An Ornithologist's Guide to Life

by Ann Hood

  Sometimes, after I made my rounds, traveling from room to room and touching everything, I sat on the sofa bed I hated and tried to picture Zane with Alice, the two of them tucked under a pastel quilt, their golden retriever at their feet and a Duraflame log burning in their fireplace. Sometimes I even tried to imagine Matthew, who had moved to Los Angeles after we broke up.

  But mostly I thought about the life Zane and I were supposed to be having. We had talked about taking a week off from work and flying to the Bahamas. We had talked about having all our friends over for Thanksgiving. We had chosen names for our baby—Benjamin after the hero of The Graduate, Skye after our favorite place in the world. I walked around and whispered those names like a mantra that would bring Zane back.

  He called every week, but I never picked up the phone. Let him miss me, I thought as I listened to his voice on the answering machine. He sounded the same. Would you buy toothpaste from this man? I asked myself. Would you elope with him? Would you have his baby? When I rewound the tape, I always tried to imagine him here with me, with his bright white smile. But I could only picture him in a snapshot I once saw of him and Alice. In it, he is smiling, staring straight at the camera. She stands beside him, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, her face serious, her fingers locked together like a church steeple in that child’s game.

  AURORA SAID, “THERE’S no way you’re spending New Year’s Eve alone.”

  I had spent Christmas with my family, flown to St. Louis clutching jars filled with tiny star-shaped spice cookies, the lids tied with festive plaid ribbons. Everyone had eyed my baked goods suspiciously. They knew I was good for a basic spaghetti sauce, a pot of chili—but tiny cookies? Plaid ribbons? They all thanked me and averted their eyes.

  When I got back to Rhode Island, there were two big packages from Zane wrapped in shiny paper on my doorstep. A plush stuffed panda for the baby. An antique silver Mexican tray for me. I put them both in the trash and didn’t go back outside until the garbagemen took them away.

  “This will not do,” Aurora said. She went to each window and opened the blinds, letting in the glaring winter sun. “I’m getting you a blind date for this party.”

  “He’d better be blind,” I muttered, looking down at my stomach. At my last visit, the doctor had smiled and said, “Twenty weeks and your fundus measures twenty. Everything’s perfect.”

  “Hey,” Aurora said, “some men find pregnant women very attractive.”

  “Zane didn’t.”

  “Zane,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  “Do you think he’ll come back?” I asked, trying to sound like it didn’t matter.

  “Beth,” Aurora said, planting herself directly in my line of vision, “do you really want this guy back?”

  “Of course not,” I lied.

  WHILE I DRESSED for the party, I wondered what was wrong with me. Why did I, deep down, still want Zane back? Pride? Revenge? The baby? I remembered how I had broken up with Matthew with such confidence. How I had been so firm and sure.

  I squeezed into some black velvet leggings, size large, and looked in the mirror. My blind date was named Arnie. “Think of Arnie Becker on L.A. Law,” Aurora had told me. “Then the name won’t seem so bad.” I wondered what Alice and Zane were doing tonight. An image of Alice in something slinky and Zane in a silk smoking jacket, champagne bubbles floating around them, came into my head. I decided to go downstairs and put the finishing touches on the cake I was bringing to the party.

  By the time I was done, the doorbell was ringing. Arnie had arrived. He had a chic short ponytail and a bow tie. He taught at Brown and lived on the East Side. “It’s one of those historic houses,” he said, doing a bad imitation of humble. “Little brass plaque out front. Et cetera.” One thing was for certain, Arnie liked himself. A lot. All I had to do was smile and nod from time to time.

  By the end of the night, he had drifted into a corner with a woman named Chloe who modeled. “Catalogue work,” she’d said, sounding very much like Arnie. I sat alone on the sofa and ate carrot sticks, watching Arnie and Chloe whisper together while everyone else dug into my chocolate mousse cake.

  Aurora plopped down beside me. She wore a glittery minidress.

  “Arnie’s a jerk,” she said.

  I nodded. We both watched him rub his nose against Chloe’s, like an Eskimo.

  “This time next year,” Aurora said, “you’ll have a great little baby and nothing else will matter.”

