All the Dancing Birds Page 2

  Bryan waves me in, barely taking his eyes from the game. I settle myself in a chair across from him. He jiggles his legs up and down, a habit born, I suppose, from always hurrying. Even seated in a comfortable chair, my son seems to run places without ever leaving. A defiant glass of yellow-white chardonnay (in direct opposition to my lovely, rich cabernet) rests cupped in his hand.

  “Hi, sweetheart,” I say. “Wow, it’s good to see you.”

  “Hey, Mom. Good to see you too.” He greets me without looking up from the game. The last light of the day crawls over his shoes.

  I try again. “I’m so excited. Your sister tells me you’re moving back to Sacramento.”

  That does it.

  “Allison!” Bryan yells toward the direction of the kitchen. “She’s such a butt,” he says into his wine when she doesn’t answer. “It’s not a certainty… I’m still negotiating with the law firm.”

  “A law firm? How wonderful. In Sacramento?”

  “Good God, Mom. Of course it’s a law firm. I’m a lawyer.”

  “Don’t be so cheeky with your mother, Bryan. I can only thank God that your father isn’t alive to hear such language.”

  I watch my son’s face fold inward for a brief moment and I know my words have stung like needles. A mother’s words, especially when spoken through a well-puckered mouth, punctuated with narrowed eyes and a slight tilt of the head, carry more weight than any well-articulated swat.

  “Oh, gosh, Mom, I didn’t mean to be rude. I’m sorry,” Bryan says, lowering his face. “I only meant‌—‌”

  “I know what you meant, dear. It’s just‌—‌”

  “Well, still… I don’t think it was Allison’s call to spill my good-news beans.” Bryan swirls his wine, then watches it settle back. “If she ever gets a job, I hope she’ll give me the honor of jumping into the middle of her announcement.”

  “Allison would be the first to tell you she married well and divorced even better, so perhaps we’ll need to wish for other good news for you to spill on behalf of your sister.” I smile, but I’m not certain my point was received in the manner I intended.

  “Right… I forgot her job is shopping. Not much to spill when her only source of world news is the Saturday Macy’s ad.”

  I decide it’s that nasty white wine that’s constricted his mouth and soured his mood. I tip my head rightward and bestow a smile on my son, in spite of his fundamental arrogance. I wait until he can no longer stand my silence‌—‌another effective motherly tactic.

  “Sorry again. I didn’t mean to be rude. Not to you.” Bryan leans his head in the direction of Allison, who’s now fussing over the dinner table. “I meant to direct my rudeness to She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Ignored.” Bryan raises his voice toward Allison, who is unsuccessfully trying to stand a narrow bouquet of dyed blue daisies within the neck of a too-large vessel.

  “Whatever, Bryan,” Allison says, giving up on the flowers and allowing them to flop in an ungainly clump down one side of the vase.

  “Okay, kids,” I say. “Let’s not make my day worse than it’s already been.”

  I stop myself before spilling my own secret-news beans about the recent state of my memory.

  “No worries,” Bryan says. “Anyway, I wanted to surprise you at dinner, but the deal is this… I’m negotiating with Brown and Sauter.” His mouth curls over the name of the law firm like a child screaming delight over a shining red bicycle on Christmas morning. “They’ve opened a spot to bring on a water guy like me, actually they’ve decided to start up an environmental department, and it looks like I’m their dude. It’s a perfect fit and I’m really, really ready to move back here.”

  I clap my hands. “Oh, well, dear, that’s wonderful news. Just wonderful!”

  “Don’t get excited yet. I probably won’t know anything for at least a month.”

  “But still, it’s wonderful. We’ll all hold good thoughts for it.” I point my voice toward the kitchen. “Won’t we, Allison?” Returning to Bryan, I ask, “How does Katie feel? Is she excited?”

  “I really couldn’t say. I don’t talk to her.”

  “You don’t talk to her? Why on earth?”

