She taught Bird to catch fireflies: hands cupped, lemon-lime light flashing in the cracks of his fingers. And then to let them go, spiraling into the night like a dying spark. She taught him to lie still in the grass and watch the neighborhood rabbits nose in the clover, so close his breath stirred the fine white fluff of their tails. She taught him the names of flowers and bugs and birds, to identify the low coo-coo-coo of the mourning dove and the brash scream of the blue jay and the singsong phoebe of the chickadee, clear and fresh as cold water on a summer day. She taught him to pluck honeysuckle blossoms from the vine and touch the end to his tongue: such sticky sweetness. She pulled the shell of a cicada from a pine tree’s trunk, turned it over to show the neat slit down the belly where, having grown, it had wriggled out of its old self into something new.
And she told him stories. Stories about warriors and princesses, poor brave girls and boys, monsters and magicians. The brother and sister who outwitted the witch and found their way home. The girl who saved her swan-brothers from enchantment. Ancient myths that made sense of the world: why sunflowers nod, why echoes linger, why spiders spin. Stories her mother had told her in childhood, before she stopped speaking of such things: how once there had been nine suns, baking the earth to dust, until a brave archer shot them one by one out of the sky. How the monkey king tricked his way into the heavenly garden to steal the peaches of immortality. How once a year, two lovers, forever separated, crossed a river of stars to meet in midair.
Did that really happen? he asked each time, and she smiled and shrugged.
Maybe.
She filled his head with nonsense, with mystery and magic, carving out space for wonder. A haven in their long-ago Eden.
* * *
? ? ?
Enough for today, she says, setting down the pliers.
In part this is selfish. She is drawing out this moment of calm, lingering in the sweet times, before the bitter things she has to confess. But there are things she needs to do before dark, and they will take time.
She lines up the bottle caps she’s completed, tallying them two by two. Fifty-five. Much fewer than on a usual day, but that’s to be expected: wading through the bog of the past slows her hands. Slows everything. Fifty-five little round capsules, brimful with transistors, a watch battery, a small metal disc. And wires, so many wires. Packed down tight into a cap the size of a coin and sealed up tight, simple and primitive and dangerous as a stone. She bundles them all into a plastic shopping bag emblazoned with a yellow smiley face: Thank you for your patronage.
Bird waits while she disappears upstairs into her room, and when she comes back, she has donned a baggy sweatshirt, a folding straw hat with a wide brim. She looks just like the trash-picking women who roam the streets, looking for bottles and cans to salvage.
Stay here, Margaret says. She hesitates, then says: You’ll be fine and I won’t be long.
She says it firmly, trying to convince herself more than him.
Stay inside, she adds, and keep quiet. She loops the bag of bottle caps around her wrist, then lifts a trash bag from the corner. Inside, cans and soda bottles clink as it settles over her shoulder. There’s a sour smell in the air and he can’t tell if it’s the bag, or her clothes, or her.
I’ll be back soon, she says, and heads into the hall.
* * *
? ? ?
After his mother has gone, Bird lifts one of the still-empty caps and twists it between his fingers, his thumbnail tick-ticking along the ridged sides. His mind tick-ticking over what he’s just heard.
It’s difficult to imagine, the world his mother has described. The world of the Crisis, and the world before that. In school, when they’ve studied the Crisis, it has always seemed like a story in a book: something made up to impart a lesson. A cautionary tale. It is different, to hear his mother tell it. To hear how it felt and sounded and smelled, to imagine her in the midst of it. To see the scars etched in her hands from those jagged days.
The mother he remembers coaxed frilly green leaves from the earth and bright globes of vegetables from their vines. She let bees land on her fingers, spread butter on his toast, spun shimmering fairy tales in the darkness. This mother is a different creature entirely, lean and wiry, almost feral, a ravenous look in her eyes. Her hair uncombed and greasy, a harsh animal musk on her skin. It makes it easier to believe the things she’s telling him: the Crisis, her wildness. How she survived. It fills him with apprehension, too, at what she might be doing now. He thinks of his mother, bent over the table, whispering stories to him, the point of the cut wire glinting in her hand. Her mouth set firm and tense in a straight grim line. He thinks of the bottle caps: little time bombs, ready to be detonated at a moment’s notice. Candy-colored bits of shrapnel to perforate the city. She wouldn’t do that, he thinks, but the truth is, he’s not sure. He’s seen the look in his mother’s eyes, a hardness he does not remember from childhood, a razor-edged glint that would slice you if you looked too long.
* * *
? ? ?
When Margaret returns, nothing seems to have changed: the trash bag of cans is still over her shoulder, the plastic bag still dangles from her wrist. She peels off her hat.
Are you all right? she asks. You weren’t scared, while I was gone?
You’ve been gone for three years, Bird thinks, a few hours is nothing. He bites back the words.
I’m fine, he says.
His mother reaches into the plastic bag.
I didn’t know what you liked, she says, so I got some of everything.
Granola bars, nuts, candy, cans of soup, packages of salted almonds, a carton of Minute rice. As if she’d gone aisle by aisle, plucking an item from every shelf. It saddens him and touches him all at once, that she had no idea what he wanted, and that despite not knowing she had still tried so hard to please him.
It’s been such a long time, she says, since—
She stops, looking down at the bounty between them.
I should have brought you real food, she says, embarrassed, and Bird can see the meal she wishes she’d procured: hot and nourishing, balanced and wholesome. Green vegetables, mashed potatoes, corn glossy with butter. Meat sliced thin and fanned out on the white china plate. He understands: it’s been a long time since she’s taken care of anyone, and she’s nearly forgotten how. It’s been so long she’d forgotten such a meal could exist, let alone the world in which someone might eat it.
It’s okay, he says, this is fine. And he means it.
They settle on cups of instant noodles, something to warm their hands. The bottle caps, he sees, are all gone.
When the noodles are ready, she slides a steaming cup toward him along with a plastic fork. They are lemon-yellow and intensely salty, and Bird wolfs them down. On the other side of the coffee table, Margaret pauses, forkless, then slurps hers straight from the cup.
How long have you been living here, Bird asks. He fishes up the last dregs of his noodles.
Almost four weeks. Though living isn’t the right word. This is just temporary, while I get things ready.
This only raises more questions for Bird. Ready, he says, ready for what? What are you doing?
Have some milk, she says, filling a mug and nudging it toward him. It builds strong bones.
She fills one for herself and takes a gulp.
Besides, she adds, it won’t keep. No fridge. So drink up.
From the bag she pulls a can, pries up the ring with a fingernail, pops the lid off. Inside, jewels of fruit glisten.
Dessert, she says, setting the can between them, and this gesture, small as it is, warms him: he has always loved canned peaches and she still remembers this. He spears a golden wedge with his fork.
Do you like school, she asks suddenly. Is your teacher nice? Are the other kids kind to you?
Bird shrugs, a one-shoulder twitch, and scoops up a sliver of peach. It is her fault if they’re not, but he does not want to tell her this. They call me Noah, he says instead. Dad told them to.
His mother pauses. She’s barely eaten any of her noodles, and now she sets her cup aside.
Is he happy, she asks.
Her voice is calm and even, as if she’s asked about the weather. Only her hands give her away: her thumbs press so hard against her fingers that the nails have turned white.
Like most children, Bird has seldom considered whether his father is happy or not. Each morning he gets up and goes to work; he tends to Bird’s needs. Yet as Bird thinks about it, there is a melancholy around him, that hush he’d ascribed to the library but maybe—he realizes—is rooted much deeper.
I don’t know, he says. But he takes good care of me.