All the Dancing Birds (12 page)

One day I cry to Bryan, “I don’t know why Allison treats me so poorly. I ask her why and she tells me I know. I
don’t
know, Bryan. Do you?”

“You didn’t do anything wrong. What say you and I forget all about sad things and blow this popsicle stand? There’s a new little Italian restaurant on K Street I’ve been dying to try.” Bryan raises one eyebrow in a playful gesture. “I hear they’ve got a bottle of red with your name on it.”

“Really? A bottle of red? With my name on it?”

“No kidding. Go get your shoes on and let’s stuff our faces with meatballs and wine. Maybe we’ll even do a film noir something-or-other at the Crest Theatre.”

I clap my hands in delight and tuck my tears down into my pocket. I slide into my shoes and smile my way into Bryan’s car. Halfway to the restaurant, I see a cat the color of Ma’s old cat, John Milton, dead and flung to the side of the road. I weep loudly for it. Bryan hands me a tissue and speeds a little quicker to our meatballs and wine.

At the restaurant, Bryan waves away his own preference and orders a bottle of Pinot Noir. The wine is lovely and makes my tongue think of ripe strawberries and raspberries and a smoky fire on a cold night. A rare smile comes to my lips.

I look at the bottle label. “You said this was going to have my name on it, but it says,
Mi Sueño
. Did I… when did I change my name to
that
?” I ask.

Bryan laughs, deep and hearty, from the bottom of his chest. “That’s just a figure of speech.”

I look again at the label. “Oh, good. I’m glad I’m still who I am. So what does this mean… this
Mi Sueño?”

“It’s Spanish and it means ‘my dream.’ Isn’t that nice? A wine for you named My Dream.” Bryan’s voice seems to snag on a nail somewhere deep in his throat.

“Well,” I say, “I’m afraid I’m all out of dreams for myself, but maybe there are still a few good
sueños
left for you and Allison.” I laugh and then start to cry again.

“Aw, Mom. Here… cheers.” Bryan holds his glass up to touch with mine.

“Cheers,” I say.
Cheers
. An odd word for a crying woman to utter. Nevertheless, I clink my glass with Bryan’s and say
Cheers
into his tender eyes.

“How can I fix you?” Bryan asks.

“I’m fine. I’m just… well, I guess I’m really not all that fine, but there’s nothing to be done about it.” I reach over and pat his hand.

Bryan looks deeply at me. I spend a moment wandering across the landscape of possibilities and hopefulness spreading across my son’s face.

“I wish I knew what it’s like for you,” he says after a while.

“You don’t want to know,” I say. I take another sip of wine. I shrug. “It’s hard to describe. Sometimes I feel good and bright like there’s still something in here.” I rap the top of my head with my knuckles. “Knock on wood.”

Bryan raps his head and laughs. “Yeah, knock on wood.”

“Sometimes I remember things, like I have a nice wind at my back, pushing me along.”

“Like now?”

“Mmm… like, right now I’m doing okay. At least, I think I am.” I look across the room. “See that man over there?” I lean closer, lowering my voice. I point in the direction of a man seated a few tables down. “He probably doesn’t know that a single drop of water can travel all the way around the world. I can guarantee he doesn’t know reading poetry could save his life or that his tie is hanging down all crooked.”

“I don’t understand.”

“What I’m trying to say is that I still notice things. I still see things. I get inspired and laugh and… obviously I cry. I’m just losing my words to talk about it all. Poof! One minute I could probably recite a soliloquy and the next all those lovely words simply vanish. In a stupid instant, I can’t remember a damned thing. I forget things faster than I even knew them in the first place, if that makes sense. Maybe I’m simply growing backwards.”

“Growing backwards?”

I laugh. “Yes. A magical way of getting younger, but this is just a terrible way to do it. Keep the wrinkles, but lose the memory of how you earned each one.”

“Maybe there’s a different medication, something new or more effective. We could try another doctor, or maybe you could qualify for a trial‌—‌”

“No, Bryan. I don’t want… really, I’m fine. Maybe I get a bit soggy these days, but really… there’s not much help for a gummed-up brain. The good thing is that I keep those nice tissue folks happy.” I smile, but Bryan’s face has fallen from the edge of inspiration and helpfulness.

