If Birds Fly Back Page 2

  A THEORY FOR ABSENT FATHERS #1:

  Invisibility necessitates imagination.

  x + y = z, where x = clues, y = stories, and z = who he is

  Mom neither confirmed nor denied my suppositions, only said things like “Sebastian, can this wait?”

  “Sebastian, not at the table, mi amor.”

  “Sebastian, we’ll talk about this later.”

  So I built an image of my dad based on possibilities. I assembled clues. Hechos. Like how Mom kept a blank postcard from Italy in her nightstand, which clearly suggested that my father was a Venetian gondolier. Or how there was a baseball in the back of her closet, which almost proved that my father was a professional sports player.

  Clues turned into stories. I figured that even if my dad was invisible to me, that didn’t make him any less real. He was as real as my stepdad, Paul, who (incidentally) can’t pitch a baseball at ninety miles an hour.

  It’s 10:30 a.m., and I’m reclining in our living-room La-Z-Boy. Chowing down peanut butter toast. Paul rounds the corner in his black suit, his sandy-blond hair perfectly coiffed. He does a double take. “Change your mind, champ?”

  I massage the area above my lip. “I—uh—it’s just a bit of stubble.”

  Paul is a helicopter pilot and a big believer in mustaches. I don’t think I’ve ever disappointed him more than last week when I said I didn’t want to grow one. He has a massive handlebar and looks perpetually prepared for the rodeo.

  “Right,” Paul says, deflating. “Well, when you change your mind, I’ll let you borrow my kit.”

  The man has a mustache kit.

  My real father better not have a mustache kit.

  I give him a thumbs-up and go back to my toast. It’s not that Paul’s an awful guy. He just has a specific look that he reserves exclusively for me. His eyes squint in a question: Where did you come from, and what the heck are we going to do with you? Unlike me, Paul is buff and into all kinds of martial arts. My best friend, Micah, and I often substitute his name in Chuck Norris jokes.

  Balancing my toast in one hand and phone in the other (it’s an art form), I text Micah: When Paul does a push-up, he isn’t lifting himself up. He’s pushing the earth down.

  My phone dings back a minute later: Paul is the only man to ever defeat a brick wall in a game of tennis.

  Hah. Good one.

  I hear Paul’s BMW revving in the driveway—then skidding down the street. I turn the TV to the Science Channel, where Morgan Freeman is talking about wormholes in that voice of his. In the hallway, my five-year-old half brother, Louis, is lining up his toy soldiers. I woke up with seven of them in my bed this morning. Imprinted into various parts of my body. Butt. Elbow. The left side of my neck. And I had Play-Doh in my hair. Apparently I am the deepest sleeper in the history of sleep.

  Louis lion-roars and then swats his hands through the soldiers. They scatter, thumping against the wall.

  Every time I hang out with Micah lately, Mom reminds me that I’m missing valuable bonding time with Louis. “When you’re at college, we’ll hardly ever see you.” What she doesn’t know is, you can love someone to pieces and hate them at the same time. Going to Cal Tech at the end of the summer is the equivalent of someone offering me space in a lifeboat.

  Maybe I’m still angry because I was the last to know. Paul married my mom six years ago, right before she got pregnant with Louis. The wedding date was on the kitchen calendar before Mom bothered to mention it, and she told the checkout lady at Fresco Mart about Louis—that’s how I found out I was going to have a brother. I overheard it at the grocery store. When Mom and Paul brought him home from the hospital, the three of them looked—I don’t know. Complete? I wasn’t aware I was missing that kind of bond until I saw it right in front of me. Louis, with both his parents. Louis, with his dad.

  It made me want to punch the air.

  The phone rings, and Mom yells, “¡Yo lo contesto!” And then again, in English: “I’ll get it!” I hate when she catches herself. Before Paul, we only spoke Spanish in the house. Had ropa vieja for dinner on Fridays. Pulled up all the living-room rugs so Mom could teach me salsa steps. Paul’s parents are Danish immigrants, so you’d think he’d get the “I want to hang on to my culture” thing. But no. Apparently only certain cultures are worth holding on to, while others are chucked aside. Paul preaches assimilation above all else.

  In the kitchen: Mom’s voice. She isn’t laughing. Usually she laughs on the phone—even with telemarketers. Maybe it’s her boss, asking if she wants another shift at the diner. A kitchen cabinet slams.

