Winter Birds (29 page)

To his credit, Patrick has not only talked but has also acted, taking on certain housekeeping chores to lighten Rachel’s work. He has often brought home meals for supper, emptied the dishwasher, folded clothes. He sometimes goes to the grocery store on his way home from work or on evenings when he doesn’t have a class. I believe he sees this time in Rachel’s life as a project to be completed, along the order of cleaning out a garage, finishing a basement, insulating an attic, and like many men whose mental scope is not broad, Patrick enjoys a project, especially one that he is supervising.

“I feel so slow,” Rachel said to him one night in the kitchen, at which he launched into a description of the changes a woman’s metabolism undergoes due to fluctuating levels of thyroxin. I did not listen to all he said. I was wondering if there had ever been a time when Rachel moved briskly, nimbly. Her slowness was such a part of the woman I knew as Rachel that I found myself unable to imagine a different Rachel, one who was a paragon of efficiency, whipping around the house, breezing in and out of my apartment with her tray, stirring up little whirlwinds as she set the table and sorted laundry.

The house has settled into its afternoon quiet now. Because Rachel’s nights are not restful, she routinely naps after lunch, at Patrick’s suggestion. Over the past week I have taken my own lunch dishes to the kitchen, rinsed them, and put them into the dishwasher. “Go to your bed and lie down,” I told Rachel one day as she was setting a bowl of potato soup on my round table. “Leave the tray here, and I will clear the dishes after I eat.” She turned and looked at me, then opened her mouth as if to say something. “I want you to lie down,” I repeated. “I want you to do it now.” She looked at me another long moment, then closed her mouth, turned, and left, the ham biscuit and dish of applesauce still on the tray.

I hear her at times in the kitchen in the dead of night. She resists taking pills to make her sleep, though the doctor has given her a prescription. Patrick has told her that hot milk may help her sleep. She makes cocoa and takes it into the living room. I have looked into the living room, have seen her sitting on the sofa with her Bible in her lap, talking aloud with her eyes closed. Some nights she cuts old clothing into small squares with which she plans to make a quilt someday. She clips articles and recipes out of magazines and writes in a diary. She dusted the furniture one night and polished Patrick’s shoes another. She often sees the sunrise.

For Mindy, I believe hers to be a brief skirmish. For her, time will be put to flight, vanquished from the field for many years. To Mindy I wish to say, however, that “many years” is but an illusion. Perhaps I will tell her this today, for our lives now intersect in a way neither of us could have predicted. We sit together at my round table every weekday for a purpose other than eating.

Steve and Teri have taken a bold step, perhaps a foolish one, certainly a desperate one. They have withdrawn Mindy from high school. They mean for her to complete twelfth grade as what they call a “homeschooler.” I have been persuaded to sign on as her instructor in English grammar and literature. Teri is, in her words, “giving geometry and economics a shot,” and Steve has undertaken history and chemistry at night. Patrick has confidently offered to provide additional help as needed with either English or history, two subjects in which he is “especially gifted,” a claim supported, first of all, by the spelling bee he won in eighth grade with the word
kohlrabi
and, second, by the medal he was awarded in tenth grade for his essay on Thomas Paine in the Sons of Liberty Essay Contest. It is amazing how often he can work these high points of his schooldays into a conversation.

Today I will sit with Mindy again, as I have for three weeks, from two to three o’clock. A strange pair we make. If costumed, we might pass for Juliet and her old nurse, though in appearance only. We meet purely for instruction. We have no bond of affection. Were Mindy casting me, she would likely assign me the role of one of the witches in
Macbeth
.

In three weeks we have concluded a unit of grammar: phrases and clauses. She has filled in blanks on workbook pages, demonstrating that she knows the difference between a gerund and an infinitive, between a dependent and independent clause. She has a keen mind when she chooses to put it to use. She can identify a participle, an appositive, an elliptical clause.

We have also read a story titled “The Destructors” by Graham Greene, and Mindy has written a two-page paper on “Trevor’s Motivation for Destruction,” for which she received the grade of C-, having attributed the boy’s destructiveness to his environment instead of its true source: his black heart. Though her eyes registered surprise at the grade, she shrugged and stuffed the paper inside her spiral notebook. Perhaps she never took the trouble to read my comments accompanying her grade.

