Heart with Joy

by Steve Cushman

  I’d decided on three new recipes to try this week. Two of them were chicken dishes and the other one shrimp. For the shrimp, I planned to pour some olive oil, coarse sea salt and parsley in a bowl, whip it up and then set the shrimp in that marinade for a few hours. Instead of boiling the shrimp, which was the only way I’d ever cooked them, I would sauté them in a pan and serve them over yellow rice. Rachael had made the recipe last week and as usual it looked easy to do and delicious.

  “Got everything?” Dad asked, grabbing a six-pack of beer.

  “Think so.”

  “Get ready then because your favorite cashier is waiting for you.”

  I looked up and Tia was leaning against the counter, flipping through an issue of Southern Living. Maybe she’d been on a break before when we first came in.

  “Let’s go to a different register,” I said, half-joking.

  “No chance,” he said and laughed.

  She looked up and smiled as we pushed the cart to her register.

  “Look what the cat drug in,” she said.

  “Hi, Tia.” I felt guilty for not calling her.

  “Julian and Mr. Julian’s dad.”

  My father smiled.

  “Thanks for calling,” she said. “I waited and waited and waited.”

  I didn’t know what to say. So much for hoping she hadn’t noticed.

  “You know you stand the risk of breaking a girl’s heart when you don’t call her.”

  The list of excuses I ran through my head all sounded pretty lame.

  “Your loss. Heather made donuts. They were incredible. Strawberry filled.”

  “How do you make donuts?” I had never seen anyone make them, not even on the Food Network.

  “That’s why you’ve got to come over. You might learn something.”

  This time she was wearing little spatula earrings.

  “What are you cooking this week? Mom says you should cook at least one new recipe a week. Spend the other six days mastering old recipes. By the end of the year you have fifty new ones.”

  “Sautéed shrimp.”

  She laughed. “I saw that episode on Monday.”

  After my father paid her, she wrote her number on the bottom of our receipt. This time my father tore it off and gave it to me right in front of her.

  “No excuses this time,” she said.

  As we loaded the groceries into his truck, Dad said, “She is persistent. And you both cook.”

  “Think of the tension after we’re married. The two of us fighting for kitchen time. The kids neglected.”

  “You’re plumb crazy, Julian.”

  Dad decided to take a nap after our run. He said he hadn’t had a nap in years, but he was tired and felt like he needed one. He said maybe we would go to the movies later if there was something I wanted to see. While he slept, I went next door to visit Mrs. Peters.

  She was sitting out on that bench by the hummingbird feeder and butterfly bushes. I cleared my throat twice because I didn’t want to scare her, but she didn’t respond. I assumed she’d fallen asleep while waiting to see some hummingbirds. Her head was against her chest and Lucky was between her feet. I went through my usual chores with the feeders and birdbaths. The birds were singing and screaming in the yard all around me.

  I walked over to the birdhouse, climbed up on the overturned bucket, lifted the top and looked inside. They looked pretty much like every other sparrow I’d seen. One of them had the black square under the chin, a male, a little boy. They looked like they could fly and maybe they did fly out each day and come back. I’d ask her about that.

  As I approached Mrs. Peters, I coughed again, still not wanting to scare her. Lucky was up on the bench now, beside her. It was strange that she didn’t respond to my coughing. And before I walked around the bench and faced her, I knew that Mrs. Peters was dead. Lucky ran over to me, kneading my shoes with his paws. Mrs. Peters’ chin was resting on her chest, her big hat shading her face from me.

  I reached for Mrs. Peters’ hat with a shaking hand. I lifted the hat and her face was so pale, so soft white it took everything I had not to reach up and trace the vein that ran along the right side of her face, starting at her hair line and disappearing over the edge of her jawbone.

  I shook her shoulder once, still thinking it was possible there might be a way to pull her out of this deep sleep. But even I knew it was too late for that. And then I was running to my house and banging on my father’s door, calling him, thinking maybe he could do CPR on her.

