Sorrow

by Tiffanie DeBartolo

  “Joe . . .”

  “It’s not done yet. Obviously.”

  She was shaking her head. “I don’t know what to say. . . . It’s already beyond what I could have imagined . . . and it’s so . . . I don’t know . . . pretty.”

  Teasing, I said, “Pretty is the lazy way to describe a birdcage.”

  She elbowed me in the ribs. “I mean it. I’m speechless.”

  “Check this out,” I said, galvanized by her reaction. “I’m in the process of making the door.” I pointed. “It’ll latch from the outside. Right here.” I showed her the drawing I’d made as well, so she could see what I was talking about. “This is where the clasp will go. I’m thinking of putting a small box around it, if I have time, so you can’t reach through and open it. Apparently that’s a thing. Some birds can open doors.” I took a drink of my cappuccino. She was right. It was terrible. The espresso tasted like burnt popcorn and there was too much milk, but I drank it anyway. “And, well, there’s this other crazy idea I’ve been working on, but I can scrap it if you think it’s no bueno. It sort of depends on the statement you’re trying to make about freedom. I mean, is this an I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings sort of thing? Or a literal absence of freedom? Or a commentary about freedom of choice regarding women’s rights? Given the charity we’re supporting, that’s what I would imagine, but you tell me.”

  She didn’t answer my questions. She just squinted and said, “Tell me your idea.”

  “OK. Like I said, if you hate it, it’s not too late to dial it back. But here’s what I was thinking: What if I put a mechanism on the cage so that as the night rolls on—we have what, two hours? So, imagine as those two hours tick by, the cage is literally closing in on you. It’ll happen slowly and be barely perceptible, but perceptible enough, like if it wasn’t for the base sticking further and further out from the bottom of the bars, people might not even notice it until the cage is pressing up against you. But they’ll sense it. It will make them uncomfortable. And by the end of the night, you won’t be able to move. You know, as a sort of interpretation of how women seem to have all this freedom but are still caged in a lot of ways, and it’s stifling, and some people are still trying to take it away.”

  Her expression had been expanding as I spoke. Her eyes were huge and sparkly, and she was pointing at me, pressing her finger into my chest. “Joseph Harper, do not get me excited about this unless you’re confident you can build it in a couple of weeks.”

  “If this is all I’m doing, then yes, I’m confident I can.”

  She pursed her lips as though she were holding a secret between them.

  “What?” I said.

  “Nothing.” She was smiling now, big and bright. “I just love this idea so much.”

  “You do?”

  She nodded. “It’s perfect.” Then she tilted her head to the side and stared at me, and I saw a glimmer of something return. A pillowy softness in her eyes that I recognized as the kind of affection a person can’t hide even if they try.

  “What?” I said again.

  She caught herself, regained her composure. “Nothing. You’re a genius. I’m excited about this, that’s all.”

  I escorted her into the cage. The space was tight for two people and we had to stand close. “I’m going to hang a bar in the center, right here, with a perch. It will look nice, don’t worry.” I pointed to the spot on the drawing too, so she could reference where we were. “It may or may not be weight-bearing, I’m not sure yet. For you, it will probably be fine. But you definitely won’t want Diego sitting on it.”

  She laughed and said, “Duly noted.”

  “Oh. Wait. I have to show you my favorite part.” I put the sketches down and walked to the corner of the room, where I’d left a long cardboard box. “I found this wallpaper to put on the bottom.” I opened the box and unrolled the paper for her to see. It was made to look like old editions of the New York Times. “Get it? Every birdcage I’ve ever seen has newspaper on the bottom. And these aren’t random newspapers. I got to pick the year when I ordered it. These are headlines from 1973, the year of the Supreme Court’s decision on Roe v. Wade.”

  “Incredible. Honestly, you’re blowing me away.”

  We drank our awful, now cold cappuccinos and talked more about how I was going to make the mechanics work, as well as how the night would unfold. October told me we were having a meeting with the audiovisual engineer from the gallery the following day, and she couldn’t wait for me to explain this to him.

