The Bird House A Novel

June 22, 2010



Tinsley didn’t return my phone calls this week about seeing Ellie, so I called Tom at work. I didn’t mention that his wife had threatened me and started doing her own private investigative work. No; I didn’t “tell on her”; I simply inquired about his health, his new diet, and his work schedule (fine, fine, and not too busy) and mentioned that I’d like to take Ellie swimming at the club. We agreed he’d drop her off on Saturday, and he did.

Ellie bounded up the porch stairs first, bursting in, tossing a navy backpack onto the floor. “Grandma, I have something to show you!”

“You do?”

“Ellie,” Tom said slowly, “let me talk to Grandma first.”

Her face fell, but I motioned toward the jigsaw puzzle set up in the living room and she took the hint.

“What is it, Tom?”

“Mom, you still see okay, driving and everything?”

“Of course, why?”

“Well, Tinsley seemed to think—”

“Tinsley should mind her own business!”

“Mom, that’s not fair. She’s just being protective, being helpful, and she, well, she seemed to think you shouldn’t be driving anymore. We spoke this morning about it and you have to admit, you’re getting more forgetful, and well, maybe it’s time to start thinking about—”

“You tell Tinsley,” I said, my breath gone ragged as I wagged my finger in his face, “that I see better than she does. You tell her that I see all kinds of things. She’d be amazed by what I see. You tell her that. And tell her that what I don’t see, the remote-control cameras in my backyard do!”

“Cameras?”

I waved him away. “It’s a little security system.”

“Okay,” he said slowly. “But—you are getting your eyes checked every year, and going to the doctor?”

“Yes,” I said firmly. I actually couldn’t recall being to the eye doctor in years, but that means nothing. I could have been there last week, I suppose.

“Tom,” I said, clearing my throat, “I can’t help thinking that all this worrywart nonsense with Tinsley has something to do with what happened to your sister long ago. And since we never really speak of it, I thought perhaps, well, that I should clear the air.” I swallowed hard and tried to conjure up as much as I could remember. Would I even be able to answer his most basic questions?

He shrugged. “It’s okay, Mom, I know all about it.”

“You do?”

“Dad told me everything, a long time ago.”

“What did he tell you, dear?”

“He said there was an accident in the tub and that was why you never took a bath anymore. And why you were a little protective of me, growing up.”

“Is that… all he said?”

“Well, he said if I ever had questions, to just ask. He said it was okay to talk about it with him, but not with you.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Tom. That was probably unfair of him, darling.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“Did you ever… wonder about her, though? What your relationship was like when you were little?”

He shrugged. “I was just a baby, Mom.”

“Yes,” I said softly. “But she was your sister. Your big sister.”

He nodded and the silence between us was awkward. There was so much I wanted to say and couldn’t.

“Sometimes”—he cleared his throat—“I think I remember her face. I know that’s impossible.”

“I don’t think that’s impossible,” I said softly.

“It’s probably from photos, not from actual memory.”

“You used to smile at her when I fed you in the kitchen.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I always fed you first, before the rest of us, and that made you happy. It’s as if you were flaunting your luck.”

“It must have been terrible. For you and Dad, I mean.”

“No one ever expects to lose a child,” I said. “Not that way.” My voice trailed off. I couldn’t tell one child how I had turned my back on another. How I had walked away. It didn’t matter that everywhere I look I see the same cold pivot: on street corners, in restaurants and shops. Some days it seems so many people are capable of doing exactly what I did. And then there are the other days.

“Well, it’s okay, Mom. I never shared many of the details with Tinsley. Just told her the basic facts.”

“You didn’t? Why?”

“Come on, Mom,” he said and smiled, kissing me lightly on the cheek. “She worries so much already.”

I swallowed hard. This was the heavy burden of secrets: the longer you held them, the larger they grew, the more people they entangled. I’d never asked him to keep quiet, but because I had, he had.

“Tom, it’s not fair for you—”

“It’s okay, Mom,” he said, his eyes clear and open. “Not everybody needs to know everything.”

I supposed he was right; hadn’t I lived my life the exact same way? Meting out details here and there, never telling anyone the whole story?

I hugged him good-bye, and as I watched him leave, I felt immensely proud. His wife was a damned adulterous fool but at least he listened to her. At least he protected her. Who wouldn’t love a husband like that? His thoughtfulness reminded me of Peter, and I wondered if it had passed from Peter’s gentle hands, to mine, to Tom’s.

Ellie ran in and grabbed the backpack.

“What did you want to show me?”

“All I can say is, it’s too bad you’re not in school, Grandma.”

“Really? Why is that?”

“Because this would make a great Generations project.”

“What would?”

Her eyes widened with excitement. “Jay Stephens!”

She pulled out papers and laid them across the floor. I leaned over and saw that they were printed from a website that had a photo of a tree on it.

“What on earth is this?”

“StephensFamilyTree.com.”

I blinked. Surely she had to be kidding—the family had their own website? I’d heard of friends using the internet to fill in some genealogy here and there, but this struck me as dreadfully showy. What kind of people were these?

“Stephens is an awfully common name.”

