The Home for Wayward Parrots

by Wehm, Darusha;

  “Yeah,” she said a little wistfully. “She’s got the whole Earth Mother thing going.”

  “Huh?” I said, looking back at Chuck. I noticed Terry then, the flowers in her hair bobbing as she and Chuck walked over to the table to sign the wedding licence. “No ...” I said, about to explain that I was talking about Chuck; then seeing the look on Seedy’s face, I decided not to bother.

  25

  THE PARROT INCIDENT

  AFTER THE SIGNING OF THE REGISTER, the proceedings took on a significantly more relaxed tone. There was a receiving line as people left the part of the yard where the ceremony had taken place, offering congratulations, hugs and kisses to the happy couple. Seedy and I were about halfway through the group, and both Chuck and Terry seemed a bit taken aback to see us together.

  “Congratulations,” I said, giving them each a brief hug and cheek kiss.

  “Thanks,” Terry said. “Do you two know each other?” she asked, looking at Seedy with confusion.

  “We went out in university,” she said matter-of-factly. “Gumbo was one of my groupies when I was in a punk band. Eerie coincidence, eh?”

  I rolled my eyes, but smiled. “I was not a groupie,” I said. “Not at first, anyway.”

  Chuck’s eyes darted from me to Seedy and back again; then she grinned. “It’s good to see you,” she said and winked at me salaciously when Seedy’s back was turned. “Weddings are great for rekindling old flames,” she whispered, and I felt my face colour.

  I felt the press of the rest of the line behind me, so had to move on before I could protest my intentions. After all, Seedy seemed to have moved on from men, and anyway, I found it hard to believe that we’d be able to go back in time.

  Though as I was thinking this, I felt Seedy grab my hand and pull me toward her. “Let’s find the bar,” she said and dragged me off toward the group of small tented tables. There was an hour before dinner, so we had a couple of drinks and chatted. It was nice talking to Seedy again.

  “We’d better find our tables,” I said, not wanting to leave her.

  “Sure,” she said and walked over to the poster-sized master list. She squinted at it, then poked me in the side. “I bet there’s room at your table. I’ll just come sit with you.” Before I could protest, she dragged me off to our table and commandeered one of the seats.

  “Hi,” she said, turning to the people seated on her right. “Hope you don’t mind if I just barge in here.” I recognized the couple and sat down next to Seedy.

  I grinned at Michael and Marita. “This is my old friend, Celia-Dee. She’s a friend of Terry’s and we just happened to run into each other. You mind if she joins us?”

  “Not at all,” Marita said. “It’s a small world, isn’t it?”

  I was just about to explain to Seedy who Michael and Marita were when we heard an amazing racket coming from the tent where the buffet was being laid out. The noise level increased and soon was accompanied by a round of very loud, high-pitched screaming.

  I was starting to wonder if someone was being murdered when I saw a blur of red, green and grey. “Oh, god,” I said to Seedy. “Someone let Napoleon out.”

  IT WASN’T AS BAD AS IT COULD HAVE BEEN. It turned out that Napoleon, mean as he was, was scared of freedom and stayed mostly up in the rafters of the rental tent. Of course, his activities up there weren’t going to make the party supply company too happy. By the time we got to the tent, he’d chewed a metre-wide hole in the canvas, shreds dropping down like confetti on the buffet table. Which wasn’t so bad, really — it covered the blobs of parrot guano he was also dropping with prodigious regularity.

  I think Napoleon’s greatest contribution to the melee wasn’t the shit or the shred. It was the volume. “Idiot,” squawked the big bird, in a voice that carried well over the shrieks and snickers of the guests. “Ugh. Idiot. Squawk.”

  “What the fuck is that?” Seedy said when we got back to the site of the disaster.

  “Someone let the parrots out,” I said dumbly. “They’re not very nice birds, either. I doubt that’s the only one. We should maybe hide.”

  “Are you crazy?” she said. “This is hilarious. Ow!”

  She jumped back and I saw the big grey, Peter Piper, flapping away from her. A small red line of blood welled up on her neck where the bird had scratched her. “I take it back,” she said. “I’m with you on the hiding.”

