The Company We Keep

by Frances Itani

  “Bannen,” Chiyo prompted.

  “Yes, that’s him. Ian Bannen as Grandfather George made me laugh out loud, every scene he was in. But you know, at the end of the film—after taking it all in—I, too, just wanted to sit there in the theatre. For a long time. Let those years wash through memory.”

  Chiyo was still thinking of her mother. Small. Helpless. But the image of the brown bandage, the knot at the side of her head—the death knot—slipped in and replaced the earlier image. Now it refused to let go.

  “All of these,” said Allam, “are good stories to hear. The stories we tell about our lives. And the lives of the ones who are gone. Everything changes when we lose someone. But we—the ones who are left—we have to choose life.”

  Cass came into the backroom to see if anyone wanted a refill, and Hazzley stood with glass in hand. Tom pushed back his chair. The mood shifted. Everyone decided to take a break.

  As Gwen rose, a single grey hair loosed itself from among her ginger highlights and rested on the shoulder of her black turtleneck—unnoticed by everyone except Allam and Chiyo. Allam leaned forward and delicately removed the hair, flicking it away. Gwen made no acknowledgement, but looked up at him briefly.

  Cass turned back at this moment and happened to see the expression on Gwen’s face.

  An exchange.

  I predict, Cass thought. She carried on into the café.

  What Chiyo saw was an exquisite and delicate move. Approach, step up and grasp, she said to herself. An intimate but silent act. Two wounded people advance in very small steps.

  Wall at Your Back

  GWEN

  The moment she entered, she heard scrabbling, followed by sudden silence. Perhaps not terrified silence, not this time, though she wondered if she was intuiting correctly. She shut the door, aware of her presence filling the space. She heard no further movement until she walked into the family room. She turned off the radio, which she’d left on during her previous visit. Rico hopped to the front of his cage, stared, dipped his head down, up again, down.

  Progress indeed.

  Maybe this was the day to let him out into the room, but how? Cecilia Grand had provided no details. Gwen went back to the instruction sheet in the kitchen to ensure that nothing had been missed.

  After several days—and only if you feel confident enough—let him out of the cage for brief periods.

  She decided to get to it. She would let him out, clean the cage, change the water while he was strutting to the tune of freedom.

  She walked slowly, talked slowly, opened the cage door with as little noise as possible. No fuss, no hullabaloo.

  Nothing happened. She took six steps back, until she was halfway across the room. No sudden gestures; nothing to startle. Now she stood entirely still.

  Rico observed every one of these actions. He dropped to the floor of his cage. He regarded her with interest, and then looked away. He hopped onto one of the lower perches and pecked listlessly at a puzzle-toy that was no longer a challenge. Crumpled paper, the half shell of a coconut, a set of interlinked plastic cups to turn. He’d already turned the cups, found and extracted the cashew in the deepest labyrinth. She’d have to hang something new, insert a fresh treat.

  “Are you coming out, Rico?”

  No sign.

  An idea came to her. She stretched out both arms to the side, shoulder level. He made a sudden move. So sudden, she was taken by surprise. She lost her balance and rocked back on her heels. He was already perched on her lower arm; she felt his toes take hold as they gripped her right sleeve. Opposable digits. Two toes forward, two toes back.

  He needed a place to land, and she had provided one.

  She couldn’t stand in the middle of the room all day. She had to prepare his chop and clean the cage. She walked slowly and deliberately in the direction of the kitchen. While moving forward, she lowered her arm and crooked it slightly, broken-wing position. Here I am, she thought. With an unlikely passenger, a parrot with a crimson tail, coming along for the ride.

  In the kitchen, she sat on a chair and rested her right arm on the table. Rico worked his way sideways along her ulna/radius and stepped onto the back of her hand. The sensation of parrot feet. Soft cool pads on her skin. One of the notes on the back page of the instruction sheet read: Rico is on his feet 24/7; feet never at rest. If a tender spot breaks down, bacteria could enter. To prevent bumblefoot, hygienic practices must be followed, especially wiping perches.

  Bumblefoot! That was all she needed.

  “Don’t start getting bumblefoot,” she said. “I am not going to be responsible for that.”

