“That’s a no.” Nate huffed into the phone.
“That’s a maybe.” Alecia sighed, her annoyance creeping in. A crash from upstairs, followed by a quick, air-stabbing wail. “I gotta go.” She hung up the phone and took the steps two at a time.
Gabe stood at the foot of his bed, his lamp cockeyed in front of him on the floor. He turned to Alecia and pointed to the mess, the shattered bulb and fragmented plastic lampshade. The lamp was a gift from Violet; “Vi” everyone called her. Nate’s Mom. Over half of what they owned was a gift from Vi and most of it had been broken by an energetic, well-meaning Gabe. While Vi loved her grandson, Alecia dreaded the quick flicker of disappointment in her eyes when she inevitably asked where the lamp went.
“Oh honey, what happened?” She bent to pick up the pieces, shards of plastic interspersed with razor-sharp glass. “Back up!” She pointed to the doorway and Gabe scampered in bare feet. He sulked, hands over his ears. Her sharp tone, even a hint of it, could send him reeling, and she took two deep, calming breaths. He hummed to soothe himself.
Still, it was just a lamp, and a fairly cheap one. Vi had picked it because Gabe liked the colors, the red, yellow, and blue fluted plastic splaying bright light on the ceiling and the walls, and also because it was hardy, but no matter. They could get a new one. Maybe next month with what was left of the first baseball check.
“Hey, buddy.” Alecia pushed the hair out of her eyes with the back of her wrist, the broken glass and plastic pinched between her fingers. Gabe hummed louder, covering his ears, so Alecia said it again, a bit more forcefully, this time meeting his eyes. She smiled. “Hey, buddy.”
He stopped humming. Smiled back at her, his eyes crinkling at the corners and for a brief second, worry-free. She pantomimed a deep breath and he took one, too. Their little inside joke, breathe, Mama. Breathe, Gabey. It’s just breathing, easy peasy.
“Do you wanna go see Daddy? He has a baseball game. Remember?”
His eyes flicked away, disinterested.
She tried again. “Gabe, let’s go see Daddy.” He brightened. She tried again. “On the way we can stop at the construction site. We can’t go in, but we can look.”
“Yes!” He jumped up and ran to her.
Alecia yelped, pointing to the spot with possible shards of glass. “I have to vacuum! You’ll cut yourself!”
Instead, Gabe lifted off, jumping over the fallen lamp and landing heavily on the bed, where he bounced crisscross-applesauce and whooped. He recoiled off the far edge of the bed, making a big show to avoid the mess and giving Alecia a pointed look. She laughed. Gabe made her laugh every day, not so much with his words, which sometimes were few and far between, but his wry sense of humor. The way he outright mocked her. No one else could see it. In many ways, Gabe was textbook: standard comedy failed him, TV shows were filled with nuance he neither got nor appreciated, humor in any regular way went over his head, or more likely, he just didn’t care. But to Alecia, he was funny and warm and she walked that frustrating tightrope, stretched taut between content and flailing every minute of every day.
With her free hand, she leaned over and plucked a small metal toy front-end loader off the ground and waggled it in his field of vision. “Sneakers on. Right there.” She pointed to where he stood and he looked down at his Velcro Nikes. He sat, working the Velcro straps, his eyes on the toy in her hand. When he was done, he stood with his arms out and his back straight. Alecia tossed the toy gently and it landed softly on his comforter. He snatched it up, rubbed it against his cheek, and stuck it into his pocket.
“Go, Mama.” He gave her a big toothy grin. The vacuuming could wait.
So they went.
And everything was just fine. Gabe was fine. Alecia was fine. She watched her husband, leaning against the wood frame of the dugout, his thumbs hooked into the pocket in his navy blue athletic pants, his hat low on his brow, looking no older than any of his boys, his eyes only on the batter, and flicking periodically to two men in the upper corner of the bleachers. Recruiters. They came around to one of the first games every year and made Nate pace. His boys. His seniors being shunted away to major colleges, maybe, one day, major leagues. He’d always hoped, anyway.
He hadn’t even looked up to see her there before the birds started.
As they fell, dead or barely alive, two small ones landed between second and third base, four on the infield, one between home plate and the pitcher’s mound, and more than a smattering of black bodies against the green grass of the outfield. Alecia shielded her eyes against the sun and surveyed the sky. A cloud of black birds, thousands and thousands of them, swarmed like mosquitoes. The whole cloud seemed to hover, suspended on some invisible air current while the crowd murmured. The pitcher, Andrew Evans, paused, his hand clutching the ball high in the air and then sort of wilting as a starling hit his feet, his face tipped up to the sky, wondering what the hell?
Then, pandemonium. Everyone tumbled, panicked and screeching, running for the small overhang under the concession stand, or the dugout, or their cars. Even the players ran, as strong and tough as they liked to pretend they were. Everyone pressed together. Parents and coaches and players and teachers, people who sometimes could hardly stand to be in the same room together, stood next to the open concession window, the smell of hot grease and pretzels thick, and all you could hear was the thunk, thunk, thunk of starlings as they hit the dirt, their wings twitching.
Alecia had the sensation of watching something huge, momentous, but on television. Removed and staticky, a broken broadcasting voice through the haze. She looked around, and even the recruiters—men in sports jackets or windbreakers, with clipboards, their radar guns tapping nervously against their thighs—watched the sky with an open-mouthed, gaping wonderment.
The whole thing lasted no more than three minutes; three whole minutes during which even Gabe was quiet, pulled in against her hip, although Alecia knew he had no real grasp of the situation. He wasn’t scared, he wasn’t picking up on the cues of everyone else, and she barely had time to be grateful for that before it was all over.