Fly with the best. City on a hill. What a hoot.
We’re not flying. We’re dying.
It’s just an approach.
***
Is this still America is what I’d like to know.
***
So our salmon flies here on a plane.
So? Sew buttons on a balloon!
Up here Dr. Eagle makes the rules and gives the forks.
Do something that man doesn’t like and the flatware will scold you. For instance, I most certainly do not know where Mrs. Rockwald’s legs are. The old coot suspects I’ve taken them. The seagulls just tell her, “Oh, I’m sure they’ll turn up.” The woman’s a double amputee, frankly. You’d think they might have the integrity to remind her.
But, as it turns out, I’m the one that gets the Birds of a Feather fork at breakfast. I know what it is. Be nice or you’ll get Eat Crow.
Dr. Eagle kept his eye on me all day. I hope his tiepin sticks him.
***
I’m pushed out into the Nest to “enjoy Indian summer.” The walls of the Nest are covered with plastic thatching. It looks like Papua New Guinea and smells like Barbie dolls taking a tan. “I don’t like to enjoy,” I tell the young training wren who pushes me around.
I knock my nectar out of my cup holder. The trainee whistles “Hail to the Chief” through her buckteeth. She wheels me to the Vista to watch the Approach grow.
The bulldozers circle in their track, tiny and pathetic. One day the hill will be so tall I won’t even be able to see them. Already their beeps are sad and ragged.
“Please don’t stop whistling,” I tell the trainee.
But she’s not listening.
I press my Lifelink.
***
“Were you frightened?” asks Dr. Eagle, looking less like Steve Martin and more like Lloyd Bridges, who once goosed me in Maui.
“Did you hear about Chip?” A mother can’t help crowing a little.
The doctor goes for my hand but I pull it away in the nick of time. “Then you know he’s a champion skier. And shooter. Does biathlons. He’s in the running for the Word Cup, did you hear?”
“In fact, I did, and I’m sorry—”
You can’t expect a doctor not to envy a young man like Chip. Fresh powder. A helicopter. Those medals. Those models. “Did you read about him in the alumni magazine? Because I don’t imagine you get to Bessans or St. Moritz much.”
“Doctor?” says the hawk nurse. He shakes his head. Men shouldn’t opt for feathered hairstyles. It’s unprofessional.
“I’M VERY HAPPY FOR HIS SUCCESS,” the doctor shouts.
“I hear you, I hear you. I couldn’t be prouder of Chip, Chip—”
“It’s a very dangerous sport, isn’t it,” interrupts the hawk. “Skiing. Not to mention shooting. Guns can be very dangerous. Accidents happen so easily and home is statistically the most dangerous—” The doctor puts her in her place: “Not now, Elizabeth.”
I let him touch my hand. “Why were you frightened?” he asks.
“Frightened? Why? Why would I be frightened?”
***
After I get the flock fork again, I decide to take a gander at our Constitution. It’s engraved in gold on a floor-to-ceiling plaque behind the glass aviary, which the Eagle stocks with macaws. Their long feather tails look dipped in rainbows. I peer through all these bright birds and read the golden rules, and I endorse most of them.
Aerie at Eagle’s Rest: A Nonsmoking Facility. Thus Mr. Ars Rockwald, financier, smokes a steel kazoo, pacing, cock of the walk, just like my late husband. Except in Mr. Rockwald’s case, a flock of ducklings follow the sound of his smoke. Here at Aerie, an adorable dozen of fuzzy water fools consistently mistake a former congressman and military hero for their mother.
I like also: Aerie at Eagle’s Rest: Soar Above and Grow Wings. Dignity is imperative. We are God’s noblest creatures. A macaw turns the red side of his face to the glass, the better to see me with. His eye glitters. I’d like to pop it in my mouth like an olive. He makes a sound like a Lifelink alarm until his blue girlfriend swoops over to comb his feathers with her beak.
***
I have no clue what happened to Eugenie Rockwald’s legs. She’s got a terminal case of the they’ve-got-to-be-somewheres.
“I haven’t a clue; may I pass you the caviar?” I tell her politely from the far side of a pink pile of salmon. Our president says we have an advantage here in America—we can feed ourselves—and he’s right. But I’d tell her to shut it if those damn nitpicking macaws would cut their cackle.
