Bird After Bird

by Leslea Tash

  Lew opened the closet door in Sylvia’s room and pulled out a painting. I recognized it—it was an oil of a red-tailed hawk I’d painted for Syl during our senior year of high school. I could see how immature the work was when I looked at the piece, but it wasn’t horrible. Not for a kid.

  “We’re going to hang this in the den, I think,” he said. “Unless you want it back.”

  “No, keep it,” I said.

  “You still painting?”

  “Not since Wren split.”

  “Her name was Wren?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Not Wren Riley.”

  I nodded. “You know her?”

  Lew sighed. “Good lord, boy, everyone in this town knew little Wren Riley. Her parents—Lark and Walt—were good folks. Smart as whips, and funny. Shame, how cancer took ‘em. I thought Lark—I mean, Wren—left town for work. Didn’t she go up to Chicago to that Big Ten school?”

  I nodded. “Northwestern.”

  “That’s the one! Damn, kid! Wren Riley, huh? Sometimes when I’m at the cemetery I pass her parents’ plot. Been wondering how she’d been getting on since her daddy passed.” He sighed. “What a shame.” He gave me a sad smile. “Pretty as a picture. Smart as a whip.”

  “And I let her go.”

  Lew set the painting down, leaning it carefully against the wall, as though he wasn’t sure if the paint were still tacky. He touched the paint and pulled his finger away, examining it closely. “Sometimes I forget how long it’s been since I done things, Laurie. Was it last week? Must’ve been.” He straightened his posture and looked at me, placing one firm hand after the other on each of my shoulders. “Listen to your old friend Lew for a minute, would ya? There ain’t many young ladies from this town I’d set stock in, not like I would my own Syl. But she’s gone, and we’re still here, and I’m telling you, boy—if Wren Riley loves you, she’s a bird worth chasing. You said it yourself your life is shit without her—you’re not painting, you’re not eating…forget the God damned telephone and the texting and all that shit and go and get that girl—and don’t take no for an answer. You hear me?”

  “I hear you, Lew,” I said, letting him pull me in for a hug. Lew wasn’t much of a hugger. Never had been. Wasn’t one to go on at length with advice for the lovelorn, either.

  “Think about it,” he said, patting my back before he let me go.

  I nodded.

  And then I shoved it completely and totally out of my mind.

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Laurie

  Louisa didn’t give up. Neither did Donna. They both checked in on me at the garage at least once a week. It was getting to the point Billy was making cracks about the team of hens pecking at me, and he didn’t let it go, even the nights he and the Boys played at the Beer & Bait. I guess he didn’t have anything better to do. Lynette’s pregnancy hormones were making her crazy and she was pressuring him to get the baby’s nursery ready early.

  “Why don’t you just put the poor girl out of her misery?” I asked him one day at lunch.

  “Got too many shows lined up on the weekends.”

  “Shows?”

  “Gigs.” He smiled, chewing his mouthful of burger.

  “That’s awesome, man. I had no idea the band was taking off like that.”

  He shrugged. “Just lucky, I guess. Need some new songs, though. Only so long we can play covers, if we want to get noticed.”

  We both saw Louisa pull into the parking lot of the garage.

  “I better go talk to her, I guess,” I said, leaving some cash on the counter for the waitress.

  Billy waved me goodbye, finishing what was left of my fries.

  “Hey, bro!” Louisa gave me a hug. “How’s it going?”

  “Fine,” I said. “What brings you ‘round today? I promise I’m eating.” I pointed over to the diner, and Billy waved through the window at my sis.

  “I’ve made an appointment for you.”

  “An appointment?” I didn’t like the sounds of that.

  “Yeah. Just say you’ll go once. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to go back.”

  “Is this one of those New Age things your friends at the library are holding? A Reiki-a-thon or something?”

  She laughed. “No, but I will see what I can do, if that’s what you’d rather.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “I made you a date.”

  “No way.”

  “With a nun.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, and Louisa tucked a business card into the pocket of my overalls. “Just say you’ll meet her. You’ll like her. I like her a lot. Just go once.”

  Sister Generose wasn’t what I expected. She didn’t wear a habit. She wasn’t old and grey. She looked a lot like Louisa with her long ponytail and fresh face. To be honest, that was helpful. It put me at ease. Well, it made me less nervous, anyway.

  “Welcome, Laurence,” she said, gesturing to a wicker chair in her small, cluttered office. “You can have a seat, or we can take a stroll, if you’d like. I know it’s hot out, but I’m afraid the A/C is on the fritz and Mother Superior can’t get any HVAC here until next week.”

  “A stroll? Sure.”

  The convent was just about ten minutes down the highway from Birdseye, but it could have been another world. I’d never had a good reason to visit it, and now I regretted that. Sitting high on a hill overlooking the small town of Ferdinand below, it was quite possibly the best view in all of Dubois County.

  We ended up on a balcony, taking in the view. Sister Generose told me about herself…how long she’d been a nun, why she’d decided to join the clergy, and why she’d become a grief counselor. It was the last bit that surprised me the most.

  “My lover died. Right out of high school, when we were set to move to San Francisco together for college—or whatever mischief we could have gotten into.”

