The Hummingbirds

by Ross McMeekin

  “Your husband stopped at the same one.”

  Grant never mentioned that he’d visited. “What’d he want?”

  “Do you really want to know?”

  The look on his face told her the answer was amusing. “What, did he try to get you to do something for him?”

  “How did you guess?”

  “That’s what he does.” If nothing else, Grant had taught her what the smallest of promises—much less, threats—could coax in those with ambition. She continued examining Ezra’s photographs, hoping he’d read it as her not caring, hoping he’d just offer up answers on his own.

  “He wanted me to spy on you.”

  “You’re kidding.” She felt annoyed, but a part of her was comforted. Flattered, even. She couldn’t resist asking. “What exactly did he say?”

  “He’d seen me taking pictures and asked if I’d photograph any guys who came by while he was gone.”

  Huh. She was surprised. Not that Grant would do such a thing, but that she’d misread him. Perhaps he didn’t assume she was at home, depressed, and lonely. This proved that he at least cared enough to try and stop whatever transgressions her despair might cause. But cared might be giving him too much credit. Beneath it all—she reminded herself—Grant was a sad, insecure man, unable to trust, and for that reason, controlling. Case in point: recently he’d been overlooked once again for membership at a country club he’d for years claimed to despise, which of course made him want it all the more. In response, he hired a lawyer on behalf of a disgruntled neighbor of the membership chair so that he might sue the fucker for damages caused by a pine tree whose needles had killed the grass of said neighbor’s lawn.

  “So,” she said. “Are you going to take a selfie?”

  “It did make me wonder what was up.”

  “Trust me. You don’t want to hear about it.” She walked to his kitchen sink and washed what was left of the shake out of her glass. In a way, she felt better: that Grant was asking Ezra to spy was proof that he hadn’t set up cameras. “Just so you know,” she said, “I’ve never done this before. There have been no guys coming by the house.”

  He smirked, hands still stuffed in the pockets of his hoodie. “I know. I’ve been on the clock.”

  “You’re so full of it.” She felt like telling him about the madam whose number she knew for a fact Grant had on speed dial. But she didn’t. And she quickly dismissed from her mind the reason why: that Grant had many times discussed how critical it was that they never talk with anyone about what went on behind closed doors. How jobs could be lost or gained and money could be earned or taken away based upon whether that information was available for the public to consume. How in the end the most important acting job they could do had nothing to do with the screen. “Forget Grant. I want to hear about hummingbirds.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “I don’t know. Why them, specifically?”

  “You are into boredom.” He paused and swirled the drink around in his hand. “Well, they’re difficult to photograph. I can go a week without taking a decent picture.” He sized up the photo she was looking at. Their shoulders touched. “A lot of other birds, you can see their personalities. Like with dogs, you can guess what they’re thinking. But there’s something strange about hummingbirds.”

  “They look like little aliens.”

  “Yeah. The way their plumage changes color depending on the time of day, the amount of light in the photograph, the angle. It’s like trying to photograph a mirage. It’s why I’ve kept this job for so long.” He looked at her. “Ever seen the birds of paradise?”

  “Maybe. Not sure.”

  “You need to.” Ezra nodded toward his bedroom and they walked. He sat down at his desk and his back looked unusually straight and proper as he flipped open his laptop. The screensaver was gorgeous. It showed a bird capped with what resembled a bright turquoise hat, intersected by black curves, giving the appearance of stained glass. It also had a mustard sash protruding from its throat, bordered by a tomato-red felt. Then, below its feet, protruding out horizontally from its tail, were long black curlicues, shaped how an old silent film star might wax his long handlebar mustache.

  “Crazy,” she said.

  He opened a folder on his computer and began flipping through more photos, each bird bizarre, brightly feathered, absurdly ornate. “Rainforest. South Pacific.”

  She imagined how they’d look on the big screen and wondered whether there was a way to get a movie set there, with the birds playing some sort of role that would feel organic. It would be tough, but some viewers loved these sorts of visuals almost as much they loved a good plot.

  “I know,” he said. “Why do they look like this? How does this happen?” He leaned in toward the screen. “The rainforest seems lush, but it’s ruthless. Species have to grow weird adaptations to survive.” The next one had a black oval mask with broad turquoise eyes and skinny little legs. The bird resembled a child’s attempt at drawing a cartoon. Sybil glanced over at Ezra. He was so serious right now, like a little kid.

  They scrolled through a few more pictures in silence. Maybe this was a way out: she could pitch a love story between a movie star and a groundskeeper-turned-nature-photographer. But to do it right, the travel budget alone would have to be massive. They’d have to find an angel investor who also happened to be a birder. And that would defeat the purpose, having a film. It wouldn’t really be an escape.

  “What’s it like there?” she asked.

  He exhaled and scooted back from the desk. “I wish I could tell you.”

  “These aren’t yours?”

  He shook his head.

  “Why haven’t you gone?”

  “I don’t know. I mean I could, right? Save up, buy a ticket. It just feels like there needs to be more to it than just going.” He shook his head and clicked to another picture. She couldn’t read the look on his face.

