The crow sat in the back yard like a stray piece of tire on the side of an expressway, except blacker and shinier. As my daughter and I watched, it shook itself out of a resting huddle, picking up a leg awkwardly, as if freeing a talon from a Plaster of Paris art project.
“It’s definitely hurt,” Claire said. “Maybe the wing is broken.” She tilted her head to the side and methodically pulled strands of her walnut blonde hair in front of her eyes, looking for split ends. “Who do we call?” Her tone contained a mix of no nonsense and impatience.
Claire always liked to push things, but today I was ornery enough to push back. We were all ornery after the fifth day of upper nineties weather and a broken air conditioner, our name on the long waiting list at Luke’s Heating and Cooling and five other mid-Michigan companies. We’d been spoiled by our air conditioning throughout the hot summer. My husband had already left to enjoy the cool comfort of his office, mumbling on his way out the door about the dangers of crawling after a crow in a mess of poison ivy. I didn’t want advice or wisdom. I was already wearing the sweat of his abandonment.
A late summer breeze came in through the back door, but with the air so heavy, what entered was a lift in pressure that settled back onto our shoulders after a fraction of a second, coating us with its weight, like the last bit of molasses clinging to a measuring spoon. Soon I would have to turn on fans, but I wanted to wait as long as possible, dreading the dust circulating around the house, the shouting we’d do to hear ourselves over the noise. Claire and I stood in the shadow of the kitchen, watching the crow’s shiny beak dip forward to its chest feathers. “Do you think it’s his wing?” she asked. “Or his leg? Maybe it was attacked by –”
I cut her off. “Dad’s probably right. We shouldn’t call anyone unless we’re sure it’s injured,” I said. “Best to just leave it be.” Her curiosity annoyed me. I didn’t have time for it. I didn’t need setbacks.
Claire took my comments as a challenge, so a few minutes later, while I stood silent in my nightgown at the sink window trying to convey a sense of finality on the subject, she tiptoed barefoot across the weather-whitened deck outside the back door. She moved in slow motion, avoiding the creaky spots. Her tanned legs advancing haltingly. The light filtered through the maple leaves and danced on the crown of her head. She wore a stretchy white camisole, her nipples pushed against the spandex material, imprints that darkened the white.
She was slender, like I once was, but much more willowy. I’d have to remind her to put on another layer of clothing before her boyfriend came over. It was her last day of being grounded; in a weak moment the night before, I’d agreed to let her boyfriend come over a day early, though insisting that she still couldn’t leave the house until the next day. Now I was sorry, mad at myself for being a sucker, mad at her for manipulating me.
Our back yard lot was fenced on three and a half sides, with one gate leading to the school sidewalk and soccer field and another gate leading to Martin’s yard. A wooded area in one corner of the lot – a small unkempt thatch – joined a portion of the overgrown space in the adjoining lot to form a miniature forest. The crow sat next to the border of the thatch.
“It’s okay,” Claire crooned softly. The crow fixed its eye on her, as if mesmerized by her voice. “I won’t hurt you.” She took another step toward the crow. It fluttered up a foot into the air, settling down a bit further, not far from the metallic blue gazing ball and the elephant grass. She turned to me and used the same low voice she offered to the bird, only less sing-song like. “It IS his wing,” she said emphatically. “We have to call someone.”
By the time I got out of the shower, the boys were sitting at the kitchen table with their Lucky Charms, chairs positioned to see directly out the double window in which the crow was neatly framed. But apparently they didn’t even notice. Claire smirked at me to acknowledge their woeful ignorance. “Can’t you call now? It’s after nine.”
“Call where?” Pete’s mouth was full of half-chewed, pastel marshmallow bits.
“That’s disgusting,” Claire said. “Close your mouth when you chew.”
“Call where?” Quentin repeated. He banged his blue cast against the table. Claire winced.
“Do you have to be so obnoxious?” Pete said.
“Knock it off,” I said.
“You always take his side,” Pete mumbled.
“Call where?” Quentin parroted again.
