BIRDS OF SADNESS
As we were leaving the Badlands, Gramps swore at a driver who cut us off. Usually when Gramps cussed like this, Gram threatened to go back to the egg man. I don’t know that whole story, just that one time when Gramps was cussing up a storm, Gram ran off with the man who regularly bought eggs from Gramps. Gram stayed with the egg man for three days and three nights until Gramps came to get her and promised he wouldn’t swear anymore.
I once asked Gram if she would really go back to the egg man if Gramps cussed too much. She said, “Don’t tell your grandfather, but I don’t mind a few hells and damns. Besides, that egg man snored to beat the band.”
“So you didn’t leave Gramps just because of the cussing?”
“Salamanca, I don’t even remember why I did that. Sometimes you know in your heart you love someone, but you have to go away before your head can figure it out.”
?
That night we stayed at a motel outside of Wall, South Dakota. They had one room left, with only one bed in it, but Gramps was tired, so he said it would do. The bed was a king-size water bed. “Gol-dang,” Gramps said. “Lookee there.” When he pressed his hand on it, it gurgled. “Looks like we’ll all have to float on this raft together tonight.”
Gram flopped down on the bed and giggled. “Huz-huz,” she said, in her raspy voice. She rolled into the middle. “Huz-huz.” I lay down next to her, and Gramps tentatively sat down on the other side. “Whoa,” he said. “I do believe this thing’s alive.” The three of us lay there sloshing around as Gramps turned this way and that. “Gol-darn,” he said. Tears were streaming down Gram’s face she was giggling so hard.
Gramps said, “Well, this ain’t our marriage bed—”
That night I dreamed that I was floating down a river on a raft with my mother. We were lying on our backs looking up at the high sky. The sky moved closer and closer to us. There was a sudden popping sound and then we were up in the sky. Momma looked all around and said, “We can’t be dead. We were alive just a minute ago.”
In the morning, we set out for the Black Hills and Mt. Rushmore, hoping to be there by lunchtime. No sooner were we in the car than Gramps said, “So what happened to Peeby’s mother and did Peeby get any more of those messages?”
“I hope everything turned out all right,” Gram said. “I’m a little worried about Peeby.”
?
On the day after Phoebe showed her father the suspicious spots and the unidentifiable hair strands, another message appeared: You can’t keep the birds of sadness from flying over your head, but you can keep them from nesting in your hair. Phoebe brought the message to school to show me. “The lunatic again,” she said.
“If he has already kidnapped your mother, why would he still be leaving messages?”
“They’re clues,” she said.
At school, people kept asking Phoebe about her mother’s business trip to London. She tried to ignore them, but it wasn’t always possible. She had to answer some of the time.
When Megan asked Phoebe what sights her mother had seen, Phoebe said, “Buckingham Palace—”
“Of course,” Megan nodded knowingly.
“And Big Ben, and—” Phoebe was struggling. “Shakespeare’s birthplace.”
“But that’s in Stratford-on-Avon,” Megan said. “I thought your mother was in London. Stratford is miles away. Did she go on a day trip or something?”
“Yes, that’s what she did. She went on a day trip.”
Phoebe couldn’t help it. She looked as if a whole family of the birds of sadness were nesting in her hair.
In English class, Ben had to give his mythology report. He was nervous. He explained that Prometheus stole fire from the sun and gave it to man. Zeus, the chief god, was angry at man and at Prometheus for taking some of his precious sun. As punishment, Zeus sent Pandora (a woman) to man. Then Zeus chained Prometheus to a rock and sent vultures down to eat Prometheus’s liver. In Ben’s nervousness, he mispronounced Prometheus, so what he actually said was that Zeus sent vultures down to eat porpoise’s liver.
Mary Lou invited both me and Phoebe to dinner that night. When I phoned my father, he did not seem to mind, and I knew he wouldn’t. All he said was, “That will be nice for you, Sal. Maybe I’ll go eat over at Margaret’s.”