“No, Grandma, he’s right here, Jay Stephens of Greenwich. And when you click on him it goes to his history, see? It says he used to be a lawyer, and then started writing articles later on. And here, I found one of the articles he wrote when I searched some magazines. This one is about Nantucket, and how even though he had his heart broken there in 1936, he still loves visiting.”

“Dear god,” I said.

“Don’t worry, he got married to someone else. They had one daughter, named Kingsley. I found her picture.”

She pulled the last sheet of paper out of her satchel. Ellie’s face was bright as she shared her discovery, but it gave no sign that she recognized what was wildly, sickeningly apparent to me. That this Kingsley person and I looked like we could be sisters. I squinted and looked at it more closely. Her hair was darker, salt and pepper to my salt, but the eyes and lips were the same shape, the cheekbones equally prominent.

I sat down weakly and the chair creaked beneath me.

“Isn’t it cool? I found them!”

“Yes, Ellie, it’s marvelous,” I said quietly.

“And here’s the best part, Grandma—Jay Stephens is alive!”

“What?”

“He’s ninety-four, and lives in a nursing home in Weston, Connecticut.”

She said she’d printed everything out for me and told me I could use my computer to contact them, if I wanted to. I said I’d think about it, not wanting to appear ungrateful. Dear Ellie; she had no idea what she’d done! I told her to gather her things while I tried valiantly to gather my thoughts. I’d always thought I resembled my mother; that was one of the things I imagined drove my father away. But perhaps that wasn’t what drove my father away at all. No. How much did he know about the Stephens family? And how often had he tried to tell me?

“Grandma?” Ellie said uncertainly.

“Yes, dear?”

“Do you want me to get you a towel?”

I pressed my palms against my forehead. “I’ll get one. I’ll just be a minute.”

I went into the bathroom and splashed my face with cold water, but it didn’t help. The hot tears came and I let them fall, spilling into the sink, mingling with the cold water that was still running.

Finally I shut off the tap. In the mirror my eyes looked red, my skin flushed. It could be mistaken, I hoped, for a happy face. I smiled at myself, testing it out. It would have to do.

I managed to carry on, to get to the club, to find a couple of lounge chairs. There were several other little girls Ellie knew at the snack bar—someone from school, someone from gymnastics—and after she and I had played a few games of catch with a foam ball, she wanted to swim with her friends and I gladly let her. I watched them glide through the water in formation, like dolphins. I pulled a chair closer to the deep end and let the sun wash over me. Let it go, Ann, I told myself. You don’t have to do anything with it; just let it go.

When we got home I asked Ellie if she’d go up to the attic with me to find the picture of my mother with the emerald ring. She said she’d try, and mentioned that she was pretty sure it was in a blue album, on the right-hand side of the page.

There were four blue albums; we took two each and combed through them. It was warm in the attic, and the smell of chlorine made it feel small and close.

“Here it is, Grandma,” Ellie said, and I leaned in.

A medium shot of my mother and Aunt Caro, their arms looped around each other’s neck. My mother looks woozy, almost drunk; her hand rests across her sister’s shoulder with the fingers elegant but loose, like a dancer’s. The ring is too big; it tilts toward the camera, and catches a small ray of light. That’s why Tinsley noticed it, I hoped, the light. In the background, the big Nantucket house was awash in roses, petals overtaking gray shingles.

It was easy to imagine Jay Stephens taking this picture; taking it while my father was working and my mother was summering on the island with her sister. Her sister who knew everything, knew why the ring was inscribed “rose,” knew why I’d never seen my mother wear it before.

“Thank you, Ellie,” I said quietly.

“Your mother was very beautiful,” Ellie said solemnly, as if that explained it, as if all beautiful women knew the whole coded story: what was possible, what could happen, just by breathing your loveliness into the air.





January 24, 1968

eggs and coffee



THE OTHER COUPLES IN THE class are not exactly our type—they’re rather flashy and loud, and all seem to be from a neighborhood down by the river—but I don’t think that should inhibit our enjoyment. After all, we don’t have to socialize with them, just share the dance floor and the dance teacher. But the look on Theo’s face when he walks in twenty minutes late and sees the woman in the too-tight orange dress giggling with her partner—he sits next to me wearing his distaste like a coat of arms.

Yes, the studio is a little run down and the teacher looks as if he’s been around the block a few times, but we agreed to try, Theo and I. To try to learn to have fun again. To learn to live.

When it’s our turn to learn the steps, it’s clear we would be better off waltzing or even jitterbugging than learning the Watusi. Theo raises his arms halfheartedly and I swing mine as high as I can, given the scarring on my right side. After a few minutes he tries to mimic the teacher, but he looks like a contortionist. I smile at the ridiculousness of it all, and Theo can’t help it, he smiles back.

When the song ends we settle down on our end of the bench and he puts his arm around me. I’m warm from the dancing, and his arm is too hot, but I leave it there, I let him hold me anyway.

Afterward, at home, mistaking the warmth for tenderness, he asks if it isn’t time to start thinking about another baby. I tell him I’m not ready, and he nods.

Theo wants a baby, and I just want a husband.