Love and Ordinary Creatures

by Gwyn Hyman Rubio

  Once, long ago, in the sky above Deniliquin, he, too, as a fledgling, had flown freely and easily for himself—alone—even as he was alighting with the rest of his flock in the trees along the bank of the mighty Murray River.

  She turns toward him, as though she has heard his thoughts. In front of the glass-paneled door, she throws him open-palmed kisses, and he feels secure in her love once more. But then, he remembers last night. He had not imagined it. It was real—the rose capering on her cheek, her bodice rising and falling as their fingers touched and lingered, as her skin feasted on Joe’s—and within seconds Caruso’s newfound confidence disappears. Does she love him for the bird he is, or has she simply been using him to fill the emptiness in her heart until someone of her own species came along? Right now, Caruso would do anything to know how she loves him. He would give up bathing in the shower with her, dropping white grapes into the crevice of her mouth, letting her feed the plumpest ones to him. How does she love him? Does she love him the way she loved her pets when she was a child? Is he no more to her than the dog, cat, or parakeet she once took care of?

  No, she loves him more than this, he argues.

  Why? he asks himself. Because he is as loyal as a dog, but not servile; as manipulative as a cat, but not cruel; as pretty as a parakeet, but not common. Because he is affectionate, gregarious, and playful. Because—like Mel Tormé—he is an original. Because, above all, he adores her, would do anything for her, and ask her for nothing back. Isn’t this selfless, disinterested love?

  Yes, he has become much more than a pet to her because he is her family now. And rightly so, for he has loved her as much as her grandmother did and much more than her parents, who lavish all of their love on her brother, and, naturally, more than Randall, who only loves himself.

  If Clarissa and Randall had been born baby coots and not baby human beings, her life would have been different, Caruso muses. After hatching from his shell, the dull coloring of Randall’s head would have indicated his weakness, and, rather than catering to his needs, his mother—determined to ensure the survival of the species—would have abandoned the sickly chick, leaving him alone to starve among the reeds, while feeding the extra food to Clarissa.

  But human families allow their damaged offspring to rule with their powerful weakness, much like Randall had—always blaming his bad behavior on his mood swings. Whereas Clarissa had to assume responsibility for her mistakes. Maybe she resists apologizing to him for the very reason that she calls him her family now.

  If she anthropomorphizes him, why can’t he psittacomorphize her? he wonders. After all, fair is fair. Why must he accept her as a woman for his love to be real?

  He knows that he is a parrot, a cockatoo, a white cockatoo, a Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, a Cacatua galerita galerita. He can readily list the physical traits that distinguish him from the Cacatua galerita fitzroyi. He is bigger than this subspecies, his ear coverts are not as yellow, and his eye rings are naked white, not pale blue. He is not delusional. If he can differentiate between himself and a cockatoo that is almost identical to him, he most certainly knows that he and Clarissa are not the same. Clarissa is a woman, a Homo sapiens, and he accepts her as she is, even though he will never forget the day when another Homo sapiens ensnared him in a net, as if he were catching a butterfly for his collection; as if he were robbing Caruso of just a few days of life and not the long life span predicted for him; as if Caruso wouldn’t miss his parents, his flock; as if only human beings could suffer such pain. This appalling memory of man’s cruelty—not some craziness inside him—is what drives him to psittacomorphize her, the way she anthropomorphizes him.

  Clarissa takes a step forward, coming even closer to the glass-paneled door, and stares across the long expanse of yard at him.

  Before last night, the two of them could often surpass the limitations of their species—he, a cockatoo, one of several species of parrots distinguished by their elegant, high crests—she, the one and only living species of the genus Homo. Whenever this happened, he would become her Ayers Rock, the heart of her universe, her sacred Uluru, her firm ground, while she would become his Great Barrier Reef, his largest, living mystery. Before last night, she allowed only Caruso to see her secret self, but last night things changed forever when she opened herself up to Joseph Hampton Fitzgerald and revealed the million coral polyps shimmering inside her.

  “Caruso! Caruso!” she calls out, her lips silently mouthing his name. He would risk it, unlatch his cage door, and fly to her, except she has trifled with his feelings.