  For some reason she felt as though she’d played a part in his not going. She banished the feeling and squeezed his knee. “You need to go.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “The pool needs cleaning.”

  She laughed, and spotted a framed photograph on the desk of a young boy in a dark suit. The boy was clearly Ezra; even at that young age, he already had those deep eyes, the inklings of a sensitive jaw, and the posture of a surfer. Beside him stood a tall woman, dressed in a seafoam-green pantsuit with matching pumps and hat. Sybil could only assume this was his mother. She had Ezra’s eyes, but the rest of her features weren’t nearly so inviting—they were imposing, in fact, if not severe—but no, maybe it was just her expression, which—the longer Sybil looked at the photo—seemed to be one of weariness and fear. “Who’s this?” she asked.

  He clicked through another photograph on the computer screen and looked up. “Speak of the devil.” He picked up the framed photograph and quickly set it back down. “If you really do want to understand why I haven’t gone, well, she’s the key.”

  Why was everyone’s mom both crazy and the most important person in their life? “Let me guess: she was controlling.”

  “Yeah, but it was more than that.”

  “Manipulative?”

  He chuckled and looked down, rubbing his temples. “What would you say if I told you people referred to my mother as the Prophetess?”

  She glanced again at the picture again. “Bullshit.”

  “Doesn’t look like a cult leader, does she?” He appraised her reaction then returned to the pictures. “But she was. One that deified birds, if you can believe it.”

  She didn’t know what to say. Was this a joke? She looked at Ezra—who went back clicking through pictures on the screen—and felt a small twinge of fear. She realized that she didn’t really know this man. Her reasons for trusting him were based on, what, how attractive he was? His skills at gardening? His willingness to cover her with towels when she’d blacked out after going on a bender?

  But no, t
hat was Grant talking—Grant who thought the worst of people, who assumed that everyone had ulterior motives. Ezra had never shown a single malicious sign in all the time she’d spent with him. “That might make bird photography complicated.”

  “They were everywhere growing up. Our house, the church, the school.”

  “Like as pets?”

  “No, more like boarders. That part I loved. It made it less lonely. Building nests in light fixtures, stealing food, landing on your shoulder to lick the sweat from your hair.”

  “Wait. Birds actually lick?”

  He laughed. “But you’ve got to understand that it didn’t feel weird at the time, the church, the birds, my mom being a prophetess. Sometimes it still doesn’t, because I was so close. It’s not like I converted. I was born into it, so for a long time it was all I knew.”

  She wondered if she’d heard any stories about the cult and just didn’t remember. She imagined news feeds from years back: buildings on fire in Texas from a botched invasion, dark cabins in wooded mountains.

  He pulled at his earlobe. His shoulders seemed to have slouched. “The people, her followers—those were the only people I knew. There was a school with the church. It was all we did.” He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, it’s just been so long since I’ve talked about this. And I’ve never really talked about it.”

  “You don’t have to,” she said. His eyes had that glazed look. He wasn’t listening. She wanted to hear more and she didn’t. It was fascinating, and she was no longer scared. Ezra was a good person. Her intuition would have told her otherwise by this point. That said, learning all of this about him was beginning to make her feel diminished. She didn’t know why. But it did.

  “So it was completely insular,” he said. “Suffocating. I was her little puppet. I don’t believe she ever meant it to be that way, but it was. Front row left, every Sunday, there’d be a story about me, about how young and pure I was, how cute and earnest. Think of me as her walking, talking, sermon illustration. My life was her open book. She used to say I was living proof that the only father we needed was God in heaven. I don’t know if I could even begin to explain to you what kind of pressure that puts on a kid.

  “But the kicker is, when she wasn’t at church, or at school, when we weren’t expecting visitors at our house, she was a completely different person. Bottles of hard liquor. Pills. Strange men. Who knows what else.” He clicked absently through some more pictures, fingers thudding into the keys. “And she’d cruise around naked, everywhere, all the time.”

  The silence was too uncomfortable. “Sounds like she knew how to party.” It was out before she could stop.

  He chuckled a bit. “Well . . .”

  “I’m sorry, that just came out. I’m an asshole. This is real.” She squeezed his knee.

  He looked over and shrugged. “I know it’s kind of crazy.”

  As he continued talking about his mother’s church, she felt growing inside of her the same kind of discomfort as when Grant told her the scant bits and pieces of his own tragic childhood. Annoyed that her own childhood, filled with middle-class convention, was so easy to talk about, because it was relatively easy, and didn’t stack up. She’d had so little to overcome—even if it often felt otherwise. She’d been raised well. Loved and cherished, challenged and taught. She should have been grateful. She was grateful, but here was the thing: her easy childhood made her feel shallow, because having an easy childhood made people think you were shallow. She’d never admit to believing this in public—she’d be crucified—but it was there, inside of her, a belief she couldn’t shake: that the quickest path to success in the arts was claiming a childhood tougher than everyone else’s.

  Hadn’t Grant flat out admitted that he’d once hired someone for a lead role over a far more talented actor because, as he put it, these days the hurt puppy gets the most attention.