“Claire wants me to call someone about the injured crow in the back yard.” I blocked the kitchen door that led to the back yard, my body a barrier. Their chairs scraped against the floor. “No,” I said, and it came out enough of a shout that they stopped. “If you go out there, you’ll make it nervous. And you,” I said to Quentin, “can’t touch it. Birds have germs. You have allergies.” He made a sucking noise, moving mucus through his nasal passages.
“He won’t have any friends in first grade if he makes that disgusting noise!” Claire said.
“If Claire got to see it close up, we should get to see it, too,” Pete said. He stood up from the table abruptly, his thighs long and white where they jutted out of his Hanes briefs, then becoming brown at the knees and all the way to his ankles where the skin underneath his sock line faded to white again. His tennis pro tan. I kept forgetting to buy him some boxer shorts so he could be cool like the other guys, hide his tan line.
“Life’s not fair,” I said. He rolled his eyes. “Deal with it.”
Crow-saving was not on my agenda. I had seven loads of laundry spread over the living room couch, floor, and chairs, and a half-dozen newly laminated posters on drawing techniques for my art classes that I had to trim. I was frustrated that I couldn’t shoo the kids into the back yard. I’d just showered, yet I felt sweat gathering under the buttons of my sleeveless shirt.
Claire stayed planted in her chair at the table, swirling her spoon through the container of Key Lime yogurt in front of her. She glanced up, her lips taking on a firmness, even as I spoke. “Look,” I said. “It might be best just to leave the bird alone, see if it regains its strength and flies off.” I wanted to reason with her in an open and mature way. In the last few weeks, we’d reached a truce, our stated goal to walk a mile in each other’s flip-flops. I wanted to honor that.
“Mom,” she said, and her voice was all affected maturity. Maybe with a bit of reason. “It’s hurt, and it needs our help.” She wanted to treat it as a moral issue, as if leaving the crow to fend for itself would be inhumane. If I failed to act, she implied, the crow might die, yes, or something else, something unforeseen, could happen; the three-year old from next door might wander into the yard, and the dying crow might bite her.
In the den, the boys addressed their boredom by turning on the television and jeering at Mr. Rogers, his shoes, and his sweater. Claire lifted her head at the sound of the trolley in the other room, smiling triumphantly as she looked at me. “What would Mr. Rogers do?” she said.
In the back yard, the calling and cawing had become eerily steady, but it was hard to know if the racket was unusual. For most of the summer we’d kept our doors and windows closed up to segregate ourselves from the heat; we’d never paid attention to how much the birds squawked at one another. Up in the trees, four of them perched like sentries on the perimeter: two in the oak, two in different maples. They were quiet, dark shapes amid the swish of green and grayish branches until they started up again, vocalizing in rhythmic caws, voices distressed.
Claire sat next to me at the table, holding the sheets she’d printed off from the Internet. She’d done the research. We were looking for a crow rehabilitator. She had some phone numbers. Crows mated for life, so one of the birds in the tree was probably a partner, expressing concern.
The woman who answered said we should try to get it over to the Wild Side, just one county away. “Those people will take it off your hands for sure if you can get it out there.”
“My daughter thinks something’s wrong with the wing, but I can’t tell,” I admitted. “We don’t want to get too close because it’s right next to this small thatch of a wooded area on our lot, and if it goes in there, we’ll never get it out. There’s too much poison ivy to risk it. Plus, there are the other crows.” I thought of Quentin in sandals, big toe ripe for the pecking. “The ones watching. We think they’re getting mad.”
She chuckled. “They do have a special caw for that – an assembly or a distress call, but I haven’t perfected my bird sounds yet. I’m supposed to get off at four, and I could come over then, but we’re short-handed today. I’ve got to be somewhere at six. So I might be able to swing over there today, but I can’t make any promises. I’d probably just take it to Wild Side myself. But really, I’m betting you could do this yourself.”
“It’s not that I’m unwilling to try the crow-catching thing; it’s just that I wouldn’t want to hurt it. Or have it hurt me.” I lowered my voice so maybe Claire wouldn’t hear me. “What would happen if we just left it there? Couldn’t it get better and maybe fly off?”