  Rico glanced at her as if imparting a casual message, and then moved from hand to tabletop. Once there, he began to investigate. A pad of paper lay on the table, along with a ballpoint pen. He bent forward and grasped the pen in his beak. With natural ease, he tilted the tip of the pen toward the page. For a moment, he looked as if he intended to write a note outlining his needs. The ones she wasn’t satisfying, no doubt.

  Fine. Let him make his list. She got up and turned her attention to preparing fresh chop. Later, she would figure out some sort of roosting place where he could land when he left the cage.

  She set a container of water on the floor, and he dropped the ballpoint and hopped down to drink. He was entirely at ease in the kitchen. When the Grands were home, he was probably in this room with Cecilia much of the day. Pooping every ten or fifteen minutes, which is what he seemed to do. She bent forward and wiped up.

  “Look at me, Rico. I’m a birdkeeper. Who would have thought? Today you’ll have beets and carrots in your chop. And bok choy and radish and turnip and herbs. You’ll even have cherries—no pits. How about that for a treat? Along with all those supplements you get in your pellets.”

  Rico did look at her. She wondered what he saw.

  “I’m sorry your family hasn’t come home. Maybe they’ll never come home. I guess I shouldn’t say that. You need your family. I need mine. I have two grandchildren I rarely see. Girls. They live in Texas. Maybe I can convince my boys to start bringing them for visits. Maybe I’ll fly to Texas to visit them.”

  Rico was behaving in a more friendly manner now. She could intuit the difference, intuit the bird. She was beginning to believe she could read his mind, his tiny brain. Or was it his behaviour she was reading?

  She managed the chores efficiently; she could be quick now that she had a better grasp of what she was supposed to do. She had also noticed a large jade plant in the bay window at the end of the kitchen, and she decided she’d better do something about that. Cecilia Grand had made no mention of caring for the jade. There was no other plant in sight. The jade was spindly, rooted in a large clay pot. At that moment, a wide beam of sun shone through the window and illuminated one side of the plant, ennobling it somehow. Yes, it took on a noble look, and in that instant, Gwen saw its beauty. She poured a measure of water to the dry cracked soil, and with that nurturing gesture, she took on the care of the jade.

  Rico continued to wander around the floor of the kitchen, poking his beak into corners. She brought out her sheets of paper, her mother’s manuscript, and sat at the table again.

  “Listen up, Rico. I’m back to Layamon. You like to listen; I know you do. Where else can such beautiful language be found? I’ve already told you about my mother writing this paper long ago. She was a clever woman. She was curious about the vicissitudes of history. Someday, Rico, I’m going to travel to a rocky, windy place in Cornwall called Tintagel Castle, in the land of King Arthur. My mother never got there, but I will. Yes, I will.”

  Rico’s head pivoted at what appeared to be an awkward angle. He looked toward the ceiling and feigned indifference.

  She realized, after telling Rico about Tintagel, that she did, in fact, have the money to go there. The money Brigg had been hoarding was now hers, and she could do with it what she liked.

  “Okay, Rico, I’ve just made a decision—a big decision in your presence. Now let’s g
et to it. In this passage, King Arthur is battling the treacherous Mordred. I don’t think you’ll be bored. Think of the heaviness of all that armour. The knights were doomed before they stepped into it. Or however they dressed. Maybe somebody fastened it onto them, or over them, in sections.”

  She began to read: “They encountered . . . and smote on the helms. Fire outsprang. Spears splintered. Shields gan shiver. Brave Arthur saw knights in their armour, drowned in the water as steel fishes, their scales like gold-dyed shields. Shafts brake in pieces. Heads were split . . . the sword at the teeth stopt.”

  Gwen was not a violent woman. She thought about the words “sword at the teeth stopt” and admitted that in the past, she had imagined, had considered violence. She’d imagined violence being done to her, and she’d imagined herself committing violence. But that was before, when Brigg was alive. The interminable days and nights during which she’d been fragile, close to the edge where he had pushed her. She would have—if someone had placed a sword in her hand—she would have liked to smite Brigg through his skull until the sword at his teeth stopt.

  She shuddered. Let the man rest in peace. She didn’t want to think of him again. Ever. But thoughts had a way of returning, whether you willed them away or not.