  “What, what is it?” He stood there in shorts and a T-shirt, his hair everywhere.

  “It’s Mrs. Peters.” I couldn’t say anything else, couldn’t say she was dead.

  He followed me down the stairs and over into her yard and then was on his knees in front of her. He lifted her head, felt for her pulse on her arm and neck. Then he looked over at me, his eyes squinted as if he were in pain.

  I said, “CPR?”

  He shook his head. “It’s too late. She’s probably been out here, like this, for a couple hours.”

  “You sure?”

  “There’s nothing we can do. I’m going to go call an ambulance and her son. Come on.”

  “In a minute.”

  I could tell he didn’t want to leave me here, but he said, “I’ll be right back.”

  I sat down on the ground, in front of Mrs. Peters. Her right tennis shoe was un-tied, so I tied it. Lucky rammed his head into my side. He had to know something was wrong. As I petted Lucky, his purrs vibrated against my hand. His leash was on the ground, behind her bench, and I thought for a moment I might be able to take Lucky for a walk and when we got back she would be sitting up waiting for us. But I knew this wasn’t going to happen.

  I closed my eyes and called out the names of birds as I heard them: “Mockingbird, sparrow, wren, catbird.” I heard the buzzhum of a hummingbird. There was a pair at the feeder. As I watched their impossible flight, I hoped that Mrs. Peters had seen them earlier today as she sat out here, that she laughed and reached for them and maybe even tickled a feather. Something told me she’d probably watched them for a while, then closed her eyes and said a silent goodbye to this world.

  30

  My father and I pulled up to the funeral home. He asked, “You sure you don’t want me to come in?”

  “No, Dad. I’ll be fine.”

  “I’ll be back in an hour. Call me if you need me before then,” he said. The last couple days had been a blur for me. A few minutes after I left her backyard, an ambulance pulled into her driveway, followed by Simon. My father went out and talked to them. I don’t know what he said. I spent most of the day in my bedroom, strumming the strings of my out-of-tune guitar. Dad tried to talk to me a few times but I didn’t feel like talking.

  When my mother called that night, I told her what happened with Mrs. Peters and about how I’d been helping her with the birds, about how she was able to feed them by hand. And I told her how she didn’t remember running over my leg.

  “But you’re okay?” she asked.

  “I guess.”

  “You’d tell me if you needed anything?”

  “I need you to come back home.”

  “Oh, Julian,” she said. The line went silent for a few seconds.

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “Why not?”

  When she didn’t say anything, I said, “I better get going.”

  “I love you, Julian.”

  “You too, Mom.” Then the ocean filled my ear: whistling wind, sweet dreams and all that promised.

  On Sunday, I mowed the yard, trying to stay busy, so I wouldn’t think about Mrs. Peters. It was because of Mrs. Peters that I hadn’t missed Mom quite as much. And I had enjoyed being with Mrs. Peters, her and those stupid birds. I never would have expected, or appreciated, the simple, easy pleasure of seeing a bird flying around your yard. That was only one of the things she’d taught me.

  I hadn’t gone over to her yard again until Monday, after school. D
ad said we should feed the cat, so he’d gone out and bought some cat food and filled Lucky’s bowl. He said he didn’t see Lucky, but when I went over there all the food was gone. I changed the feeders and the water. I checked he birdhouse, and the nest was empty. The birds had flown away.

  Dad showed me her obituary in the paper. I read through it a half-dozen times trying to learn something new about her. Most of it I already knew. It mentioned her husband and Simon, that she’d been born in Nashville and had been an elementary school teacher for forty-three years. But the things I didn’t know about her were what I found most interesting: she had a brother named Gray who lived in New York state and she had been a contestant on The Price is Right over thirty years ago.

