“Thank you.” I fought the well-bred urge to stand as well and shake his hand. Sensing my churlish resistance, I’m sure, he took out his wallet, removed a business card, and placed it in front of me. “Leaving my card is a habit, I’m afraid. Indulge me, please, by accepting it.”
The card read, in a surprisingly plain typeface, Malachy Burns. I admired the discreet, antiquated nicety of this object, the absurdity of the gesture notwithstanding. And then my visitor added, pointing to the card, “I’ve thought of inserting a little fill-in-the-blank below my name so you could embellish it to your liking: With Passion. His Bridges. In Hell. Of course, you’d have to know me better than you do.”
At the door, he looked back and said, “I regret to inform you that a large rodent or a lapdog has recently defecated, not unjustifiably, in front of the novels of J.R.R. Tolkien.” This parting shot left me speechless, as I’m sure it was intended to do, but it also proved to be true (and I knew at once that the perpetrator was the latter creature he’d named, since one of my lonelyhearts had dropped by with her shih tzu). Before I went downstairs to check, I stood by the front window and watched my visitor depart. He crossed the street and let himself into the brownstone directly facing this one. I couldn’t see his ultimate destination, but I would have bet the remainder of my inheritance that it was the apartment in which someone (I now had an excellent notion who) had so dramatically—so operatically—shattered that set of my mother’s good china.
SIX
I
AWAKE TO THE PENETRATING STARES
of my four- and five-year-old nieces, Théa and Laurie, and the shock of cold metal on my neck.
“Sa poitrine!”
Laurie whispers bossily at her little sister and then, seeing my eyes have opened, switches to English. “Onco, we’re listening to your heart.” She is busily removing what must be David’s stethoscope from around Théa’s neck.
“Darling,” I say, “my heart’s not in my throat. Not now anyway.”
“I
know
. I was telling her that.”
I start to rise, reaching out to touch their blond heads. Their hair is the absolute texture of innocence, smooth as Venetian glass, yet also erotically stirring, like the warm skin of a lover’s inner arm.
“No, no. Lie down,” commands Laurie. She pushes me back.
“All right, I’m your patient.”
“Théa,
son poignet
.” Complying, Théa grabs my nearest wrist in both hands. I note with pleasure that she is wearing the black silk dragon pajamas I bought for her in Chinatown (for Laurie I bought one of those stiff lacquered parasols painted with chrysanthemums, for Christine a doll with long black hair and a rice paddy hat; it was Mal who taught me to shop with a theme).
“Pas comme ça.”
Laurie rearranges her sister’s hand on mine. “Davi showed us how to get a pulse,” she explains.
“Ah.” I give in to her prodding. I’m glad I wore pajamas to bed, but then Laurie orders me to unbutton the top so she can get the stethoscope to its target. As she finally locates my heart and listens, wide-eyed, she wears an astonishingly unlined scowl. I glance sideways at Théa, who’s let go of my wrist, and wink. I have the urge to seize both girls and pull them into my warm narrow bed, but I know Laurie wouldn’t take kindly to my interfering with her exam. Back in New York, I’ve met enough children to recognize the age of martial law. I wrap my arm around Théa’s bony shoulders and hold her against my side.
“It’s very fast, I think,” says Laurie. “Very very fast. I think it’s too fast.”
“Well if it isn’t Lord Layabout and his concubines.” David stands in the doorway. He’s smiling, but I’m embarrassed he’s found me in this position, however innocent.
“Davi, his heart’s way too fast, I think.”
“Well, lass, we may have to arrange a transplant.” David looms over us now, a hand on Laurie’s shoulder, and I pull myself to a sitting position. He taps his Jacques Cousteau watch. “
Eleven,
Fen. I’ve already been to the clinic, pilled a few cats, stopped on my way back to castrate a bullock and then to pick up the tables and chairs. Think you could dress your leisurely self and help me unload them into the garage?”
“Listen, Davi,
listen,
” says Laurie, thrusting the stethoscope at him with un-derailable purpose.
David takes the stethoscope and sits on the edge of my bed. Concealing my reluctance, I comply. Théa, hearing her mother’s voice downstairs, lost interest and fled, so David and Laurie now huddle in silent consternation over my body. David pushes back the left half of my pajama shirt and positions the stethoscope firmly. He holds the disk between two fingers so that his entire hand loosely cups my breast. I can feel my nipple harden, out of nervousness, under his palm. Since I rarely go to doctors (sinfully taking my health for granted, and no, I have never been tested), I’m feeling doubly peculiar, worried that as my brother listens so studiously to my heart he will accidentally diagnose some fatal arrhythmia or murmur.
“Well, Dr. Dah-vi?” I say, trying to sound playful by echoing the pet name for my avuncular rival.
“Well, you’re not a pig. And decidedly not a Shetland pony. Every species, you know, has a unique heartbeat, so in fact I don’t know much more about what I’m listening to than you would.”