  We worked separately for the rest of the day. I concentrated on the birdcage, and October concentrated on a selfie. She spent over an hour photographing her eyes in extreme close-up with a forensic camera. Then she edited the photos into a video montage, put a bunch of weird filters on them, and intercut the video with images of masochistic, hard-core pornography. The porn flashed by in quick, short bursts so that if you blinked you missed it and if you didn’t blink you weren’t quite sure you’d seen it at all. It made me uncomfortable when she showed it to me, mainly because it reminded me of the fantasy I’d had of her and Cal on the beach, and even though I knew it was impossible for October to have gleaned those thoughts from me, or sensed my shame all the way from Big Sur, I couldn’t exactly put it past her.

  At some point later in the day, it must have been around four o’clock, Cal burst into the studio like he’d been shot out of a cannon and declared the workday over.“Enough of your toiling,” he said. “I’m only here for two more days. I want to hang out.”

  October and I were at opposite ends of the room. We both stopped what we were doing and looked at him.

  “Which one of us are you talking to?” she asked.

  “Both of you. Come on. Let’s do something.”

  October didn’t make a move, so Cal sauntered over to her, lifted her up, and flung her over his shoulder.

  “All right,” she laughed. “Put me down.”

  He slid her back to the ground. Then he rested his hands on her shoulders, looked at me and said, “Drop the tools, Harp. I’m not above picking you up either.”

  I walked over, wiping my hands on my jeans. “I could use a break.”

  “Excellent. How about we go for a drive?”

  “For a drive,” October repeated, rolling her eyes. “As you know, what Chris means when he says ‘Let’s go for a drive’ is ‘Drive me somewhere.’”

  I offered to do the driving, but October predicted we were going to end up at a bar and said, “You guys have fun. I’ll be the chauffeur.”

  A second later Cal said, “I got it!” He looked at me when he said, “the Pelican Inn.”

  The Pelican Inn is an authentic British pub off of Highway 1, on the way to Muir Beach. Cal and I used to hike there from my house when we were kids. We’d talk Ingrid into giving us some money, and when we got to the Pelican Inn we’d eat fish-and-chips and drink a couple of sodas before heading home. It used to make us feel like adults to sit in the bar, order food, and pay the check by ourselves. And we would feign British accents whenever we were there. Actually, it was more specific than that. We would feign the exact Manchester accents we had perfected by watching Noel and Liam Gallagher in interviews. We would introduce ourselves as Noel and Liam too. Cal was always Noel because he was the leader of our band, and because he is a month older than I am—Noel is the elder Gallagher brother.

  More than once when we were kids, we’d talked about how we were going to go back someday, after we were grown up, and actually order beer. So when Cal suggested we go to the Pelican Inn, my first thought was: This is one shared dream he and I will realize together. And there was a sense of contentment in that. A softening in my heart. But right away the softness gave way to an impending melancholy, a pressing in of regret, of all that had been lost.

  Cal hopped into October’s SUV with the gusto of a windstorm, and I couldn’t help but follow. This is w
hy Cal had always been a good ally for me. His enthusiasm is contagious. It’s hard for me to get excited about most things, but Cal has the ability to flip a switch and turn on my fun side.

  October drove through downtown Mill Valley and headed up Marion Avenue toward our intended destination, but when she got to Edgewood, instead of continuing straight, Cal said, “Make a right.”

  October turned, and as soon as she did I knew where Cal was taking us. October did not and said, “This isn’t the way to the Pelican Inn.”

  “Detour down Memory Lane,” Cal told her. A minute later he said, “Up there, on the right. Pull over.” He pointed down a long, sloping driveway and said, “There it is. Bob Harper’s masterpiece.”

