Some Wildflower In My Heart (26 page)

Birdie nodded thoughtfully and, with all the deliberation of a parliamentarian, asked if Wednesday, November 16, would be suitable to our schedules. “Since I help out with the school choir on Mondays and Thursdays,” she said, “and then give a piano lesson every Tuesday and Friday, I guess that leaves just Wednesday for me, unless I switched my schedule around some, which I sure
could
do if we needed to.” True to her promise, Birdie had never spoken of my piano lessons in the presence of Algeria and Francine, and even now she did not break faith either by word or glance.

As it turned out, the lunch menu for November 16 specified hot dogs, tater tots, and fruit cocktail—a meal requiring less time for cleanup than others—and thus the date for Birdie's tea party was set. When Francine suggested that we all ride together in her car, I immediately spoke up. “I will drive my own car.” For Birdie's sake I would undergo the ceremony at her house, but I knew that I could not endure confinement as a passenger in Francine's car. I had seen the backseat of her car littered with pop cans and Hardee's sacks and had witnessed her erratic driving on a number of occasions.

On the appointed day I purposely lagged behind, telling Birdie that I would follow as soon as I cleared my desk and deposited the day's cash in the bank. By shaving ten minutes off the beginning of the party, I reasoned, and perhaps taking my leave before the others at the end, I would fulfill my duty to attend yet spare myself some degree of discomfort, of feeling hedged about and scrutinized at close range.

After my stop at the bank that day, the drive to Birdie's house seemed shorter than usual, most likely because I longed to forestall my arrival. I recall the rich late-autumn blue of the sky above the treetops, as if layered thickly with tempera, and the lingering color of the leaves, though for the most part muted russets by now, as I slowly drove through the streets of Filbert and turned onto Highway 11 toward Birdie's house.

I was well aware of the fact that the familiar route was altered this day by the absence of Birdie herself in the front seat of my car. I had grown so accustomed to her affable chatter every Tuesday and Friday as we drove to her house for my piano lesson that the silence seemed chill and foreboding, thus magnifying my reluctance concerning the tea party. I could muster no interest this afternoon in listening to an audiotape, in spite of the fact that I had recently borrowed from the Derby Public Library a recorded reading of the essays of Virginia Woolf, which I had found most intriguing.

As I passed Shepherd's Valley Cemetery and turned into the narrow driveway leading to Birdie's house, I glanced toward the rows of headstones to my left, thinking as I did so of the blessed serenity afforded by burial plots: no obligations of communal festivity, certainly, but even more enticing, no futile regrets, no corrosive memories. At this very moment Birdie's voice came to mind, for scarcely a week earlier she herself had gazed toward the cemetery and had said in soft, lubricated tones, “It sure is peaceful around here.” Though it seemed to me that such a remark was an invitation to jest, I did not reply. Had Thomas heard her, he would have retorted with a clever, though outworn, quip, “Yessiree, I betcha folks are
just dyin'
to buy a lot next door to you!”

I parked my car behind Francine's maroon Pontiac, the muffler of which I noted appeared to be not only insecurely affixed but also riddled with ragged perforations. Girding myself for the trial of sociability before me, I approached Birdie's front door, which was standing open as if awaiting my arrival. I heard from within a harmonic chord of combined laughter, followed by an exclamation of delight from Birdie.

“Oh, good, here's Margaret! Now we can start!”

She appeared at the screen door, beaming euphorically, and as I entered she crooked her elbow through mine as if we were partners in a square dance and escorted me to the royal blue recliner. Her action must have given rise to the same comparison in Francine's mind, for Francine, who was sitting next to Algeria on the yellow sofa, began to clap her hands and chant, “Swing your lady round and round, do-si-do and promenade!” Though I ignored her, or possibly
because
I ignored her, Francine continued clapping after I was seated and even attempted singing a snatch of “Turkey in the Straw,” off key, of course. Algeria sat stiffly, I noted, glaring at the Nehi Soda sign on the wall above the bookcase. From all appearances she was as ill at ease as I at the thought of a tea party.