  “Olivia drinks her Scotch and soda to feel good,” the old man had explained to him one late summer day at the wrought iron table in his backyard. “As the heat of the drink warms her stomach, it also warms her mind, and she feels a sense of well-being. Whiskey doesn’t hit me like that. Rather, I am affected by the sole act of drinking it. Knowing that we are imbibing the same thing, at the very same time, in backyards adjoining each other—now, this is what gets to me. This little connection between us gives me sublime pleasure, although I’m never able to forget that she isn’t truly mine. My heart desires what it can’t have,” he had said, sighing as he glanced down at the cocktail glass in his hand.

  My heart also desires what it can’t have, Caruso thinks gloomily as he fixes his gaze on Clarissa, who is now pressing her full lips against the glass door. A few days ago such an intimate gesture would have numbed his doubts and sent him streaking his beak across the bars of his cage. Today, though, he is unable to bridge the distance between them, unable to glean any pleasure from their shared orbit. Let her heart desire what it can’t have, he thinks, turning his back to her.

  “Hi there, lover boy,” Clarissa calls out as she bustles back into her own kitchen. She whips by his cage and down the hallway. Wire hangers rattle in her bedroom; drawers bang. After a while, she reappears in front of him, wearing a chartreuse sundress tied around her neck in back.

  “Joe invited me to lunch last night,” she tells him. “That’s why I went in so early. Wanted to take a little time off now.” She pinches the flesh beneath her upper arm. “See that. I’ve put on a bit of weight. It’s snug around the waist, too,” she says, sucking in her stomach. “Maybe I shouldn’t wear this,” she murmurs, checking herself out in the mirror above the chaise longue. “What do you think, Caruso? Does this make me look fat?”

  He eyes her from top to bottom. Sloppy, she looks, like a not-quite-congealed mold of lime-green Jell-O. “Everything that deceives may be said to enchant,” the old man said whenever he spoke of Pascal Robinson. Caruso wonders if he should wear a mask of deception right now. Aren’t human beings forever changing masks? he rationalizes. A mask of politeness at work, another of regret at the end of a relationship, one of devotion in church. If she can wear a mask whenever it suits her, why can’t he? So, opting for deceit, he shakes his head.

  “Are you sure, Caruso?”

  “Bar-bie doll,” he lies.

  “Bar-bie doll?”

  “Bar-bie doll,” he lies again.

  She begins to giggle.

  “Bar-bie doll,” he says, a little louder.

  “Will you quit it?” she says, all of a sudden giggling uncontrollably.

  He wants to push the lie further. Not hard for him to do. After all, he is an Australian bird, a pretender by birth. So many birds of his native land are pretenders—the kookaburra pretending to be a stick so as to avoid becoming the hawk’s prey; the male lyrebird mimicking every birdcall in the forest, pretending to be the best crooner to win a mate; the cassowary roaring, pretending to be a lion when he fights with a male rival. Therefore, Caruso will make the lie even bigger. The heart must fight for what it desires, he decides, throwing back his head, pretending to be a construction worker, wolf-whistling.

  “Stop it, please,” she says, giggling so hard she loses her balance and stumbles against the sunroom table. A vase of zinnias topples over. Water splashes across the wooden surface and spills on her dress. “You’re in
corrigible,” she says, still tittering as she hurries down the hallway.

  At last, he’s the one in control, he thinks. Time to relax and enjoy his moment of triumph. Spotting the pinecone at the bottom of his cage, he rappels down to get it and then carries it back up to his perch. When she comes back, he is greedily gnawing the husk.

  “Joe will be here soon,” she says with excitement.

  He glances up, his eyes falling on the delicate white silk blouse and the long blue peasant skirt. She has changed clothes. Immediately, his sense of control wavers, and his beak drops open, the pinecone plummeting to the wire-mesh floor.

  “I finished what I needed to do at Crab Cakes this morning. The staff, I think, can manage without me for a while.” Her hair is pulled back into a ponytail. Her lips are painted soft pink, the color of the pink dogwoods that bloomed every spring in Theodore Pinter’s backyard. “He’s taking me to the Treasure Chest,” she says. “What do you think about that?”