  And what was the worst that had happened to her? Sure, from the moment she transferred to that elite private arts school in Seattle to pursue drama, everyone seemed intent to put her in her place, and felt it their God-given responsibility to remind her that her physical appearance meant nothing in the grand scheme of things—nothing, except that she should be shunned from all social activity, made to feel like a pariah, and yes, she had no friends growing up, and yes, it all probably started because freshman year this asshole senior with a bias for edgy, Off-Broadway musicals had hung a Barbie doll from a noose outside of her locker when she hadn’t wanted to go out with him, and yes, the administration didn’t take the threat seriously, and yes, they placated her parents with the sideways compliment everyone’s just jealous of her looks, and yes, all the rest of this upperclassman’s disciples in the lower grades called her Barbie throughout the rest of her time in high school—and yes, it was even worse when she tried to go goth, and then granola, until she finally gave up and went back to shopping at J Crew—and yes, her parents and grandparents and everyone else asked her completely different questions about her future than they did her boy cousins because, well, she was beautiful and thus best fit as a trophy wife, and yes, she moved to LA in part because she wanted to finally live in a place where she wouldn’t feel the need to apologize for that one fucking thing she couldn’t control: her genetics.

  But who on earth cared about all of that? In the end, there were two facts that excused her from receiving any and all empathy, even in LA: she was beautiful, and a movie star.

  She had it all.

  Sure.

  But as Ezra continued talking about his difficulties, she checked herself for that flurry of thought. She and Ezra weren’t in competition. This wasn’t some contest. This is what she hated about Grant, his believing that all anyone did or said was a potential threat to his position. He would call this tryst a call for attention, or even self-sabotage, because—as he’d said before—her place in society had been accepted by everyone except her.

  But no, this wasn’t even on Grant. If only. Ezra’s story wasn’t about how she’d been wronged. She knew that. She needed to stop making every fucking thing about her. She just needed to fight it.

  “No, I understand,” she said. “This was your mother. Your mother! And she’s getting hammered Saturday night and getting up Sunday preaching the opposite.”

  He took a deep breath and leaned back. “I remember once when I was asking her about who the hell my dad was, because she refused to tell me anything about how I was born. I think she liked to pretend I was the virgin birth or something. Anyways, she was sprawled out on the couch watching a sitcom, naked as usual. Eden time is what she called it. So I ask her for the thousandth time about my father and all of a sudden she gets angry and tells me to strip. I’m like, no. No way. But she’s like, strip now or you’re never going to know a thing about him.”

  Sybil said nothing. She felt herself begin to move past that moment of inadequacy, and start to feel him. She slowly began to feel relieved of guilt. In one of her acting classes a teacher had described the process of becoming someone’s story. You had to not just picture it, but hum it, like a song you were trying to learn by heart. If you learned the song well enough it would become your own.

  “So I take off my clothes,” he continued. “It’s embarrassing, but that’s how much I wanted to know about where the hell I came from. I’m ten and I strip down in front of her. Of course, the second I’m naked I have a boner. Worst thing you could possibly imagine. But she ignores it. She says to me, Now grab ahold of some skin on your stomach. So I do. Feel that, she says. Now grab some of mine, meaning her stomach fat, and I’m like, No. But she says Don’t be embarrassed. You came from inside there.

  “So I grab her skin with my fingers and she says, Does it feel any different? Like does her skin feel any different than mine. I shake my head and she says, That’s right. We’re more alike than you’d like to think. You don’t need a father. You don’t need anyone. You’ve got your mother right here.” Ezra adjusted his seat and dragged his fingers slowly through his s
calp, and then scratched the back of his head.

  The room felt still and abuzz at the same time. “I don’t really know what to say.”

  He stood up and paced across the room toward the bed for a moment before turning. “At the same time, you know what’s strange?” he said. “I think I liked her more as a mess than when she was busy being the Prophetess.”

  She nodded and, despite herself, for a moment considered the possibility of what it would be like to play Ezra’s mother in a movie. It would be a dynamic role for an older woman. She wondered what Grant would think of it, whether he might get on board with something like that. Wondered who might play Ezra. Whether Ezra would be okay doing the story in the first place. She caught herself thinking this way and felt a brief flash of shame, dry in her stomach.

  Ezra returned to his seat and sighed as he sat down.

  “So, to your question,” he said. “I went to my room after that and started doing push-ups and sit-ups to try to purge myself of what just happened. When I came back, she was passed out. Cigarette still smoking between her fingers, mouth open, snoring, teeth stained purple from wine. I felt I should stay there, just in case, you know. Anyway, the television still had one of her comedies on, so I sat down and changed the channel and stopped on this public television nature special. And there they were.” He gestured to the screen. “Of all things, birds. But the most beautiful I’d ever seen. I sat there in the middle of our suffocating room, in the middle of our suffocating little world, and thought, somehow, I’ve got to get there.”

  She thought of what a ticket would cost. It would be nothing for her to pay for it. She’d go with him, even. Finally a place, and a reason! She’d catch hell for it, but so what? He needed this and so did she.