  “Mom, of course not. Why would I talk to Katie? We’re through with all the haggling over who gets what, no kids to fight over, no designer dog to split down the middle. It’s just a matter of toughing out California’s stupid six month and one day waiting period for the divorce to be final. We’re almost there, though… actually, the middle of next month.”

  “Divorce? Divorce? My God, Bryan. You never told me.” My hands flutter across my lap like wounded sparrows shot from the sky. “How could you not tell me?”

  “Of course I told you. We talked on the phone about it. You cried all over the place. Told me I was a jerk and I should try to work things out. How could you forget?”

  “Oh, well… of course,” I say, my eyes widening as if I were just caught being naughty. “No, actually… I just meant‌—‌”

  YOU SEARCH. You search like a wild woman through every tangled memory you’ve ever had for something‌—‌anything‌—‌that reminds you of a significant conversation. You look into the deep of your wine, like it’s a witch’s gazing pool and think yourself crazy not to remember your son announcing the end of his five-year marriage. You run through the halls of your mind to whatever synapse or structure might hold the memory of a conversation so meaningful that it most likely stole your breath away and made you twist a hanky between your fingers for the sheer agony of it all. Your mind is mean. It has taken a moment from you‌—‌a huge moment‌—‌and in a bully’s game of keep-away, it won’t give it back. You hope your eyes don’t make a clamor that would call attention to the wild foray going on inside your head. In the end, you lamely mutter an apology. Tears well in your eyes and you excuse yourself to the powder room before those too are discovered. You stand over the sink and berate the face you see in the mirror. When you’ve sufficiently recovered, you finish the evening with a half-frozen smile pasted to your face, all the while spreading vows throughout every nook and cranny of your mind to keep future diligence over your conversations. By the time you leave, your only issue is where‌—‌once again‌—‌you’ve placed your car keys.

  On the way home, I make a wrong turn onto the freeway. I’ve headed toward Lake Tahoe, when I should have turned in the direction of San Francisco. Stupid. Silly. I realize I’m well far away from where I should be, but in all honesty, I could say that about myself in most everything these days. “My God, Lillie Claire,” I say into the dark of my car. “What in the world is wrong with you?”

  For the umpteenth time in one day, another sting of tears starts up behind my eyes. I’ve been tilted on my axis, only to be soundly dumped onto my sad and ridiculous chowderhead.

  I correct my direction at the following off-ramp and then spend the next thirty minutes paying close attention to my hands, gripping them tightly to the wheel to keep them from making another wrong turn. I only find familiarity when I finally pull into my driveway. I turn off the ignition and sit wordlessly in the dark before asking my legs to tremble their way out of the car. I start toward the house, but stop, standing gawky and slew-footed in the middle of the drive.

  For a brief moment, the day’s clouds part like a ruffled, purple peek-a-boo skirt. I look up and whistle at a round and yellow moon.

  The moon whistles back.

  Chapter Two

  I stand beside my bed, wondering if I should straighten the covers or crawl back in its downy softness. I run my hand over the sheets. I don’t know when it was I decided lace-edged pink sheets would be my signature bedwear. I think it occurred during a shopping trip about a year after my Ivan died so suddenly that it took at least that long to stop expecting him home every night for supper. Even now, I’m still caught up improbably thinking I can hear him singing in the shower, or clanking dishes about in the kitchen, or humming some made-up ditty while spreading strawberry cream cheese over an onion bagel o
r pouring glasses of wine for dinner. Then I realize he’s been gone ten years. Ten years!

  It’s odd I can’t remember where I kicked off my shoes last night, but I can remember every moment of Ivan as if he were still here, sitting in the bedside chair pulling on his shoes, tucking his shirt down over his narrow belly and talking about some client’s spreadsheet as if it were the most exciting literature ever written. I would be making the bed‌—‌the one that now has pink ruffled sheets, covered by a poplin rose-embellished quilt‌—‌nodding my head as if spreadsheets were the best thing since Poe’s Sonnet to Science.

