An Ornithologist's Guide to Life (6 page)

Rachel makes her way almost through the crowd, almost to the door, when she is stopped by something so familiar she smiles and reaches out to it. But her arm hangs like that, reaching, without going any farther. It is Mary that she sees. In that crowd, wielding a sign that does not hide her bulging belly, which is wrapped in the softest color yellow maternity dress. Mary sees her too. Their eyes meet, lock. It seems to Rachel that the world around them melts completely away, and they are just two women standing on a street. But then the clinic door opens, releasing a medicinal smell in its burst of cold air-conditioned air, and two people emerge and gently take Rachel's arms to escort her safely inside. Behind her, the shouting starts up again, and Rachel almost imagines that she hears Mary's voice above all the others, calling out to her. But when the door closes, and she is in the silent waiting room, she cannot imagine what it might be that Mary would have to say to her. Or what she could ever say to Mary.

THE LANGUAGE OF SORROW

T
HE BUS FROM
Logan Airport pulled in with a heavy sigh. Dora's grandson was coming from New York City, via Kennedy Airport. Gate one. She considered getting a box of doughnuts to bring home with them. A Dunkin' Donuts was right inside the terminal, Dora had recognized the familiar smell before she even saw the shop. Her children had always loved doughnuts, especially the messy ones like powdered sugar or chocolate frosted. A long ago morning shot through Dora's mind: Tillie and Dan at the old metal kitchen table, the one with the green rooster on top, their mouths dusted with white sugar, with smears of chocolate, their teeth small and smooth, the sunlight sending dust particles dancing in the air, and Dora pouring purple Kool-Aid from a pitcher with a goofy grinning face on the front.

She remembered it and it was gone. As if she could somehow pull it back, Dora raised her hand, surprising herself. The hand looked like her grandmother's used to—wrinkled,
spotted, gnarly. The noisy arrival of a bus right in front of her forced Dora to put all of this nonsense aside. It was the bus from New York City. On that bus was her own grandson, Dan's boy, who she had not seen in over five years. People spilled off the bus. Giggling girls and boys who looked like they were in gangs, young women with small children and older women dressed in clothes from Lord and Taylor or somewhere like that. Dora met each person's gaze with her own expectant one. Her lipstick felt waxy on her lips. Fleetingly she remembered how the undertaker had put a thick coat of lipstick on her friend Madeline Dumfey's lips, in a dreadful shade of pink. He thought it made her look healthy, as if someone who'd been killed by cancer could look healthy. What an idiot, Dora thought. The flow of people slowed, then stopped. Dora stood on tiptoes, trying to see inside the bus. Was it the wrong day? The wrong bus?

But then a boy stepped off. He was not like the tattooed and pierced teenagers who Dora saw on Thayer Street. This disappointed her for reasons she did not quite understand. He was more like the private school boys, the ones who dragged lacrosse sticks past her house every afternoon. Except for the dark shadows beneath his eyes and the defeated way in which he slouched off the bus, he could be one of them. Sad and ordinary, those were the words that sprang to Dora's mind. His hands clutched a piece of bright red American Tourister luggage, the one meant for women to carry their curlers and things. With his fair hair and pale skin, his light blue eyes and perfect pouty lips, he looked exactly like his mother. This disappointed Dora too.

“Peter,” she said, stepping through the crowd waiting for their luggage.

He barely looked at her. “I've got another bag,” he said, and joined the others waiting.

“Let's get it, shall we?” she said, though he had already gone to do just that.

The last time she had seen him was five years ago at her son's funeral, a hot bright sunlit day, even though it was February. That was Houston, she supposed. Relentlessly sunny, even in winter, even at funerals. She had not paid much attention to Peter that day. She'd had enough to deal with. The news of Dan's death and the way in which he'd died. The flight to Texas in the middle of the night, stopping and changing planes in Newark and then Chicago and then Dallas. Arriving just in time to get to the church, unable to even change her clothes. Peter seemed hardly there that day.

“I've got it,” he said.

Dora blinked as if he woke her up.

“Welcome to Providence,” she said, hoping he didn't notice her voice trembling.

His eyes looked like some kind of monster's eyes they were such a light blue. Dora found herself remembering a little albino girl who'd gone to school with Tillie.

“I don't want to be here,” Peter said. He swung his other bag, also bright red, the kind men hung their suits in, over his shoulder. The weight of it made him stagger slightly.

Before Dora could think what to say, he was walking ahead of her, his shadow stretching between them like a bridge.

S
HE PUT HIM
in Tillie's old room. It still had the pink and white striped wallpaper from her childhood, and a bureau
decorated with ballerinas. Even though he frowned when he saw it Dora couldn't let him stay in Dan's room. He didn't seem to deserve it, the smell of boy things, the stamps and coins carefully collected or the models of ships and race cars assembled over many lost Saturday afternoons. This boy seemed removed from any of that, a sullen stranger plunked into Dora's life.

Peter tossed his bags on the bed. “Thanks,” he said. Dora heard sarcasm in that one simple word.

“I could get us some doughnuts,” she said without much conviction. “We could have some doughnuts and chat a little.”

He wasn't even looking at her. His eyes flitted around the room, searching. “Is there a phone I could use?”

Dora hesitated. His mother had told her he wasn't supposed to call the girl.

“There's one in the kitchen,” Dora said carefully. “And one in my room. But I'm afraid you can't call . . .” What was the girl's name?

“Rebecca,” Peter said. “But I have to.” He walked right past Dora and pointed foolishly like the scarecrow in
The Wizard of Oz
. “Which way to the kitchen?”

