The Bird House A Novel

September 14, 1967

no bath



HOW LONG DID I WAIT for Peter last night? I’m not sure, but I drank three glasses of beer. I only drink beer when I go to “our tavern”—something about the salty-sour scent of the place made me crave it. Beer is what I smell, beer is what I’ll have. And beer is the least lonely thing to drink when you’re waiting. A bottle of wine is something to be shared. Cocktails are for show—watch me sip daintily, let’s make a toast. But beer is acceptably solitary. It lasts a long time. So I drank, and I waited, and he didn’t come.

The bartender was beginning to know me; we were at the start of the bar relationship, when you recognize that he knows what you drink, and what you like to eat, and maybe, just maybe what your intentions are. Or the world’s intentions for you, I should say. After a half hour or so, he brought out a relish tray, a plastic dish of pickled cucumbers and wavy-edged carrots. A few minutes later, he was more pragmatic. He pulled a bag of chips off the metal clip on the bar and set them on the table.

Finally, he took complete charge. “If your, uh, friend is running late,” he sighed, “you may as well order. I can have them make you a small cheeseburger now, and you can order again when he comes.”

I nodded, smiled at his wisdom. When the cheeseburger came, I ordered one more beer, knowing it had to be my last. From where I sat, I could see the red phone on the bar. I tried watching it and not watching it. I’d noticed the first night that the bar seemed to have no name—a neon Budweiser sign flashed in the window but only a smudged TAVERN was painted above. If Peter wanted to call, or needed to call, could he? Would he know what to look for in the phone book?

I’d like to say it was a lonely dinner, or that it didn’t taste as good without Peter there, that my heart broke and my mascara ran. But that would be a lie. Two men in streaked white aprons did the cooking and the dishes, behind a swinging door. No one cried in the bar. No one had a tantrum. Dionne Warwick and the bartender kept me company. All I had to do was look in his direction and he sauntered over. He asked nothing of me; he was all give. I ate a cheeseburger with mayonnaise and mustard and pickles and had a bag of chips without sharing a single one. Heaven for a mother of two, heaven.

But every half hour or so, I remembered who I was waiting for and wondered where he was. At ten o’clock I considered going back to Peter’s house; imagined stumbling upon whatever had kept him. A sick child, out-of-town guests. I pictured it like a diorama, his life, whatever it held, small and torn around the edges, ephemeral as paper.

Finally, close to eleven, in a last burst of he-could-still-walk-in-any-minute hope, I lingered a long time over a silver dish of vanilla ice cream. I saved the thick red cherry for last, waited until it was half frozen and tasted like some other thing entirely, a new category, a food I’d never craved before, a food for which I had no name.





June 5, 2010



When I picked up the phone and Ellie said, “Something’s happened, Grandma,” my first words were, “To your mother?”

They flew out of me, light and automatic, and not, I believe, dripping with hope. I would hate myself if they were. Softly she answered that no, it was her father. One of those moments when children realize, suddenly, the chain of relationships. My daddy is my grandma’s son.

Tom had fallen ill with chest pains, and as soon as Bryn Mawr Heart Center heard about how young his father and grandfather had been when they died, they’d ordered a battery of tests. I found this out not from Ellie, on the phone, but from a tearful Tinsley in the hospital corridor.

“He was out jogging with his new shoes.” She sniffled.

I bit my tongue, but the thoughts still flew: it’s my fault all the way round, then, isn’t it, Tinsley? For the shoes, for marrying a man with weak arteries and procreating! I said nothing; one had to be more forgiving of Tinsley at a time like this.

“Well, it’s good that he went to the hospital. That he didn’t try to, to—”

“Run through it. Tough it out,” she said. Our eyes met. She knew the language of men exercising, of coping with fleeting pain. Of course she did; she ran side by side with one, one younger and stronger whose spent sweatshirts didn’t even smell of effort (Ellie had sniffed it). As I observed her trying to rearrange her disarray—hands in her hair, wiping beneath her eyes—a frisson of doubt traveled through me; could I have misread that kiss, that touch, that moment at the birthday party? No. I breathed deeply and surveyed her. She really did look terrible, I must say. Her lovely hair was sticking up on one side where she kept scratching it and fluffing. Her face was swollen from crying, as if she was already at a wake. She blew her nose loudly and when I asked if she had a cold, she looked at me oddly when she said no.

“What did the doctors say?”

“They said they doubted it was serious, they’re just being extra cautious.”

I nodded; precisely what I’d assumed. Tom was young, after all. Ellie sat a few seats away from us, burrowed into a celebrity magazine that was wrinkled and wet looking from being pawed through. She glanced over at me once or twice and I noticed she was chewing her lip. Poor dear, she was probably scared and confused.

“Why don’t I take Ellie down to the cafeteria for lunch?”

“She’s already eaten.”

