Migratory Animals by Mary Helen Specht Page A

Canon,” said Santiago, grinning. Alyce watched late-afternoon light dapple his arm as he reached for one of the napkins stacked beneath a rock. Thin and fine-boned, Santiago had begun shaving hishead three years ago when he could no longer disguise his sharply receding hairline.
    Some people laughed at Santi, others turned to chat again in pairs and threesomes. They passed around plates of shish kebabs and German potato salad and chunks of crusty bread. They refilled their drinks. Alyce tried to remember what it had felt like when she’d loved these people more than anything.
    Watermelon was the only perfect fruit.
    Cool and wet. Sweet but not so sweet one felt sick after eating it. The Christmas contrast of the green of the skin and the red of the flesh. In grade school, Alyce and her best friend, Jessica, carried a small watermelon as “provisions” when exploring the back alleys of their Phoenix suburb. Afterward, they would each hold a piece daintily by the rind while red juice dripped stickily down their mouths and chins, pushing tiny black seeds around with their tongues.
    But chopping a whole watermelon was a bitch, and there in the kitchen that afternoon, during Flannery’s homecoming party at Roadrunner Ranch, she had to press the dullish blade from both ends before the bulging middle finally cracked open. She held up the knife and imagined bringing it down, carving herself into pieces instead. Releasing the pressure to coordinate her limbs as one cohesive body.
    Slicing the fruit into smaller and smaller chunks, she watched a pair of finches through the refractive bottles lining the windowsill. The birds at the feeder had recently exchanged their winter camo for summertime, yellow-feathered bellies, and the color caught her eye, jarring and garish. (Her brain automatically calculated the dye combination it would take to re-create.) The feeder was already there when they’d moved in, and Harry kept it filled it with seeds from the feed store off the highway. Now, one pair had built a nest beneaththe overhang of the porch, balancing their home precariously atop a rafter.
    When Alyce was growing up, her whole family had been so obsessed with birds that being sent into the wild with a pair of binoculars and a laminated identification guide was a rite of passage for every twelve-year-old in the Buckle clan. Letters and, later, e-mails always began with a list of recent sightings (“WOW: A pair of painted buntings made three appearances at the pecan tree feeder last week!!! We’re also happy to announce that Ruth is pregnant.”); vacations were planned around at least one reported nest of a rare or striking species. Alyce almost fell to her death at age ten when her father encouraged her to climb “higher, sweetie, higher” up a rock embankment where a great blue heron had supposedly laid eggs.
    Out the window, the ranch finches were uncharacteristically calm considering all the activity: Steven and Lou trying to dance the tango in the grass, three steps in one direction, dramatic head turns, three steps back; the clank of metal echoing across the yard indicating Brandon and Molly were in the process of losing a game of horseshoes to Harry’s cousin and his boyfriend; and the kids, her own two boys and Steven and Lou’s little girl, crushing and crowding into the oversized blue-and-green hammock Alyce’s parents had brought from Mexico a few years ago as a Christmas present for Harry, who, along with the other guests, was not in immediate view—perhaps off on a walk, she thought. Clouds hung bored in the sky.
    Alyce used to adore parties, with this group of friends in particular, but really any sort of party. At one time she thought herself a natural hostess who crackled to life when there were other people drinking, pairing off to gossip, sneaking cigarettes out of view of their partners. Unlike marriage or parenthood, hosting allowed her to dip in and out of