The Bird House A Novel

February 20, 2010



Today was the indoor doubles round-robin, and as usual, I’m sore. If I’d played singles, I probably would have needed an ambulance. Betsy and I laughed about this tonight on the phone: why does anyone consider tennis a “life sport”? It’s desperately hard on the knees, elbows, shoulders. It’s a sweaty game played on hot, humid days. It’s a young person’s game if ever one was invented. But no, we’re encouraged to play it for life, which I have, mostly, except when the babies were little. Theo played every Saturday morning throughout our marriage, though never with me. He played until he collapsed on the court, clutching his chest, crying out to his partner, Bix, as if protesting a foot fault. Life sport, indeed. I remember whispering that very thing to Tom at Theo’s funeral. Theo’s friends all gave eulogies that wove in tennis stories, tennis metaphors. Bix insisted on tucking a tennis ball into the casket. I leaned over and groaned, “Life sport, indeed,” to Tom, and he pointed out that he was sure all that tennis at least helped the pallbearers with their heavy lifting. We giggled, and I saw a slice of Tinsley’s furrowed brow coming over Tom’s shoulder. Then it was gone, and it was as if she wasn’t even there.

On the court next to us were four women Tinsley’s age who ran and lunged and grunted as they swung their tan, fit arms. Even when they were finished and put on their sweaters, you could see the outlines of their muscles pushing through the cable pattern, distorting it. One of them saw me watching her and smiled back sweetly, as if catching me in reverie for how I used to look. But no, I wasn’t in thrall; I was wondering if I’d pegged her right, if she was the kind of woman who wore her tennis dress everywhere, to the market or a parent-teacher conference. Tinsley was becoming like that, I’d noticed; always dressed in warm-ups, looking like she was going to, or coming from, something sweaty.

When I returned home, I soaked in Epsom salts, and as soon as I got out of the tub, Tinsley called to ask if Ellie could come tonight instead of Saturday and I said certainly, of course.

“Whatever happened to you the other night?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You were nearly an hour late picking up Ellie.”

“Oh, Ann, I told you I wouldn’t be there until close to nine.”

“You did not,” I said, but my voice wavered. Might she have?

“Sure, I did. We’re going to have to get you a BlackBerry, Ann, to keep track of your appointments.”

I shuddered at the thought.

“Anyway, Ellie’s very excited to tell you her new theme.”

“Oh, she found one, did she?”

“How could you not? That was a treasure trove of material. And I imagine I haven’t seen the half of it.”

“Did you…” The words caught in my throat. “…help her? At all?”

“God no. She rejects all my ideas out of hand.”

I smiled. “She knows what she’s after, I suppose. You’re like that, too, dear.”

“Am I?”

“I think so. You had no trouble decorating your house, or choosing china. I remember how I struggled when I was a young bride. Not you.”

“Well, Ellie’s a lot like Tom, too. Speaking of which, he’ll drop her off, okay?”

When Tom and Ellie arrived at seven that night, he looked exhausted, and I told him so, in no uncertain terms. He said he’d worked late all week on a big case, and I frowned. I hated the thought of Tom working himself into the ground, like Theo. He hunched his shoulders, making himself small, as if he didn’t fit, and was suddenly uncomfortable in the home he’d grown up in.

Ellie hung up her coat and carried her tote bag to the dining room table, where I’d set out a plate of pigs in blankets from the farmers’ market, along with ramekins of ketchup and mustard.

“People with a history of heart disease in the family shouldn’t work so hard, Tom.”

“I know, Mother.”

“Your family needs you far more than any of your clients.”

“Most clients don’t even like me,” he sighed. “I’m the one always forced to tell them the truth.”

“Well, I like you,” I said, patting his arm. “I’m sure you deliver bad news exceedingly well.” The first threads of gray were showing at his ears, and that made me feel older than any creak of my bones. That my children could be old. Were old.

“I like you, too, Daddy,” Ellie called out from the next room.

“Thanks, sweetie,” he said.

“What time should I come back for Ellie? Can’t be too late. We have an ice-skating lesson in the morning. Dads and daughters.”

“That sounds like good fun. I didn’t know you still skated, Tom-o.”