I look down at my menu and frown. “I can’t figure out all these dishes,” I say, my voice now flat as a stone. “Will you help me?”

He brightens‌—‌at last and without trying, I’ve given my beautiful son something about me he can fix. Bryan folds his hand over mine and escorts me through the long list of foods. I do my best to concentrate, but I’m stuck on a word that clangs and rings through my head like a loud, noisy gong. It repeats over and over‌—‌the same word, banging wildly inside my mind.
Cheers. Cheers. Cheers.
Tears slide again across the rounded curve of my eyes until they fall in fat dots onto the menu.

I’m mad at my eyes. I shake them free of their water and pick up my wineglass.

“What’s the name of this wine, again? It’s quite good.”

“You don’t remember? It’s
Mi Sueño.”

“
Mi Sueño
. My, what a pretty name! What does that mean?”

“It means ‘my dream.’”

“Well, cheers to your dreams,” I say. We clink glasses and I find a small moment of peace within the sound of two glasses touching.

By the time Bryan drives me home, I’ve found twelve new things to cry over. He leaves me at the door with apologies, another fresh box of tissues and a generous kiss on my wet and snotty cheek. I stand for a while at the door, waving until his car is gone.

I wander to my closet only because it’s become my place of comfort and because it draws me there, sometimes many times a day. Often, instead of reading about what sort of person I used to be, I just stand in the middle of my closet, allowing my feet to shuffle back and forth.

Tonight I take down my letter box and finger through my letters until I find the perfect piece.

I read out loud and listen carefully to my halting voice. I still read well, but it’s getting harder to decipher my crooked handwriting. Some passages take a few stuttering tries before the meaning is clear enough to move on to the next. Nevertheless, I plod ahead.

My dearest children,

This letter makes my hands tremble before I even set down a word. I don’t know how to approach the subject, except to jump in with both feet, hoping not to make too much of a mess of it.

I believe you should know as much about death as you do about life. There! I said that frightening word. Death‌—‌that sharp and specific moment between one’s last breath and the silence of forever gone.

As much as I’d rather celebrate only how your grandparents lived (because to think of anything else makes for a terribly sad day), I suppose you should also know about the way your people died.

On my side, your MeeMaw went first. The doctor said it was heart disease, silent and deadly and that nothing could have been done to prevent its horrid and instant conclusion. Your PaaPaw found her in the garden, curled around her favorite rose bush, clippers still in her hand and a look of astonishment on her face.

When your MeeMaw died, I think your PaaPaw‌—‌always a worryingly stoic man‌—‌choked back his tears so deeply into the crevices of his lungs that those tears puddled right there, which most certainly started the silent growing of what would soon take him away too. I believe he looked at his wife all laid out at the Dignity Family Funeral Home, her hair softly curled, her lips tinted a soft pink, her best dress hugging the curves of her silent body and, right there and then, he just let his soul slip off to heaven with her. There’s no other explanation, because just six months later, your PaaPaw died of lung cancer.

He never even told me he was sick, but that’s another story for another letter. (I’ll work on that.)

Of course, it’s possible that death isn’t all that bad for the departed, but nevertheless, terrifying for the living. I guess everyone believes in something, though. I know Ma believed in heaven, Pa believed in fishing, and they both believed in love.

On the other side of the family, your father’s parents both died young, reaching for each other (most likely) during the slow motion, frame-by-frame instant when a logger misjudged the angle of a curve on one of our mountain roads. Your dad was only sixteen when his parents, your paternal grandparents, were crushed under the very logs that might have made the sawdust your PaaPaw carried home in the cuffs of his pants.

I think about that coincidence every now and then.

Your father told me his parents would have doted on you, marveling over your first steps, your first words, your first mud pies, your first pencil strokes, your first moments of everything. His father was a millworker like your PaaPaw, but for a different company, his mother a homemaker, very much like your MeeMaw. He had one older brother who died of pneumonia before he was born.

Of course, you know your father died of a heart attack in the prime of his life. I can’t even go on at all about that.

