An Ornithologist's Guide to Life

by Ann Hood

  This morning Bonnie has brought Portuguese sweet rolls to have with their coffee.

  “Daddy and I are just having salads for dinner these days,” Marjorie tells her daughter. “This way I don’t need to turn on anything—oven, stove, nothing. It’s really made life simpler.”

  Bonnie smiles in a way that makes Marjorie think she has a secret.

  “What?” Marjorie says. “I know you’ve got something up your sleeve.”

  Bonnie grabs both of her mother’s hands. “I told Ted I’d wait because he thinks it’s bad luck to tell too soon. But I can’t keep it from you.”

  Marjorie gets a sick feeling in her bones. She knows, of course, what Bonnie is about to tell her and she knows it should make her delighted—a grandchild!—but she feels awful, like Bonnie is about to tell her bad news.

  “You’ve guessed, haven’t you?” Bonnie says, slightly deflated. “It’s just six weeks. Hardly pregnant at all.”

  “There’s no such thing as hardly pregnant,” Marjorie says. “At any rate, Ted is right. Things can go wrong early on.”

  Bonnie looks horrified.

  Marjorie pats her daughter’s hand. “I’m sure you’ll be fine,” she tells her. Then takes their coffee cups to the sink. She wants Bonnie to leave. She says, “Rhoda Harris and I are going to play tennis today. Then have lunch.” It’s all a lie. She has no plans today. Rhoda Harris is in England with her husband.

  Bonnie has come up behind her. “If I didn’t know better,” she says, “I’d think you weren’t happy about my news.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Marjorie says, letting the water run too hot and plunging her hands under it. “It’s just that if we get all excited and something goes wrong, we’ll feel just terrible.” Saying this, Marjorie realizes it is exactly what she wants, for something to go wrong, for there to be no baby. “It’s wonderful news,” she says, forcing herself to turn around and hug Bonnie. “Imagine! A new little person running around.”

  Happy now, Bonnie says, “I guess I should get to the office. I wish I’d get some morning sickness or something. I mean, I feel really wonderful.”

  Marjorie has always heard that’s a bad sign, to have no symptoms. “You’re sure?” she says.

  Bonnie nods. “Positive.”

  Marjorie turns back to the dishes in the sink.

  “Mother,” Bonnie says, standing on tiptoe and peering over Marjorie’s shoulder to see out the window. “Who is that young man?”

  Marjorie glances up. “That is your father’s idea of a gardener.”

  “What’s happened to Phong?” Bonnie asks.

  “He went and got sick and this is who Daddy replaces him with.”

  They both watch Justin push the lawn mower. He has on cutoff jeans and nothing else.

  “He’s like a Greek god,” Bonnie says.

  Marjorie laughs. “Hardly. He’s practically illiterate and he has these terrible tattoos everywhere.”

  “I think he’s very handsome,” Bonnie says. “Maybe he can come and cut our grass at the beach.”

  “You would be very disappointed,” Marjorie tells her.

  Still, long after Bonnie leaves, she stands at the sink looking out, watching the way his muscles push against his skin. He hesitates at the white fence that separates their yard from the O’Haras’. Marjorie cranes her neck to see what it is he’s doing there. For a moment she thinks he’s pissing—his hands seem to flutter somewhere in front of him, his back arches oddly. There is a flower bed there, but he isn’t stooping. The boy is pissing on her flowers, on the neat rows of anemones and petunias that she herself planted and that Phong tended for several summers. Marjorie isn’t certain what she should do. But then the boy, with an elaborate shudder, moves away, lugging a large garbage bag. Still, Marjorie stands there until the doorbell rings, and leaves to answer it, disappointed.

  Marjorie doesn’t recognize the woman standing on her doorstep. But she recognizes the little girl clinging to her leg. These are the people next door, from the O’Haras’ yard. The woman is pregnant—God! Marjorie thinks. Is everyone pregnant these days?—all white doughy flesh and bumpy cellulite thighs. She shouldn’t be wearing shorts. Her toenails are bright pink. And the little girl has that same tangled hair, screaming for a good brushing. She’s the one with the IOI Dalmations bathing suit.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” the woman is saying. “But I can’t find my little girl. Jessica. The older one?”