Tell a truth, an honest truth, and those birds repeat it, repeat it right back to the Eagle. “Let me spread a little carrion on this cracker for you, Mrs. Rockwald.”
***
We were spooning up our crème brûlées and drinking our decafs. Mr. Rockwald was smoking his ducklings when Mrs. Rockwald began flapping her arms, fish eggs all around her mouse.
She pointed straight at her husband—financier, congressman, veterinarian—and howled, “Son of a bitch, I know where my legs are! They’re in the broom closet with him, writhing around in lust!”
Lust, lust, lust, trilled the macaws in their dinnertime cage.
Quack quack, said the ducklings.
“Fancy that. A congressman a leg man,” I said. But I had custard in my crop and my words came out yellow and honky. The hawk passed me a Sweetly Sing napkin and I upended the toothpick dispenser. This is still a city on a hill.
***
A Bill pertaining to Soar Above has been passed to resolve the issue of lunatic spousal accusation. Dr. Eagle etched it right into the Constitution—Aerie at Eagle’s Rest: Mate for Life. The legless harpy has been found in violation of same and has been assigned to knitting.
And since Mrs. Rockwald, having no legs, has hardly any lap, she has no place to hold her ball of red yarn except her mouth.
Democracy works.
Still. No system is perfect. Sometimes Mrs. Rockwald loses a stitch and when she goes looking for it she finds no lap and no legs and gasps. Then the yarn falls like a line of blood to the floor.
***
Nobody told me Stu and Marlena were invited.
I’d been hoping to pick the Eagle’s brain about some new legislation, but here was Stu, coffee stains on his polo, frowning the way he does when he tries to smile. And Marlena, piping right in about “advance planning.”
“Advance planning, huh? You know, it’s possible I’ll leave it all to the macaws.”
“The McWho?” said Stu.
“I’m especially fond of Little Blue.”
“Your mother very much enjoys our aviary,” said the hawk.
“We’re not talking about financial planning,” said Dr. Eagle, “only about how to make you comfortable here.”
“Is this about the Approach?”
“No,” said Dr. Eagle, “it’s about Revolution.”
“Pardon me?” I said.
“Your body is going through many changes,” said Dr. Eagle. Marlena was all thumbs on her cell phone and Stu was halfway through a French cruller. The doctor leaned close and said, “The eagle retreats to its hidden aerie, plucks all his feathers, and reemerges victorious.”
“Victory?” I said. “Victory?” Stu was dribbling. I passed him an Eat like a Bird napkin.
“Transformation,” said the doctor, taking an amber fish-oil capsule from his jacket pocket and popping it in his mouth.
“Transition,” said the hawk, scratching with her pen.
“Preparation,” said Stu, glaze stuck in the corners of his mouth.
“An advance plan, an action plan,” said Marlena, looking at her phone.
“Victory,” said the doctor and winked at me.
***
The president held both my hands in one of his. Rebirth is traditionally represented by the sacred number of thirteen. Thirteen stars on the seal. Thirteen arrows in the eagle’s right talon; thirteen olive branches in his left. Ours is a magical coun
try. Our forefathers embedded their magic in our money.
Hand to hand, hand to talon, talon to talon to dollar.
Oh e pluribus, e pluribus.
Could it be her talon, Mr. President? With the arrows?
I appreciate your disregard for human life.
***
When I tell Sophie, the poor girl who cleans me, about the lip gloss gummed to the mouthpiece of Marlena’s cell phone, she tells me about her cousin who does permanent makeup. “Like tattoos,” she says, “only classy.”
“Never have children.” I look down at my Lifelink button, desperately bored.
***
I find feathers in my bed.
The hawk suggests a change to hypoallergenic bedding. Even my thread count is bound up in the eagle binder. This is all news to Sophie, who does her best to get away without reading. “You’re a keeper,” I tell her, as she moistens a Q-tip with pink gel.
***
I’m oftentimes asked what difference it makes to America if people are dying of malaria in a place like Ghana.
***
While Sophie swabs, I make a mess of Birds of a Feather.
