Delicate Edible Birds (7 page)

When her father and Rosalind return, Aliette is always balanced on the arm of a couch, air-swimming, as L. critiques her form. He makes her air-swim and do jumping jacks for hours every day. The cloistered life suits her. She is radiant.

 

AFTER A MONTH, ROSALIND WATCHES
from a window as a coffin falls from a stack on a hearse, the inhabitant spilling out when it hits the ground. She goes nearly mad. She breathes into a paper bag until calm, and makes them wear masks inside. She forces them to carry hot coals sprinkled with sulfur. The apartment stinks like Satan.

When Aliette and L. kiss through their masks, they laugh. And when Aliette comes to L. in the night, she swings her coals like a priestess swinging a censer.

 

ON A LAZY DAY OF SNOOZING AND READING,
L. gets a letter from his mother. He doesn't bother to bake it. He tears it open, Aliette watching, hand over her mouth.

In three sentences, in her shaking hand, her mother tells him that his father, a hearse driver, was one of the rare lightning deaths. Amadeo toppled from his horse and was dead before he hit the ground. And Lucrezia, two hours later, fell ill, her knees wobbling, joints stiffening, the fever, the viscous phlegm, the cyanosis, the lungs filling.

Only years later does L. understand that when his sister died, she died of drowning.

 

HE STAYS IN BED FOR ONE WEEK
and does not weep. He lets Aliette hold his head for hours. Then he rises and shaves
his moustache off. Its outline is white on his tan face, and the skin there looks exceptionally tender.

 

IN THE FIRST WEEK OF NOVEMBER,
the crisis slackens. People emerge into the street, mole-eyed and blinking, searching for food. In some apartments, whole families are found dead when their mail can no longer fit through their slots. Rosalind, however, will not let the Huber household leave the apartment. L. reads the baked newspapers, saddened. In addition to his family, he has lost his novelist friend, C.T. Dane; his fellow swimmer Harry Elionsky, the long-distance champion; the actress Suzette Alda, with whom he once danced for an entire night.

Life picks up again, though some new cases are still reported, and the horror is not completely over. More than nineteen thousand New Yorkers have died.

 

EARLY IN THE MORNING OF NOVEMBER 11,
the streets burst into triumphant rejoicing. Victory. Sirens blare, church bells ring, New Yorkers pour into the streets, shouting. Newspaper boys run through the sleeping parts of town, shouting,
The war is ovah!
An effigy of the Kaiser is washed down Wall Street with a fire hose; confetti pours down; eight hundred Barnard girls snake-dance on Morningside Heights and a coffin made of soapboxes is paraded down Madison, with the Kaiser symbolically resting in pieces within.

Many people still wear masks.

A mutiny occurs in the Huber apartment, and Rosalind wrings her hands as the other three rush into the street to join the celebration. They are all in their nightclothes. Mr. Huber dances a jolly foxtrot with a dour-faced spinster. When a blazing straw dummy is kicked down the street, L. turns to look for Aliette. She is standing on a curb, clapping her hands and laughing. As the dummy passes, the wind picks up and billows out Aliette's nightgown. Through the suddenly sheer garment, he sees how her belly is extended above her thin legs.

 

WHEN ALIETTE SEES HIM SWAYING
there on the sidewalk, his face pale, she puts a hand on her belly. A soldier and his girl pass between them, but they don't notice. When she turns, L. is beside her, gripping her arm too tightly.

He drags her into the building and to the doorman's empty room. A thin wedge of light falls across her flushed cheek.

“You didn't tell me,” he says. “How long?”

She stares at him, defiant. “Since May,” she says. “That first time, I think.”

“My God,” he says, then leans his forehead against the door, above her shoulder. She is pinned. He rests his stomach against hers, and feels a pronounced thump, and another. “My God,” he repeats, but this time with awe.

“A good swimmer, I'll bet,” she says, daring to smile a little. But he doesn't smile back. He just stands, leaning against her, until he feels another kick.

 

THEY WAIT UNTIL DECEMBER,
a day when Mr. Huber has returned to Wall Street and Rosalind has gone shopping.

