Megan Bergman - Birds of a Lesser Paradise - Stories

Or keep bees, I said.

We received our first mail-order queen in March. She’d arrived with four worker bees in a candied box.

I’m not doing this to fit in, I told Russ. I’m doing it to sell honey. A work-from-home operation that will pay for itself.

I bought a smoker secondhand, sealed an old jacket and leather gloves with duct tape. I used my fencing mask for a veil.

I’m glad you found something, Russ said.

I was eight months pregnant, thirty pounds heavier, and desperate to be happy.

There were days when I could ride my bicycle without a helmet and smoke a cigarette at the same time, I said. I was once practiced in the art of fire breathing. Give me a bottle of vodka and a lighter and I could show you.

Russ grinned and pinched the seat of my maternity jeans.

I’ve still got it, you know, I said.

When we returned home from the vet, I propped Poppy on my left hip and took a walk around the property. The sunflowers were budding. The corn was calf-high. The barn swallows swooped over us like stunt pilots.

Vito usually took the walk with us, his back sloped and hips low, nose to the ground. I missed his lithe body weaving through the grass, brushing against my legs. I missed watching him charge the moles and chipmunks that lived beneath the brush pile, sprint after the garbage trucks that used our driveway for a turnaround. He was a runner, a stalker, a too-fast-to-call-off dog.

We loved his gusto, the way he ran at things he wanted with what my dad would call a devil-may-care sprint, saliva streaming from his mouth, his bear-sized feet tearing up the earth.

That morning, Russ and I had talked about him as if he were already gone.

Remember how he used to dive underneath his bed in winter and wear it like a turtle shell? Russ said.

How about the time we took him to the Christmas-tree farm? I said. He was small enough to fit inside your coat.

He raised his leg on a tree, Russ said. That’s the one we took home.

But now Poppy and I walked down the slope of our backyard alone. We paused to refill bird feeders with sunflower seed and grease poles with Vaseline to keep squirrels away.

The pediatrician told me: Narrate your life to encourage language. Speak in the third person.

Mommy and Poppy are walking through the green grass, I said. Mommy and Poppy are outside. See the blue sky? See the white clouds?

Poppy’s chin glistened with drool. Her wide eyes scanned the ground.

Bear scat during berry season is unmistakable — seedy, fragrant, copious. We passed two piles near the blackberry brambles.

Big bears make big piles, I said.

One apiary lid was pried open.

I got chills as I scanned the tree line behind our house, knowing the bear was likely within a square mile, likely to make another go at our honey stash. Once bears find your apiary, they return night after night.

Bad bear, I said, shaking my finger. I felt the unmistakable flash of adrenaline.

I had very little experience with bears. Eastern black bears, Russ promised, are like big dogs.

I’d fed them once behind a shopping mall in western North Carolina on a road trip with a group of friends. We tossed boiled peanuts into their mouths. The bears were jesters — fat and gluttonous — and leaned back on their haunches like begging pets.

I knew I was more likely to die of a lightning strike, hypothermia, or even bee stings than from a bear attack. But bears can spread their claws nearly ten inches wide, run thirty-five miles per hour. At their worst, they can eat you alive.

Big, bad bear, I said again.

Poppy laughed and buried her head into my armpit, her sticky fingers curled into my open mouth.

After Poppy was born, I couldn’t breast-feed. I spent a week and a half trying. We ended up on the floor most nights, Poppy failing to latch and screaming with hunger, me crying in frustration as Russ stroked my hair and shushed her.

She’s losing too much weight, the pediatrician said, so I expressed milk for her, hooking myself up to a pump that tugged my milk down into plastic vials. Every two hours I woke to pump and feed her, rousing myself from a feverish sleep, breasts full and hot.

In the white noise of the breast pump, I heard: Kim Jong Il’s noodles. Kim Jong Il’s noodles. Kim Jong Il’s noodles.

Heavy components, I said to Russ one morning at three o’clock.

We’re switching to formula, he said. You stopped making sense a week ago.

I put my head underneath the pillow and bit my lip.

Relax, he said, stroking my back. This is not a failure.

I just want what’s best for Poppy, I said.

Take cats, he said. Excellent mothers. Let little ones fend for themselves occasionally.

If I carried Poppy in my mouth by the nape of her neck, I said, child services.

I want to take the night shifts, he said. For a while.

In the winter we left wine to chill in the snow. In the summers we kept a supply in the outdoor fridge next to the refrigerator pickles and spare zucchini.

The first night Russ left the bed for Poppy, I got up for a glass that turned into a bottle.

Russ was not well. He’d scrapped with an off-duty air traffic control guy in the back of a cargo hangar and come home with a busted lip and a screaming headache.

What does vertigo feel like? he asked. He cracked open a beer, took two long sips, and reached for Poppy.

I made him a peanut butter and honey sandwich. He slid potato chips into the center.

I like to hear them crunch, he said.

He fell asleep on the couch with Poppy on his chest. Her mouth left a puddle of drool on his softening pecs.

I touched his cauliflower ears, the ridges of cartilage broken and scarred over from high school wrestling. I kissed both of them on the forehead and found myself loving them so much — their long eyelashes, the fat of their cheeks — that I could not move.

The evening light gave our house a dreamlike quality. The carpet was warm on my bare feet. The curling wallpaper and inherited furniture were reassuring. The upholstery smelled of old chicken suppers and cigarette smoke. Instinctively, I looked for Vito, patted the loveseat as an invitation. Then I thought of him alone in his cage at the vet clinic.

I lifted Poppy from Russ’s chest and took her upstairs to her crib. She rolled onto her side and began to suck her fist.

Poppy’s skin made everyone else’s look old. Her hands and cheeks were milk white, downy. My hands were sun-stained, wrinkled, rough.

Maybe I was old.

At night I looked at my naked body in the shower. Once it had been something to look at. Now it was covered in jagged red stretch marks, soft skin. Now I made love with a shirt on.

Back in the living room, I climbed on top of Russ, rubbed his chest with the heels of my hands, massaged his temples. His eyes opened to small slits, then closed. The corners of his mouth turned upward, a slight smile. I squeezed him with my thighs.

Don’t knife me in my sleep, he said.

His naked chest was warm from the late sun streaming through the window, and I slept there until midnight, one hand cupping his jaw.

I dreamed I was standing over Russ’s bed with Poppy, teaching him to talk.

His dark eyes were hidden in pockets of swollen flesh. His head was shaved, his forehead was raw, his lip split. I held Poppy in the crook of my left arm, stroked Russ’s hand with my right.

Poppy recited the pilot’s alphabet.

Lima, Mike, she said. Oscar, Papa.

I woke up and walked out into the yard. The grass was cool. The birds were quiet. I could smell wild dill in the fields. Next to the moon, Jupiter was the brightest thing in the sky. I sensed the bear in the forest behind our house. I pictured myself in his eyes, my body a small shadow on his horizon.