How to Make a Bird

by Martine Murray

  It was like when you saw a mean snarling dog and you thought to yourself, “I mustn’t be scared because the dog will sense my fear and attack me.” But that very thought, that the dog will sense your fear, is such a scary thought that you get another fear: the fear of being found out fearing. Life seemed to be full of those snarling dogs, making you dislike your own disliking, making you afraid of your own fears, making you try too hard to cover them up, making you put a red dress over your own thin lost limbs. Who was I convincing? I looked at the sky, all lit up with stars. A couple walked past me. They slanted forward as they walked, her with her hairdo and him with his sheltering arm. You could tell they were in agreement, by the way they strode. It was as if the ideas that dwelled within them, and sought a future place, had risen up and joined in a blaze of joyous certainty, so that the couple only had to keep pushing forward through the black warm air toward that one clear star. Their star. “Their star,” I said again in my mind, and then I wished I hadn’t said it.

  I had my hunger wires all mixed up. It was as if I had this large, large hole in my heart and I was trying to plug it up with a thin, thin man. Any kid old enough to do a jigsaw puzzle would tell you that a thin bit won’t fill a large hole. So why was I such a dope?

  See, it wasn’t the Thin Captain curling me in, it wasn’t him, the handsome, slightly successful person; it was the feeling of him not liking me. It was the way I agreed so wholeheartedly with him not liking me that I didn’t like me either. So now there were two people not liking me. Him and me. Of course, I was the more important disliker in the equation, since I knew myself better and my opinion counted for more, but still, having all that disliking jabbing into you can really knock you out; it can make you feel very bad and very unlikable.

  “Their star,” I said again and remembered the night when Harry first kissed me. Just before, when we were looking up at the stars, he said that we weren’t really seeing the stars, we were seeing the light they cast and it wasn’t a direct light, it was a sideways light. Whatever it was I wanted, it wasn’t a direct, exact thing; it wasn’t the star, it wasn’t the thing at all, it was the light that came off things. Maybe it was the dark too. Maybe it was the thing that makes you pulse and dance and run deep in the woods, like a wild animal. It was the mist of those paintings.…

  And that kind of stuff can’t be named or explained with a voice. It’s a knowing that becomes your blood before you even know your heart has opened. It comes in sideways, slips through your pores while you’re busy trying something else. It slips in while you’re failing at badminton, injuring your arm, standing alone. It whispers so softly it isn’t you who hears it, it’s yourself, or your soul, or whatever it is that dwells within.

  I knew I had one of those: a drawn-in, torn-up, tossed-to-the-sky self. A self that made a slow silent passage. A self that longed to become me, like a breath becomes sky. What I wanted was to join up with the world, to become one piece of blue.

  I said to myself, “You just fell over and now you have to get up and keep going.”

  No one likes that falling over. But then hardly anyone likes exercise or cabbage either, and they’re still supposed to be good for you. I can’t say I was completely convinced by this startling, cabbage-flavored blast of good sense, and I could even feel my sorry old mind, with its hearty appetite for high drama, revolting at the very whiff of it. But I just heaved a big sigh and decided there was only one thing to do, and that was move.

  I got up off the wall. My bare feet felt the footpath and I looked at them poking out from my dress like little white mice. I felt fond of them. I don’t know why. Probably because they’d always been there, whenever I expected them to be, and I knew they would walk me away.

  chapter twenty-seven

  It must have been about two o’clock in the morning by the time I’d made my way up Tennyson Street. There was no one about. My bike was still locked up at the beach, but I had my backpack and my book of nocturnes. I wasn’t thinking. I was just going. Tennyson Street was a long street lined with an arch of spreading plane trees. There were lovely, dark, soft houses, old curving apartments, muffled gardens, curtained windows, upstairs rooms. People sleeping inside them. Families without holes. With warm safe houses. No silent places. I kept looking at the homes. Walking and looking.

