Parakeet: A Novel

by Marie-Helene Bertino

  I horrify her by saying I don’t have preferences, I’ve allowed my mother-in-law to plan most of the reception.

  The parakeet next to me sighs. “Do you hate weddings?” I ask her.

  “Peaseblossom hates everything,” Mary says.

  Peaseblossom frowns. “I guess I don’t get why everyone assumes a wedding is a good thing. There are a million reasons that get a woman into a wedding dress, not all good. Jealousy, aggression…”

  “Merging of property,” one of the actors offers.

  “Property,” she agrees. “Chances are you’ve been to a wedding where the groom is miserable. The bride, the parents.”

  “At my sister’s wedding last year,” a stagehand says. “She fell asleep during mass. The groom had to wake her up twice.”

  “That’s anxiety,” Peaseblossom says, pleased. “When a woman realizes she’s lying down with the patriarchy.”

  “Does that make you happy?” Adrian says. Only I know him well enough to see the slip of his thoughts show. “Another woman’s panic?” Adrian smiles, always managing the actors whether they’re in a black box or a Times Square diner. “Open dialogue is important. Still, let’s keep in mind there is someone at this table who is getting married soon.”

  The table’s attention shifts to me. Peaseblossom is too young to know she should apologize, which I appreciate.

  I don’t mind the pseudo-progressive marriage talk, the bandying of hypotheticals by people who pretend for a living, though I hold a sisterly suspicion of performers. I’ve never liked how they handled my brother’s gentle nature, doing violence to his texts, soldering them open with their coarse stage games.

  “Have you ever been married, Adrian?” Cobweb says.

  “Honey, I’ve been married hundreds of times.” Adrian dons the parakeet head. He holds his ringing phone up to the papier-mâché ear. “Hello?” Everyone laughs. My grandmother helps him take the head off. He nods to me. “Yes, yes, we’re all here. It’s me, the Lunas, the birds…” I shake my head no to a question he asks with his eyes. “… and a few others. Come join you? A party?”

  Everyone but me cheers.

  Okay, I mouth.

  We leave and walk through Times Square’s after-hours daylight where dozens of families debate whether to stop at the mega chocolate store. Mary from sales wears the parakeet head. Every person at Forty-Seventh and Broadway sifts through their bag to find something and not one of them does. Leather satchels, wristlets, bags like corsages pinned to the wrist.

  A man whispers into the vicinity of my neckline, “I am not secretive. You can see that I have a disability.”

  An elephant walks by. No, a man with a child on his shoulders. One hundred tired parents shoulder one hundred tired toddlers. A break-dancer spirals on a flat of cardboard. The actors pump their shoulders to her music. The beat drops out. The dancer halts, balances on one shoulder that supports the weight of her body. Palms pressed flat against the cardboard, her feet flexed and up-twirled to the haze of billboards and the starless sky. The dancer eyes us over one remarkable shoulder.

  The beat returns.

  She corkscrews off the ground, shuts off the boom box, jigs from person to person with an outstretched hat. The actors give her everything in their pockets. We say goodbye to the two Lunas who have curfews. One leaves with her mother, the other alone, both carrying parts of my childhood.

  The party is in a fifth-floor walk-up above a major appliance retailer. No one appears to be the host. We pour drinks in the kitchen and take them into the main room, lit by the back of a neon sign, a refrigerator holding hands with a washing machine. I sit on a hammock slung between two pillars, surrounded by parakeets. Every time the door opens I worry/hope it is my brother.

  Adrian traces Cobweb’s collarbone, making the young man giggle.

  Mary slides coasters underneath everyone’s drink.

  Two men walk in. “Oh no,” Cobweb says. “My boyfriend.”

  Adrian is still flirting. “Your what?”

  “Boyfriend,” the boyfriend says, crossing the room. He is not an actor, but someone who looks like he can build a bureau with his hands.

  The boyfriend ignores Adrian and speaks to Cobweb. “Are you fucking kidding me, Marco? Jesus Christ, let’s go. We have to go to your mother’s tomorrow and I’m not disappointing her again. Get your shit, Marco. And don’t forget your phone because I’m not coming back.”

