Lost Birds

by Putrius, Birute

  She asked shyly, “Where are you from, Johnny?”

  “Where was I from last or where was I from first?”

  “I didn’t know it was such a complicated question,” said Elena, smiling nervously.

  “Cleveland last, Florida first.”

  “Wow, from Florida.” Elena was impressed.

  “I ain’t from the wow part of Florida, honey. Where you from? You got some kinda accent.”

  “I was born in Lithuania.”

  “Lithu-what? I never heard of it.”

  “It’s in Europe. Well, now it’s part of Russia.”

  “I bet they got some good cookin’ there. You a good cook, honey?”

  “I don’t know,” Elena stammered.

  “Maybe you’ll invite me sometime. I get tired of eating alone in restaurants.” Johnny cocked his head and looked her over.

  “Well, maybe you could come Saturday for some dinner?” The blood in Elena’s head was pounding. If he didn’t answer instantly, she was going to pass out.

  “Downright pleasure, ma’am,” said Johnny, blowing out a smoke ring. “You know, I like you.” Johnny flicked his cigarette out from the dock and flashed his cat grin at Elena.

  By Saturday afternoon, Elena had bought a new blue dress at Goldberg’s Fashion Forum, gotten her hair piled on her head at Silvia’s, and picked up a choice roast beef at Balta’s Meats, a Napoleon cake at the Tulips Bakery, and the best brandy. She picked all the dahlias in her stingy backyard to put on the table, and she put on her mother’s amber brooch for good luck. By the time Johnny rang her doorbell, Elena was a swoon of colors, perfumes, and emotions as she answered the door.

  At first, dinner was uncomfortably quiet as Johnny kept pouring brandy into the cordial glasses. Elena felt like a wooden puppet, always politely smiling, serving food, but part of her was shyly hidden. When she looked at Johnny’s big-toothed smile, she suddenly felt like that green chocolate on the assembly line—somehow not ready yet. It wasn’t until Johnny went to look for some dance music on the radio and took her in his arms to dance that Elena finally looked into Johnny’s eyes and found herself at home like a sore foot finds its worn slipper. Taking a deep breath, she melted into Johnny’s arms, swaying back and forth to Frank Sinatra.

  Johnny slept in her bed that night and in the morning Elena woke up on his shoulder. It felt so strange, so reckless, so unlike any other morning of her life, that it was sheer intoxication. They didn’t get out of bed until the late afternoon. They rolled around and made love again and slept like they were children, and there was nothing in the world calling them. Elena heard the Janulis family, who lived in the downstairs flat, going down the back stairs on their way to church. Hours later, she heard them return. She could smell Agota cooking Sunday dinner. And still, she stayed in bed, legs wrapped around Johnny’s. When she finally got up to make some apple pancakes, Johnny wolfed them down as if he’d never eaten one before.

  “I knew it. I can spot them every time. I knew you was a good cook the moment I laid eyes on you. Come here, sugar, you’re as sweet as these pancakes.” Johnny kissed her hard, like he was devouring her the same way he ate those pancakes, with an insatiable hunger.

  That week, Johnny slept at Elena’s every night, and soon he moved in with his small scuffed suitcase. Elena spent every penny she could spare on Johnny—the best dinners, cigars, and records. Always she’d bring home a surprise and bring it out with their brandy. The coffee can with the Bermuda fund hadn’t seen a penny since Johnny came. She’d wash his hair and trim his nails, polish him like an icon until he shone. She liked taking care of him. At night, she curled into his body, feeling ripe with him, liking the smell of him on her skin. Before long, she wanted to keep him, lock him up safely like her mother’s amber brooch.

  The women at Nabisco warned her to go slowly. Agota tried to tell her to go out with nice Lithuanian boys, saying she wasn’t so sure about Johnny. Elena thought it was because her friend was old-fashioned and didn’t understand Americans. Even Silvia at the beauty shop had heard Johnny was a smooth one. She tried to tell Elena to be careful, but Elena wasn’t listening. He was hers, as much a part of her as her arms or legs.

  Elena began to talk to Johnny of love and marriage, not realizing how love-phobic he was. She noticed a change immediately, as though he became too itchy, his eyes darting in all directions as if looking for the door or checking for the nearest road.

