The Study of Animal Languages

by Lindsay Stern

“. . . same ones Harriet wears,” May is saying, when I lift the phone back up to my ear. Harriet the spy, she means.

  A shadow darkens the frosted glass square in the door of the ward. With a hitching sound, the heavy lock slides out of place, and then a man with blond sideburns pokes out his head.

  “Ivan?” he says. I wave to him. “Franklin’s ready for you.”

  “They’re even cooler than Harriet’s,” I say into the phone. “Look, May, I have to go, but feel better soon, okay? I’ll be thinking of you.”

  The man shakes my hand as I cross the threshold, introducing himself as Nurse Harris. A small gold crucifix hangs at his throat.

  I follow him down a corridor lined with pale blue doors. Some of them are open, revealing figures reading or napping. A few of them look up as we pass.

  We turn left into a rec room filled with tables and plastic chairs. A shaft of light slants through one tall, barred window, broken by an elderly woman standing before it, gazing out. Several other people—old and young, male and female—sit at the tables, two of them playing cards. In the corner is a counter stacked with plates, half obscuring a chalkboard that reads “Lunch: Beef Stroganoff.”

  “He’ll be right in,” Nurse Harris concludes. He adds, grinning: “Character, your dad.”

  I do not correct him. As I sit down at a free table, the woman turns from the window, and I have to stop myself from gasping. Thick black marks are scrawled across her cheeks.

  When she sits down, I discover their source: a Sharpie, which she pulls out of her pocket, along with a pocket mirror. She opens the mirror and then, with great care, writes the letter Z on her forehead.

  And then a figure is shuffling into the room, his hair wet from the shower.

  “Frank.” I stand up to greet him, relieved. “It’s good to see you.”

  He accepts my embrace but does not return it. He is wearing a smocklike shirt I do not recognize, printed with tiny blue wheels.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine.” He lowers himself into the chair across from mine. “Docs say I’m off the hook for a felony.”

  “Really? That’s wonderful.”

  I swallow, struck by how frail he seems. His eyes are glassy, his face bloated. There is too much to say.

  “I’m sorry to show up like this, out of the blue,” I begin. “But I wanted to apologize.”

  “What for?”

  He is pausing before each sentence. The delay is subtle, but definite enough for me to scoot closer to him, taking his soft, papery hand in mine.

  “A lot of things,” I say. “First of all, for not telling Prue you ordered the flowers. I let her think they were from me—I’m sure she told you. I’m ashamed.”

  Frank squints, as though chasing a thought.

  “And about what an asshole I’ve been to you this week,” I continue. “You’re not well, and I haven’t taken good care of you. I’ve even provoked you, and I’m sorry. I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

  The scent of beef is filling the room. There is an ambient, clinking sound.

  “You look different,” Frank says.

  I wait for him to say more, but he does not. His nose twitches. His stubble is coming in white.

  “I destroyed my life,” I whisper.

  A nurse appears with two plates of slippery pasta, interspersed with lumps of beef. After serving a young woman, she sets the remaining meal down before Frank.

  He picks up his fork. I expect him to limit himself to the noodles, but then he stabs a hunk of meat.

  “Frank . . .”

  “Yeah?” He licks the gravy off the tines, and then feeds the hunk into his mouth.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Eating,” he says, through his mouthful.

  “That’s beef.”

  He lifts another forkful to his face.

  “You don’t eat that.” I scan the room for the nurse. Instead I catch the eye of the woman with the Sharpie, who winks at me.

  I stand up, raising my voice: “You’re a vegetarian, remember?”

  He shrugs, regarding me dimly. There is a desolate composure in his eyes.

  “Someone?” I call out. “Is there a doctor, here?”

  The woman lets out a long, toneless cry. As it intensifies, Nurse Harris hastens back into the room.

  “Please . . .” I intercept him, gesturing at Frank. “Can you get him something else? He doesn’t eat meat.”

  “Looks like he’s enjoying it just fine.”

  “You don’t understand . . . ,” I begin. He glances over my shoulder at the woman, who has fallen silent.

  “He would never do that, ordinarily,” I say.

  The woman cries out again, and the nurse pushes past me.

  Desperate, I kneel down before Frank, who seems oblivious to my efforts.

  “Let’s get you out of here,” I say.

  He mumbles, “I’m in the middle of lunch.”

  “Let’s get you home.” Before he can eat another bite I take his face in my hands, his soft skin pooling over my fingers. Beige liquid dribbles from his mouth.

  “Sir?” comes a female voice. I register the livid clop of heels, and turn to find a woman in white.

  “Franklin?” she says, leaning toward him. “Is this man bothering you?”

  “Yeah.” Frank wipes his mouth with his sleeve. “He’s family, though.”

  She glances at Nurse Harris, but he is tending to the woman. To me she says, “Visiting hours are over, sir. Please come with me.”

  Without another word, she takes my arm and steers me back into the corridor. Frank bends over his plate, still chewing patiently as I am swept away.

  Twenty-one

  I call a cab back to campus, asking the driver to book it. But there is a traffic jam on the highway, and the trip takes over two hours. By the time we reach the science building, the western sky is flaming with light.

  “Thank you,” I say, and tip him liberally. Then I dash up to Prue’s office.

  Her door—covered with May’s drawings—is locked, so I try the Center for Ornithology, my heart sinking. She must have driven back to Walt’s already.

  But when I reach the aviary I find her sitting inside, alone, visible through a glass panel beside the door. The staff member usually stationed here must have gone home for the day, because the reception window is dark. A poster for her lecture is still taped to the wall, featuring a blown-up image of a finch. It stares into the camera with its bright black eyes, the branch beneath it embossed—by a trick of Photoshop—with Prue’s name.

