The Hummingbirds

by Ross McMeekin

  “So, I moved halfway there. A quarter of the way. Across the country, East Coast to West. But to answer your original question, why haven’t I been there yet. Well . . .”

  “It’s complicated,” she said. It felt like to use any more words to try and encapsulate it for him would be cruel. There are places you can never leave. And then the question of what had kept her, and what was keeping her, with Grant. But forget all of that. They could go. They could be on a plane by maybe even tomorrow. “Then what happened?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you up and leave right then?”

  He chuckled and shook his head. “Not for years. The next morning, she didn’t remember what happened. Or at least she didn’t act like she could remember. But that’s how we treated what happened when no one else was there.”

  Sounded familiar. She took both his hands and looked dead into his eyes. Would he go with her? She suspected yes. But could she actually go herself, or was this feeling inside of her just another act, when acting could feel so, so real. She dismissed the worry as fear. “You need to go. We need to go.”

  He opened his mouth as if he was trying to say something.

  “I can buy the tickets. Cover expenses. It’ll be easy to make up some sort of excuse.” It felt so good to tell him this. She hoped it was true, that she could trust it.

  “I couldn’t—”

  “I want this. I need some time away to figure stuff out, and this can be it.” There she was, softening it. Making it easier for them both. It was the right thing to say, she told herself, to take the pressure off—he needed her to need it too.

  He broke into a smile and his eyes clouded up. He laughed.

  They embraced. She didn’t want to let go. The wonder of the moment threatened to empty as they stood there. But it didn’t. She almost couldn’t believe it. This was real. Pure. They were going to seek out the truth because they wanted it for themselves, and for no other reason than that. God, she needed this.

  She let go. Ezra was flushed, eyes wide. He looked to be taking short, shallow breaths. She thought for a moment he might cry, but then he brought his fingers to his neck and pressed into the skin.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Sometimes my body freaks out,” he said. “It’ll pass.” He stood up and walked out.

  She followed him through the front door.

  “It can help just to walk around,” he said.

  A panic attack. She knew them well. Had had them on many a night, and on many a set, and had watched others go through the same. She wondered whether she’d done something to trigger it. But she took his hand and his grip was tight.

  Outside, the morning sun was bright but not yet warm. The silence as they walked was peculiar. Maybe she’d never really heard it before; there was always a plane overhead, always the breeze, always an interruption every waking moment. Now it felt holy, if there was such a thing. People assumed intimacy was comfortable. Maybe it could be. But this wasn’t like that, not quite. It was more that she felt alive in it. A live wire. Ezra’s vulnerability . . . these weren’t the things people shared with her. She met everyone at their most impressive, which was another way of saying most guarded. But this was that sharp edge of reality, where everything was buzzing, heightened. And Ezra, he was so broken, yet so full. Hands shaking. Body unable to hold what he had inside.

  She saw a deep dignity in it. She wanted to see it through with him. They would buy plane tickets and fly away as soon as they could get a flight. She closed her eyes and they continued walking. Slowly, Ezra began to grow calm. A dry wind blew through the grounds and a plane overhead roared. They reached the north end of the property and now were circling back around through a row of lavender bushes that smelled like tea.

  Then it was upon her. The scene became overwhelming. The drone of the hundreds of bees gathering pollen from the masses of lavender felt ominous. She felt the urge to check her phone but knew to do so would be terrible.

  Ezra stopped. “You okay?”

  “You’re contagious,” she said.

  “I’m sorry—”

  “No,” she said. “I didn’t mean that. I’m just going to head upstairs to take a bath. I think I need some time to just think.” It was the opposite though, wasn’t it? She needed time not to think. Thinking never quieted her brain. It did the opposite—at times she even lost complete control of her thoughts, and she experienced what she could only describe as someone madly flipping channels in her brain from one image to the next, with no rhyme or reason to it, and all she could do was sit there helpless, waiting for it to stop. But this was only the damn withdrawal symptoms. That was all. In her pocket her phone buzzed.

  “I’ll see you in a bit,” she said, and left him for the mansion. She peeked into her pocket; the text was from Grant. Call me. She ignored it. She would ride this out. She wanted a warm bath and some good music and a few magazines and a way to feel bright and good and that everything was under control, or at least would be soon. She walked toward the door and saw herself reflected in the glass. Her thoughts dug into her.

  You’re leading him on.

  She opened the door and went inside.

  Selfish. Narcissistic.

  She started running up the stairs.

  You’re a fraud. Everyone knows it. Even your friends know it. They’re just scared to say it because of Grant.

  She got to the tub and turned on the water and sat down on the edge and began sobbing. Each and every terrible thought was voiced in a confident, chorus of godlike voices. Her anxiety and sorrow? Her plight? A farce in comparison to Ezra’s and Grant’s. She was a shallow pool compared to their oceans. A queen who everyone hated. She’d done next to nothing to deserve the crown, and she knew it, and everyone knew it, and nothing in the world could change it.

  Goddamn these withdrawals. And Grant. She just needed to fight it. She wiped her nose and twisted the knob on the faucet back and forth, over and over, until she was making only the smallest changes. Minutes passed. She just couldn’t find the right fucking temperature.

