I whisper a line from a Mary Oliver poem about thinking of dangerous and noble things. Mindy recognizes it. Of course she does. And she recites back to me the end of the verse, declaring a desire to be afraid of nothing.
Afraid of nothing like those winged wonders taking flight on a chilly November morning.
One window of the apartment overlooks Fiona’s; out another I can see the public library. The last one offers a stunning view of the brick building next door.
The landlord left us alone to walk across hardwood floors that could use a little care and walls that need a coat of paint. It’s nothing fancy, but the price is right and it’s within walking distance of Mindy’s office.
Besides, Mindy’s smitten with the place.
“I can put my desk here,” she says, pointing at one wall. “And my bookshelf next to it.”
“Your mom might have an area rug in the attic that would look nice in here,” I say.
“The braided one?” She nods. “That would be pretty.”
I take a few pictures on my phone to send to Linda, and Mindy tests the appliances to make sure they work okay. They seem to, even if they’re anything but new.
“You know,” she says, shutting the door of the fridge that’s not too much taller than she is, “this will be the first time I’ve ever lived on my own.”
“Yup.” I tap a loose floor tile in the bathroom with the toe of my shoe. “You think you’ll like it?”
“Without a doubt.”
I offer to treat her to a good cup of coffee, and she’s happy to accept. We leave the truck parked along the street and walk, even if it is a bit chilly.
“You know, this is where I first met your mother,” I say, holding the door of the coffee shop for her. “Did I ever tell you that?”
“Only a hundred times.” She smiles. “But tell me again.”
And I do.
Some stories bear much repeating.
CHAPTER
Thirty-Eight
Linda, 1975
June days had a way of joining all together into one. Settling into an easy summer routine was natural for Sonny, Minh, and me. Get up for a bowl of cereal. Play in the morning sun, weed, worry over the tomatoes that showed no promise of bearing fruit. Inside for sandwiches and a quiet time. Up to play some more or walk to the park or drive to the library to pick out a few books. Home to make dinner and welcome Bruce.
Dinner.
Baths.
Bedtime.
Then again the next day.
Not such a terrible way to spend a life.
Not terrible, no. But a little less than exciting.
Still, that wonderful, monotonous, predictable life was precisely the one I’d signed on to when I married Bruce, and I didn’t regret a single moment of it.
June became July, and even those days passed me by in a blur of routine.
Saturdays were different because Bruce got up to make French toast or pancakes, and we’d spend the day doing odd jobs around the house or packing into the car to have a picnic lunch beside the creek, letting the girls splash in the water until they were completely worn out.
Sundays were for church and sometimes lunch at Hilda’s, then for naps in the afternoon and cereal for dinner.
Sure, time flew when we were having fun. But it went even faster when we were about the business of the every day, every hour, every minute. No matter how I tried to slow it down, to rein it in, it kept taking off on me, always hovering just out of reach.
The last night of July, I put the girls in the bath together. Sitting on the closed lid of the toilet, I watched them splash in the water and scoop up cupfuls of it to dump on their own heads. I was exhausted and eager to get them into bed so I could have time alone with Bruce while we sat in front of the television, watching reruns before dropping into bed.
“All right, girls,” I said. “Scrub-a-dub-dub, please. Let’s not make this last all night.”
“Aw, but we’re having fun,” Sonny said, letting her shoulders slump. “Can’t we play a little bit longer?”
“Play,” Minh said, holding up her red plastic cup. “Please, Mommy.”
She tipped that cup over, water spilling down her hair and face as she and Sonny both got a hearty case of the giggles.
I thought about what a little old lady had said to me at church the Sunday before. She’d taken my hand in hers and told me that I was in the “golden time” of parenting and that it would never get better than it was right then.
“Enjoy them now, sweetie,” she’d said. “Don’t take a single moment for granted.”
Simply remembering what that old church lady had said made my chest tighten and my head spin.
Someday I’ll miss this, I thought. I’ll kick myself for not enjoying it more.
I ached for those little girls even though they were right there, within my reach.
Sooner than I wanted, they’d be big.
I gave them five more minutes.
I decided to enjoy them sufficiently the next day. And the next.
But in that moment, my backside on the hard toilet lid, I was tired.
Exhausted to the bone.
“Uh, Lin,” Bruce said, cracking the door open and peeking in. “Maybe get the girls out of the tub.”
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“I just opened the mail. We got something from the adoption agency.” He reached his arm in, handing me a piece of paper. “Don’t freak out, okay?”
“Don’t bathe your adopted child with other children,” the letter read. “They may have been infected with parasites. Take them to the doctor immediately for medicine.”
We got the girls out of the water and wrapped them in towels, not knowing what in the world we were supposed to do.
“You can never tell your mother about this,” I told Bruce. “Never.”
I tossed and turned all night, unable to sleep even as exhausted as I was. All I could do was worry about getting Minh to the doctor the next day, finding money for the anti-parasitic, and keeping Sonny healthy.
I didn’t want to take a moment of these golden years for granted.