CHOLESTEROL
Dinner at the Finneys’ was an experience. When we arrived, Mary Lou’s brothers were running around like crazed animals, jumping over the furniture and tossing footballs. Mary Lou’s older sister, Maggie, was talking on the telephone and plucking her eyebrows at the same time. Mr. Finney was cooking something in the kitchen, with the help of four-year-old Tommy. Phoebe whispered, “I am not too optimistic about the possibilities of this meal.”
When Mrs. Finney straggled in the door at six o’clock, Tommy and Dougie and Dennis tugged at various parts of her, all of them talking at once. “Look at this,” and “Mom, Mom, Mom,” and “Me first!” She made her way into the kitchen, trailing all three of them like a fishhook that has snagged a tangle of old tires and boots and other miscellaneous rubbish. She gave Mr. Finney a sloppy kiss on the lips, and he slipped a piece of cucumber into her mouth.
Mary Lou and I set the table, although I think it was largely a wasted effort. Everyone descended on the table in a chaotic flurry, knocking over glasses and sending forks onto the floor and picking up plates (which did not match, Phoebe pointed out to me) and saying, “That’s my plate. I want the daisy plate,” and “Give me the blue one! It’s my turn for the blue plate.”
Phoebe and I sat between Mary Lou and Ben. In the center of the table was a whomping platter of fried chicken. Phoebe said, “Chicken? Fried? I can’t eat fried foods. I have a sensitive stomach.” She glanced at the three pieces of chicken on Ben’s plate. “You really shouldn’t eat that, Ben. Fried foods aren’t good for you. First of all, there’s the cholesterol—”
Phoebe removed two pieces of chicken from Ben’s plate and put them back on the serving platter. Mr. Finney coughed. Mrs. Finney said, “You’re not going to eat the chicken then, Phoebe?”
Phoebe smiled. “Oh no, Mrs. Finney. I couldn’t possibly. Actually, Mr. Finney shouldn’t be eating it either. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but men should really be careful about their cholesterol.”
Mr. Finney stared down at his chicken. Mrs. Finney was rolling her lips around peculiarly. By this time, the beans had been passed to Phoebe. “Did you put butter on these beans, Mrs. Finney?”
“Yes, I did. Is there something wrong with butter?”
“Cholesterol,” Phoebe said. “Cho-les-ter-ol. In the butter.”
“Ah,” Mrs. Finney said. “Cholesterol.” She looked at her husband. “Be careful, dear. There’s cholesterol on the beans.”
I stared at Phoebe. I am sure I was not the only one in the room who wanted to strangle her.
Ben pushed his beans to one side of his plate. Maggie picked up a bean and examined it. When the potatoes came around, Phoebe explained that she was on a diet and could not eat starch. The rest of us looked glumly down at our plates. There was nothing at all on Phoebe’s plate. Mrs. Finney said, “So what do you eat, Phoebe?”
“My mother makes special vegetarian meals. Low-calorie and no cholesterol. We eat a lot of salads and vegetables. My mother’s an excellent cook.”
She never mentioned the cholesterol in all those pies and brownies her mother made. I wanted to jump up and say, “Phoebe’s mother has disappeared and that is why Phoebe is acting like a complete donkey,” but I didn’t.
Phoebe repeated, “A truly excellent cook.”
“Marvelous,” Mrs. Finney said. “And what do you propose to eat tonight?”
“I don’t suppose you have any unadulterated vegetables?”
“Unadulterated?” Mrs. Finney said.
“It means unspoiled, without any butter or stuff added—”
“I know what it means, Phoebe,” Mrs. Finney said.
“I can eat unadulterated vegetables. Or if you have any red bean salad handy—or stuffed cabbage leaves? Broccoli and lentil casserole? Macaroni and cheese? Vegetarian spaghetti?”
One by one, everyone at the table turned to stare at Phoebe. Mrs. Finney got up from the table and went into the kitchen. We heard her opening and closing cupboards. She returned to the doorway. “Muesli?” she asked Phoebe. “Can you eat muesli?”