  I never knew which bird it was — it didn’t sound like Napoleon; I’d gotten to know his voice — but over all the other sounds came a very crisp and clear, but definitely avian, “Motherfucker! Cunt-assed fuckstick. Squawk.”

  “Okay,” I said as we continued our retreat, “that was pretty funny.”

  I steered her into the house and found a free bathroom. I cleaned her cut and rooted around in the cupboards for a bandage. “What’s with all those birds?” she asked.

  “Kim works at a pet store,” I explained. “And she takes the bad birds home so they don’t get destroyed. There’s a whole room full of them. I guess the door got opened somehow and a bunch got out. Poor Kim.”

  “Poor Kim?” Seedy said. “Poor Chuck and Terry. Talk about ruining their day.”

  “I dunno,” I said. “It’s going to be pretty memorable, and that’s a good thing, so long as no one loses an eye.” That made Seedy laugh and I felt a pang of something in my gut. Nostalgia maybe, or regret — it was hard to say. She sure did look good in that suit, though.

  “Anyway,” I said, moving away from her in the small room. “We’d better go. There’s probably a whole line of gashes and scrapes waiting to get in here.” She smiled at me and we went back out to the yard.

  BY THE TIME WE GOT OUTSIDE, the parrots had been contained. Someone had cleaned up the buffet table and was getting food out. I saw Chuck at one of the tables talking to a man I didn’t recognize, a huge smile on her face. I guessed that I was right about the birds adding more colour than trouble to the festivities, at least in her eyes. She was used to them, after all.

  As wedding receptions go, it was probably up there. I don’t remember much of the one other wedding I’d been to, but from what I could guess, this one was more fun than the mean. I danced with a half dozen women, including Seedy, only stopping for a drink every now and again.

  I must have been getting pretty drunk and all the people were starting to get to me. I was at the bar talking to Jeannette about the Facebook incident.

  “I probably shouldn’t have posted that,” she said, “but I’m sick of them getting away with spewing their shit all over us.” She took a swig of her drink, some kind of juice and booze number, I guessed. “Chuck disowned them after what they said to Terry.” I was curious, but could probably guess. “It’s tough,” she went on, “because Mom still talks to them. I mean, they completely fucked up her life ...” She stopped short and stared at me with a shocked look on her face. “I’m sorry, Brian, I didn’t mean ...”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Kim told me about her parents’ reaction to ... well, me.”

  “Anyway,” Jeannette went on, her face a bright red, “they’re just awful, but Mom still loves them. I just didn’t want anyone else to get blindsided by their nastiness.”

  “I get it,” I said, and we stood together in companionable silence for a moment. Finally, she touched my arm and said, “Thanks for letting me vent,” then wandered off. I found myself alone at the bar, strangers all around me. I’ve never been good in that situation and, between the conversation and my not inconsiderable tipsiness, I was feeling particularly in need of getting out of there. I grabbed a nearby bottle of wine and started walking to a part of the yard that seemed to be less crowded. The sound of the DJ faded, the laughter and murmurs of voices grew dim, and then I saw a small flickering light from a corner of the yard. I walked that way and found Wolf leaning up against a tree, smoking a cigarette.

  “Mind if I join you?” I asked.

  He smiled and said, “Nice to have the company,” and offered me an open
pack of cigarettes.

  “No, thanks,” I said. “I’m here for the break, not the smoke.”

  He shrugged and put the pack back in his breast pocket. “You’re not used to the mob yet,” he said.

  “No,” I said. “It’s always just been me and Mom and Dad. I’ve never really been good at crowds.”

  “This bunch can be a bit more challenging than most,” he said, dragging deeply on his cigarette. “I love them, that’s for sure. But Kim’s always been her own person, and the crazy family she’s created doesn’t follow the program in a lot of ways.” I started to realize that he was at least as drunk as I was. “I hope you don’t expect too much of them, especially her. She’s wasn’t always this way ...” He stubbed out the cigarette in a pot with a dead plant in it. “But Kim’s kind of ... I don’t know ... fickle. She gets really excited about new things, then loses interest just as fast. I just don’t want you to think ...”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I never expected anything from her, really. I just wanted to know, you know? I’ve already gotten a lot more from her than I hoped to.” I scowled into the darkness. “Except ...”

