Diana Abu-Jaber - Birds of Paradise

“Cooking up?” Nieves looks at Stanley. “What?”

Stanley’s expression opens to incredulity; his eyes flick between his parents.

Avis’s pulse is pounding so hard it seems it must be visible. In some way, this girl is the reason that things aren’t right. Because that’s what a girl like this does — breaks into a family, sets them against each other.

Brian stands beside her now, sliding an arm around her shoulder. Is he shaking? “Oh… She doesn’t mean that at all! Avis hasn’t been feeling well,” he says lightly. “There’ve been these — disturbances — in the neighborhood lately…” Was that a chuckle? “Please — kids — we do —we want to help you — your mother and I both,” he says to Stanley. “We just haven’t had a chance to discuss any of this between the two of us. It is a lot of money. And — well — now a baby coming! It’s all just a bit overwhelming, you know? I think Mom’s just in a state of, like, shock — aren’t you?” He gives Avis’s shoulders a squeeze. She lowers her eyes and finds she’s staring at the navy polish on the girl’s toes, the thong of a silver-sequined flip-flop.

Stanley rises as well. “Well,” he says quietly. He clears his throat. “Well I guess this wasn’t the way I expected things to go.”

Avis interposes herself between Stanley and the girl (which isn’t difficult, as the girl remains seated after Stanley has risen, Avis notes, as if it’s all a matter of supreme indifference to her if they stay or go) and puts her imploring hands on his chest “Stanny…” She is reassured by the solidity of her son’s chest, his familiar smell of toothpaste and grassy earth, his boy scent. “You’re trying to replace her. Felice turning eighteen — a little like losing her again, isn’t it? I think it is. Almost worse in a way…” Her eyes darken. Brian clears his throat as if about to speak and her focus returns. “I have — just a suggestion. Why don’t you and your girl try staying here —with us, for a while? We’ll give you some money and we can cover your living costs while you figure things out with the market. Would that be nice? Let’s just try being a family together again,” she says quietly, ignoring Brian, who keeps trying to cut in. “My goodness, Stan, you’re practically still a baby yourself! Let us take care of you. I mean both of you, of course. We’ll help with the money. But just come home for a bit.” As she speaks, Avis feels buoyed by this idea: Stanley needs to come home! They would make it up to him — whatever he thought he’d been missing. It wasn’t too late — they could show him. And if he insists on bringing this girl — fine. “It’s a bit of a mess,” she says as gently as possible to Stanley. “No, of course — this baby is wonderful news. But you two don’t have any idea what you’re in for. You’re going to need us.”

Only then does she realize that her son’s face is growing remote, sealing up, just as he used to do in his childhood. And Avis can feel her insides start to crumple, a fernlike twisting-in. “Oh — I. I’m sorry.” She steps back, as if she could pull away from the words. “Just — never mind. That didn’t come out right, maybe.”

“About a thousand years late, Mom.” His voice parched. Stanley sidesteps Avis and offers his hand to the girl to help her up. They behave so formally, like children impersonating adults. Avis finds herself admiring their gravity as they move to the door, a regal height to the girl’s shoulders.

“I’ll call you later,” Stanley mutters to his father as he ushers his girlfriend through the door. Then pulls it quietly shut.

Avis stands alone for a moment, staring at the door, not moving.

“Ah,” Brian says.

She wraps her arms tightly around her middle. She doesn’t want to talk. All the words have left her. How many times is a person supposed to lose her children? Is this why she went through motherhood? The morning sickness that lasted all day, the swollen ankles, the all-night feedings, the fevers and crying and vomit? The anxiety and the waiting up, and on and on. All for what? A moment where you stand there and watch your child close the door in your face.

BRIAN FINDS AVIS OUTSIDE, sitting in the backyard on a teak folding chair. He sits beside her and for a few minutes neither of them speaks. Finally he reaches for her hand. “You’re in shock. I know you’re in shock. We both are. It’s a lot to take in. For both of us. But — just imagine, sweetheart? A grandchild .”

Avis stares at the fluttering palms. “Not my grandchild. You can have her.”

“You don’t mean that! You’re just overwrought.” He attempts a new, lighter tone, “How do you even know it’s a her?”

“Don’t you see what he’s trying to do? He’s trying to replace Felice. He was cheated of his old family — we all were — so he’s trying to make a new one. Just like he was always running off to his gardening and his market.”

“Sweetheart.” Brian presses her palm between his fingers, his voice thin and trembling, as if running through a wire strainer. He sits unusually upright, his face so alert he seems almost frightened. “Isn’t that a good thing? Doesn’t everyone eventually want a family of their own?”

Avis frowns, smoothing back the short ends of her hair.

“Maybe we should just give them the money.”

“It’s too much!” She wraps her arms around her elbows. “Who is this girl he’s with anyway?”

“Well, the mother of our grandchild, at the very least.”

She is touched, briefly, by an awareness of her husband’s anxiety, but her own preoccupations are overpowering. She doesn’t respond. The late-afternoon sky is a green watercolor. Everything in the world seems bound to the screen of fronds; everything is breathing, subtly, quietly, barely moving.

TUESDAY MORNING, AFTER BRIAN — finally, blessedly — leaves for work, Avis leaves her rounds of dough to rise and goes straight outdoors. She’d listened to the mynah’s chatter all through the early morning while kneading the puff pastry (“I swear it — I’m going to report those people to animal control,” Brian had said at the door). When Avis steps through the fronds, pushing aside the nodding spindles, Solange is sitting in the grass, legs folded under, as if at a tea ceremony. She doesn’t exactly smile at Avis but she nods, her face relaxed.

Solange hands Avis an old-fashioned silver peeler and they cut tiny zucchinis into strips that Solange collects in a pot beside her on the grass. Then they hunt around for a shrub buried in the thickets at the west corner of the yard. It has a frilly, dainty leaf that Solange calls “vervain” and she tells Avis that it’s good for strengthening the “female systems.” She hums as they collect, and the bird grows still, then she sings a few fragments of song, shreds of music, the words floating away like confetti, like tearing a letter into pieces. The long, patient labor reminds Avis of the externships she did in culinary school — visiting different pastry shops and kitchens, listening to the bakers’ philosophies about their work, their approaches and aesthetics. Only Solange speaks little, her thoughts seemingly embedded in the small movements of her hands.

“My son would be shocked,” Avis says into the silence, vaguely smiling. “Me, in the dirt. Outside! He would be amazed.” She glances at Solange.

“You don’t go out of doors?”

“Almost never.”

“You close yourself in on purpose. It’s not healthy.”

“I don’t like vegetables, either.” She continues to smile, enjoying the feeling of confession. “I don’t like growing them, cooking them, or eating them.”

Solange finishes cutting a zucchini. “When I was growing up, there were two worlds — one was inside the great house and the other was outside with my mother. Inside was very fine and very clean, and a lot of black women to keep it so clean. The lady of the house — Myra — she was light-skinned, but she wasn’t pure white. There were a few drops of Africa in her, so we knew that was why she hated us so much. She worked the women like slaves. But my mother would steal outside when she could. She changed us out of our good house clothes into the old castoffs, and we would go tend to the vegetables and herbs in the patch the gardener gave her.” Solange wiped at the edge of her forehead with one hand. “Sometimes she went foraging too. Inside, I learned the alphabet, but outside, I learned all the plants.” She looks at Avis, holding the peeler aloft.