The Home for Wayward Parrots
Page 15
“Hrm,” Kim said. “I’m not really a big believer in coincidences. Looks like you rekindled something, eh?”
I shrugged. Talking about this with Kim was more uncomfortable than usual, which was saying a lot. I never liked talking about the women I liked. Perhaps it was my discomfort that prompted me to find another topic of conversation. I remembered my brief chat with Wolf the night before.
“So, Kim,” I started, looking intently at my coffee cup. “I know you don’t want to talk about who my father is, and I respect that. But finding him, even if it’s only a name, isn’t just curiosity for me. I can imagine a lot of reasons why you wouldn’t want to talk about him with the rest of them, and why you wouldn’t want to tell me anything. But please,” I lifted my eyes to hers, “please don’t stand in my way of finding out for myself.”
I thought she would cut me off again or, worse, start to cry. Instead she said nothing, and I sat there for what seemed like forever, my heart pounding. Finally, she took a sip from her own cup and said, “You know, everyone thinks they’re anti-social or just plain bad. But they aren’t malicious — I’m confident that none of those birds wants to hurt anyone. They’re just operating without some basic information.”
I didn’t know what got her started talking about the birds, but I just didn’t have the energy to force the conversation back to my father. So I let her go on. “I don’t know what happened to him, but Napoleon — he’s afraid. That’s why he attacks people: he’s just defending himself. He doesn’t know that we’re not the ones who hurt him. And Peter Piper, I think he doesn’t understand that we’re not all parrots. He’s protecting his territory. They aren’t bad birds, they’re just ... missing something. Maybe they forgot, or they never knew. Or maybe it’s easier for them if they just ignore certain things, maybe it lets them see the world in a way that makes it easier to bear what they’ve lost.”
I’d lost where she was going with this conversation, but as abruptly as she started this strange monologue about bird psychology, she changed tacks again. “You should call Wolfie sometime,” she said. “I bet the two of you would have lots to talk about. I’ll give you his number.” She got up and opened a drawer. She rifled through the papers, rubber bands and plastic bags that filled the drawer until she found a stubby pencil and a scrap of an old receipt. She wrote some numbers on the back and handed it to me.
She looked at me expectantly and I didn’t know what she wanted. So I stood, thanked her for the coffee, told her the wedding had been lovely and left.
27
SEEING YOU AGAIN
October 22, 1980
Dear Kimmie,
I thought it would be hot here, but it’s not that bad. We’re on the coast, I’m not allowed to tell you where exactly, but it’s almost like being at home except everything is dusty and brown and there aren’t any trees. Not real trees, anyway.
It’s kind of boring here now. There’s no fighting and all we do all day is clean. But I just keep thinking of all the money I’m making and not spending and that makes it all OK.
Write to me. Letters are the most exciting thing that happens here. I miss you.
Jim
I CALLED SEEDY A WEEK AFTER THE WEDDING, expecting her to laugh in my face. But she surprised me as always.
“Gumbo!” she said instead of hello. “I was just going to call you.”
“Well, for once I beat you to something,” I said, and she laughed.
“I was just thinking that we had a pretty good time the other night,” she said. “We should do that some more, don’t you think?”
“Go to weddings?”
“Ha! No, the wedding part wasn’t what I was talking about. You free this weekend sometime?”
“Sure,” I said, thinking, Am I really being propositioned by my old girlfriend?
“How about dinner?” she asked.
“Why not,” I said. “We have to eat, right?”
“Right,” she said. “Give me your address and I’ll pick you up at seven on Friday.”
“Sure,” I agreed again, wondering how things had happened so quickly again. Seedy. She always knew how to get me to do what she wanted. I liked that about her.
SHE TOOK ME TO A KOREAN PLACE I’d never seen before, which was so fancy I started to panic slightly when we arrived. I could afford it, I knew, but why would she take me somewhere so nice? I didn’t know what most of the things on the menu were, but Seedy seemed to know the place well. She ordered a half dozen items for us and then played with the stainless-steel chopsticks while we waited.
“I often wondered about you,” she said as we sipped warm sake, “how things were for you after we split up.”
“You knew where I was,” I said.
She shook her head. “Yeah,” she said, “but I was too young then. I didn’t know that when you fuck up, you just stand up, admit that you did and move on.”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t break up with you because anything changed between us,” she said, sounding exasperated. “I broke up with you because everything else in my life was changing. I figured that you and me belonged with the rest of it and that when things change, they all change. I didn’t know any better. It wasn’t fair and I’m sorry.”
That was the moment our silent-but-deadly waiter chose to appear out of thin air and separate us with the steaming and chilled dishes Seedy had ordered. Looking at them, I still couldn’t tell what most were, but the smells that rose from them were all delicious. I seemed to have lost my appetite, however.
Seedy dug into the plates of food, serving herself generous portions of everything. I didn’t move. There was a knot of something building in my chest. Hurt, anger — it was like all the rejection I’d ever felt was coalescing into an arterial blockage. A heart attack of a different kind.
