Why Do Birds

by Rob Hoerburger

  Andy got so lost in his thoughts of the boy that he almost missed the bright Nikes and the forward-facing baseball cap moving up 45th Street. From behind he could just about see the brown hair tucked between the cap and the jacket. The hips seemed slightly bigger than those of the woman from the spring. But at this point he had to follow every lead.

  He trailed the figure, walking west, just far enough behind to keep her in sight. The woman was sauntering, not moving at an accelerated New York City clip, and even stopped a few times. Andy did, too. He didn’t want to catch her right away; maybe he’d pass her and then face her on the corner. Maybe she’d remember him. Or, if he realized it wasn’t her, he’d know not to reveal himself to her.

  He lost her between Broadway and Seventh, when a theater let out after she’d passed it. Matinee-day crowd. By the time Andy made his way through the lingering crowd of blue hairs in shawls and wool coats, the woman had disappeared into the maw of Times Square. Andy stood among the bustle and the street vendors looking as lost as a tourist, crossing the same blocks a few times over, looking as suspicious as the potential perps he monitored.

  Let her go, he thought. Get on with your life.

  He drifted almost absent-mindedly toward the subway. He would probably come back again tomorrow, but something felt finished now. That might have been his chance.

  Just as he was near the token booth at 41st and 7th, near where he’d spoken to her all those months ago, he thought he heard something coming up from the platform, different from the rumble of trains and the hum and buzz of the crowd and yet too far away to really be intelligible. He drew closer. It almost sounded like one of her songs.

  Boy, you really have lost it, he thought.

  The sounds sorted and separated themselves out. Not only did it seem to be one of her songs, but it sounded like her singing it. With her old, full voice. The voice from that golden day.

  As Andy charged down the stairs, he told himself the song was still going, that the phantom second verse was actually happening. It was only when he got down to the nearly empty platform, with the usual assortment of students, hangers-on, pole lurkers, one truck of a blind man carrying a large case, nothing but train sounds, that he realized he must have been imagining what he heard.

  And even if he hadn’t been, he was too late. Either way, she was gone.

  33. Queens, N.Y., February 1983

  SOUL TO SOUL

  A publication from the young adults’ corner of the Church of the Immaculate Conception.

  Issue of February 3, 1983

  REVIEWS

  Michael Jackson, THRILLER

  By S.V. Kelly

  Today is the feast of St. Blaise, the guy who something like a thousand years ago saved a kid from choking on a fish bone with a proto-Heimlich maneuver and since has been the patron saint of throats. So if you get to church today to have your throat blessed, when the priest rests the crossed candles on your shoulder, presses the opening next to your throat and says, “Through the intercession of St. Blaise, may you be protected from all afflictions of the throat,” you might want to say a prayer for Michael Jackson’s throat too.

  Yep, he’s finally back, three years after the brilliant Off the Wall, a jumping soulful mélange that was the last great blast of the disco era. “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough” was not just the best thing to hit dance floors since “Get Down Tonight”; it was also a funk fire sale: The ’70s are over, here come the ’80s, get everything while you can.

  Thriller isn’t nearly as joyous or liberating as Off the Wall; it’s only nine songs long, and most of them have some kind of weight to bear, some emotional baggage to lug around. And yet once again it’s about the most vital record you’re likely to hear in a very long while.

  Rat-tat-tat. The opening drum riff of “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ ” fires off and announces that you’re in a new landscape, one of smoke and mirrors and hazardous turns and twists, a dance floor littered with broken glass and landmines, with Manu Dibango’s 1970s hit “Soul Makossa” as inspiration and road map into the perilous ’80s of oil embargoes, hostage crises and long recessions. Jackson spills so much energy in this opening track that he needs a couple of songs to recover, including the limp duet with Paul McCartney, “The Girl Is Mine” (which works if you take it as a joke), before he’s back to paranoia central with the title track, whose flourishes come on you like a sudden dousing on a street curb. Life as horror movie, or at least as fun house, and once again, the only way to outrun the zombies is to outdance them. Jackson growls and yelps and hiccups his way through the danger zone until Vincent Price, the king of horror movies himself, comes along to relieve him with a goose-bump-drawing narration/rap, while the beat keeps going, kind of like Edgar Allan Poe meets Chic.