  Number 3/37. Would it be a lovely warm home too? As I came close, I had the strange feeling that I had been there before, as if the street had once flowed briefly through my memory. But I was always having these feelings, because I always dreamed of other places, imagined myself in boats, in velvet, on sweeping lawns under huge spreading trees, in a calm stone house with wide windows. Number 37 was a block of flats. Brick flats with a thin cement driveway and a gaping carport at the end. A big yellow globe stuck out on the wall, lighting up the bulging steel balconies. One had flowerpots and plastic furniture. The others were empty, except for an air-conditioning unit. I felt vaguely anxious as I stood in the driveway, not because the flats looked sinister, more because I’d known something once and I’d forgotten it.

  I walked up a stairwell. Number 3 was exactly the same as number 1 and number 2. It’s so much easier to be the same, I thought. At least number 3 had the sound of a television coming from inside, but no lights were on. I pulled back the knocker and held it still for an instant. Suddenly I was only a tiny, tiny distance away from finding out who Eddie knew here, and instead of feeling excited I felt like a dying fish in a bucket. If there was one thing I was getting sure of lately, it was that if you expect something to make a difference it surely won’t. I was stupid for counting on it, I was stupid for even coming. I tried looking at it sideways but it didn’t work. All I saw was that little hole in the door that people look through to see you standing there as if you are a small bulging person in a pond. There was no largeness coming out that door. I was looking for Wise Person. I was imagining that she would explain something. A thing I didn’t know, a thing that would help me not be so mad.

  You see, I hadn’t forgiven Eddie, not yet. I hadn’t forgiven him for leaving me here alone. Well, it wasn’t Eddie I was mad at, it was life. I was all rare in my heart about it, if you know what I mean, it felt all bloodied and soft and undercooked in there. Ever since it had happened, the days had rolled over, one after the other like breathing, unmanaged, just arriving and then leaving. There was nothing to mark one day out from the other. It was like a road without signposts or corners; it wore at my edges, the even tumble of day after day, each darkened by a wedge of night. I was waiting for something, anything: thunder, a truth, a new heart. I began to hope that it would be different, that a corner would be turned, a day would open its red mouth and cry out for wine. And right now, I had imagined, would be the moment that would open its red mouth. So why was I feeling so unsure of everything?

  I told myself I didn’t really want that, as if God was listening, because he never gave me what I wanted. You can’t fool God, though, just like you can’t pretend to a snarling dog that you aren’t scared.

  And even if Wise Person was behind that door, would she want to see me? I convinced myself that it didn’t matter what she might think, since I’d come all this way. Surely I was sick of caring about what other people thought, and wasn’t it about time I left some room for me to think my own thoughts and not other people’s thoughts. I flapped the knocker into the door. Three times. It felt good to get it over and done with.

  At first there was no response. I pressed my ear to the door. I thought I could hear shuffling or sniffing or something, but then it was quiet. I knocked again. This time there was a firm response. More moving and then feet coming toward the door. At the door the feet stopped. Whoever was on the other side was looking at me through that hole. I could feel their eyes sharpening through it. I stared at my bare feet. I didn’t let myself imagine what I would look like to those eyes, but I couldn’t look straight back at that little hole.

  Whoever D. Wolton was, she seemed to be considering. Did she recognize me
? I thought suddenly of Eddie’s eyes. The way they hurried over the world, scouring it, not stopping, like a crow flying low against the paddocks. And me, waiting, with a big mess in my heart.

  A long sniff came from behind the door. Then it began to open.

  chapter twenty-eight

  I recognized D. Wolton immediately and I felt sick. It wasn’t Demeter, or Delia either. He leaned on the door. His underarm faced me, his face leering behind it like Luna Park. Travis Houghton.

  “Little Manon,” he said. I stared back at him. “Well, what in the hell are you doing, knocking on my door at this time? You realize what time it is? It’s two o’bloody clock!”

  “I didn’t know it was you.”