  In those days, I would throw open the drapes, letting light flood every corner of the room to fall upon Ivan’s papers like a glorious benediction. He would look up‌—‌appreciative. I never understood what he meant by that look, but I certainly understood the nuance of light and shadow. I studied it. I wrote of it, quizzed my students about it and made up rhymes for Bryan and Allison regarding it. We were a family enamored with light.

  I keep the bedroom drapes tightly closed now. The rest of the house can fend for itself against the sun and clouds, but the bedroom has become mine alone and, without Ivan, it has no right to claim any light for itself. It’s now a room of dark and shadow and I want it that way. I think, in fact, the room remembers Ivan as much as I do. It took me months before I could bring myself to vacuum away the outline of his footprints or clean his side of the bathroom vanity, and even longer before I could angrily pack away his clothing for charity, cursing every shirt and pair of pants for no longer wrapping themselves over his body. I hated his ties. The scent of his cologne made me cry until I threw up into the toilet. I recall one day sliding my bare feet into his leather lace-up shoes and walking through every room of the house before finally hugging them to my chest and then sending them off to the Goodwill. Perhaps there was another Ivan out there who needed his mostly beige slacks and ties to become a successful statistician and economist. Perhaps the world needed another settled and sedate financial man who played a guitar and sang and held his wife until the cows came home.

  Two years after Ivan’s death, I began stacking my books and papers on his side of the bed. It was like I was screaming to the Universe that if it had to take my beautiful fair-haired Ivan away, then the only proper person for that side of the bed was a man I called Mr. Literature. Of course, he would be dark and filled with the essence of Stephen King, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, and the very woeful Poe. It seemed only fitting.

  I’ve since placed my books and papers where they belong. My days with Ivan are long past and I’ve grown to that acceptance. But, even now, I still spend several minutes a day recalling my husband’s husky whisper in my ear, the scent of his morning hair, his hands pressed on my body.

  Oh, God, those hands.

  My memory of Ivan is most likely either larger or smaller than he was in his true life, but it doesn’t matter. This is a widow’s perfect memory and, whether any of it is true or not, it’s a daily thing that helps get me standing on my morning feet. One day, I’ll tell my children that for the past ten years, I’ve missed my husband, their father, and hated myself for not saving him from his suddenly failed heart. Not today, though.

  Not today.

  The backs of my hands are threaded through with bluish veins like small streams and tributaries across a crêpe paper landscape; light brown dots here and there mark me a woman who spent too much youthful time lolling in the sun. I turn my hands over and ponder the criss-crossed lines on each palm, the life lines, the heart paths. I think of the many times I ran my fingers across Ivan’s palms, tracing every crease and marveling at the warmth radiating back at me. By the time he died, I had nearly memorized the placement of every line, every swirl and loop across the tip of each finger, the length and breadth of them.

  Now I don’t remember one detail of Ivan’s hands and I hate myself for it.

  I know what to do.

  I go to my closet and pull down a cedar letter box from the upper shelf. It’s where I keep my favorite poems and letters, all of which I’ve written and each of which is addressed to my children. I don’t know why I keep them secreted away in my father’s handcrafted box, when I could as easily share these dear little writings as they occur.

  Still, I continue to add new letters and little scraps of thought. At least once a week, I sit at a small secretary’s desk tucked into a corner in the living room. I select a piece of stationery‌—‌usually something flowered, occasionally a slip of gold-edged creamy paper I keep for special occasions. The paper is important because it’s the first impression and sets the tone for the words I’ll place on it. Many of the older notes are undated, but since I’ve noticed little memory dings creeping along the edge of my thoughts, I’ve started adding the date (provided I can figure it out, of course).

  I started writing when it occurred to me that children never really know their mothers: first they’re too young; then they’re so busy dividing and branching out into the person they will soon become, their ears are closed to any wisdom a mother might offer.

  Then they leave.

  And thus I write.