“Definitely,” she said. I felt a surge of enthusiasm. “We have this standard we use – the ‘two hours, two days, two weeks’ rule. It might get better and fly off in two hours. Or two days. The tough cases can take up to two weeks, but crows can definitely mend on their own.” She paused. “Unless a dog or a fox gets it. And it might not be an injury. It could be West Nile. Does the bird appear to be okay neurologically, or does it stagger around?”
“He doesn’t move too much at all, but when he does, he kind of limps.”
“Is he all puffed out or more sleek-like?”
“Sleek-like,” I said.
“Sounds like an injury,” she said. Then she sighed. “Maybe you could get a laundry basket and put it over the crow until I get there. A basket keeps the bird from moving too much or attracting the attention of a larger animal. And then you can transport it in the basket or a box, depending on how active it is. Just make sure it can breathe.”
As I listened to her, Pete and Quentin entered the room. They each held something in their right hands, and at the same moment, they flicked their wrists and extended Star Wars Light Sabers, one green, one red. Quentin gestured to the back yard, making a slicing gesture with the saber in the air above him.
I voiced my final worry. “If it’s West Nile, are we at risk?”
“No. Crows are dead-end hosts. People get West Nile from mosquitoes, not from crows.”
Claire was in the shower, getting ready for Brandon, and I was on the living room couch. Martin had called after the crow rehabilitator hung up, telling me I should send Claire over for some of his tomatoes. “They’re falling off the vine,” he said. Or he could bring some over, if I wanted them, after Hannah’s nap. I told him we were dealing with a dying crow. And then, I couldn’t help it, I did the thing I’d done ever since I met him and his wife Lacey: I closed my eyes and pretended to be blind to hear if his voice sounded any different when I couldn’t see. It was such a good-natured, self-sufficient voice, and hearing it made me realize I’d imagined all blind people to be morose, tortured. Maybe even incapable.
He wished me luck, and I yelled my goodbye back over the fan and grabbed another item of clothing to fold. Soon the school year would begin, and I would leave the bickering of my own three children to listen to the woes of nearly a hundred teenagers in my art classes, who talked to their seatmates about issues that fractured their worlds – friendship rifts, distant parents, unprotected sex – while their pencils moved on the paper, shading, finding perspective. I tried to pretend I didn’t hear, but when their voices lost the moral authority and certainty that I heard so often in Claire’s voice, becoming almost innocent, and when I knew that they might take whatever advice they heard from the person drawing next to them, whoever that might be, I had to decide whether to say something or choke down my words to honor their privacy.
Sometimes I found it so difficult to know when to help people and when to leave them alone. After Martin and his family had moved in, it took us a couple of months to get the hang of things. We had to remind ourselves that they’d lived without us all these years, and if we moved, they’d do without us again. Martin told me that wanting to help is a common response, that it’s better than the other one, which is avoidance. The first time they came into our yard, when we asked them over for dessert, we had to adjust to the physical thing. Touching their arms to point them in the direction of the swing set. Describing distances in feet and yards, instead of by landmarks. Hannah was sighted, but at three, her ability to comprehend danger was limited. We felt we had to watch out for her.
Claire came into the room wearing wet hair and the scent of tea-tree shampoo. The flimsy camisole was gone, replaced by a normal t-shirt. One less fight to have. “He’ll be here in fifteen,” she said. “Any update on the crow situation?”
Quentin zipped into the room, put a foot on a sheet of lamination and tried to surf the carpet. He landed at Claire’s feet.
“When Brandon gets here, don’t bug us,” Claire said. “We don’t want to play with you.”
“Let’s not be mean,” I said.
Pete was at the doorway, his face in a pout. “Why does HE have to come over?”
“Because mom won’t let us go out. You’re stuck with us.”
“Can’t you just let them go, Mom? We don’t want to see them hold hands or kiss, and they’re always mean to us.”
The stack of my husband’s underwear made a nice, uniform pile. I remained silent.