  Jackson really ups the ante on the Side 2, starting with “Beat It,” featuring a 12-hammer guitar solo by Eddie Van Halen. Yeah, that Eddie Van Halen. Then along comes “Billie Jean,” a tale about a love affair on the dance floor, or with the dance floor, that might have gone terribly wrong, which slinks and creeps along as Jackson keeps ducking and feinting, almost singing into himself. Here is a man who feels besieged from every angle, and he’s essentially fighting for his life by the end. Not as easy as A-B-C, but just as funky.

  He lightens up for the rest of the album. “Human Nature” is, if not quite innocence regained, then at least a chance for him to catch his breath and his hope (it was co-written by one of the guys from Toto, and almost makes up for their recent bloodless radio hits); then there’s some candy floss (“P.Y.T.”) and a sweet if unessential ballad to close the record, “The Lady in My Life.”

  All in all, maybe not the album we were expecting, or hoping for, but more than the record that we, you know, need. Some of you may be aware that this day, Feb. 3, is not only the feast day of St. Blaise but an important day in rock ’n’ roll history, the day that Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper were killed in a plane crash in 1959, the day that Don McLean sang about in “American Pie.” They were something like the Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego of rock, martyrs for the rock ’n’ roll cause. Now, 24 years later, it might be time for another veneration, but not because of something or someone lost, but for something found: Michael Jackson may just have brought pop music back to life.

  Sib read the review on the mimeographed sheets from I-Mac four or five times as she sat propped up in bed in her sweats, the smell of apple-pectin shampoo hanging in the air, replacing the secondhand smoke and stale beer from spinning that night at Whelan’s. She’d wanted to get Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” and Prince’s 1999 (which she had warmed up to) into the review, too, but figured that would be too much for a church publication; even Michael Jackson was a gamble for the director of the youth group, a young priest named Will, who agreed to let her write it because he’d been a big fan of the early Jackson Five hits.

  But she’d take it for now.

  She’d had a good night at Whelan’s, her fourth consecutive Thursday spinning since Larry had given her the night permanently after he started getting some gigs in Manhattan. The bar had been steady, the crowd mostly the club kids and the late-shifters and a few random guys in down vests slowly cozying up to a winter weekend, cold but not frigid, no snow on the ground. No meatheads like Tuke. No foosball-table tremors to make the records skip. No snorters in the men’s room. With the regular gig, Sib finally had some dependable money landing in her pocket, even if, with the occasional tip, it was only $50 a week.

  She had five requests for Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” that night, which was a lot for a four-hour shift. At most she’d play a song twice in one night, but she was in a good mood, and got to it three times before she ended at 2. “I can’t believe that’s Michael Jackson,” a lumberjacked guy with a silver rope earring named Travis said to Sib. “But if he’s good enough for Eddie, he’s good enough for me.” And then he dropped a five in her tip jar. Whenever she put on one of the songs from Thriller, suddenly the D.J. b
ooth, the bar, Sib’s life didn’t feel so cramped and shabby.

  Sib had been to church that day and actually offered up a prayer of thanks for Thriller. She also got her throat blessed; Sib wasn’t sure if it really protected her, but the ritual was comforting. And the day, February 3, was always something of a turning point for her. It meant that Christmas was finally, officially over — there were still the straggling trees on the curbs up to then — and that Lent and spring and baseball, her own personal crocuses, would be popping up soon.

