Delicate Edible Birds

by Lauren Groff

  ALIETTE’S CHEEKS GROW PLUMP and her legs regain many of their muscles. By May, L. is being driven crazy by the touches, leg sliding against leg, arm to knee, foot silky across his shoulder. He immerses himself in a cold-water tub, like a racehorse, before coming out to greet her.

  Their flirtation slips. Dawn is pinkening in the clerestory window, and L. is lifting Aliette’s arm above the water to show her the angle of the most efficient stroke, when his torso brushes against hers, and stays. He looks at dozing Rosalind. Then he lifts Aliette from the water and carries her to the men’s room.

  As she stands, leaning against the smooth tile wall and shivering slightly, he slides her suit from her shoulders and pulls it down. To anyone else, she would be a skinny, slightly feral-looking little girl, but he sees the heart-shaped lips, the pulse thrumming in her neck, the way she bares her body bravely, arms down, palms turned out, watching him. He bends to kiss her. She smells of chlorine, lilacs, warm milk. He lifts her and leans her against the wall.

  When they reemerge, Rosalind still sleeps, and the pool is pure, glossy, as if nobody has ever set foot in it.

  Who, in the midst of passion, is vigilant against illness? Who listens to the reports of recently decimated populations in Spain, India, Bora Bora, when new lips, tongues, and poems fill the world?

  Now, when they don’t touch, they share the splash and the churn, the rhythm of the stroke, the gulps of water in the gutter, the powerful shock of the dive, and a wake like smoke, trailing them.

  ALIETTE LEAVES HER WHEELCHAIR in the foyer and begins to walk, even though the pain seems unbearable when she is tired. She loves the food she loathed before, for the flesh it gives her. She eats marbled steaks, half-inch layers of butter on her bread. She walks to the stores on Madison, leaning against a wall when she needs to, and returns, victorious, with bags. On one of her outings, she meets her father coming home for lunch. As she calls to him, and runs clumsily the last five steps, his eyes fill. His fleshy face grows pink, and the lines under his mouth deepen.

  “Oh,” he says, nearly weeping and holding out his arms. “My little girl is back.”

  IN THE HOT DAYS OF SUMMER, the pool sessions are too short and the day that stretches between them too long. In his anxiety to see Aliette, L. writes poetry. Those hours of relief aren’t enough, so he walks. But on the streets everything sparkles too brightly: the men selling war bonds smile too much, the wounded soldiers seem limp with relief, their wives too radiant and pregnant. He hates it; he is drawn to it.

  To forget her need to be with him, Aliette keeps herself busy. She takes tea with school friends at the Plaza, goes to museums and parties, accepts all dates to the theater that she can. But when her dates lean in to kiss her, she pushes them away.

  FIVE TIMES AT THE AMSTERDAM BEFORE JULY: that first time in the men’s room; in the lifeguard’s chair; in the chaise longue storage closet; in the shallow end; in the deep end, in the corner, braced by the gutter.

  All this time, Rosalind sleeps. The days that Aliette suspects she won’t, she fills her nurse’s head with glorious evocations of the cream puffs that are the specialty of the hotel’s pastry chef. Rosalind, she feels certain, will slip out at some point during the lesson and return a half an hour later with a cream puff on a plate for her ward, licking foam from her lip like a cat.

  THE SECOND WAVE OF THE ILLNESS hits America in July. People begin to fall in Boston, mostly strong young adults. In a matter of hours, mahogany spots appear on cheekbones, spreading quickly until one cannot tell dark-skinned people from white. And then the suffocation, the pneumonia. Fathers of young families turn as blue as huckleberries, and spit a foamy red fluid. Autopsies reveal lungs that look like firm blue slabs of liver.

  ALIETTE SLIPS AWAY ON A DAY that Rosalind is off, visiting a cousin in Poughkeepsie. She takes a cab to the dark and seedy streets where L. lives, but is so thrilled she doesn’t see the dirt or smell the stench. She gets out of the cab, throwing the driver a bill, and runs as quickly to the door of L.’s close, hot bedroom as her awkward legs will allow.

  She comes in. He stands, furious to suddenly see her in this hovel. She closes the door.

