Lauren Groff: Delicate Edible Birds: And Other Stories

“Pot?” I thought of this, wondering if Pot could have the gall to waltz into some place, open up the display cabinets, hide the birds under her shirt, and waltz on home. “I don’t think so. It’s not like her,” I said, at last.

“Well,” said my mother, her voice breaking. “Who’d have a collection like that?”

And my mother and I looked at one another. There was a long, shivery beat, a car driving by outside, its headlights washing over my mother’s face, then beyond. And then we both ran out coatless into the snow, we ran into the blue twilight as hard as we could up the block, forgetting about our cars in our hurry, we ran past the grand old hospital, over the Susquehanna, we ran fleet and breathless to the Ambassador’s house, and then we burst inside.

The house was extraordinarily hot, the chandelier in the hallway tinkling, and the ugly miniature schnauzer barking and nipping at us. Our shoes slid on the marble floor as we sped into the living room. Bookcases, Persian rugs, leather armchairs — no Pot. We flew through the door, into the library — no Pot. We ran though the hall and stopped short in the dining room.

There, my little sister was dressed in a feather boa and rhinestone starlet glasses, in her undershirt, crouching on an expensive cherrywood chair and looking at a book of birds that was at least as big as she was. She looked up at us, unsurprised, when we came in.

“Hey,” she said. “Mom, Lollie, come here, look at this. This is a first edition Audubon. The Ambassador said I could have it when I’m eighteen.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” my mother said, snapping from her surprise and charging over to her. She ripped the glasses from Pot’s face and pushed her arms into her little cardigan. Pot looked up at her, her face open and wondering.

That’s when the Ambassador appeared in the doorway and said, “Oh, dear. I told Miss Petra here she should have been home hours ago. But you know her and birds,” and he gave a tinkly little laugh.

“You,” I said, charging at him. “What in the fuck are you doing with my sister? Why is she in her undershirt?”

“Pot,” my mother was saying at the same time. “Has he touched you? Has he hurt you? Has he done anything to you?”

The Ambassador blinked, his milky eyes canny. “Oh, my,” he said mildly. “Oh, I’m afraid there’s been a misunderstanding. Pot told me you knew she visited with me.”

“We did not ,” I said. “Are you hurting her?”

Pot gave a little bark of surprise. “Oh, God,” she said. “No. Jeez, you guys. I mean, like. I don’t think he even. You know. Girls,” she trailed off.

We looked at her.

She sighed. “No girls. He doesn’t like them,” she said.

My mother and I looked at the Ambassador, who flushed, ducked his head. “Well,” he said. “Well, Petra. Oh, my. But yes, you are right. And no, I have never touched Petra. She comes here after school, and I give her one object of her choice every week. I have no heirs, you know,” he said. “I have so many beautiful things. Petra is an original. She is a pleasure to talk to. She will one day be something great, I warrant.”

“He lets me wear a boa,” said Pot. “He lets me be a movie star. He knew Grace Kelly. And it’s always hot in here so I have to take off my sweater. It’s always one hundred degrees exactly. I die if I don’t take off my sweater.”

“Yes. I’m afraid I am anemic,” the Ambassador said delicately. “I cannot bear cold.” He looked at our shoes, dripping slush on his fine floors. He said, “Could I make some tea for you before you three ladies return home?”

My mother and I stared at the Ambassador for a very long moment. And then, in shame, we gathered ourselves up. We apologized, we clutched our little Pot tightly to us. And he, ever the statesman, pretended we hadn’t offended him. “These times,” he sighed, escorting us to the door, where the wind had blown a great heap of powder onto the priceless rug. “In these dark days, there is so much distrust in this town. I understand absolutely. You never know quite what to think about people you believe you trust.” Then he shivered, and Pot reached up and squeezed his hand. In the glance between the two there was such adoration that, on the long walk through the dark, I stole small looks at Pot to try to see what exactly he had seen in her, the budding wonder there. The one she would become, to our great wonder.

IT TOOK A LOT OF TIME. Templeton could not heal quickly. There was still much scandal, many divorces, many people leaving town to start over. The dentist I had been to all my life. The school custodian, the principal, the football coach. My postman, the town librarian, my best friend’s brother, the owner of the boatyard, the manager of the Purple Pickle, the CFO of the baseball museum — all divorced or shamed. Brad Huxley sent to military school. The Garbageman moved to Manhattan, though his trucks still rumble by every Thursday morning. And there were many more.

But the newscasters trickled away when a professional football player killed his wife and charged the country with a new angst. The tourists returned as if nothing had happened, and there were motorboats again on the lake, my tearful graduation, the death-by-chocolate binge the night before I drove off to school. The Chens were shipped back to China, and probably set free, and the girls were taken to San Francisco, where most of them decided to make a new life. To heal. I read of their trial in the Freeman ’s Journal, from the safety of my dorm room my freshman year. In the end, time smoothed it all away.

But for those of us who return periodically, there is always a little frisson of darkness that falls over us when we see the candy shop where the Lucky Chow Fun once had been.

ONLY NOW, MANY YEARS LATER, can I imagine what the real tragedy had been. It was not the near-death of my town, though that was where all my sympathy was at the time. I mourned the community that almost buckled under the scandal, for the men in the town, for our women. How we were split. As was my training, I forgot about the poor Lucky Chow Fun girls. Only now, years later, do I dream of them.

ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WERE SEVEN GIRLS. They were girls like any other girls, no cleverer, no more or less wealthy than others in their town. They were pretty as young girls are always pretty, blooming, rose-cheeked, lily-skinned. The factory they worked in was gray, the machines they worked on were gray, the nighttime streets they walked back to their crowded apartments, all gray. But they dreamed in colors, in blues and greens and golds.

One dark night, the girls’ parents closed the doors. Conferred. When they came out, the girls were told: we are sending you to America. There should have been joy in this, but the parents’ smiles were also taut with fear.

How much? the girls asked, trembling.

Enough, the parents responded, meaning: Enough money, enough of your questions.

And the seven girls were taken to the docks. They crawled into boxes and were sealed inside with water and candy and pills. There, with the bones of their knees pressed to the bones of their ribs, hearing the roar of the tanker, they saw nothing in the darkness but more darkness.

They arrived, weak and trembling. They were unpacked. They were taken to the house where they were trained to be quiet, absent, to press themselves to the mattresses and not say a word. In that house, they slowly became ghosts.

The seven ghosts were put then into a van, driven to a cold town on a lake, where nobody knew who they were, nobody cared if they were living or dead, where they cooked silently, cleaned silently, lay on the mattresses, and did not say a word. Men went into their rooms, men left their rooms, other men came in.