Today we will begin the next selection in her literature book:
Julius Caesar
, another study of the motivations behind destructive actions, this time murder. Perhaps she will write another paper: “The Motives of Caesar’s Murderers.” This is one of the essay topics suggested in the teacher’s manual.
Julius Caesar
is a play I have never read in its entirety before today, though I once typed a paper for Eliot titled “History Reconstructed in
Julius Caesar
.”

I have made up a quiz for Mindy today to test her reading of the first two acts. I will read the questions aloud, and she will speak her answers. I do not trouble her to write them down. It is understood that I will award her a grade at the end of four months, after we have completed the course of study. She has behaved as though she does not care what this grade will be. To her these months must stretch like an endless road, though in reality they are but a few short steps in her lifetime.

When one lives to be eighty, he understands that the drawing out of man’s days is a fleeting affair. “That we shall die, we know.” Thus says Brutus after the murder of Julius Caesar. And Cassius, in response, justifies the murder by declaring that he who “cuts off twenty years” of a man’s life “cuts off so many years of fearing death,” by which he means this: We have done him a favor by killing him! We have relieved his mind! We have spared him many years of dreading the specter of death!

One may speak facetiously of death when it is that of another. When one is close to his own death, however, he sees life as a circle far too small: “Where I did begin, there shall I end.” So says Cassius before he dies, no longer speaking lightly.

These are some of the things I may say to Mindy. But though I will speak, it is not likely that she will hear me. Certainly she will not heed me. While the old often cannot hear, even more often the young will not.

Why man does the things that he does—this is the concern of the unit in Mindy’s literature textbook, the book I now hold in my lap. I run a finger over the title on the front cover:
LITERATURE: INVESTIGATING THE WORLD
. The title of the unit we are studying is simply “Why,” its subtitle “Character Motivations.”

The book is ambitious. It assumes, for instance, that teenagers care about the motivation of a murder committed over two thousand years ago, fictionalized and depicted in a play written over four hundred years ago. Already I can imagine the empty well of Mindy’s eyes when I tell her today that Shakespeare took liberties with the actual historical events surrounding the murder, that the play titled
Julius Caesar
is more about Brutus and Cassius than Caesar, that the work marks a turning point in Shakespeare’s development as a playwright. Before, he was more concerned with plot weaving, but now he turns his attention to the minds and motives of his characters. So says today’s lesson in the teacher’s manual.

The textbook writers were thinking deep adult thoughts, for motivation is something that interests grown-ups, not teenagers. What concerns teenagers is the act itself, not the motivation behind it. “Because I want to”—this is the motivation of the young. “Because I love”—though it may be claimed, it is not to be allowed, for love darts in and out of shadows, invisible to the eyes of the young. It delights in binding heart and mind with cords. When he finally wakes up, Gulliver finds himself incapacitated.

Through my apartment door, which has sometimes remained open since the installation of the new furnace, I have heard that Steve and Teri mean to keep Mindy separated from the boy she imagines herself to love. She has no car keys, she has no telephone, she has no computer. Teri guards her like a warden during the day. At night Steve takes over. He has told Mindy that if she chooses to sneak out of the house at any time, she will not be allowed back for the rest of her life. This is extreme talk. I try to imagine the fear in a father’s heart when speaking such words. He must rise every morning to wonder if she is still in her bed.

Furthermore, Steve has bought a dog, a young bulldog with a face and a bark that mean business. Steve has named him Stonewall after one of his Civil War heroes. Teri has observed that a stone wall is “what he looks like he ran into.” Teri’s nerves have been affected. She puts on a resolute face, but she talks and eats to excess. She has told Rachel that she feels “like a balloon ready to pop.”

Rachel has seen the boy driving up and down Edison Street. And we have all heard him. Whether the rumble of his car is due to age or to deliberate sound enhancement, I do not know. He comes at all hours, the black hulk of his car moving slowly, growling ominously. He has come in the dark of night, honking his horn and throwing glass bottles. He has done all the standard things. Once he splattered Steve’s truck with eggs. Another time he punctured a tire. Perhaps I should use the passive voice: A horn has been honked, bottles and eggs have been thrown, a tire has been punctured. These acts are laid by us to the boy’s account. According to Teri, Stonewall has barked wildly and clawed at the front door during these nighttime raids.

