The Bird House A Novel

June 12, 2010



Last night I woke at 2 AM, not with a start, suddenly alert, but slowly, as if someone was tapping me gently. I struggled into consciousness, reluctant to release a dream I can’t even recall, and I heard the sound then—half knocking, half grinding, a mix of progress and protest.

I sat up. I walked toward the sound, which seemed much less loud now that I was fully awake, and stood in front of the French doors overlooking my backyard, the ones that opened onto a small deck. There was little light from the quarter moon, but I saw the outline of the split railing, the red metal café table and chair. I put my ear to the glass. The rhythm of the sound was familiar, and after a few seconds I smiled in recognition: woodpecker. He missed his bird house, I thought guiltily, and made a mental note to put it back in the morning.

After breakfast I carried the bird house and ladder out to the tree. I stepped beneath the deck to find the Braille of the woodpecker holes, and my breath caught in my chest. I took an enormous step backward, too fast, and I stumbled, my hands crablike behind me, gripping tufts of spring grass. I sat on the soft hill, looking at the hard cantilevered beams Theo had drawn and specified so carefully, which now had a chunk missing on either side, a gnawed V that looked too deep to have been carved by a bird.

Tinsley? Was it possible she’d go this far? She wasn’t cut out to be a criminal; adultery was no preparation for it. No. It blinded you to things; it warped your vision. She didn’t see what was right in front of her eyes: that there was only one chair on my deck, and only one purpose for it: coffee for an adult in the morning. I suppose Tinsley knew that much: that Ellie would not go out there. But what she should have known, had she been looking carefully, had she been paying attention, had she done her criminal homework, was that I considered that deck a shrine to Theo, and hadn’t set foot on it in years.

I got up and called the handyman Betsy had referred me to and asked him to repair the deck. When he came out and saw the damage, he sighed. “Damned squirrels,” he said.

“Really?”

“You’d be amazed by what they’ll chew through, just for fun.”

“You don’t think a—person could have done this?”

He blinked at me, considering. “No way. This is squirrel nibbling.” Still, he said, any woman living alone needed an alarm system. “If you were my mother, I’d install a camera, too. You could put it somewhere hidden, mount it in a tree or a bird house,” he said.

I smiled and looked up at the tree grazing the secondstory window and said I’d think about it, indeed I would.

Something to watch over me and worry a little, just the right amount.





June 15, 2010



I decided to go to the Potting Shed alone this time, but I did take something with me in the car: a map. It couldn’t be that hard to drive home from Gladwyne in the dark; other people did it all the time. I didn’t recall what time it was when Ellie and I had seen Peter there; all I remembered was the darkness and the deer. Still, he’d said he ate dinner there every night, so my thought was to wait in the bar until he showed up. I was looking forward to that fancy red wine and a little adult companionship. Oh, hell, who was I kidding? Companionship? There was still something between us, even after all these years, and it certainly wasn’t companionship.

The door to the bar was heavy, fashioned of oak and leaded glass, and it took me a few hearty tugs to wrest it open. I was off balance when I walked in, and thought I must have gone dizzy from exertion. How else to explain why Peter sat two seats away from Tinsley?

I wasn’t having a senior moment, and I certainly wasn’t mistaken. I may have been wrong about the deck—the next day I saw a rampaging passel of squirrels—but this time things were crystal clear. I recognized Tinsley’s singular crop of hair immediately, and had her back not been toward me she would have been close enough to see the shock on my face. I backed out the door slowly and went to my car to think. It had to be a coincidence, I told myself. She was probably meeting a friend there, maybe even Zach. I decided I had two choices: confront her, or wait until one of them left. I chose to wait, and I didn’t have to wait too long; after a half hour of cleaning out my glove compartment Tinsley left the bar alone. No friend—no Zach. I went back in.

“Peter,” I said from a few feet away, “is that drink offer still available?”

“Annie,” he said, beaming. He stood up and took both of my hands in his. “Don’t you look radiant tonight.”

I pulled my hands back and waved the comment away. As if I hadn’t carefully applied blush so I’d look that way.

“It was pinot noir you had last time, right?”

I nodded and sat down.

“It’s funny that you’d take me up on the drink tonight, of all nights.”

“Why?”

“A woman was just in here asking me about you.”

I felt blood pooling in my knees; suddenly there was none left in my head, my neck, anywhere in my body.

“Really?”