  The thought that my children will find these poems and letters after I’m gone is somehow pleasant to me. I picture the mouths of my very grown-up babies (surely saddened by my death) slowly tilting upward as they read my letters, my poems. Look at this, one will say to the other. This is so lovely, the other will say. I didn’t know this about Mom. Here, read this one. On they will go, together, like when they were children and we would take discovery walks through the arboretum or the zoo, our hands twined together like slender twisted cords, little oohs escaping our lips because we were seeing the world’s wonderment. They will discover me. I won’t be lost.

  I will be the day’s wonderment.

  I open the box and pull out an early letter, hoping it can help me remember my Ivan’s hands. I unfold the paper like one would open the wings of an origami bird, careful to retain the paper’s memory of each crease, every fold.

  The closet is unusually large for a mid-century house‌—‌a walk-in, actually, that may have served initially as a baby’s cradle nook or a small reading corner. It was Ivan who transformed the nook into a closet; I can still see a slight ridge where his hammer missed its mark, hitting the wall. It looked like a smile to me and I told Ivan to leave it. It’s been this way since.

  The size of the closet allows me plenty of room to stand in its center with all my blouses and skirts and slacks hanging loosely on three sides, like narrow, wrinkled people. There’s floor-to-ceiling shelving for shoes and folded items on each side of the entry door, a naked bulb light overhead with a pull chain instead of a wall switch.

  I begin to read; it takes a while until I fall into the rhythm of my words. I follow the words until the end, and then I read the letter twice more, until its meaning, its memory, soaks deeply into my skin and remembrance falls over my head like soft rain.

  My dear children:

  I wish you could have seen this morning’s sun as I saw it. I love the way it comes into my room in the early mornings, sliding up over my body and into my sleeping mouth like it’s the first meal of my day. Then it opens my eyes and lets me love it or curse it, depending on how well I slept the night before. This morning I loved the light, because it woke me to thoughts of you, my dear children.

  You’re now so grown and adult, it hardly seems fitting to call you children; still, I’ll always see the child in you each, in spite of your well-grown bodies and faces. As odd as it sounds, I wish you could know me, as well, for the child I once was. Maybe someday we can travel to the house where I grew up with my Ma and Pa (your MeeMaw and PaaPaw).

  I could show you North Carolina‌—‌my cradle of green‌—‌and how its trees are tall and straight and slim like me. I could show you how I walked, swinging a bucket of frogs at the end of my young arm. You would laugh, of course. We could sway within the languid rhythm of the local dialect, slow and dreamy like a sultry summ
er’s day, every word thick with sweet tea and milk biscuits. We could eat grits and eggs for breakfast and pop fried okra into our lunchtime mouths. For our evening meal, we’d have Southern fried chicken with collard greens cooked up on the side, biscuits with cream gravy, and another side of corn, fresh from the cob. A berry pie would wait for us on the sideboard and a thin dog would skitter around the edge of the table, wagging its tail to the rhythm of our conversation.

  Then we could walk across the yard, with its clay soil, deep and rich like the layers of one’s soul. I’d have you dig your fingers into that hard Carolina clay, textured and striated with history, so you could hold it in your hands. I’d show you how I’m filled with layer upon layer of pine dust, folk music, and ancient yarns, all evoked from atop a porch on a Sunday afternoon.

  I could show you the precise spot where the blood of our people soaked into the earth. I know where it is because one day, your PaaPaw dug a deep hole in the yard, just beyond the house and back of Ma’s clothesline. He wanted me to see the colors that lay deep within the Carolina clay. He told me how the ground carried deep within its folded layers the hardened gray of its soldiers’ uniforms, the red of the blood shed on its land in battles you will never understand for things that are now long different.

  Yes. I’d especially show you the dirt. We’d dig our own hole so you could see for yourselves the colors and lessons of history and Southern courtesy far beneath the surface of what you see. You could scuff your feet over the place where our family lived and drop your spittle onto it. You could stand over the wetness and watch it slowly seep in to mix with the fluid of our people. Your people.

  There is mystery in watching how the earth accepts the gift of moisture from someone’s spit.

  I wish I could show you, but we’re probably too old for spitting now.