  TEN

  A few hours later they were back in the mansion, stretched out on couches, watching some trashy afternoon entertainment news program with the volume low. After the bath, she’d gone through her workout regimen and achieved a measure of balance she didn’t want to give away. The bitter self-appraisal of earlier had quieted and she saw it for what it was: her old self, trying its best to gain back the ground it had lost over the last week.

  Ezra had taken it all in stride. He was understanding. Incredible, even, especially in light of the trauma he’d obviously endured—but she absolutely could not allow herself to draw comparisons between her and him. To do so was stupid. Self-defeating. A habit contrary to how she wanted to live her life.

  This was about being together and loving each other in the time they had together. Love didn’t tally points. And Ezra was attractive—he understood intuitively what it meant to be an other in this particular way.

  Which highlighted the problem with her and Grant. His otherness was won through grit, determination, and ruthlessness. Everything was a competition. It had only worked for this long because he was always the winner, she the loser, and they were both comfortable with that.

  Miserable, on her end, but comfortable.

  Ezra hadn’t mentioned the trip since he’d come inside, and she knew he wouldn’t bring it up until she did. When it came to favors, he was clearly the sort of person that made you insist. That was what her parents would have called polite.

  Her phone buzzed on the coffee table: Grant’s number shadowed by a stock avatar. Her mind replaced it with an image of his cunning eyes and jaw.

  Ezra glanced over and went back to the show.

  She didn’t reply to the text. Another quickly followed. It’s important. She hated messages like that. So vague and manipulative. So anxiety producing. So typical.

  Ezra’s phone chimed. He took it out of his pocket and glanced at i
t for a few moments before putting it away. She wondered who might be calling. Was it Grant? Checking up on her? Maybe. But unlikely. And anyway, Ezra didn’t respond. And she didn’t feel comfortable asking, seeing as he didn’t ask her, either.

  The text could also have been from April, angling to get him back or still furious over what had happened. Beyond that, she didn’t know. He hadn’t really mentioned his friends. It occurred to her that this relationship was probably as much a break from his own life as hers was from her own. A reminder that under the current circumstances, they didn’t exactly mesh. What, was he going to invite her out bowling with his buds? A double date with another of his groundskeeper friends?

  She recognized that she felt threatened by whoever had texted him, and realized this was why the trip made so much sense. Right now—so soon after connecting—it would be devastating for them to try to face the vast differences in their lives and respond to them with trust. To call class merely a social construct was like dismissing one of those marvels on Ezra’s laptop as just another bird.

  The television screen flickered to a line of makeup products she’d been passed over for as a possible spokesperson. The actor who’d gotten the role was fresh from starring in sitcoms for kids, and had the ability to pull in not only the younger crowd, but also the aging beauties. The latter all wanted what they once had. Sybil? She represented what they feared might happen to them.

  She knew this wasn’t quite true, but it’d felt that way when she’d received the news about the commercial, and here she was, sliding back into that mind-set again. Pretending she understood some casting director’s decision when in reality she hadn’t a clue; she’d just rather own the worst possible answer than hope for a better rejection, only to be disappointed.

  If only knowing this meant more. If only when the epiphany struck she found herself changed. If only this realization wasn’t one she had to come to over and over again.

  She needed to stop thinking. When she started thinking she started feeling terrible. Was it Hamlet that said There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so? This was one of those days that seemed bent on making her kneel. Or go fetal. She couldn’t let it.

  She sat up, crossed her legs beneath her, and turned off her phone. Then, as Ezra watched, she held it aloft between her finger and thumb and dropped it into the bright silver garbage basket next to the couch. The phone’s impact was muffled by a firm bed of junk mail.

  “Phone dead?” Ezra asked, peering over at her but still lying down on the couch as the television blinked through car commercials.

  “I wish.”

  “Are you all right?”

  This was why she liked him: he didn’t ask who was that? even though she knew her gesture begged for that sort of attention. “I’m great.”

  He kept staring at her. “C’mon.” He swung his feet off the couch so he was sitting. “What’s up?”

  She leaned back, feeling the warmth of emotion building in her neck, her ears. She was about to cry. But it wasn’t a cry of panic. It was a good cry, the kind when someone actually wanted to understand you, even though you were a mess. Ezra wasn’t going to treat her as some entitled prima donna for having the gall to say she was having a rough time. He’d at least proven that. He wasn’t social media. He wasn’t Grant. He wasn’t, well, anyone. She choked out the words, “This is tough for me.”

  He came over and sat next to her and began rubbing her back as she cried. The celebrity news came back on. The thought occurred to her that this was how it could be. All of the shades open in every room. Vaulted skylights transparent, not tinted dark like Grant preferred them. Letting in sunlight. The peach paint on the far wall of the room, glowing. But forget this house; they could get one on the coast, right on the shore, like the one Grant had now but without the feel of a fortress.

  A place in the South Pacific. An open-air bungalow, Ezra lying there, casual yet attentive. Engrossed in his photography and in their love life, which was free to blossom without harsh realities of the outside world. They’d stay for a few months. Who knew, maybe a few years. What difference was age thirty-­eight compared to thirty-five? She’d probably return looking better than when she’d left, just from the lack of stress. Yes. They’d disappear. She’d lose her phone and her agent and the silence would no longer be oppressive, because it had been her choice.

