me this: God is not afraid of pain. He does not try to keep us from it. He does not avoid it for Himself. So I suppose we should not fear it either. If Sierra’s pain is meant to be, she will live with it. She will carry it and live her life in spite of it. As will you.”

Was that all that remained? Bear it and go on? She didn’t think so. “There’s got to be more. There’s love. Given time, it will work its healing on Sierra. And me. Even you, Luca.”

He only said, “I hope you are right.”

Who did that sound like? She let out a dry laugh. “You reminded me of Nick just then. He’s afraid to hope too.”

She folded a hand towel and put it on the counter, not because it needed folding but because her hands needed something to do. “It occurred to me that you and I, we’re playing the same role. We’re both of us keeping our stories from our children. And I wonder if the bitterness we see in them is the result.”

She felt a small shock in him, though he didn’t move and his expression didn’t change.

Softly, very softly she said, “It’s difficult for you to remember those years. Only you can know how difficult.”

“What good is remembering?” His voice sliced through the air. “I cannot undo the past. I was not there to raise my son, and now he is a man halfway through life himself.”

“The past, no, but you could change the future. Tell him what happened. He’s going to have a hard place inside him until he knows. Without your past, he’s missing his own story.”

He gave his head a vigorous shake.

“I won’t press you.” She came beside him and turned his hands over to the scars on the soft sides of his palms. “I can’t imagine how frightening it would be to go back there, even in your memory. I don’t blame you for not wanting to speak of it. I’m the last person to blame you.”

How could she, of all people, blame him for shrouding his story in secrecy? Still, she didn’t let the matter drop. Some sense that what she was doing was right—some still quiet voice? —kept her talking.

“I’d help you if you wanted. If you’d tell the story to me, if you couldn’t tell it to Nick, I would transcribe it.” She held on, hoping her touch would reassure him. “You know the saying ‘A picture’s worth a thousand words’? Art can convey things to the heart—maybe to Nick’s heart—that your words might not. I’d arrange your photos for you and illustrate those things you don’t have pictures for.”

They stood, locked together by their hands, an awful quiet hovering in the space. He looked to the door, as if he could spring free by leaving her presence.

“I’m sorry,” she said in her quietest mothering voice. “The last thing I’d want to do is hurt you. It’s your past. You have to do what you want with it.”

She let go of his hands and poured him a glass of water. She stayed as the morning wore on, not wanting to leave him wounded and frail. When she was sure he was okay, she said, “I’ll leave you, Luca. Call me, if you need anything.” She turned to go. “You’re like family to me.”

And it was true. She had no extended family to speak of. As much as she loved Hill, her sister wasn’t someone she turned to for comfort, nor did Hill seem to need her.

He didn’t say good-bye. He returned to his pastries, spooning goat cheese into them.

April stood outside the door listening to an eerie silence. She remembered him at Blue Ziti’s, standing like a lost child in a pool of broken glass and tomato soup, all because he saw a policeman. What did she think she was doing, asking him to relive the jagged days of his past?

But she couldn’t rid herself of the notion settling into her bones that he needed her interference. It might be hypocritical of her—the woman hiding her husband’s suicide from her own daughter—to demand the truth from him. And oh, how she felt every ounce of that hypocrisy.

But there
were
important differences. Nick wasn’t a sixteen-year-old on the knife’s edge of depression. He was ready to hear his dad’s story. And it had been over thirty years since Luca went to prison. Wasn’t it time he faced his story?