An Ornithologist's Guide to Life

by Ann Hood

  DORA DID NOT know what to do for Peter, who moved around the house noisily, slamming cabinets shut, muttering to himself. He called the girl constantly, as if she could give him answers. Dora heard him say: “But they were cool, right? Like in their pictures?” And: “They seemed in love, right? Like they’re not going to get divorced, right?” Another time she heard him asking softly: “Did he have any hair? Did he look at you or anything?” It took Dora a moment to understand Peter was asking about his baby, not the man who adopted him.

  After several days of this, Peter appeared in front of her as she dozed over a mystery novel.

  “I’ve got to do something,” he said.

  Dora stared at him, trying to sort out who exactly he was and why he was standing in her parlor.

  “Peter,” she said finally.

  “Yeah. Right.” He was jumping up and down a little. “I’ve got to do something.”

  “Let’s go to dinner,” Dora said, getting to her feet, even though a small roasting chicken was defrosting in her kitchen sink.

  Once in the car, she couldn’t think of where to go. She drove around the city, confused. She didn’t really like all this renovation that was going on, the way they rerouted the entire river and made all the roads go in new directions.

  “Maybe I should have talked her into keeping it,” Peter was saying. “Maybe I should have married her. I mean, I will never see that kid. Ever.”

  Dora nodded politely. Weybosset Street, Washington, Dorrance. None of them seemed to be in the right place. It was twilight now, and the lights came on unexpectedly, out of nowhere.

  “I mean,” Peter said, “it’s like he vanished.”

  “Yes,” Dora said. “Well.”

  Then a thought occurred to her. She and Bill used to take the kids to The Blue Grotto, up on Federal Hill, for special occasions. It had white tablecloths, good martinis, chicken marsala and spaghetti with bolognese sauce. Tillie liked to get a Shirley Temple there and Dan had a Roy Rogers, both with extra cherries.

  “Do you like Italian food?” Dora said, getting her bearings.

  “Like the Olive Garden?”

  Dora sighed. She didn’t know what the boy was talking about most of the time. “I suppose,” she said.

  Federal Hill, at least, had not changed: it was still impossible to get a parking space. After circling a few times, Dora suggested they park and walk the six or seven blocks to the restaurant.

  “Whatever,” Peter said.

  It was one of those summer nights where in the country you would hear crickets, where the air is so still it makes a person move slower. On the sidewalk, Peter took Dora’s arm. His chivalry surprised her.

  “Maybe I do love her,” he said, his voice full of the resignation a man three times his age might have.

  Out of the car, Dora noticed that indeed Federal Hill had changed after all. Now there were Thai and Cambodian restaurants everywhere.

  “Let’s go in here,” Peter said. “What do you say?” He stopped abruptly.

  Dora glanced up at the sign, the squiggly lines for letters, the red dragon on the window. She had read once that they ate dogs in Cambodia. She thought of the Blue Grotto, the smell of garlic and tomato.

  But Peter was tugging her arm.

  “Not there,” he said. “Here.”

  She only had a moment to see where he was leading her before they were inside, and in that moment Dora read the words: BUDDY’S TATTOOS.

  MELINDA HAD SAID nothing about tattoos. That was what Dora told herself as Peter explained what a good idea this was. He would commemorate his son’s birth. He would have a reminder of him every day for the rest of his life. And if the boy ever decided to try and find him, there would be the proof of his fatherhood right on his arm. Dora listened and looked around. It was exactly what she might expect—a little seedy with its peeling paint and hastily washed linoleum floor, the iron smell of blood mingling with an antiseptic that reminded Dora of hospitals, and an array of customers in leather and metal. The lighting was fluorescent.

  “I’ll get his name and maybe like a little heart or something,” Peter said, jabbing his finger at the wall where available tattoos were displayed.

  Dora’s eyes drifted past cupids and dolphins and vaguely familiar cartoon characters.