  Louis has decimated his entire regiment of soldiers and has fixed his sights on the TV.

  Do NOT cut off Morgan Freeman. Anyone but Morgan Freeman!

  Right as Louis starts pushing buttons on the remote, Mom enters the living room, still gripping the phone. Wet faced. Her voice reminds me of a dying dinosaur. “Louis”—scratchy throat—“I need to talk to Sebastian alone, please.” When my little brother doesn’t budge, she yells, “¡Louis, ándale, ándale!” and then cracks a bit more, realizing he doesn’t know that language. Eventually—from facial expressions alone—he gets the picture and scrams.

  All the while my stomach is in my shoes.

  “Uh, what’s up?” I say, nervously biting the last piece of peanut butter toast.

  Her dark hair fuzzes around her in waves. Disoriented, rubbing her eyes—“You know that man who wrote about Miami?”

  Be more specific, I try to say. But the peanut butter’s firmly cemented to the roof of my mouth. It comes out like “Beeee maaaa sppefff,” followed by strange clucking noises when I attempt to extract said peanut butter from said roof of mouth.

  Then she drops the bomb. Nagasaki style.

  “Álvaro Herrera. He’s your father. Oh God. Oh God.”

  I suck in. Peanut butter lodges in the back of my throat. I don’t even know who Álvaro Herrera is, but I can’t believe she’s finally told me! I can’t believe I’m choking!

  “Sebastian?” Mom says. “Sebastian!”

  I heave forward, out of the La-Z-Boy. Mom thwacks my upper back with the palm of her hand—six times, by my count—until I retch a chunk of toast onto the new carpeting. It’s vaguely the shape of Michigan.

  “Oh my God,” Mom croaks, dropping to her knees. “Oh my God, Sebastian.”

  My throat is a bit irritated, but this does not dissuade me from speaking. “Who . . . is . . . he?”

  Hands on her face—“You don’t recognize the name?”

  I shake my head. The room feels too warm.

  “He’s a—well, he’s a writer. Midnight in Miami. You’ve probably heard of the movie. He wrote that book.”

  I startle. “That guy? The dead guy?”

  “He’s alive, Sebastian.”

  “Wait. Who was that on the phone?”

  “Your aunt Ana. Remember, she works with geriatrics? She heard through the nursing home circuit that he’s back, and I—” She gathers her breath. “Someone spotted him in Miami.”

  “A nursing home? How old is he anyway? Know what—doesn’t matter. No me importa. I’m going to Miami.”

  “You most certainly are not!”

  I scrunch my eyebrows, confused. “What?”

  “I said: You. Most. Certainly. Are not!” She glances into the hallway, where Louis is peeking into the living room. We must be a sight: on our knees. Mom, on the verge of sobbing. Me, crouched like a scared monkey.

  “Why the hell did you tell me then?” I say.

  “Sebastian! Language.”

  “Fine. Why the heck did you tell me?”

  “Because!” She throws up her hands. “Because if you asked another question about it . . . I panicked, okay?” Gesturing to the TV screen—“What if he’s on the news? What if I walked in tomorrow and you were watching him on the screen, and I’d have to lie to you, Sebastian.”

  My voice has too much growl in it. “How’s that any different from what you’ve been doing for my ent
ire life?” Was I the last to know about this, too?

  “Hey. Not fair. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done to protect you.”

  “From what?” I point at the TV, as if Álvaro Herrera is about to pop out of the box. “From a guy in a nursing home who I’ve never met?¿Seriamente?”

  “¡Sí!” she shouts. “¡Exactamente! That is exactly right! He left me, Sebastian. Do you understand?”

  “No! I don’t. How could I when you’ve never told me anything?”

  She clamps her teeth together. “Fine. We met at a film festival before I moved to California. I was trying to launch my acting career, and Álvaro—he saw my first movie. I had a small role, but he said I was good and we hit it off. Four months later, he proposed. He had a ring, Sebastian—plans for a wedding, the whole thing. And then he left. I was pregnant with you, and he . . . never found out. After he left, I didn’t think he had the right to know.”

  That’s awful. Incredibly awful. But . . .

