Winter Birds

by Jamie Langston Turner

  When he stopped abruptly, then nodded primly at the smattering of applause that followed, this was the thought that came to me: Thus by altering realism, a writer may actually enhance realism. In my mind, this would have provided a fitting summary for his speech, though I never would have dared to suggest a revision of anything Eliot wrote or said. What did I—a former elementary school teacher, a mere typist—know about Shakespeare? When he asked me how I liked his speech, I told him it was perfect. He smiled complacently, as if he knew it already but was pleased at my discernment. I, too, had learned a good deal about enhancing realism by altering it.

  Like Shakespeare’s plays, every man has his own problems of time. In my life I, too, have sighted remarkable things within mere minutes of time, things that have changed the course of my life. In addition, entire years of time have been lost in my memory. At times I have set logic aside and acted prematurely; too often, though, I have done nothing. So often there is nothing that can be done.

  Were I a character in Richard II, I would have hung back when Northumberland urged the rising up and going forth to fight. To his request to “wipe off the dust that hides our scepter’s gilt,” my reply would have been, “Not I, I pray thee. Let me stay behind / I am content with dusty scepter, lord.” From Eliot I learned the art of writing in blank verse. From life I have learned that the effort required for most endeavors is generally too great for the small glint of gold dust that might be uncovered. I prefer to let sleeping dust lie.

  The funeral procession is ending. I wonder how many people in the cars following the hearse are fretting over their own problems of time. The last car in the line is an old Chevrolet, turquoise and white—a car that has overstayed its time. I see only a driver inside, no passenger. I lean forward until the turquoise Chevrolet creeps out of sight. From the opposite direction a florist’s van pulls up in front of the mortuary. A man gets out and removes a large spray of red flowers, which he carries inside. He comes out only seconds later, skipping down the front steps like a schoolboy.

  I think of the only flowers Eliot ever gave me, a bouquet he had picked himself from his own backyard and brought to my house when he came to tell me that the most recent paper I had typed for him, an expanded version of a formerly unpublished paper, had been accepted by the Yale Review. He was particularly happy that night, and his happiness spilled over into generosity. Besides the flowers, he brought a small cheesecake, which we shared at my kitchen table.

  Eliot’s last three manuscripts had been rejected by various literary magazines, and for several weeks he had brooded over his failures. I was to discover later, after our marriage, the depths to which he descended during times of gloom, but for now I could only rejoice with him that the cloud had lifted. The letter of acceptance from the Yale Review, which he brought for me to read, was salve to his bruised ego. I served the cheesecake on white china dessert plates and put on a record of waltzes to play in the background. I loved him already, had loved him for months now, but he had shown no interest in me beyond my typing skills. The bouquet of flowers and the cheesecake gave me hope.

  It was many more months before he spoke to me of marriage. The flowers—a mix of irises in every color and size, from dwarf to queen—wilted within a week. But I recall the way they held on, new blooms unfolding one at a time along the stems as the old ones shriveled. I was over forty years old and had never before observed the wonder of irises. Each day I clipped off the dying blooms and marveled as new ones opened. At last there was only a single bloom left, a deep inky purple. I left it in the vase a day too long, for the next morning I saw that its head had drooped, bleeding a purple stain on my best tablecloth. When I emptied the water in the sink, a horrible smell arose.

  My mother had been far too busy at our boardinghouse to pick bouquets of flowers. I was presented a corsage by one of the boys who took me to a dance in high school, but it wilted quietly, without the fanfare of Eliot’s live bouquet. During my years of teaching, children had occasionally brought me flowers, mostly late summer roses and early spring daffodils, but they, too, had died gently. It was after four decades of living, therefore, that I first saw the mingling of beauty and ugliness—in a bouquet of irises on my kitchen table.