Dora put her hand on his arm. Startled, she dropped it just as quickly. She didn't expect muscles under the shirt. And standing close like this she saw that he was taller than he'd seemed at the bus station.

“Your mother gave me so few restrictions. Calling Rebecca is one of them. I'm sorry.”

He looked at her and she knew that really, she couldn't stop him.

“You love her, I suppose,” she said.

He laughed, a barking sound that Dora didn't like one
bit. “No. But I don't think I should have deserted her. I don't think I should have been sent away for the entire summer to live in this podunk town with an old lady.”

Dora took a step back, away from him, rubbing her arms up and down.

“I mean,” Peter said, “who are you, you know? My father kills himself and you vanish. Do you know what I've been going through for five whole years? You have no idea.”

She did know, of course; Melinda had filled her in. But what Dora said was, “I hardly think your father killed himself.”

That bark again, then Peter stuck his face in hers. “What do you call it when someone smokes so much cocaine that they jump out a fifth-story window running from imaginary monsters? Huh?”

Dora reared up to her full height, five feet, eight inches. She had always believed in the benefit of calcium and as a result had not shrunk like other women her age. Why, Madeline Dumfey had died a full three inches shorter than she had lived.

“An accident,” Dora said, “I call it an accident.”

D
ORA DID NOT
see the point of dwelling on her losses. But often, at night, they seized her and shook her awake. Sometimes she found herself groping for Bill on the other side of the bed, reaching and reaching as if her life depended on finding him there until, finally, panting, she had to remind herself that he had died on April 14, 1983, from lung cancer. A picture of him taking those last gasping breaths in a hospital
bed would come to her and she would close her eyes and press the lids hard until it vanished.

Other times she awoke thinking she had to call Madeline about one thing or another and then a strange uneasiness took hold as Dora remembered that Madeline was dead. They had known each other since 1943 when they worked side by side as secretaries at the army base in Quonset Point. Dora wore her hair in a Veronica Lake peekaboo cut back then; Madeline favored more of a Gene Tierney wave. They went together every Friday afternoon after work to Isabella's Parisian Hair Salon in Wickford to get their hair done. Both of them had slim hips, good legs, a wide collection of shoes. They shared nylons, a real commodity back then, and lipstick. They double-dated, covered for each other when they wanted to give a guy the bum's rush. They stood up for each other at their weddings; Dora wore a deep maroon velvet for Madeline's and Madeline wore an icy blue satin at Dora's. Those were the things that came to mind when Dora woke up with an urgency to call Madeline: the smell of the chemicals at their beauty parlor near the base, the feel of a nylon stocking sliding on her leg, the crush of velvet against cool skin on a November morning.

Since Peter had arrived, what woke Dora was the feeling that she needed to check on the children, the way she would when they were young. She used to walk through the darkness of the house and slip into their rooms and make sure they were breathing. First Tillie, a neat sleeper, on her back with her covers tucked under her chin. Then Dan, often upside down in his bed, his sheets and blankets a tangle around his waist and feet. Dora would stand and count their breaths before climbing back into her own bed, satisfied.

P
ETER SAT IN
the kitchen, ate entire boxes of Oreo cookies, drank milk straight from the bottle, and talked to Rebecca. At first Dora reprimanded him, reminding him of her promise to his mother. But Peter would just stare at her with those practically albino eyes, popping whole cookies into his mouth while she explained. Really, Dora didn't care if he talked to the girl. Talking wasn't going to change anything. So she gave up and let him do it.

“. . . so Polly's coming over a lot? Her mother lets her?” Dora heard him say one afternoon.

Dora was making baked scrod for dinner, with parsley potatoes. He didn't like anything she cooked but she continued to make complete meals for the two of them despite that. Over her roast beef and mashed potatoes he'd asked her if there was anyplace around to get a good burrito. The night she'd made leg of lamb he'd requested fish sticks. Last night he'd described something called Hot Pockets, a frozen bread type thing stuffed with meat and vegetables. Dora had nodded and taken another pork chop from the platter.

“I'm surprised her mother lets her. Really surprised. Her mother's like so uptight. She's a Republican, you know.”

Dora glanced at him. She was a Republican, after all. But she would have let Tillie visit her pregnant friend. She would have considered it a positive experience for Tillie, to know that there were consequences for actions.

“What?” Peter said, cupping his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone.

Dora spread the crumbled Ritz crackers over the scrod
and put the pan in the oven. “I think you have foolish ideas, that's all,” she said, and set the timer.

“Excuse me,” Peter said. “But I wasn't talking to you.”

Dora shrugged.

“You're eavesdropping,” he said.

“I'm making dinner,” Dora told him.

“Anyway, I think Polly is probably sick of Jen and Justin and that's why she's hanging around so much,” Peter said, presumably not to Dora.

Dora took out two of the blue and white everyday dishes and began to set the table around Peter. She tried to picture the girl on the other end, but could only come up with an image of Melinda at that age, a sullen girl who always looked like she was not to be trusted. She'd slunk into their home during dinner one night, Dan's arm protectively around her waist, dressed in torn jeans and brown suede Indian moccasins. Those shoes had bothered Dora. Earlier that day she had commented to Madeline Dumfey that it seemed loose girls wore those. Then right in her kitchen, hanging on to her son, Melinda appeared with that very type of shoe. “That girl's trouble,” Dora had announced as soon as Melinda and Dan had gone. And of course she'd been right. Before Melinda he had never even gotten drunk. After Melinda's appearance in their kitchen Dan had started with marijuana and who knew what else. The school was calling every other day about his absences. One night the police brought him home, stoned, confused, and with Melinda.

Dora sighed. She was holding two forks, the timer was buzzing, and Peter was staring at her hard.

“Gran?” he said.