Pete snorted when I refused to take his bait. He followed Claire into the kitchen.
When they returned a few minutes later, they were buddies, sitting on either side of me on the couch, antagonistic shadows pushing the wrinkled clothes further into crevices. “We want to give the crow some bread,” Claire said. “Just a few crumbs.”
“But we don’t want Quentin to come,” Pete said.
“That’s not fair.” Quentin emerged from the pile of whites where he’d buried himself.
“Please get your stinky cast away from my clean underwear,” Pete said.
“Why don’t you take it upstairs?” Quentin plucked a pair of briefs out of the pile and threw it at Pete, who tackled him.
“Enough.” I yelled. But they all laughed and Quentin twisted his face into a replica of mine. “All of you, get your shoes on, and you can go out. But the two of you,” I pointed to the boys, “stay three feet away. Follow your sister.”
“What if the other ones attack?” Pete said.
“That’s why you move slowly and don’t get too close.”
One by one, we stepped onto the back deck. A lawnmower droned in the distance, but there were no bird sounds, not even chatter. “Maybe they’re on their lunch break,” Pete said.
They each held a couple of slices of bread, Claire leading the way, pulling on the crust of her bread piece and palming it. They moved slowly, every step a freeze-frame.
The crow watched, its eye fixed. Claire took another step, and the black body fluttered up, its talons jabbing at the air until it fell, closer now to the edge of the wooded area.
“You’re going to have to back off, guys.” I called from the deck. “We can’t let it go into the woods. Dad says there’s too much poison ivy in there and if it goes in, we’ll never get it out. We can’t risk Quentin’s getting it – he’ll scratch himself to death.” I wondered if they were listening. “It’ll die in there,” I added for good measure.
“One more step,” Claire said, and in sync, the three of them each raised a foot just as a loud rustling sounded overhead. Two crows in the maple began kibitzing, their caws scratchy, rapid. Quentin threw his remaining bread in the air and ran back to the deck, shooting past me and into the house. At the flurry of his movement, one of the birds overhead darted down to the ground, claiming the territory between Claire and Pete and their path back to the house. Claire was unfazed and whispered, “The wife?” but Pete looked worried. Before I could say anything, Claire said, “On the count of three, circle around the crow and go back to the house.” Quentin watched from safety behind the kitchen window, but I heard him counting with Claire and Pete in a loud whisper, and when they got to three, Pete and Claire ran around the bird to the house where I was standing, holding the back door open.
Inside, Claire doubled over and did her half-real, half-fake laugh. Pete glared at her. “It’s not funny. We could have been attacked.”
Claire shook her head. “Lighten up. It’s like that dumb Hitchcock movie about birds.”
“That’s not dumb. It’s a classic,” I said.
“They could have dive-bombed us!” Pete said. “Made us victims of their aerial assault!”
“This isn’t Top Gun. They’re just birds!” Claire said in disgust.
I looked at the two of them, enemies again. “Just stay inside from now on.”
The doorbell rang. Pete stomped up the stairs, yelling back down, “Why does HE always have to ruin everything?” He slammed his door, and then it opened again, as he yelled down the stairs, “I hate your frickin’ boyfriend.”
“Don’t say ‘frickin’,’” I yelled up the stairs. He slammed the door again.
Quentin threw open the front door, Claire pulled the rubber band out of her hair, and the scent of shampoo filled the room.
In the living room, the fan shook on its stand, wind-tunnel loud. The edges of the posters on the floor lifted in the air stream as the fan oscillated from side to side, sending out fabricated breezes. On the other end of the house, Claire, Brandon and Quentin had their own fan; they’d pulled the blinds in the family room to watch a movie in the dark. Pete still sulked in his room. I would finish the socks before I tried to do anything else with the crow.
When Claire came in a few minutes later, I told her the plan: we would sit tight until the crow lady got off work. I would try to cover the crow with a laundry basket in the meantime to keep him cool and in the same spot. I didn’t mention predators. They all watched the movie, my daughter drooling over Orlando Bloom, while her boyfriend poked her in the ribs to punish her. I made turkey sandwiches and mixed Kool-Aid. How lovely it would be to load everyone in the car and drive to the lake, but we couldn’t leave the crow. The crow lady would be calling back in a few hours. No air came in through the back door. Sweat collected between my breasts.
