Silent Bird (26 page)

At the pool area, the radio was airing a heated discussion on
futbol
—meaning soccer, of course. Would Montpellier stay “the most sportive city in France” as it had been voted the year before by the French sports daily,
L'Équipe
? Would the local soccer club, Montpellier-Herault SC, keep satisfying its supporters?

Collapsing on a shaded lounge chair near one of the yard exits, I kept my face composed while Madame Courbois served coffee, Carole chatted on a phone extension at the bar, and I waited for my fiancé t
o get out of the damn shower. Thank goodness the two Courbois men and Benoit and Thérèse kept themselves far away. I had no idea where they were or what they were doing and didn’t want to know. I only hoped that Jeannot would materialize before the rest of the gang did.

“
Excuse me, I was just checking on my dog,” Carole said after she hung up.

“
She has a cocker spaniel,” Henri explained. His smile was not creepy, I was relieved to note, just a little too bright, like he’d lost control of it. “Name is
Miaou
.”

“
Miaou
?” I repeated blankly.

Carole said,
“You know the sound that cats make?
Miaou
. This is what we have named our dog.”

Oh.
Right. In France, even the cats speak French. And pigs say “
groin, groin
” rather than “
oink, oink
.” Go figure.

“Because our dog thinks she is
a cat,” Henri said with a laugh. “She plays with the neighborhood cats like it is the joy of her life.”

Carole
helped herself to some grapes from a bowl. A bottle of the Courbois wine stood next to it. She said, “You see, my neighbor Janine is always spoiling
Miaou
with leftovers. She has three cats herself. But she is bringing the
petit monstre
back now so you will get to meet my little ‘cat.’ We have another treat for her in the kitchen, yes, Henri?”

Carole had spoken so fast I was
n’t sure I followed. Who had a treat, Janine or the dog? And was there a real cat in the story somewhere? I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if Janine was the “little monster.”

Suddenly I fe
lt very, very tired. All I wanted to do was grab Jeannot and go home. Then I heard a new noise. Doggy toenails skittering on concrete, and a shiny cocker spaniel decked out in bright red ribbon tore onto the deck yipping and skidding into a circle before scrabbling inside the house again. Carole laughed and got up to follow.

I kept drinking my coffee and composing my face like my life depended on it.
So the dog was real, at least. Not much else seemed to be. I didn’t feel real myself.

“
Would you like more coffee?” Carole asked when she returned, dog trotting behind. The dog had something in its mouth. Something orange.

Curious, I leaned closer.
It was some kind of...foot. A clawed orange foot.

Finally the light came on.
This was
Miaou’s
treat. A dismembered chicken foot. With wagging tail, the dog dropped its treat at
my
foot. Everyone laughed except me. I rose, ready to find the bathroom myself, when he appeared at the patio doors.

“
Pilar,” he said, voice surprised but pleased. He didn’t glance around, didn’t try to find Thérèse. He looked only at me. “You came!”

I’d never been so happy to see anybody in my life.

I kissed Jeannot
hello in front of everyone: family, dog, chicken foot, and God, if He felt like watching. And Jeannot smelled yummy again: like chlorine and sunshine instead of cough medicine. Though he was still pale and vaguely rumpled, he looked great, too. Yes, he wore one of those embarrassing Speedos. But he looked hot.

“
I cannot believe you are here,” he said, lips grazing my cheek. “How…?”

“Monique’s car—and
we need to talk,” I said. “Now, please. Could we take a walk and look at the vines?”

“You are interested in
vines? Yes, of course, let’s go.”

He tol
d his family what we were doing and didn’t seem to notice their various expressions. And I couldn’t help noticing that this had been the problem all along: Jeannot Courbois was simply too nice, too well-meaning, and too damn oblivious to see what took place right under his nose.

Like Mom
, a voice in my head whispered.

We left the backyard through a low wooden gate and entered one of the
furrowed rows. My mouth felt drier than the air. I planted both feet on the hard earth, stared into the golden light, and said, “First, your family.”

Jeannot
turned to me, perplexed. “What about my family?”

