Megan Bergman - Birds of a Lesser Paradise - Stories

Golf carts lined one end of the parking lot, which was filled with expensive SUVs and luxury sedans.

Gray was sitting on the curb outside the door, legs outstretched, smoking a cigarette and drinking whisky from a flask.

The spring night held a chill. Gray offered his sport coat.

You want to share some of that cake? he asked.

I sat down next to him and handed him the ramekin.

Dig in, I said. Fingers are fine.

Gray was tall and lean and kept his long hair pulled back in a ponytail. He was wearing what looked to be a pair of wing tips.

He saw me looking at his feet.

An old pair of golf shoes I took the cleats out of, he said, shoveling chocolate into his mouth.

Whenever I dine at country clubs, I said, which isn’t often, I only eat dinner rolls and dessert.

I know what you mean, Gray said. They think they can slap nuked cafeteria food on nice china and fool us all.

Why are you here? I asked.

I’m a bow hunter, he said.

I pictured him in a loincloth, jogging through the forest with a handmade bow and feathered arrow.

We passed the flask of whisky back and forth until both of us were drunk.

A friend once told me there were two kinds of urban naturalists. The McDonald’s-eating semihoarder animal activist, and the armchair conservationist with bloodlust.

I have to tell you something, I said.

He bent down close as if he was going to kiss me.

You’re the enemy, I said, laughing.

Maybe not, he had said. We want the same thing, right? Ducks?

We made out behind the bushes. I felt like a traitor.

Emory led me by the forearm to the basement of the suburban shepherd’s farmhouse. The brick walls were lined with skulls.

We stood in silence, taking it in. There were at least fifty sheep skulls with open sockets, worn molars, and gently curved mandibles stacked in neat rows.

The smell was too much.

I need to go outside, I said, pushing open the basement door.

The bright sun made my eyes water. There were sheep tightly packed in the small backyard pen. Some dragged themselves across the grass, their hooves so destroyed they were forced to walk on their knees. You could count ribs on each of them like the bars of a birdcage.

The ground was littered with Styrofoam and paper bags from the fast-food joints across the street.

My first reaction was to throw up, my second to cry. I pictured the slow torture of the suburban shepherd in his own basement.

Two malnourished lambs licked each other’s coats in the fence corner.

These are things we need to see, Emory said, wiping her eyes. To remind us.

Show me someone who can explain her first love, my mother once said.

I tried to explain Gray to myself. Here I was, in love with someone who killed animals for sport. We were like people of opposing religions, but I wanted it to work.

He was passionate about his hobbies. He spoke beautifully of his love for rare tree species, his need to see a Lost Franklinia and protect the Carolina silverbell. I was with Gray the afternoon he saw his first mountain camellia. It was like watching a man find God.

Gray was competent — he could cook with nothing but a multitool at his disposal, start fires, do taxes, hang pictures. He cleaned his aging mother’s house, made her lasagna and eggplant parmesan, let me buy junk food and keep it on a shelf only he could reach. Gray knew what days I needed chocolate biscotti doled out.

He had a fascinating collection of stolen bowling shoes and golf cleats, and tolerated my fear of predator cats, alligators, bears. He was an alpha presence in the house, an armed companion in the woods, a voice of reason in my chaotic life. Bottom line: Gray made me feel safe in a way I never had, and I did not want to give that up.

I’m asking you to dinner, Gray said when he called that night.

Even after I’d showered, I felt as if I smelled of sheep.

Gray was waiting for me at the bar, his wing-tipped, cleatless golf shoes propped on the stool rung.

I kissed him on the cheek.

How are you? he asked.

I burst into tears. I could not decide if it was because of the sheep or my empty bed at home.

I let Gray jump to conclusions.

Come here, he said, bringing me close. We can work this out. He gave me his glass of wine and ordered another.

After dessert, Gray walked with me to my car and got in the passenger side.

Are you sure? I asked.

I drove home with his hand on my knee, then up my skirt. The neighborhood was quiet — it seemed as if everyone else knew something we didn’t, that there was a reason to be in bed with the lights off after dinner.

When we entered the front door, the dogs greeted Gray with gusto, rubbing their muzzles on his thigh, leaning into his legs, whining.

I missed you, too, he said, crouching down to let them kiss his face.

The feral cats remained hidden. I imagined them still as garden statues underneath the couch, ears clipped, nails carved into the wooden floor.

We went to bed with the door closed. Gray undressed me, rubbed my shoulders.

I want to come back, he said.

Prince began whining at the door.

Gray moved his hands lower, began kissing my neck.

Prince paced the hallway. His cart had a squeaky wheel. The sound was impossible to ignore.

Gray pulled away. I can’t, he said in frustration.

He flipped over on his side and put a pillow over his head.

Lying back, I noticed I had wet dog food underneath my fingernails. I’d heard from friends what infants did to your sex life. I imagined disabled dogs did the same.

Prince barked and rattled the doorknob with his nose.

I’m coming, I said.

When she was alive, my mother had a compulsive need to exhibit porcelain Christmas villages year-round. When I would visit on Sundays she’d make hot tea and show me the new figurines she’d acquired. Over time she placed cider stands in front of city hall; frosted fir trees, stray dogs, and hobos by the train station. I hated them all — houses with glowing windows, children with cherub cheeks, plastic geese on the frozen pond, men in top hats gazing sentimentally at petite wives.

When she passed away, she willed them to me. All ten thousand dollars’ worth. As if she was saying to me: Live like this.

I sold them immediately and used the money for a down payment on a new house — I needed more room. I knew it was wrong, using her money that way, funding a lifestyle she did not condone.

You’d give those dogs your own bed, she’d once said, not realizing it was true.

Mom had her villages, Gray his leaves. The dogs, the raccoon, the chinchilla, the feral cats — these were mine.

When I was younger I grieved for birds nesting in the sickly dogwoods outside McDonald’s, the wet deer carcasses left to rot on the side of the road. I thought twice about killing bugs in the house, opting instead to usher them out the door on sheets of paper.

One afternoon after we first met, Emory hit a bird with her car and called me.

Talk me through this, she said.

Can it be saved? I asked.

No, she said. It’s suffering.

She was standing over it in a parking lot, her car running. Run over it again, I said. You have to.

She gunned her engine.

We cried together, hysterically. I had finally found someone who understood me.

If I come back, Gray said on the phone, the raccoon, the chinchilla, and the cats have to go. The dogs can sleep downstairs.

I’ll have to think about it, I said. I can’t make promises.

At the shelter we stared coolly at people dropping off dogs, had no sympathy for those who didn’t trust cats around the baby or whose boyfriends were allergic to dogs.

But I missed Gray. I missed his shoe collection in the closet. I missed watching him brush his hair, as if I was seeing something I shouldn’t. He said he felt effeminate styling his hair in front of me, pulling it back into a slick ponytail. I missed his body in the bed, the way he slept with one arm tossed across my back.