  “You’re gay? I thought that wasn’t allowed in your religion.”

  She smiled. “Oh, it’s not…but it’s not exactly frowned upon now, either, with the new Pope. Bigger fish to fry, as it were.”

  “That’s awesome,” I said. “I mean, it’s awesome that you can be open. But you’re a nun, so I guess it’s not as awesome as all that. And I’m sorry about your lover.” It felt weird saying the word lover to a nun. I began to wonder just why I was here, and if this was all a huge mistake.

  “So, tell me about yourself, Laurence.”

  For some reason I didn’t mind that she called me by my proper name, so I didn’t bother to correct her.

  “Well…like you, I lost someone right out of high school. I joined the Army and she stayed here. We used to work with a search and rescue dog. I’d asked her to put it on hold, or at least stay out of dangerous situations, until I got back. She didn’t want to wait. She got picked for the FEMA team and she and the dog were both killed during a search.”

  Generose nodded. “I remember reading that in the paper. We prayed for her and her family for quite some time.”

  “Oh.” That surprised me. “Okay, then.”

  “Is there more you’re not telling me, though? Your sister said you’re going through some big stuff lately.”

  “Yeah. Um…I met someone else. Someone I really cared for. Things were going well.”

  “Until they weren’t.”

  “Right. She broke up with me on the night I was going to propose.”

  “She turned you down?”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t get the chance to ask. We got into a fight right before I was going to pop the question and that pretty much ended it.”

  Sister Generose gasped. “Ouch!”

  “Hey, aren’t you supposed to be more…stoic or something?”

  Generose reached out and gave me a quick hug. “Laurence, I think the world’s suffered long enough from stoic nuns and counselors. I just want to keep it real. Is that okay with you?”

  I smiled. I liked this weird lesbian nun with the questionable filter.
“Yeah. Actually, that’s perfect.”

  I saw Generose twice a week. When it had been two months, we cut our time down to once per week. That woman was amazing. She listened patiently while I told her everything—about my guilt over Sylvia and over Rodriguez, and my heartbreak over Wren. She shared stories from her life—she was a few years older than I’d guessed when I’d met her, and she’d traveled a lot before she’d taken her vows.

  She never asked me to pray. She never forced her religion on me. All she did was listen, talk, and make it clear her door was open anytime.

  One day I showed up in a bad mood that even our weekly stroll couldn’t cure. “Laurence, didn’t you tell me that you are an artist?”

  “Yep.”

  “When’s the last time you painted, or drew—which is it you do? Or do you sculpt?”

  “Sketches and paintings, mostly.”

  “How long?”

  I shrugged.

  She shrugged back.

  I shrugged again.

  “Weeks?”

  I nodded.

  “Laurence, I’m sending you home early today. Don’t come back until you’ve painted something.”

  “But—“

  She turned her back on me and walked briskly away.

  “What do you want me to paint?” I called to her back.

  She didn’t stop walking, and she didn’t speak. She just threw her hands in the air and shrugged.

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Laurie

  I didn’t know what I was going to make, but I knew I wanted to talk to Generose again, so I didn’t see that I had any choice but to comply. It had been so long since I’d opened the door of the Community Center, I wasn’t sure my key would still fit. They might have changed the locks, for all I knew.

  I set at my easel with my brushes and paints before me, ready to go. A million images flashed through my mind. The hawk I’d painted for Sylvia. Wren’s face. The mural on my wall at home. The woods. My truck. Hap with his tongue hanging out. Rodriguez—more specifically, the snapshot of him with his little boy that he’d kept on his bunk, in Iraq.

  That’s when I knew what I needed to do.

  I didn’t have a model to work from, but I thought I could freehand it well enough.

  Little by little, feather by feather, I painted the bird. Its wide, majestic head filled the canvas, its piercing eyes and bold, golden beak springing to life before my eyes. This painting was either going to turn out very, very good, or horribly bad.

  I worked all night. I got so worked up that I kept turning the A/C up. Finally, I stripped off my shirt and threw it on a table—the same table where Wren and I had painted birds on one another. I pushed that out of my mind and kept working.

  As dawn broke, I looked at my finished work, in acrylic. The head and shoulders of a bald eagle, the symbol of our nation and a personal favorite of my fallen friend. I was pretty sure it matched the tattoo he’d gotten on his right shoulder to celebrate graduation from AIT.

  I wasn’t sure if Generose could receive texts, but I snapped a pic of my work and tried sending it to her phone, anyway.

  -Lovely work, Laurence! Tell me about it on Tuesday night.-

  And I did. I told Generose I wanted to send it to my friend’s widow.

  “Why not take it, yourself?”

  “Well, they live pretty far away.”

  “So?”

  I started to shrug, but stopped myself.

  She laughed. “Are we going to play the shrug game again?”

  “No,” I said. “I think I learned my lesson.”

  “Laurence, there’s this thing called ‘closure.’ We’ve talked about that, yes?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Closure galore. We’re all closed up.”

  She smirked.

  “Okay, maybe not ‘all closed up,’” I conceded, “but, yes, I’m familiar with the concept. Are you saying I need to get closure?”