  “Yeah? Well, you do now.” He sniffed again. He was bare, apart from a pair of pajama pants. One hand was hooked over the top of his pants. I remembered then. How Dad and I were in the car, in that driveway. How Mum had rushed out of the stairwell, clutching a dressing gown around her. How Dad had said it and how she’d sunk onto that cement driveway, those balconies looking down over her, when she sobbed and shook like a two-year-old. Dad had got out of the car and helped her up.

  “You looking for somewhere to stay, are you?” Travis yawned.

  “No.” I just stood there. I had nothing left now. I felt a big gust of hope rush out of me and I was emptied, hollow as an old exploded balloon. He shrugged and folded his arms across his chest.

  “Well, whaddya want then? You look like a hooker, you know that? You look like a bloody hooker. You’re lucky no one picked you up.”

  I started to cry. I swiped at the tears, but he saw.

  “For God’s sake! Don’t start that on me. You better come in.” He walked away from the door. All I knew was that I wanted to go home, but my legs walked me in because my legs weren’t thinking.

  There was a small room with a big television and stereo in the corner. There were two matching brown couches and a table in the middle with an ashtray, a bong, and a neat pile of Rolling Stone magazines. Frothy nylon curtains that made you think of old-lady underpants covered the window. They were meant to be white, but they were gray and motionless. A fan stood in one corner, next to a big shelf full of records. The room smelled of incense. I sat down on the couch that faced the window. Travis sprawled on the other couch. I found myself staring at a ceramic breast that was sitting on top of a speaker. It was hollow, with a hole in the nipple where you could pour through.

  “It’s a jug,” said Travis, grinning. I quickly turned away from it. “You get it? A jug.” He let out a short stab of laughter. I felt embarrassed, as if it were my breast he was laughing at. So I just stared at the carpet. I guess I’d lost my sense of humor.

  “Tell you what you need,” he said. “A choof.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You know, a billy. Does a world of good when you’re down.” He leaned toward the little table and tapped at the bong. “I’ll pack you a cone if you like.” I nodded feebly. I didn’t care that much anymore; not about the Thin Captain, not about Paris. I felt like getting quiet. I felt like getting really quiet.

  Travis set to work, grinding and stuffing and fussing around looking for a lighter.

  “So, I hear your mum went back to France to live.”

  “Mmm,” I said. “She’s with her family there. Her sister.” I narrowed my eyes at Travis. I didn’t want him talking about her, actually, as if he had some kind of claim. I remembered what Ivy had told me.

  “Mum lied to everyone, Travis. To you as well.” I don’t know what made me say it. Maybe I wanted to twist up Travis’s reality too.

  “Whaddya mean, Manon? What are you saying?”

  “She was never an actress. She lied. She came out with that theater company, but she was only the costume hand. You know, she didn’t even come from Paris either. She came from a place called Poitiers. She was just a seamstress.” I said this last sentence in a bitter old drunken way and I even added a snort. Travis didn’t seem to care one bit. He just roared with laughter. “That’d be right,” he said, and started packing the cone, shaking his head in an amused way.

  Ivy said Dad didn’t care either. He had written to Mum’s sister, because he was so worried about Mum with her depression. The sister wrote back and told him the truth about Mum. The sister said their mother was an alcoholic who died when they were young. Mum had some liaison with a married man and ended up pregnant. She had an abortion, and that was when her depression started.

  Dad never even told Mum he knew. He didn’t care that she’d lied to him, didn’t care that she wasn’t an actress. None of that mattered, he didn’t give a hoot what she’d done, he just loved her. He loved her so much that he just let her go on telling her stories about being an actress. He even organized little parties so she could have the pleasure of telling, of being the center of attention. Mum wanted everyone to think she was special, and she was safe here. She could pretend whatever she wanted, and there was no one to contradict it. Ivy said Mum had even somehow convinced herself, the way she carried on.

  It was the one fine thing about Mum: She was an actress. The one thing I was proud of, the one thing that made up for her unusual behavior. Ivy said she would have made a great actress, anyway. But that didn’t count.