“Is he sick?” asks Laurie hopefully. I decide not to take this personally.
“He’s just a bit lazy. That’s his only ailment today.”
“Oh.” She checks her disappointment, seemingly aware how rude it is, and says to me, “Onco, I’m glad you’re well.” My nieces do have marvellous manners, which, like so many other things about them, make me feel surprisingly proud—genetic reflex, I suppose.
As I get out of bed, David is staring at the box on the windowseat. “What’s Dad doing up here? Afraid he’d flee the reunion? Afraid I’d spirit him off and have my obstinate way?” Laughing, he leaves without waiting for an answer.
When I make my way downstairs, I hear no voices. The dining room table is covered with an array of Mum’s best china pitchers, soup tureens, and teapots. Véronique walks into the room and says, “Your mother, she never arranged flowers? I do not find a single true vase in this house.”
“I must say, I don’t remember,” I tell her honestly.
Véronique regards me with an uncharacteristically neutral stare, as if she’s forgotten whether she knows me. “Have you eaten? Denis has saved you coffee, I believe.”
“I’m a tea loyalist, but thanks.” She is still staring at me, and I can’t read a thing in her gaze. I’d have expected her to remark on my laziness or my lack of helpfulness. “You might check the scullery,” I say. “For vases.”
“Oh,
merci
.” She smiles quickly and goes into the kitchen ahead of me.
Dennis is busy at the table—exactly where I left him the night before. “Water’s hotting up; I heard your voice,” he says. Christine is sitting on the scullery floor nestling a dingy stuffed cat into a bed she’s made of linen napkins (I resolve not to be hurt that my rice paddy doll is nowhere in sight). Her mother climbs onto a stool, searching high shelves. “Brilliant, Fenno.” She turns and holds out two cobwebbed vases. “May I hand them down?”
Once again relieved to be useful, even to Véronique, I offer to wash them. She pulls Christine onto a hip and heads outside. Too late, I try to stop Dennis from making my tea.
“You know, I do all these things ten times faster than anyone else, so why not?” After he hands me my cup, he looks at the seven vases next to the sink. “I don’t recognize a single one of those, do you?”
“I suppose Mum never did arrange flowers.”
“She wasn’t keen on domestic things, was she?”
“And yet she produced you.” To my digestive dismay, Dennis is now skinning and boning a small mountain of chickens.
As I turn over a vase to rinse it under the tap, two objects fall into the sink: a house key, the large old-fashioned kind, and two military medals.
Behind me, Dennis sighs. “Isn’t it strange to think that just a week ago—less—Dad was living his life on that island, making his meals, reading his books, enjoying the sun?”
“Well, as Mal loved to say, we’re all alive the day before we die.” I rub one of the medals between a thumb and forefinger, trying to remove the oxidation that’s darkened its face. The striped ribbon is crumpled and dirty.
“Yes, but
how
alive is another question. I imagine Dad was extremely alive, as alive as could be, to the end. Do you think that’s good or bad?”
“Do you mean, would I rather go slowly, and have the leisure to contemplate my demise while in excruciating pain, or get whacked by a lorry while I’m fretting over my tax return?”
“I just keep not believing he’s dead, because, well, it wasn’t time yet, was it? Wouldn’t you say it was premature?”
Under any circumstances, I’d find it hard to answer this rather obtuse question without sarcasm, but now I have an excuse not to answer at all. I turn around and hold out the medal. “Recognize this?”
He leans close to examine it but does not take it. His hands are wet with poultry juices. “Must be Dad’s, from the war.”
“In an old vase on a shelf in the scullery?” I show him the key as well, though keys in odd places, hiding places, are not so unusual. But this key is not a key to our house.
“Well, you know, maybe we were having one of our treasure hunts, Davey and me, or playing a trick on Mum,” he says. “There was a period when we used to ‘borrow’ things from her handbag or her chest of drawers and hide them. See how long it would take her to notice them missing.”
I am about to pocket my finds as David walks in from out back. “Going a little daft already, Fen?” He’s struggling not to lose his temper. Only then do I remember the tables and chairs.
“Oh! Show the medals to Davey,” says Dennis. “That was a fancy of his way back when.”
David’s scowl lifts as I hold out the medals. He takes them and lays them in the palm of a hand. “I say, this is a Distinguished Service Order.”
“Dad’s?” I say.
“Oh Dad wasn’t that brave.” He laughs fondly. “Brave he was, I’m sure, but a D.S.O.—we’d know about that. Mum would’ve made him wear it to go to the loo.” He holds up the other medal, rubs its soiled bit of ribbon. “Nor, might I add, was he in Africa. Where did you find these?”
“In a vase, of all places,” I say. “Africa?”
