His Eye is on the Sparrow

JW stood in the door way as Laura Dell packed her suitcase. He told her that he was taking her home, but nothing felt like home anymore. Laura Dell thought she had been doing just fine the last couple of months, she was a lot less energetic, and quiet these days. When her mother found out she had forgotten to pay her rent more than once, JW flew up. Before he knocked on the door she was fuming with a speech she had written for her brother and mother. Get out of MY sandbox! she yelled in her head as if they were children again. But when she opened the door to see her brother, she lost all her steam.

Suddenly she realized that she hadn’t cleaned the apartment. Clothes needing to be washed were lying around, the croutons she had eaten for dinner sat by the TV remote, she remembered the two times she forgot to pay rent and begged the landlord not to kick her out. Looking into his eyes she realized she had forgotten to call him for five months. Time to Laura Dell had become a small group of snails trying to make it across the marble floor at the museum. She had the same recurring dream in which she rode on top of them like a cow-girl, supposed to be their leader. But all she did was jump down from one snail and run to another. She ran from snail to snail trying to make them go faster. But they never did. When the day had been really tough, the snails always led her to a blurring dark hole. It was like standing on the edge of one of Salvador Dali’s strange paintings; things were melting everywhere. In her dream, she had melted into the black dirt and watched the emptiness within her spread from her; there was enough to wrap around the earth twice.

She melted into the folds of JW’s button-up. JW wrapped her up in his arms and she cried for the first time since the funeral. He was there to take her home.

* * *

Two months after Laura Dell had been home, her mother mentioned that her Grandparents house was up for sale once more. It had been two months since she left Chicago. She went over that day and put in her offer with the money she had earned in Chicago, finally feeling like she was doing something right. The light poured through the southern sky on late afternoons when she sat on her Grandmothers back porch swing.

Laura Dell pulled Herbert’s journal close to her on her Grandmother’s porch swing. She had 30 minutes to be at dinner at her mother place. Looking back on it, Laura Dell always marveled at how little she expected to find her husband that night.

* * * * * * * * * *

Laura Dell stepped back into the Field Museum of Natural History for the first time in eleven years. She laid eyes on Sue and shivered from the outside wind. The cold was something she had never managed to acclimate herself too and her diamond ring and wedding band slipped slightly to the left as the chill settled into her petite fingers feeling heavy on her contracted skin. Weldon, put his arm around her waste, “She’s a beauty, Laura.”

His flannel shirt felt like tiny fur-beings dancing lightly against her shoulder. And she looped her hand around his waist, making herself small in the crevice beneath his arm. “I’d like to think that if I were a dinosaur with Sue, that we would be good friends.” Weldon nodded his head in approval. She looked up at him, “Our hips would certainly match up these days.”

Glancing at her swollen belly Weldon said, “Yeah, but those little guys wouldn’t have any room to grow in nine months if you didn’t put on some kind of weight, little mama.” He kissed her forehead; Joy flowed between them like a river of one soul flowing back and forth, back and forth between steady beacons.

He led her over to the bench, encouraging her to rest her feet. Laura Dell giggled a little because she was just at the end of her first trimester, and the pregnancy really had not been that bad so far, but Weldon was so excited about finding out they were having twin boys that he had asked her if she needed to rest at least six or seven times within the walk to the museum. Laura Dell was pretty sure that what he really wanted to do was continually say out loud, “If you need to rest, we can rest. It’s for the twins sake really, dear. You know, the twins that are hanging out with you these days.” Every time Laura Dell would decline, laughing. But she cherished the way that Weldon put his hands up in the air in defeat, then slid them casually in his pockets, and grin like a little boy surprised with the two brand new toys of the century.

But before she sat down, the sun-light that had so often brightened her mornings in Chicago, caught a bronze plate on the bench.

In Loving Memory of Dr. Herbert L. Walters

A believer in insignificance:

for though the sparrow lives a tiny life,

there is hidden within him

an impressive lineage,

and an impressive story to be told.

Weldon held Laura Dell tighter and let the silence create a sanctuary for them.

Weldon noticed things like the way she woke up in the mornings. It was little, but every morning she would tilt her head to the right just a little before she fully woke up. Her hair would gently move across her face. She would rather sit on the porch swing at their house than anything in the world and if she could she would sleep out there. She liked to drink scotch on the rocks. And when she knew that Weldon was looking at her, she’d look at him in a way that made him want to chase her for the rest of his life.

In reality, it had been a difficult chase to begin with, but Weldon always said that it was worth waiting for. Laura Dell got off the plane with JW from Herbert Walters funeral and stepped into a familiar southern town, and instantly regretted her return to Alabama. She bought a pair of sneakers. She thought she could outrun death.