  “I’m sorry,” I say softly, standing up. “I’m really sorry that happened. But just because he left you”—choosing my words carefully—“doesn’t mean I can’t know him. Maybe he’s changed.”

  Mom sounds so tired. “People don’t change.”

  Theoretically, everything is explainable. That’s why I like physics. If you want to know why a pineapple and a slice of pizza fall at equal speeds when dropped off a building, there’s a reasonable answer for that. Plus there are all these outrageously named theories. Like, I kid you not, the Hairy Ball Theorem.

  In the last year alone, I’ve read A Brief Compendium of Astrophysical Curiosities by Dr. Boris P. Mangum seven times. I write theories in the margins. About physics, about my own conundrums.

  I thought: If I can solve the mysteries of the universe, then I can sure as hell figure out the mystery surrounding my dad.

  I thought: Rational explanations and order should exist everywhere in the world.

  Should being the operative word.

  A tuna fisherman I understand. Stuck in another dimension I understand. An eighty-two-year-old presumed-dead writer wasn’t even on my radar.

  A THEORY FOR ABSENT FATHERS #2:

  The end of invisibility directly correlates with the beginning of complication.

  All morning, I Google “Álvaro Herrera” in my bedroom. Discover a website called findalvaro.com, where someone has posted three hours ago: Silver Springs. Miami, FL. I swear it’s him. There are twenty-five responses, all saying something like No shit! Take a picture!

  “Álvaro Herrera” gets thirty thousand image results.

  Álvaro on Hollywood Boulevard.

  Álvaro in Havana.

  Álvaro on the set of Midnight in Miami.

  I skim some of the attached articles. They tell me he never had children. (Inaccurate. Am I the only one?) They tell me that Álvaro’s novels are translated from Spanish, that he came to the US in 1961 as a political refugee, and that Warner Bros. adapted his first novel, Midnight in Miami, in 1963. It’s about a bartender named Eduardo Padilla who gets wrapped up in a spy ring. There is side-boob in it but no actual boobs. Álvaro has a cameo.

  Looks like the type of people interested in Álvaro also have a healthy obsession with Bigfoot, Bat Boy, and Elvis. He’s famous, sure. But mostly with conspiracy theorists, die-hard movie buffs, fans of Cuban literature, and the Latino community. I doubt 95 percent of the population would recognize him. And those who do would probably want to invite him to dinner. Take a billion pictures. Steal his underwear or something.

  By the fifteenth article, I’ve made my decision. Hell, I made my decision at the exact moment Mom blurted out his name.

  (That’s part of my problem. I do everything too fast. I swear I only have one button: Go. Someone forgot to install the brakes.)

  I log on to the Silver Springs home page, which profiles a white and faded-blue building surrounded by palm trees. A cheesy talking flamingo juts onto the screen and offers a virtual tour. (Wish I were kidding. I couldn’t make up that crap.) So I follow this flamingo to the Volunteer section and fill out a form. Boom! Twelve minutes later, I receive an email saying my application has been approved. I start tomorrow.

  Next step: plane tickets.

  This is the hardest bit, because I’m flat broke. Can’t-even-find-a-dime-in-my-sofa broke. So I do the only thing I can: I sell my Chinese fossil collection on the internet. I kiss every one of them good-bye, box them up, ship them to the highest bidder. Then I spend a thousand bucks on a one-way, last-minute ticket from Los Angeles to Miami. Boarding: seven hours from now.

  Ay. Stomach lurch.

  I’ll call my aunt Ana when I touch down. I’ve met her a bunch: every Christmas, some Easters. She’s cool. Hopefully cool enough to let me crash on her couch for part of the summer.

  Mom keeps knocking on my door. She never comes in unannounced because of . . . because of that one time. So I put on my headphones—I have A Brief Compendium of Astrophysical Curiosities on audiobook as well—and enter a staring contest with the poster above my bed. The cast of X-Men glares back.

  All the while, I’m going over the plan.

  Step 1: Fly from LA to Miami.

  Step 2: Talk to Álvaro Herrera.

  Step 3: Glue all my broken pieces back together.

  Dr. Mangum is saying, “A supernova is so bright that, even if but for a moment, it can outshine a whole galaxy. Scientists do not yet know the detailed mechanism of igniting stars.”

