Remembering Tanya
by
David Holden

I'm driving hay to the mesa when I first catch sight of it. A sleek white bird, its body slung under broad wings marked with black at their tips, is flying above the arroyo. Unlike the redtail hawk high above, which rides the wind with an easy grace, this bird has an edgy flight. To hover it flaps its wings in bursts. Then it swoops to the side, allowing me a view of its wing tops marked with black at the center. Later it lands in an oak and folds into a shape suggestive of a gull. But we are thirty miles from the Pacific; this is no shorebird.

When I was a senior in high school in Portland, Oregon, my friend Donald asked if I would accompany his girlfriend Tanya to the beach, as he was too busy with a term paper to do so. She was a lanky girl with long, curly blond hair that accented a slim face with an aquiline nose. She had a wide mouth with thin lips and penetrating blue eyes.

At Cannon Beach, though the May ocean was still frigid, we ventured into the surf. Tanya dove in and out of the water with intense energy. By the time we ran back to our blankets my limbs were numb.

Tanya was shivering. Under a cover she pressed her body against mine. We rubbed each other with hard strokes less sensuous than meant to spark some warmth. The seawater made us both sticky. Then she stopped, looked at me, and kissed me.

I gazed at her questioningly, her breath warming my nose. With a laugh she got up and, blanket under her arm, ran back to the car. When I got there she already had the motor running. We drove back to town without talking.

At lunch in Santa Barbara a friend suggests that the bird I saw might be a white-tailed kite. At home I refer to my guidebooks, and find its description: white with black shoulders, and pointed wings held in a dihedral position in flight. Yes, this is the bird I've seen. The next morning I go looking for it, but it is gone.

The day after Tanya and I returned from the seaside I ran into Donald in the hallway. "You didn't touch her, did you?" he asked.

I stood there, perplexed.

He turned and walked away.

Two years later, at college, I got a letter from my mother, full of news from home. After breaking up with Tanya, Donald had gone off to Harvard. Tanya had married and moved to Hawaii. My mother learned that Tanya felt trapped in her marriage. One evening she'd gone out on the beach and put a bullet through her head.

This morning, as I go to feed the horses, I see two white-tailed kites hover above the arroyo, wings atwitter, their forms a constantly shifting pattern against the slate sky. Then the barking of the dogs reminds me there's work to do.