When the house is empty, they pack only what she needs. In the cab to Little Italy she squeezes his hand until it goes numb. The driver is singing boisterously to himself.

“You're kidnapping, you know,” she whispers to L., trying to make him laugh.

He looks away from her, out the window. “Only until we can figure out what to do. Until you have him and we can be married.”

“L.,” she says, ten blocks later. “I don't want to be married.”

He looks at her.

“I mean,” she says, “I would rather be your mistress than your wife. I don't need a ring and a ceremony to know what this is.”

He is silent at first. Then L. says, “Oh, Aliette. Your father does. And that is enough.”

 

HIS MOTHER, AGED WITH HER RECENT GRIEF,
meets them at the door. She looks at her son, and touches his lip
where his moustache had been. Then she looks at Aliette, and holds open her arms to embrace her.

 

THE DETECTIVES DON'T COME LOOKING
for Aliette for a week, unable to find out where L.'s mother lives. When at last they do, she hides the couple in her bedroom, and opens the door, already talking. In her quick jumble of Italian, the detective who knows the language passably becomes confused, then tongue-tied, then shame-faced when he tries to tell her why he is there. “L. DeBard,” he says.
“Noi cerciamo L. DeBard.”

She looks at him as if he were the greatest fool the world had seen. “DeBartolo,” she cries, hitting her fist on her chest. She points to the card in the door. “DeBartolo.” She throws her hands to the skies and sighs. The detectives look at each other, bow, and leave.

In the bedroom, L. and Aliette listen to this barrage, and press tightly together.

 

THE NEXT DAY,
Aliette goes into labor. Though the baby is a month early, Aliette is very small, and it takes a long time. From morning until late at night, L. paces down the street, finally going into a bar. There he discovers Tad Perkins drinking himself into a stupor, alone.

“Isn't that old fishface L.?” cries Tad. “My God, I thought you damn well died.”

“You're not that lucky,” says L., laughing with great re
lief. “You still owe me thirteen dollars.” He sits down and buys Tad and himself four quick martinis.

Later, staggering slightly, he goes out into the street. The moon is fat above. When he reaches the apartment, all is still. His mother sits beaming by the side of the bed, where Aliette rests. In his mother's arms, he sees a tiny sleeping baby. A boy, he knows, without being told.

 

WHEN ALIETTE AWAKENS,
she finds L. sitting where his mother was. She smiles tiredly.

“I am thinking of names,” L. says, hushed. “I like Franklin and Karl.”

“I have already named him,” says Aliette.

“Yes? What's my son's name?”

“Compass,” she says. And though he presses, she won't tell him why. At last, grinning, he accepts the name, vowing to nickname him something more conventional. He never does. After the child is a few months old, he will find the name suits his son to perfection.

 

THEY HAVE A MONTH TOGETHER
in that tiny flat. L.'s mother bustles and looks after them, feeding them elaborate meals and rocking the baby while L. reads Aliette his new poems.

“You are growing into the best poet in America,” she says.

“Growing?” he jokes. “I thought I already was.”

“No,” she says. “But now you might be.” And she lies back, letting the words from his poems sift into her memory. She looks a little ill, and doesn't complain, but L. can see that something is not right with her. He worries. At night, he hears a soft rasp as Aliette grinds her teeth in pain.

 

SOON, THE DETECTIVES RETURN.
L.'s mother does not let them in this time, but their voices grow loud in the hallway. They shout and rage at her. At last they leave. L's mother is shaky and collapses into a chair, puts a cloth over her face, and weeps into it, unable to look at the couple for fear.

L. looks at Aliette. “I am taking you back,” he says. “I'll keep Compass with my mother.”

Aliette says, very quietly, “No.”

“Yes,” L. says. He tells her that he knows she is ill and her father can afford physicians that he cannot. That if she returns without Compass, her reputation will not be tarnished, and no one will know about her pregnancy. Later, when they marry, they can adopt him. Their argument is quiet, but goes on for many hours, until Aliette finally succumbs to her illness and pain and his arguments. She has been afraid that she is growing worse: she feels herself weakening, and allows herself to be convinced about something that, if she were stronger and less frightened, she never would have countenanced.