  For all those years I had viewed life as a child, seeing good and evil as separate kingdoms. I had secluded myself among children, had read them sweet stories, had taught simple unbendable rules of arithmetic and behavior, had directed them in plays such as Tom Sawyer, which depicted naughtiness as humorously cute and good as ultimately triumphant. I had ordered my days neatly and safely, lived peaceably with my neighbors and colleagues. I had pushed to the back of my memory the small deprivations of my own childhood, the failures of Santa Claus to answer my letters, the quarrels over money between my parents.

  And then one day I observed cut irises in a vase, saw them continue to bloom as if unaware that they were separated from their native soil, saw them turn translucent as they collapsed inward like pale shriveled fists, saw them leak in their dying, smelled the foulness of their death. For weeks thereafter I argued with myself. Relinquish your hope of marriage now, I said, before its inevitable demise. And then I answered myself: No, hold fast to love, for nothing else matters.

  I saw Eliot’s imperfections—his melancholic nature, his excessive frugality, his regimentation, his aloofness, his prudish public persona, his disagreeable children. Yet I loved him. Whenever I heard the voice warning me of his faults, I defended him: Love is its own reward, I said staunchly. I will behold the marvel of this flower; I will take it to myself; I will not forfeit beauty for the dread of disappointment. I will hope for marriage, this wondrous thing that has been the cornerstone of life on earth for untold centuries. I closed my eyes and saw Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe strolling hand in hand along fragrant lilac-bordered lanes, riding in a wagon beneath a canopy of flowering apple trees, sitting on a dark hillside under a full yellow moon, bending over their firstborn child. I saw Jo March and Professor Bhaer sheltered under the umbrella, gazing into each other’s eyes. I wrote down a list of Eliot’s virtues—his intelligence, his quietness, his politeness, his neatness.

  Later, after I had received and accepted his offer of marriage, I learned of the extremes of his neatness—his reluctance, for instance, to entertain the thought of romance except on specified days and immediately after bathing, his unvarying methodology, his inordinate haste to rise from our bed afterward to bathe again. I fell into the habit of examining the faces and gestures of other married couples in public, wondering whether impulsiveness played any role in their love. I looked into the eyes of other wives and wondered whether their husbands ever coaxed them into the bedroom in the middle of a Sunday afternoon, a day Eliot always spent in his study with the door closed. And yet, I tell you, I felt myself to be happily married. If there were small troubling questions, I knew the fault must lie with me.

  No one appears to be home at Steve and Teri’s house across the street. I recall that Teri takes Veronica to therapy on Thursdays. I remember the lilt in Teri’s voice when she reported to Patrick and Rachel that Veronica was starting to hold her head more erect. I try to imagine what Veronica does in her therapy sessions. Perhaps the therapist rolls balls toward her on the floor and moves her arms to music. Perhaps Veronica lies on a mat while the therapist exercises her legs. Perhaps puppies lick her face. I think of her small fair face, her blond hair, her hand waving good-bye. I am reminded that from a distance uncommon things may look normal.

  I think of Steve at work now at the catfish processing plant. I wonder if he ever comes up behind Teri in the kitchen and places his hands on her body, if she ever lays her knife or spatula down and turns to him. I wonder if fancy and passion ever prevail in the house where I now sit. I wonder if Patrick ever approaches Rachel at unexpected times for the purpose of love, if she sets down her dustrag, turns the vacuum cleaner off, or leaves her cake batter unmixed to follow him. Imagine an old woman thinking thoughts like these.

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nbsp; I hear the telephone ring in the kitchen, but I do not get up to answer it. Patrick owns an answering machine, which is seldom put to use since Rachel is home most of the time. I hear Patrick’s voice: “Hey there, I wanted to remind you that I’m bringing Potts home for supper tonight, but you probably remember already. You must be gone. Or maybe you’ve just stepped outside.” He goes on at some length about where she may or may not be. I wonder if Rachel has ever placed her hand over Patrick’s mouth to stop his words.

  All the other cars have left the parking lot at the mortuary—the ones that opted not to join the procession to the cemetery, those done with death for now, with missions of life to accomplish. I think of the casket on its way to its hole in the ground. I think of Timothy the tortoise, who outlived all the other veterans of the Crimean War. My bird book reports that when robins fly north after winter they take leave of the flock one by one as the others continue on their way. Others in my family have dropped off along the way, but if I were a robin, I would be well into Canada by now.

