Woodpecker

Chapter 14 / Sam 6 / 2 x 13 Days Left

Woodpecker had drifted down gracefully from the sky behind the house on the morning that she and Ben were to visit Stuart Levitsky at the university. She'd been drinking coffee and eating a croissant on the terrace, trying to work out what to say when she got there. Her anxiety was back, not as strong as before but enough to want to hide under the bedsheets every morning. As soon as Woodpecker appeared though, perching on the edge of the table, it had fizzled away. She was so happy to see her again but instantly hit with the realization that she would, at some point, fly away again. She wished that she could pick Woodpecker up and keep her there with her. Perhaps then she wouldn't feel so engulfed by her loss.

"Hi Woodpecker," she said. "It's nice to see you."

"Hello darling," Woodpecker said, "how are you managing?"

"Oh mum, it's been so hard. I'm struggling a bit to tell you the truth. Every time you come it's so much better and I wish you could stay."

"I can't I'm afraid darling. I must choose the right time to go back, or I'll be lost forever. Do you understand?"

"I don't, but I'm sure you are right," Sam said. "There's so much I want to ask you. All of this would be so much easier if I knew who I was. Who dad was."

Woodpecker cocked her head in the way that she always did when thinking. It was like she was plucking the strings of information out of the air with her beak. "I don't really know about all of that darling so I'm afraid I can't help. There seems to be things that I know and things that I don't. It's like your mother's life has been percolated into me, removing the painful bits like bitter coffee granules on filter paper."

Sam had wanted to ask Woodpecker these questions about herself since she first appeared. She had hoped that she could fill in the gaps about her father. All the things that her mother had refused to talk about in life. Her face showed her disappointment. Blowing her nose on the paper serviette greasy with flecks of pastry, she had thought again about the only memory that she had of the man she believed was her father. The bright turquoise ball with a picture of a dolphin bounced down the black and white garden. The man, her father, followed it towards her. As always, she couldn't make out his face, it was distorted like looking through a fogged-up car windscreen. But this time something, everything, was different. Just as he was about three meters away the fog cleared, and for the first time in her life she could see his face.

"That's him," said Woodpecker at the precise moment his face appeared.

Sam burst out crying. Floods of joyous tears that would later come in waves like true sadness but in antiphase. "Thank you, Woodpecker," she blurted out. The recollection of her father's smell burnt more strongly than ever at the back of her nostrils.

"Don't thank me, really darling. I promise I didn't even realise that was about to happen. But do please pull yourself together. I'm here to tell you something important and then I really must be getting back."

Sam tried to compose herself, but her instinct was to cling to the image of her father's face like a child to its comfort blanket. A terror came over her that she would forget how he looked, that it would fade once more behind the frosty glass. She tried to think how it was possible to preserve a memory, perfect and unchanged, but she didn't know. Memories faded no matter how important they were or what we do to cast them in bronze. She would have to let it go and hope that it returned with the same clarity once she had listened to what Woodpecker was there to tell her. "What do you need to tell me?" she eventually asked.

"This might not make sense," she began.

"I'm getting used to that to be honest Woodpecker. I'm sure it eventually will," Sam said, smiling at her. It was true. She was accustomed now to the cryptic messages that Woodpecker brought and the habit of the universe to make sense of them.