“Don’t want to waste my skills since I learned from the best,” he said, and I blushed with pride. I’d skated backward for a week, pulling his arms, urging him to move his legs one at a time. My back ached just remembering it. He did learn, and he stayed in figure skates with his old mother long enough to start skating backward, and then he heard the siren call of hockey. I drove him to the rink at 5 a.m. every Tuesday and Thursday for years, but I can’t recall ever skating with him after that.

“Well, why don’t I drop her at home later? You and Tinsley relax for a change.”

“Oh, Tinsley won’t be home. She’s playing squash.”

“At night?”

“Surely you’ve heard of electricity, Mother.”

“Don’t the two of you do anything in tandem?”

“Oh, you know Tinsley. She’s got a schedule and she sticks to it.”

“Yes, I suppose. But you need to have some fun once in a while. Let loose. Go dancing.”

He did a quick tap dance on the floor and I laughed.

“Well,” I said, “you relax then, sweetheart. I’ll drop her at home.”

“Are you sure?”

I nodded and told him I’d have Ellie home between 8:30 and 9:00. That’s what I remember: 8:30 or 9:00.

Ellie ate the little hot dogs with great care—small bites, plenty of chewing. She used her napkin properly, to dab, not to wipe. Then she asked me if I was going to eat anything, and I recognized at once the combination of politeness and longing. I told her to go ahead, that I’d already eaten (and I had slipped two of them in my mouth while I was setting the table).

“So I did it,” she said, after the last bite. “I didn’t think I could but I did it.”

“So you did. You finished them.”

“No, Grandma, I mean I did the project—I found the aspect!”

“Really?” I put one hand against my mouth, feigning surprise. It wouldn’t do to let her know that Tinsley had already filled me in.

“Yes! And I came up with the best one. One no one else will have!”

“What is it?”

“I’ll show you,” she said, and opened the green leather album.

She paged past photos of weddings, christenings, and parties. She breezed through the tall churches and the rolling backyards and the brocade tables, turning so fast they came together in a mosaic, silk dresses and stained glass and silver cocktails, pulpit and sandbox and seaside, marble and slate, sunlight and candlelight, low fog and bubbling champagne.

They ran together in my head the same way sometimes: the before taunting the after. Like watching a past life flash before your eyes. When my mother met me at Porter’s Soda Shop and told me my father had left for good, and that she would be moving, the images started shifting then. Lining up in their flashing queue. I was furious with my father, and I didn’t even know the real reason to be. My mother sat very still as I cried, only moving to take small sips of her root beer float. She seemed to have used up all her tears already, but now, I wonder, forget the sadness, where was her anger? Where was her fury? Finally, I took a sip of my own float, and my face went pale.

“Wait a minute, you’re moving?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Not ‘we’?”

“Well, we’re not a couple anymore. I have to get used to saying I.”

“Mother, I meant me.”

“Well, of course you’re going to college, dear, in the fall. That much is certain.”

“But what about on fall break, and Christmas and…”

“Well,” she sighed, “I haven’t quite worked that part out yet.”

And the images of my other life began to pile up behind her. She smiled at me, a small smile, but not, I realize now, the kind of small smile that is all you can summon up, but the kind you are trying to contain. I imagine a fresh start might have seemed romantic to her then, at that moment, before the full realization of her financial ruin became clear.

I sighed and watched the pages of my life pass by again in Ellie’s hands.

“Here!” she said breathlessly.

I leaned in. The photo she pointed to was small; the white corners that affixed it to the gray page were barely bigger than her fingernail. I squinted. It was a black and white of my father in his workroom, a separate cottage that sat nearly an acre away from the main house. He was always apart from us, my mother used to point out. Even before he left. I didn’t understand what she was talking about—in my mind he was always at my side—or I was at his. If you extended every photo an inch in every direction, I imagined you’d find me lingering in every frame. In this shot, he was wearing a leather apron, smoking a cigar and laughing at whoever was behind the camera. Proof he was happy at that house at least once.

“Woodworking? Is that what you’ve chosen?” My father did love to tinker—he carved little boats for me and made drinks trays for Mother’s friends. Of course, if my dear mother had been sitting next to me, she would have suggested “Philandering” as an aspect.

“You’re getting warmer,” she said and smiled. “Look at what he’s making.”

Behind his shoulder, on the edge of the sawhorse, I could make out a small roofline.