  Masterpiece was a facetious term. The house was three stories of cutting corners made to look fancy. Bob’s clients typically wanted the biggest, showiest houses on the block, not the most well-built ones, and Bob had constructed our family’s house in a similar manner. The house was still standing though, and it didn’t look much different than it looked back when Cal and I were teenagers, so maybe it was a masterpiece and I was an ungrateful shit.

  October parked on the side of the road just north of the property and looked over her shoulder at me. “I’m assuming this is where you grew up.”

  I nodded.

  “I grew up here too,” Cal said. “In high school, I spent more days and nights in this house than in my own. As a matter of fact, the first time I ever touched a boob was right there in that garage.”

  “Shit,” I mumbled. “Kathleen Kelly.”

  Cal threw his head back and laughed. “I can’t believe you remember her name!”

  “Of course I do. She traumatized me.”

  Cal’s laugh came from deep in his gut. “Tell October the story! You tell it way funnier than I do!”

  Most people would describe me as dry and somber, but for some reason Cal found me uproarious. I looked at October and said, “Kathleen Kelly wasn’t some girl from our school. She was one of Ingrid’s friends.”

  “Ingrid is Harp’s mom,” Cal clarified.

  “Yeah. So, my mom is having this party one night. Cal and I were what—sophomores at the time?”

  “Not even. It was the spring of our freshman year.”

  “Right. And Kathleen comes out to the garage where we were practicing; she’s drunk out of her mind, and wearing this low-cut blouse.”

  “Like, to here,” Cal said, pointing to his bellybutton.

  “Pretty much,” I agree. “And she asks us straight up if we’ve ever seen a topless woman before.”

  At this point Cal is laughing so hard he can barely get the words out. “Tell October what you asked Kathleen!”

  I shrugged. “What? All I said was ‘In person?’ because I didn’t know if she meant in real life or on TV. We’d obviously seen naked women on TV. It seemed like a legitimate question.”

  October was chuckling now too, looking back and forth between Cal and me.

  “Anyway,” I went on, “Kathleen unbuttons her shirt and unhooks her bra right in front of us. The door to the house wasn’t even closed. And then she says, ‘Who wants to touch them?’”

  “And they’re huge and fake and, like, rippled,” Cal explains. “Imagine unripe cantaloupes.”

  October made her paper-belly face. “No . . .”

  “Both of us are standing there, frozen and terrified, our jaws on the floor, and Kathleen is saying, ‘C’mon, c’mon, doesn’t anybody want to touch them?’ and finally Cal raises his hands. Plural. He raised both his hands.” This is where I started to crack up. “Your face,” I said to Cal. “I remember how concerned you were. Like you felt bad I wasn’t volunteering and had to do Kathleen a favor.”

  “That’s exactly how I felt!”

  I tapped October on the shoulder so that she would look at me, and then I raised my hands and stretched out my fingers like Cal had done, to show her. “No kidding, his hands are like this, and he says, ‘Fine, fine, I’ll do it,’ and he walks up to her and grabs them like they’re two clown horns. And he squeezes.”

  October covered her face and giggled.

  Cal said, “I learned a very important lesson that day. Don’t squeeze.”

  After our laughter died down, Cal hopped out of the car and said, “Come on. Let’s look around.”

  October and I followed Cal as far as the driveway, but he kept going.

  “Chris . . . ,” October said.

  “Nobody’s home,” he told her. And while there were no lights on and no cars around, there was no way he could know that for sure. “I just want to peek in the windows. For old time’s sake.”

  He was all the way to the front door when October took a step closer to me, put her palm on my back, and said, “Just checking to make sure you’re OK. Being here, I mean.”

  “I’m fine.” I nodded and stepped away from her. “Thanks, though.”

  It was true when I said it. Seeing the house wasn’t a trigger for me. I had hiked past it a few times since I’d moved back and didn’t feel much of anything when I did.

  It wasn’t until I looked up and saw Cal standing near the front door, calling my name the way only Cal ever did, that my mood took a nosedive.

