The Man Who Loved Birds (21 page)

“I know what you mean. I have awakened in the night to precisely that same thought about my parents. It is always the
chotolok
who get caught up.”

“What’s that?”

“My people make a distinction between the
bhadralok
—the big people who choose and shape their lives—and the
chotolok
, the little people whose lives are a matter of yielding and accepting what is given to them. The
chotolok
suffer most.”

“You pay attention to that, Matthew Mark,” Rosalee said. “You be grateful you live someplace where they aint forced a mother’s son to go to war in a long time.”

“There’s the war on drugs,” Matthew Mark said. “Daddy talks about it all the time.”

“Well, that aint the same. Here, you go dump these peelings in the compost heap, I expect that dough has chilled long enough.”
Matthew Mark took the heaping bucket and ran across the road. “That child,” Rosalee said, more to herself than aloud. “He’s a skiff of a boy for certain, but he’s got his daddy’s smart mouth.” She hauled herself to her feet. “Let’s get ourselves inside.”

Rosalee took the dough from the refrigerator. With her palm she fanned flour across the countertop and placed the dough in the middle. Matthew Mark brought the emptied peelings bucket inside, banging it with his hand. “Hush that racket, we’re almost done. You sit and be quiet or you won’t be sitting there atall.” Rosalee rolled up her sleeves.

Meena stepped to her side to watch, to see a blue-black bruise on Rosalee’s arm. “Rosalee—how did you injure yourself?”

Rosalee sprinkled flour over the ball of dough and cut it in uneven halves, setting the smaller half aside, then covering the larger half for a long minute with her hands. “You chill it so as to keep it smooth but it’s easier to work with if you warm it up a little before you roll it out. You want to be gentle with it. Worst thing for pie dough is to handle it too much. Makes it tough. I just bumped myself on the kitchen counter, being stupid and clumsy as usual. You bruise easier when you get older but you know that. I hadn’t expected it to begin so early, is all.” She took up an empty whiskey bottle that she had brought from her house. “I caint keep a rolling pin in the house but these work just as good.” She coated it in flour, then set about rolling the dough into an even circle.

“When did this happen—I mean, when did you strike your arm against the counter?”

“Oh, sometime today. Or yesterday, I don’t pay attention to little things like that.”

Matthew Mark sat still as a small creature caught far from shelter, watching and listening and making himself invisible so as to avoid being made to leave, and everything was washed in evening color and summer light.

Rosalee took up a dinner knife and with a flip of the wrist carved a circle from the rolled-out dough. She laid the dough in
the pie pan and sprinkled it with flour, then gathered the scraps into a second ball and returned it to the refrigerator. “Here, Matthew Mark, you break those eggs, your daddy don’t need to know you had your finger in the pie. You watch him now, he’s good,” and Matthew Mark jumped up. He took an egg in each hand and broke them one on each side of the bowl’s brim. With a shy grin he held out both hands to Meena, a perfectly halved shell in each. “He taught hisself that trick,” Rosalee said. “Lord knows I caint do it.” She brushed the pie shell with egg white, then beat the eggs with sugar and a little flour. Then she filled the pie shell with sliced peaches, poured the thickener over them, dotted them with butter, and sprinkled the whole with cinnamon.

“Now for the hard part,” she said. She took the second ball of dough and rolled it out. Taking up the knife she cut the dough into strips, then set about weaving them into a lattice. “I guess you got to figure that the world belongs to the big people,” she said as her hands moved back and forth across the pie, “and those of us that never made much of ourselves got to sit back and keep our heads down and the best thing we can hope for is for nobody to notice. I do wonder sometimes, though, what it would be like to make something of yourself.”

“You made something of yourself, Mamma. You made a pie.”

“Oh, a pie. Any old fool can make a pie.” Rosalee pieced the last strips of dough together into one long strip, which she attached to the pie rim with wetted fingers, crimping and fluting with her right hand as she turned the pie with her left. She sprinkled the finished lattice with sugar. “OK, now. I’ll scoot this over to my house. Matthew Mark? Your job is tell me when it’s been exactly one half hour, because that’s when I’ll need to start thinking about getting back over there to check on the pie.”

Alone with Matthew Mark. He had pushed the four-wheeled oak chair from the office into the kitchen and was rolling it back and forth, back and forth as Meena wiped the counter and washed the bowls. After a moment he stopped his chair at her elbow. “She didn’t bump her arm against the counter.”