“Oh, a dollhouse!” I cried. “How perfect, Ellie! I’m sure every little girl in my family had one, if we look carefully. My father did make a marvelous one for me, I remember now, with a—”

She screwed up her face. “No, Grandma, it’s not a dollhouse.”

“Well, surely—”

“It’s a bird house.”

“Bird house? I don’t recall him ever making a bird—”

“Yes, he did. And if you look at this other picture, with the other people, there’re two more in it.”

She turned to a photo of my great-aunt Minna, standing with my mother in front of our first Nantucket cottage, the one that came from my mother’s family. The roses climbing up the walls are so heavy and full I could almost smell them. My mother is perhaps twenty-five, already married, already a mother, yet at the height of her beauty. Her hair was so gold and fine, I used to expect butterflies to light on it. I held a finger up to the photo, as if I could feel it. When I needed hair for my fairy garden princess, I always used the fine strands from her hairbrush.

“No, over there.” Ellie pointed impatiently. On my mother’s left, two cedar-shake bird houses rose from the garden soil on sticks.

“Oh,” I said.

“That’s three, plus I have a bird house in my backyard… and you have one outside your bathroom window!”

My heart fell a story in my chest. How on earth had she seen that? I’d hung it in the tree so it was only visible, I thought, from a certain angle of the bathtub. The green base and brown roof blended in with the foliage. Or so I’d thought.

“Grandma?”

“Yes?”

“You seem a million miles away.” It was one of her mother’s expressions, wildly preferable to something glib her classmates might have said, like, “Earth to Grandma, do ya read me?”

“Do I? I’m just, uh, thinking about this idea of yours. This aspect.”

“And?”

“I can’t help thinking, Ellie, that dollhouses are…” I hesitated, wanting to choose the best words, “more family oriented, more historically significant, I think, than bird houses.”

“No, Grandma. Dollhouses are too girly. And… I don’t even like dolls.”

“But a bird house is such a… I don’t know… such a small thing. In the scheme of a family and a heritage and a… legacy.” I tasted tears in my throat. Were they caused by her choice, or my own fumbling words? She knew nothing, so why did it matter, why did it hurt so much? I breathed in sharply, willing it away. I was becoming a dreaded thing: a silly, sentimental, forgetful old woman.

“But, Grandma,” she said, rising to her knees with excitement, “I could buy a silk bird and wire it to the cover!”

She had me. How could anyone argue against such a brilliant book cover?

I cleared my throat, shook off whatever had welled up. “I believe our Adirondack house had a bird house out back,” I said with a smile, and we spent the rest of the evening flipping the pages quickly and carelessly until we found it. By the time we made a list of everyone in the photos, names and ages and other pertinent information, it was nearly nine. I told her we could work on the cover next time.

I drove Ellie home and noticed that Tinsley’s station wagon wasn’t in the driveway. Tom rubbed his eyes as he stood at the door, and I worried that I’d woken him, that he’d fallen asleep at his desk.

“Sorry we’re a bit late,” I said.

He looked at his watch. “You’re early, actually.”

“Didn’t we say eight-thirty?”

He blinked. “It’s a weekend, so we said nine-thirty, Mom,” he replied, with a softness at the edges of his voice. He reached out and squeezed my hand, and I let him, even though I knew what it meant and what he was trying to say and all I wanted was to yank my hand away and tell him, no, like a mother does, you’re wrong.

I was on edge all the way home. I tried to keep my eyes on the road, and not think about my mother, and the day Aunt Caro called me from the carriage house to tell me someone had left the teakettle on all day, ruining the kettle and the stove, nearly setting fire to the whole kitchen. When Caro asked my mother how it had happened, how it could have gone unnoticed, she said she thought the kettle’s whistle was a silly bird in the backyard. A few months later, we placed Mother in a nursing home. But this was different, I told myself. Dear lord, I may forget a time or a date now and then, but I know a pot from a bird!

I shook off the memory, but something lingered. I kept expecting a raccoon or a deer to leap into the path of my car; the wind to knock a tree across the road. I told myself Tom was just being gracious, not concerned. I told myself it was Ellie’s project, not mine. But it didn’t feel that way. No.

As much as Ellie and I had outlined and sketched, as much as we used innocuous tools like pencil and glue, I could feel the scraping at the earth beneath my feet, the trolling, the tilling. Dredging up things I didn’t want to remember, but couldn’t seem, somehow, to let go of.