  Marjorie waits. The woman’s hair is the color blond you get when you do it yourself.

  “I was on the phone and she wandered off.”

  “Again!” this little girl blurts. “Mommy says stay in the yard or in the pool and Jessica just doesn’t listen.”

  “Ashley does,” the woman says, touching the top of her daughter’s head. “But Jessica has a mind of her own.”

  “Then she lies and says she was right upstairs in her room or something,” the little girl adds.

  The woman shrugs, a “what are you going to do?” motion that irritates Marjorie. What you’re going to do, Marjorie thinks, is watch your children, comb their hair, and stay off the telephone.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I haven’t seen her.”

  “If you do,” the woman says, “can you give us a holler?”

  “Yes,” Marjorie says. “Of course.” And they live close enough that a holler would do it too. Disgusted, she closes the door.

  THAT NIGHT, THEY still haven’t found the little girl. While Marjorie and Gary eat their salads on the patio, they can hear the mother give an anguished description and details to the police, whose car sits in the middle of the street sending a blue light across Marjorie’s yard.

  “The woman can’t keep track of those children,” Marjorie tells Gary. “It’s no surprise that one has gotten herself lost.”

  “They’re like little ragamuffins,” Gary says. He has turned the patio light on himself tonight, and the paper is spread around him like a fairy tale princess’s hair. “Little sweet girls,” he adds, distracted, turning a page.

  Gary is a messy newspaper reader; he turns it all inside out, pulls the guts of one part away from where it belongs, and leaves the whole thing in disarray. If Marjorie doesn’t read it first, she can’t piece it back together into a shape that makes sense. She has not read today’s yet, and watching Gary tear it apart she knows she won’t get a chance now.

  Bonnie’s news grabs hold of Marjorie. She isn’t supposed to tell Gary; Bonnie and Ted want to break the news themselves, in some elaborate manner, at the appropriate time. Bonnie has asked her mother to act surprised when they do. Still, she wants to see Gary’s private reaction herself. All day the word grandmother has scraped away at Marjorie’s insides, eroding pieces of her.

  “Gary,” she says, her voice low enough to hold a secret.

  From behind them, cutting through the kitchen, comes a man’s voice.

  “Excuse me?” it calls. “Mrs. Macomber?”

  Marjorie jumps to her feet, banging her thighs on the sharp metal table. Gary looks at her.

  “Probably the police,” he says, calmly. “Canvassing the neighborhood.”

  Marjorie remembers how the garden boy, Justin, stood so long by the fence that morning.

  Gary has stood too, to answer the door. But Marjorie grabs him by the arm, hard.

  “That boy you hired,” she hisses. “Justin. He was up to something over by their yard.” She indicates with a tilt of her head so there’s no confusing what yard she means.

  “By the flower bed, you mean?” Gary says.

  “No,” she whispers.

  The policemen are knocking, banging the M shaped knocker against the door with an urgent desperation.

  “I think he was masturbating,” she tells Gary. Is that what she had thought? she wonders.

  Gary laughs. “Marjorie,” he says, in that same affectionate way that seems, now, condescending.

  Marjorie remembers how long he stood there, his arms jerking abou
t. She remembers the way he shuddered before he moved on.

  “I’m telling you,” she says.

  But Gary is shaking his head, laughing to himself, heading toward the door.

  By the time she joins him, he has already assured the policeman they have not seen the little girl. He is shaking the policeman’s hand.

  Another policeman comes heavily up the front walk.

  “Joe,” he says, “we got her. She’s been in the garage all day. Hiding.”

  “Jesus,” the first one says. He looks at Gary. “Sorry to bother you.”

  “They don’t watch that child,” Marjorie blurts.

  She is, oddly, relieved that the little girl has been found. Maybe Justin was just weeding over there. Her own imagination seems enormous, out of control.

  “She says she was scared to come out,” the second policeman says. “Won’t say what she’s scared of. Just that she’s scared.”