Pete had come downstairs and now sat across the room from Claire and Brandon, who were on the couch. Quentin lay sprawled on the floor. Pete kept his eyes on Claire and her boyfriend. We watched, too, my husband and I, when they were together. There were rules they had to follow. They used to go into the basement, until we objected, and now they stayed upstairs, always vertical. My friend taught me to use that rule after she learned it the hard way with her own daughter: vertical, never horizontal.
Brandon was seventeen, with red, curly hair, and he always wore t-shirts with cut-off sleeves. I imagined him buying the t-shirts new, then taking the scissors to the armpits. Sometimes when he saw me, he lowered his eyes, and I wanted to say to him, “What are you ashamed of?” but Claire told us once how much he respected us. Sure, we said, knowing it could be a line. Sure. We had to teach them about propriety. What was appropriate for teenagers in a house with parents and younger brothers, especially when the girl had only just turned fifteen. How awkward it was to come upon squirming bodies, even if those bodies were wearing clothes.
Pete raised the glass of Kool-Aid to his lips, his eyes remaining dark as he looked in my direction. He had been a spy for me before, and he knew some of my shame. He brought his plate and glass into the kitchen. “I’m going to poke the holes in the top of a box,” he said. A few minutes later, he was in the living room, and I imagined the scissors I’d left there for poster trimming now in his hand, rising and falling as he plunged the scissors into the cardboard. The sound made me wince, but I couldn’t keep myself from counting. I wanted him to stop.
Right after lunch, Claire started pushing again. “Do the laundry basket thing,” she said.
“When I’m ready,” I told her.
Ten minutes later, when they weren’t paying attention, I picked out the most rickety laundry basket and went out the back door. On the lawn, I stood silent for a moment, watching the crow, the black down on its head sleek, as if combed, its eyes a dark grayish-blue. The relatives in the branches above squawked, and the crow opened its mouth as if to respond, but nothing came out. I wanted the ability to translate what they were saying to him. To understand if they were offering encouragement or using him as an example, warning other crows about his plight. I wanted to know what he planned to say back. But when I heard the back door squeak and the clunk of feet on the deck, the crow and I broke our shared eye contact. In an instant, Claire and Brandon were beside me, their steps even with mine. “What do you want us to do?”
“Just stay back,” I whispered. The crow already hugged the edge of the woods. A twig cracked under my foot, and the crow puffed out its wings and made a quarter turn. Above me, a startled caw came down from the trees. Claire inhaled. We were just two feet away, and I wondered if I could just try to throw the basket over the bird, knowing it would be too ironic to wipe the thing out with a blow to the head from the receptacle meant to save it.
Abruptly, Brandon stepped forward. His hand grabbed the rim of the basket. “Let me do it,” he said. A fist of anger rose from my stomach into my chest.
I jerked the basket away from him. “No!” The word came out sharp and bitten, surprising them. Claire bent her head, avoiding my glance. She reached out, pulling at Brandon’s arm, and they backed up, giving me room.
Beyond the woods, laughter rose from the school soccer field, and the noise and my embarrassment made me step with more force than I intended. The black clump rose up and shrieked, flapping its wings rapidly, propelling itself into the wooded area, poison ivy territory.
“Shit,” I said. I turned to Claire and Brandon, who stood apart but were connected by their arms, their woven fingers. “Shit,” I said again, for emphasis, and I stomped toward the back door, tossing the laundry basket to the side, nearly knocking over the grill.
Quentin stood inside the door. He looked at me and raised his eyebrows. “You swore.”