“A reporter.”

“Was she doing a story on high school reunions?” I smiled, but the twinkle, I noticed, was gone from his eyes.

“No. She’s doing a story on bathtub drownings,” he said quietly, and the whole intent of the evening, the shape and the form, started to slip away.

I swallowed hard. “And I suppose she said there’d been another one?”

“Yes. A little boy. And as she was researching the frequency of these types of accidents in the county, she came across the old newspaper article about Emma, the one where I was quoted about ringing the doorbell.”

The bartender brought the pinot noir and I took a huge sip, so huge I needed to wipe my chin.

“Peter, I don’t think that was a reporter you spoke to.”

He looked at me curiously. I was practically shaking, gulping wine.

“Who was it then?”

“My daughter-in-law. She’s trying to dig up things to use against me, to try to keep me away from my granddaughter.”

“Why would she do that?”

“I found out she was cheating on my son.”

He whistled. “That’s a fine mess.”

“Yes. She knew I’d lost a child, but we’ve been a bit closed off about the details. She probably suspected something and… followed up on her hunch.”

“So she’s trying to get some leverage, make you seem unfit to grandparent, in case you tell Tom about her affair?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus, your own daughter-in-law?”

“Well, you have girls, so you wouldn’t know, but daughters-in-law are a different species altogether.” I took a deep breath, rubbed my eyes.

He nodded and, finally, for the first time since I’d entered, glanced away, toward a bubble of laughter that emanated from the dining room. His profile in the low light was still handsome; his nose and ears still as small as a boy’s, unlike so many older men.

“Tinsley,” I sighed, “well, she must have been jumping with joy when she found that article. But how do you suppose she found you so quickly? How did she know you’d be here?”

“She checked every old folks’ home in the area, and when she called Wyndon Manor they told her where I eat every night.”

“She told you that?”

“No. But I’m a journalist, remember? It’s not that difficult.”

“Yes, if you can do it, I suppose it isn’t,” I teased, and he rewarded me with another wide smile.

“Annie,” he said, taking my hands into his, “would things have been different? Do you ever wonder?”

“No,” I lied.

“Maybe if I had made my money earlier, if I had proved somehow that I was more than a struggling reporter, doing a job anyone could do, after all—”

I set my glass down on the bar carefully before I turned to him, trying to calm myself, my fluttering heart, my suddenly wobbling chin.

“Peter, I was young, I was under a terrible strain.”

“I know. And on top of it, your father, what happened to your mother. I don’t blame you, Ann, for choosing… the security of Theo. I suppose you didn’t think I’d amount to anything.”

“Oh, Peter,” I sighed. “It wasn’t that simple.”

“Maybe it was. That’s why you stayed.”

“I stayed?” I sputtered, then wiped my lip with my hand. “You stayed, Peter! You were the one glued to the spot!”

“Annie, don’t you remember?”

My head swam and I squinted, as if it would help. It was too much, suddenly, this collision of past and present. Weren’t we two sets of people, our younger selves and our older ones? I closed my eyes, picturing myself at thirty, the freshness of my face, the reflection of my slim legs in the bathtub water when the afternoon light hit it just so. I tried to hold on to that picture, that person.

“Maybe you’ve erased it all from your mind,” he whispered. “I can’t blame you. I don’t blame you for anything.”

I inhaled briskly, audibly, washing away the moment with a determined smile. I wanted to tell him all was forgiven, and all was forgotten, but it never would be. If we found a way to carry on, it would have to be with a burden on our backs. How could it not be?

“You know what you need?” he said suddenly.

“A cheeseburger?”

“Ouch,” he said and smiled. “No, a lawyer.”

“What for?”

“A custody and paternity lawyer. You can fight for the right to see Ellie all you like, but given the situation, hadn’t you better get an attorney? And hadn’t you better be certain she’s actually your granddaughter?”

“You don’t really think Tinsley’s dalliances could have been going on all these years?”

He shrugged. “It’s best to be sure, isn’t it? And if your daughter-in-law’s been unfaithful repeatedly, well, it will at least scare the pants off her.”

He looked devilish as he said it, his eyes twinkling like they did when we would think of practical jokes to pull on our friends. He was always planning shenanigans in the boys’ locker room after football practice. Innocent things like hiding people’s shoes when it snowed. Once his algebra teacher walked into his classroom and found all the chairs gone. He’d carried them all the way down onto the football field, two at a time.