  “What?” Wolf asked, lighting another cigarette. I pulled the bottle of wine out of my pants pocket where I’d managed to stow it while I was walking around. I took a drink straight from the bottle, then passed it to him. He shook his head, took a pull from a bottle of Guinness, then repeated, “What?”

  “I was hoping to find out who my father was,” I said. “I get the feeling it’s not a happy memory — no one seems to know anything, and Kim won’t talk about it.”

  “Yeah,” Wolf said, taking another swig. “That.”

  “You know something?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t know anything. I just ...”

  “What?” I asked, my voice rising.

  “Never mind,” he said, a lawyerly tone of finality in his voice.

  “No,” I said. “If you know something, tell me, please. Kim doesn’t need to know ...”

  “Not now,” he said. “I have to think about it. I’m sorry, Brian. Just give me some time. I promise I’ll get back to you, I just can’t ... I’m too drunk now.”

  “Damn it,” I said, but without malice.

  He put his hand on my shoulder. “Yeah,” he said. “Damn it.”

  AFTER THAT I FINISHED THE REST OF THE BOTTLE of wine and spent the remainder of the evening dancing, drinking and grazing on what was left of the buffet table. Seedy found me after an hour or two, as worse for wear as I was feeling.

  “I can’t drive home,” she announced, flopping down into a chair next to me.

  “No,” I agreed, “you can’t.”

  “Wanna split a cab?”

  “I’m not going back to town,” I said. “I planned ahead and got a motel room in Maple Bay.”

  “Smart guy,” Seedy said. “So, wanna split a cab?” She looked at me and I recognized the look in her eyes.

  “Uh,” I said, with as much aplomb as I ever had with her.

  “Great,” she said, trying to stand up and managing to pull it off on the second try. She grabbed my hand. “Let’s go.”

  SHE HAD LEARNED A THING OR TWO in the ten years since we’d last been in bed together. I guess I probably had too, but like always she was in charge. Obviously, I hadn’t planned on going to bed with anyone that night, so I was ill prepared. I was almost as surprised when Seedy pulled a bunch of condoms out of her purse as I had been by the fact that she wanted to use them with me. There was a lot more going on with this woman than I’d ever imagined.

  The morning was slow to come. My head was pounding and I woke to the sound of puking in the bathroom. Thankfully, the morning after had never been one of my problems, so Seedy’s troubles didn’t start me off, too. She came out of the bathroom looking surprisingly good for someone who’d just been tossing her cookies.

  “Morning, sunshine,” she said, slipping back into the bed. “That was pretty fun yesterday, huh?”

  I wasn’t sure exactly what she was referring to, but regardless it was easy for me to answer, “Sure was.”

  It took us another hour to finally get out of bed, and we spent longer in the shower than was strictly necessary for hygiene. “I should drive you back to your car,” I said after I’d checked out.

  “Thanks,” she said. “Wanna get breakfast first?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I do.”

  26

  SUNDAY MORNING COMING DOWN

  WE PULLED INTO WANG’S, which was not, as its name implied, a Chinese food restaurant. It was, rather, the best diner between Victoria and Nanaimo, at least according to the sign in its window.

  The place was crowded — Sunday morning is probably the busiest time for a place like that — but we managed to slip into a small two-person booth without waiting. There were laminated menus propped between the sugar rocket and the salt and pepper shakers, and I pulled them out. It was typical diner food: exactly what we needed.

  A waitress who looked like she’d been working there since the dawn of time came by with a coffee pot and took our orders. I sipped the hot coffee and looked through the steam at Seedy. She was wearing her suit from the previous night, but managed not to look ridiculous. Her cheeks were flushed and there were bags under her eyes, but the combination somehow made her look more beautiful. Maybe I was still just in shock from the surprise of seeing her — so much of her — again.