“I know that.”

“Then you can make my daddy stop hurting her.”

Meena dried her hands on a dish towel and crouched to face him. “I would like to do that, Matthew Mark. But your mother must have her reasons for telling us what she did. I have to respect those reasons even if I cannot understand them.”

“You’re all just afraid. You’re all just afraid of my daddy.”

She stood and turned back to the dishes. “You will grow up and then you will understand,” she said, because it was the only thing she could think to say.

Rosalee returned and they sat outside in the twilight and finished peeling and slicing the peaches. Matthew Mark pulled his chair to sit beside Rosalee. First he laid his head on her arm, then, when she turned to dump sliced peaches from the pan into the kettle, he slipped his head into her lap. Rosalee placed her hand on Matthew Mark’s towhead, shut her eyes, and sang in a low, tender voice.

Slumber, my darling, the birds are at rest,

Wandering dews by the flowers are caressed,

Slumber, my darling, I’ll wrap thee up warm,

And pray that the angels will shield thee from harm.

“What a lovely lullaby,” Meena said. “Once all I wanted was to have a child.”

“I’ll be darned. What makes you think you’re too old to have one now?”

“The world has too many children. That is our greatest problem and challenge. And I have other priorities. To begin with I have no security in this country.”

“I tell you what. I’ll light a candle to the Virgin for you to get yourself a baby.”

Meena smiled. “That is sweet of you but my reasons are not entirely political. I am unable to bear a child.”

A pause. “Well, I swan, aint that a shame. You’re certain about that? I guess you would be, being a doctor and all. All the more reason to light a candle.”

“I suggest we place our faith in more
scientific
means. I am grateful that I am childless. If I had given birth to a child, I would still be in India. All the same, I thank you for your concern. You will light your candle and I will bear a child. A miracle child, like Krishna born of Devaki. And then you can teach me your lovely song.”

Rosalee shifted Matthew Mark’s head in her lap. “I aint never met anybody from another country, I don’t think, except maybe the Mexicans who come to work tobacco.”

Meena filled her bowl with peaches. “I love walking in the woods in the evening light. As a child I knew nothing like it. The sun rose, then it set—it was light, then it was dark. Here the light lasts and lasts and everything changing all the while.”

“You been walking in the woods? Alone?”

Meena busied herself cutting away holes the birds had pecked. “I walk to the statues at the monastery, but not usually alone, no. Often I have Mr. Johnny Faye for company.” She stole a glance at Rosalee’s face—a blank page. “Oh, I can imagine what you are thinking but he’s just—a
character
.”

Rosalee kept her eyes on her quick-cutting knife. “He’s more than a character, he’s a, a—force of nature. Johnny Faye—he’s like your Shivo. Dangerous, in a skinny lawbreaking kind of way. You watch out.”

“Oh, Johnny Faye wouldn’t hurt a fly. You should see him with the birds. He could talk one off its nest.”

“It’s not
him
I’m telling you to watch out for. I know what I’m talking about.” A loud
burrrr
sounded in a nearby tree. “The first katydid of the summer. I hate that sound. You hear one of those, winter caint be far behind. I think a lot about that story you told about the woman who rides the lion. I liked that story—you don’t hear stories like that around here, where the woman comes out
on top. You got to ask yourself—why would a smart woman like Durga take up with a rounder like Shivo in the first place?”

“I’ve never thought about that. Durga marries Shiva, we take that for granted.”

“Well, there aint nothing you can take for granted. I hope your Durga was in love with the man. I hope she had that much.”

“Were you in love when you married?”

A shadow on Rosalee’s face, a cloud drifting across a summer-blue sky. “No way. I knowed it was a mistake from the first but I went ahead, I was young and dumb and had got myself in a rough patch. Seemed like he would be my security, him with the police and all. That might have been when I learned about the little voice.”

“What little voice?”

“The little voice that tells you what to do. Least, it does for me. It always tells me what I ought to do. Problem I have is paying attention. I can always find some reason not to pay attention. Johnny Faye—he’s a summertime lake.”

Meena smiled. “Yes, lovely. Though I might have said a river.”

Rosalee tightened her lips and raised her eyes to Meena’s. “You can drown in a river just as easy, maybe easier than in a lake. I know, I come close. If I’d had the money—” She turned back to her peaches. “That’s enough of that.”