And then there’s me‌—‌the one now with the broken brain.

It will cause my death, you know. The good news is that I know how I’ll go and, if there is such a place as heaven, I’ll surely be once more with your father. With Ma and Pa. Maybe even Ma’s old cat, John Milton, will be there. Hah!

Still, I’d rather discuss the way the roses did this year and how their blooms were such a constant delight when I’d bring them in to let their long stems sway over the lip of that cobalt blue vase that I love so much.

I hope I didn’t needlessly upset you with this letter, but still, it’s important for you to know your past and how it might affect your future. It seems you might need to guard your hearts, your lungs, and your hands on the steering wheel. And now, of course, your brains.

We are your kith and kin. Your heritage. Your good or unfortunate health. If there is any sadness in this backward look, I’m sorry for causing it.

It’s said that sorrow doesn’t last forever. That’s wrong. The sorrow lasts and lasts and lasts. That, you should also know.

Love and gentleness,

Mom

P. S. I hope it helps that I’ve written this letter on my dearest and most favorite stationery. Don’t you love its creamy color?

I stand in the middle of my closet, as still and silent as any grim winter could be; my memories are a flash powder of starlight and magic, blazing white-hot one moment, cold as ice the next. There seems to be a system of hierarchy within my mind now. New, young star memories are born only to die an immediate sparkling death, while the eldest thoughts sit on fat cushions, twinkling like old wrinkled sages.

My thoughts are turning inside-out and what I should know is gone the moment I learn it, while what should have passed away long ago is all I can think of and cry over‌—‌again and again and again.

Chapter Thirteen

N
ow here I am, dry-eyed and trembling after months of splashing and crying over every little thing, I’m finally dry-eyed and upright. Of course, all that warm moisture I made created a favorable climate for bees‌—‌loud and bothersome bees‌—‌who are now busy hanging a nest in the rafters of my mind. I hear their industrious work as they spread their sticky honeycomb across the hardened wood of my brain. I feel them flying around, gathering all the memories they can find onto their legs, intending only to make jar after jar of some tragic nectar of forgetfulness.

It’s no wonder I’ve always been afraid of bees.

With a chronic buzzing that seems to have settled deep inside the wells of my ears, I begin what can only be called my mad phase. I let words fly through the air much like the stinging insects that inhabit my head. I bellow into the room and to the sky and the stars above.

“Who did this to me? I want to
know
and I won’t leave this world without an answer!”

I stand at my window and hurl obscenities at the moon. “You’d better goddamn tell me.” The moon is silent on the subject.

I hurl a dinner plate of half-eaten spaghetti at the kitchen wall; it leaves a large dent, red and angry like a bitter bruise. I can only imagine the wall is enraged by my assault, but it says nothing.

I stand in the middle of the living room and let my throat explore sounds and expletives only a madwoman would make.

I rip open the seams of my blouses, scratch at my face.

I’m unfolding, unraveling, and the twisting movement of this slow unwinding of my mind is incomprehensible torture. Still, I won’t let this thing happen to me without protest.

I am mad.

Loudly, wildly, soundly mad and the only soul who knows this is me because I hide my anger from my children. To everyone, I am a sweet little woman. To the walls and the moon, however, I am a different story.

YOU HIDE. You hide your broken dishes in the bottom of the garbage can, covering them with yesterday’s crumpled newspaper. You sneak shards of breakage out to the trash can during the dark of night when the neighbors are sleeping and only the yard dogs bark to each other about your secret tantrums. Still, in spite of vows to be nice‌—‌tomorrow‌—‌the moon shrinks from your outbursts and the sun wisely covers its ears. You give each day its bitter tonic of words, each night its dollop of pitiful spite. You make bargain after bargain with yourself to be kind to what’s left of your dishes and your sensibility. You call your children and make cooing mother noises, even though they are grown and can look over your shrinking stature without even having to stand on their tiptoes. You don’t fool them. Still, you hide. You hide. You hide. In the end‌—‌when you become tired of hiding what everyone knows about you anyway‌—‌you simply leave your broken dishes in plain sight and allow your lusty words to fly about like tattered kites in a terrible wind.