  I can tell Adrian is impressed with the way this man and his friend navigate the room. We’re all impressed. Adrian extends his hand to shake on an erotic, participatory idea, but this man will not engage. De-winged, Cobweb takes off his wig to reveal nonglamorous hair. He leaves with his boyfriend.

  Adrian says, “That’s one way to leave a party.” A few weak titters. His phone rings. “Perfect timing.” He disappears into the back and returns to inform us that there is another, better party uptown. To me, he whispers, “We’re on.”

  “Now he’s uptown?” I say, my resolve slipping. The change of locales, the citywide parade. “Is this what it’s like every night?”

  Adrian answers the question under the question. “Everyone is clean,” he says. “No drugs. Please remember, you’re not letting me tell anyone you’re here.”

  “Let’s go into the forest!” Mustardseed says.

  We catch the train uptown. Adrian and I take the two-seater and I lay my head on his shoulder. Birds flank us. Someone says, remember we have a performance tomorrow. Someone tells that person to hush.

  Mustardseed insists, “Let’s go into the forest. If it’s locked we’ll climb the gate. We’ll pretend we’re owls. We’ll see the moon come up over the lake.” How lonely extroverts make me feel. The train erupts out of the station and we hover aboveground for a few stops.

  Adrian traces a circle on my shoulder. “Before we get there, you should know. The person you think of as your brother is not the same.”

  “I know recovery changes you. I work with a lot of addicts.”

  “There is a change,” Adrian says. “But it’s more than that.”

  We leave the train at Columbus Circle. The shops are closed, but one of the birds has stolen a bottle from the party. We pass it around and I regret my earlier thought about actors. Peaseblossom receives a message from Present Day Luna who has finished her director’s meeting and is hurtling through the city in a cab. I hope she gets stuck in traffic and goes home, but then a cab halts at the curb and she leaps out, holding a white dog the size of a coffee cup.

  “Well met,” she says. “Tut tut.”

  “Tut tut,” the company says.

  Adrian zips the shivering dog into his coat. The park is snow-filled and quiet. Present Day Luna stands next to me, eclipsing me in height. I am far from the Long Island Inn. Shoving my hands into my coat pockets steadies this thought as we walk across a swath of lawn to a lake that is famous to all of us.

  Someone says, “We should take off our clothes and go in.”

  Someone tells that person we’d die.

  I follow Adrian into the brush. The thrum of whiskey, the shape he makes against the banks of snow, and the nearness of my brother perform a trick. The snow is my brother. The dark path. With every step memory unwraps and I remember what it’s like to be in a room with Tom when he’s sober. His intense gaze, broken only occasionally by a laugh that changes his whole body. His patient heart. My own batters my rib cage. I want to tell him everything. I want to never see him again. I want hours of uninterrupted time to talk about our grandmother the bird.

  The trees are ankled in fresh snow. The dog in Adrian’s coat is asleep. The actors are finally silent, the only sound boots plunging through the crust. Our skin is illumined with crescent reflections moving over us, as if we are underwater or by a pool in all those movies about Los Angeles.

  At the end of the field, a driveway winds up a hill to a mansion. Inside is a famous unicorn tapestry, a collection of wrought-iron tools, and, Adrian promises, the person I’m here to see. I
stop halfway up the driveway so I can steady myself against his side to pull at my boot. He can look at me for as long as he likes without the uncomfortable prickle I experience when anyone else does because I know his secret, he doesn’t care about any of these people. After this run he will move on, the way after a fun season you shutter a house.

  Present Day Luna catches up to us.

  “Did she tell you?” she asks Adrian. “About the note?”

  Adrian nods, checks me for reaction. The dog in his coat gives me a sleepy wink.

  “I think it’s bullshit,” she says. “I don’t think she thinks that way at all.” She peers at me, a question brightening her eyes. Don’t talk to me, I pray. “Maybe I can ask you,” she says.

  “I don’t know anything about acting,” I say.

  “I know who you are. We saw pictures. We all do, don’t we?” Luna asks Peaseblossom, who doesn’t answer. “I’m sorry if this is pushy but I rarely get the opportunity to speak to the person I’m playing. The person whose life it actually is.”

