Noy Holland - What begins with bird

You see she’s leaving.

I used to like it — the feeling that my wife was always leaving, that any moment she would pick up and go. I would hear her drive off, I wouldn’t stop her. After a time I would find some picture of her and sit with it in my chair. All true, every word — I would speak to her, as though to her, a grown man, a fool. I could make myself feel very sexy, and wanting. I wanted her, the way she tucked her toes against my ankles when we loved, such a simple act, as small as that — I could summon every foolishness, every hoarded sweetness — the near-blue skin of her ankle, nicked — the seaside, I pictured, the tidewashcd shore — dewy and silken and pale, the skin, where the elastic of her sock pulled tight, ribbed, an imprint, the tide recedes, you wake alone in the glare of love. I was undone by it, wished to be, easily, in passing. I rubbed out the print, smoothed it away — would, would, never had: a missed statistic: the incidence of men in their kitchens goading themselves to tears. Sobbing in their rockers. Come on back, baby. Come home .

It’s me!

Your angel, your prince. Dear old breadstick .

They ought to fix that door. We’ll all have dreams of it. Hooked shut. Then the stutter and wheeze.

A woman embarked. Stealing away through the wintry mix, we can’t stop her. Just as well. We will stay and speak of her.

She wanted sunshine. The very best for her boy, fresh air for her boy. A little sunshine. Ions, photons, vitamin D. Wanted heat. To be limbered and quiet and slowed. Be his mother. His cooling shade, soft, becalmed. The slow marvels, she would give him, the glistening ant, the lizard’s coppery pouch; mirage puddled silver in our road, the box turtles gliding above. Her wild boy singing in a secret tongue, tongue of wind, tongue of dog.

He would have collections: feathers, coins, the crisp skin of snakes. The beak of a bird, a tree frog. A June bug on a thread. The dream of a life she remembered. The owl in the mimosa, the armadillo asleep in the shadows — you could smell them beneath the house.

She set him down. For an instant. Buzzing heat, lakelight, the drowse. The wag of the brittled palmetto. She moved off, a thinking woman. Thought: sinkhole, felon, dengue, flood. Not likely. But what of the limb, the pebble thrown, the interstellar iceball? She thought of the are: velocity: mass: the mathematics of the cataclysmic. Perhaps the woodstork. The kid with a stick, the hand of God. The orangutang sprung from the zoo. All that. Still she moves off.

He isn’t far, she thinks, she could hear him. She can almost even see him. Should he need her. It’s just an instant, just a couple, three minutes she needs just to think, she isn’t far, really, just to think some, he’s in his bucket, rocks a bit but the ground is soft, he may be sleeping, yes, likely, lucky for her, she can think now, counts the minutes-three, four, loses track — and so she milks it, another minute gone, the list in her head, she will turn back, should, he must be sleeping, poor child, the breeze from the lake, coolish today, the day pleasing, what is left of it, was, you mustn’t blame her. She hears an owl in the trees and turns away, back — spooked — I never liked it, you hear people say they like it — the hoot, the trill, old owlers, out in the cold, a boy at your heels, and here it comes, the great swoop, quiet as a cloud passing.

She went back then. Her boy was shrieking. Strapped in. Just a baby. She had set him down on a mound of fire ants. Like to carry him off, sure you’ve seen them. Like on the specials? Just the tiniest things but they swarm.

She came sobbing home back through the trees to me, his bucket swinging against her legs.

We got him hosed off. You couldn’t touch him. He stuck every place you touched him.

Those little blisters everywhere broke open and they ran. Fire ants, the heat of the day, you see the logic. We got him strapped in and sedated. Bound for the icy north.

Move along. That’ll fix it. Build a rock wall, saw the trees down. Mop and mow. Now you’ve got her, you’ve got her, she’s gone.

The nights were quiet. Cold already and quiet. Sundown, sunup. Not a bird, not a frog.

He crawled, he ran. He had a birthday. Said, “Papa, I am four almost. And after this I will be six and after that I will be ten and when I become fifteen I’ll drive and I will drive so fast and then I will be twenty. Then I will have one leg. Old people only have one leg and then I will be dead, Papa, and you will come and save me. I will be in a pond.”

We get out of the car, snow coming down, we’re rushing. He says, “Wait, Papa. I want to feel the cold.”

It’s like a knife at your throat, to love them. It is like gathering leaves in the wind.

We want the best for them both, we’re like anyone.

The smell of home, the dog at the foot of the stairs. Your wife asleep, your children. Fire humming in the stove.

Or something else. And else again. We think in pictures. The dream of a life we remember and slept through while we lived.

The velvety air. The way the trees crooked down — how easy he would find it to climb them. All boy. A way to think of him. I think of the lake through the trees where we lived, where she lived as a girl, old Angel Oak, the swinging vines, shrimp you could buy on the roadside. Boiled peanuts. Old coot in the steam on the median, his boy fishing the grate at his knees — a string, a hook, a giving stick — happy with that, horsing, we were happy enough to see them.

We could take a week, go see them. Get some sun on our bumpy bottoms, yellow in our hair. Light out.

It’s been a winter, don’t you say? I would say it. We came out of our house to come down here, our car was gone to the roof in snow. Still we managed, we two.

It’s a distance. Quite a drive.

She pulls her eyelashes out. We keep our hats on. She pulls her hair out strand by strand. That’s life, I guess, funny workings, not to fret. It’s just I’m

SIT DOWN.

We all have them — little tics and such, how our minds work. Mine.

I’m not an ogre.

Turn’s up, I got you.

Give a hand.

You are very kind, you few, our small tribe, it’s just us. The last listeners.

A warm welcome. Come on, Amherst.

I give you Akron.

Give up the post.

I’m gone home, going home.

He likes to lie on my back.

You know the specials? We’ll watch the specials: the horned; the frilled; the mighty bird-hipped. Ornithomimus, Avimimus. The theropods, the thecodonts. The king tyrant, T. rex.

Boy, his heart really goes.

Allosaurus, Staurikosaurus.

Little god, boy heart.

Liopleurodon — what eats sharks.

You ought to hear him.

Yangchuanosaurus, Megalosaurus, Tarbosaurus bataar.

Velociraptor: the swift.

Troodon: the wounding one.

All the old dead meat eaters.

He is up as soon as he sees the snow and moving, opening doors and faucets, checking the drive for the daily — the blue bag, bound, the T-town news. It isn’t out there.

It’s only inches. He could sweep his lawn clean in an hour — there is that much, that little, snow. But, watch: the will call it a snow day — stupid seedy two-bit town, sorry one-plow county. Close the roads, the schools. Pipes will freeze while people sleep.

But who can sleep?

He wants to wake her. He switches on the Ronco-matic — a spluttering of something, a mushy, tinny roar. She will sleep all day if he lets her — breathing, indolent thing — or lie in bed and read. He puts on opera.

He walks back to their room, raises the blind, stands by the bed, watches. He turns the intercom up a little. His wife rolls over. The flowered sheets — hers, too busy for him, tawdry — twist across her ribs.