Meena dumped her sliced peaches into the kettle and sat her bowl on the ground and leaned forward. “Would you mind if I shared a bit of news? I have no one else to tell and
a good story wants to be told
. Mr. Johnny Faye is just an—
amusement
. A companion for a forest walk. I have a real suitor. I have been asked for—a
date
. Thirty-three years old and I have never had a date. In my country this was not how we accomplished such matters—there the family arranges everything. I am so—nervous.”

“And who might be your beau?”

Meena spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. “Mr. Vetch, the county attorney.”

“Hunh. No surprise. What I’m wondering is what you see in him.”

“Mr. Vetch organized the benefit to buy equipment for my office. He’s well-connected and prosperous and he’s an attorney.” Meena smiled. “One cannot help but find some attraction in a law degree. Even a doctor can dream, yes? It makes so much sense.”

They finished the peaches in silence. After the last peach Rosalee put her knife in her bowl and set it atop the kettleful of sliced peaches. “I really hate to go home. Peaceful here and safe. I expect that’s why Matthew Mark comes over so much. Can’t blame him. I’d do the same if I wasn’t married.”

“You may come over any time. Night or day.”

“That’s awful kind of you but I’m a married woman and I got my responsibilities. For better or worse I said it out loud with my hand on the Bible. And I wouldn’t mind so much but I feel like I’m missing something important.”

“You have Matthew Mark.”

“Thanks be to you and I thank God for him. But that’s not the same. You know that.”

“I do know that.”

Rosalee shook Matthew Mark’s shoulder. “Come on, now, sugar, you’re too heavy for your mamma to go lugging you around like she used to and we got to get that pie out of the oven before it burns up.” She gave Meena an apologetic look. “I guess you’ll have to wait til tomorrow morning for your pie. I’d ask you over but my husband will be home any time now and he’s not much one for company.”

“I shall look forward to my pie,” Meena said. “And in any case I took my pleasure from watching you and Matthew Mark put it together.”

After she left Meena sat alone on the darkening patio until the katydids fell silent.

And now he came to mind at times not of her choosing. She would be talking to a patient when in an instant Johnny Faye would be so
present to her that she had to excuse herself to collect her thoughts so as to drive him as far from them as possible, as if she were a ruminant cow and he a pesky fly. Not a happy feeling, not at all, a disease in its own right, if only she knew a pill that could make it go away and give her back her calm and untroubled indifference to the world. In her native country wise women understood this. The family would take charge of a woman suffering from this disease and isolate her until she had recovered. She would be kept at home and fed well and tenderly ignored until enough time had passed and she had regained her good sense.

Once Meena had been a lake, now she was a restless river.

Enough of this and she resorted to reading novels, in whose pages she had always found solace, an entrance to a dreamland that was not
her
dreamland. She took up this book or that and every fabricated tree and table called forth his ropy veined arms, the moles across his
broad shoulders
. What was going on? She must be lonelier than she had ever been, in a life filled with times and journeys alone. This was nothing but obsession, a trick of the hormones, a flaw in the logic. And still he was there. Something sweet.

Meena was following Johnny Faye from the statues to the Rock House.

“Careful of the poison ivy.” He pointed with his stick. “I can knock down spider webs and scare away snakes but you got to watch out for poison ivy on your own.”

“As a child I played in jungles inhabited by leopards and crocodiles. I am capable of watching out for myself, thank you.”

“Suit yourself.” They continued down the path. “If this was winter I could show you a sight. There’s a holly tree on the edge of a creek, ever year loaded with berries and ever year this flock of cedar waxwings comes through and shows up right when the holly berries have froze and thawed and set to fermenting and then the day comes, they figure it out ever year, and you’ll see that tree covered with those little guys duded up in their party clothes, ever limb with a cedar waxwing on it like they’ve come together for a big party and all sitting on that green tree with the bright red berries like they was posing for a Christmas card. And then what do they do but eat the berries for the buzz, you know, for the alcohol from the fermenting. They get so drunk I seen them fall to the ground and wobble around like they been swilling whiskey. There’s a red fox come ever year and hangs out at the bottom of that tree waiting for Christmas dinner to fall into his lap. Prettiest drunks you’ll ever see too, look like they put on a hat and coat
just to go out on the town and get plastered. Not that they’re the first to do that.”