  I was growing very tired of Aurora’s advice. It wasn’t midnight yet, but I didn’t care. All I wanted was to go home and crawl into bed. I stood and thanked Aurora for everything.

  She looked puzzled. “But it’s not next year yet,” she said.

  “It’s close enough,” I told her.

  WHEN I GOT home, Zane was sitting at the kitchen table eating some white chocolate macadamia cookies I had baked.

  “Are you here for an affair?” I said, surprised at how quickly I could retrieve a line from The Graduate, at how well I was keeping my cool.

  “You don’t answer my calls,” he said. “I miss you.”

  I chewed on my bottom lip, eating off the remnants of the lipstick I’d worn to the party. I wanted him back so badly my knees were shaking. “You look beautiful,” Zane said.

  “Where’s Alice? I mean, New Year’s Eve and all that.”

  Zane finished off another cookie before he answered. “We’re discussing our relationship,” he said finally. “What was good. What was bad. Why it turned sour.”

  “Isn’t that all old news? When I met you, you two had broken up. A fait accompli.”

  “She knows how much I love you. We’re both taking some time to think. To decide.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut so I didn’t have to look at him. He isn’t coming back, I told myself.

  “Beth?” Zane said softly.

  I opened my eyes. “I don’t want to see you until you’ve made up your mind,” I said.

  Later, I was shocked at my firmness. I lay alone in our bed, feeling our baby roll and tumble, and wondering where I’d gotten the strength to throw Zane out when what I really wanted was to wrap myself around him and never let go.

  AFTER THE SNOW melted and spring threatened, the rain came, turning our backyard into mud. I spent my weekends buying baby clothes, tiny things called Onesies and Sleepers. I refinished a crib, painted plump animals in bright primary colors on the walls of the nursery, interviewed nannies.

  I still baked, but now it was simple things—sugar cookies for Valentine’s Day, apple pie, pound cake. Aurora missed the fancy stuff, but my neighbors seemed relieved. “Oh, spice cake! How wonderful!” Mrs. Grady told me. Things were starting to change.

  The only thing that remained constant was that I was still waiting for Zane to make up his mind. Sometimes when he called, I almost picked up the phone. Almost, but I resisted. Instead, I did my prenatal Jane Fonda exercises and practiced my breathing.

  “A spring baby is the best kind,” Aurora told me. She was my birthing partner, and after class she always came over for coffee and dessert.

  “Guess what?” she said, nibbling on her oatmeal cookie. “Arnie and Chloe are getting married.”

  “So soon?”

  Our eyes met for an instant.

  “You know,” Aurora said, “sometimes, maybe there is such a thing as love at first sight. What do I know? I’ve had sixteen boyfriends in eight years.” She caught my gaze again. “You never know.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  “I think he’s going to come back,” Aurora said. “How could he not? He’s just being a typical man. Considering his options. Stuff he should have done first.”

  WHEN ZANE DID come back, it was raining. Hard. I had just frosted a dozen chocolate cupcakes and sprinkled them with multicolored jimmies. Outside, our yard was bursting with life—bright crocuses and tulips, lime green buds on the tips of tree branches. My due date was two weeks away, and everything was ready.

  I heard Z
ane’s car pull up, heard him swear as he stepped into some mud. I was upstairs, getting ready for bed. I went to the window and watched as he made the slippery route back home.

  He rang the doorbell. But instead of answering it, I opened the window and pressed my face to the screen. The rain felt warm against my skin.

  “Hi,” I said.

  Zane stepped back to get a good look at me. He didn’t have on a raincoat or hat, and water streamed down his face, matted his hair to his head.

  “Let me in,” he said. “It’s pouring.”

  “What do you want?” I called down. “I was just going to bed.”

  “You, Beth,” He said. I could see his dazzling smile even from that distance, even in the dark and rain. “I want you.”

  I stared down at him. He looked, I thought, very small.

  “Beth,” he said. “Come on. I’m soaked.”

  But all I did was shake my head.

  “Come on,” he said again, leaning his head back to try to see me more clearly.

  “Zane,” I said, “I don’t know if I want you to come back.”

  He laughed. “Very funny,” he said. When I didn’t answer, he shouted, “What about our baby? What about us?”