  He puffs out his cheek feathers and cackles incredulously.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” she says, rolling her big blue eyes at him. Anchoring her hands on her kneecaps, she lists forward—her pink lips close to his cage—and whispers into his ear coverts, “I promise not to make a scene. This time, I’m gonna steal a dish off Chef Louie’s menu. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, isn’t it?”

  Another bird aphorism, he thinks dismally.

  “Does this outfit look nice on me, too?” she asks in a breathy voice.

  For a second, he wonders if he should lie again, but then her mouth, so close to him, draws him in fully; and, no longer listening to her words, he takes another sidestep toward her, losing himself in the pink valentine of her lips. If he could replay this scene in his mind, over and over, to keep her forever with him, he would.

  All of a sudden, a series of knocks punctuates the air, like firecrackers popping.

  Light-headed with worry, he wobbles on his perch, then steadies himself by hoping to catch a glimpse of her lips again, but she is pattering down the hallway.

  “How’s my favorite chef?” Joe says, in his tar-heel drawl, the instant the front door snaps shut. “Nice place,” he adds quickly, followed by the muffled sound of his sandals on the sea-grass rug. “Where’s my buddy?” he asks her.

  His buddy, Caruso thinks, offended.

  “This way,” Clarissa says.

  He listens to their footsteps down the hallway floor.

  “Hi, Caruso,” his rival says, trudging toward him.

  “Jo-seph Hamp-ton Fitz-ger-ald,” he forces himself to say.

  “Hear that, Clarissa?” Joe says. “We’re already good buddies.”

  Like Popeye and Bluto, Caruso thinks, with a flutter of his wings.

  “Caruso’s a friendly guy,” Clarissa tells him.

  The mask must be doing its magic, he thinks.

  “Would you like a glass of wine before lunch?”

  “Sure. We’ve got some time,” Joe replies, glancing down at his wristwatch.

  “White wine for us and some white grapes for Caruso,” she says in a sunny voice.

  “She spoils you, too,” his rival teases, poking his middle finger through the bars of his cage.

  “Go easy, Joe,” Clarissa says as she turns to leave. “That’s his home. His safe place.”

  Joe eases his finger out and stares beyond Caruso at Clarissa, her hips oscillating through the doorway.

  Several minutes later, she returns from the kitchen with a tray, which she puts on the table by the sunroom windows. After giving him a glass of wine, she takes the other for herself. Locking eyes, they press the rims to their lips—seeing only each other as they drink—before she sets her wineglass down, throws the latch on the cage door, and offers Caruso her arm.

  He ascends, and she moves him through the empty space. He climbs up to her shoulder, and they sit down at the table. Winking at Caruso, she pinches off a grape and tenderly feeds it to him. Whereupon she tweaks off another and eats it herself—her lips appealing, her eyes half-closed as the grape travels down her throat.

  Unexpectedly, Joseph Hampton Fitzgerald opens his lips, crooks up his arms, and flaps his elbows like wings. Laughing, Clarissa takes a grape and drops it into his upraised mouth.

  Mocking me, Caruso thinks, his cheek feathers hot with fury.

  “Watch this, Joe,” she says, nipping off another grape. “Feed me,” she says to Caruso, who parts his beak as she slips the fruit between his upper and lower mandible. She shuts her eyes and slants back her head. At once, he curves his neck to relinquish the white fruit to her mouth. Yet before he can savor this victory, his rival is out of his chair, picking off a grape, inserting it between his teeth, and tilting toward Clarissa.

  Fake indifference, Caruso reminds himself as Joe brushes the champagne-colored rind against her trembling pink lips.

  Like a bird gone mad, Caruso clings to the bars of his cage, rocking it with such ferocity the water in his drinking dish sloshes over onto the pinecone below, but the bothersome questions keep coming. What is she doing now? he wonders. Is she feeding him spicy, peppery shrimp with her fingers? Does she blow on his lips when he complains that his mouth is burning? Are they munching on island figs, just now coming into season? Are they sipping on glasses of wine? What are they saying to each other? Has she shared with him more secrets about her family? Has she told him that Caruso is her family now? If he were a human being, he would drink a shot of bourbon to soothe his frayed nerves.

