Megan Bergman - Birds of a Lesser Paradise - Stories

The rabbit was half dead, but not because of Sam. He had silvery blisters in his ears. He was mite-ridden, missing an eye. Soon, he’d be caught by a cat or a hawk. He shook in my arms.

Gray would tell me to snap its neck. He’d shown me once with a squirrel he’d run over in the driveway.

I placed the rabbit underneath the porch with water and food. I was the shepherd of a strange flock.

You are looking for things to put between us, Gray had said when I told him about the sheep.

Maybe it was true.

Was there room for me in the porcelain village? My run-down house, my dogs, my sheep? Would my figurine be coated in hair?

The sheep huddled in the corner of the yard, leaned into each other, suspicious of my stones, Salli’s strange gait, Prince’s squeaking cart.

I went inside to top off my vodka and lemonade. I thought of Gray’s leaves in the drawer of my bedside table and went upstairs to retrieve them. The raccoon had nested in my pillow. He looked so gentle, so asleep, that I did not shoo him away. I took the album outside and sat on the back steps — the one-eyed rabbit underneath me, the dogs beside me, the sheep watching me with their slivered eyes.

People always say: Don’t give up so easily on things you love. But you can, and I did.

I ripped the leaves from the album’s pages and threw them into the air like confetti.

Feast, I said to the sheep.

And eventually, they did.

2050

My father was ninety-one and senile but insisted he could still look for love. The dating service paired him with Susan — an octogenarian feminist who listed skee ball and container gardening as her primary hobbies. She was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s and chewed nicotine gum when she talked. They’d been dating a month, and when he was lucid, Dad was smitten.

Companionship of any kind is important, the dating service director assured me on the eve of their first date. The couple comes to the Senior Center and we serve them a steak dinner followed by tea and cheesecake on the center terrace. Love keeps them in the present; a relationship is a tether to the future.

Help appealed to me; keeping Dad in the present was a lot of work for one person. It meant constantly exercising his memory — note cards, photographs, detailed answers to his repeated questions. Each month I could feel him slipping further into dementia; our conversations were his life raft. I quizzed him over meals, moving from our shared history to details from the morning: What did you have for breakfast today? Who won the US Open this week? What was the name of my first dog? Explain to me the design of your homemade water filter, the one you patented in 2025.

Dad muddled through explanations but always excelled at questions directed at his earlier years — it was the last ten years he couldn’t hold on to. I worried he’d become proficient at duping me with general expressions, clichéd answers, pronouns instead of proper names. He was often too proud to admit his failing faculties and limited short-term memory. He always ordered “the special” at restaurants because he couldn’t read the menu, and he’d suffer through rich bisques or adventurous pastas when what he really wanted was a burger or chicken sandwich.

Dad had never been one for romance, but watching him with Susan was heartening. I’d observed their third date. Susan and Dad held hands throughout dinner, and he’d offered her his dinner jacket to keep warm.

It’s Florida, she said, waving him off with one hand. It’s always hot. And I have my own sweater. But thank you.

I like your eyes, he said. They’re so blue.

I have cataracts, she said. Are you Jim?

I’m Stu, he said.

He seemed to forgive her missteps and poor temper. In all honesty, I’m not sure he was in love with anything except the idea of her company.

They’d moved onto dessert served on a terrace surrounded by potted tomato plants and fruit trees. Susan wiped the cheesecake from Dad’s chin. He appeared to relish the simple pleasure of being touched. When we got home, he asked me to write her name on a piece of paper, which he kept by his bedside. That way, he said, when I wake up I can think of Susan.

I didn’t mind helping him remember to love her.

I’d become one of many cash-strapped caregivers with no children of my own — just the responsibility of an aging parent modern medicine had turned into an invincible robot, a robot puttering around outmoded and diapered, trying to make sense of tangled strings of thought. We lived in my father’s oceanfront house in Key West, Florida. Residing on an island had enabled Dad and me to live an almost antiquated life in a small neighborhood between resorts. People come here to escape real life, he’d once said. We live somewhere between real life and respite, a sunny kind of purgatory.

My partner, Link, lived with me in my father’s house, but Dad was so old, so near death, that we’d begun calling it my house in private. Dad lived in a suite we’d made for him out of his old bedroom, the one he’d shared with my mother for seventy-three years. He’d had an artificial heart installed fifteen years ago, a blood-compatible, synthetic ticker that pushed his body beyond its intended mortal means.

The doctor, prior to inserting the heart, regaled us with stories of a calf who’d lived hundreds of days on an early model of the heart. But now the doctors referred to Dad’s as a jalopy of hearts and told us of newer, more infallible models. Not interested, Dad would say. When I was a boy, if you died, you were dead. Why keep a bunch of zombies my age running around anyway?

The morning of his latest date with Susan, Dad got going about storm-water collection. He moved in and out of lucidity, inhabiting the present for only moments at a time.

Rest up, Dad, I said. Big plans tonight.

The war for water begins, Dad said, launching one of his demented rants. I belted him into his recliner and set him up with lukewarm coffee and a large print projection of real-time news. His body hinged over the black safety harness, leering, eyes bulging, ready to reel off a dated tirade that would probably include references to the Symbionese Liberation Army, farm subsidies, Nixon, and, if he was really getting after us, Beyoncé.

Don’t get yourself worked up, I said, touching his forehead with the back of my hand. You’ll spill your coffee. And talking like that might scare Susan. Remember to ask about her kids.

I’ve been worked up for sixty years, he said. It started with Reagan. what was it he said about common sense and acid rain? If Michael Jackson hadn’t endorsed Pepsi, things would be different now, wouldn’t they? Endorsements change the course of the universe. It’s always about stuff. Electric sedans and petridish livers. You can buy anything. Who’s Susan?

Susan, I said, is your girlfriend. Silver hair in a bun, floral blouses, khaki pants. Smart as a whip when she remembers what she’s talking about.

I wrote Susan’s name down on Dad’s notepad in large print, showed him a picture of her. He claimed he could remember things better that way. We had a whole series of captioned photographs to help his recall stay fresh.

I want to buy her something, he said.

Do you want your shoes on or off? I asked.

I want to take her somewhere, he said. Do something I’m good at. Fishing, maybe. Link can bait the hooks.

I’d have to call and ask permission, I said.

I’m ninety-one, he said. Why do I need permission for anything except dying? Can Link take us to the beach? I’m tired of dinner at the Senior Center.

Link was Dad’s ideal avatar, the sentient being he sent out into the world to accomplish the things his aged body couldn’t. Dad admired Link’s rational approach to life, his tool-savvy, survivalist ways. Whenever we argued over the thermostat, the dying ocean, theocracies, or how to best grill sausages, Dad wanted to know: What does Link suggest? Ask Link what he wants to do . It was hard to see Dad embrace the role of a beta male when he’d been the alpha figure for most of my life.