  “I don’t know,” I told him, which was only half true. I felt certain about the baby, but about us I really didn’t have a clue. “I guess I need some time. To think. To decide.”

  “But I love you,” he said.

  “I know,” I said. Then I stepped back from the window.

  He stood out there a very long time. But finally, I heard the car door slam shut, the tires spin in the mud, then Zane driving away. That was when I made my way downstairs, into the kitchen. My cupcakes were lined up, shining with chocolate and colorful sprinkles. I removed the plastic wrap and sank my teeth into a cupcake. In the morning, I would call Aurora, I would practice my breathing, I would pick a bouquet of spring flowers. But for right then, I wanted nothing more than to sit and enjoy what I had made. It had been too long since I’d had something that sweet.

  JOELLE’S MOTHER

  SHE MUST BE beautiful, the three of us thought. Not like our mother or the mothers of our friends with their long tangle of hair and arms lined with silver bracelets from Mexico. But beautiful like Joelle herself, all matching sweater sets and small pearl earrings and hair tamed by a fat headband. In our school, we did not have girls like Joelle. Instead of plaid skirts with a big gold pin on the side and loafers, we wore long flowered dresses, clogs from Sweden. Exotic, we thought,whenever we saw Joelle, our stepsister, again.

  She made us lose our breath when we caught that first sight of her stepping, bored, from the train once a month. She came to visit our father who was her father too; it was our mothers who were different. We would run to Joelle with such ferocious hugs she almost lost her balance. Joelle was not a hugger, but she let us hug her and hang on the sleeve of her cardigan, dragging her toward our mother who waited by the car. For those few minutes, we had Joelle to ourselves. We breathed in her scent: Christmas trees. We babbled, the three of us talking at once about the total eclipse or the new Italian phrases we’d learned or how a snake sheds its skin. Joelle kept her eyes straight ahead, nodded if we were lucky. She let us guide her through the train station and outside.

  Our mother waved at us, standing beside our VW, the one that could not make a steep hill so our mother had to get out and push, letting one or two of us steer. Also, the heater never worked so in winter we kept our mittens on, even inside the car. Joelle’s mother drove a Ford of some kind. We knew because Joelle told us; her mother always drove Fords.

  In those moments, wrapped in Joelle’s scent, bursting from the train station, and seeing our mother there, disappointment and embarrassment flooded us. Joelle’s mother did not want her to speak Italian, did not have hard bottoms of her feet from going barefoot, did not have long dark hair under her arms or candles stuck into empty wine bottles made thick from melted wax. Our mother grinned and waved and whistled through an O made with her fingers stuck beneath her tongue, shrill and loud. She always mussed up Joelle’s hair, first thing. She always said, Time to let your hair down now!

  The three of us piled into the back of the VW. Joelle sat straight as a ruler up front. Our mother put on “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” too loud, then shouted at Joelle about our weekend plans. We shrank into the back seat, not wanting to hear. Our weekends were always the same: Friday night potlucks that ended in everyone dancing and drunk in our tiny square yard. Saturday afternoon drives from our house in Baltimore to Washington where we had to look at paintings or mummies or dinosaur bones. Then Chinese at Mr. Hsu’s on P Street. Sundays meant long walks somewhere, by the harbor or in the park, maybe crabs for dinner. Why our mother had to say all of this to Joelle, who knew it as well as we did, we could not understand. Joelle stared out the window while our mother shouted over Crosby, Stills and Nash.

  We pretended our mother disappeared and we were sent to live in the suburbs with Joelle and her mother. Our mother made us eat yogurt at lunchtime. Also raisins, dried figs, Brazil nuts. But not Joelle’s mother. She bought her TV dinners, Salisbury steak or turkey with stuffing, all four courses nestled in their own private compartments. We imagined a dishwasher, a swimming pool—built-in. We imagined bedspreads light as angels’ wings, white or maybe baby blue. We counted all the Fords we passed, and sighed.

  IN A CIGAR BOX that had long ago been painted black and covered with seashells glued onto it crookedly lay evidence of our father’s former life with Joelle’s mother. A wedding band, thick and gold, a lock of hair, also thick and gold, the only remnants of our father’s past. We thought him mysterious. A golden-haired first wife, a daughter, a life he talked about only when we pushed him.