  This was what Clarissa had done last Christmas. In a moment of weakness, she had relented and called her parents, and Caruso had been privy to their loud voices seeping through the receiver, frantically discussing Randall and his woes. In the background, he heard her brother screaming, “Hang up the goddamn phone!” while Clarissa had just stood there, saying nothing, the receiver shaking in her fingers. After hanging up, she went straightway to the kitchen, where she had swigged from a bottle of bourbon to calm herself down.

  Calm—this is how Caruso wants to feel.

  “Claaa-risss-a!” he cries out, shaking the cage even harder. He remembers the old man quoting Sir Walter Raleigh to him. “‘Hatreds are the cinders of affection,’” he’d said.

  I’d rather hate her than love her like this, Caruso thinks, coming to an abrupt standstill.

  “I could never hate her,” Theodore Pinter had said as they snacked on carrots in the kitchen. “My love for her was always greater than that.” He was peeling a carrot, the orange curls piling up on a paper napkin. Caruso recalls that the ornamental pear tree beside the kitchen window was in full bloom and that its heavy fragrance erased the smell of everything else. “She paid no attention to me through most of junior high, but during our very last semester, I breathed in a mouthful of courage and asked her to the Saint Valentine’s Day dance. I invited her in January—ahead of time—because I wanted to act before Pascal Robinson did.”

  The old man cut off some carrot for Caruso, and after that a piece for himself, and they munched and swallowed. “I wasn’t sure what Pascal would do. He might ask her, or he might not. You see, they clearly liked each other, but they weren’t official yet.” Removing his glasses, he huffed on the lenses and wiped them off on the tablecloth’s hem, but instead of putting them back on, he slipped them into his shirt pocket. “What I’m trying to say is, he had lots of girlfriends. Wasn’t a one-woman man back then—isn’t one now, from what I hear.”

  He tentatively pinched the bottom of his earlobe. “And lo and behold, Caruso,” he said grandly, “she said yes. As the date drew near, I rented a white tux from Moberly’s and ordered an expensive purple orchid for her pink dress.” Clucking, Caruso rocked forward. “Yes, Caruso,” he said, sighing, “I know what you’re thinking…that we were just kids, that I was going overboard, as usual…but I wanted to show her the stuff I was made of. I wanted her to perceive me as the better man.”

  He sliced off another circle of carrot and offered it to him. “Fo
r two months, I daydreamed about us—waltzing like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers across the gym floor. I had such great expectations,” he said, shaking his head, “but they were dashed the second we stepped through the wide double doors and saw Pascal slow-dancing with Olivia’s best friend, Suzanne Winters. Next, he tapped Carl Hinton’s shoulder, and off he went with another one of her girlfriends. Dateless, he danced with every girl there. Every girl but Olivia. ‘I don’t care a fig about him,’ she kept saying, her eyes brimming with tears, ‘and if he taps you, Teddy, let’s ignore him.’ Of course, he never did. Pascal Robinson was born with a gift for manipulation,” the old man had finished, “and by June’s end, Olivia was all his.”

  “Clarissa!” Caruso cries, his legs quaking from the memory, his body shivering with fear. His belly hurts. The feathers on his breast itch from worry. Dread claws at his throat. Lowering his head, he parts his beak, isolates a pinfeather, and jerks it out. At long last, relief burns through him like a shot of bourbon.

  Ten

  The clouds in the sky are as translucent as a convergence of jellyfish, Caruso thinks, glancing up from Clarissa’s shoulder while they sit at a wrought iron table in front of Iris’s Coffee Shop, the scraggly pine beside them providing little shade from the sun.

  “I like your bird,” a teenage waitress, in cutoffs and a yellow tank top, chirps as she hurries over. “What kind is it?” she asks, setting down Clarissa’s Very Berry smoothie.

  “Caruso’s a parrot. A Sulphur-crested Cockatoo,” Clarissa explains, taking off her floppy cotton hat, hanging it by its strap from the back of her chair.

  “Does he bite?”

  “He’s never bitten me,” she says, smiling, sucking Very Berry up a large purple straw.

  “I’d like to have a bird like that.”

  “Parrots are a lot of hard work,” Clarissa tells her. “You’ve got to feed them the right foods, give them baths every day, and spend time with them, or else they’ll get sick.”