  “A heart is nice,” she said. She sat on a folding chair, her purse on her lap. Like an old lady, she realized, and tried to strike a more casual pose. “But I didn’t know there was a name. Or rather, that we knew the name.” She crossed her legs at the ankle, the way she had learned in charm school back in the thirties.

  Peter studied a variety of hearts. Broken, intertwined, chubby, pink, red. “It’s Daniel,” he said, without looking at her. He pointed to one of the hearts and said, “This one’s good.”

  A fat hairy man came into the room from one of the curtained off cubicles. He wore farmer overalls with no shirt underneath. “Who’s next here?” he said.

  “I am,” Dora said firmly. She stood up and smoothed her skirt. “I’m getting the same as him.”

  The man looked from Dora to Peter. “Fifteen each or two for thirty,” he said. He laughed at his own joke, then wiggled his fingers at them. “Come on.”

  Dora and Peter followed him into one of the cubicles.

  “You show him,” she told her grandson.

  Again Peter pointed to a heart and explained the lettering he wanted for the name. He answered questions about color and size. The man nodded thoughtfully, not unlike a painter Dora had once watched in Paris who sat by the Seine with his easel and tubes of paint. Even when the tattoo man—tattoo artist, Dora silently corrected herself—prepared his tools, the needles and dyes and medicated swabs, Dora thought of that French painter, how his nose was peeling and pink from sunburn, the yeasty way he’d smelled, his serious concentration. She had wanted to buy that painting; it had filled her with a longing for things she would never have but always want. Bill had laughed at her, claiming it was simply bad art. They had continued their stroll along the river, Bill reading from the guidebook, pointing at this bridge and that monument, while Dora kept glancing over her shoulder at the man painting.

  “You need to take off your sweater,” the tattoo artist told Dora gently.

  She had put on her jade green cashmere twin set for dinner. Now she slipped off the cardigan almost casually, tossing it on Peter’s lap.

  Dora closed her eyes and offered the man her arm. She thought of nothing. The first prick of the needle startled her with its burning pain.

  “Oh,” she said, her eyes flying open.

  “The outline’s the worst part, Gran,” Peter said.

  Dora took a breath and closed her eyes again. But each prick of the needle sent fresh tears down her cheeks. She heard herself panting, the way she had when she’d waited too long to get to the hospital to have Dan and arrived crouched on the floor of their Impala, like a wild animal.

  “Usually people have a few drinks before they come,” the man told her.

  “It hurts,” Dora managed to say between needlepricks and tears. “It hurts so much.”

  The pain took over her body, her mind, it invaded every part of her: hot, sharp, constant. Until she was no longer separate from it. Only then could she stop crying, open her eyes, and continue.

  AFTER ZANE

  AFTER ZANE LEFT, I started to bake. Complicated cakes. Exotic éclairs. Soufflés and meringues and desserts with French names I couldn’t pronounce. I bought springform pans and candy thermometers, marzipan and candied violets. Everything I made was beautiful. So beautiful that I took photographs of each creation and hung them on my refrigerator, the way my mother used to hang my kindergarten art.

  The thing was, I never ate anything I made. Instead, I gave it away. My obstetrician had told me early on to avoid empty calories. All that sugar—brown and white—all that heavy cream and whipped cream and cream cheese added up to nothing but empty calories.

  “This has got to stop,” said my best
friend, Aurora, between bites of yellow butter cake with milk chocolate ganache frosting.

  I was eating a low-fat blueberry yogurt and waiting for my graham cracker pecan crust to chill properly. Outside the wind was blowing puffs of snow around like tumbleweed. I thought of tumbleweed, of prairie women, of being somewhere—anywhere—but Foster, Rhode Island, alone and pregnant. I thought of all those Laura Ingalls Wilder books I used to love as a child. I wanted to be that brave and enduring.

  “I MEAN,” AURORA was saying, “your neighbors are starting to hide from you. Who needs a different cake every day?”

  Now the snow was starting to look like spun sugar. Yesterday I had made a frozen cranberry soufflé with a spun-sugar wreath on top. In fact, it was still sitting out in the snow while I tried to decide what to do with it. As usual, Aurora was right. I was running out of people to give my culinary creations to.