  “‘Smite’ is a glorious word,” she said to Rico. “Think of the act of smiting. Woodcutters, for instance, in fairy tales. Woodcutters were always poor, honest and helpful. Witches were wicked, woodcutters kind. I’ve always thought of woodcutters as having immensely satisfying work. If a woodcutter has an enemy, he has only to imagine a face on a block of wood and split it down the middle. All part of life, Rico. A giant soap opera is what it is, even for kind woodcutters, I expect.”

  Rico, unenthused, wandered away, two dark smears of droppings on the floor in his wake. If Gwen were asked to describe the colour, she’d say green-black. He will not soil his food; he will not soil his water. He soiled the floor instead. And the colour had been consistent since the first week of parrot sitting, so she must be doing something right.

  She followed him into the family room and watched as he easily flew into his cage and stared out at her through the bars. The positioning of the cage was necessary for Rico’s safety, for his feeling of safety. A parrot will never rest properly in a round cage. He needs security, a wall at his back.

  “Got it,” she said. She fastened the cage door. “You’ve had enough of the kitchen, enough of King Arthur, enough of open spaces, enough of life as a soap.”

  He cocked his head to the left, his preferred posture, stayed like that for a moment and said, in a calm, quizzical voice, “Whatsamattah?”

  These were the first meaningful words she’d heard from him since the day he’d called out, “Save me!”

  Now he was on a roll. He straightened his head and ordered, in a deeply low male voice, “Pick it up.” He made beeping sounds as if punching keys on a speakerphone, and then, in her voice, in Gwen’s own speaking voice, he said, “Hello,” and added a word that sounded, in a different octave, like “smite.”

  “You—are—astonishing—Rico!”

  He puffed his throat and replied with a series of clicks and whirrs as if in perpetual dial mode, this time on an old-fashioned rotary phone.

  He began to eat the chop, paying her no attention. As for Gwen, she experienced the short-lived satisfaction of believing she had done something well.

  November

  Remember, Remember

  HAZZLEY

  Monday morning, her birthday, Hazzley looked out at giant flakes of falling snow, a scene of luxuriant beauty. She began to strip the bed while thinking of Guy Fawkes.

  Remember, remember!

  The fifth of November.

  She could almost hear the chant in the street, the shrill and deliberate voices of children calling out, “Penny for the Guy?” No fireworks, no bonfires during the war years, when she was a child, but she recalled in detail the excitement of 1945. That year, her fifth birthday coincided with her father’s returning home after the end of the war, a war he did not discuss. Ever.

  He’d been home a couple of weeks, weary but in good spirits, assuring her that a bonfire and fireworks—her first Guy Fawkes celebration—would be held especially for her birthday. She had already tagged after a few of the local boys, up and down neighbourhood streets, while they wheeled the Guy in a broken-down pram, begging for a penny. Her family had helped with rag-and-straw stuffing and contributed a pair of oversized trousers. The boys painted the Guy’s face on a stuffed paper bag that served as head. Someone’s grandfather proffered a worn fedora and a pair of holey socks. Another donated scuffed boots. Hazzley’s father, at the boys’ invitation, added the final touches: a buffoonish Hitler moustache drawn with charcoal under the Guy’s large nose, and a puny and distorted swastika on each cheek. And then, the event itself, a long procession of flaming torches through the blackest of nights.

  In an open space that backed onto a row of bombed-out flats and amid great cheers, the effigy burned atop a pyramid of wood scraps, boxes, crates, old mattresses and broken furniture. For days, the people in the surrounding area had been tossing these onto the growing heap. When Hazzley thought of it now, she realized that the pile must have been fifteen or twenty feet high, the blazing fire even higher, flames shooting straight up into the night air. A memorable birthday, yes.

  After the fire was lit, after potatoes were thrown into coals around the edges, the fireworks that had been purchased with “pennies for the Guy” were set off. Empty milk bottles had been lined up to hold rockets; Catherine wheels were tacked in place; there were Roman candles, bangers and squibs. Ah, it was all so much fun. Especially the Catherine wheels, spinning in a frenzy at the end. Sometimes an occasional wheel disappointed and fizzled out, but that still wasn’t quite the end because the potatoes, now black and charred lumps, were prodded from the coals with gloved hands and peeled—a mess of dirty potato skin and ash, to be eaten with enormous pleasure. Of course, Guy Fawkes Day and the bonfires went on year after year, but Hazzley’s first was the standout memory, never to be repeated in quite the same way.