  “They probably watch horribly scary things,” Marjorie tells them, even though no one seems to be paying her any attention. “Jurassic Park and things of that nature. She’s just a little girl.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” they both say, as if it’s something they learn in the police academy.

  Gary and Marjorie stand on the front steps and watch them get back in their police car, its blue light spinning silently.

  “Remember that sweet little doll Bonnie had?” Gary says. “It wore a ragged sort of dress made of burlap? And it had a big tear stuck to its cheek?”

  “Little Miss No Name,” Marjorie says.

  She can’t imagine why Gary would remember that doll of Bonnie’s, or any doll, for that matter. He hardly seemed to notice Bonnie when she was a little girl. He was too busy then, trying to earn money, to make a name for himself at the insurance company where he now holds the largest office, the corner one with its own cubicle for a secretary, its wide view of things below.

  “Yes,” Gary says, closing the door. “Those little girls remind me of that doll. Unkempt but lovable.”

  “Really?” Marjorie says, surprised. “They aren’t lovable at all to me.”

  “MRS. MACOMBER?” Justin says.

  He has a way of appearing behind her, out of nowhere, and frightening her. It is very hot today, and humid. He is covered with a shiny layer of sweat, and standing close enough that his smell seems to cling to Marjorie.

  “I can’t find the gasoline, for the mower. Maybe you’re out?”

  Marjorie sighs. She has left the cool comfort of central air conditioning inside just long enough to get in her car and drive to the pool at the club. All she has on is a navy blue shift dress, her bathing suit underneath, and sandals. She doesn’t want to get all hot and sweaty rummaging through the garage.

  “Well,” she says, “did you root around inside?” She motions toward the garage behind them. Between them, the hot air ripples. What was it Bonnie said he looked like? A god? Dizzy from the heat, Marjorie can agree. But he smells so ungodly, so earthbound. She wishes he would wear a shirt, at least.

  “That’s how I know you’re out,” he says, cocky.

  She can’t imagine Gary would let something like this happen. It’s his job to take care of things like gasoline for the lawn mower, and oil changes for both cars. And hiring gardeners, she adds, turning around and going into the cool dark of the garage. She never comes in here. It smells like metal and fuel, a smell that tastes metallic on her tongue. The light has to be turned on by a string that hangs from a bulb somewhere; she can’t find it.

  But the boy has followed her inside and says, “It’s supposed to be over here.”

  Instead of searching for the light, Marjorie follows him to one distant corner. She wonders if she’s ruining her sandals, getting motor oil on them.

  “See for yourself,” he says.

  She pokes around, among mulch and watering cans and a garden hose coiled up like a snake.

  “Hey,” the boy says. “Boss.”

  She turns and he is right up behind her in that way he has. Marjorie feels a dull throb in her groin. This is so cliché, she thinks. She wonders what he expects from her. Is he stupid enough to believe she will grab him and take him right here? But as she thinks it she feels a quiver in her thighs, high up.

  “You’re a stupid arrogant boy,” she says.

  He laughs and moves right up to her, pressing her lightly into the bags of mulch. The garden hose is hard against her shins.

  “Lady,” Justin says, not even bothering to whisper. “You drive me nuts. I mean, I know you’re probably even older than my mother, but the way you lay out there all greased up, with that flat stomach and those gorgeous tits, I’m about to go crazy.”

  Is this really me he’s talking about? Marjorie thinks, excited by the idea that a boy who looks like this boy would think of her this way.

  “I’m going to be a grandmother,” she says.

  It is the first time she has ever spoken to him in such a voice, inviting and honest. She imagines she has not used this voice in years, since she was a girl not much older than him, before all the things that happen to a person had happened.

  “No shit,” Justin says, and lets out a low whistle.

  Marjorie reaches up and pulls out the rubber band that hold his dark hair in its ponytail. His hair spills out around him like a girl’s.

  “Can I touch you?” he says.

  She is surprised he asks; his boldness and confidence imply that he just takes what he wants.