  “So tell me,” she said. “What are you doing these days?”

  I told her about my job, and she acted more interested than most people bother to. “And you?” I asked. “You’re a librarian. How is that?”

  “I like it,” she said. “I tried a few other things first. After I university I went to Japan and taught English for a year. Paid off my student loan, and discovered that I really do not like teaching. Came back here, did some odd jobs. And I mean strange, not just random.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “I was a copy editor for an anarchist magazine for a while,” she said, “and I worked the counter at a porno shop. Other stuff. It was okay; it paid the rent, but it wasn’t enough. So I went back to school. That’s where I met Terry, getting my MLS.”

  “You’re a realtor?” I asked, confused.

  “No,” she laughed. “Master’s of Library Science. Librarian school.”

  “You need a master’s to be a librarian?”

  “I know,” she said, “it’s pretty crazy. But everyone and their dog has a degree now, so they have to make it harder. It was a pain, but it was worth it. I love working at the library. All those books ... plus, I get to be so orderly.” She made the last word sound like something dangerous and sexy. “You’d love it,” she added salaciously.

  I should have known that Seedy could make me blush just by talking about cataloguing books.

  “So you met Terry at school?” I changed the subject.

  “Yeah,” she said. “We were in the same class — she went straight for her MLS after undergrad. We were an item for a couple of years in grad school.”

  “A couple of years,” I repeated. “Wow. That’s serious.”

  She shrugged. “We never lived together or anything,” she said. “But, yeah, I loved her. Still, we weren’t that great together. It was one of those intense relationships — lots of fighting and lots of making up. Fun, but not really good in the long term.”

  “You seem to care about her.”

  “I do,” she said. “I’ll probably always love Terry, but as much as it pains me to say it, she and Chuck were meant for each other. I’m just glad that she’s happy.”

  Our food arrived then and we were saved from more deep talk by mountains of hash browns, stacks of toast and a mess of eggs. We ate like we’d not seen food in weeks.

  IT WAS A STRANGELY FAMILIAR FEELING, eating breakfast with Seedy. Funny, since we rarely had breakfast together when we’d dated before — we rarely had the opportunity to spend the whole night together. Yet as I sat across
from her at Wang’s dipping toast corners into egg yolk, it was like déjà vu. We finally finished all the food, drank more coffee than necessary and split the cheque. She slipped into the passenger seat of the Civic and I drove back to Kim’s so she could pick up her car.

  “So,” I said, as I stopped in Kim’s driveway next to Seedy’s old beater, “can I, uh, call you sometime?”

  “You’d better,” she said, grinning. She pulled out her phone and said, “Squirt me your details.”

  I fumbled in my pockets for my phone and we spent more time connecting our devices and sharing contact files than it would have taken to write down our numbers. But there was no excuse for getting digits wrong or losing the paper this way. I guessed she really did want me to call.

  She waved as she got into her car, and I winced as the engine barely cranked into life. She roared off in a hail of gravel and exhaust, and I was about to follow when I saw movement from the corner of my eye. Kim came out the front door, a large blue-and-green parrot on her arm. She waved at me and motioned for me to come inside. I turned off the car and stepped gingerly onto her driveway. An uncaged parrot made me as wary now as I imagined a similarly unrestrained tiger would.

  Kim must have seen the trepidation on my face because she said, “Oh, don’t worry about Bluebeard here. He’s not violent, just ugly.” She turned to go back into the house and I saw that the other side of the bird was missing about half the proper number of feathers. Mottled skin showed through in nasty-looking patches, and one of the beast’s feet seemed to have far too many talons. Kim wasn’t kidding — that was one ugly bird.

  I followed Kim and Bluebeard though the door and made my way to the kitchen while she stowed the bird. I sat at the small table and when Kim returned she offered me a coffee. My caffeine needle was pointing at the F, but I accepted a cup anyway. “I see you met someone at the wedding,” she said, a sly smile on her face.

  I blushed, but said, “Not really. We knew each other from before. Just a weird coincidence.”