Noy Holland - Bird

“I got my keys, okay, I got my glasses, talked to Mother in the can, she’s fine.”

He is goofy a little, too happy by a lot. He takes his big-man strides, preparing. “Wallet, gym bag, watch, what else?”

The sun is on him: a man taking on the day.

Bird takes a seat in the ragged chair and makes a curtain of her half-brushed hair. She bends her face to the baby, nuzzles the baby’s belly, wets the baby’s pilly sleeper with—

“What, Bird? Those are tears?”

“You’ve had a dream,” he says, “you can’t remember. But it’s got you all torn up.”

“You need food,” he ventures. “Talk to me. I should have poured your coffee. You want me to brush your hair.”

He keeps at it — he can’t leave until he has signed her up.

“It’s the dog. You think the dog has Parvo. Have you gotten her shots for Parvo? I think she might have Parvo. Could be she needs her Parvo. Do you think she might be due?”

Helps her get her mind off.

Hiya hiya hiya yeah yeah yeah.

This is your wife with her mind off.

This is the little tissue I kept.

This is the dog the landlord hanged who we took away down to the tidal strait and threw in daisies after. Mickey and I did. You know Mickey.

“You look blasted,” he says. “What is it? Free radicals in french fries? Emissions tests and taxes? Sunscreen in aubergine, in mist and stick and tube?”

“Or it’s me,” he says. “Something.”

“Hush.”

She passes her husband the phone book. Baffling to him, a phone book. He can’t think what to do.

“The dog?” Bird says. “Parvo?”

He backs away some, shoulders his satchel. Wise move. The baby bubbles and hums.

“Lyme’s, could be. Heartworm? She needs her DTP?” Bird says.

Stay, she thinks, and drives him out.

Thinks: How about a week in bed, cowboy? Crème brulee and cocktails? Rose petals floating in the tub?

Bird is holding her breath, hardly knows it. Her husband settles his glasses on the bridge of his nose. He looks shy almost, smiling sweetly. He gives a little shy-boy wave. Turns away.

The sun flares in the window. The nose of the lock slides home.

“We drove a Drive Away out,” Bird announces, fogging the X her boy left on the window glass.

“I saw a bag of bread on the freeway,” she shouts. “A little flock of shoes.”

So long, solong. Farewell, my prince.

They are gone now and now she can miss them.

Now she can miss herself — who in the world she has been for her husband, who she meant to be to love.

The baby as a littler baby, her boy trotted off to school. Her mother dead, a broken doll, geese scudding down on the pond. Bird misses everything at once. One thing makes her want all the others — lived or not, still she misses them. She misses lives she has never lived — days issued out of the future, hours that will never be.

Bird misses her mother. Kisses the baby. She is a dead baby’s mother. She will be her baby’s dead mother, by and by, and her baby will be a dead mother, too. By and by. Best case, the gods willing.

Bird can see right out to the end of herself: out to the satiny coffin, her children gathered around. She sees them saddled, grown, old orphans — ranting the way she hears herself rant about the lunacy of the news: the frothing for war, the oceans ruined, the babies swiped and murdered. The talk people talk. The daily terrors. The whales deafed, the quiet boys freaked on psychotropics. I want that one. I want you.

Columbine. Turpentine. Pretty little place near the mountains.

I want your old place in Brooklyn with screw eyes set in the floor. How about?

Before they hanged the dog? Before the baby we lost?

And you can find my mother’s scarves smelling of her still. And you can call me Caroline. Before our little Caroline? Welcome home, little chicken, little bird.

Bird sinks into it, a bloom of heat, so to feel it: the door swung to, the shrinking stars. A leaf falling. The way her mother spun her ruby on her finger, think of that. The way Mickey hooked his finger in her ear. Berries in the bathtub. Sweetened ferns. The sound of the chain on the asphalt road that the school bus drags behind it. Shall.

A swell of things: gathered, unsortable, gone.

Bird misses the one-ton they slept in, the rocks her husband used to bring to her from the places he used to go.

Salt pillars and clouds. The tamarack needles blown.

“I had a toothache,” Bird says — too loudly, and to whom?

“He chewed up a grape for a poultice. He broke his hand slugging a wall.”

Bird carries the baby upstairs. She lays the baby down on the bathmat. Walks out.

Out and back and is gone again. Down the stairs for a cup of rum — half a cup by the time the tub fills. Hot: she wants the heat to sink into.

They sink in. The baby moves through her private baby-phases of alarm and bliss.

“Boo,” says the baby, then “booa,” a plea, and snatches at Bird’s breast. The left, the right, the foremilk, the hind.

I want that one.

“Say may I,” Bird says. “Say please.”

It won’t be long, it never is. Please and thank you. Soon: Actually, I want that and that one then and could I have that one again? Puh-uh-lee-zah?

The baby’s nursing, which makes Bird weepy.

Somebody quick say why.

They move from tub to rocker, the rocker beside the window, the bus whistling down the hill.

I want that one.

Wasn’t that how it felt — not so long ago — looking out over the Lucite bins where all the born babies in the hospital slept or were fed or cried?

That one.

“When I was a born baby,” the baby will come to say. “When I was a baby that died.”

I want that one.

Say may I. Say please.

Bird thinks of Doll Doll — picking pups out, picking Tuk. Of picking Mickey, Bird crossing the room with her shoe in her hand. I want that one. Bop you between the eyes.

Get your lucky bone out, get your talisman.

That one there is mine. This one?

In a mood, Bird is, wanting. Like to take off. Like to scream.

She took her babies out to Coney Island, to the aquarium there beside the sea. Her two.

Used to light out. Ride out there with the dog, she and Mickey. Let the dog swim. Come the cold months. Get in under the boardwalk, let his pants down. Smell the sea. Little bit. Sit out on a towel by the water.

I want that one.

Sweet time. Sweet little way of living.

She’s got the more always, got the gimmes . Wants the old life, wants the new. All the many dips and surges, she wants, the stations of alarm and bliss. The luxury of a day to kill taking a bath with the baby. Kissing on the baby. Kissing her fancy man. Four days, she wants, in bed with him, every meal delivered. Créme brulee and cocktails. Wax paper packets of junk. Have a romp. Ask it in — all the old somebody elses they have been, everything they hoard.

Quick now. You fly through!

Waaaa. Nothing but heat and sunshine.

Come the cold months, nobody out there. Come the sunshine beside the sea.

She gets the tab of Mickey’s zipper down, gets the button slipped out through the buttonhole and she can’t see him yet, she waits to see him, she waits, and he is rising up. Oh, hi. Lifting out of his britches. Pleased to see you, sir. Hello, hi .

I want that one.

Who boy. Boy do I , Bird thinks.

She kisses the baby’s toes. The bottoms of her feet, wrinkled from the tub, her little wrinkled hands. Bird dresses the baby in her sparkle dress, her little beaded shoes. Props her up among pillows on the couch, takes a picture. Takes a dozen more.