  The last time I’d seen Cal in that doorway was the day before he left for Brooklyn. He’d come over to make one last appeal, and he’d used the same argument I’d tried on Bob. “Give it a year. If we don’t make any progress you can come back and go to Berkeley. What do you have to lose?”

  I had assured him I would give that serious thought and, to make us both feel better, told him I’d probably be in Brooklyn by Christmas.

  I could see the internal debate on his face then, and the concern. “Harp,” he’d said, “promise me one thing. Promise me that no matter what happens, we’ll always be best friends.”

  “I promise.”

  The Pelican Inn opened in the late 1970s and is meant to look like a cozy medieval pub. The walls are brick and white plaster; the floors thick, wide planks of five-hundred-year-old redwood; and in the back corner of the restaurant there’s a walk-in fireplace with a big cauldron in the middle of it.

  It was Friday, and the place was packed when we arrived. Right away I could see that all the people waiting in the entryway made October uncomfortable. She didn’t take her eyes off the floor, and she kept snapping the elastic hair band she wore around her wrist. I wondered to myself if we should go somewhere less busy, but Cal didn’t seem fazed by October’s behavior, and I didn’t think it was my place to step in and say anything if he didn’t.

  There wasn’t a table for three available, but Cal sweet-talked the hostess, and she said that if we didn’t mind squeezing in at a table meant for two, she could seat us right away.

  “Bloody brilliant,” Cal said in his Noel Gallagher brogue.

  “Sounds fantastic,” I said as Liam.

  October looked at us like we were two strangers she’d picked up on the side of the road.

  The waitress led us to the back corner of the dining room, to a small table right beside the fireplace. The table had a chair on one side and a bench on the other. The bench was actually a section of an old church pew. It faced the room, and right away Cal took the single chair so he could sit with his back to the other diners.

  I slid onto the bench first, all the way to the wall, but the space was so tight that when October slid in beside me, our legs and arms pressed against each other’s. I remember trying to hold my breath, trying to shut my body down so that she wouldn’t pick up on my reaction to being that close to her. But my leg palpitated like it had its own heartbeat, and I realized with resigned mortification that there was no way for me to hide my feelings from her.

  Luckily, glancing across the table at Cal distracted me. He looked elated and proud, and it made me homesick to be there with him, though not for my
literal home. I was homesick for the feeling I used to have when I was with Cal and could see the world through his eyes. There’s a certain sort of hope that kids have, even in the direst of circumstances, because they don’t yet understand the constraints of time and the complexities of adult life. When I was young, I used to imagine time as a wide-open space, like a big field that Cal and I ran around in. Now that I’m older, I see that time is really more like a funnel, getting narrower and narrower as we move forward into it, limiting our space, our options, until one day there will be nothing but a tiny hole that we’ll drip through into nothingness.

  I stared at the candle in the center of the table. Finally, a real one, in a real, old-fashioned pewter candleholder, with a real flame; I took comfort in that.

  Cal and I both ordered Guinness, and October asked for a lemonade. After the waitress came back with our drinks, we ordered fish-and-chips and shepherd’s pie. Then Cal lifted his glass, looked at me and, still committed to his accent, said, “Here’s to brothers.” He leaned across the table, grabbed me, and kissed me on the forehead. Then he kissed October on the lips, adding, “And to the woman who brought my brother back home.”

  Cal was smiling, the moment was poignant, and I remember thinking that if October and Cal were both in a sinking ship and I could save only one of them, I didn’t know which I would pick.

  After we ate, the waitress offered us another round of Guinness, but Cal shook his head and asked for the check, which he paid right away. When I tried to leave the tip, he said, “Fuck off, you bloody cunt.” This was something we’d heard Noel and Liam say, and it made us laugh every time.

  A second later, Cal got October’s attention and went back to talking like himself. “Baby,” he said, “would you be bummed if you had to drive home without us?”

  She started fishing through her purse for the car keys and didn’t immediately respond.

  Cal looked at me and said, “I was thinking . . .” And before he said it I finished his sentence with: “. . . that we’d hike back.”