  One hot July morning Johnny said good-bye in his casual way. Elena didn’t yet realize that he meant forever. Later, when he didn’t return, she crumbled, hardly able to breathe without Johnny. And in her wild abandoned surprise, her lovesick stupor, she didn’t even notice that her coffee can had been emptied. Every day for two weeks, she called in sick. From downstairs, Agota brought her pots of soup and dumplings. When Elena finally returned to work, no one mentioned Johnny. Everyone helped her bag her quota of cookies. When Elena finally asked Captain Eddie where Johnny had gone, he told her that Johnny had come by to get his last check. Someone said he had bought a used car and was heading south. When Captain Eddie saw her stricken look, he told her, by way of condolence, that there were running people and staying people and damn if they didn’t sometimes get together, and someone got hurt.

  Odell sang the blues through the rest of July.

  In August, when the weather got sticky and hot, Agota took Elena with her to the Lithuanian resort in Union Pier, Michigan, for a three-day weekend. Elena sat like an invalid on the beach, hardly noticing where she was, and not even realizing she had missed her period. She found herself humming snatches of Odell’s blues like they were lullabies. Agota tried everything she could think of to cure Elena’s lovesickness, but Elena looked incurable. If only she would cry or scream in anger, but she was too numb.

  On the last day, Agota took her friend to a Lithuanian picnic at the Lankutis resort. Tables were set with potato kugelis and smoked sausages and sauerkraut. A band was playing tangos, and stout couples turned dramatically to the Latin rhythm. Elena sat in an aluminum chair with a physical ache so strong she felt as if she had lost an arm. Agota brought over a plate of food, but Elena pushed it away.

  Agota asked, “What did you like about Johnny? I could never understand what you saw in that hillbilly.”

  “That’s what I liked about him. He was so different, so foreign.”

  Agota laughed. “Foreign? He was an American through and through. You’re the foreigner here.”

  Elena shrugged. “He had this mouth I liked.” As Elena said this, she realized that she always thought of Johnny’s mouth or his hungry eyes. She could hardly remember the rest of Johnny. The rest was vague and fuzzy like his past. She was stunned to realize that she knew next to nothing about this man of hers. And for the first time since Johnny had left, something inside seemed to release a bit.

  The band stopped playing, and Mr. Janulis took the accordion and started to play the old songs. From all sides, people joined in the singing, forming a huge circle, swaying arm-in-arm. Even Magda joined the circle and sang snatches of songs. Elena didn’t pay much attention, but something insistent in the accordion made her foot twitch to the tempo of those harvest songs she remembered singing. A long-forgotten rhythm was taking over her body. And when she heard the owner of the resort, Bronius Lankutis, a recent widower, sing a lament in his soothing tenor, “Oh, well, let me fill you with hot tears,” Elena woke from her mournful lethargy, feeling as if she could listen to that voice forever—a tenor so clear and healing, it was like balm. His voice cast an old spell, like something long forgotten. Suddenly, she felt as though she were ten again and had never left Lithuania, where all her days were filled with birch forests. This was not about love. Love was madness. This was about a cure for love. As she stood there listening to the songs, Elena decided she was going to marry Bronius Lankutis and spend all her Februarys at his resort growing hothouse flowers, and stari
ng at the frozen waves of Lake Michigan.

  Agota was surprised when Elena asked if her lipstick was on straight. She nodded and watched as Elena walked over to join the circle and link her arm to Bronius’ arm as if they were two links of an unbroken chain. Agota smiled and walked over and took her husband’s arm, and together they joined the others to make another link in an old and familiar chain.

  Secrets of Life

  Irene Matas, 1963

  Adolescence is like doing the cha-cha. Two steps forward into the dark mystery called adulthood, cha-cha, followed by two steps back into the stifling coziness of childhood. Cha-cha back and forth. I was doing that dance big time in 1963—the last innocent year, when the Kennedy brothers were still in the White House and political assassinations only happened in history books. The country’s innocence would soon be shattered in November with the Kennedy assassination, and afterward a whole generation would veer into cynicism and mistrust.