Still, Sophie doesn’t mind if I make an occasional jab at Mrs. Rockwald. I can’t always be growing wings. Mrs. Rockwald once parked her motorized chair on top of Sophie’s foot, then stabbed her thigh with a knitting needle. Sophie screeched and flailed, stuck like a rotisserie chicken.
I’m not saying she wasn’t in part asking for it; it’s true she wears nothing but shorts and knee pads under her smocks. There is plenty of dark meat to needle.
“That’s for kissing up my husband’s ducklings,” said Mrs. Rockwald (and it’s true—Sophie sometimes squats to gobble them up).
“Sophie, you ought to poison the old bitch,” I tell her; her flutter strokes give me palpitations. “What difference does it make to America if people are dying in a place?”
Sophie beeps for the Wren to come and get me and hops on her good foot toward the door.
“Don’t forget your legs!” I point to her crutches.
Sophie’s crutches are unforgettable.
Sophie, of course, forgets them.
***
I remember meeting a mother of a child who was abducted by the North Koreans right here in the Oval Office, the president said. It was a heart-wrenching moment to listen to the mother talk about what it was like to lose her daughter.
Mrs. Rockwald snaps up a fish in the Rookery. She holds it in one swiveled claw and rips it to shreds with the other.
***
Sophie’s crutches belonged to the late Frau Monschgeier, a lady of the last regeneration. Dr. Eagle loaned them to her. Herr Monschgeier used every ounce of his diplomatic savoir faire to obtain from a cagey vizier crutches said to have magical properties not otherwise pacified.
They looked like human legs and likely were. Herr Monschgeier spent his life filling his good lady’s crippled lap with such gems. He was a Duesenberg of a man, a man of a real time, a man of a real place: Zanzibar, I think.
“Sophie,” I said, while the fat Wren pushed me around, fondling a Snickers bar in the pocket of her scrubs, “Sophie, you’re too young; the world was lost before you even arrived; you’ve never even seen a real man, have you; never even dreamt of Zanzibar.”
“Zanzibar,” munched the Wren, or perhaps “Snickers bar.”
Because my Sophie was gone.
***
I’ve started sleeping with my eyes open so I woke right up when a man came into my room.
He was smoking, and very loudly too. It had to be Rockwald.
He picked up Sophie’s gleaming bone crutches, put them under his arm, and started to make away with them. When he caught my eye on him, he got right in my face and winked.
“Mr. Rockwald! Those are somebody’s legs!”
Rockwald pressed a fluttering finger to his yellow lips.
I shrieked like the wind cresting the Nest. To shut me up, Rockwald scooped up one of the ducklings and put it on my face, where it smoot.
Later that night, I lost the rest of my hair.
Don’t Like It? Grow Wings.
***
Pink snow very much, croaked my late husband, a twist of my hair for a boutonniere, exactly how we buried him. Duckworth, I’m going to make a wish, the president said. I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen the representative of our country. He is a bird of a bad moral character, Duckworth. He does not get his living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead tree near the river, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labor of the fishing hawk, and when that diligent bird has at length taken a fish, and is bearing it to his nest for the support of his mate and young ones, the bald eagle pursues him and takes it from him.
***
We’ll let our friends be the peacekeepers and the great country called America will be the pacemakers. “I’ve got your z-score,” says the hawk. Turkeys put me through a bone scan and now they’ve got my insides. The hawk clips my scans into my binder and snaps it shut. “Hollow,” she announces. “Perfectly hollow. Be careful you don’t get caught in an updraft.”
***
“Why do they call you Hatchlings?”
“Sushi, darling?”
“Hatchlings. Why do they call you that?”
“Why? It’s a diminutive. In other words, a nickname. For citizens, a synonym, it means the same as citizens.” My daughter has a sixth-grade vocabulary; you try getting her to talk about anything other than Duck Tales.
Her nose starts to whistle, like it does when she’s about to cry. Like it does when she’s about to make amends.
Aerie at Eagle’s Rest: Giving Family a Capital F.