  FROM THE SECOND-STOREY WINDOW, she saw that the falling snow was now caught in an updraft, as if released from earth rather than sky. Surely this small storm wouldn’t amount to much so early in November.

  Having thought of Guy Fawkes in postwar London, she remembered a partially gutted building not far from her childhood home, a three-storey affair that had been hit by a German bomb. Any surviving occupants had been moved, the remains of the building condemned and cordoned off. But this did not stop her and one of her pals, a girl named Dorothy, from squeezing through a barricade at the rear. After crawling through a shattered window and climbing unstable stairs to get to the top floor—steps missing or swinging from a single nail—she and Dorothy created their own secret space within a ruined kitchen. Here, inside a cupboard that still had doors, they stored their prized finds: a tortoiseshell comb studded with rhinestones, two teacups, a cracked plate, one bent spoon, one partly melted knife, a doll’s head attached to its shoulder and left arm, two pieces of twisted shrapnel (one of which had German markings). Much of the roof was destroyed, and rain frequently dampened their play area. One afternoon there was a light snowfall, which caused the blackened kitchen floor to sparkle magically, but only for a moment because the snow melted so quickly. It was a wonder the whole structure hadn’t collapsed on top of them. Their parents didn’t know they were there, and how would they? Hazzley and Dorothy were entirely free to play in the bombed-out streets.

  Where was Dorothy now? Last time Hazzley had seen her was when they were thirteen years old and Dorothy came to say goodbye because her family was moving to Liverpool.

  THE WIND HAD INTENSIFIED, and snow was slanting to the left. Wind and snow on her birthday. Not a real winter storm—not like the ones in January that went on for days. Prior to real storms, she stocked the pantry shelves and stayed indoors. When it was necessary to go out again, she and
her neighbours emerged like bears stumbling from dens. The roads were always a mess of ice and slush, and Hazzley was not fleet of foot in those conditions. Even though she wore boots with grips and rubber soles.

  She also knew that this early snow wouldn’t last. Rarely was there snow on her birthday. As of today, she was officially seventy-eight. She never asked herself, as she sometimes heard others say, Where did the years go? She knew exactly where the years had gone. She could call up various periods of her life in stark detail. Whether the memories were accurate . . . well, that was another issue.

  She looked sharply toward the doorway to the hall as if glimpsing the sudden movement of someone close by, but no one was there. Her past, probably. Her past was all around.

  Slightly unnerved, she sat on the edge of her mattress. Lew had been dead for three years. She had mourned grievously immediately after his death. A part of her still mourned. There were unresolved issues during the last part of Lew’s life—she couldn’t deny that—but she had loved him. One of her widowed friends told her, soon after Lew died, “You know, Hazzley, it took two years for my brain to start functioning fully again after my husband died.” At the time, Hazzley didn’t know what her friend was talking about.

  She had a better understanding now. The ashes, for instance. Lew had been vague in his instructions about what to do with them after his body was cremated. “Just spread them somewhere,” he had told Hazzley and Sal. He was laughing; those were the good times. “Throw them into Spinney’s Ravine, or into a fast-moving creek that leads to a river that leads to an ocean.”

  The ashes, after the funeral service, had come home with Hazzley. First in a plastic bag. After that, they went into a ceramic urn she and Sal chose together. It seemed preposterous that a body could thus be reduced, and though she hadn’t exactly decided what to do with the cremains—she hated the word—the urn sat on the floor in a corner of her dining room, behind the door. On a day when she was particularly stressed, she felt she had to have some part of Lew with her when she went out to deal with a lawyer and all the demands that had to be met. She opened the urn and looked around for a small container. A near-empty plastic pill bottle was on a shelf in the kitchen, and she grabbed at that. Lew had been prescribed prednisone for something or other; she couldn’t remember what. An inflammatory flare-up of some sort, probably. Hazzley dumped the few remaining pills in the trash and filled the prednisone bottle with some of Lew’s ashes. She kept the bottle in her purse when she went out that day and forgot to remove it when she returned. Part of Lew travelled with her for weeks until she remembered to dump his ashes back into the urn. She was not about to tell Sal any of this.