As If a Bird Flew By Me: A Novel

Celia Considers Her Options

77 CELIA CONSIDERS HER OPTIONS Celia considers a road trip: She still carries the list of historical dates in her purse. A map of 1692 Salem (by WP Upham, 1866) hangs on her office wall (an O marks Pudeator’s house). She thinks of driving to Massachusetts , to stand in the shade of trees, to stare at a different town than the one she’s invented. And why would she go?: the historical placard and engraved markers, the 21st shine to 17th century buildings, the country of website promotions of witch tours? She can only imagine this reason—to see the river, the reeds at the edge of the salt marsh, the ocean, the possibility of a whale fluke offshore, on the horizon. The dead are with us, within us, under our nails, coursing along our veins, in the lattice of our bones. Shut your eyes. Notes from an oboe drift and mist in and out of your range of hearing. What next? k Celia considers the cellist: She loves the sound of her, the woman who walks by her house with her husband and their shepherd. Once at dusk, the lights 78 were on in their living room, and Celia had been wandering around the neighborhood, slowly, meandering, too agitated to go home, too tired to go far. Then she heard scales. Soft C major. She walked toward the sound. Scales morphed into a rambling, random song, stalled then restarted . Open strings played with fingers on other strings, a vibrating harmonic. A slide, a chord, a pause, a staccato. A long note held, in vibrato. She saw her then, her back to the large living room window, the outline of the cello’s scroll snug to the left side of her head, left hand moving along the fingerboard, the right arm directing the bow. Breathless, time is absent— If it had been darker out, she would’ve stayed longer, sat on the curb, and just listened, her eyes shut, clasping her knees, head down, to blot out the rest of world but the sound of the cello. k Celia considers the heart’s disbelief at one sentient’s absence: The sound of pet tags jingling in her house, her friend’s mutt visiting—the leap of the heart, she looks up, her deceased dog expected around the corner. The past catches up with the present and she sighs, a little lost without his red head in her hands. A hole in the universe the size of his body follows me from room to room. ...