Birdie took a small, framed picture from Algeria's lap and brought it over to me. “We were just having ourselves a laugh over my wedding picture,” she said. “See what Mickey did?” The youthful bride in the picture was unmistakably Birdie; though there were notable differences—a slightly fuller face, for instance, and loose, midlength hair in a tumble of curls—the pronounced malocclusion of the front teeth set to rest any question concerning her identity. A similarity struck me upon studying the photo. In her homeliness Birdie resembled a diminutive Eleanor Roosevelt.

In the picture Birdie wore a floor-length white gown as befitting a bride but with no adornment of lace, seed pearls, or the like. It appeared to be made of plain cotton, for it had no sheen. Upon her head was a laurel of entwined ivy and flowers, and in her left hand she clasped what looked to be a small white Bible. The expression upon her face was one of exquisite triumph at having won a prize of great worth. Her
prize
in this case—the man wearing a black suit and standing next to her in the photo, whose dark hair rose above his forehead in a slick crest, whose countenance betokened the same victorious attainment as her own—was holding his right hand aloft in the pose of one taking an oath. Very clearly imprinted across his palm was the message
Help! She Snagged Me!

I made no comment, and Birdie took the picture from me again and set it upon the coffee table. “My husband's a real cutup sometimes,” she said, sitting down on the edge of the other recliner and looking directly at me. “I never know what he's got up his sleeve. I was telling Francine and Algeria that on our honeymoon he just
insisted
that I order the lobster at this seafood restaurant in Mobile. Then he got up to go to the lavatory—I
thought
—but really he went back to the kitchen and talked them into putting a
live
lobster on a plate with one of those fancy silver covers on it. A little later, here came the waiter bringing it out.”

She looked up at the ceiling and laughed with abandon, laying her hands upon her cheeks. “I don't think he expected me to react like I did!” she said at last. “I
screamed
right out loud and threw that lid straight back over my shoulder and pushed my chair back so hard I lost my balance and landed on the floor! The waiter felt just awful, and Mickey did, too, really, except when he jumped up to help me off the floor, he
stepped
on the lobster, which I had knocked clean off the plate, and you could hear its shell
crack
!”

She began fanning her face with both hands, adding, “It was sure a circus there for a while! The lid I had slung landed on somebody else's table and knocked some lady's plate of spaghetti right in her lap. When we finally got settled down again and everything was cleaned up and set straight, Mickey looked at me across the table, and we just burst out laughing. I'm surprised the manager of that restaurant didn't throw us out! There's no telling what all those other people thought about us. And Mickey didn't help any when he stood up and said, ‘You'll have to excuse my wife, folks. This is the first time she's been out in public since they let her out of the asylum.'”

Francine hooted and slapped her knee. “Now
that's
the funniest part of the whole thing! Didn't you just want to choke him?”

Birdie smiled and shook her head. “No, not really. I knew for sure I'd never have to complain about life being boring with Mickey around. And it sure hasn't been one bit boring, not in the whole twenty-eight years.” As if recalling the purpose of our gathering, she stood up. “Well, I better quit talking or we're going to run out of time. Now, does anybody want coffee?”

When Birdie left the room, the three of us sat silently for several moments before Francine said, “She's something else, isn't she?”

“She crazy,” Algeria said. “Any man do that to me, I'd kill 'im.” They both glanced at me as if it were my turn to advance the conversation, but I said nothing. By means of a swift mathematical calculation, it had suddenly struck me that while Birdie Freeman had been good-naturedly contending with the adolescent pranks of her new husband twenty-eight years ago, I had been moving through my days joylessly benumbed, having locked away the blue book in which I had stored the written treasures of Tyndall's short life and having sealed my heart from communion with others.

This line of thought brought to mind an observation recorded in William Styron's lengthy novel
Sophie's Choice
, during which Stingo, the young narrator, pauses to reflect upon the cruel absurdity of
time
, that incomprehensible dimension that can simultaneously accommodate both the sublime and the sordid, the divine and the damnable.

