The Bird Artist

by Howard Norman

  “He holds a fierce grudge from Thanksgiving at Romeo Gillette’s table, when I said a thing to him. I can’t remember what I said. I’ve been told I’m not polite.”

  “I told you that,” my mother said.

  “I’ll eat at Spivey’s tonight,” I said.

  “Good. All the more fish, potatoes—let’s see, what else?” Botho said. He leaned over and opened the oven door. “Cake. All the more for us. Enough for three’s enough for two.”

  “I worked to catch that fish,” I said.

  “This time of year you can whistle a fish from the harbor,” Botho said. “Besides, I saw you buy it. I was at the wharf. You didn’t see me, maybe. But I saw you. I saw you buy the fish.”

  “No, you didn’t see him, either,” my mother said to Botho. “I told you that Fabian bought the fish.”

  “I’ll eat in the restaurant,” I said.

  “This is your house, too,” my mother said. “You don’t get exiled to Spivey’s. Darling, please sit down. We have a guest you don’t care for is all. That happens in a life.”

  “Once too often,” I said.

  “Fabian, please. Wash up for supper.”

  “I’ve seen you in that dress in church, Mother.” She had on a light blue cotton dress with a white lace shawl. “But just now, I don’t recognize you in it.”

  Storming from my house, I bypassed Spivey’s and went directly to Boas LaCotte’s sawmill barn. It had been a favorite refuge since childhood, a hideout. Whenever Lambert was away from the village, yet not at his trout camp, he left his crippled owl, Matilda, in LaCotte’s care. I did not know an owl’s life span, but this one seemed very old to me. In the barn, Boas kept it tethered by one scaly leg (the other leg had been mangled in a muskrat trap) to a sawhorse. It was on the sawhorse now. The barn had high rafters. The floor was littered with wood scraps, chips, sawdust, random planks. I loved this barn most early in the mornings, when sawdust in the air suspended sunlight in swirling eddies and traced the sun’s slantings from the roof to the ground.

  When I stepped into the barn, the owl shuffled excitedly along the sawhorse, its wings ruffling loudly, lifting it up a few inches. It rolled its head in its socket, then tore at a mouse Boas had nailed by the tail to the sawhorse. The owl spread a clipped wing like a magician’s cape over the mouse, revealed it, covered it again. The owl usually got worked up when a person came close.

  I sat there until dark, then took a lantern from its shelf, lit it, found a piece of scrap paper, took a pencil from my pocket, and began to sketch the owl. It was a frenzied effort, though. I was just killing time. Botho’s presence in my house, let alone on the very day my father had left, had skewed my thinking, violated every notion of propriety. Yet I had not been fully able to grasp the forebodings. How could I? It was enough, just then, to be shocked at the sheer audacity of the circumstances. I had had to flee my own house, where suddenly I could not breathe the same air as Botho August. I did not know how to think about all this. I did not know how to think about anything, except what I discovered minute by minute. I stopped drawing. I sat there. The owl picked apart the mouse. It got totally dark in the barn.

  Finally, I returned home. The house was dark, my mother gone. No note. No message scribbled down. I made a cup of tea for her out of habit, out of misguided hope that she had only gone for a walk with Botho. Her new evening stroll. But of course the tea was long past cooling by the time I nodded off, head down on the table. In the morning I had just coffee for breakfast, leaving a note saying I had gone to work at Portugal Cove.

  On the way to Portugal Cove, I stopped at Margaret’s house. She was in the attic working on accounts.

  “I had a cake waiting,” she said. “It was my birthday and you forgot I’d invited you for cake, or else you remembered, which is worse for your not showing. You’re a worm under a rock, Fabian. I had a cake.”

  “It was my original evening plan. I looked forward to it, Margaret. Truthfully. But then this other—”

  “And no gift, either. No gift last night, and from the looks of it, no gift now.”

  “It’s true.”

  “You look about as repentant as I thought you’d look, which is not at all. What, did Alaric say, ‘It’s not exactly a national holiday! Come help me with the dishes’? Fabian, I do not forgive you.”

