The Lovebird (28 page)
“Did you hear me talking at all in my sleep last night?” I asked. “Or this morning?”
“No. Why? Were you dreaming a lot?”
“I don’t know,” I said, thinking of the dark-haired dream strangers who always held the back of me against the front of them in spooning embraces. “Yes, I guess I was.”
Jim stepped outside smelling of the soap from his shower. He kissed the top of Cora’s head. “I’m not even going to ask what that’s about,” he said, baffled by the peach pit.
“It’s going to be cool. You’ll see.”
“Did you get a chance to look through that cookbook, Margie?” He sipped from his coffee mug and stared at the horizon.
“Oh, I—yes. I did.” It was true. I had looked at the book just before falling asleep. But I could remember nothing from it, nothing at all, apart from some sort of raspberry tart drizzled in ribbons of red glaze, because when my eyes had scanned its pages my thoughts, as they so often were, had been in another place. “It’s a nice book,” I said. “Thank you again.”
As if he hadn’t heard me, Jim said, “Well, I’m off to work. Have a good day you two. And keep Granma out of trouble.”
Cora and I watched Jim’s truck depart until it became a tiny yellow prairie flower that finally blew away in the breeze.
“I dream a lot,” she said. “Granma says it is because my mind is sorting through all the possibilities for my future.” She scraped the peach pit against the brick several times in silence, then eyed me sideways through her cat-eyes. “What were you dreaming of?” she asked. “Or who?”
WOLF(Canis lupus)
THE MOON WAS JUST A SHY CRESCENT
on the night we all sat around the table and ate the stuffed bell peppers—some made with meat, some with rice—Jim and I had prepared together. They were our first attempt at collaborative,
Three Hundred Thrifty Thirty-Minute Meals!
–inspired cooking, and they were received by Granma, Cora, and Josie with great greed and enthusiasm.
During our time together in the kitchen, Jim had asked me about my charm bracelet after it jingled against a can of tomatoes. “Oh, it was a birthday gift,” I said.
“I like the bird.”
“Thanks.” I lifted my wrist in front of the window and let the light from the sinking sun glint off the silver. “My friends used to call me She-Bird.”
“She-Bird?”
“Yes. I think it sounds like an Indian name.”
“Kinda does.” My wrist remained raised for a few more moments as if suspended by a puppeteer, and we both looked at the other charm, the half of a heart with its jagged edge. I hadn’t bothered to take it off, for it had always seemed an integral part
of the bracelet. I didn’t say anything about that charm and Jim didn’t ask about it, but still the image of Simon pointing to his own bare chest, as he had on the night he gave it to me, flashed through my mind.
The preparation of the peppers took decidedly longer than half an hour (which led Cora to declare the cookbook’s title “false advertising!”) and was punctuated by several seemingly interminable silences, occasional nervous laughter, and three bodily collisions—inevitable in the cozy kitchen. But Jim wore his mother’s rose-printed apron while we cooked—more for the purpose of putting us both at ease, I suspected, than to protect his unfancy clothes—and it was amusing to see him wrapped in flowers with a big bow tied at his back.
We lingered at the table after the food was gone. Josie burped. “Oh my,” she said. “That was delicious. I actually liked the meatless ones just as much. Who knew?” Outside, Belly whimpered for scraps that didn’t exist.
Just as I got up to gather the empty plates, Cora’s eyes went wide. “Oh,” she said. “I almost forgot!” She disappeared into her room and emerged with a big, golden manila envelope. “This was at the post office today. It’s for you.” She slid it across the table and Jim’s eyes watched it closely, the way they never watched me. A drawing of Charlotte, unmistakable with her droopy ears and dark fur, decorated the envelope’s front.
“Funny bunny,” Josie noted.
“This looks like it’s from Bumble,” I said.
“Bumble-not-your-boyfriend,” Cora singsonged. Jim blinked.
“Right.” I blushed.
“If you write him back,” Granma said in her soft way, “give my regards to his mother.” I nodded. “And go enjoy your letter in peace, honey. We’ll handle the dishes.”