  But in April of that year innocence still prevailed as I contemplated my transformation—not the superficial makeovers in women’s magazines, but a grand transformation of life. At seventeen, I looked around my South Side Chicago neighborhood for a role model, but couldn’t find anyone to emulate. I didn’t like the look of the unhappy mothers I knew, some with education and status before the war but now working the night shift at factories or cleaning offices. During the week, my mother’s face congealed into a resigned sadness, but sometimes, on weekends, she would have company over. Then she would tell lively stories about the golden days of Lithuanian independence between the wars, when she used to stroll down Freedom Avenue in Kaunas wearing fox collars and cloche hats. “I used to look like Greta Garbo in Camille,” she would sigh. “Your father looked like Ronald Coleman in Lost Horizons. What a time we had,” she would say sadly, as if all life had stopped after the war.

  The nuns at Maria High School didn’t look any happier, always smelling of baby powder and chalk but often looking sour, as if life had played a dirty trick on them. The single women from the neighborhood were a mixed bag. Some looked slightly overdone, like Silvia in her beauty shop, painting on a vivid face. Others like Elena were quiet and muffled, hiding from life and all of its appetites. And yet, I was amazed to hear that both Silvia and Elena had recently married despite their old-maid status. There were other women with reputations, like the loose Mrs. Paskus, who had run away with Mr. Teodoras, the alcoholic ballet teacher. These were not the models I was seeking, but the more I looked around, the more dismal it looked.

  And then one weekend, after a performance of the Lithuanian Opera, my mother threw a party, and Aurelia Norkus came into the room as if she owned it, wearing a long tight skirt with a dramatic cape, her hair piled high on her head, and large hoop earrings framing her face. Her eyes were direct, not demure, as she stood with one hand on her hip—defiantly blowing cigarette smoke into the sky like an offering to some unknown god. I instantly worshipped her, even though Aurelia was thirty-four years old, a fact that would have made her an old maid in the eyes of the other women, except that she was so exuberantly different that none of the South Side categories suited her. She was dark in a world filled with dishwater blondes—beige people with blurred features. Aurelia looked like New York, while the rest of the women looked more like Gary, Indiana.

  I studied her, trying to decipher the code that made Aurelia such a different species, noticing how the men also watched her, stealing glances while their wives chattered on. This was a woman who knew the secret weaknesses of men and held them in her palm like an amulet. By comparison, the other women around her looked harmless, sanitized. Aurelia was telling Felius about a Fellini film festival where she had seen La Dolce Vita.

  “I saw that a couple of years ago,” said Felius the Poet, the local bohemian who usually held court at the Amber Tavern. He was thrilled to discover another foreign-movie enthusiast. “Have you seen Jules and Jim with Jeanne Moreau?”

  Aurelia continued as if she hadn’t heard him, gesturing with her cigarette as she spoke. “There’s a redemptive scene at the end of La Dolce Vita that’s so moving, don’t you think?” She looked at Felius expectantly, but he only stared blankly. As if picturing the scene, she added, “These Italians emerge from a castle after a night of debauchery into the brightness of a Mediterranean morning on the beach. They’re repulsed by a monstrous fish washed up on the shore—a symbol of their own corruption—while Marcello is seared by the face of an innocent girl standing nearby—a symbol of what he’s lost.” She narrowed her eyes and took a deep drag on her cigarette, satisfied that she had painted the scene successfully.

  My mother smiled and waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, those crazy Italians!” Everyone else looked at each other, puzzled.

  “What does she mean—a monstrous fish?” My father shrugged his shoulders.

  Aurelia realized she hadn’t quite captured her audience. “Well, you simply must see it. It’s a fable for our times,” she said as she sashayed off to the kitchen, with Felius watching her every move.

  I followed her, wanting to ask her about the secrets of life, to sit at her feet like an acolyte until I had learned the complicated arts of this brand of womanhood. Aurelia lit her Marlboro with a Dunhill gold lighter and poured herself a crystal glass of Chivas, while I finally worked up the courage to talk to my idol. “That movie sounded interesting. Tell me more about it,” I asked, smiling shyly.

  Aurelia looked at me blankly for a few seconds, then took a long drag on her cigarette and let out a plume of smoke. “It’s about life with a capital L,” she said through lidded eyes as she turned to walk away.