Of course I didn’t.
Still, it would have been a lie to say that some of those golden moments weren’t so very hard.
Minh liked to sit beside me on the piano bench while I played. She’d put her fingers on the very edges of the keys, never daring to press down on them to make the notes sound, even when I told her she could, that it would be all right.
That afternoon had grown so hot that being outside in the sun was more miserable than being inside with very little breeze. I set the fan to oscillate and sat at the piano, flipping through my sheet music until I found the song I wanted.
“Nocturne in C-sharp minor” by Chopin.
I’d played it a hundred years before in my high school recital when I’d still had dreams bigger than I could hold in my two arms. Those days I couldn’t understand that I’d let all that go for life in a cramped house with a man who sometimes snored and two little girls who weren’t always very good at putting away their toys.
Sometimes the dreams of the young were replaced by those they never could have dared to imagine.
It didn’t mean that one dream was better than another. They were just different.
I was overwhelmingly, wholeheartedly, blissfully thankful for the life I had with Bruce and the girls.
My fingers found their way as I played, missing their place a few times. Nothing too horrible, though. I played the song the way I felt it instead of how it was written—a habit of mine that had vexed my piano teacher enough that she threatened weekly to expel me from my lessons.
If I looked closely enough, I could still see the scar from when she split my knuckle with her ruler.
During a trill in the song, Minh climbed up beside me. She watched as I passed my fingers over each other, an intricate dance, while I performed a run up the keys.
“Mommy,” she said, her little voice holding
so much awe that I had to stop the song.
“Want me to do it again?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
So I did the run again. And again. Four times.
Then Minh extended her pointer fingers and pushed down one key, then the next. C, F, C, F.
“Very nice,” I said.
“Again?” she asked.
“Yes.”
And she did. The same two notes. Then she played them together, louder, making her eyebrows push together.
“Mom,” Sonny said. “Mom.”
“Just a minute,” I said, still watching Minh play her two-note song.
“Can I have a popsicle?” Sonny asked, making her voice louder.
“Not now. It’s almost time for dinner.”
“But it’s hot,” Sonny said, taking a step closer to me. “Please.”
“I said not now.” My voice had a sharpness to it that I wasn’t accustomed to using with her. I softened it as much as I was able. “I’m listening to Minh play a song.”
“That’s not a song,” Sonny said. “It’s just pounding.”
“Don’t be rude.” I turned back to Minh.
“Why does she get all of your attention?” Sonny screamed, stomping her foot and slamming her fists into the sides of her thighs.
“Sondra Lynn Matthews, you go to your room.” I stood up and pointed the way. “I won’t have you throwing a tantrum.”
Sonny tensed every muscle in her little body and screamed, her face reddening so deeply I might have worried had I not witnessed this brand of temper from her before.
It was a good thing we didn’t have any neighbors, otherwise they might have called the police after hearing such a savage war cry from my sweet daughter.
Minh stopped her song and slid from the bench. I felt her press against my leg.
“Look at your sister, Sonny,” I said, putting a hand on the back of Minh’s head. “You’ve upset her.”
Sonny, nostrils flared and lips pursed, glanced at Minh. Then she threw her head back and heaved out a sob. Big, round “wah” sounds came from her, and her shoulders jolted up and down with every intake of air.
“Oh, honey,” I said, reaching for her. “Shoot. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
Then I heard a sniffling from Minh that broke into a quiet weeping.
“Girls.” I knelt on the floor. “I’m sorry for yelling. I don’t want to be the kind of mom who yells.”
Before I knew it, I was joining in on the crying.
As hot as it was, the three of us huddled together until we were all wailed out. By the time Bruce got home, we were on the couch, one girl on either side of me, Free to Be You and Me on the record player and dinner entirely unmade.
Good man that he was, he rolled up his sleeves and put together a handful of peanut butter and jellies.
“You’re a good mom,” he said when he handed me mine, cut into quarters. “These girls are lucky to have you.”
He’d used strawberry jam. That was as good as him telling me that he loved me.
CHAPTER
Thirty-Nine
Sonny, 1988
When I woke up that morning, I had a smile on my face. Not only was it exactly two weeks before I’d move away to college, it was also the day that Mike was taking me out on what he called a “date of surprises.” The only thing he’d tell me was that I needed to wear my prom dress.
Mom and Dad had even agreed to abolish my curfew. Not that we’d be out too late. The whole town of Bear Run turned into a pumpkin when the clock struck midnight, leaving a whole lot of nothing for anyone to do but twiddle their thumbs.
Still, it was shaping up to be the very best day of my whole life.
I sat up in bed and stretched my arms over my head, feeling nothing but excitement for the day.
That excitement passed quickly once we got to work and Mrs. Olds asked Mindy and me to look through the collection of donated taxidermy for an “Animals of Michigan” room. I stared down a particular frozen-in-a-snarl possum for a full five minutes to make sure it didn’t move before putting on two layers of work gloves and lifting him out of his box.