There was no nice way to say this.
No nice, civilized way to break someone’s heart. “I don’t want you to move back to this village, Jeannot. Please. I don’t want you to work alongside your father. I can’t let you be here and do this.”

He frowned.

“Because…I don’t trust them,” I said.
An understatement.

His frown deepened. “But you do not know them—”

“I know them better than you think! Your father is a…bigot. I’m sorry, but it’s true. And your uncle is, if anything, worse.”

“
Stop
.” It was a command. Kind of like “
Shut up
.”

I disobeyed.

“
Your father
grabbed my arm,
Jeannot.”

“He…what?”

“And he said terrible things, not fifteen minutes ago.”

Jeannot winced, eyes still unconvinced.

“Your uncle…I don’t know what bothers him more. That I’m foreign or that I caught his son harassing the little girl who ended up on TV—and got a picture of it.”

He snorted: an angry sound.

“That again? Pilar, what makes you say these things; and obsess about this girl? What makes you think you know about my family? You barely understand French!”

That stung. “I understand enough,” I said.

“Then what about me? Do you think I am terrible, too? I am part of this family!”

Gazing at
his face, I recognized the kind of bewildered pain that I’ve known myself. But I stood my ground. I had to. On that warm day in the South of France, I didn’t bow my head to avoid what was ugly. I didn’t turn away.

“Of course I don’t think you’re terrible. And I know you love your father, your uncle…your cousin. But loving someone doesn’t always mean you…
know
them. People…aren’t always what they seem. Please. Listen to me.
I know
. Sometimes they aren’t anything like what you think, or want, or have a right to expect. They have secret selves—”

“
I don’t understand you! What are you saying now?” Jeannot kicked the dirt, his hair golden in the sun, his back straight and tall. When he turned back again, his chocolate-brown eyes looked bewildered and frightened.

“I’m sorry.
I’m so, so sorry to hurt you.”

“I love you, Pilar.
You know that. But what gives you the right to say these things? To try to break up my family when you barely know them?”

In Jeannot’s words I heard the echo of my father’s
:
We don’t want to break up the family.

But sometimes
a family needs to break up!

“I have a reason,” I said. “
It’s a long story. And I want to tell it to you. I trust you enough to do that.”

“Well then, please, do.
Tell me the big secret that will explain everything!”

My hear
t sank at his tone. Then I thought of Monique as dignified as a queen as she climbed those dingy stairs to her husband's girlfriend's apartment. Monique speaking to her husband clearly, honestly, without a shred of self-pity. I thought of how firmly she believed in love despite losing it. She would support me telling the truth in the privacy of these vines. She would say, “Pilar, you haven’t to be afraid; it's not beautiful!”

Children’
s stories don’t need false endings.

I stared off across the vineyard, at the rows of grapes converging on an unseen horizon. “
You’ve noticed that many times I don’t want to make love.”

I felt his startled attention, the question in his head:
What does this have to do with my family?

“This problem is:
I feel love for you,” I said. “Adoration, attraction…I
want
to want you. And I want you to want me. But to me sex is just...a tool, I think.”

“
A tool,” he repeated. “You said something like this already. But not what in the world it means.”

“
I have never been able to stay in a relationship, Jeannot. You and I were doing so well…before you asked me to marry you. You wanted me to stay here in France and meet your family. And so everything became…difficult.”

“Because of my family? I still do not
understand.”

I cast around
for a better way. I looked at the parched earth, the patches of brown and green, the pale sunlight. But the answer wasn’t there.

It was inside me.

“
I’ve never desired relations exactly….not even with you. Though I love being close to you. I know this doesn’t make sense.”

Jeannot did
n’t speak.

“
I promise: the problem is
not
you. I know that’s hard to believe. I don’t like...pressure. Pressure to make love.”

I
glimpsed moisture on his cheek.
Oh, Jeannot
, I told him silently.
Don’t
.
This is hard enough
.

If it is a silent bird, God will help him...

I made myself speak directly into Jeannot's eyes—and it felt right. It felt right.