  Chapter 14

  Second Childishness and Mere Oblivion

  Birdwatchers disagree on the sound made by the rufous-sided towhee. Some hear its name in its call—“chip towhee.” Others hear “chewink,” and others “shrenk.” In the South, watchers claim to hear “Louise!” Other transcriptions of the towhee’s call are “drink your tea” and “chip chup chup zeeeeeee.”

  The voice I hear at Patrick’s supper table tonight is deep and well modulated, a radio voice. It is easily distinguished from Patrick’s rapid tenor. I move from the round table to the chair beneath the wall clock to hear the new voice better. I have already eaten what I want of my supper—pot roast with potatoes and carrots that are bronzed from having been cooked with the meat. It is a good meal, but I have eaten my fill and left the rest. At the age of eighty I am at last able to walk away from food. All my life I have carried with me my father’s voice saying, “Clean your plate!”

  I am following other instructions of my father’s now to “leave room for dessert.” I heard these words every night as a child from my place at the foot of the table, beside my mother: “Help yourselves to the food, but be sure to leave room for dessert!” He tended to put on an air of cheerful magnanimity in front of the boarders. Out of their presence he was most often weighed down with the thought of long columns of figures that he knew would never balance at the end of the month.

  More than once, late at night, I overheard Daddy telling Mother that he would have to keep back part of her grocery money for the week because of some other expense that had come up, usually something relating to the printshop. And more than once I heard Mother protest, “But I hardly have enough as it is to put a decent meal on the table!” As the argument escalated, I would wait for Mother to fire her strongest weapon, the one that gave her the best chance of prying the full amount of grocery money out of Daddy’s tight grasp. “Well, all right,” she might say eventually, with a tone of resignation, “I’ll just have to cut out the desserts for this week. I’ll let you explain it to our renters.”

  I have heard much scraping of silverware against plates in Rachel’s kitchen tonight, more than usual. I have heard the man’s deep voice telling of his family—a sister who works at a bakery in Greenwood; two younger brothers who have ended up on opposite sides of the country, in Los Angeles and New York City, which, he says, “speaks of their animosity toward each other”; an older brother who lives here in Greenville; and his mother, who lives in Pearl, Mississippi, and works in the lunchroom of the same school where a boy went on a shooting rampage several years ago.

  I have heard Patrick talk about the proliferation of daycare centers as a result of so many working mothers, about his own older brother who left home as a seventeen-year-old, and about the number of murders committed in the United States by minors. I have heard Rachel ask Potts if he would like more tea. I have heard Patrick’s laughter when Potts asks if he gets good food like this every night. “Sure do, except when the truck is late,” Patrick says—an inane reply.

  I have heard Potts talk at length of his son. Even through a wall I can hear his love for the boy. Tyler plays baseball, Potts says. He wants to be a major league pitcher someday. He plays basketball, too, but baseball is dearest to his heart. These are the very words he uses—“dearest to his heart.”

  Patrick doesn’t exactly interrupt people, but he follows close on their bumper, then speeds around and slides in front of them. The mention of baseball reminds him of an article he has recently read about a black baseball player who is deaf. He begins to relate the entire story, an inspirational feature from Reader’s Digest, a story which I also read during the wiring project in November when I stayed in the back bedroom. Patrick keeps back issues of Reader’s Digest in a basket on the floor of the bathroom between his office and the spare bedroom. I believe Reader’s Digest to be the source of much of Patrick’s discourse.

  He talks now of the deaf baseball player’s discouragement, the taunting he suffered as a youngster, his parents’ unfailing support, his work with disabled children, his experiences on farm clubs, his break into the majors.

  “Do you know his name?” Patrick asks, as if he is a quiz show host and the category is “Noteworthy Black Americans.”

  “Was it Curtis Pride?” Potts asks. “He played for the Expos back in the nineties sometime, didn’t he? Had a .444 average his first season, I believe.”