• • •
UP ON MY BUNK, I TORE OPEN
the envelope only to find another envelope inside. It was wrapped in a sheet of paper on which Bumble had printed a note.
Bird, Simon asked me to give this to you. I admit I held onto it for a while. I didn’t read it, I promise. I just wasn’t sure if I should send it. I’ve been hoping your life is peaceful, and I don’t want anything to upset you
.
No news here. No run-ins with your nemesis, Agent Fox. No more newspaper articles, either. The gang says hello and Charlotte, as I believe her portrait illustrates, is doing great! I think going away was a good decision. I think the whole thing is going to blow over. I’d say you can return to civilization in a couple of months, and start fresh in a new city, with a new name, so long as you promise to stay out of trouble forevermore, and give up driving to eliminate the possibility of being pulled over. NYC? Why not?
I’ll keep in touch. In the meantime, here’s this … (drumroll) …
Simon’s sharply slanted cursive spelled out my first name across the envelope. The sight of it gave me a Ferris wheel feeling. The envelope was fat with many folded-up pages, and I found that his letter to me was almost as long as mine had been to him. Upon reading the first sentence, however, I realized Simon had not received my letter before he had written his and given it to Bumble.
Margie
,
I read about the restaurant fire in the
Sun
and, in light of your conspicuous absence from school, have guessed that you’ve gone away somewhere. Bumble is unwaveringly loyal to you, and refuses to inform even me of your whereabouts, but I persuaded him to do me the favor of sending you this letter
.
Where to begin? At the beginning, I suppose, when you had the misfortune of meeting me
.
You touched me very deeply with your aura of a sad little girl who is always trying to be brave. I will never forget the sight of you with your bicycle, the sight of you always alone. From the moment you first appeared in my classroom, it was all I could do not to stare at you unceasingly, not to have conversations only with you, not to forget my job altogether. I swore I would never allow myself to be alone with you, but I couldn’t help it. When I led you to my office that day, I didn’t know I was leading you to an eventual life on the run (assuming you are not just two hours north of me sitting in your shambles of a house with your tragically remiss father, which wouldn’t be much better). If I had known, I never would have done it
.
Don’t misunderstand me: I loved the time we spent together. I loved having you in my home. I loved sharing the Operation with you. It was fear—no, pragmatism—that broke the spell—that and the specter of my wife, with whom I wage a constant battle, one that persists even now. But I’ll get to that shortly. I sent you away in part because, I admit, I was not yet entirely over Anna. She haunted me and at times my anguish was unmanageable. But mostly I sent you away because, deep down, I knew there was no way you would stay. Being young, bright, and so beautiful, it was only a matter of time, I was certain, before you would come to feel you had no use for an unhappy, dried-up old man like me—a man with a rather distasteful history. I sensed your restlessness. One night at Gelato Amore I overheard you talking with the crew about that unkempt ice cream boy who worked downstairs, and there was such a dazzle in your voice. I knew how sedate and gray I must have seemed to you, or would seem to you soon enough. I saw the way strangers looked at us when we were together. What would happen when I was 70 and you were barely 40? It was too ridiculous to even consider. The feeling of waiting for you to tire
of me, as you inevitably would, was one of unbearable suspense. I couldn’t stand it
.
Also, I saw Annette’s sisterly attachment to you growing—how could it not? She sensed your inner beauty and your gentleness—and I couldn’t stand to think of her being disappointed in the future. She has suffered enough loss already. True, I was entirely to blame for having created the situation in the first place, but I let romance and hope overpower reality and common sense. Can you blame me, Miss Red Shoes?
I couldn’t explain myself to you this way then because of course you would have simply told me I was wrong, bitten my earlobe and insisted on staying. And by that point I would have been in no position to argue because, my dear, you were so seductive, though you did not know it, which was partly the reason why. So, I put it to you the way I did. I know it was cruel and swift, but it seemed to me to be the best way. Oh Margie, you must forgive me. Not only for hurting your heart, which I know I did, but for unwittingly helping to land you in this fix
.
