An Exultation of Larks

When I tell you I didn’t mean to be a spy, I hope you believe me.

I need to figure out a way to give $20,000 to a single mom, a young widow, while simultaneously protecting her from some hurtful information about her husband.

The universe gave me the money by accident. I need to set it right.

Our love affair was like everyone’s – it started happily and ended sadly.

I bring books with me to bars. I don’t like eating dinner out by myself, but it suits me to sit alone at a bar and nurse a glass of red wine. There’s a cute bar on the walk home from work and usually the guys there will leave me alone. I mean, how boring, right? Who hits on a woman who’s reading a book?

“What are you reading?” was the first thing he said to me.

I showed him the cover of my book – “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” and he laughed. It’s a collection of short stories by Raymond Carver. I was right in the middle of “Cathedral,” my favorite.

“What’s funny?” I asked.

He looked at me with a deep calm. He wore professorial glasses. “I love short stories.” His name was Nathaniel and he said to call him Nate.

I loved hearing him say the word love.

He laughed at my jokes and when he smiled there were little crinkles around his eyes. He brought me a big glass of ice water (after I said I was already at my drink limit after my second glass of wine).

It was just that mundane. I don’t know what song was playing in the bar, I don’t remember what I was wearing.

I do remember the amber light reflected in his eyes, the pages of the book fluttering as I closed it, the garnet splash at the bottom of my wineglass.

I knew I should’ve waited. I should’ve been more cautious and careful – like I usually was. You don’t understand how unusual this was for me. In what universe did I act so impulsively?

He walked me home. He put his denim jacket around my shoulders. He stayed. He nibbled my toes. He ran his hands through my hair. He looked into my eyes and recited a poem in Spanish. Finally, I felt seen and like the world made sense.

I have a bunch of nice little leather notebooks. The mustard gold one is for everyday to-do lists. The green one is a dream journal with scraps of poetry. The Paris blue notebook is for drawings.

The little black notebook had never been used. I sat on a park bench, pulled the notebook from my bag and found a drawing pencil. I waited. I didn’t actually know why I was there.

I saw them and made a note. “She’s taller than I thought. Girl looks about 3.”

I was spying. I had become a spy.

Nate moved in with me. It was summer and we were sweating, bringing his stuff up the stairs of my duplex. He didn’t have a whole lot. Lots of jeans and t-shirts and clothes for work. A jar of seashells. Boxes of books. (Lots of collections of short stories!) A really nice stereo and some vinyl. He mostly rode his bike but he did have a little Honda that he parked behind my place.

I added him to my checking account and ordered new checks.

We talked about kids. He wanted to name them Lark and Hotspur. I turned the names over in my mind, wondering at the link or origin in his life.

He told me a group of larks is called an exultation. “You know, like a pride of lions or a murder of crows. This place will be full of exultation!”

I laughed. Sometimes you feel so good you laugh, even if there’s no joke.

I looked it up – the word hotspur means a rash, impetuous person.

On the park bench, I pretended to read. The woman, Maya, sat next to me. She was carrying her three-year-old, who was cheery. I said hello and Maya said hi distractedly.

The child ducked her head under her mom’s elbow and looked at me. “What are you reading?” I could see Nathaniel’s eyes on this little face and it pierced my heart.

“A story,” I said. I tried to smile but felt like I was grimacing.

“Honey,” said Maya, “let her read in peace.” She had a pretty voice.

“It’s OK,” I said. “I’m just waiting for my sister. And her daughter.” Now I was the spy who lied.

“Oh, nice,” she said, “maybe she could play with Amelia.”

“Yeah!” said Amelia.

“Oh,” I said, “that would be nice, Amelia.”

Amelia had some apple slices and a piece of string cheese. Maya told me her name and said that she was recently widowed.

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” I found myself saying.

I put the little black notebook and pencil back in my bag. I hadn’t gathered any information but seeing them helped me to know what to do.

On a fine Saturday morning, Nate had said, “Babe, I put some money in the account.”

“Oh, OK,” I replied. “Are you going to pay my mortgage? Or better yet, my school loans?”

He was flipping a pancake. Saturday was our day for pancakes. “Maybe, now that you mention it. But first,” he put the pancake on a plate and passed it to me, “gotta eat.”

I poured some maple syrup. “Where are you riding today?” It was Saturday and he was riding bikes with his friend Dave.

“I think we’re going to hit a trail above that state park we visited last week.” He kissed me on the nose and then brushed off a speck of whipped cream. “I’ll miss you while I’m gone!”