  Sib couldn’t remember the last time she felt this good, and couldn’t begin to figure out why. She still didn’t have a full-time job. She still worried about her dad — when she got home that night, she found him asleep in the living-room chair, waiting up for her, her review of Thriller splayed across the afghan he had pulled up around him. “Oh, fell asleep watching TV,” he said as he stretched his legs and pushed himself out of the chair. “Nice review,” he said. “Michael Jackson and St. Blaise, there’s an odd pairing. Good night, Siobhan.” And she still hadn’t figured out who she was sexually. There hadn’t been another kiss with Larry. They just avoided the subject of the first altogether and went back to being pals. It was easier that way. Sib still wasn’t sure if she liked boys or girls or both or neither. That would be all her dad needed. She could just hear herself having that talk with her father. “Uh, Dad, you might want to forget about the grandkids.” She wondered if her parents ever knew about Kieran, or knew what she thought she knew about Kieran, based on that day in Rose’s store. She’d never told anyone but Timmy, and now it was so long ago she wondered if she was even remembering it right. The present was already muddy enough.

  But tonight something was lifting her. Sib glanced over at her nightstand. Was she finally ready, she wondered? Should she risk the natural buzz she was feeling? Just cash out the good feelings of that day and night and face the rest tomorrow?

  She opened the drawer of the stand and pulled out the cassette. She’d had it in there since before Thanksgiving, since she found it in Downstairs Records that day around her birthday. It had been sitting at the front of the section, of that section, wedged in before the first record, and at first she just thought someone had left it there randomly. Then she picked it up and saw the title handwritten across the top: “Too Much Love.”

  What was this? A joke, she figured, played by Larry and Timmy, but they never said anything about it at the next songwriting session, and she never brought it up. They basically abandoned the project after that, as none of their promising leads — the odd riff, the snatch of lyric, the elegant bass line, the Carole King chord progression — ever knitted together. Sib’s songwriting career lasted all of two months.

  Sib’s first inclination was to toss the tape, but every time she started to, some pang of guilt would stay her hand. What if it wasn’t a joke? What if by some weird cosmic turn, there was a real song there? A song with her title? Yet she couldn’t bring herself to play it. Something was going to be revealed, and she wasn’t sure she was ready for it.

  She’d gotten a Sony Walkman for Christmas — among other things, it let her listen to music late into the night without worrying about waking her dad. Should she risk the vibe she was feeling? Maybe there was a song. Maybe it was bad. “Get used to the idea of things going wrong, dear,” Aunt Constance once said.

  Finally, some of Constance’s advice that might come in handy, Sib thought. She popped in the tape.

  Almost a full minute went by. Sib kept fast-forwarding, but heard nothing. Maybe it was all a joke. But then just when she was ready to give up, she heard four finger snaps counting off, and then a solo voice, no accompaniment:

  Just a glance my way

  Floods my senses

  Just a sliver of your day Kicks down my fences

  Just the thought of your touch

  It’s all too much

  Every step you take

  Feels like a mile

  My heart can break

  At the crack of your smile

  Just the thought of your touch

  It’s all too much

  It’s a drop it’s a flood

  It’s a stride it’s the tide

  It’s a note it’s three

  It’s a mile-wide melody

  A word you send my way

  Can rend all my seams

  A hint of your someday

  Can mend all my dreams

  It’s all too much

  It’s all too much

  It’s too much love

  The song stayed a cappella all the way through, with just the finger snaps. Sib listened a dozen times. She wasn’t sure that “rend” or “fences” were such great words for a pop song, though she liked the rhyme with “mend.” The snappy, jaunty rhythm could have almost been sister to Doris Troy’s “Just One Look.” Sib recognized the fact that, as in all good pop songs, the music was actually listening to the lyrics. Could her title really have inspired it?

  For now, though, it had to be reduced to the basics, to the things that grabbed Sib the most. The lowish voice dabbing itself on the melody, and the bouncy rhythm. Sib thought it could have been written by a drummer.

  No way, she thought. It couldn’t be. This might really have been the greatest cosmic joke of all.