  As I reached for the door to the funeral home, I heard someone cough behind me. It was an old couple coming up the steps. I wanted to disappear. I wasn’t sure I belonged at the funeral, but felt as if it was the least I could do for Mrs. Peters.

  I walked inside, not sure what to expect. I’d been to my grandmother’s funeral years earlier. That day the place had been overrun with my aunts and uncles, flocks of cousins, so it almost seemed like a family reunion except for the fact that Grandma was in a casket instead of the kitchen, baking brownies.

  Through the open door, I could see Mrs. Peters’ casket and flowers, the thirty or so people. They seemed divided into two camps: those Mrs. Peters’ age, probably old teacher-friends of hers, and a group of well-dressed people in their forties and fifties. I assumed they were friends of Simon’s. But I was the only kid.

  Beside the casket, Simon stood next to a man I didn’t recognize. They shook hands with the people filing by. The man was about Mrs. Peters’ age with the same thin, pale skin. He was tall and slim with a white beard and white hair. He looked out of place next to Simon and that fake smile of his. It had to be her brother, Gray.

  As more people made their way back to their seats and the line grew shorter up by the casket, I considered standing up and going to see her but couldn’t do it yet. I wasn’t sure what I would do, whether or not I’d start to cry. Plus, I didn’t want to talk to Simon and was hoping he would go off to the bathroom or something. Then I’d go up there.

  What the room needed, instead of the piped in organ music, was birds, lots of birds, flying around, wings flapping, landing on the casket, maybe seeing her off, saying hey lady, thanks for all the good food over the years. But no, that had already happened the afternoon she died.

  I started to cry, and my tears surprised me. An old lady sitting next to me held out a tissue and I took it, dabbed at my eyes, not sure what had happened to me in the last couple months. Things had been so clear back then. The only thing I cared about was trying to get through the school year so I could go and see Mom, maybe even start living with her if it turned out she wasn’t coming back. But here it was a month before the end of the school year, and I wasn’t sure what I was going to do.

  Mrs. Peters had taught me a lot, taught me to search for what mattered to me, what filled my heart with joy, and to pursue it. I’d learned that cooking was my passion. I had also discovered that I enjoyed spending time with my father, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to leave him.

  I went outside to get some fresh air. Maybe by the time I got back, Simon would be off doing something. It was dark outside. The cicadas buzzed on. I leaned against the railing and looked out over a small row of shrubs. Cars whipped by on the highway every few minutes.

  Behind me, the door opened and Gray walked outside and lit a cigarette. He nodded and leaned against the rail, a few feet to my right. “Are you her brother?”

  Without looking at me, he said, “That would be me. Let me guess, you’re Julian.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Evelyn wrote me a letter every Sunday. She’d mail it Monday, and I’d get it on Wednesday. That’s how we kept in touch. Once a year, I’d call her on her birthday and she on mine, but otherwise it was letters.”

  I remembered finding her sitting out back one morning reading a letter with perfect small black script. It must have been from him.

  “She mentioned you in the letters, said you were helping her with her birds. Said you were a nice kid, had some interest in birds, might even be a little ornithologist in the making. Evelyn said she would do everything she could to nip that in the bud. I think it was a stab at me.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I’m an ornithologist. She never forgave me for it either.” Gray laughed, then stubbed his cigarette in the ashtray by the door and leaned over the railing again. “She believed birds should be admired from a distance, that you should sit in your backyard and let them flit around you. I agree there is no better way to spend a day, but to learn about something, to really know it, you have to hold it in your hands. You have to smell it, feel it against your skin. Let me tell you a story about my sister.”

  I leaned forward a little, adjusted my arms against the railing as if to settle in for a long journey.

  “This happened probably fifty years ago now. After an undergraduate degree in animal biology, I’d decided birds were what I wanted to study. Evelyn was ten years older than me, and she was the person who first sparked my interest in birds. We’d walk through our neighborhood and she’d point out different birds, make up stories where all the characters were birds.