“Ice cream then?”

She shook her head. “She had some yesterday.”

I sighed. I contented myself with watching Ellie and cataloging what the doctors had done and said. They’d done an EKG earlier, but wanted an ultrasound, an angiogram, and some sort of calcium test for good measure—That’s what Tinsley had said when I arrived. I thought it wouldn’t take overly long—it was tests, not surgery—but there did seem to be a lot of people in the waiting room of the heart center.

“When can we see him, do you suppose?”

“They took five vials of blood from his arm,” Tinsley replied, and a trail of tears slipped out.

She buried her head in her hands and I had to face facts: Tinsley was not herself. The doctors weren’t worried and blood work was not an upsetting procedure.

“Tinsley, darling, have you taken some sort of sedative?”

She shook her head violently.

“I’m not sure I—”

“He has to live, Ann,” she sobbed. “He has to.”

“Well, he will, dear,” I said. “Of course he—” My voice trailed off as I realized this wasn’t, after all, about Tom. Not at all. It was about guilt.

I cleared my throat and glanced over at Ellie, whose lips were moving silently as she read celebrity trash. I breathed deeply and closed my eyes. Behind my eyelids I saw myself as a young mother, alone, tired, sad, and bored. So bored I could have started a bonfire just to watch something change color. Twitchy, Betsy and I used to call it.

“Tinsley,” I said quietly as I rubbed my hand across one eye, “when I was your age I had a love affair.”

She looked up slowly. “What?”

“Oh, don’t make me say it again.” I sighed and patted her hand. “I broke it off eventually, it had to stop, but still.”

“You had an affair?” Her face took on some color, but her lips curled in distaste.

This was too juvenile to be believed—that she found an older person’s sexual persona upsetting? Did she really think, with her overbite and mop of hair, that she had invented desire?

“Imagine that,” I said flatly.

She cleared her throat and blew her nose. “So you made a mistake?”

“No,” I said, twisting my face.

“No?”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying.”

“Then what are you saying?”

I could see Peter clearly in that moment. Even in an antiseptic corridor, I could smell the musky cologne that lingered along his jaw. Even sitting on a cold plastic chair that sparked static every time I moved, I could feel the soft pile of his suit coat against my cheek. Even surrounded by stethoscopes and harsh aqua scrubs, I could remember how he always unbuttoned the top button of his oxford-cloth shirt and loosened his tie, as if it was an invitation, a taunt asking me to undo everything else.

“I’m saying it wasn’t a mistake. It was the most necessary, and the most beautifully urgent, thing I’ve ever done, as difficult as it is for you to comprehend my sexual happiness. And I’m saying, I suppose, that I love my son, but that because of my past, I understand almost anything, Tinsley. Almost anything.”

“I don’t know what you mea—”

“Oh, Tinsley, please,” I whispered. “We saw you.”

She stood up and glanced nervously over at Ellie, who was completely immersed in her magazine. “I don’t know what you’re suggesting, Ann, but—”

“I’m not suggesting anything, Tinsley, I’m just trying to be… human. One woman to another, for god’s sake.”

She blinked. Her tears were gone now. “I can’t believe you’d open up this conversation when your son is in the hospital and your granddaughter is several feet away,” she hissed. “Or have you already told my daughter about your affair, like the breast cancer?”

“Now, wait a minute—”

“You,” she whispered, “you just want Tom and me to split up so you can have Ellie all to yourself!”

“Tinsley, dear god!”

I reached for her wrist but she yanked away and ran toward the hallway near the nurses’ bulletin board. I hurried after her. Ellie was completely oblivious, intent on her reading, swinging her feet from the too-tall chair.

“Tinsley!”

She stopped, then turned slowly to face me.

“Tinsley, this has been a terrible day, so let’s—”

“No.”

“No?”

“No more, Ann. No more playdates, no more inappropriate conversations, no more manipulating her. It’s over.”

“Tinsley, don’t be rash, I—”

“I need some air,” she said as she ran toward the exit.

“Do you? Or do you need to call Zach?”

Her face froze for a second, and then she bolted outside, turning left, away from the parking lot and the parade of people streaming in, looking for a way to feel better.

I sat next to Ellie for a long time, fuming, fidgeting. I tore through a Ladies’ Home Journal that was squashed on the floor. I looked at recipes for spring casseroles and cakes while Ellie stared at starlets in bikinis. She seemed to be scanning the information, as if she’d need it, every inch of it, sometime in the future. Every useless thing, everything her mother wanted her to not see, not know, not worry about. Go, I wanted to cry. Go as far from her and her desires as you need to! I’ll be waiting for you with an icebox full of cola and the open mind that skips a generation!

The doctor came out and told us Tom was fine, all his tests were normal, and he thought it was just acid reflux.

“What a relief,” I said, and when Ellie and I were ushered into Tom’s cubicle, he looked absolutely fine.