  “It’s maybe too late for character research,” Adrian says.

  I tell him it’s fine even as the list of what I don’t like about this woman grows, her insistence that she is respecting my privacy even as her ego pushes into it. She speaks with the wandering expansiveness of a woman who doesn’t know we die.

  Mustardseed points to the luminous, milky field. “The moon and snow are talking.” But Luna won’t be distracted. “Why is it important to tell this story?” she says. “No one can give me an answer. I’m supposed to represent Present Day, the perch of the story. But why now?”

  “Beats me,” I say.

  She frowns. “And what’s the deal with the parakeets? The play doesn’t make it clear. I should know why she needs to replay these scenes from her life in this way at this time.”

  “It doesn’t sound like a failure of the play, but of imagination.” Her wounded expression pleases me. “Why are you entitled to know?”

  “That’s my phone,” Adrian says, wresting it out of his pocket. “We’re here,” he says. “At the bottom of the driveway.”

  “Ask the person who wrote it, why now?” I say to Present Day Luna, gesturing to the house.

  “I did. The answer was that I, Luna, blame myself for everything. The play is my unburdening.” She glances downward as if doubting the ground. “You’re right about entitlement. Every director I’ve ever had has gotten sick of my questions. Can I just say, though?”

  I brace to hear something unforgivable.

  “It’s very clear in the text that the playwright loves you so, so much.”

  If she knew the damage this does to me she’d be the meanest woman in the world.

  Adrian, on the phone, says, “I’ll wave. Can you see me?”

  “Look,” Peaseblossom says. At the top of the hill a copse of old-fashioned lamps outside the mansion illuminates then goes black, ignites, goes black.

  The company cheers, passing us.

  “I have a surprise,” Adrian says. “Your sister is here.” The lamps go out. “Here, here. Not kidding at all. She saw the play and everything.”

  Luna lifts the tiny dog from Adrian’s coat and joins the others. Adrian’s smile turns from confused to concerned. He hangs up. “I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s not the right time.”

  “The right time for what?” The lamps turn on. A few of the actors reach the front door. “I can’t go up?”

  Adrian shakes his head. “I’ll leave with you. We’ll get a drink and talk.”

  “I don’t want a drink.” I shake him off, walk out of the park as he follows with Peaseblossom and Mustardseed.

  Adrian insists on finding me a cab but first he must buy an orange juice at the deli. The birds with wrecked hair and lopsided wings scrutinize breakfast sandwiches from the counter menu.

  If it helps, my grandmother said, you won’t find him.

  I buy a banana and rejoin Adrian and the parakeets on the street where they hold paper bags and gaze up at the trees.

  “It’s supposed to be sixty degrees tomorrow,” Mustardseed says. “This snow won’t last a day.”

  I admire Adrian’s hips outlined in morning light, the elegant stance that makes him so desired. He says, “Don’t let me live anywhere with no seasons again.”

  “For a moment,” I tell him, “I mistook you for a woman.”

  He hits a pose, designed to beguile. “I get that a lot.”

  He hails me a cab and we say goodbye on the street. “Adrian,” I say. “I don’t know if I want to get married.” As soon as I say it, it’s true, and the wedding becomes a tangible, breakable thing. I understand that I am able to do things to it, like opt out.

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” he says. “Look at you. Shocked I still know you. Whenever you’re in fugue, you don’t answer direct questions. You repeat what the person says.” He pantomimes. “How do you feel about getting married? I’m getting married. Are you as ready as you can be? Am I ready?”

  “Don’t do my voice,” I say. “That’s mean.”

  He shrugs, smiles. “Life is mean?”

  “Will you think less of me? The groom is decent and kind, has a good job, a promising future.”

  “Sounds awful.”

  “I have a dead-end job. Bad health insurance. It would take me years to pay this wedding off.”

