Winter Birds (32 page)

Rachel appears at my door with the tray. “Here’s your dessert, Aunt Sophie,” she says. She places before me a bowl of chocolate ice cream and two Oreo cookies on a saucer. She begins collecting my supper dishes and putting them on the tray. She is wearing a pair of blue knee-length pants, the kind we used to call pedal pushers, and the orange sweatshirt with
OCTOBER BALLOON FESTIVAL
printed on the front. She has pushed the sleeves up past her elbows. It is beginning to have the soft, faded look of something much worn and much washed.

“How are you?” I ask her. I want to invite her to sit down, but I don’t. She might feel obligated to sit, might try to make polite conversation. Or she might decline, claiming to have other work to do. Or she might sit down, and then neither of us could think of what to say. None of the possibilities is appealing, so I don’t ask.

Rachel places a hand against the bruise on her neck. “I’m all right,” she says. “It looks worse than it feels.” She looks at me. “I hope it didn’t upset you too much.”

I shake my head. “I don’t upset easily,” I say. I take a bite of an Oreo cookie and know that what I have just said is untrue. What I mean is that I don’t often show outward signs of being upset. What happened yesterday horrified me, both at the time and later. I could not eat more than a few bites of my supper last night, a supper much delayed by the disruption, and when I went to bed I replayed the incident over and over. I imagined how the firing of a gun would sound inside Patrick’s kitchen. I imagined Rachel lying in her own blood on the floor. I imagined Prince turning the gun on Patrick, on me, on himself. So many possibilities to alter the outcome. There is no guarantee against terror in the afternoon, even in one’s own home.

But the gun didn’t fire. The moment is past, and I sit here alive watching Rachel pick up the tray and turn to leave. I stare hard at the colorful hot air balloon across the back of her sweatshirt and wonder if she ever wishes she could climb inside one and be carried to another life in another part of the world. I watch her plod to the door and into the kitchen. I hear her at the sink scraping and rinsing my dirty supper dishes.

I think of Patrick’s lunge toward her after she collapsed to the floor, of his falling down on his knees beside her, of his anxious cries. “Rachel! Rachel! Are you okay? Did he hurt you?” All this as Prince escaped through the front door.

“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” she said. Patrick held her elbow as she got to her feet, and for the first time since coming here to live, I saw the two of them embrace. It was not a mere courtesy on Rachel’s part that she allowed him to pull her close. Indeed, she opened her arms wide and leaned into him. I could not look away. Perhaps some would find it humorous—so slight a man supporting so large a woman—but I did not. He stood straight and firm, and she clung to him as if he were a rock and she a shipwrecked soul.

Two police officers came to the house later to question us and to retrieve the gun. They pulled the stove away from the wall, and one of them picked up the gun and put it into a plastic bag. “Why, look, here’s all our leftovers, Rachel,” Patrick said, peering behind the stove. “There’s some dried peas and rice and a couple of macaroni noodles.” To which Rachel said sadly, “Oh dear, I need to vacuum all that out.” It was Patrick, though, who got the vacuum cleaner out of the closet and told her to sit down while he cleaned it up.

Wheel of Fortune
is on while I eat my dessert. The category is Fictional Character, and the puzzle shows but one letter.—T—————. A young woman with spiked hair guesses the letter
L
and then buys a vowel. She chooses
O
, which turns out to be a wise choice, for now the name of the fictional character is obvious. O T——L L O. She spins again, however, and goes bankrupt, leaving the next contestant, a man wearing a bow tie, to solve the puzzle. See where your greed got you, I want to tell the young woman.

Like Othello, Prince is a jealous boy. I have heard Teri tell Rachel that he is quick to pick fights with other boys, black and white, whom he accuses of flirting with Mindy. He has demanded that Mindy not encourage them, but he always suspects that she does. Since her parents withdrew her from school, he has prowled Edison Street to see if other boys are at her house. He has called on the telephone at all hours just to see if the line was busy. If it was, he was sure she was talking to another boy. And his jealousy extends to her parents, for exerting their will over his, for keeping her within their sight while denying him access. And when his jealousy turned to fury, he came to take Mindy by force, certain that she would do his bidding.