  It is only later, sitting naked on the mattress, dripping with sweat and trying to cool off in what breeze will come from the window, that she notices the bachelor’s funk of his apartment, the towers of books and notebooks lining the walls like wainscoting, and hears the scrabble of something sinister in the wall behind her head. That is when she tells L. her plan.

  THAT NIGHT MR. HUBER IS CHAPERONING. L. pays his friend, W. Sebald Shandling, starving poet, to sit by the pool. Shandling is foppish, flings his hands about immoderately, has a natural lisp.

  “Watch me like a jealous wife,” L. instructs him.

  His friend does watch him, growing grimmer and grimmer, until, by the end of the session, when Aliette comes to the wall and touches L. on the shoulder, he is pacing like a tiger and glaring at the pair. Mr. Huber looks on with an expression of jolly interest.

  In the cab home that evening, as the horse’s hooves clop like a metronome through the park, Aliette asks her father if L. can come live with them, in one of the guest bedrooms.

  “Daddy,” she says, “he told me how disgusting his room is. But he cannot afford to live elsewhere. And I’ve decided to train for the New York girls’ swimming championships in September, and need to add another session in the afternoon, at the Fourteenth Street YMCA. It will just be easier if he lives with us.”

  “You have become friends?” he says.

  “Oh, we get along swimmingly,” she laughs. When he doesn’t smile, she adds, “Daddy, he is like a brother to me.”

  Her father says, without much hesitation, “Well, I don’t see why not.”

  ON THE JULY DAY HE LEAVES HIS HOVEL, L. stands in his room, looking around at the empty expanse. He hears children playing in the alley below. He goes to the window and watches. Two girls skip rope, chanting.

  I had a little bird, they sing, rope clapping to the words.

  Its name was Enza.

  I opened the window.

  And In-Flu-Enza.

  Then they shriek and fall to the ground, clutching their chests, giggling.

  L.’s world is spun on its head. Now he deals with servants, people calling him sir, any food he likes at any time of the day, the palatial apartment filled with light. And, of course, midnight creeping, and free midafternoon siestas in the cavernous cool apartment, as the servants sit in the kitchen and gossip about the war. In mid-August, L. is deemed chaperone enough, and Rosalind stays home when they go to the Amsterdam or the Y. If Aliette’s father leaves for work a bit later than usual on those mornings, the servants’ bland faces reveal nothing. Rosalind begins wearing a long strand of pearls, and French perfume. She takes to sitting on Aliette’s bed, combing her hair and asking the girl about her dates with the Ivy League boys. Her voice is rich and almost maternal.

  ALIETTE TELLS HER FATHER that she no longer needs Rosalind, that she is healthy, and he can let the nurse go. Then Rosalind becomes his nurse, for he has discovered gout in his toes.

  One golden night at the end of September, they are all listening gravely to the radio’s reports of war dead, eating petits fours in Aliette’s father’s study. Mr. Huber and Rosalind go into his bedchamber to treat his gout. Through the walls, L. and Aliette can hear their murmuring voices.

  L. takes the cake from Aliette’s hand and lifts her skirt on the morocco leather couch. She bites his shoulder to keep from screaming. Throughout, they can hear her father moving about behind the wall, Rosalind’s heels tapping, the maid dusting in the other room.

  When Rosalind and Mr. Huber return, Aliette is reading a novel, and L. is still in his wing chair, listening intently to the radio. Nobody notices the pearls of sweat on his forehead, or, when Aliette stands for bed, the damp patch on her skirt.

  THE MARVEL IS, WITH ALL she and L. do together, that Aliette has the time to train. But she does, growing muscle
s like knots in her back, adapting her kick from the standard three-beat to a lightning-quick eight-beat flutter, better suited for her weak legs.

  At the competition in September in the 200-meter freestyle, she is already ahead from her dive, and draws so far away from the other girls that she is out on the diving platform, wearing her green cloak, when the other girls come in. She also takes the 100-meter freestyle.

  The captions below her picture in the New York Times and the Sports News say: “Heiress NY’s Best Lady Swimmer.” In the photo, Aliette stands radiant, medals gleaming in the sunlight on her chest. If one were to look closely, however, one would see a bulge at Aliette’s waist.