Finally, while she was tasting her second choice, I found my voice. “Is that what this is?” I said. “An apology for dumping me ten years ago? Is that what last weekend was, too? One final fuck before you kiss me off properly?”
She set her chopsticks down carefully and looked at me. “No,” she said sadly. “That’s not what this is. This is — or at least this was — a date. I was just talking about the past because, you know, it’s what we have in common. And it’s something that bugged me all this time. And I figured that after ten years, we’d both be able to see our past more clearly.” She picked up her chopsticks again, but didn’t take a bite of anything. “I guess I was wrong.”
I frowned, not understanding. But that knot in my chest broke apart, and I could feel an almost physical dissolution of something toxic that had filled me. It was like I was a barrel full of pain and she’d poked a hole in me. Slowly it drained away. After a minute, I served myself from the dishes in the centre and ate. Everything was delicious. After I’d tried it all, I said, “I’m sorry, Seedy. I don’t really get it, but ... well ... I thought about you a lot, too. After, I mean.”
She smiled at me with a mouthful of gyoza. After she’d swallowed, she said, “I can’t stay mad at you, Gumbo. You’re not like other people and that’s what I’ve always liked about you. How can I expect you to ...” She saw me looking confused again and laughed. “It’s okay. Really. Don’t worry about it.”
I took a bite of something saucy and hot and chewed. “So,” I said, after a pause, “is this a date again, then?”
AFTER SEEDY LEFT THE NEXT MORNING, I fished out the scrap of paper Kim had given me. I knew that Wolf had answers for me, even if he didn’t want to give them up. And I wanted them, I really did. But every time I was about to call him, this voice in the back of my mind asked me what I would do if I found out that my father was a rapist. For god’s sake, he could have been a child molester. What if I was a product of incest? What if Kim had some horrible uncle who’d been hurting her her whole life until she finally got pregnant? What if she never told anyone her secret because she was afraid? Afraid for herself. Afraid for me. Did I really want to know that?
I could still smell Seedy’s body on my skin. I wasn’t exactly surprised when she’d followed me in after dinner and we’d ended up in bed again. It was nice to be sober this time; hell, it was just plain nice. After the rocky start to the meal, things had smoothed out, and I had to admit that I was happier than I’d been in years.
We’d talked about Seedy’s job (making order out of chaos) and my job (making order out of chaos), books and movies we’d enjoyed and more amusingly the ones we’d hated, the most recent election. It was like meeting someone new without all the getting-to-know-you garbage. It was fun.
Back at my place was also fun, and also familiar and strange at the same time. In the morning, I found some granola in the back of the cupboard, remembering how she practically used to live off the stuff stirred into a cup of yogourt. I brought her a bowl back to the bed, and she laughed, the sound tinkling in my ears. “I haven’t eaten this in years,” she said, taking a huge spoonful. “I can’t imagine why not. This is fantastic.”
As she was leaving, she asked if I wanted to see her again. “Of course,” I said, confused.
“I mean, you know ...” she said, suddenly shy. “I mean, do you want to be seeing me, like, regularly?”
“Are you asking me to go steady?”
She laughed, but it was kind of a nervous laugh. “That sounds dumb,” she said. “I guess we’ll just have to see.”
“Yes,” I said. “I want to see you again.” She kissed me, then shut my apartment door in my face. I shook my head. I’ll never understand her, I thought, but who needs understanding?
I was remembering the look in her eyes as the door closed when I thought about my conversation with Wolf. I didn’t understand that either, but I knew now that whatever he had to tell me, I wanted to know it. I found the receipt in the pile of things by my laptop. The phone number had already burned itself into my memory, but I read over the digits scratched in Kim’s loopy handwriting anyway. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and reached for my phone.
28
LETTERS FROM CYPRUS
October 30, 1980
Happy Halloween! The boys are planning a party here at the base but the rumour is that the major is going to shut it down. I hope not, it’s been nothing but sit around and wait since I got here. It’s not that I want another Nicosia or anything, just that it feels like we’re not doing anything. I could use a party. We all could.
Remember the Halloween party at Dave’s last year? You told your folks you were staying with your brother and when you came home with wine on your breath they didn’t let you out of the house for a month. It was worth it, though, what a great night. You looked so good in your Marilyn Monroe dress, I was the luckiest guy at the party. I was always the luckiest guy.
I hope your letters are just slow. I can’t wait to hear from you. I miss you.
Jim
“KIM TOLD ME TO EXPECT YOUR CALL.” Wolf Heinz wasn’t exactly all business, but it didn’t feel like a chat between buddies either. I’d seen him on TV once or twice during some flashy trial, and Johnny talked about him all the time. He was a hard-ass, a real pro, a killer in the courtroom. I’d never seen any of that in person, though. He was just Uncle Wolf: stout drinker, secret cigarette smoker, potential keeper of the identity of my father. It had always been easy to talk to him before. But now that I wanted something from him, I guess it was no more Mister Nice Guy.
“We had a kind of strange conversation,” I tried to explain. “Honestly, I don’t know what she was trying to tell me, but she said I should call you and gave me your number. I think she wants you to tell me what you know about my father.”
I heard him sigh. “She wants me to tell you about the letters,” he said.