  As if someone else is controlling her movements, Marjorie takes his hand and moves it under her shift, inside her bathing suit, to where she is hot and wet.

  He moans.

  Is it possible that she still has this kind of power over someone so young and beautiful? His fingers, rough from garden work, slip inside her and move in the right way. She wonders how many girls he has had, so young.

  When Marjorie was in high school and college she believed her virginity was a precious thing, and she held on to it until she and Gary were properly engaged, the wedding date set, everything official. What she did in those days—and what she has not done since—was to take boys into her mouth, feel them swell and push and then burst with come that she used to drink up.

  It had seemed back then, groping in cars, burning for sex—her too! she had wanted it as badly as she wants this boy now—that taking them in her mouth was a less intimate act than the real one. That it was somehow all right; that it didn’t count. And even though now she knows better, knows it is much more intimate to swallow someone’s come, that it does, indeed, count, she kneels on top of the coiled hose and unzips Justin’s cutoff jeans—no underwear! His penis springs out at her, beautiful, young, hard. A pale blue vein pulsates across the length of it; Marjorie takes all of him in her mouth, and it is as if she is a young girl herself, a teenager in someone’s white Impala, kneeling on the dusty floor, swallowing every inch of them.

  Justin comes in such a loud burst, shooting warm come into her mouth, grasping her head between his hands so that he is even deeper, forcing his come down her throat. It is bitter, lovely. When he finally slides from her mouth, he kneels too, on the hard cold floor, and kisses her for the first time, as gentle as a baby.

  BONNIE AND TED have invited them for dinner. This is the night, Marjorie supposes, that Bonnie will tell them the good news. But ever since the morning she first went into the garage with Justin six weeks ago, Marjorie has felt disembodied. She waits for him to arrive on Wednesday and Saturday mornings; she watches from the little window over the kitchen sink as he weeds and clips and mows. By the time he arrives she is all ready for him—a dress, her sandals, and nothing underneath. Marjorie is forty-nine years old and she has never done anything like this. She has been a faithful wife, a good mother, a friend and neighbor others rely on. As summer wears on, she has even helped the woman next door, now almost obscenely pregnant, search for this oldest daughter, Jessica, who hides in small places and will not talk.

  Still she meets Justin i
n the garage, goes to the dark cold corner, and does things with him that she has not done since she was young. She and Gary, who always have had a good solid sex life—even now, married twenty-seven years, they make love once or twice a week. Even now, there are surprises, like that night on the patio.

  But there is nothing like this, with this boy, except what she had when she was young and passionate, the hands everywhere, in and out of holes, the desperate licking, as if they could actually literally devour each other. And then, this Saturday morning, she finally took him inside her house and inside her, right upstairs on Bonnie’s childhood bed, with the white eyelet spread bought at Bloomingdale’s, and the frilled canopy that made Bonnie believe she might be a princess.

  And now here is Marjorie, in her navy blue summer slacks and striped boat neck cotton sweater, her crotch filled with the ache that good long sex leaves with you, sitting in her daughter’s living room at the beach house with an ice cold martini, chewing on cashews, listening to Gary and Ted discuss their morning golf game. She had forgotten what young boys were like, how they stayed hard so long, and could make love twice in the same morning, growing hard again so quickly.

  “How is that gorgeous thing?” Bonnie asks Marjorie.

  Marjorie holds her breath.

  “That god that Daddy hired for the yard,” Bonnie says.

  “He’s off to college,” Gary answers. “Phong’s son is going to take over next week.”

  “But that can’t be,” Marjorie says, with too much enthusiasm so that they are all staring at her, confused. “I mean,” she stammers, “he isn’t bright enough for college.”

  Gary shrugs. “Just the state school. But he’ll be living there. Besides, you don’t like him. Mother thinks he’s going to steal something. Or murder us.”

  Ted and Gary laugh, but Bonnie is studying her mother’s face and frowning. Marjorie recognizes the bloated blotchy skin of early pregnancy.

  “I think Mother has a crush on this boy,” Bonnie says finally. She eats the olive out of Ted’s martini and sits back, self-satisfied.