On the day that my daughter said Fuck You to my husband and me, I taught her to do laundry. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. We’d grounded her, so she said her Fuck You, and then she and I stormed to our rooms. My husband acted as an ambassador of good will, traveling between us, absorbing our spite and venom. When we’d both ventured out of our boxes of emotion, moving through the house cautiously, always aware of where the other was, I finally made myself approach her, told her to gather her clothes from the floor of her room and get ready. Separate darks from lights. Make a third pile of “delicates.” Wash whites on hot. Wash darks on cold. Wash delicates on warm. Inspect all tags before drying, especially on the shirts that are already too small, exposing your midriff.
On the night of the Fuck You, she’d come back from babysitting for Hannah. It wasn’t late. Martin and Lacey had just gone to the house of some friends in the neighborhood, carrying their potato salad and their canes as they went down the sidewalk. They’d arranged for someone to drop them off later. But Claire and Brandon had gotten in a fight before Claire had gone over there. She was crying when she came in the door that night and told us that he’d shown up, after Hannah was in bed, and parked his car down the street. And he’d stayed there, arguing with her at first and then lying with her on the couch, both of them losing track of time until they heard the car in the driveway. We didn’t know what to do, Claire said. You told me never to bring boys babysitting. We didn’t do anything wrong, but he hid in a corner anyway. They pretended they didn’t know he was there, but they did. They gave me the money and said goodbye. They opened the back door and turned on the light. And they left the door open and went into another room.
So they could pretend not to hear him. What do you say to a blind man and his wife in a situation like that? After Claire went to bed, we talked it over and decided to say nothing. It was the coward’s way. I wasn’t proud of it. But I couldn’t think of what I owed them. To Claire, we said Grounded. And then Claire said Fuck You and learned how to do the laundry. Martin and Lacey never said anything, and although they’d brought Hannah into the back yard in recent weeks, they hadn’t called Claire to baby-sit.
The blue laundry basket lay upside down on the deck, the sun making a pattern of squares on the wood planks as it shone through the openings in the side. When the phone finally rang, it wasn’t the crow lady. “Listen,” Martin said. “I’ve been out in my garden, and it’s awfully noisy. What were you saying about crows earlier?”
He met me at the gate, and Hannah trailed after him, carrying a bowl of large tomatoes, the kind of deep red you wanted to bite into right away. I hated it that he was being so nice to us. He wore a green, short-sleeved shirt with palm trees on it. I explained the plan and the setbacks and how we hoped that the crow lady would be able to make it out but we didn’t know.
The bird was where we left it, alive, and resting a foot or so into the wooded area. My crew waited on the back deck, promising not to move. As I ushered Martin and Hannah into the back yard, I told him the about the poison ivy in the woods and the crows overhead. I described to him where the crow sat in relation to the swing set that he knew so well. He raised his head, eyes closed, and listened for such a long time that I was almost uncomfortable. When he opened his eyes, he said he would go into the woods and force the crow into the open area.
“But the branches,” I said. “And what about the poison ivy?”
“I’m immune,” he said. “At least that’s what my mother always says.”
“What if other crows try to stop you?” Quentin waved his cast toward the trees.
“I don’t know. We’ll see.” Martin squinted and stuck his tongue out at Hannah.
“He always says that,” Hannah said. Then he was off, walking carefully toward the wooded area, his cane in front of him. As he stepped quietly into the woods, he raised the cane and slashed it to the right. A crack, followed by the swish of branches, startled the crow. It began to move its wings again, trying to flutter away.
On the deck, the kids were silent. I concentrated on the trees overhead; there were six or more crows now, all watching, but they, too, were silent. Martin took another step, whacking another branch. The crow hopped out of the woods and stumbled, half-flying onto the grassy part of the yard. Overhead, the crows rasped furiously, ke-ke, ke-ke.
Martin came out of the tangled undergrowth, too, crashing behind the bird, his face a bright red with a sheen of moisture. Then he pitched forward, tripping on something buried under the brush. The hand without the cane went up in the air like he was waving, and the top of his body bent from the waist. What would it be like, I wondered, to fall without seeing the ground come up at you, seeing nothing but the dark, blurry fog that you lived with every day?
I stood rooted to the spot where I held Hannah’s hand.