“
My father sexually abused me for a long, long time. For years, from the time I was a child until I was an adult. And in all that time I never said ‘no' to him—not even once. Which makes me just as guilty as him, don’t you think?”

“
Where’s my new Grandma?” I asked Daddy as I stared through the railing of the boat toward the cloudy shoreline of his island.

I couldn’t see much green. I only saw clouds and fog and gray water and little drops of rain on my arm. But
I couldn’t wait to get there already. I couldn’t wait to meet another kind old lady in sweaters that smelled like mothballs.

“
She’s right there, love,” he said in a suddenly hushed voice, as if we’d entered a synagogue.

And he pointed.

A tall, thin woman waved to us from the docks. She wasn’t smiling, though. She didn’t even have a human shape. She looked like a giant pencil wrapped in scarves.

Our boat moved closer, slowly, groaning like a ghost attacking the rocks. After a long time of waiting and sitting and jumping and waiting some more, we were finally here.
Daddy scooped me up along with my pink suitcase and Rabbit, lifting us all into the air so my feet dangled like puppets.

“
Sweetheart, this is my mother, your grandmother,” he said, linking our hands.

“
My name is Pilar,” I said to the lady. “It’s a Spanish name, but you don’t have to say it that way. He doesn’t either.”

“
Mum,” Daddy said and nudged past me to throw his arms around her.

They stayed there a long time while I waited, hopped on one foot, and played with the handle on my suitcase.

“I can’t believe you are here,” the lady told him. She had a strange accent, like her words were crackers she had to eat.

When I laughed, s
he looked at me.

“
How do you do, young lady. Welcome to Sark. You may call me Grandmother Russell...or Grandmother.”

She held out her hand
again, so I let go of my suitcase. Her fingers felt loose, worse than before, like frozen fish fingers falling out of the box. This grandmother didn’t look like the type to make trees out of Play-Doh…but you never knew. As Mama said, be nice and grown-ups will be nicer back.

I looked around me with interest.

The land
was still foggy but green now too. Everything smelled like sardines and wood. And just like Daddy always said, there were real carriages and horses on the road, not cars. I loved ponies. I even knew how to lift my bottom off the seat when the animal began to run. But I had never used a horse like a station wagon.

“
See? This is how we get around on Sark,” Daddy said.

“
I want to sit in front,” I cried, and held up my arms to be raised into the buggy.

Grandmother Russell’s house was
the color of roses. And it was really, really tall, with lots of balconies. I told the animals I’d see them later and jumped up and down on the bright green lawn, swinging my suitcase in circles. I pointed at the clean white shutters and teepee roof then ran to the huge, open porch to try the rocking chair.

“
Look, Daddy, like in
Lady and the Tramp
!”

“
That’s enough silliness,” Grandmother said from the doorway. “Come inside before you catch your death.”

We went through a long hallway into a big shiny living room so the grownups could talk.
Daddy’s jacket was un-zippered but he kept running the zipper up and down again without making it stop anywhere. And Grandmother sat with her arms like sticks at her side and made small unhappy noises.

I yawned.

She was saying something about fingerprints on wall
s when I reached out a dirty hand to tug on my father’s jacket. “Come on, Daddy, let’s go see my room!”

It was on the third floor, as high as the clouds chasing each other across the sky.

I hung onto the windowsill for so long looking at the view that I didn’t notice at first that Daddy had left me alone with the lady who didn’t like fingerprints or silliness.

“
We’ll get along just fine,” Grandmother Russell said. “Just keep your toys put away and don’t make noise.” She stopped, staring down her nose. “Your father must want you very much or he wouldn’t have brought you all this way.”

“
I know,” I said. “I’m his best present.”

Grandmother frowned.
“Yes, well, he’s worse than a child sometimes.”

S
he left the room.

All alone, I bounced a few times on my new bed.
It was neatly made, with a real canopy in yellow, my other favorite color. The wallpaper also had yellow in it and showed children in dresses and suits picking flowers. In the corner a white wooden toy box waited, lid open. I decided Rabbit would stay out of the toy box all the time and sleep with me in the big bed. Whether Grandmother liked it or not.