  She shrugged.

  “Did you really just shrug at me, Generose?” I couldn’t help but laugh.

  She smiled. “Look, Laurence, you’ve been through some heavy shit. The kind of shit that doesn’t resolve itself without some effort. All I’m saying is—a long drive can be a kind of therapy, too.”

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Wren

  The project started out so strong. As I jogged alone, I wondered what had gone wrong.

  Janice had tasked me with finding a way to leverage more market share from the major chains, and it should have been a no-brainer. I had the SKUs, I had the consumer feedback, I had plenty of capital to invest in advertising subsidies, and I’d even managed to line up some social media promotions that would tie-in with the Super Bowl ad for our brand two years out. I’d done all the research to show which plants and product lines could be optimized for maximum output, and researched where to break ground on new facilities to maximize our tax credits, delivery matrix, and employ the most American workers for the most reasonable wage. We were ready to pounce, ready to sell.

  The assignment should have been a slam-dunk. It was right there in front of me, within my reach, similar in many respects to the kind of packages I had contributed to as a staffer at Parker & Bash, but now from the corporate side, I got to weigh in with opinions on marketing and sales.

  “With your vigor, I’m sure you’ll double our shelf space in all the big chains!” Harold had said over dinner. “No can say no to you, Wren.”

  And I agreed. I thought he was right. I knew we had all the facts online, all the data ready to go, selling our increase in shelf space to the three largest grocery chains in the US as a win-win scenario.

  So why did I fail? At my first at-bat for Harold’s family business, why did I crash and burn?

  I was in the park, staring at a warbler through my binocs when the texts started rolling in.

  -Krojer Stores passed on the deal. Said they’d give you another foot in all the stores, but said no to the other 75% of the offer.-

  Janice texted a frowny face at the end of her message. Crap—a frowny face didn’t cut it. We needed that shelf space to recoup the costs of the marketing & infrastructure we’d already set into motion. We counted on this deal going through.

  Let me see what I can do.

  -I’ll handle Krojer. You get on the phone with Law-Mart and see if you can wheedle any wiggle out of them. They agreed to 3 more feet per store—maybe you can get them to bump up to 4. When they say yes, Krojer and KostGo will probably fall in line.-

  I sighed. Janice stepping in to save the day on my first major project for the company wasn’t my idea of starting strong.

  You got it.

  I clicked a photo of the warbler and shoved my phone in my pocket as I made my way back to my apartment. I could make all the calls I needed from my office there—no need to go into corporate.

  My first month in the city, I’d been there every day, and out pressing flesh every night. I’m not sure when it happened, exactly, but at some point I decided to try working from home, and ended up sleeping all day.

  That had felt really, really good, so I did it again the next day. Worked all night, slept all day. That got me out of doing the parties and seeing the people.

  And now it was affecting the project.

  I just hadn’t felt like leaving my apartment, unless I had to. I had food delivered only when I was really starving, and I only hit the jogging trail when I knew Janice wasn’t available to go with me.

  I wasn’t living the NYC dream. I really wasn’t into shopping or Broadway or the museums or…

  I saw the paper crane before I saw the little girl reaching for it. My hand was nearly on it when she swooped in and scooped it up. “Look, mama!” she said, showing off the tiny bird to her mother.

  “I think that belongs to the lady,” the mother said. “Give it back, sweetie.”

  I smiled. “No, no, it’s okay—I just noticed it the same time your daughter did. Let her keep it.”

  The girl smiled and the pair playe
d with the crane as I walked away. It felt like mine—I felt a jolt through me when I saw it. It felt like one of Laurie’s cranes, and I ached at the fantasy that one of his letters or drawings was inside. Even if it’s not a letter to me, just some part of him would be something.

  I took care of the phone calls, managing to conjure enough sparkle to woo Law-Mart into agreeing to the entire four foot section increase, and hanging up the phone in triumph as they assured me they’d fax over the paperwork that very day.

  “Janice, I did it!” I said, ringing her at the office.

  “Awesome. You got time for lunch? We need to talk.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. Who likes the sound of that?

  “I’m at the building. I can meet you…”

  “I’m upstairs. Had my calls forwarded. Be right down.”

  In minutes, she knocked. “Come on in, J!”

  I tried to be cute, upbeat, sunny, funny—I tried to be Birdy.

  Janice smiled, but it was a wan smile, stretched and thin. “Wren, have you tried Lombardi’s yet? C’mon. I know you can never say no to pizza, no matter how shitty.”

  I laughed. “You’re taking me for shitty pizza?”

  “Well, some people say it’s gone downhill, but I still think it’s the best in the city. Let’s walk.”

  “How many blocks is that?”

  “Several. The better to work off the calories, right? Not that you need help with that. You look like you’re losing weight.”

  I shrugged. My eyes had taken on a hollow look in the past few weeks. I’d thought NYC would be more intriguing than it was. I guess I’d expected non-stop entertainment in the off hours, and I was truly surprised when I didn’t feel excited about the parties and the shows and the shopping. I wasn’t sure what was wrong with me, exactly, but I didn’t feel hungry anymore, and even though my best friend was here, I felt so very, very lonely.