I, too, have pondered this same mystery many times, the most memorable of which occurred in 1966 on the day I returned to my apartment after having left the newly dug grave of my son. By some monstrous coincidence, as I approached the entrance of the building, there exited a woman whom I had never seen and in whose arms was cradled an infant. Behind her, holding the door open for me to enter, a man, her husband presumably, called to her, “Hadn't you better cover up his head, Brenda? Wouldn't want him to catch his death, you know. He's the only one we've got.” Indeed, the same millisecond of time can give birth to acts both poisonous and regenerative, both craven and noble, both trivial and momentous, as well as all gradations between.

Incidentally, although Styron's novel was marred with what I judged to be gratuitous vulgarity and unrealistic excesses of behavior, I felt a powerful kinship with Sophie, especially so when she pointed to her heart and declared, “It has been hurt so much, it has turned to stone.” Furthermore, like myself, Sophie had given up on the idea of God.

A few minutes later Birdie reentered the living room, slowly pushing a serving cart. We all watched her as if stupefied. Perhaps none of us had seen such a cart put to its intended use. I admit that I had not. When she encountered the raised edge of the blue braided rug positioned in front of the recliner in which I sat, causing the tea in the glass pitcher to slosh wildly, Algeria rose to her feet and said, “Wheel's caught. Here, push it back.” When the cart had come to rest in the middle of the room, Birdie laid her hands together, patted them lightly in a series of small circular motions as if flattening a round of dough, and smiled at us all. “All right, ladies,” she said, “I think I have it all here, and if nobody minds, I'll say a blessing on our refreshments and our time together.”

I did not close my eyes but only lowered my gaze. Though I did not look at Birdie, I heard her words clearly and have retained them in my memory since they were uttered, with perhaps minor alterations in phrasing. “My Father, you see us gathered here and you know what's in our hearts and minds. Thank you for this food and thank you for my friends. Thank you for Francine and her sweet, happy way and for Algeria and her big, kind heart and for Margaret—she's such a good, strong leader, Father, and so smart and talented. Please give us all a nice time today and help us to grow closer to each other as we work together this year and to learn to love each other more and more.”

At this point in my text, I must interpolate that Birdie's method of evangelization—it was no secret to me that such was her life's objective—was seductive, whether by design or timidity I knew not. She spun a silvery web of crafty, ingratiating kindnesses in which to catch her prey unawares. No sermons by way of speech, not in the early stages of beguilement, at least, but only strand after sticky strand of ensnaring good works, beautiful and shining, especially to those whose lives were sullied and worn with defeat. I was wary, however, and saw her tricks for what they were. Though gradually and ineluctably she began in the early days of our acquaintance to bore an aperture into my “box,” as she later termed it, I was nevertheless most vigilant. I believe I sensed from the beginning that she would stop at nothing, that roadblocks would only spur her to search for back alleys by which to insinuate herself into the lives of others.

The menu of refreshments on the serving cart was meager, though appealing in both appearance and taste. Birdie first offered to each of us a small crystal plate, a dessert fork, and a white linen luncheon napkin embroidered with clusters of lavender grapes. We all sat mutely, as if the formality of her actions and the accouterments of the tea service had deposited us in a foreign land. She moved about with a sacramental air.

We served ourselves as Birdie circulated among us, proffering each platter of refreshments and keeping up a steady patter of polite talk. First she said, “These little cookies are called cream wafers, and Mickey said to tell you that you
ought
to at least try one because even if they look a little washed out and underdone, they'll just melt in your mouth. But if you don't like them after just one, he said not to worry because he'll eat your share after he gets home from work. They're his favorite cookie of all the ones I've ever made.”

Then, “This is praline candy. I sure hope you all like pecans. That's fine, Francine, take as many as you like, honey. Mickey got the pecans from somebody at church who has trees in his yard but doesn't like to fool with them. Mickey cracks them all for me and shells them so I can put them in the freezer and use them all year. He just got these and shelled them last week, though, so they're not the frozen ones.”