At last, she clutches Compass to her chest and smells her fill of him. Weeping, feverish, she agrees to go.

 

L. STOPS THE CAB
half a block from Aliette's father's house and leans close to her. Their kiss is long and hungry. If they knew how often they would remember it, for how many years it would be their dearest memory, this kiss would last for hours. But it ends, and she climbs out, wincing with pain, and he watches her walk away, so lovely, the feather of her hat bouncing.

 

WHEN ALIETTE WALKS BACK
into the house, her father is sitting in the parlor, head buried in his hands. When he looks up, it is clear that he does not recognize her. She looks at the mirror above the mantel and sees herself: pale and skinny again, hair dun-colored, her face above her fur looking a decade older than her age. When she looks back, Rosalind is in the doorway, and the tray she is holding is chattering. Her face is pinched with unhappiness, while a broad, bright smile spreads across her father's.

After the doctor visits Aliette, she is forced into bed rest. She sleeps while, across town, L. holds Compass and traces Aliette in his son's small face.

 

ONLY YEARS LATER CAN ALIETTE TRACE
the pieces of her loss in the evidence scattered through her fever. There is her father's expression when he looks at her as she first walks in,
a mixture of hurt and relief. How the doctor asks prodding questions about her delicate parts until she admits to the pain, and allows him to examine her. How her father's expression changes after conferring with the doctor, how he looks at her angrily. And a year later, she will hear him shouting at Rosalind one night when drunk. “Nobody, nobody abandons a Huber,” he'll say. “We were right to do what we did.”

Two nights after L. has returned Aliette to her father's house he is feeling a little restless, anxious to hear of Aliette's health. He decides to take a walk in the wintry streets, to kick through the snow and work off his anxiety. He leaves Compass in his mother's lap, and hurries down the dank stairwell and into the night.

He does not see the shadows detaching from the alleyway, or how they steal close to him. He feels the sudden grip on his arms, then the handkerchief with the sour stink of chloroform pressed over his nose and mouth. The gas lamps flicker and darken, the street becomes wobbly, and a snowdrift catches him as he falls.

 

MUCH LATER, L. CAN SEE A GOLDEN LIGHT
growing between his lids. His head is bound with pain. His eyes open slightly. He is on the hard wooden floor of what appears to be an office, a vast mahogany-paneled room, bookshelves, paintings of ships. His fingertips lie on what feels like rubber.

Two unfamiliar faces loom over him. “He's waking up,”
one says. The men back away, and in their place stands Mr. Huber, transformed and dangerous with rage. Beside him is Rosalind's brunette head, in her mask, eyes filling with tears. Suddenly L. feels cold. He is naked, he realizes, a window is open, and snow is pouring in and powdering the rug.

“You deserve this, and more,” says Mr. Huber. L.'s lips move, but he can't say anything. He closes his eyes.

“Rosalind,” says the fat man. “Give it to me.”

When L. looks again, Rosalind's eyebrows have come together above her mask in a frown. But she hands Mr. Huber what he wants, something that appears to be a blade, glinting. Aliette's father stoops closer. Through his numbness, L. can feel hands grasping his legs roughly and pulling them apart.

“Bastard,” Aliette's father breathes in his face. L. has only a moment to smell his sour breath before he goes out of L.'s line of vision.

He hears a thunk. Then such pain, and so impossible, that L. blanks out again.

 

TIME RUNS FLUIDLY THROUGH THE REST:
the discovery of the fiercely bleeding L. in the snowbank by a police officer on patrol. The rescue and delivery to the hospital, the doctors unveiling his wound, vomiting, the cauterizing of the hole between his legs. And, at last, the fever that makes him delirious for months.

His literary friends come to visit him, and out of kindness, they do not bring the newspapers lurid with the story of his gelding. When L. seems unlikely to survive, W. Sebald Shandling visits L.'s mother. He finds her holding Compass. The baby is chewing on his father's most recent poems. In an act of uncharacteristic selflessness, Shandling persuades a publisher to take the collection, to provide something for the baby in case his father dies. And L. rages while the world shifts into treaties and recovery, while President Wilson is struck by influenza but recovers in time to sign at Versailles.