The Bird House A Novel

March 12, 2010



Tinsley and Tom seemed almost too thrilled by our idea for the cover. When they picked Ellie up on Saturday night, and she informed them breathlessly, their faces through the car window took on the animated bluster of clowns. It reminded me of a different kind of photograph, hand tinted, with the sky too bright and everyone’s cheeks unnaturally pink. Maybe Tinsley felt guilty because she’d been exercising too much, and was excited to have an opportunity to hover over her daughter one of the evenings she was supposed to be mine.

We met Tuesday evening at Doolittle’s Dog Park, near the enormous faux-bois birdbath at the top of the rise. At one time, this was just a park—no dog. It spanned thirty acres and had been annexed off from the main estate and donated by the Forrester family, so everyone could enjoy the rolling meadow view. Now, the township had renamed it after a fictional character and the sign had dog-biscuit artwork painted in the background. I could only hope that the Forresters had once had a dog, and that they weren’t howling in their graves.

Tom ran his hand over the birdbath. “Hey, Ellie, we don’t have to bathe in it, do we?”

Tinsley laughed loudly, too loudly I thought. She really had to be careful, with her broad bones and large teeth, of turning horsey as she aged. We all have animals inside, dear.

“No, silly!” Ellie said. “We’re going to do other bird things.”

“Okay, then, let’s go get some twigs, right, Tins?”

“You got it—I’m on twig patrol,” she said.

“Huh?” Ellie scrunched up her face.

“Your parents are off to build you a nest.”

“Yeah,” Tom said, “and then we’ll go out to dinner for a big plate of worms!”

“Daddy!”

Tom leaned over to tickle her. The light was thick and yellow as it filtered through the trees, and I didn’t want to waste a second of it, so I grabbed some candids of them laughing and joking around. Between giggle fits Ellie tried to explain to her parents what she wanted them to do: to run in circles around the bath, and to flap their arms like birds. Ellie went first, then Tom, then Tinsley. Tom started to squawk and make pterodactyl calls, which made Ellie laugh harder. Everyone’s skin glowed and I couldn’t help thinking what an exceptionally handsome family they were. Still, smooth skin and handsomeness aside, they weren’t moving in a coordinated way, and many of the shots I took were really quite terrible. I started to think I’d been mad to attempt it.

Still, they were having so much fun, who cared? At one point Tinsley flapped her way up to Tom and leaped on his back.

“Help!” he cried. “A hawk has its claws in me!”

He fell to the ground, and on her next lap, Ellie piled onto them and told them to get up and fly. They laughed together and tumbled around, Tinsley’s golden and caramel hair flying in all directions, and all my nascent fears about her faded away for a moment.

I took close-ups and wide shots of all their antics, but honestly, no matter what they did, it didn’t look like cover material. They just couldn’t seem to hit a rhythm; if one was up, the other two were down. Finally I took a nice shot of Tom and Ellie, flapping in unison, but Tinsley was out of synch. I’d never noticed before how oddly long her arms were, so thin in the forearm they appeared in danger of snapping in two.

They kept circling and eventually improved, smoothing their gaits, synching their arms. I just kept pushing the button, not even pausing to look, just hoping I was getting what I was seeing, and more. Those little in-between moments when people forget they are posing, and just keep moving. Thank god I’d left the Nikon at home and brought my little digital camera—I would have wasted roll after roll of film.

“I have an idea!” Ellie said suddenly, breathlessly, before she stopped and ran to the birdbath. She proceeded to climb onto the rim while her mother kept telling her to be careful. She flapped on the edge, as if she was about to leap, and I thought, that’s it, that’s the cover. Just her. Not the others. Her. I took a dozen shots, each better than the last.

The next day when I picked up my prints at what used to be the butcher shop and was now Staples, the young man who waited on me must have seen it, too. Because as he totaled up my purchase he said he would be happy to go in and do any cropping or enlarging I wanted for a dollar fifty per print. That didn’t strike me as something he said to every customer, like the admonition to supersize. He’d seen something and was offering an improvement: crop out that older couple next to the kid and you’ll really have something awesome there.

After I finished and had the prints in my car, I drove around for a long time before I delivered them to Ellie. I told myself I was just touring the old haunts, seeing what was new, what the developers were up to. I was just doing a neighborly reconnaissance, keeping an eye on what new restaurant had taken over the little tailor shop, and whether the bank had succumbed to evening hours. I stopped in front of Luddington Park, thinking I might take a stroll, but the human traffic looked a bit thick to merge into. I watched the joggers panting and huffing, and the bicyclers spinning and leaning, all along a thin winding path that was only ever meant to hold a mother, a baby, and a lightweight collapsible stroller. I sighed and tried to think of somewhere to go next, and couldn’t come up with a damn thing. When I was married to Theo and felt trapped in the house, I used to go to the train station and pretend to be waiting for someone. At the first sound of the whistle, I’d arrange my face expectantly, scan the crowd for a familiar pair of eyes, then sigh and look at my watch. It gave me something to do, that little piece of playacting. It gave me a small purpose.

Now, it wasn’t that I felt trapped so much; I just wanted to freeze the moment in time. I didn’t want to go to her house with those photographs; I wanted to take the prints and hide them, lose them, start over again. All Ellie had to do was glue in her essay, and bind the pages with raffia. The project had ended. What now?