I think what happened is that Nate was filling out an online form. He’d left a job about six months before we met, and started a new one, near the cute bar actually. He needed to enter account information and grabbed the box of checks I’d just ordered. The money was from a retirement account at his old job. $20,000. I saw when I finally checked the account on Monday.

I’m not sure why he didn’t roll the money over. Don’t they always tell you to roll it over when you start a new job? Maybe there was some holdup and he had just planned to park it in our account until he could roll it over into a new retirement account at his new job. Maybe he did plan to pay off my mortgage. Maybe he was planning something wilder, bigger and weirder.

Maybe he wanted to buy a hot air balloon and fly all the way to Napa, with his bike strapped to the side of the basket.

We will never know because he didn’t tell me, he didn’t tell Dave, and he certainly hadn’t told Maya.

He was hit by a truck on a side road between two different bike trails. The driver was drunk and never saw him. Dave called 911 and then he called Maya.

I finally found out after calling every hospital in the county.

He was right here and then he was gone.

Yes, Nathaniel was married. Separated, as it turned out. He had a little studio apartment which I didn’t know about. And Maya, of course, didn’t know about me.

I needed to decide whether or not, or how, to tell her that I have $20,000 that should be hers.

So I started spying. I started with Facebook, of course. Nathaniel didn’t have an account, but Dave did. I found photos of Nate right away, from their many bike rides together. Most were just the two of them on their casual rides, but there were a few organized races as well. The coolest was the Pirate Ride. It was a gravel race and it looked like it had been a very long day. One of people helping with SAG (“Support and Gear”) was Maya. She and Nate had the same last name.

The last photo in the series showed Nate smiling broadly, wearing a goofy medal with a pirate insignia. He looked sweaty and dirty and joyful, and Maya was hugging him around the waist and kissing him on the cheek.

A friend of Maya’s had tagged her in the photo. Soon I was breathlessly paging through her wedding photos. She looked shy, and Nate was beaming. She wore flowers in her hair instead of a veil.

Amelia was born two years later. She was premature. She was only 2.5 pounds at birth. She was so tiny and had little mittens and wore a little mask.

Maya became less vibrant. Her long hair started to go gray. I don’t mean to judge her looks. Anyone’s hair would probably go gray under the circumstances. I didn’t see Nate in any photos at the hospital. I suppose he was taking the photos.

Now Amelia was hanging from Maya’s neck as Maya kissed her cheek. “Well, monkey,” she said, “we’d better hop on home.”

“I want to wait and see the other little girl,” whined Amelia. She looked tired.

“I know,” said Maya, “but maybe next time. Little bunnies like Amelia need to hop in bed.” She grabbed Amelia’s wrist gently and pushed her arm into the sleeve of her jacket, then repeated the procedure with her other arm.

Maya had called Amelia two different animals and said the word “hop” twice in the space of 30 seconds.

Was this what my future had been with Lark and Hotspur? The future of the past?

“It was nice meeting you,” I said weakly.

“Yes.” Maya smiled. “You have a good night.” She popped Amelia into the little stroller and off they went.

I decided I would stop spying and just call a lawyer. There would have to be a way to get Nathaniel’s previous employer to take the money back and redistribute it to Maya and Amelia.

The leaves were starting to fall. I wished I’d thought ahead like Maya and brought a jacket.

On what would be our last night together, I asked Nate what his dreams had been when he was a little boy.

“Oh, hmm,” he said, setting his book aside. His head had been on my lap. He sat up. He laughed. “I think I dreamed I’d have a couch like this and a beautiful woman like you.”

“Did you ever think you wanted kids?”

“What’s this about?” A guarded look came over his face.

I shook my head. “I’m not sure. I guess I was just thinking about it.” I met his eyes. “I think I’d like to have kids with you. Maybe after I pay off my school loans.”

He smiled. He could make me do anything with that smile. “I can’t wait,” he said lightly.

Now of course, I have to wonder, was he thinking of Amelia? Or did he really see our kids, those once and future kids, who now will never be?

And I think about science fiction. The different timelines. The multiverse. The thousands of worlds and existences we will never know, though sometimes it feels like they are there, knocking gently on the membrane that surrounds our perception.

In this timeline, Nate loved me. He also loved Amelia and Maya, the people he had promised to cherish and protect all the days of his life.

Maybe in another universe, Nate went home that night, played with Amelia and helped her get ready for bed. He tried again with Maya. He set up a transfer of his retirement funds into his and Maya’s savings account, until he could roll it over at his new job.

And maybe I drank my wine and finished reading “Cathedral” and walked home, all alone but somehow, at peace.