  Aurora sighed and wiped some frosting off the rim of her plate with her finger. She had copper hair that fell to her shoulders in perfect ringlets, size six Easy Fit jeans, and just the right amount of freckles. Men did not leave Aurora.

  I pointed this out to her.

  She licked the frosting from her finger thoughtfully. “Joseph Russo,” she said finally, smugly.

  “Who?”

  “Eighth grade,” she said. “Took his ID bracelet back in front of the whole school during assembly. It was so humiliating.” She looked panicked for an instant. “Not that you should feel humiliated, Beth,” she said. “You should feel . . . angry.”

  I nodded and went to check my crust. It was perfect.

  The wind howled, the snow swirled. Somewhere out there Zane was moving about his life without me. I rested my head against the refrigerator, smack in the center of a photograph of my bourbon pecan pie. It had been, I was told, delicious.

  NINE MONTHS AFTER we met, eight months after he first said, “I love you,” seven months after we eloped, and six months before our baby was due to be born, Zane left me and went back to his ex-girlfriend, Alice.

  “But you don’t love her,” I reminded him as he packed his car. “You love me.”

  Zane stopped rearranging boxes long enough to shrug. “I’m having second thoughts, Beth,” he said.

  “Second thoughts?” I said. “About us?” My mind was shouting instructions at me: Remind him how the two of you wrote your own wedding vows! Say the line that makes you both cry—“We were born together, and together we shall be forevermore.” Show him the sonogram pictures!

  Since I got pregnant, I did everything slower. Think, move, react. So that before I could say anything, Zane was telling me, “Second thoughts about Alice. Not us.”

  “Alice?” I said, aware that I was repeating everything he said.

  Alice was a piano teacher. Everything about her was long—fingers, hair, even her face. “Horsey,” Aurora used to say. “She looks horsey.” Then Aurora would whinny. I used to think Alice was a funny name, the name of someone’s old maiden aunt. But in the autumn air, coming out of Zane’s mouth like that, it sounded sexy.

  “This,” Zane said, looking sadly around him, at me in my new maternity jeans and our old rented farmhouse and our pumpkin patch bursting with fat bright-orange pumpkins, “it all happened too fast.” He was cradling the television set. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  It was October, one of those glorious autumn days that make a person glad to be alive—blue sky, leaves on fire with color, cornstalks and jack-o’-lanterns on doorsteps. Just the day before, Zane and I had walked through the woods that stretched behind our land, had thrown ourselves down on the fallen pine needles and gazed up at the setting sun. Zane had rested his hand on my stomach. Now, standing on our doorstep, hugging myself, I wondered if even then he knew he was leaving.

  I watched him close the trunk, check for his car keys, then move toward the driver’s seat. I had watched him do these small tasks countless times, mornings as we both went off to work and weekend afternoons when he left to run errands. But all those times I knew he would be back.

  He got in the car and adjusted the rearview mirror.

  “Zane!” I called. I willed my legs to run after him, but they remained frozen in place.

  He rolled down the passenger window and leaned toward it.

  Having his attention like that, I couldn’t think of anything to say. But as he began to put the car in gear, I yelled, “Together we shall be forevermore! Remember?”

  But it was too late. He was already driving away.

  ZANE AND ALICE had been together for almost nine years. When they broke up, Alice got the Volvo, their split-level ranch in the suburbs, and their old dog, Bud. Zane got a 1982 Subaru with body rot and a pale-pink-and-mint-green-flowered sofa bed. Alice liked pastels and small floral patterns. Colorless, Aurora called her. Then she’d say, “She’s ecru, she’s taupe. You, Beth, are purple. Bright purple.”