But for now he is in jail awaiting a trial. Unfortunately for him but fortunately for us, Prince turned eighteen a month ago. He will be tried as an adult.

Questions beg to be answered, age-old questions for which there are no answers. Why is a woman attracted to a jealous man? How could a girl like Mindy claim to love a boy like Prince? Perhaps the answers are all too simple. Perhaps they are the same answers as for other questions: How does a woman permit herself to marry an evil man? How could Sophia Langham think she loved Eliot Hess? Love is a problem with no solution. Most often I think of it as a myth, an impossible story that many people believe.

Before his arrest, Prince Cook was a high-scoring basketball player at Greenville High School. A woman may be drawn to a man with celebrity status, even in such a small arena as a local high school. Or the English Department of a small college. Perhaps it was a flattering thing for Mindy at first when Prince was consumed with possessing her. Perhaps she didn’t know how dangerous such an obsession could become, how quickly it could turn deadly, how “trifles light as air” could be interpreted by the jealous one as solid proof of faithlessness.

Mindy is not of an age or disposition to endure advice from an old woman. Could I have substituted
Othello
for
Julius Caesar
in her literature book, I would have. Then I could say to her, “Beware of a jealous lover. See here, observe what happened to Desdemona in the end, all for the trifle of a handkerchief.” For a jealous man is never satisfied. He will put out the light altogether before he will allow it to shine for another.

And yet a man may seek the light of many women at the same time. A jealous man may demand all from many women, yet not give himself fully to any one of them. There are birds like this, driven by competition to father many broods, to fly from nest to nest, lord to a feathered harem. There are other men who take long solitary flights, who give nothing but their names to the women devoted to serve them.

When Rachel returns for my dessert dishes some time later, I am once again sitting in my recliner. The only light is from the television.
The Beverly Hillbillies
is in progress, but I am not following the plot. The words that Jethro and Elly May exchange mean nothing to me. Having never cared for the program, I usually mute the volume or change the channel, but tonight I want noise to fill up the silence. Rachel picks up the bowl and saucer and wipes the round table with a wet cloth.

“I used to like that program when it first came on,” she says to me. It occurs to me that perhaps she wants noise tonight, also.

“You may sit down and watch it with me,” I say. But I speak too soon, realizing in her hesitation that she has no desire to watch television reruns with an old woman. To cover up the awkwardness, I say the first thing that comes to my mind. “Did you know he died not too long ago, the man who did this?”

“Who?” Rachel asks. She takes a step toward me, the dishcloth in one hand, the dishes in the other. “The man who did what?”

“The man who created the program. This one,
The Beverly Hillbillies
. He even wrote the theme song.”

Rachel cocks her head and says, “How do you know these things, Aunt Sophie? Was that in
Time
magazine, too?”

I nod, for I read it only days ago: “DIED. PAUL HENNING, 93, creator of the long-running 1960s sitcom
The Beverly Hillbillies
(and its spin-off,
Petticoat Junction
); in Burbank, California.”

“Maybe I can watch it with you some other night,” she says. “I’m going to finish up in the kitchen, then take a hot bath and go to bed early. I feel like I can sleep tonight.”

It must be that I fall asleep myself after she leaves, for the next thing I hear is Patrick’s key jiggling the lock of the kitchen door. I see him pass by my doorway, then hear his footsteps recede down the hallway as he goes to check on Rachel.

Chapter 25

That Makes These Odds All Even

Though the eastern phoebe often nests on cliff ledges, it sometimes chooses more domestic settings such as porch or shed eaves for its home. An early springtime arrival, the phoebe frequently returns to the same nesting site from year to year, boldly announcing itself by name:
fee-bee, fee-bee, fee-bee!

Three times before today I have awakened in my recliner at Patrick’s house and wondered where I was. Each time the answer has come, but the question was disturbing. What if I were to awake one day and have no answer?

One can do nothing to prepare for the quick causes of death such as those of my father and sisters, or of Tillie Flower and Tillie Fowler. But I watch myself for signs of the slow creeping diseases of the mind such as Alzheimer’s or dementia. Or the silent onset of certain cancers. Or the mysterious complexity of disorders my mother suffered in her last days. Here is another example of the Principle of Variety for Patrick to exclaim over. Oh, the infinite variety of ways to die!