  I write in the hard copy:

  THE STARS-ARE-LIKE-SECRETS PRINCIPLE:

  Both can run out of fuel. Even if they remain dormant for years, all it takes is a catalyst. One day, they will explode.

  3.

  Linny

  WHO: Santiago Lopez, host of the popular Argentinian game show ¡Arriba!

  WHEN: 2012, shortly after his nightly broadcast

  WHY: He disappeared for six days, and when he finally returned to the set, his only explanation was “The grand prize last week was a Hawaiian vacation. I thought to myself, If they can go, why can’t I?”

  NOTES: Maybe Grace is on an extended vacation? Maybe she’ll come back on her own a few days from now—sunburned from the beach?

  I don’t spot Álvaro Herrera for the rest of my shift, but I resolve that—the next time I see him—I’m going to get some answers.

  In the Silver Springs parking lot, my phone buzzes with a text from Ray: Hope you didn’t party too hard with the old people. Attached is a selfie of him and Cass lounging at the beach. She resembles a praying mantis in her wide-lensed sunglasses, but her bathing suit is very Cass: aggressively pink, fringed, rhinestone studded. Ray is rocking a pair of orange swim trunks that mimic his fiery hair.

  I squint at the picture for a sec before trying to whip out a reply, but then it occurs to me that the un-freaking-believable news is best shared face-to-face. I unchain my bike and fast-pedal down to Cass’s favorite beach spot: by the Hilton, next to the constantly shirtless ice cream man with the six-pack abs. I park between two red convertibles, kick off my Chuck Taylors, and hotfoot it through the burning sand.

  When Ray sees me, he says, “Sup, Linny!” and I scoot onto his towel. Although we’ve only known each other four and a half months, he greets me with the biggest smile, like we’ve been best friends for our entire lives.

  “Just a warning,” he says. “I might’ve had three ice cream cones within the space of an hour. Half of my body is sugar.”

  Cass affirms, “It’s true. And now he keeps asking me to go for a run with him. I’ve explained to him the mechanics of boobs without sports bras, but it’s not sinking in.”

  “Care to join me in the sugar high?” Ray asks.

  I laugh and shake my head. It’s funny—sugar is actually the reason we’re all friends. Cass and Ray met at Dylan’s Candy Bar, the ultrahip sweets boutique where they were coworkers for an ill-fated seventeen days. (Ginormous lollypops. Accidental fire. You get the picture.) Although Ray joined our trio afte
r Grace left, I still find it intensely weird that he only knew of her.

  But I do adore him. He’s on the track team and is constantly trying to drag me into sprint workouts to, as he claims, “reduce my anxiety.” I refuse most of the time (running is his thing, very much not mine), but it’s nice to be asked. And honestly, it’s nice to be understood. Ray came out the week before summer break, and even though almost everyone was cool about it, some people (aka dickwads) weren’t. He knows what it’s like to walk around under a spotlight.

  He and Cass are my only friends who don’t give me that look—a mixture of aw, poor you, little sisterless girl and your family must be so screwed up for Grace to disappear like that. It involves heavy eyebrow arching and an upward pout of the lip. What’s unbelievable is, sometimes I catch my glance in the mirror, giving myself that look. Because it does suck, and no one knows that better than me.

  Pulling out my camera, I switch it on so I can film Cass’s and Ray’s reactions to the Álvaro news. I call out, “Take one.”

  Cass is largely preoccupied with spritzing bronzing oil onto her endless legs to attract all the boys, as if every guy within a fifty-mile radius didn’t already have a moth-to-flame reaction. Fresh conquests perpetually snake their arms around her shoulders. She parades them through Miami Beach Senior High’s halls like prized kills, raccoons she’s just snuffed with her BB gun. Last month I shot a short movie of her getting ready for a date. The lighting was all wrong, but with her chalky eyeliner and mass of blond hair, she still looked luminous, more of a Marilyn Monroe than I’ll ever be. (Not that I lack curves. The curves are aplenty. I just prefer to be behind the camera, capturing the things that no one else sees: all the seemingly insignificant details that add up to something wonderful and big. I love that about movies, the way they dive into you as deep as you dive into them.)

  When Cass hears “Take one,” she snaps to attention. So does Ray. He lifts and throws one shoulder forward into an exaggerated pose. “What’s our motivation in this film?” he says.

  Cass says, “How about . . . we’re criminals?”