  The next day, after school, I sat at the Little Touch of Kretinga Restaurant, where I worked, checking the Catholic newspaper, the New World, to see if La Dolce Vita was on the Legion of Decency’s condemned list. It was, and it was playing at a little art house downtown. Time for a field trip.

  All teenage girls need to do things in pairs—the minimum required number. Since I needed a companion in my transformation process, I asked Vida, who lived across the street, but she shuddered at the idea of seeing a condemned movie. “It’s a sin, Irene.”

  On Friday, before walking into religion class, I stopped in the bathroom and looked at my dowdy uniform—navy skirt and a matching bolero jacket with a white blouse underneath. Too ugly for words, I thought, as I rolled up my skirt until it was the fashionable length and tried to tame my dirty blond hair with a brush. In class, Father Miknaitis was warning the girls about the dangers of sex. “You’ve got to be careful with boys this age,” said the priest. “They’ve only got one thing on their minds, if you know what I mean.” That was my cue to whisper loudly, “No, what?” The girls sitting around me tittered.

  “Oh, I heard that, Irene, and frankly I’m tired of your dirty whispers.” His upper lip curled.

  That shut me up. I thought I was funny, not dirty. Hearing Father Miknaitis say that made me wince. I knew I wasn’t one of those goody-goody types like Milda, and that kids used to call me Bad Irene in grammar school, but, geez, I felt like a little kid when it came to sex. Sure, I’d kissed and necked with Al Vitkus until my lips were swollen, but I was still a virgin and sex was a complete bafflement. Father Miknaitis’ angry stare drilled into me, making me feel dirty.

  Suddenly Connie O’Conner raised her hand and asked, “But Father, doesn’t everything on earth procreate? If that’s how God created us, then how come it’s such a sin?”

  The priest’s anger swiveled from me to Connie like a giant searchlight in the fog. “Well, Constance, now what would happen if we all just followed our basest animal instincts to procreate? Just think about that for a minute,” he said, his anger rising.

  Connie wisely said no more.

  He scanned the room filled with pubescent girls, took a deep breath, and plunged back into his lesson. “That’s why we have marriage. It’s the job of the church to control these base instin
cts. God gave us a body, but he also gave us a spirit, which he didn’t give to the animals,” he soldiered on, jabbing his finger in the air. “God gave us a soul so that we could control our animal instincts. Now, isn’t that right?” He made a point of looking at Connie and me.

  How does this celibate priest know so much about sex? I wondered, but no longer had the courage to ask anything. I was just grateful that Connie had saved me from his wrathful glare.

  After class, when I walked into the cafeteria and spotted Connie ahead of me in the line, I picked up my lunch tray and followed her to her table. “Oh my God, thanks for saving me from Father Miknaitis,” I said, putting my tray down. “You know, sometimes I think he gets a kick out of talking about sex to a room full of young girls.” I was beginning to move from shame to anger.

  Connie opened her carton of chocolate milk. “Come on, he’s a priest. They don’t think that way.”

  “Heck, he’s just like any other man, only he’s got a skirt on, that’s all.” I spooned the chipped beef onto white bread and rolled it up before taking a bite. “That poor priest doesn’t stand a chance in a class of girls swimming in hormones.”

  “Get out!” Connie snickered as she ate the canned peaches and drank the syrup. “Where do you come up with this stuff?”

  I told Connie about meeting the sophisticated Aurelia and wanting to go downtown to see La Dolce Vita. Connie was intrigued. “Did you ever see Breakfast at Tiffany’s?”

  “Yeah, sure, I loved it, why?”

  “I just cried when Holly Golightly sat on her windowsill singing ‘Moon River.’ I want to be like her.”

  “Yeah, like who wouldn’t want to be Audrey Hepburn,” I said, handing Connie my canned peaches.

  The following Sunday, I told my father I was going to Marquette Park to watch the soccer matches—the Lithuanians were playing the Estonians. Then I met Connie in the public restroom in the park, and we both changed into tight sheaths, high heels, and scarves. Dime-store makeup and sunglasses helped us achieve a cheap Holly Golightly likeness. On the way to the bus, we ran into my brother, Pete.