But for today I have awakened in my recliner, and I know where I am. I have read of birds that return spring after spring to build new nests in the same old places. I suppose someone has tagged these birds to determine that they are the same birds returning and not simply the same species. How much of life is composed of routine, both man and beast coming back time and again to the same pursuits in the same haunts. Here I perch in my recliner in Patrick’s house on Edison Street in Greenville, Mississippi.
Soph-ie, Soph-ie, Soph-ie!

Not only do I know where I am, but I also know what day it is. It is Monday, the day after Easter Sunday. The sky is bright above the treetops. I look at the bird feeder and see it swinging as if lately vacated by a squirrel or a large bird. I find it interesting that certain birds in plentiful numbers in the yard never come to the feeder by my window. Crows and starlings, for example, or doves, robins, blue jays. Perhaps there is a sense of pride in some birds that resists the idea of a handout.

I look at the television screen and ascertain that it is late morning. The sound is muted, but I see Samantha twitch her nose at her refrigerator and stove. Instantly a fully cooked meal appears on the countertop, ready to serve in china bowls and covered platters. She moves to the dining room and twitches her nose to set the table, then returns to the kitchen and begins carrying the dishes of food to the dining room. I wonder why she doesn’t twitch her nose again to save herself the extra steps, but I suppose, like anything else, such a gimmick must be used sparingly lest it wear out too soon.

Earlier this morning I saw Ricky and Fred laughing at Lucy and Ethel, who were dressed in funny costumes, but I have slept through
MacGyver
and
Love Boat
. I feel as if I have returned from a long journey, though I know I haven’t left my apartment.

And then I suddenly remember what woke me. My daytime dreams are often more vivid than my nighttime ones.

I turn and look toward the bookcase against the wall behind me, for I have just dreamed that someone broke into my apartment and vandalized the books, ripping them apart and scrawling curse words on the covers, strewing them over the floor and nailing loose pages of the Bible at crooked angles on the overturned bookcases. In my dream I grappled with the vandal, a figure in a dark cloak, and when I reached out my hand to pull the pages from the nails, I heard a loud voice in my ear: “Woman, why weepest thou? Whom seekest thou?”

But the bookcase is upright, the books and magazines in order on the shelves. The only voice is Rachel’s in the kitchen. The door is partly open. I rise, stand a minute to gain my balance, and then walk slowly toward it. I see that Rachel is on the telephone. She is wearing her brown bathrobe. “I’ve got my finger on it,” she says. Her broad back is bent over, her head nearly in her lap. And then I see that she is reading from a book. I know what book it is.

“‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts,’” she reads, “‘neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.’”

She pauses as if listening. “I know, I know,” she says. “I can’t explain it. I wish I could. I’ve been praying so hard. I was—” She breaks off, then begins reading again, slowly. “‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven . . . ’” She labors through the words, with many pauses, and it strikes me that she is crying. Rachel can cry and still speak intelligibly. “And here’s something else,” she says. “I just saw this other verse a little further down. It says you’ll ‘be led forth with peace.’ That’s what it says, Teri. And if you’re led forth, that means somebody’s got you by the hand. He knows your sorrow, Teri. He’ll give you comfort.” She pauses again. “I know how bad it hurts, Teri. I know.” Her voice breaks. “But God is faithful. I know that, too.”

And so I am witness to another crisis from this same doorway, another breakdown in the machinery of life. What I have known was coming is here. A vandal has been busy overturning the lives of our neighbors across the street. This is no dream. And this person Rachel has been reading about—the one who claims that his ways and thoughts are higher than ours—has been standing by, watching it all. Now, according to Rachel, he offers to lead them forth with peace.

Perhaps he can be seen in the role of a tour guide after a hurricane or other natural disaster. He takes the dazed victims by the hand and conducts them through the ruins of their home. See, he says to Steve and Teri, here is the wreckage of your daughter Mindy, whose boyfriend wields a deadly gun at innocent people, who is in jail for now but may someday get out and threaten you again. See the girl, once so beautiful, whose mind is now closed to you, who claims that she wants to die, who says words like “I hate you” to those who would lay down their lives for hers.