Phoebe said, “Oh yes, I eat muesli. For breakfast.”
Mrs. Finney disappeared again and returned with a bowl of dried-up muesli and a bottle of milk.
“For dinner?” Phoebe asked. She gazed down at the bowl. “I usually eat it with yogurt on it—not milk,” she said.
Mrs. Finney turned to Mr. Finney. “Dear, did you buy yogurt this week?”
“Blast it! How could I forget the yogurt?”
Phoebe ate her dried-up muesli without milk. All through dinner, I kept thinking of Bybanks, and what it was like when we went to my grandparents’ house for dinner. There were always tons of people—relatives and neighbors—and lots of confusion. It was a friendly sort of confusion, and it was like that at the Finneys’. Tommy spilled two glasses of milk, Dennis punched Dougie, and Dougie punched him back. Maggie socked Mary Lou, and Mary Lou flipped a bean at her. Maybe this is what my mother had wanted, I thought. A house full of children and confusion.
On the way home, I said, “Didn’t everyone seem unusually quiet after dinner?”
Phoebe said, “It was probably because of all that cholesterol sitting heavily on their stomachs.”
I asked Phoebe if she wanted to spend the weekend at my house. I’m not sure why I did this. It was an impulse. I had not yet invited anyone to my house. She said, “I guess. That is, if my mother is still—” She coughed. “Let’s go ask my dad.”
In the kitchen, her father was washing the dishes. He was wearing a frilly apron over his white shirt and tie. “You’re supposed to rinse the soap off,” Phoebe said. “And is that cold water you’re using? You’re supposed to use really, really hot water. To kill the germs.”
He didn’t look at Phoebe. I thought maybe he was embarrassed to be caught doing the dishes.
“You’ve probably washed that plate enough,” Phoebe said. He had been rubbing it around and around with the dishcloth. He stopped and stared down at the plate. I could practically see the birds of sadness pecking at his head, but Phoebe was busy swatting at her own birds.
“Did you call all of Mom’s friends?” Phoebe asked.
“Phoebe,” he said. “I’m looking into it. I’m a little tired. Do you mind if we don’t discuss this now?”
“But don’t you think we should call the police?”
“Phoebe—”
“Sal wants to know if I can spend the weekend at her house.”
“Of course,” he said.
“But what if Mom comes back while I’m at Sal’s? Will you call me? Will you let me know?”
“Of course.”
“Or what if she telephones? Maybe I should stay home. I think I should be here if she calls.”
“If she telephones, I’ll have her call you at Sal’s,” he said.
“But if we don’t have any news by tomorrow,” Phoebe said, “we should definitely call the police. We’ve waited too long already. What if she’s tied up somewhere and waiting for us to rescue her?”
At home that night, I was working on my mythology report when Phoebe called. She was whispering. When she went downstairs to say good night to her father, he was sitting in his favorite chair staring at the television, but the television wasn’t on. If she did not know her father better, she would have thought he had been crying. “But my father never cries,” she said.
SACRIFICES
The weekend was unbelievably long. Phoebe arrived with her suitcase on Saturday morning. I said, “Golly, Phoebe, are you planning to spend a month here?” When I took her up to my room, she asked if she was going to be sharing the room with me. “Why no, Phoebe,” I said. “We built a whole new extension just for you.”
“You don’t have to be sarcastic,” she said.
“I was only teasing, Phoebe.”
“But there’s only one bed.”
“Good powers of observation, Phoebe.”
“I thought you might sleep downstairs on the couch. People usually try to make their guests comfortable.” She looked around my room. “We’re going to be a little crowded in here, aren’t we?”
I did not answer. I did not bash her over the head. I knew why she was acting this way. She sat down on my bed and bounced on it a couple times. “I guess I’ll have to get used to your lumpy mattress, Sal. Mine is very firm. A firm mattress is much better for your back. That’s why I have such good posture. The reason you slouch is probably because of this mattress.”
“Slouch?” I said.