  Potts is a smart man. He knows the wisdom of cushioning his knowledge—“Was it?” “Didn’t he?” “I believe”—so as not to upstage his white boss.

  “You’re right!” Patrick says. I wonder if he is staring at Potts in open disbelief. Imagine, a black ex-con working at an office supply store knowing so much! Patrick recovers from his shock and goes on to talk about a specific game between Montreal and Philadelphia in which Pride was called in as a pinch hitter in the seventh inning with one out. Montreal was trailing by three, with two runners on base. To quote the article, Pride’s “bat exploded,” and the two runners scored off the double he hit.

  I wonder if Patrick will point out what I considered to be a glaring deficiency in the story as reported. For without telling the outcome of the game, the article stopped there, with Pride on second base looking up at the stands where the forty-five thousand fans were on their feet, cheering for him. It closed in typical Reader’s Digest fashion, with a tear in the eye and a catch in the voice: Curtis Pride, the deaf but plucky black baseball player, feels within his soul a vibrating warmth as he realizes he is at last truly connected to the vast sea of mankind from whom his disability has always separated him.

  I have little patience with such stories. I suspect Reader’s Digest of blurring the edges of reality. What I wanted to know, but wasn’t told, was whether Montreal won the game. Since the information was omitted, I assume that they didn’t. Perhaps the next batter struck out, and Curtis Pride was thrown out trying to steal third. Perhaps the Phillies went ahead by ten runs during the last two innings and Curtis Pride cried bitterly in the locker room. But no matter, Reader’s Digest, the “World’s Most Widely Read Magazine,” found in an otherwise uneventful game one little beam of light to flash to all the readers of its “more than twenty-five million copies in nineteen languages.”

  There is a sudden whirring sound, as of an electric mixer. I wonder if Rachel has suddenly thought of a part of the meal she forgot to prepare. The sound temporarily, mercifully, blocks out Patrick’s voice just as he has moved on to talk about yet another baseball player he has read about recently, Cal Ripken Jr., who broke Lou Gehrig’s Iron Man record in 1995. Perhaps Patrick is thinking that he will stump Potts now, that surely he will be less likely to know about white baseball players than black. I also read this article in Patrick’s bathroom collection of Reader’s Digest magazines, another story with the standard sentimental ending in which young Cal Ripken pays tribute to his father’s shining example on the baseball field and in life.

  When the mixer
finally stops, there is silence for a moment, and then I hear Patrick: “Nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.” I wonder what has elicited these words. How has the conversation pivoted from baseball to the treasure of a man’s heart? These words were not part of the Reader’s Digest articles about Curtis Pride or Cal Ripken.

  When Patrick pauses, the new voice says, “And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say? Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my sayings, and doeth them, I will show you to whom he is like: He is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock.” And now I understand. It takes no powers of clairvoyance to realize that they are reading from the Bible. An old woman, even one with Jewish blood in her veins, has heard enough in her lifetime of the King James New Testament to recognize it for what it is. She may never have attended church or synagogue, yet the tune and cadence of the language are as familiar as an old folk song. Perhaps my nephew and Potts are looking at the page together. This would make Patrick feel very expansive and liberal of soul—to share a holy book with a black man.

  And then I hear Rachel’s voice, at a volume I rarely hear from her: “And when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock.”

  The new voice picks up again, but I lose the first words as I think of Rachel’s acquaintance with vehement storms. Then I hear Potts say, “And immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was great.” The reading appears to be over.

  And then, strangely, after a pause Patrick lifts his voice in prayer. I am mystified by the turn the conversation has taken. I am further mystified by Patrick’s prayer. Though shot through with pompous word choices, it somehow rings of sincerity. He prays for Potts by name, expressing thanks for his “dear brother in salvation, whose path has divinely intersected my own.” He prays for Potts’ son, Tyler, that the “ways of this young man would be ordered according to your holy will” and that “he would be preserved from the evil one” and “sheltered in the hollow of your almighty hand.”