  THE SLOW RUMBLE OF INFLUENZA becomes a roar. September drips into deadliest October. In Philadelphia, gymnasiums are crowded with cots of soldiers healthy just hours before. America does not have enough doctors, and first-year medical students, boys of twenty, treat the men. Then they too fall sick. Their bodies are stacked like kindling with the rest in the insufficient morgues. More than a quarter of the pregnant women who survive the flu miscarry or give birth to stillborn babies.

  ALIETTE’S STOMACH GROWS, but she does not tell L., hoping he’ll notice and remark upon it first. He is in a fever, though, and sees nothing but his passion for her. She begins wearing corsets again, and she makes a great show of eating inordinately, so that her father and Rosalind think she is simply getting fat.

  THE PLAGUE HITS NEW YORK like a tight fist. Trains rolling into the boroughs stop in their tracks when engineers die at the controls. After 851 New Yorkers die in one day, a man is attacked for spitting on the streets.

  Mr. Huber sends his six servants away, and they are forbidden to return until the end of the plague. Three out of them won’t return at all. Mr. Huber, Aliette, Rosalind, and L. remain. They seal the windows, and Mr. Huber uses his new telephone to order the groceries. They buy their food in cans, which they boil before opening, and their mail is baked piping hot in the oven before they read it.

  After the second week of quarantine, Rosalind becomes hysterical and makes them drink violet-leaf tea and inhale saltwater. She paces the apartment wildly and forgets to brush her hair. They cannot persuade her to make up the fourth for bridge, so they play Chinese checkers, backgammon, and gin. Mr. Huber suddenly unveils his collection of expensive liquors and dips gladly into them. When he has had too much, he and Rosalind go into the servants’ quarters and hiss at each other. At those times Aliette sits on L.’s lap and presses her cheek against his, until the shape of his moustache is embossed into her skin.

  When her father and Rosalind return, Aliette is always balanced on the arm of a couch, air-swimming, as L. critiques her form. He makes her air-swim and do jumping jacks for hours every day. The cloistered life suits her. She is radiant.

  AFTER A MONTH, ROSALIND WATCHES from a window as a coffin falls from a stack on a hearse, the inhabitant spilling out when it hits the ground. She goes nearly mad. She breathes into a paper bag until calm, and makes them wear masks inside. She forces them to carry hot coals sprinkled with sulfur. The apartment stinks like Satan.

  When Aliette and L. kiss through their masks, they laugh. And when Aliette comes to L. in the night, she swings her coals like a priestess swinging a censer.

  ON A LAZY DAY OF SNOOZING AND READING, L. gets a letter from his mother. He doesn’t bother to bake it. He tears it open, Aliette watching, hand over her mouth.

  In three sentences, in her shaking hand, her mother tells him that his father, a hearse driver, was one of the rare lightning deaths. Amadeo toppled from his horse and was dead before he hit the ground. And Lucrezia, two hours later, fell ill, her knees wobbling, joints stiffening, the fever, the viscous phlegm, the cyanosis, the lungs filling.

  Only years later does L. understand that when his sister died, she died of drowning.

  HE STAYS IN BED FOR ONE WEEK and does not weep. He lets Aliette hold his head for hours. Then he rises and shaves his moustache off. Its outline is white on his tan face, and the skin there looks exceptionally tender.

  IN THE FIRST WEEK OF NOVEMBER, the crisis slackens. People emerge into the street, mole-eyed and blinking, searching for food. In some apartments, whole families are found dead when their mail can no longer fit through their slots. Rosalind, however, will not let the Huber household leave the apartment. L. reads the baked newspapers, saddened. In addition to his family, he has lost his novelist friend, C.T. Dane; his fellow swimmer Harry Elionsky, the long-distance champion; the actress Suzette Alda, with whom he once danced for an entire night.

  Life picks up again, though some new cases are still reported, and the horror is not completely over. More than nineteen thousand New Yorkers have died.

  EARLY IN THE MORNING OF NOVEMBER 11, the streets burst into triumphant rejoicing. Victory. Sirens blare, church bells ring, New Yorkers pour into the streets, shouting. Newspaper boys run through the sleeping parts of town, shouting, The war is ovah! An effigy of the Kaiser is washed down Wall Street with a fire hose; confetti pours down; eight hundred Barnard girls snake-dance on Morningside Heights and a coffin made of soapboxes is paraded down Madison, with the Kaiser symbolically resting in pieces within.