But then his body righted itself and Claire went running toward him, into the woods, her flip flops trampling whatever ivy wound its way around the trees. She touched his free arm, the one without the cane, and he wrapped his fingers just above her wrist, holding her motionless, listening. He called quietly, “Get the sheet and the box.” He released her arm then, and as he walked toward where the crow had cornered itself, he made a small crooning sound.
“Come on,” he said to me, hearing me move toward him from across the yard. “Just drop the sheet right over it.” He lowered himself to his knees.
I did what he said, and then he was just a neighbor again, moving on his haunches to feel at the cotton, trying to locate the crow underneath. I knelt, too, and began scooping at the material myself, until together, we both found the bird’s body and secured it in the cloth.
He handed the bundle to me. I held the crow to my chest. Its head poked out of the sheet. The kids relinquished their silence and Claire laughed her fluttery, run-up-the-scales laugh. “You got him!” Hannah said.
The crow’s sleek face and beak rested against my shirt. Quentin wanted to touch, but Martin and I shook our heads. Pete stepped forward with the box so I could place the bird inside.
“And you’re taking it where, again?” Martin asked.
“Some place called Wild Side,” I said. He nodded his head. His face was less red in color. “Thanks,” I said. “We really appreciate it.”
“Remember that I have a vested interest,” he said. He turned his head from side to side, as if surveying the area. “Your yard is safe,” he said. Overhead, the crows made noise, but it wasn’t loud or threatening anymore. “Maybe I’ll bring Hannah over to swing later on, but right now, we need lemonade, right, Hannah Banana?” He smiled as he reached for Hannah’s hand and took a step toward his yard. He stopped and turned back, looking uncertain. Finally, he reaching his arm out in the direction of my kids, and I realized that his hand was extended to Brandon. “Martin,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”
“Yes, sir.” Brandon said.
In front of the refrigerator, the boys poured Kool-Aid into plastic Tupperware cups. Claire put a hand on my shoulder. “Mom, we’re burning up. Can’t Brandon and I take the boys for ice cream? They can be our chaperones in the back seat. Just down to Quality Dairy.”
“I’m taking them with the crow to Wild Side.” I said. The boys created a clatter of ice as they twisted a tray over the ice bin. “But maybe we can meet you there afterward, you and Brandon.” Her face was flushed, like Martin’s, but she stood up straighter and smiled.
In less than an hour, my husband’s car would pull into the driveway from the road. We’d all be gone by then, the boys and I in an air-conditioned car to drop off the crow, Brandon and Claire in Brandon’s beat up Grand Am to take a spin before the four of us met for ice cream, double scoops, dessert before dinner. I imagined that once in the car, we would take the top off of the box, and the crow would poke its head out during the ride, watching the green leaves and the other black crows go by in the windows.
Claire smiled at me so brightly that it was almost hard for me to repeat the conditions. “Only an hour and a half,” I said. “We’ll meet you at Quality Dairy at the corner of Larch and Lake Lansing. If you get there first, go ahead and buy.” I handed her a folded ten so that she could buy her own ice cream, maybe even his.
In the passenger seat of Brandon’s truck, Claire grabbed the seat belt with her right hand and held it up in the air, the silver buckle catching the light as she nodded at it and then me before fastening the belt. Through the open window, she called out, “See, I’m wearing it.”
As Brandon pulled into traffic, a siren sounded in the distance. If I imagined the worst, I could hear wrenching metal and breaking glass. But if I listened for the balance between imagination and truth, all I heard was the buffered mewl of the siren and the swish of five o’clock traffic. The boys stood on the front lawn, chins lifted in anticipation of a breeze, before they ducked into the van. Above me, the crows had taken their places in different branches. We didn’t need to hurry. They would wait.
Dawn Newton received an M.A. in Writing from the Johns Hopkins University. Her short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in the Baltimore Review, Gargoyle, the South Carolina Review, So to Speak: a feminist journal of language and art, and other literary magazines. She is presently completing a memoir, Stage IV: Mother on Tarceva, and lives in East Lansing, Michigan, with her husband, three children, and gal pal Clover.