  When Zane left me, he left the sofa bed behind. Like most things since I got pregnant, it made me feel nauseous. I hated that sofa bed. I hated pink, except in extreme cases like Pepto-Bismol. When I first went back inside after Zane drove off, I tried sitting in the family room. But that sofa bed glared at me, mocking. Upstairs, our bed with its happy rumpled sheets made me feel like crying. So I went back outside and stretched out on our front lawn. I stayed there, not thinking, until it got dark and the Milky Way appeared above me.

  Then I went inside and called Aurora. It wasn’t until I heard her casual “Hello” that I started to cry.

  ALL THE BAKING had begun with those pumpkins in our yard. Whenever I tried to carve happy faces on them, I ended up with jack-o’-lanterns that looked like the Elephant Man. Finally, I threw out the ghoulish shells and tried to figure out what to do with all the leftover pumpkin flesh. Pies, I thought. Ten pies, four dozen pumpkin cookies, and six loaves of pumpkin-spice bread later, I was a baking maniac. Now it was winter, and I had moved on to holiday baking—eggnog cheesecake, Swedish sugar cookies, Noel date bars.

  “What you need,” Aurora told me as she nibbled a lemon-hazelnut biscotto, “is to make lists.”

  “Lists,” I repeated. In the past when my heart was broken, I would drink jug zinfandel and eat lots of chocolate. This time, I couldn’t do either. I concentrated on my gingerbread people. Man, woman, child, all with happy icing clothes and wiggly smiles. A happy family.

  Aurora wiped the crumbs from her chin and pulled out a pad and pen. “You need a lawyer. You need child support.” She glanced at my bulging stomach. “You need a birthing partner,” she said. She was starting to scare me. “Wait,” I said. “You’re assuming he’s not coming back.”

  She cleared her throat, then patted my arm. “How could he choose someone so horsey over you? How could he choose a woman who buys furniture from furniture showrooms? You have Mexican antiques! You have folk art! You have style!”

  That was when I really started to cry. I had everything, I thought, feeling the strange flutterings of our baby’s first movements. Everything except Zane.

  WHEN I MET Zane, he and Alice had just split up. I had just split up with my boyfriend, Matthew, and had gone to Boston for the day to shop. Zane was in Crate and Barrel buying glassware. I was buying dishes. He came up to me, holding a wine goblet as if he were making a toast. “Your dishes,” he said, “and my glasses make a good combination.”

  Zane was tall and blond, like a guy in a toothpaste ad. He looked too good: I was suspicious. But by the time we left the store and went for Italian food at the kind of restaurant people in movies go to—red-and-white-checked tablecloths, a candle dripping from a chianti bottle, a waiter whispering, “Ah . . . amore!” my suspicions had gone the way of all the wine and fettuccine Alfredo we’d had.

  “Do you believe in love at first sight?” Zane asked me that night as he left me at my front door.

  “Absolutely not,” Aurora told me the next morning when I told her the story. “Love at first sight is a myth. A line.”

  The next time I saw Zane,
we sat in my bathtub until our skin wrinkled, and told each other our life stories. He told me about Alice. I told him about Matthew. We discovered we both liked Indian food. We both loved the Isle of Skye. We both knew all the lines to The Graduate by heart. We both wanted to move to the country and have babies.

  “Alice got indigestion from beef vindaloo,” Zane said, nuzzling my neck.

  “Matthew said he could never be more than three miles from a building over ten stories high,” I told him.

  “Alice thought Skye was too cold and rainy.”

  “Matthew can never stay awake long enough to see when Benjamin and Elaine Robinson have their date,” I said.

  Then Zane said exactly what I was thinking. “Beth,” he whispered, “we’re perfect for each other.”

  “You’re nuts,” Aurora told me, as I packed all my belongings into liquor store boxes. “You’ve known this guy a week?”

  I didn’t have a logical answer. All I could do was hum “Mrs. Robinson.”

  FOR THOSE FIRST few months after Zane left, I thought about how foolish I had been. I was glad Aurora never said, “I told you so.” I walked around our old farmhouse and touched our things to remind myself these past months had been real. Here were our beeswax candles, our wreaths of dried herbs, our wedding vows framed in wood.