He reached into his wallet, pulled out a card, and handed it to me. A friend of his, he said.

“This is very gracious of you, Peter, under the circumstances.”

“Annie, if the circumstances were any different, do you think I’d even know a paternity lawyer?”

“You mean you—”

He waved me away with one hand. “I took one look at his school picture when he was around five, and I knew he wasn’t mine.”

“This,” I sighed, “wasn’t exactly the friendly, jovial drink I had in mind.”

“Then you’ll have to come back another night,” he said and smiled.

He tried to cajole me into staying for dinner, but I said no. The last time, we’d taken things a little too fast. It was time, I thought, for us to try it slow again.





September 15, 1967

no breakfast



PETER DIDN’T CALL TO EXPLAIN, he came to the house. He sat in the car and waited until I noticed he was there. The children were napping, so I went out and sat with him, against my better judgment.

I forgave him the minute I opened the car door and saw him, eyes wet, face drawn. I forgave him before I heard his voice, before it cracked, before he pleaded, before his ghastly reason tumbled out. And then, afterward, I felt less forgiving. How to account for this? I was ready for any number of things, for flat tires and out-of-town guests and croup. I could have forgiven a thousand things, but his was worse: his wife had had a seizure. She’d fallen to her knees walking into a neighbor’s house to play bridge. Crumpled. Her friends were stunned, thought she was joking with them. Too young to have such a thing happen. He said she was in a coma; he didn’t know whether she’d make it through the next day, let alone speak or walk. Her future is up in the air, was what he said. His voice came apart in the telling, actually broke up, like static on the line.

“Oh, Peter, dear god,” I said. “What can I do? Do you need help with the children, or with dinner or something?”

He shook his head, explained that his in-laws had come to help.

Sun streamed in the windows, warming the front seat of the old Buick, and I couldn’t help thinking that it smelled like Play-Doh and crayons. It smelled like what I was trying to escape.

After a few minutes, he took my hand.

“Don’t you see, Ann, that this is a wake-up call?”

“Wake-up call?”

“Life is short,” he said through his tears. “I lost you once, and I don’t want to be apart from you any longer.”

“Peter, you’ve had a great shock—”

“It shocked me into realizing that I love you and I belong with you. It’s always been you, Annie, always.”

“Peter, now is not the time to—”

My front door opened. I knew the sound by heart, the creak of wood scraping ever so slightly across slate. I turned my head slowly to the right, dreading what I knew was coming. Emma, on the front porch.

“Go back inside, sweetie,” I said, climbing out of the car.

“Who’s that man?”

“No one, honey.”

“Mommy, I want my bath.”

“In a minute.”

“No, now! Now, Mommy!”

“I’ll wait a bit,” Peter whispered. “Go.”

When I went upstairs the baby started to cry, so I drew the water and put the children in together. Efficient, I guess you’d call it. And it should have been fun for them, no? Other mothers did this, I knew. There was nothing wrong with trying to get it done fast, even if someone wasn’t waiting for me downstairs.

Emma begged for bath bubbles and when I told her it was too slippery for the baby, she whined, splashing her fists repeatedly until I gave in. I tried to direct the capful of Mr. Bubble toward her end of the tub, but of course the baby was delighted. He squealed and splashed his hands; the water was an inch or two higher than he was used to, but he sat up sturdily; I didn’t even need to steady him anymore.

I put bubbles on their chins and laughed at their silly faces. It was fun, it was friendly; doesn’t it sound like fun? But I was thinking of Peter and his comatose wife and his little house, the defeat of the roof, the old flowers that needed deadheading. So different from the house I grew up in. Our house is old and crumbling, but it’s stately. It’s always in need of repair, but we always repair it.

I thought of Peter daydreaming of me at the office, the surreptitious phone calls, in contrast to how Theo worked all the time. And I couldn’t help thinking of what had started it all, when I found him at my high school reunion and he twirled me around the floor, shocked at my husband being away on business. He said, as he always had, the perfect thing. His words just right even if his house, his life, his marriage were all wrong. “If I was married to you, I would never leave you home alone, Annie, never.”

It finally hit me: Peter had no passion, no ambition, for anything but me. He didn’t care about his job. He didn’t tend his own yard, or scrape the curls of old paint off his house. He always said the right thing, but he didn’t always do the right thing.

