Chapter 16 Roseate Spoonbill #6
Felicity said, “She puts me to shame,” and then told Sparrow, “You have to get chocolate-covered raisins.”
With a glance of alarm, Sparrow asked, “Why?”
“Because chocolate has good . . . um, good magic in it,” Felicity said. “And I like it. And it’s unnatural for a little kid
to not want chocolate.” She whispered to me, “This is so weird. Here I am trying to deprogram my kid’s healthy eating.”
“I’d be grateful if I were you,” I told Felicity. “Nelia only eats macaroni and cheese, and by only macaroni and cheese, I
mean only macaroni and cheese, lunch and dinner. And it can’t be homemade, it has to be from the yellow box. She counts the
blueberries to make sure we don’t give her too many.”
With the slightest and fleeting upturn of her lips, Sparrow said, “Maybe yogurt on the raisins?”
Felicity said, “Nope, got to be chocolate.”
As she made her way down the aisle five or six feet in front of us, I heard her murmur, “Okay . . . Mom.” My breath snagged
in my chest. I almost didn’t dare to look at Felicity.
“I know,” Felicity said. “She’s been doing that.
Almost like an experiment. Sometimes ‘Mom,’ sometimes ‘Mommy.’” Catching up with Sparrow, Felicity took her small hand, interlacing their fingers.
The translucent long-sleeved black shirt Felicity wore modestly showed only the vague outlines of her black bikini.
She wore no makeup and her hair had grown, and a thick braid, the mama of Sparrow’s baby one, danced against her golden shoulders.
There were probably half a dozen prettier women just in that store alone.
And yet, Felicity parted the shoppers like a seaplane landing in a quiet hidden lagoon.
That ideal girl Lily Landry had described, long ago at the gentleman’s club, cleaner and crisper and all-around classier than any real-life girl, the girl of special knowledge.
Even if the people who could not take their eyes from her didn’t realize it, there was something extra and indefinable about Felicity. There always would be.
We left the take-home food in the car and sat on benches on the boardwalk to eat a cold-dinner picnic straight from the grocery
bag (another thing you start to do in Florida without anyone giving the slightest bit of a damn. In Sheboygan, even in July,
passersby would have thought you were homeless or running from the law). I remember being a kid on vacation with Ross and
his family and thinking that everyone who lived in Florida must be on vacation every day.
“Could I give some raisins to the birds?” Sparrow asked.
“Yes,” Felicity said. “Wow, those birds, they do okay! Look how fat they are.” Sparrow threw raisins into the air and gulls
fought each other for the morsels like fighter bombers.
“People are driven by Satan to put chocolate on perfectly good fruit, you know.”
“Well, sweetie, what I said about putting chocolate on fruit, that was just a joke. I was agreeing that the raisins were healthier
without the chocolate . . .”
A car pulled over then, a big black Escalade. The tinted side windows purred down, and a young voice yelled, “Look, Mom! That
little girl is a bird trainer!”
At the same moment, Felicity shouted, “No! Sparrow, come here right now!”
Her terror knocked the wind out of me. It took me a moment to say, “It was just a little kid. With her parents.”
Felicity said nothing, crossing the thin horseshoe of sand to grab Sparrow’s arm, none too gently.
“Stop!” Sparrow cried. And Felicity stopped, but still looking wildly around her with those darting-goldfish eyes I remembered from court. Then she apologized, leaning down to give Sparrow a kiss on the top of her head and half a stick of gum. Sparrow did not look convinced.
We walked all the way back to the car before Felicity said, “Reenie, you know why that happened? I saw that big black SUV
and what do you think I thought?” I shrugged. I shook my head. “I thought, Jack Melodia. He’s finally got us. He would grab
the child and throw her in the back, and we would never catch up with him. The last thing I would see would be her little
face crying in the back window, if I could even see through those windows.”