Through my open door I have also heard Teri’s reports of what Steve, built somewhat like a bulldog himself, has told the boy: In short, if he catches him on his property, the boy must be prepared to deal with drastic and permanent consequences. These are my words, not the ones Steve used. I cannot think that the boy cares to test his sincerity. I have also learned the boy’s name: Prince Cook. I have learned that he has no father. I try to imagine what kind of mother the boy has, if when she named him she had visions of a noble and handsome son. I have heard Teri describe him in unflattering terms: “mean as sin,” “scarecrow skinny,” “eyes like a snake.”

There is a tap on the side door, and I hear it open, hear footsteps in the kitchen, then see Teri and Mindy standing at the door of my apartment. “We’re here,” Teri says. She is wearing denim overalls and a yellow ball cap with the word
Umbro
stitched on it. She is carrying Veronica. Teri is not a tall woman. She won’t always be able to carry the child, but for now she holds her securely and possessively, as if born to do nothing else but bear such a weight. Veronica’s head lolls to one side, her mouth gaping. Teri walks toward me, saying to Veronica, “Look, sweetie, let’s see if Aunt Sophie’s feeder has any birds today.”

The sun appears to be attempting a brief showing after the hard morning rain, and though the feeder has no visitors, a large crow, lighting on a nearby tree branch, caws weakly and shakes its feathers. I have read that crows are smart birds, thriving by their wits, their toughness, their strong sense of community. I think of Steve and Teri calling upon all their resources to save their daughter and defeat a boy named Prince.

Mindy seats herself at the round table, props her elbow on her textbook, and rests her chin on her fist in the attitude of one prepared to be bored. She gazes stone-faced toward the clock on the wall. She wears a dark brown jacket over a white T-shirt, tight pink pants, and slip-on shoes with thick heels. From her behavior over the past three weeks, I know that she will not remove her jacket and will not look at me during our hour together, thus giving every indication that she cares nothing about English grammar and literature nor for any ancient specimen associated with the teaching of it. Yet she is not insolent; rather, she seems completely indifferent, as if insolence would require more effort than she is willing to exert. Perhaps, at some level, she is too polite to be overtly rude. I do not know her well enough to say.

At the window Teri points to the crow and says, “He’s a big old fellow, isn’t he? See him, sweetie?” Veronica gazes vacantly toward the sky.

I rise from my chair, book in hand, and walk to the round table. Folded back on the tabletop is an old copy of
Time
magazine. “DIED. PETER FOY, 79, go-to man for flying actors on Broadway and beyond; of a heart attack; in Las Vegas.” I have never heard of a go-to man, but
Time
magazine tells me that Peter Foy took out patents on odd contrivances made of “wire, pulleys and harnesses” by which he sent people soaring above the stage in movies and television. I think of Peter Pan, of Sally Field in
The Flying Nun
, of Superman. I think of a man who could invent ingenious ways to keep actors aloft but who could do nothing for himself when death came.

“Well, we’ll be back in an hour,” Teri says, moving from the window. At the round table she lays a hand on Mindy’s shoulder. Mindy stiffens. Clearly she does not welcome the touch, but something keeps her from pulling away. Teri removes her hand, then says to me, “Will you be okay for an hour?” Yes, I almost say, I can endure unpleasantness as well as your daughter can. I only nod, however, and she leaves. In the kitchen she croons to Veronica, “You want a little nap, baby?”

I turn in the literature book to
Julius Caesar
. It falls open to act 4, and I see the words I underlined in pencil earlier today: “Our cause is ripe, the enemy increaseth every day.” Without knowing why, I read these words aloud now. Mindy gives no sign of having heard me. For no good reason I continue reading: “There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.” These are well-known words. Mindy glances quickly toward me, then as quickly away. “On such a full sea are we now afloat,” I add, “and we must take the current when it serves.”