  Travis passed me the bong. It was made of an old Spring Valley bottle and a piece of plastic pipe with a coat hanger wound around the bottom to make it stand up. I’d never had one before but I’d seen Eddie doing it, so I didn’t tell Travis I was a beginner. It must have been obvious, because he interrupted me when I started to try and light up.

  “No, no, you’ve got to hold the shoddy, here, look, with your thumb.” He grabbed it to show me how. I wasn’t even sure I wanted it. Boy, it ponged. I should have known it was bad, just by the way it stunk. I mean, if you offered that to a hungry horse to eat, would they even go near it? I doubt it. Horses have fine instincts. As for mine, they’d been blunted by alcohol and disappointment. One after the other.

  It made a dirty gurgle as I breathed in the smoke, which seemed to shoot straight up into my brain. I felt sick and dizzy all at once. My head started to turn. I sank back into the couch as Travis laughed.

  “Head spins, huh?” I nodded and closed my eyes for a minute. My head seemed to waft away. I felt lighter.

  “Travis?” I said, when I’d recovered a bit.

  “Yep.” He was packing himself one. I was pinned down to the couch. My head was light but my body was filled with heaviness. I was glad I’d got heavy enough to slow down.

  “Why do you reckon Eddie would’ve written down your address?” Travis stopped for an instant and frowned, then he began nodding to himself.

  “Ah, so that’s how come you got here.” He chuckled. He put his mouth to the bong and breathed in a long hard breath. He held the smoke down in his lungs for as long as he could, then he blew it out, one long stinky ribbon of smoke.

  “Probably because Eddie was coming here, the night he was—the night of the accident. He was on his way here. Didn’t you know that?” I tried to sit up but it made me feel nauseous, so I sank back into the couch.

  “No, they were going to see a band. Harry wanted to see a band,” I said. Travis raised his eyebrows.

  “Is that what Harry said?”

  “Yeah. That’s what he said.”

  Travis flopped back into his couch.

  “Well, then, Harry was covering. For your mother.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “Look, I heard your mother ring Eddie. She was hysterical. Wasn’t my fault. Don’t mean to be rude, but she was a damn moody bitch, your mother. Almost the moment we got here she started complaining. After a couple of weeks she was always bawling her bloody eyes out. She’d ring your brother, telling him I was abusing her. Wasn’t true. Never laid a hand on her. But Eddie was coming to get her. I heard her give him the address. She went and packed her bag and she waited all night for him. Right there. Right where you are now. Perched on the couch like a
little owl. You look like her, you know? Did you know that? Only you’re younger, of course.”

  I didn’t answer him, so he kept on. “Anyway, she wouldn’t speak to me. But I was glad she was going. She should never have come. If you ask me, she had a bloody screw loose.”

  I wasn’t listening to Travis, though. I was thinking back to the last time I saw Eddie. We were on my bed, talking about Harry. The phone was ringing and Eddie jumped up to get it. He went out of my room and then, that was it. He went to answer the phone. He never came back.

  “When did she ring? I mean, what time?” I was weak.

  “Dunno what time. It was evening time.”

  “What about Harry? Why was he in the car?” My voice was slurring.

  “Probably just being a mate, I reckon. Helping out.”

  “Mmm.” I could hardly get a word out. I saw words forming in my mind, like little insects clinging to a piece of fruit. A great ripe soft piece of fruit. I heard myself take a deep breath. Minutes must have gone by in that one long breath. My eyelids were heavy, I couldn’t keep them apart.

  “You can sleep there if you want. On the couch. I’ve got a blanket,” said Travis.

  “Okay,” I heard myself mumble. The smoke was in my bruised mind, going in loops like a little kid’s handwriting. The wine. My mum. She’s bitten by the wind again. A screw loose. She never told us she’d called Eddie. She let Harry cover it up. Harry Jacob. She’s bitten by the wind again. Bitten by Travis Houghton. Travis was looking at me. Travis leering. Travis getting up.

  He gave me a blanket and left the room.

  chapter twenty-nine