What a heel I felt then. Felicity must feel this dread descend on her like sleet every time she stepped out into the sunny
street with Sparrow. It waited for her on every sidewalk, beach, and playground, in the children’s museum, the grocery store,
the shoe shop, and the haircut salon. She must hear that threat in every slammed door, every broken shutter, every playful
drunken argument between two frat boys at bar time. Everything was a menace. “I’m scared to death,” she said.
She thought about it ten times a day.
Sometimes, a grave and simply dressed social worker with a no-nonsense French twist would come to the door.
A simple DNA test, and Jack was established as the rightful biological father of Sparrow Irene Wild, a longed-for daughter whose lying slut of an ex-convict former prostitute mother had conspired with her own murderous mother to cause him anguish with a lie about the baby’s supposed death.
There would be a hearing. Felicity would be given supervised visitation, on the basis that she posed no physical threat to Sparrow.
Then sometimes, she believed Jack would bypass the law.
She would wake up one morning and Sparrow would simply be gone, the bright, star-embroidered curtains in her room gently billowing in the dawn breeze.
And then, she sometimes thought that Jack would just chalk it up.
He was no stranger to lies. He’d told his share.
He was no stranger to cold treachery or cold pragmatism.
Perhaps an all-out brawl over this little girl, conceived outside his marriage, risked the kind of attention even Jack Melodia could not manage or control, like the murder trial, with its appallingly appealing Lucrezia Borgia of an accused and its dozen hairpin plot turns.
So she was safe. It was all fine. She was just on edge. Paranoid! That’s all it was.
She would lean into that assurance for two hours, sometimes three. And then she’d give herself a recovery lecture: Jack Melodia
was not desperate. He was not reckless. So get a grip. Felicity, haven’t you spent enough time in misery? Girl, learn how
to be happy! Sparrow was happy!
So much could have gone wrong between Felicity and Sparrow, and yet, mostly they seemed enclosed by a protective circle of
light. Felicity sometimes felt like the emotional equivalent of people who crawled out from under cars that had fallen on
them. (“Miraculously, with only minor injuries!”) Everything was just fine!
But it wouldn’t take long for the central fear to snap a rubber band against her wrist . . . Not so fast, my pretty, and yes, I do mean you! There was always another mental movie to make about how Jack could destroy her.
Jack had been in love with her, for a long time. He once considered her his possession. He would consider Sparrow his possession.
If he believed that Sparrow was his possession, he would never part willingly with her. Or had he parted with her already?
Maybe he had.
Felicity would feel okay for a tiny window of time. And then she would think of a new scenario. “What can I do? Move to Italy?
Walk around there by myself? Even though I survived the loneliest time in my life and the only thing in the world that makes
me feel safe is to be around people I care about? There’s nothing I can do.” There was nothing she could do. Just listening
to her, imagining a life like that, had given me the emotional equivalent of a migraine.
Felicity could hardly call the police to report that baby’s biological father might try to claim her.
Well, right, no, he hadn’t done anything to try to get her.
And yes, he had every right to do that. He had no criminal record.
He was a businessman. And unless you counted grooming and sleeping with a teenager .
. . but you know, boys will be boys! . .
. unless you counted that, he wasn’t a bad guy in a way anybody could prove.
Should Sam approach Jack with a plea for Felicity’s custody of her child?
Or not? Would doing that rock the boat? Would it rouse Jack to devastating action?
For on the other hand (there were plenty of other hands) Jack could have taken steps to claim Sparrow, if he knew about Sparrow, at any point since Felicity got out of prison.
He was a lawyer. He would know what to do.
He hadn’t taken that step. Did that mean something?
Or would he draw that gun the moment that Felicity dropped her guard, breaking the bubble and stepping into the dreadful and lovely real world?
“Where’s Ruth when we need her?” I asked, half kidding, then fully humiliated by what I’d just said, literally slapping my
hand over my mouth. There were times when I had to remind myself that Ruth was Felicity’s mother, as the rupture seemed too
real and of such long standing. “Jesus, Felicity. I’m sorry. I’m an asshole for saying that.”