As David hands the medals back to me, he says, “The Africa Star, that one, for service in North Africa during the last war,” but it’s clear he’s lost interest. “Must’ve been left by the occupants before us. Curious.” Then he holds the back door open. “The day, like life, is passing us by!” he announces to me with an accusatory smile.
THAT OCTOBER,
an icy rain fell with vindictive force for nearly two weeks. Each morning I would head straight for the basement to check for flooding (we were watertight, as it turned out, thanks to work that Armand had done when he put in his ovens). Outside, leaves that had barely turned yellow were ripped from the trees and papered tight against windows. Inside, it was so humid that the glue binding the cheaper books softened and filled the store with a medicinal, rubbery smell.
During this fortnight of damp gloom, I was often alone in the shop and found it hard not to brood about my socially straitjacketed life. Perhaps I was lazy, but most evenings after closing up (then neatening and reshelving books), I would go upstairs—half the time to a solitary simple meal in my flat, half the time for a chatty rich meal at Ralph’s, sometimes with a colleague of his (in which case most of the conversation amounted to academic dishing and griping; I had no regrets about passing up
that
life). I kept up my early-morning walks, even in the rain, and on Mondays, when we were closed, I would go to a film or out to lunch with one of the few friends I’d kept from grad school (whom I would forbid to gripe
or
dish). And because the business was new, I declined the few invitations I received for weekends away.
The readings Ralph wanted us to stage would not start until after Thanksgiving, and I seemed to be living in suspension till then, as if that one change in my routine would vastly enrich my existence.
One late afternoon I decided to close early; I hadn’t seen a soul in over an hour. To air out the place before locking up, I opened the door to the garden. I leaned in the shelter of its frame to catch the scents of wet moss and magnolia leaves. The rain fell hard, sluicing from our gutters onto the flagstones with a punishing din. Sparrows huddled, fluffing their feathers for warmth, on the perches around the feeder I had hung from the tree. As I took in this scene (morosely likening myself to one of those sodden immobile birds), someone spoke, just inches from my ear. “I was beginning to think the place abandoned.” In response to the alarm on my face, my visitor continued, “I might have pilfered a thousand dollars in art books without your being any the wiser; perhaps you should install one of those tinkling bells.” My visitor was (and it did nothing to improve my mood) Malachy Burns.
I smiled tersely. “Any other advice?”
“Not today,” he said cheerfully. His shoulder nearly touching mine, he turned his attention to the garden, as if we were companions in contemplation. “That’s a splendid feeder. Very Kyoto-esque. I know exactly where you got it and it can’t have been a bargain.”
I said nothing in reply to this backhanded compliment. The birdfeeder was a Victorian pagoda whose perches seated twenty under deep scalloped eaves. It had come from a pricey antiques shop a few blocks away. I had justified the splurge as a thematic accessory, writing it off as a business expense.
Malachy Burns stepped back inside. “Listen. I’ve brought someone I’d like you to meet. She’s waiting up front.”
Full of sour, weary speculation, I followed him through the aisles of books. His cranky senile mother? A neighbor with a complaint? Another lonelyheart he wanted to fob off on me?
Against the silver light from the front window, I could see only that there was a sizable object on the armchair next to my desk. Malachy Burns had draped his mackintosh on the chair and was now bent over the object, murmuring as if to a baby. As I came nearer, I saw that the object was a cage. When my visitor turned around, a bright red bird the size of a small dog was perched on his shirtsleeve.
“This is Felicity,” he said. “Felicity, this is Fenno. I think you’ll like him. He’s very classy.”
The bird regarded me intently. She tilted her head in that quizzically avian way, and I heard a faint clicking in her throat, a cantankerous tut-tut-tutting. She was, on closer inspection, not entirely red but had a deep blue-violet belly and gray feet that looked as if they were covered with crocodile skin. Her beak and eyes were the soft black of stones pummeled smooth by the sea.
I will admit that I was half-besotted, there and then. I had never owned a bird, though I admired the beauty of birds in the wild, and I had never laid eyes on a creature like this one.
Malachy Burns was raptly watching us both, man and bird. He said, “She’s an eclectus. I named her for the virtue I’m least likely to acquire—that is, after deciding that Fidelity smacks of finance and that I simply couldn’t love a companion named Prudence.”
Having no idea what was expected of me (was this a prank?), I was mute. Now Malachy Burns extended the arm with the bird. Felicity half-unfurled her wings, then closed them again. “Let her sit on your shoulder. Go on, Felicity.”
Certain this must be a prank, I backed away.
Malachy Burns laughed. “She won’t bite your ear off. More than I can say about some of the people in my life.”
So I let Felicity—and she was quite willing—vault from his sleeve onto my shoulder. Immediately, she began to explore my hair and my right ear, gently, with her beak. She did not cackle or chatter, which made her touch feel more amorous than playful. I turned my head toward her, trying to see her, and noticed that her feathers gave off a pungent smell, a pleasant musky mixture of nutmeg and lilies.