  She could be open. She could be free of all of this pent-up bullshit.

  Then, finally, there would be a story. People would want to know why on earth someone so successful and so connected would leave the business, and she wouldn’t tell them, she’d hold it over them like a secret only fit for ears who had been there, because hers was a reality that they never would nor could understand. And this? This would prove it. She would create a mystery and people would have to try and decipher it from her roles, which from then on would be more complex. A path towards reinvention: simply disappear. When she came back, she’d be changed, the world would be changed, and then she and Ezra could work out what to do next, on their terms.

  “Okay,” she said. “My birds of paradise . . .”

  He was waiting there patiently, kindness in his eyes. What had she been doing with Grant all of these years?

  “. . . were all the important films I was going to make.”

  He scanned her face. “So you made it.”

  She searched his eyes to see if he was being sarcastic. He wasn’t. He was trying to be polite. “Important films. But you’re a gentleman.”

  He shrugged. “You’ve done well.”

  Was that what they were talking about? Doing well? She suddenly felt petty. “Listen to me,” she said. “Complaining again.”

  “No. I didn’t mean to. I mean, who am I to tell you how you should . . .”

  “—No. It’s fine. I know you weren’t . . .”

  “—I really hate it when people make assumptions, like I just did,” he said.

  They were staring at each other, both so serious, and then a smile broke across his face, and she felt one peel across hers, as well. They were laughing at themselves and each other at the same time. They were the same. Despite everything, the same. “I love you,” she said.

  He colored.

  It had just come out, and though it had sounded impulsive, she realized she didn’t feel nervous at all—she meant it. She remembered how nervous she was with Grant, wondering whether he loved her. When he’d finally said it, she’d felt as though she’d passed some sort of test. But this admission felt as natural as her lungs taking breath, and it was clear by Ezra’s embarrassment that the notion had been pressing on his mind as well.

  “I’ve never been in love before,” he said.

  She went to him and kissed him, hard, full. He tasted faintly of coffee.

  His hands were around her and he pulled her close.

  She pulled back from him and smiled.

  He looked surprised.

  “Don’t worry. Just give me a sec.” She slid her thin gray laptop over, flipped open the screen, and her plain blue desktop background lit up, document images scattered randomly across it. “I need to show you this.”

  “Cool.”

  She realized that he probably thought it was something fun. “This is serious, though.”

  “Serious.”

  “Very serious.” She laughed. “No, I mean it. This is really important.”

  “This is your birds of paradise.”

  “Yes.” She gave him a quick kiss, pulling his lip back with hers.

  She took a deep breath and searched the web for the news site. For a moment, she felt a wisp of sentimentality from back a decade-plus, in her early days in Hollywood, before Grant, playing her favorite foreign film clips for some dull piece of pretty meat feigning interest in French cinema in hopes that he might get to fool around later. Even then she’d felt embarrassed, as though sharing her own desires was poor form, versus acquiescing to another’s.

  She found the clip and cued it up. “I’m not
going to give you any context.”

  A female reporter, surrounded by storefronts resting beneath skyscrapers, talked into a foam-capped microphone.

  Often assumed to be simply a third-world problem, acid attacks over the last few years have been on the rise in some major cities . . .

  The camera swept over a huge, modern city, then streets teeming with people and cars and storefronts.

  . . . women have been especially targeted, some on charges of immodesty, others out of jealousy. For instance, this woman, who requested that we withhold her name . . .

  And there she was. Helen. Sybil had seen the face on this video countless times, but it never ceased to affect her. A sad warmth grew in her stomach. The newscast showed a picture of Helen before it happened: mouth wide, perhaps afraid to smile, lips thin and serious but beautiful in their soft lines. Her nose was long and slender, like her chin, and her thick black locks draped all the way down past where the picture cut off at her shoulder. Sybil had yet to find an actor who might be able to capture her features, though every time she saw someone similar on the street, she would stop and stare. There had been a singularity to Helen’s proportions, the way they seemed to lean this way and that, the way they appeared to stretch just a bit farther than was common.

  . . . she allowed her roommate to photograph her in suggestive poses while studying for a semester overseas in the States . . .

  Sybil glanced at Ezra, who was intent on the screen. For some reason, she felt like stopping the video before it could get to the next part, and just explaining it away.

  . . . she returned home from overseas changed. She no longer wanted to marry and pursue domestic life; she wanted to return to the States to get an advanced degree in economics. The son of a well-known family in her community proposed, and she declined. Then, for reasons unknown, the picture surfaced, and the family of her suitor retaliated . . .

  Helen, now deformed, appeared. She had a cream white mask, not unlike those one might wear for a Greek tragedy, completely covering her face. But then she took it off and showed what was left below. Her face had melted from the acid. It shined in places where it shouldn’t, a plastic glare in the light. Sybil shivered and wrapped her arms around her stomach. There were a few places where she could go in her mind and immediately conjure tears, should she need them for a part. This was one.