  Above the rooftops, cranes add to the city, giving everyone more to work around. Mustardseed rustles in her coat, says I’m cold with the preserved sweetness of the early twenties. Adrian’s breath puzzles out from under his scarf. He says, “You’ll be a beautiful bride if you decide to be. Don’t wait so long to call again. I’m capable of getting very angry.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “No, I’m not.” He laughs. “I allow your family everything.” He tightens his embrace around the birds. “You’re so used to taking notes on other people. You know who that reminds me of?”

  “He hasn’t changed,” I say. “He’s still selfish Tom. Tell him I said so, Adrian. Tell him I said, Fuck his unburdening.”

  His gaze remains gentle. “You should probably remember that transition takes time.”

  One of the frustrating things about performers is that they’re always exiting on a landing line. “Don’t say something like that and leave, Adrian. Don’t do it.” He and the parakeets are already walking away. Every moment the snow diminishes. One thing is ending and another moves uptown limitlessly into the bargain the trees make with the morning. I want to join the thing that’s limitless, I’m mixing up Adrian and my life, my love for a friend I never get to see, nights with him so rare that they’re precious and they hurt.

  THE BOYS WHO LOVE PRISCILLA

  My brother’s voice on my phone in the morning, beseeching me to meet him in the city. There is something I should know before being angry, which I am well within my rights to do, he admits in his message, because of the play, the years, what he calls the “Whitman’s Sampler Assortment of Crimes” he’s committed against me, referencing our grandmother’s favorite chocolate without realizing the irony. I’m swayed by the well-placed intimate reference. Besought. His voice weapon and shield; higher-pitched than I remember, from what must be sorrow or lack of sleep. Then something I’ve never heard him say: I’m sorry. The audacity that repulsed me in the evening heals me in the morning and I show up to a public city atrium feeling manipulated, hopeful, confused, weak-willed, undercaffeinated, assuming the worst and hoping for it. Human.

  Amid a bank of metal chairs and the sun, a misplaced-looking family consults a map. A couple shares a salad. A well-dressed woman folds a receipt into her purse. The family’s mother says, “I understand.” I see my brother, sitting in the farthest chair, partly obscured by a recycling receptacle, taking a bite from a sandwich. My legs tremble as I walk over, too nervous to call out. Age has receded his hairline and broadened his shoulders. He is almost unrecognizable.

  “Hello,” I say, standing over him.

&nbs
p; He drags his fingers across the cellophane wrapper to clean them. “Hello.”

  “Tom?”

  “Greg,” he apologizes. “I think you’re looking for someone else.”

  The other tables are brotherless. You won’t find him, my grandmother said. I dial his number.

  Yards away, the well-dressed woman answers her phone.

  I watch her speak and hear my brother in the earpiece. “Are you here?” he says.

  “Tom?”

  The woman snaps her purse closed and stands, turns in my direction.

  At an empty table I sit in a chair that hurts instantly as my brother walks toward me wearing a prim blouse tucked into black work pants: his movement edits the courtyard’s sound; the lost family’s reorganizations gone, the honking of morning trucks gone, to include only the tapping of heeled boots as I notice the obvious things first; the slimmer cheeks and neck but then as this figure comes closer I notice deeper, more familiar, stranger, the dark skin familiar, the flashing eyes familiar, the simple eyeliner and lip gloss new, my understanding has almost caught up by the time they reach the table—a woman, who moves like water being poured from a delicate vase.

  The other chair squeaks as she sits. Her perfume finds me.

  “You can hang up now,” she says.

  The family, oblivious to anyone having metamorphic moments nearby, asks one another how important it is to see the museum and the church in one day. Could they do one in the morning, before the airport? But the flight is so early. Well, whose fault is that?

  “Do you work here?” I say.

  “I keep an office on the tenth floor. I like being around businesspeople. No one bothers me. They’re more polite than artists and don’t ask questions.”

  “You’ve always liked your space,” I say.

  The mother of the tourist family stands above us. “Do you know how to get to City Market?” The woman I am sitting with gives careful, patient directions, as I study her for anything that remains of the person I used to know, the endless capacity with strangers even while wagging her heel underneath the table in anticipation of the mother leaving. The elegant hands, the voice that has always sounded like stacked bars of light. She concludes, “The city is a grid meant to baffle us all,” to make the mother grin before she rejoins her family.