“Daddy!” Ellie folded her arms around him. “Are you okay now?”

“Fit as a fiddle,” he said and smiled.

“We’re so relieved,” I said.

“Where’s Tins?”

“I, uh, she’s not feeling well.”

“What?” He screwed up his face.

“I told her to go get something to eat. She’s likely in the cafeteria.”

He nodded and said she’d been running errands and probably hadn’t eaten anything all day. “She shouldn’t skip meals,” he said, and I nodded.

This was my son, the boy I had raised: a person who noticed things about other people, even when he was having his own medical crisis. This was what Tinsley was missing, was taking for granted: what every woman wanted. To be worried over, just the right amount. I squeezed his hand. My good boy. The image of Zach came to me just then: his swinging his daughter sideways, recklessly, and her attendant squeals of joy. Did Tinsley not want solid and true, but something wilder?

I don’t know where Tom’s blend of thoughtful and responsible came from. It was impossible to know, ridiculous to care about now; Tom was my son, that was the only thing I knew for sure. When Peter had spread his coat beneath the bleachers of the football field, and we’d lain on it as if we were seventeen and not twenty-nine, he didn’t give anything to me that I didn’t already have. Tom was mine, all mine, in a way that Emma never was. I had managed to keep him.

We sat and waited for his release papers to come as Ellie chattered on about the things she’d read in the waiting room: did Daddy know, for instance, that bikinis were flattering on most figure types, and that Ellie was definitely old enough to wear one, despite her mother’s protests?

Tom laughed and said he’d see, that he’d talk to Mommy on her behalf. What argument, I wondered, would he use? What are you trying to keep her from, Tinsley? The inevitable? Your daughter will get dirty, she will get sick, she will disobey you. She will roll up her skirts and try a cigarette and steal makeup and drink cheap beer because she is human. Like all of us, dear, even you.





June 11, 2010



Tinsley hadn’t returned my phone calls to her home phone or her cell phone, so I called Tom’s office and left a message with his secretary that I was picking Ellie up at school. I was the first person in the car line, and I waved to Ellie when she pranced down the stairs.

She ran to my car and the teacher didn’t think twice about opening my door; I was her grandmother, after all.

“What are you doing here?” Ellie asked as they strapped the seat belt in place.

“We’re going for ice cream,” I replied.

“On a Tuesday?”

“Why not? School’s practically over.”

“Mommy said you were sick,” she said. “She said I couldn’t see you for a while cause you weren’t feeling well.”

“Oh, I’m all better now, darling.”

As we looped around and drove past the rest of the line, I slowed down to a snail’s pace as I passed Tinsley’s station wagon at the back.

“Wave to your mother,” I said cheerily.

Tinsley rolled down her window and shrieked, “Ann!”

“Yes?”

“What are you doing?”

“We’re having a playdate!” Ellie yelled from the backseat.

“No!”

“Yes!”

I glanced back and Ellie’s face shone with triumph.

“I’ll drop her at home in an hour or so,” I said and smiled, then, leaning out the window, lowered my voice to just above a whisper. “Along with a photo you might like to see.” I pulled away quickly and my tires squealed as if they were delighted, too.

Porter’s was the only old-fashioned soda fountain left in all of the Main Line, and it was nestled in a dark corner of downtown Bryn Mawr, tucked between a pharmacy and a dry cleaner. I ordered an egg cream, which I had to explain to Ellie did not contain any actual eggs, and Ellie decided on a banana split.

“I’m going to ruin my dinner,” she announced.

“What are you having?”

“Spinach lasagne.”

“No great loss,” I said, smiling, and she giggled.

When I pulled up to Tinsley’s house later that afternoon, she ran outside like a shot and told Ellie to go in and start her homework. Ellie climbed out and thanked me for the ride, wisely not mentioning the ice cream, although I knew Tinsley would find out eventually—Ellie had dripped chocolate sauce on her polo shirt.

“Just so we’re clear,” Tinsley said after Ellie was safely inside, “if you ever do that again, Ann, I’ll—”

“You’ll what, Tinsley? Tell Tom? Because I’m sure Tom would love to be told about your boyfriend.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about this,” I said, leaning over and pulling the photo out of the glove compartment.

“This is nothing, I don’t, you don’t… You’ve been following me?”

“No need for that. It’s a small world, Tinsley. You ought to be more careful.”

“This… this proves nothing.”

“I wonder if Zach’s wife would think so, too.”

At the sound of his name, her cheeks went ruddy.

“What do you want?”

“You know what I want.”

“Grandparents have no automatic visitation rights in the state of Pennsylvania.”

I cocked my head curiously; why would Tinsley know this? Had she asked another lawyer in Tom’s firm? And why would she be doing this kind of research?

“Neither do adulterers,” I said. “See you next Thursday.”