John William soon married after Laura Dell came home with him. With just Laura Dell and her mother in the house together, things got worse. Each time her mother would try and talk about the funeral, or the end of anything really, Laura Dell would shut her down. Finally, her mother asked Weldon Carter, a southern gentleman, to come over for dinner. It was a pitiful reenactment of Tennesee’s, The Glass Menagerie. Their first meeting, according to Laura Dell, was painfully awkward, but total bliss in Weldon’s mind. She had been polite and told him she wasn’t interested several times, but he couldn’t get her off his mind. He caught her singing one-day when he stopped by to help her mother fix the coffee pot again. That day he bought her a guitar. He didn’t even know if she knew how to play the guitar, but he couldn’t imagine a voice like hers going without the beauty of an instrument. He laid it on their front porch like a gift from heaven.

But Laura Dell didn’t think it was heavenly, and she let him know it. If he hadn’t caught the handle, the whole thing would have gone over the railing. He looked at Laura staring at Sue. She had come so far. She had talked about this place more that she talked about anything in her life and he had finally talked her into taking a trip back to the museum.

As he gazed with her to the giant dinosaur, he wished more than anything that Herbert was looking down on them. She had talked with Weldon about their outings, and morning walks. So Weldon imagined that if Herbert were there, he would point out to Herbert the way she leaned into his shoulder, and linked her arm in his. He knew Herbert would be proud, maybe even a little jealous.

The truth was that after Weldon proved that he wasn’t going to leave her, she let him into her life. He remembered the day that she fell for him. She handed him a box of journals before she went for a run and errands for the day. He spent the day wading between old air force photographs and Laura Dell’s own journals.

“Laura Dell,” said a voice from behind. “You are late, as usual.”

“And you have a shoe up your ass, as usual. Pleasure to see you Dr. Feinman.” Laura Dell stood to shake his hand as Weldon laughed beneath his breath. She finally said the thing she wanted to say, in the moment she wished to say it. Gumption, JW thought. Weldon was proud. It reminded him of a date they had in Atlanta. They had been dating for almost a year when they went to an Art Museum in Atlanta. Laura Dell didn’t drink much, but after dinner she and Weldon decided to go to out some place downtown. Waling up to the bar, he had expected to order two southern pecans but Laura Dell beat him to it, “Scotch on the rocks, please.” It was the best thing he had heard in a long while, particularly as he watched her figure take up about as much room on the bar as a packet of sweet-and-low. She was the kind of girl that drank scotch on the rocks in heels. This was the girl he married.

Laura Dell hadn’t taken Feinman’s job offer after the internship, but while she stayed in Chicago for a while after Herbert died, she had gotten the nerve to talk things over with him. After that, the relationship had been calmer, and more comedic. Laura Dell visited the Museum a couple times when she was having a particularly good day and would often find herself catching up with Dr. Feinman and the latest “crisis” that he had to deal with. She thought she’d never say it, but as she sat on the plane home to Alabama, she kind of missed Feinman’s straight-shooter talk.

“Dr. Feinman, this is my husband Weldon.” As Weldon and Dr. Feinman shook hands, a man appeared around the corner and started towards them.

“Well, well, if it isn’t the little one from Alabama. The south winds haven’t blown this way in a long while Ms. Dell.” Laura Dell turned to meet an aged Eddie. She gave him a big hug and Weldon watched as she fought tears. Eddie gave Weldon a wink, and continued to gently lead Laura around the museum catching her up on the last eleven years. Weldon walked behind them, every now and then talking with Feinman, but mostly felt like he was finally living in one of Laura Dell’s dreams.

“After you left things changed around here, Ms. Dell – I mean Ms. Carter,” Eddie said with a smile. “The bird? Oh, yes. Lived a long and happy life. I took him in and the children and I nursed him back to health. The cat and I have become rather close as well. Old Herbert is pretty old now though,” he paused thoughtfully. “I guess in cat years he’d probably be around the age of Dr. Walters when you first met him.”

At this, Laura Dell’s smile faltered and she took her hand from Eddie’s arm. But Weldon scooped her hand into his and Eddie waited patiently.

“Can we go see Herbert?” she asked.

“You come all this way to see at cat Ms. Laura?” Eddie chuckled. Laura Dell laughed too. She didn’t know why she had named that cat Herbert. It had seemed right at the time, but the irony of the moment was too much not to laugh.

“I think Eddie would like to show you something else that’s taking place around Herbert,” Weldon said.

Laura Dell looked confused, but didn’t pay much attention to it and allowed Eddie to lead them out of the museum to the car. They said goodbye to Feinman at the entrance, who claimed he needed to make sure his desk was in order before the lunch break.

When they arrived at the cemetery, Eddie eased into parking spot. Laura Dell could see why he moved so slow; she looked out her window to the graveside dotted with so many sparrows that she lost count.