  “Anyway, this was my last semester of graduate school and she was coming to visit for a few days. I was looking forward to seeing her. My thesis was on the correlation between wing span and the head size of birds. Pretty simple stuff when I think of it now, and I’m sure it was to my professors too, but at the time it was my life and what I’d spent four years studying.

  “In the basement of the house I was renting that year I had a huge corkboard, covered with seventy-two different species of birds. Most of them I’d found dead somewhere. I would spend hours walking around, searching for dead birds. People who lived around the university knew we were looking for birds, so quite often we would come to class and the professor would have a half dozen samples in a box for whoever wanted them. He would also get them from zoos, vets, and wildlife centers.

  “So after teaching my class, I headed home that day. I only lived two miles from the campus and those walks were often the highlight of my day. Some days, I’d count fifteen to twenty different types of birds over the course of those two miles. That day, I didn’t count many; I’m sure I heard them, but I was more interested in seeing my sister.

  “I remember turning the corner onto my street and thinking something was wrong. My grass didn’t look right. At first, I thought it might be my eyes or the sun playing tricks on me, but it wasn’t. There were little patches of raised dirt and grass, like tiny graves.”

  Gray pulled another cigarette from the side pocket of his coat and lit it. I felt myself leaning forward, closer to this man, some living connection to Mrs. Peters. The smell of cigarettes hung in the air, and while I had long decided I would never smoke, the smell reminded me of my mother.

  “The closer I got I could see that they were indeed little mounds of dirt. This boy named Marshall was sitting on the curb across the street from my house, staring at my yard as if he too were trying to figure what the heck had happened. My first thought was that he had done it. There were probably thirty of these little mounds in the yard in four perfectly spaced rows.

  “I walked down the driveway to the back of the house and heard grunting coming from behind the shed. Evelyn was there with her suitcase full of my dead birds—my specimens, my work—and she was digging small holes and setting a bird in each one.

  “She looked up at me, leaned against the shovel and asked if I was going to help her bury all these birds. I took the shovel from her and started digging more holes as she lifted the birds from her suitcase and dropping them into a hole, which I then filled in with dirt.

  “While she could tell you everything you wanted to know about birds, could tell you habitat and mating rituals, as well a
s any professor I ever studied with, she didn’t care about science. She believed in the magic of flight, the dip and rise of a bird flying overhead. She once told me there was nothing more beautiful than a bird taking flight, and I would have to agree with her.”

  Gray finished his cigarette and dropped it in the ashtray. ”That was my sister and that’s how I remember her, not like she is in that box.” Gray squeezed my shoulder once, then disappeared inside the building.

  I leaned against the railing, dizzy from what he’d told me. While I had only spent a month or so with her, it seemed exactly the kind of thing she’d do.

  Car lights were starting to come on in the parking lot. The front door of the building was opening and closing and the slightest hints of soft music were seeping outside. If I was going to say goodbye to Mrs. Peters I figured I’d better get in there and do it soon.

  When I went back in, the viewing room was empty. It was just me and Mrs. Peters. I walked up to the coffin. They’d dressed her in a light green dress, nothing too fancy. Her hands, those long white fingers, were folded across her waist and the blue veins on her face were covered with makeup. Her white hair was combed straight down along the sides of her face and the ends of it rested on her shoulders and chest.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Peters,” I said. I reached into my pant pockets and pulled out a sandwich bag of birdseed. She would probably say it was wasteful, but I wanted to give her something to take with her. I imagined her in heaven, the white shirt, overalls and big hat on her head. She would see some of the birds that had died in her backyard and she would feed them and once again she would be surrounded by birds. I reached in the coffin and lifted her hands and set the seed beneath them. Her hands were cold and I squeezed them for a moment.

  When I turned around, Simon was standing there. He nodded at me and stuck his hand out. I didn’t know what else to do, so I shook his hand. “Thanks for coming,” he said. Like I’d have missed it for the world.