Megan Bergman - Birds of a Lesser Paradise - Stories

Aside from a touch of separation anxiety, Zydo was the perfect dog.

Then, one Saturday afternoon, our friends came by in an inflatable dinghy.

Let’s hit the Dockhouse for live music, they said. Climb in. Room for Zydo? I asked.

I worry about his nails, someone said. We’re drunk, and if the boat sinks.

The crowded boat had burst into laughter. The sky was still blue, but we could see the moon. The water made a soft slapping sound against the side of the dinghy.

He’ll be fine on board, Mac said, handing me a fresh beer. There’s nowhere he can go.

The cool aluminum can between my fingers, the reggae our friends played from a portable radio — these things made me believe in okay, in just fine, in letting go.

We’d never left Zydo alone on the boat, and as the dinghy pulled away he lifted his chin to the sky and whined. Some cord in my chest pulled tight. I looked away.

When we returned that night, singing, smelling of beer and sunburned skin, he was gone.

What do you want? my therapist asked.

A baby, I said. I want a baby.

She folded her manicured hands and nodded. It struck me as a learned nod. I’d once heard that women nod their heads to build rapport — even when they don’t agree.

I’d started therapy after Zydo’s accident. My guilt had consumed me. I needed direction. My therapist plumbed me like a well, pulling out fistfuls of trouble, messy tangles of fear and longing.

What prevents you from having a baby? my therapist said.

I’m getting old, I said. My partner is old. And if I can’t take care of my dog, I don’t deserve a baby.

Silence the inner critic, she said. How old are you?

Thirty-nine and a half, I said, but Mac is in his fifties. And I think he’s lukewarm on the idea. He’s not trying very hard.

A few months earlier I’d said to Mac, Wouldn’t it be fun if we had a full house?

You want another dog? Mac had asked. More chickens?

Mac was a good person, a visionary. We’d met at a bar in Duck, discussed our love of dogs, open water, and community agriculture. Our relationship was simple. We kept separate bank accounts. We didn’t fight.

Three years ago, Mac and I had driven into Raleigh towing a yellow ’74 Volkswagen bug that had silkie bantam hens roosting in the backseat and two goats hanging their whiskered chins out the windows. Mac had taken a job as a professor of agriculture at the state college. We settled in a historic neighborhood one block from the prison. A year later, Mac got a government grant to build a community vegetable garden on a plot downtown. It was his dream, but someone had to manage things while he taught, and that person was me.

I like my simple life, Mac often said. I don’t need anything more than what I’ve got.

In vitro might be a possibility, my therapist said.

Yeah, I thought. A ten-thousand-dollar, pain-in-the-ass possibility.

When I returned from my appointment, I found Sam baffled by the tool sign-out sheet and food records. She tossed her bangs aside as she scanned the clipboard.

Skinny Meatloaf? she asked. One-Eyed Gloria Gaynor?

When the customers won’t give you a name, we name them after musicians they resemble, I said. There is One-Armed Snoop Dogg, Phil Collins with a Mustache, and so on.

Sam wrinkled her nose and brushed soil from her jeans.

It’s pretty obvious who’s who, I said.

I don’t know, Sam said, rubbing her lower back.

I worried she was looking for a way out. Assistants never lasted long at Mac’s. From what I could tell, they liked talking about the job more than working it.

It isn’t meant as a sign of disrespect, I said. It’s just our way of tracking assets.

I signed out a hoe to Neil Diamond. The strawberry patch could use weeding, I told him.

I had to remind myself I was dealing with people, not characters. Our Neil Diamond really looked like Neil Diamond, wily eyebrows, thin lips, and all — but there was no swagger in his comb-over. Tiny Hanson told me Neil Diamond had a daughter in town who wouldn’t see him, that he paced her neighborhood on weekends, hoping to catch her on the way to her car.

Wife left him long time ago, Tiny said. Girl probably ain’t even his.

I turned to Sam.

By the way, I said. There are brown spiders that scare the bejeezus out of me in the strawberry patch. Jumpers. Wear gloves over there.

This isn’t. she said, wrinkling her nose in disgust. Ugh.

Sam stared at her hands and began to clean beneath her nails.

Waste of time, I said, hoping I wasn’t scaring her off.

The soil had burrowed into the lines of my hands the first year of the garden. When Mac and I went out to a nice dinner, I painted my nails deep red to hide the black earth.

Sam’s hair was shiny and her skin was smooth. I found myself thinking about her ripe ovaries. What are you, twenty-five? I thought. A hundred and thirty pounds? You’d be easy to knock up. You have all this time.

I wanted to borrow her body for the weekend.

A handful of customers, or as the head of the neighboring condominium home owners’ association called them, “vay-grints,” had gathered for work and scattered themselves across the four garden quadrants. Buildings that weren’t quite skyscrapers cast shadows across the plants. The bus station spilled over with people on their way to work. Two blocks away, Not Grandmaster Flash played the Love Boat theme on trumpet.

Saint Charles tugged at my sleeve.

I been vomicking again, he said.

I dug into my purse and fished out Tums. Sam stood next to me, eyes on the compost.

Don’t eat out of the trash if you don’t have to, I told Charles.

He crushed the tablets with his teeth and sauntered off to tend the kale.

When we got the grant money, this place was covered in cigarette butts, I said to Sam. And now.

I surveyed the garden. The roots of old, knotted oaks bulged underneath the cement sidewalk. The trees’ shade was a godsend when the summer heat began to bear down. The early crops looked healthy and Tiny had done a good job picking up the Styrofoam cups and cigarettes that littered the place each morning. Mac had fashioned cone-shaped trellises out of driftwood for the newly planted peas. A clump of azaleas lined the Blount Street entrance.

This isn’t what I expected, Sam said.

I lied. It will be if you give it time, I said. Hard work can turn any old dump into a fertile paradise.

Two fishermen had found Zydo just before nightfall, disoriented, paddling out to the horizon. At first, they said, they could not believe what they saw.

We thought it was a porpoise, one said.

Zydo had been dehydrated and confused. He’d snapped when they lifted him into their boat.

Desperate and lonely, he had swum a mile into the open sea.

That evening I returned home from the garden with a headache and a bag of early cucumbers.

I don’t think Sam is going to work out, I said.

Mac slid his reading glasses down on his nose and laid the newspaper on the kitchen table.

I sat cross-legged on the kitchen floor and scratched Zydo’s stomach. His back legs twitched when my nails found a good spot.

Pregnancy test was negative this morning, I said.

I felt my bottom lip begin to quiver.

Don’t cry, Mac said.

It’s karmic, you know, I told Mac. We’ve done this really bad thing with Zydo, and now.

You’re paranoid, he said, rising to rub my shoulders. And superstitious.

He began washing the cucumbers. I pressed my face into Zydo’s coat.

I wondered who knew me better — my partner or my dog, who sat up and shoved his nose into the crook of my neck, resting his chin on my collarbone, as if to say There, there, there.