  Sib got out of bed, taking the Walkman with her, and tiptoed down to Kieran’s room. She didn’t venture in there much, but every time her dad talked of breaking it down, maybe putting some of his things away, Sib always protested. His glove was still on the dresser, along with his grammar-school yearbook, the stereo system he’d gotten for 8th-grade graduation, still on the low shelves next to the bed. Sib opened the door to his closet, dove into the shirts and sports uniforms still on the rack and parted them, wincing at the whiff of a decade of must and mothballs. In the back was the album she’d gotten from the mystery donor the Christmas right after her hearing had returned. She’d put it in Kieran’s closet, shrink-wrap unpunctured, and not looked at it since.

  Now as she considered the solid brown cover, the letters of the group’s logo stenciled in gold, she remembered how she could barely stand to hold it all those years ago, how it sickened her, how it frightened her, as if it were wired and she’d get some shock just touching it. When she picked it up now, the shrink-wrap crumbled a bit under her fingertips.

  She slit the side and pulled out the album. The booklet with the lyrics spilled onto her lap, and when she opened the fold of the cover, there was a picture of the two of them on a bridge somewhere, looking flush, bell-bottoms and bangs on her, very ’70s, sheepish grins on their faces, as if they’d realized they’d pulled something off, gotten away with some kind of cultural heist.

  She slid the shiny, virgin vinyl out of the sleeve and placed it carefully on the turntable that Kieran had barely gotten to use.

  She sat on Kieran’s bed. She didn’t bother to start at the beginning; she went straight to the end of Side 2, to the song that she’d gone out of her way not to hear for more than a dozen years. There was that opening piano riff, tickling her in unpleasant spots. The day, the kitchen table, the bicycle, the booth at Rose’s, the garbage strewn in the gutter on Liberty Avenue, the sight of Kieran flying headfirst toward her bicycle, all of it contained in those first few notes.

  Sib fully expected unbroken misery once the girl started singing, but instead she found herself fascinated, to the point of aural gawking. There was a geeky kind of warmth, depth in a shallow pool. An acquired taste for sure, but now, for the first time, acquirable by Sib.

  And maybe it was the same voice on the tape she’d found at the record store. She listened to the song on the record a few times, then rewound and replayed the tape. They were very similar, in tone, in range, in the slightly halting phrasing, the newer voice on the tape sounding both older and younger, lighter and yet wiser.

  Still, there was something beyond the vocal similarities. Some quality that Sib couldn’t put her finger on. Some music critic you are, she thought. She t
urned off the record player and, Walkman still attached, went back to her room and the drawer in her nightstand. She pulled out the picture of her mother and her family. Her female family.

  Then the word came to her: diapason. Tuning fork. A musical completeness.

  ***

  The late-morning sun coaxed its way through the curtains on Sib’s window, and the warmth on her cheek woke her, the youth newsletter with her review of Thriller next to her on the bed. She uncurled her arms and legs under the Mets comforter and turned to look at the clock. 11:00! She’d slept more than eight hours for the first time since before she could remember.

  When the cobwebs cleared, she pulled open the drawer in the nightstand. There was the tape, just where she’d left it weeks ago. Had she dreamed the whole thing?

  She went down the hall. Kieran’s room. Looking just as it had for years. No warm impression on the bed, no residue of anyone other than a 14-year-old ghost. The record player was covered.

  She pulled on her hoodie and made her way downstairs. It was her father’s day off, and she figured she would find him in the kitchen reading the paper or tinkering with something in the yard. “Dad?” she called. No answer. She saw a bakery bag on the table. “Dad?” All quiet. Maybe Mrs. Donovan had made contact finally.

  She went down the stairs and onto the pavement in her sweats and socks. It was a brilliant, dappling day, cold but invigorating. The outdoor thermometer on the side of the garage said 32 degrees, but it felt warmer, especially in the unshaded parts of the driveway. “Dad?” she called. No one in the yard. As she turned to go in, she caught a glint from the basketball hoop and walked toward it. At the base, she noticed for the first time that the fissures had been filled.

  34. Outside Los Angeles, February 1983