Megan Bergman - Birds of a Lesser Paradise - Stories

I drove into Camden through inn-lined streets. The town’s window boxes were full of late-summer flowers and creeping Jennie. The leaves on the trees were tinged with yellow, a suggestion of the bright foliage to come. Chalkboards advertising lobster rolls and bisques flanked restaurant doors.

I remembered the second thing she’d told me, her hand placed on the small of my back: When a calf is born, she said, the mother pushes her baby above the surface of the water to breathe.

I’d rolled my eyes then, at her motherhood propaganda. Now it made me want to cry. Everything did, for that matter.

Back at the cottage, I avoided calling Malachi. Instead, I daydreamed about marrying into a big French family, and what it would be like to eat dinner with them, lamb on our forks, babies at our feet. I imagined a man who’d fill the roles Malachi didn’t want.

But finding a new man was out for now. Funny how pregnancy validates and neutralizes your sexuality at the same time.

I made a tomato sandwich and brought it to Grandma B’s desk, a small walnut heirloom pushed into a sunny nook at the top of the steps. I opened the drawers and sifted through paper clips, expired oatmeal coupons, and stickers until I found a stack of letters, roped and set aside. I slid my finger underneath the rope and tried to open the first envelope. It was postmarked 1976, Charlottesville, Virginia — my mother writing home from college. The lip had refastened itself; I gently pried it open and pulled the letter out.

Dear Mom, it said. My roommate is allergic to cats, but I’m feeding one on the back stoop anyway. I miss having cats around. I’m homesick — for the cats, you, Maine.

The next letter was written when she’d moved to Steuben with my father and I was little, maybe four.

I took Lauren to her first swimming lesson today. She hated it, wouldn’t put her face underwater or blow bubbles, and kept pulling the front of her swimsuit down. God bless her; I love that little face. She tells me she’s afraid of “shawks” in the water.

I read a few more.

How do you explain Boy George to a six-year-old?

The flea beetles have taken the kale this year. What do you recommend?

Grandma B had saved them all. Though Mom had not lived with her since college, their intimacy never faltered. The letters were full of play-by-plays, carefully selected anecdotes in familiar handwriting.

I closed the desk, gently wrapping the red rope around the letters, leaving them the way I found them, the way I knew someone else would find them when Grandma B died, or her house was sold. I walked to my mother’s old bedroom, sat on her bed, and called Malachi. He answered on the first ring.

Lauren, he said. He sounded spent, his voice hushed. What have you—

I haven’t made a decision yet, I said, but I’m thinking about going through with it.

You can’t, he said. Listen to me. It doesn’t make any sense, bringing a child into this world.

I can’t live my life waiting to die, I said.

What, he said, you’re pro-life now?

This isn’t a political act, I said. It’s a vote of confidence.

It’s selfish, Malachi said. Grossly selfish.

It’s like something within my biological makeup wants me to have a child, I said, and maybe I trust that more than—

Than who? Malachi said. It’s about good decision making, and I can help you—

I’m a thirty-year-old woman with a steady income and supportive family, I said. I’m not ready to admit the world is dying. I can’t go on believing that.

Believe it, Malachi said. Another ice shelf the size of—

Look, I said. I’m plenty scared. You don’t have to pile it on.

I can’t believe you’re doing this, he said. He was beginning to choke up. I’ll call you back, he said, and hung up the phone.

I lay back on my mother’s bed and cried until it felt like a needless thing to do. Her vintage Nancy Drews lined the wooden shelves. Her blue and red ribbons from years of horse shows were still pinned to the walls. A Fleetwood Mac concert poster hung from pushpins over the bed. Something in Stevie Nicks’s eyes told me sex was better in the seventies, when people weren’t waiting for the world to end.

It was almost nine o’clock, and the house had darkened considerably. Energy conscious, I’d neglected to turn on the lights. My back and head ached.

I called home. My father answered. Hi, Daddy, I said. Can I speak to Mom?

One minute, he said. I think she’s outside with the dog. How are you, honey?

Dad was infinitely reliable, the quintessential father. The type who sent me flowers on my birthday, called regularly, kept my elementary-school art framed in his office. At that moment, hearing his voice, I wanted to be ten again, ignorant about the world, safely ensconced in my backyard watching Mom garden and Dad grill burgers, worrying about spelling homework or riding the bus. Or hiking with them in the Camden woods, riding in the backseat on a drive down the winding Kancamagus Highway with public radio on.

I’m okay, I said. Just okay.

“Just okay” sounds like a conversation for Mom. I’ll yell for her. Thisbe, he shouted. Thisbe . Lauren’s on the phone and she’s just okay .

Lauren? Mom said a moment later. Her voice was high, on alert, already leaping to conclusions. What’s wrong?

I’m at Grandma’s house, I said. I need to talk to you about something. I hate to ask, but can you come down?

I’ll be there in the morning, she said.

I fell asleep in Mom’s old bed. I woke hours later to the whoop-whooping of coyotes. The harvest moon was low in the sky, and the entire yard was gray but illuminated. Looking at the moon, I felt something ancient and indefensible stirring within the pit of my body.

I woke up when Mom walked through the front door of the house at six a.m., meaning she’d left home at four. I heard her clogs on the wooden stairs, the familiar rhythm of her steps that used to wake me on Saturday mornings when I wanted nothing but to sleep in.

Before I could get up, she was there at the bedroom door. She wore yoga pants and a thick sweater.

My eyes were tired. I sat up; she came to the edge of the bed, ran her thin hand over my hair, and hugged me. We had not been this way in years. Living apart, we talked frequently but with busy ambivalence; we saw each other on holidays. Our intimacy was rusty, but only for a moment. Mom’s embrace tightened. She knew something was wrong.

She pulled away. Our eyes were wet.

Thanks for coming, I said.

Mothers, I believe, intoxicate us. We idolize them and take them for granted. We hate them and blame them and exalt them more thoroughly than anyone else in our lives. We sift through the evidence of their love, reassure ourselves of their affection and its biological genesis. We can steal and lie and leave and they will love us.

I’ll put tea on while you get dressed, she said. I brought muffins.

I pulled on a pair of sweatpants and brushed my hair, which had gotten long, because Malachi liked it that way. I headed downstairs. Mom handed me a warm muffin and a thermos.

I’m five weeks pregnant, I said, leaning over the kitchen island.

She took a deep breath and nodded. She wrapped her arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. For minutes we stood that way, her warmth the most comforting thing I’d felt in days.

And Malachi? she said. Is he supportive?

No, I said, closing my eyes to keep the tears from spilling out.

Are you going to keep it? she asked.

I don’t know, I said.

I drove myself home from the airport. Dulles was black and wet from a fall rainstorm; street and landing lights made disconcerting signals in the dark. Malachi, I knew, would be hosting his weekly EWU meeting at a friend’s place, a run-down subdivided Victorian house on the edge of Adam’s Morgan.