Mrs. Olds was conveniently busy elsewhere in the museum. That sneaky stinker.
“This is bogus,” I said before squealing when the possum tail touched my skin. “I’m going to die now.”
Mindy stood, looking down into a box, her hands up in surrender. “This one’s full of birds.”
“I hate this room so much.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a rat scuttle into the room and I screamed, running to the wall and climbing on top of the radiator.
“Rat! Rat!” I yelled, keeping my eyes open and fixed on the thing. “Mindy, get help!”
But Mindy didn’t move, and at first I thought it was because she was utterly horrified. Then I realized it was because she was laughing.
I looked back at the rat and noticed that it was stuck—glued?—onto a chunk of wood.
“Seriously?” I shouted, jumping down from the radiator and kicking the rat with the toe of my Keds.
Mrs. Olds came in, hands to her chest and laughing so hard I thought she was going to give herself a heart attack.
“Oh, Sonny,” she said. “I’m sorry. I had to.”
I opened my mouth to let her know that, no, she didn’t when I heard a deep voice calling up the stairs.
“Hello?”
“Is that Grumpy?” Mindy asked.
I nodded and Mrs. Olds stepped to one side to let us out of the room.
“Girls?” Grumpy said when he saw us look over the banister to the landing. “We’ve got to go.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked, my heart sinking into my stomach.
“Grumpy?” Mindy said. “What are you doing here?”
“We have to go to the hospital,” he said, waving us toward him.
“Is it the baby?” Mindy’s face lit up.
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
“Mrs. Olds,” I said, turning to look at the small woman.
“Go,” she said. “Go. Don’t worry about this. I’ll take care of it.”
Mindy and I ran side by side down the steps, so fast it was a wonder we made it to the bottom without falling.
Grumpy drove five miles per hour over the speed limit the whole way to the hospital, which, for him, was a pretty serious criminal offense. I wouldn’t have doubted if he went down to the police station the next day to turn himself in.
For that day, though, the only important thing was to get us to the hospital.
We all knew even if we didn’t say it that the baby wasn’t supposed to come for another three weeks at the least. Something had gone wrong. All Grumpy said was that it was something to do with blood pressure.
Honestly, I thought he was saying that the stress of it all was raising his blood pressure.
It wasn’t until we were in the waiting room that Aunt Dana explained it.
Mom was the one with high blood pressure—it might have even been why her ankles were swollen like balloons. It was best for both of them, Mom and the baby, if the doctor delivered the baby right away.
“Will they be okay?” Mindy asked.
“I think so,” Aunt Dana said, taking our hands.
We waited for a long time. Uncle Chris gave me a dime so I could call Mike. It was a bummer to call off our date, but I wouldn’t have left the hospital that evening for anything. Not even to wear my prom dress one more time.
“I’m just disappointed I have to go see Big Top Pee-wee by myself,” Mike said on the other end of the line.
“We were not going to see that,” I said.
“Well, we aren’t now. But I am.”
“You’re so weird,” I said.
“Yeah,” he answered. “Hey, do you want me to come to the hospital? I could steal a wheelchair and see how fast I can push you down the hall.”
“No.” I put my forehead against the top of the pay phone, the metal cool against my skin. “That’s all r
ight.”
“Okay. Call me tomorrow, though?”
“Sure. Bye.”
“Wait, Sonny?”
“Yeah?” I said.
“I just wanted to ask you something.” He hesitated. “I, uh . . .”
“Yes?” I felt queasy and lightheaded and wasn’t sure I was ready for whatever he was about to say next.
If I’d learned anything from watching Molly Ringwald movies, it was that a boy always picked the weirdest times to ask a girl to go steady with him.
“This is kind of weird to ask on the phone.”
“Okay.”
Even through the receiver I could hear him pull in a quick breath.
“Well, I was wondering if . . .” he started.
“Wait,” I interrupted him. “Don’t do it like this.”
“Do what?”
“Ask me to be your girlfriend.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because what if we end up getting married and having kids?” I said. “Do you really want to tell our children that you asked me to be your girlfriend over the phone?”
“We’re getting married?”
“Well, we might. Who knows?”
“Okay, I guess.”
“So, save it. Ask me later.”
“Roger that.”
“Goodbye, Mike.”
“Bye, Sonny,” he said. “I like you.”
“I like you too.”
It was almost midnight when Dad came into the waiting room. Grammy and Grumpy had already gone home, leaving us to wait with Aunt Dana. The doctor had come out half an hour before to tell us that everybody was all right, but that was all she’d say.
She wanted our dad to be the one to tell us everything.
When Dad came out, he had his hand on his heart like he worried it would burst right out of his chest, and he had to swallow and take a breath before saying anything.
“She’s perfect” was all he could get out.
“It’s a girl?” I jumped out of my seat and clapped my hands.
“Can we see her?” Mindy asked, moving to the edge of her chair.
Dad answered by putting out both arms and nodding. The two of us fit up against him and he wrapped his arms around our shoulders.
The Nature of Small Birds Page 23