  “I’ll make it up to you. What happened was, I got home yesterday for supper—”

  “I saw you yesterday, at the wharf, as a matter of fact. I was up the wharf a bit, talking with Imogene Malraux, who’d just broken her finger and had it in a splint. I didn’t know you could break your finger just hanging up clothes. God Almighty, you situate your hand wrong between a blouse and a clothespin and everything suddenly changes. What a stupid life this is.”

  “Did you see Botho August at the wharf?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “Anyway, I got home. I walked into my own kitchen. And who is sitting at the supper table?”

  “Botho August.”

  “The same.”

  “Well, some days life has no big surprises, eh?”

  “He was about to eat supper with us!”

  “Your father gone to Anticosti?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sit down, Fabian. I’ll set aside my disgust about my birthday for five or so minutes. Sit down, on my lap if you like. Your voice is off-kilter.”

  “I’ll stand, thanks.”

  “What happened next, pray tell?”

  “He had brought my mother a music box.”

  “A music box. I see. And?”

  “I left the house. I stayed in LaCotte’s barn awhile. I went back home. Nobody was there.”

  “Well, such excitement. But it would have been as exciting with me last night, in a different way, naturally. When you got home was there any food left on the plates?”

  “Margaret, what are you talking about?”

  “That you’re making me a detective here.”

  “Oh—I’m sorry. I’m—”

  “God, okay, now I see. Your mother and Botho.”

  “Yes.”

  “She wasn’t at breakfast, I take it.”

  “Right.”

  Margaret jotted down a few figures in a column, tucked the pencil behind her ear, pushed her hand through her hair, then looked at the floor.

  “So, that’s it, then,” she said softly but clearly. “Alaric’s an adulteress.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “It’s either true or it isn’t. I’d bet it’s true.”

  “She never once, not once, mentioned his name in our house.”

  “Now I’m utterly convinced it’s true.”

  5

  Helen Twombly

  All summer, right up to the day in October, in fact, when my father came home, my mother spent every night in the lighthouse. The change in my life had been immediate, strange, disturbing: the truth of it spun me sideways and backwards. One moment, I could almost shrug it off as her passing fancy for Botho. The next, her adultery battered my senses. In the rare times we were alone together in the house, she would sing lyrics or hum tunes I had never heard. Their source had to be Botho’s gramophone records. The songs were part of my mother’s new world, a short distance away in the lighthouse. It was a kind of secret music, because it meant more to her than I could fathom. She knew I could not bear to hear the songs. She had seen me actually clamp my hands over my ears. I would leave the room. She sang them so I would leave the room.

  We had set up a strict pattern of avoidance, my mother and I. We fell into it; it had gone unspoken. One day there is a family, the next day there is not. I needed even a makeshift philosophy about it. One night, I decided that her infidelity was a result of her sadness, therefore inevitable, ill-fated, and nothing could change that now. Yet looming up ahead was the prospect of my father’s coming home, which I both longed for and dreaded beyond reckoning.

  I drifted into eating at Spivey’s every night. At first I merely looked forward
to it, then came to rely on it, just to not eat alone. Lemuel, who must have known about my mother and Botho, avoided the subject. After about the twentieth night in a row of my sitting at the same table, he said, “So, my cooking’s finally got you mesmerized, eh?”

  I went weeks at a time without drawing or painting.

  One night in late August I actually met my mother as she walked to the lighthouse and I walked home from an after-supper coffee with Margaret. I had seen her lantern up ahead. It was awkward. I did not know at what distance from my mother to stop.

  Finally, we stood an arm’s length apart. “It’s a nice night out,” she said. “Ten thousand stars in the sky exactly. I counted them.”

  That very phrase was one she would say to me as a boy, and it had always made me laugh and think that it was true, she had actually gone to the trouble to count stars.

  “I don’t like any of the songs you hum in the house,” I said.

  “Well, all right, now that I’m aware of it, I’ll stop.”

  “You were aware of it before. I just finally wanted to say it.”