And that’s what I was thinking as I clung to my son, mine, dipping my hand full of water over his hair, smelling his newly washed scalp. He was mine, not Peter’s, not Theo’s. I’d gone home the night of the reunion, after Peter and I lay beneath the bleachers together and he told me he had always loved me, and that he always would. I’d gone back home after that marvelous release of finally sleeping with Peter, after too much wine and too many cigarettes on the third-base line, I’d gone home and grabbed Theo roughly, wrestling with him almost, in an effort to erase whatever Peter might have done. Two men in the same night, and not so very long afterward, another small man arrived: my son. Mine. He belonged to both of them, or neither of them. I felt the singularity of this, the finality of my life coming together even as Peter’s was tearing apart.

I turned around and went to the shelf to get the hooded towel, then shook it out on the floor, and when I turned back, the baby was underwater. Not because he slipped in the bubbles. Not because he wasn’t strong enough to sit up for long. No. Because Emma’s hands were on his chest, pinning him down.

“Emma!” I screamed. I pulled her off and brought him up, sputtering, startled.

I wrapped him in a towel and held him close as I wagged my finger in her face.

“Don’t you ever do that to him again! You could have killed him, Emma, killed him!”

When I stopped talking, I saw it in her eyes: recognition. She knew she could have killed him; she wasn’t surprised. Did she know exactly what she was doing?

“I was just playing,” she said.

“I’m putting him in the playpen and I want you to think for just a second about what you’ve done!” I said.

“Okay,” she said flatly. That was all, the only word I remember. Dull and ordinary as an old spoon.

I wasn’t gone long. A minute? Two? Long enough to diaper the baby and nestle him in his playpen with a pacifier. Long enough to lay him in the light blanket and give him a rattle. That’s all. I didn’t rock him, or sing to him, or play patty-cake. I hurried back. I did.

But when I returned, there she was, underneath, floating, her hair looking soft, almost delicate. My first thought horrified me: that she’d done it on purpose. She was big and strong, so strong. She was almost four! Did she want me to rescue her as I’d rescued the baby? To save her? And prove that I loved her as much as I loved him?

I pulled her out, dripping, and bent her over my knee, opening her mouth with one hand, thinking she just needed to spit out some water. I hit her with the flat of my hand between the shoulder blades, waiting for the wetness to spill across the floor, but nothing came.

I laid her on the floor and tried desperately to remember the lifesaving course I took the summer before college. I tilted her head, pinched her nose, blew into her mouth.

“Breathe, Emma!” I screamed. “Breathe!”

I ran to the phone and dialed the rescue squad. When they arrived I was still hunched over her, counting breaths. One of them had to pull on my shoulder to move me away. They worked on her for a few minutes and I stood back in the doorway. When they stopped and looked up at me and told me she was gone, all I could think was that the baby had slept through it. How was it possible that Emma wasn’t talking and the baby wasn’t crying?

The silence. I will always remember the silence.

The police took my statement; no one doubted what I said, or what I did. Of course she was old enough to leave in the bath for a moment. Of course you weren’t gone long. Of course, of course. No one doubted. Not Theo, when he came home and held me, broken heart to broken heart. Not the police, not Betsy, not Aunt Caro, no one. And not even Peter, watching from the curb as the ambulance pulled up, watching again as they loaded my daughter’s body inside. His soft face was all startled love, no accusation.

“It was me,” Peter said to the police. “I rang the doorbell urgently and called her away from the bathroom.”

“What time was this, sir?”

“I don’t know—but I rang it five or six times,” he said. “I should only have rung it twice.”

“Must have been important,” the patrolman said.

The glance we exchanged held too much; I dropped my gaze. It was more than either of us could bear.

“His wife is terribly ill,” I said quietly.

Peter’s story provided a worthy distraction; no one needed to know why I’d put the baby in the playpen. No one needed to know what Emma had done. But I know Peter said this for another reason: to take the blame. To make it seem as if it wasn’t my fault.

But no—it was only me.

Because only I know how angry I was. How distracted I was. Only I know how I didn’t turn back to look at her as I whisked the baby out of the room, not even when I heard the tiniest sound, the small squeak that I know now must have been skin slipping against porcelain. The slippery bubbles popping, falling out of her way. The water just a little too high. The moment before the small wave went in her mouth. The moment before she hit her head.

No. I thought the squeak was the duck. I thought she was squeezing her rubber duck.