“I’m sorry for what happened.” She means the Christmas in Aspen she passed out with a lit cigarette. Her neck bobs like a toy duck’s, a wooden duck’s. The hands over her face don’t belong to her. They look like my mother’s hands, veiny and pinched at the fingertips. “I brought you this,” she says, clawing up a heap of red wool and waving it at me like a flag.
***
I cut the jacket’s scarlet threads with my teeth—which are still all mine, every one of them—and scatter the golden buttons onto the floor for Sophie to get her dinner with.
***
These days, I sleep as lightly as I did when I was expecting. It’s like a dream when Rockwald tiptoes into my room carrying a sprig of purple mayflower stuck in a mason jar. “Where did you get that?”
“Why, Tennessee, ma’am.” The mayflower smells scissory, like bourbon.
“Ma’am, I’ll admit it. My family may be old, but we’re a bunch of bootlegging sons of bitches.”
When he takes his pants off, his legs are white and skinny. His black socks go up past his knees, like an egret’s. “In Tennessee, ma’am, we have a thing called hospitality.”
I scoot over and let the old buzzard into my bed. He knows every verse of “My Country, ’Tis of Thee.” “My heart with rapture thrills,” he sings through his steel cigar, “thy woods and”—he gives my bed jacket the eye—“templed hills.”
When Ars puffs “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the room fills with flapping ducks.
I look at up at the fat, full-grown ducks. “Oh, God, for a Wingmaster 870.”
“A tomboy,” he says, “an apex predator.” When he slaps my flank I know just how it feels to be a crème brûlée. My shell cracks and inside I’m six kinds of softness: pudding, feathers, blossoms, cotton, seed, etc. Ars says, “Happy is a man with a flock of ducks and no gun.”
I don’t know about that. But I notice he wears a real eagle feather behind his ear. Which noble bird dropped that? He spreads his arms the width of the pillow. What a wingspan. A long time since I’ve rested my head on anybody’s snowy breast.
“Now listen here, my chickadee. You keep your beak shut.” He pinches my nose closed. He has quite a grip for someone so arthritic. “If you tell anyone about any of this, they won’t believe you.” He gives my nose a wrench. A
s if I were a squawking pigeon, a soiled dove, a broken-record macaw.
“Birds of a feather!” I squeak.
He lets me go and reclines, smoking his crippled kazoo. “So long as you heard me.”
“Oh, I know you better than you know yourself, you old duck-sucker.” I roll away from him. I keep rolling until I hit the floor.
Something cracks.
A red curtain falls between me and mine. My electronic bed, my smoking financier, my flock of ducks, my Sophie’s legs, my eagle binder, my emeralds.
“A great fall, a great fall,” says Rockwald. Then: “My people were all the king’s men.” He presses the Lifelink and starts humming “My Country, ’Tis of Thee” quickly, quickly.
Sweet land of liberty, where’s Sophie?
I remember meeting a mother of a child who was abducted by the North Koreans right here in the Oval Office.
In my breast a lantern clatters like a ride through the night.
***
Dodos finally got something right. The letters are now the proper size on the hawk’s name tag. Betsy R. Sharp fingernails for such a historic figure. She wraps a white cloth around me. I stripe it fast and red. “My stars,” she says. “I’d better get—”
“So soon,” says Dr. Eagle, feathery from all the arrows he’s administrating.
“I know, Doctor,” says Betsy Ross.
“I thought—surely not before Christmas.”
“I’ve got the olive branches, right here in my smock.”
The wicker walls of the Nest rise up like mountains, crested with snow. The stars swell.
“Ah! The stars of progress,” says the Eagle.
“Grow wings,” says Betsy Ross.
I can see all the way into the valley, past the approach and through the blinking snowplows to the curve of river. The little town three miles out is waking up; our flag slides up into the dawning sky above the flat-roofed school and my heart pitches powerfully at the succulent sight of a rabbit’s pale tracks in the snow.
“It’s too cold,” says Betsy Ross. “Doctor?”
My wet feathers. My four fathers.
Me, a bird of the air.
I cut my name in the crusted snow with my talons. Each flake sparkles. Betsy Ross’s shadow surges toward me from behind. “Don’t you think we’d better put this one in the aviary until spring? Doctor? Doctor?”
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