“No, no, no. I know how you meant it, Reeno. How could anybody have those thoughts? But that’s exactly what I think too. If
he comes for me, if he comes for my child, what will I do?”
“We’ll make a plan. We’ll bring Sam in on it too. We’ll find someone who’s an expert in personal security. Also, he hasn’t
come anywhere near you yet. Let’s not go looking for trouble,” I said, sounding like Miranda.
That night, when Felicity and I again fell asleep talking, I had no energy to get up and find my own bed, much less seek out my husband or my mother or even change my clothes.
Wasn’t a sundress sort of like a nightgown anyhow?
In the morning, I woke to Sparrow staring at me from a distance of about eight inches, her concentrated silence loud as a shout.
“You didn’t put on your jammies,” she said. “You must feel really ick.”
“I was too tired.”
“So will I have to take the airplane to my school? My friends miss me.”
“What are their names?” I asked.
“Andre and Mary and Christopher and Sally Marie. I have a lot of friends.”
“What is your school?”
“I go to Three C’s. Cocoa Consolidated Christian. You don’t have to be a Christian to go there. Andre is Jewish.”
Felicity came in and sat down beside Sparrow on the foot of the bed. She asked, “Are you a Christian?”
“I don’t know,” Sparrow said. “I think so. We pray at school but only for one minute. And we sing a song. It’s not that great
a song usually. We get more vacation.”
Practical girl.
I was hauling my bag down to the living room, having decided to lug a few of my old books and dolls back for Nelia. All of
a sudden, Sparrow started to cry. “I want to go too. With your best friend.”
Felicity asked me then, “I’ve been thinking. Can you wait until morning?”
“I wish, but the kids . . .”
“Just until morning. Then, we’ll go with you.”
“You can absolutely come! You could use the break! My dad would love to see you too . . .”
Felicity said, “No, I mean, we’ll come to stay.
Not to stay with you! At least, not for more than a week or something.
Patrick will find a good house for us.” She shrugged.
“Florida is as good as anywhere, Reenie. Better. It’s where you are, it’s what Sparrow knows.
” She would take her little girl to meet her great-grandparents today and then close this book.
“I’d love to see my brothers, but that’s a bridge I can’t cross right now.
There’s nothing else left for me here, except memories, sweet and sour.
” Felicity was right. Even her beloved mother was lost to her.
I knew that Felicity would visit Ruth, but it was hard to imagine what good could come of it.
She got out her one-day-old iPad and said, “Other people can sell my place. Other people can pack the four or five things
I want to keep. I want to live where I won’t be seen. I don’t mean to hide. I mean where I won’t be seen as something I’m
not. I let men put things on me I never wanted.” To Sparrow, Felicity said, “You want to go back with Reenie and Miranda?
We can do that. We’ll go to Disney World. Did Granny take you to Disney World?”
With her wide-eyed amber gaze, Sparrow was, for a moment, the image of her mother. She said, “There’s a lot of sin at Disney
World.”
“Oh wait!” Felicity said. “Didn’t you know that kids don’t do sins? Not until they’re like thirteen. And even after unless
it’s a really big thing.”
Sparrow said, “Oh!”
“I thought they told you that. Kids do naughty stuff, but they just have to say sorry.”
Sparrow said, “Oh!”
“Plus, they took all the sin out of Disney World a couple of years ago.”
“Oh, that’s good,” said Sparrow. “I might like to go. Everybody I knew went except me.” I had to turn away so Sparrow wouldn’t
see my face.
Like Sam, I admired Felicity’s forward logic and her fearlessness. About everything except Jack Melodia, she seemed confident,
even battle ready. When we turned to Sam, even he was short on ideas. It turned out that even as Sam stayed up late chewing
on possible strategies, when it came to Jack, the universe had plans for his plan.