Megan Bergman - Birds of a Lesser Paradise - Stories

Willow and I have bonded over what she calls our “mother issues.” If we ever get into a pissing match about crazy mothers, I’ll win. So far I haven’t mentioned Mom’s summer nudist experiments, her uncanny knowledge of healing crystals, or the fact that she only ate kimchi, nuts, and instant miso for a year after my father left — washing her macrobiotics down with jugs of chardonnay. She spent two years wearing only teal and her bookshelf is one part New Age and another part Harlequin.

Mom’s worried about liabilities, Willow says. What if our cheese goes bad and people get sick? What if the dogs come back and bite someone’s leg? What if the llama kicks an employee or someone gets hurt on the farm?

I’m not going to sue you, I say.

I know you won’t, Willow says. And Buzz won’t.

And how do you know that? Pete asks, laughing.

I just know, Willow says.

And we don’t have llamas, I said.

We will, Willow says. That’s part of the long-term plan.

I’m going to finish the chores, Pete says, standing up from the table. He opens a Budweiser.

Are we protected against that sort of thing? Willow asks him.

What sort of thing? Pete says, taking a long gulp of his beer. The world? Bad luck? No. We’re not.

What if Buzz got hurt, Willow says. Would we have to pay worker’s comp? Who pays worker’s comp? I didn’t know that we had to worry about those things.

We don’t, Pete says, letting the back door slam behind him.

I take my plate to the sink because I can’t stand the thought of Willow’s face. I wash what I can get my hands on without going back to the table, then head upstairs. Anything more might be intrusive, I tell myself, though I know Willow wants to talk. We’ve had many nights like these, especially in winter when the lack of light leaves us melancholic, restless. When the mood in the house becomes low, there is at first the urge to retreat, and we go running to our books and projects. But as the night wears on, Willow can’t bear to be alone. She’s always looking for the friend I don’t know how to be.

• • •

I remember my father drunk, sitting on a metal stool in the barn behind our house.

I was twelve and walked outside in my bare feet. He was smoking a cigarette and cutting his own hair, which had been long until that moment.

My father was interested in hair, particularly mine, which he said was the color of leaves in fall, the coat of a Rhodesian ridge-back, the red amber ale he brewed in the barn. He often held forth about my hair, and I believed it was what made me his favorite person in the world.

Phoenix! he said. Come here.

I walked over to him and crouched at his feet, wide-eyed at his new look, worried he might drop ashes on my head as he sometimes did. I could feel the hay and his soft hair underneath my toes. The cup of hard cider between his legs smelled like rubbing alcohol.

What do you think of my short hair? he asked. He had cut it without help, without looking, and it made him strange to me.

You don’t look the same, I said.

That, he said, is precisely the point.

Put it back, I said, choking up. Fix it.

I’ve been thinking about it, and hair is just hair, Dad said. A filamentous chain of keratin. A string of dead cells. The same tissue found in antlers, babe. Even after you die, for a few days at least, your hair will continue to grow. It’s waste, really, is what it is.

He steadied my head with his hands. Be still, he said, cupping my chin, scissors in his mouth, then in his hands.

I pulled away.

Don’t be scared, he said. What have I told you to do when you get scared?

Tell myself a story, I said.

My red hair fell to the ground.

He left a few days later. For weeks I rode my bike into town looking for him, conscious of the way my hair no longer moved in the wind. I biked around the hollow and behind shopping centers, dehydrated, hopped up on fear and disbelief. I never saw him again.

• • •

It’s ten P.M. and Willow is standing in my bathroom in her nightgown; she collects vintage nightgowns and this one looks especially sweet on her, beautiful even. It has a high neck with a lace collar and a thousand pearly buttons, and the cotton is clean, white fabric aged into the color of tea. Cold air is coming through the cracked window and I can smell manure.

She’s holding her wedding picture. Her eyes are wet, her nail polish is chipping off, and she squints away tears, wrinkling her tiny, upturned nose to hold them at bay.

Let me get the bourbon, I say, disappearing into my room for a moment.

We sit down on the tile floor, chilled by the night air, and lean against the cast iron tub. We pass the bottle between us and Willow pulls at her hair, which is loose around her shoulders and boasts the scent of cheap shampoo that claims to smell of rain. Strands fall to the tile; I’ll wipe them up with toilet paper when she’s gone, like always.

This isn’t working, she says. I don’t know what else to do.

You’ll figure it out, I say.

If I was a better friend, I’d tell her the truth, that things with Pete are over and she is wasting her beauty and happiness, but I hate hopelessness, and can’t promote it. Plus, this farm is my life. I have no incentive to kill Willow’s dream.

We stop talking and look at the wedding picture, Pete thin and handsome in his rented tuxedo, hovering over Willow on the front porch of an inn in town. I know them so well that I feel as if I was there on that day ten years ago, that I have always shared in their unhappiness.

Pete’s father wore chaps to our wedding, Willow says, shaking her head. I should have known. You can’t take the cowboy out of the man.

I nodded, agreeing with nothing. We would never be friends in real life — but this bathroom is not real life.

I just want to be happy, Willow says.

Happy is an idea, I say. My dad always said that when an idea gets old, try another one on.

Wasn’t your dad crazy? Willow says.

She can’t help herself, I know.

Aren’t we all? I say.

In the morning, Willow’s petite garlic is planted perfectly, a little love song from Buzz. I see it on my way to the barn. Buzz crosses my path, hand pruner tucked under one elbow. I can always tell by his stride how he feels about himself. Today his steps are fast and long and I think he’s been up awhile, crossed a few to-do’s off his list.

Morning Phoenix, he says, nodding.

The clouds are low. It is fifty degrees outside. The sky is radiant.

I like what you did with the garlic, I say.

He shrugs.

I do not know how Buzz came to work for Pete and Willow, but his eyes remind me of a rescued dog, happy with a home but afraid to feel too comfortable. It’s as if he expects to be discarded, and I wonder what it is in his heart or in his past that makes him feel that way. He is an emotionally distant Romeo, always looking for ways to help Willow while remaining as quiet as possible. I don’t even know where he lives, where he comes from each morning. He is awake and working before everyone.

When I imagine sleeping with Buzz, I always stop immediately. It’s no good, and I think the absence of lust between us makes for easy distance. We don’t have to worry about one another, manipulate our appearance, manufacture conversations.

He walks to the far corner of the property where the apple orchard and blueberry bushes grow. He has a fit body and looks good in jeans; if you couldn’t see the wrinkles around his brown eyes, you’d think he was twenty-six instead of pushing fifty. He’s in motion twelve hours a day, throwing hay, pruning trees, planting, shoveling. Buzz has a thing for projects. He finds them everywhere. When I have a farm of my own, I want someone like Buzz on hand.