  Many people still wear masks.

  A mutiny occurs in the Huber apartment, and Rosalind wrings her hands as the other three rush into the street to join the celebration. They are all in their nightclothes. Mr. Huber dances a jolly foxtrot with a dour-faced spinster. When a blazing straw dummy is kicked down the street, L. turns to look for Aliette. She is standing on a curb, clapping her hands and laughing. As the dummy passes, the wind picks up and billows out Aliette’s nightgown. Through the suddenly sheer garment, he sees how her belly is extended above her thin legs.

  WHEN ALIETTE SEES HIM SWAYING there on the sidewalk, his face pale, she puts a hand on her belly. A soldier and his girl pass between them, but they don’t notice. When she turns, L. is beside her, gripping her arm too tightly.

  He drags her into the building and to the doorman’s empty room. A thin wedge of light falls across her flushed cheek.

  “You didn’t tell me,” he says. “How long?”

  She stares at him, defiant. “Since May,” she says. “That first time, I think.”

  “My God,” he says, then leans his forehead against the door, above her shoulder. She is pinned. He rests his stomach against hers, and feels a pronounced thump, and another. “My God,” he repeats, but this time with awe.

  “A good swimmer, I’ll bet,” she says, daring to smile a little. But he doesn’t smile back. He just stands, leaning against her, until he feels another kick.

  THEY WAIT UNTIL DECEMBER, a day when Mr. Huber has returned to Wall Street and Rosalind has gone shopping.

  When the house is empty, they pack only what she needs. In the cab to Little Italy she squeezes his hand until it goes numb. The driver is singing boisterously to himself.

  “You’re kidnapping, you know,” she whispers to L., trying to make him laugh.

  He looks away from her, out the window. “Only until we can figure out what to do. Until you have him and we can be married.”

  “L.,” she says, ten blocks later. “I don’t want to be married.”

  He looks at her.

  “I mean,” she says, “I would rather be your mistress than your wife. I don’t need a ring and a ceremony to know what this is.”

  He is silent at first. Then L. says, “Oh, Aliette. Your father does. And that is enough.”

  HIS MOTHER, AGED WITH HER RECENT GRIEF, meets them at the door. She looks at her son, and touches his lip where his moustache had been. Then she looks at Aliette, and holds open her arms to embrace her.

  THE DETECTIVES DON’T COME LOOKING for Aliette for a week, unable to find out where L.’s mother lives. When at last they do, she hides the couple in her bedroom, and opens the door, already talking. In her quick jumble of Italian, the detective who knows the language passably becomes confused, then tongue-tied, then shame-faced when he tries t
o tell her why he is there. “L. DeBard,” he says. “Noi cerciamo L. DeBard.”

  She looks at him as if he were the greatest fool the world had seen. “DeBartolo,” she cries, hitting her fist on her chest. She points to the card in the door. “DeBartolo.” She throws her hands to the skies and sighs. The detectives look at each other, bow, and leave.

  In the bedroom, L. and Aliette listen to this barrage, and press tightly together.

  THE NEXT DAY, Aliette goes into labor. Though the baby is a month early, Aliette is very small, and it takes a long time. From morning until late at night, L. paces down the street, finally going into a bar. There he discovers Tad Perkins drinking himself into a stupor, alone.

  “Isn’t that old fishface L.?” cries Tad. “My God, I thought you damn well died.”

  “You’re not that lucky,” says L., laughing with great relief. “You still owe me thirteen dollars.” He sits down and buys Tad and himself four quick martinis.

  Later, staggering slightly, he goes out into the street. The moon is fat above. When he reaches the apartment, all is still. His mother sits beaming by the side of the bed, where Aliette rests. In his mother’s arms, he sees a tiny sleeping baby. A boy, he knows, without being told.

  WHEN ALIETTE AWAKENS, she finds L. sitting where his mother was. She smiles tiredly.

  “I am thinking of names,” L. says, hushed. “I like Franklin and Karl.”

  “I have already named him,” says Aliette.

  “Yes? What’s my son’s name?”

  “Compass,” she says. And though he presses, she won’t tell him why. At last, grinning, he accepts the name, vowing to nickname him something more conventional. He never does. After the child is a few months old, he will find the name suits his son to perfection.