There was a pause after which I expected him to explain, but nothing happened. “Letters?” I prompted.
“Look, Brian,” he said. “I want to get something straight with you. Kim never told me who your father is. As far as I know, she’s never told anyone. So I can’t answer the question you’re asking. But ...”
“But what?” I asked.
“Look,” Wolf said. “Why don’t we meet for a drink sometime this week? It’s quiet right now at the courthouse and this would probably be a lot easier explained over a beer.”
I didn’t want to wait any more and couldn’t see how a beer could possibly change what Wolf would have to say. But I had to admit that the man was intimidating and he held all the cards. He had the information I wanted and he knew it. So if he wanted to meet for a drink after work, a drink after work was what it would have to be.
SMITH’S IS A VERY STRANGE PUB. It used to be the Old Bailey, a classic English-style office workers’ ginmill. When it changed hands, they kept the dark wood panelling, the long shiny bar and general ambiance. But they added an open-plan DJ booth with a pair of turntables, plush couches and microbrew on tap. At five thirty on a Wednesday afternoon, though, it was still a white-collar drinker’s haven.
I sat at a low table on one of the couches, nursing a pint of Blue Truck and trying not to fidget. I’d finished half my beer when I saw him darken the doorway, his thousand-dollar suit creased after a day of doing whatever Crown prosecutors do when they aren’t wearing a wig. He saw me, waved briefly, then walked directly to the bar.
In a few minutes he was sipping a pint the colour of strong coffee and walking toward me. I felt the last few sips of my own beer threatening to return. I stood.
“Thanks for coming,” I said, and we both sat.
“It was my idea,” he reminded me and took another long pull from his pint. He set it down on the low table between us and the faint whiff of chocolate hit my nose.
“Let me tell you a story,” he said.
“LIVING IN OUR HOUSE WAS LIKE LIVING IN THE PAST,” he started. “Our parents were good people, really. They loved us, in their way, and they did everything they thought was right for us. They really did believe that family was the most important thing. The trouble was, they also believed that most of history — the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment — well, it just didn’t apply to them. They would have fit in just fine in the sixteenth century, but in nineteen seventy-nine, it was plain embarrassing.
“Kim and I did what we could to avoid the religious craziness, but they were our parents and we had to live there. That meant we were both looking for a way out as soon as we could get it.” He took another long drink of his beer and peered into its dark depths.
“I wondered a lot about what might have happened if I’d stayed,” he said. “Maybe Kim would have talked to me, maybe she could have done something ... But she was on her own; she was only sixteen. I can’t imagine what it would have been like for her, realizing that she was pregnant, knowing what that would mean for our parents. I ... I should have been there.”
He sighed and stared off at a point that was long ago and far away. “But I wasn’t. As soon as I was done high school, I left to go to university. I had good grades. I got a partial scholarship, and our folks paid the rest. For all their backwardness, they believed in education and I went out and got one. I left the Island as soon as I could and came back only once a month to get a cheque for school fees in exchange for a lecture on sin. So I was free, more or less. Which is why the letters came to me.
“The Island was smaller then; we pretty much lived in the country. Everyone knew everyone, so I knew who Jim Connor was. He was a year behind me in school, a big burly kid. Seemed nice enough. It wasn’t much of a surprise to anyone when he joined the Army right after high school. In those days everyone was doing a tour in Cyprus and Jim’s battalion went over in the fall. September or October, I guess it
was.
“I didn’t know that Jim and Kim even knew each other, but then the letters started coming for her. Postmarked UN Forces Cyprus, addressed to Kim Heinz at my dorm at UBC. She never even mentioned it to me, but I understood well enough. I never opened the letters, just saved them up. On my monthly trips home I’d find some way to pass them on to Kim without my parents knowing. She just thanked me and took them. That was it.
“We never talked about it, but I guessed he was her boyfriend. At the beginning he wrote every week, then the letters slowed down until, after a couple of months, they just stopped. I didn’t think much of it; I mean, teenage love doesn’t generally survive long absences. And then it was obvious that Kim was pregnant and I figured — well, what could he do, halfway around the world? She was on her own and, letters or no letters, that’s how it was.
“I know it sounds harsh, but eventually I forgot all about them. After ... after you were born, Kim kind of hid out for a while. But then she turned eighteen and moved out of the house, and soon she was living with Aaron. Jim Connor kind of just vanished from my mind.”
He downed the remaining liquid in his glass and turned back to face the bar. He caught the barkeep’s eye and lifted his glass in a signal for a refill. The young woman behind the bar nodded her understanding and started pulling the pint. He turned back to face me.
“I found out only a few weeks ago ...” he said, his voice trailing off.
“Found out what?” I asked, my own voice hoarse.
“Kim called me, asked me to tell you about the letters. So I asked her, ‘This is about Jim Connor, right?’ She exploded, told me never to say his name, that I had no right to talk about him, that she never wanted to hear his name again. Kim never yells. I don’t think I’d ever heard her get angry like that. I just said okay and we hung up, but then later I googled him. It wasn’t all that hard to find; the Canadian military keeps good records.