  “Fair enough. But of course, when I’m standing at the sink, or making tea, they still go round in my head.”

  “Nothing I can do about that.”

  “You could knock me senseless with a pot. Look, I’m still your mother. I’ve still got all the feelings toward you I ever had. It’s just that now I’ve got new feelings for someone else, Fabian.”

  “And toward my father?” Yet I did not want to hear any answer so I began to walk away.

  “Fabian, I forgot to mention—”

  I stopped. She waited for me to turn around.

  “Margaret Handle left her nightshirt in the house. I was tidying up and discovered it. I washed it and hung it out to dry.”

  “She’ll wish you hadn’t.”

  “Tell her you did it, then. I don’t care.” She nervously smoothed her hands down the side of her face. “Well, I’m neither early nor late for work, but I’ll be on my way. I was just up to visit Helen Twombly’s grave by moonlight.”

  A few weeks earlier, during supper at Spivey’s, Margaret had said, “If we keep it to Tuesdays and Thursdays, I’ll sleep at your house, generous soul that I am. I’m used to an empty house, whereas one gives you the jitters. I’ll help you out.”

  That very night in my kitchen she unpacked her night-case. I did not know she even owned one. She took out a toothbrush and a bottle of whiskey. She took two glasses from the cupboard, filled them, and we sat at the table.

  “I prefer that we sleep in your parents’ bed,” she said. “I’m sorry—do you still consider it your parents’ bed?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, think about it in any spare time before we go to sleep. Hey—look what I brought!”

  She reached into the case, taking out a deck of cards.

  “This is an Old Maid deck,” she said. “Have you ever seen this hag close up?”

  “No.”

  Margaret swallowed the last of her whiskey, then poured a second glass. She fanned the cards out on the table, located an Old Maid, and set her apart.

  “Don’t eat that card for dessert,” I said.

  “Oh, you heard about that, did you?”

  “Romeo told me.”

  “It’s not the sort of game to enjoy by yourself. It’s bad enough with a crowd. Want to play?”

  “No. I don’t know how, and don’t care to learn.”

  “A bit goddamned touchy tonight, aren’t we. It’s just a game for the ladies, is that it? Well, what do you want to do, then?”

  “Sit here. Sit here and not think out loud.”

  “Not think out loud about what?” She finished her drink.

  “I’ve got money worries. I’ve been using up my savings at Spivey’s. There’s been no work at the dry dock. I can’t seem to draw. I owe on commissions rendered in advance. I’ve spent that money. I’ve lagged behind. I’ve got money worries.”

  “Yes, and what with the rings on order.”

  “No—no, actually—” These words slipped out. “Actually, the Hollys—”

  “Are paying for the rings? How pathetic.”

  “You’ll finally hate me for Halifax, won’t you?”

  “Probably I will before you go there. I’ve felt some hate already.”

  “You are a blunt woman, Margaret.”

  “Fabian dear, I’m only exactly as blunt as life is, forgive the preachy sentence. You’re going to marry a stranger. Your mother is adultering nightly. Your father’s got one hell of a homecoming in store. How much more bluntness do you want?”

  “What I want is not to talk. I want to sit here not talking.”

  “Well, what am I supposed to do here, twiddle my thumbs? Whistle on the open bottle, whew whew whew, or what?”

  “My mother has some books. Would you like to read a book? There’s a shelf of them. There’s things to read in this house.”

  “All right, then. I’m more than content with that brainstorm. God Almighty, there’s a lot to pack into a night, isn’t there? A book, a bottle, whew whew whew whew”—she blew shrill whispers on the bottle. “And then there’s your very tough decision as to which bed we sleep in. I’ll look forward to resolving that. Well, we’ll meet up in one bed or another, anyway, and you’ll show me what you’ve painted—you are going to paint for a while, aren’t you?—and I’ll tell you about what I’ve read. Two little school kids on a nighttime adventure. All right. Finish your drink, there, my friend. Momma’s working late and Poppa’s elsewhere. And I’m about to go deep into my reading.”