I gave the Operation to you because I was too tired and depressed to keep it up, and you so clearly needed a family and a cause to give your heart to. I should have known that you, with your passionate nature, would take it further than I had ever dared with that bold campaign—a fine finale, if I do say so—concerning Untamed. Still, your subsequent information session at Gelato Amore should not have resulted in this mess. And it wouldn’t have, were it not for the fact that you were being watched by people who were just waiting for you to say the wrong thing. And I believe you—we—were being watched before I retired from the Operation. And that, I suspect, was the specter’s doing
.
Contrary to rumors you may have heard, my wife really is deceased. It is true that she left me. She died after. She did both—the leaving and the dying—in a state of bitter rage against me that, obviously, I will never be able to assuage
.
She was the original animal lover. Anna was a brilliant scientist who had grown completely opposed to the use of animals in laboratory tests. It was she who converted me, much as I did you. Initially, I went along to please her, but in time my concern for animals—which led naturally to my commitment to a more earth-friendly way of living, as you observed during our cohabitation—became genuine. We established Operation H.E.A.R.T. together, recruited a few friends, and set about enacting small-scale campaigns much like the ones in which you participated shortly after you joined. Anna and I did have some fun. For all her cerebral precision of thought and manner, she was capable of great moments of total and ecstatic abandon, such as when we vandalized a fur coat boutique or staged a noisy protest at a petting zoo, but then I don’t think she had been able to express herself much as a child. In any case, it was an exhilarating abandon of which she was, to my disappointment, absolutely incapable in any other circumstance
.
In those days, the Operation had a completely different crew. Among them was a young woman, a colleague of my wife’s, with whom I became inappropriately involved. I won’t go into detail, except to say that it ended badly. When Anna discovered the affair, she left, and took Annette with her. She was too prideful and, in her way, too punishing to even demand stewardship of the home for which she had singlehandedly paid. I stayed, alone, waiting for her to come back
.
The Operation limped along for a while, then dissolved. I could not persuade Anna to return
.
A year later, she got sick. The cancer was merciless, and she went fast. Annette came back to live with me. Our devastation was mutual, if different in its origins and nuances
.
After she died, I reestablished the Operation with entirely new membership. Why did I do it? Because I missed her? Because I wanted to honor her memory? Because I wanted to appease her? Because I wanted to resurrect something I had ruined? I did it for
all of these reasons, along with a handful of other, shadowed ones of which I cannot pretend to be completely aware. This is all my own tangled and overgrown mental mess, and it is my burden to weed through it. It was nothing you could have ever understood or remedied. Yet I’m afraid the punishment she hoped would fall on me is now hovering unjustly over you
.
You see, I believe that sometime between her leaving and dying, Anna contacted law enforcement about my sometimes criminal, albeit relatively harmless activities as an animal rights activist. I didn’t realize this until just recently, as I’ve been thinking of virtually nothing but how and why this has happened to you. As I mentioned, she was a very smart woman. And I know her well. That was exactly the sort of spiteful action she would take, endeavoring to see me caught and punished for the very activities she had inspired, and in which she herself had once gloried. She knew all about the “green scare” your lawyer friend described in that silly article. And she knew that someone like me would be a potential target for those whose job it is to crack down on so-called domestic terrorists. I am sure it was Anna who prompted the FBI to turn its gaze on Operation H.E.A.R.T. Why else would they have worried about a humble and, I am not too proud to admit in hindsight, fairly ineffectual assemblage of six college students and a middle-aged professor? And there the gaze remained, until you, my misera avis
*
gave them cause to take action by committing an offense they could spin as truly serious—much worse than mere vandalism, breaking and entering, or the theft of some lobsters
.
Margie, I’m sorry! Please forgive me. If I can help you, let me help you. I’m not sure that running away and hiding was the best course of action, as you are officially wanted by the FBI. I fear you will only make matters worse for yourself in the long run. I understand it was a case of a fronte praecipitium a tergo lupi,
and that you lacked the funds to pay for a lawyer, though evidently you spoke to one. In truth, I don’t have much money to offer, either. As you know, I am unlike Weatherbury, that summus maximus bore in the tweed blazer, not a tenured professor, and my salary is meager. But I can offer you support. You needn’t go through all of this alone. Who are you with? Where?