“Well, you do slouch, Sal. Look in the mirror sometime.” She mashed on my mattress. “Don’t you know anything about having guests? You’re supposed to give your guests the best that you have. You’re supposed to make some sacrifices, Sal. That’s what my mother always says. She says, ‘In life, you have to make some sacrifices.’”
“I suppose your mother made a great sacrifice when she took off,” I said. I couldn’t help it. She was really getting on my nerves.
“My mother didn’t ‘take off.’ Someone kidnapped her. She is undergoing tremendous sacrifice at this very moment in time.” She started unpacking. “Where shall I put my things?” When I opened up the closet, she said, “What a mess! Do you have some extra hangers? Am I supposed to leave my clothes jammed up in the suitcase all weekend? A guest is supposed to have the best. It is only courtesy, Sal. My mother says—”
“I know, I know—sacrifice.”
Ten minutes later, Phoebe mentioned that she was getting a headache. “It might even be a migraine. My aunt’s foot doctor used to get migraines, only they turned out not to be migraines at all. Do you know what they were?”
“What?” I said.
“A brain tumor.”
“Really?” I said.
“Yes,” Phoebe said. “In her brain.”
“Well, of course it would be in her brain, Phoebe. I figured that out when you said it was a brain tumor.”
“I don’t think that’s a particularly sympathetic way to speak to someone with a migraine or potential brain tumor.”
In my book was a picture of a tree. I drew a round head with curly hair, put a rope around the neck, and attached it to that tree.
It went on and on like that. I hated her that day. I didn’t care how upset she was about her mother, I really hated her, and I wanted her to leave. I wondered if this was how my father felt when I threw all those temper tantrums. Maybe he hated me for a while.
After dinner, we walked over to Mary Lou’s. Mr. and Mrs. Finney were rolling around on the front lawn in a pile of leaves with Tommy and Dougie, and Ben was sitting on the porch. I sat down beside him while Phoebe went looking for Mary Lou.
Ben said, “Phoebe’s driving you crazy, isn’t she?” I liked the way he looked right in your eyes when he talked to you.
“Extensively,” I said.
“I bet Phoebe is lonely.”
I don’t know what came over me, but I almost reached up and touched his face. My heart was thumping so loudly that I thought he would be able to hear it. I went into the house. From the back window, I watched Mrs. Finney climb a ladder placed against the garage. On the roof, she took off her jacket and spread it out. A few minutes later, Mr. Finney came around the back of the house and climbed up the ladder. He took off his jacket and spread it out next to her. He lay down on the roof and put his arm around her. He kissed her.
On the roof, in the wide open air, they lay there kissing each other. It made me feel peculiar. They reminded me of my parents, before the stillborn baby, before the operation.
Ben came into the kitchen. As he reached into the cupboard for a glass, he stopped and looked at me. Again I had that odd sensation that I wanted to touch his face, right there on his cheek, in that soft spot. I was afraid my hand might just lift up and drift over to him if I was not careful. It was most peculiar.
“Guess where Mary Lou is?” Phoebe said when she came in. “She’s with Alex. On a date.”
I had never been on a date. Neither, I assumed, had Phoebe.
That night at my house, I pulled the sleeping bag out of the closet and spread it on the floor. Phoebe looked at it as if it were a spider. “Don’t worry,” I said, “I’ll sleep in it.” I crawled in and pretended to fall asleep immediately. I heard Phoebe get into bed.
A little later, my father came into the room. “Phoebe?” he said. “Is something the matter?”
“No,” she said.
“I thought I heard someone crying. Are you okay?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
I felt bad for Phoebe. I knew I should get up and try to be nice, but I remembered when I had felt like that, and I knew that sometimes you just wanted to be alone with the birds of sadness. Sometimes you had to cry by yourself.
That night I dreamed that I was sitting on the grass peering through a pair of binoculars. Far off in the distance, my mother was climbing up a ladder. She kept climbing and climbing. It was a thumpingly tall ladder. She couldn’t see me, and she never came down. She just kept on going.