  How did you meet Joelle’s mother?

  How did you fall in love?

  Where did you get married? Did she wear a long satin dress? Our mother didn’t. Hers was white, Mexican, cotton, embroidered. She stood barefoot on a beach in Delaware. They blew conch shells, wore wedding rings fashioned from seaweed, had their friend Raymond play the flute. We knew Joelle’s mother wouldn’t stand for any of that. We had proof: the solid gold ring. Inside, in scrolly letters, initials carved beside a date. June 6, 1966. A million years ago.

  “Another lifetime,” our father told us, sighing heavily.

  But we pushed and prodded, hungry for details.

  “We met in college,” he told us finally. “Are you satisfied?”

  Satisfied? We were starving.

  “Why didn’t you stay married to her?” we asked. Unspoken between us was our fantasy—then she would be our mother too.

  “If I had, then none of you monkeys would be born,” our father said, leveling his gaze at us, the one he used in his lectures at Johns Hopkins; he was a professor of English literature. “You are one part me and one part your mother.”

  Guiltily, we left him to his blue books for grading.

  But he called to us, and we turned back to face him.

  “It’s about love, you know,” he said. “I thought I loved her, but I didn’t. Your mother,” he added, “your mother I adore. For always.”

  Of course, we asked Joelle. Did our father live with you and your mother? Did he make up stories for you at night? Did he hold your mother’s hand? Kiss her on the back of the neck while she stood stirring soup on the stove?

  Joelle was stingy with details. Sometimes she would bark at us. “No, he never did any of those things. He left us, you know!” We would sulk out of her room and whisper about what that meant. Could he leave us too someday? Then we would study our father for signs of his possible departure. But he remained the same, slightly goofy and distracted, circling our mother with nervous attention. Other times Joelle would cry and blame our mother for ruining their life. We thought our mother capable of ruining lives, with her strong opinions and the certainty with which she did everything. But Joelle and her mother’s life hardly seemed ruined. Still, when we raised this poin
t to Joelle she would only shake her head and refuse to elaborate.

  Once in a while Joelle would tell us something that we wanted to know, how our father and her mother had honeymooned in Bermuda in a big hotel with a pink sand beach. We could not, of course, imagine it: our father at a resort, lounging on the beach, sipping rum swizzles and slathering Joelle’s mother’s back with coconut oil. But she told us it was true; she had seen pictures. When we begged Joelle to bring the pictures to us she grew quiet, sullen. “My mother,” she told us, “would kill me if I did that.”

  Our mother, we knew, would never go to Bermuda. We looked it up in the atlas and stared at the tiny island with the pink sand beaches where everyone spoke in British accents and stopped midafternoon for teatime. One night we asked her, feigning innocence, if we could take a vacation to Bermuda. We waited, breaths held, for her reply. “Why in the world would we ever go there?” she said, wrinkling her nose as if she smelled something very very bad.

  JOELLE IN SUMMER was best. She arrived in cool tennis whites, tanned from days spent at The Club swimming or taking lessons of one kind or another. We made her tell us details of The Club. Our summer days were spent sitting on the sidewalk trying to finish our Popsicles before they melted. Or running under someone’s sprinkler. Or taking turns standing in front of the fan in the kitchen. For two weeks every year our parents rented a cottage at Rehoboth Beach. Then we rode waves, collected fireflies in empty mayonnaise jars, ate watermelon on the screened in porch. We waited all summer for those two weeks. Until then, we had Joelle’s descriptions of The Club.

  “No one can yell there,” she told us. “Suppose your mother wants you to come out of the pool. Maybe it’s time to go home. Or maybe she wants you to go with her to The Grill for a hamburger. She has to walk to the edge of the pool and get you. No yelling from the chaise lounge.”

  She pronounced chaise, chezz. We imitated her, taking turns being Joelle’s mother. Sit on the chezz, we’d say. Now walk to the very edge of the pool and ask us politely to come out for lunch. This game always ended in a fight: everyone wanted to be Joelle’s mother all the time.