  “You finish mine.”

  Margaret picked up my glass and took it into the living room. She sat in front of the bookshelf and ran her finger along the spines. I went into my bedroom, mixed paint in two jar tops, and took out a piece of blank paper.

  I did not look in on Margaret, did not hear her out in the house. In an hour I had gotten well started on an ovenbird. The ovenbird is in the warbler family. It has olive-colored wings and tail and upper body, but its belly is heavily streaked in black. You often saw ovenbirds walking on the ground, as I had that week behind the sawmill, though sometimes they perched on low branches. I thought it was easy to detect a human word in their call, teacher teacher teacher, each repetition louder than the one before. Maritime Monthly had advanced me two dollars and would pay another two on receipt of ten ovenbirds. I badly needed the money. This new drawing was coming along nicely. It was best to keep at it. But Margaret knocked.

  “We could start in your bed, and later move to Orkney and Alaric’s,” she said through the closed door. She was talking louder than necessary. “The bottle is empty, and reading is hard work, it turns out. Or: we could start out in their bed. There’s more choices than you might think, Fabian.”

  “Come in.”

  She opened the door. “Thank you,” she said. She had doused the lantern wick, and in the vaguely moonlit kitchen a ribbon of smoke wavered up. She had on her nightshirt.

  “We can start out in here,” I said.

  “All right, then. At least that’s a decision.”

  She got directly under my sheet and blanket, pulling them up to her chin. “Cozy, cozy, cozy,” she said. “If you want, just go on with that bird. I’m perfectly content. I’m worn out from reading, though.”

  “No, I’m through for now.”

  “Fabian, there’s a second bottle in my overnight case. Be a dear, will you?”

  I got the bottle and handed it to Margaret. She took three swigs, then set the bottle on the floor next to the bed.

  “All of that reading hurt my eyes. Would you turn down your lantern?”

  I guttered the wick and went into the kitchen. I washed my face, dried it with a towel, then brushed my teeth and took off my clothes. I had never done that before, undressed in the kitchen. I put on my nightshirt, laid my clothes across a chair, and got into bed. Margaret took a long drink.

  “Fabian,” she said, her voice crack
ing slightly. She hesitated a moment. “I bet you think that Witless Bay is so small, whatever goes on people will hear of it. Sooner or later, but eventually.”

  “If you’re referring to my mother and Botho, yes, everyone surely knows about it. I don’t get stared at in Gillette’s store, though. Some days it all bothers me worse than the day before.”

  “No—I meant me. Something about yours truly, Margaret Handle.”

  She began to cry, racking sobs broken only by moaning and deep sniffling and coughs. It just took me aback. I stood, then sat down again. It was such powerful crying that it turned her face into a child’s; not just any child’s, but it was her face in Gillette’s storeroom, so many years back, when Romeo had slapped her. To me it was that face exactly, and it had the effect of jumbling together all the years I had known Margaret. She wept in a way that seemed beyond comforting. She sat straight up then, facing away from me.

  “What’s going on here?” I said. “I don’t get it.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t drink more just now.”

  “Fabian, do you know whom I consummated with, one time, before you came along? My first time.”

  She took a drink, then a deep, ratcheting breath. Somehow she was speaking clearly now, and there was a terrible sadness in her voice, and it seemed a strength beyond my comprehension for her to speak at all.

  “None of my business,” I said.

  “That’s correct. But something you don’t know about can still affect you.”

  “Don’t talk in circles, Margaret. It’s not like you.”

  I reached out to touch her shoulder, but she could not see that. She was still turned away. I pulled back my hand.

  Now, turning, she looked at me. “I mean Alaric’s way of treating me.”

  “She hasn’t liked you since you were a little girl.”

  “Well, it got worse for a reason in particular.”

  “What reason?”

  “A year before you and I started up together. Before our Tuesdays and Thursdays. Before that.” But she could not catch her breath and stopped talking. Then she outright moaned, “Oh—” She wiped her face with the hem of her nightshirt, then looked into my face.