  I knock, and she meets my eye through the glass. Her face registers no anger—only surprise, mingled with sorrow. She is perched on a director’s chair in the balmy, winterized portion of the lab, under an imported tree. Two branches, wrapped in leafy vines, hang from the ceiling. A small gray bird flits between them.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” I blurt out, when she opens the door. “I’ll leave if you want. I’ve just come from the hospital.”

  She is dressed in her teaching uniform: a blazer and black jeans. She looks at me.

  “I went to see Frank.” I rake my fingers through my hair. “To apologize.”

  She seems older, somehow. The finch chirrups overhead.

  “Come in,” she says.

  I follow her into the soft, damp air of the enclosure, raising my voice over the birdsong: “It was chilling to see him there, P. I know he needs it, but whatever they have him on—lithium, or something?—it’s . . .”

  Wordlessly, she offers me the director’s chair, but I sit down on the grass instead.

  “We spoke this morning,” she says, looking down at me. “He sounded fine.”

  “He’s not in pain, or anything. And he’s not manic. But he ate beef.” I stare at her, but she only blinks. “
Can you imagine?”

  I shield my eyes against a sunbeam coming through the glass wall. It faces the dense, outdoor portion of the center, reserved for local birdlife.

  “I’m sorry.” I turn my back to the sun, the cool grass sticking to my ankles. “I’ll go. Do you want me to go?”

  Instead of replying she sits down, too—not on the chair, but on the ground, cross-legged, facing me. Her hair is piled in a messy bun, looking especially golden. Behind her, the sky is bluish pink, the strong light sharpening the edges of the chapel and campus center.

  “I read your letter,” she says.

  Her voice is quiet. Under ordinary circumstances, I would think she had drifted into one of her wistful moods—usually triggered by too much work, or too little sleep—that usually culminate in tears.

  “Things have been bad for so long,” she says. “How did we let this happen?”

  “How did I,” I say. “It’s my fault.”

  “No.” She stares at her hands. “I’ve been shutting you out for a long time.” Tracing the lines of her palm she adds, “I was scared. It felt so unfair—how the things you lived for were making me feel trapped.”

  There is a scuffling above us, and a leaf twirls through the air, coming to rest on the inside of her thigh. As she folds it once, and then again, I say, “You could have told me, P.”

  She gazes up into the branches, where a pair of finches are pecking at each other. “I’ve been so lonely with you,” she says.

  I take her free hand, stroking the back of it with my thumb, but it stays limp. “I’ve been lonely, too,” I say.

  She has folded the leaf into a tiny bundle. When she places it on the grass between us it expands, the new seams glowing with sunlight. She says, “Did you actually buy us a trip to the Galápagos?”

  I nod. Then I ask, “Why did you marry me?”

  She laughs, but it comes out as a sigh. “I’ve been asking myself that a lot lately.”

  The comment stings, despite its legitimacy.

  She says, “Do you remember that fight I had last winter, with Daora?”

  I do, vaguely, but before I say so she continues: “It was about you, actually.” She swallows. “I was over at her place for drinks one night, when Edson was traveling, and we were talking about you two. I said something about Edson that annoyed her, and she retaliated by saying she had no idea what I could possibly see in you. How do you live with that man? I remember her saying. He’s very handsome, yes, and smart, but so buttoned up, to put it generously. Probably even on the spectrum.”

  A finch lifts off the tree and settles a few yards away from us. Twittering, it ducks its head, its orange beak vanishing into its downy chest.

  “You should have seen her face when I told her what you’ve done.” She smiles, despite herself. “She didn’t even believe me until she’d heard from Dalton. And even then—”

  “She was right,” I interrupt. “There’s something wrong with me.”

  “Oh, stop it.”

  “I don’t deserve you.”

  “You’re just shy.”

  “I’m a walking punch line, P. I specialize in knowledge, and I’m clueless.”

  “I’m not much better.” She nods at the finch. “Thinking I can talk to him, when I can’t talk to my husband?”

  The bird has swiveled around to prune its wing, but now it freezes, its throat palpitating, though it makes no sound. It stares through the wall of the laboratory, at the middle distance, where a small crowd is feeding into the chapel.

  Prue says, “Did you really proposition Quinn?”

  I wince. But her eyes sparkle.

  She says, “It’s a little bit funny.”

  To my surprise, she scoots forward and crawls into my lap, startling the finch. Faint with gratitude, I wrap my arms around her.

  “I’ve missed you,” she says into my chest.

  “I’m right here.”

  “Now, maybe.” She tilts her face up to mine. “But come on. We’ve both been out to lunch.”

  I blow a stray eyelash off her cheek, and she squints, adding, “I wasn’t having an affair, but I may as well have been. You may as well have been. You knew that. You must have felt it.”

  “I don’t feel it now.”

  “We should have seen this coming.” She smooths the loosening edge of my bandage. “I mean, think about it. You want to hole up with your proofs. I want to travel. I want to show that language is bigger than we are. You want to reduce it to math. Minus the sex, we’re a match made in hell.”

  “But we’re married,” I say. “You’re the love of my life.”

  “We drag each other down though, don’t you think?”

  The finch is hopping toward us. When it reaches my foot it hesitates, inclining its head. Then, with a complicated whistle, it swoops back up into the branches.

  “Just imagine,” Prue says. “You’ll never have to clean up after me. You can leave parties when you want to. You won’t even have to go to them in the first place. You’ll never have to hear another word about animal—”

  “No,” I interrupt. “P, no. Stop.”

  “You’re in your forties,” she whispers. “You’ll find someone else.”

  She smiles bravely. Her eyes have filled with tears.

  She says, “You can even start a family if you want.”

  “You are my family.”

  I take her face in my hands. Her eyes are dark and wet. I feel a reckless pull toward her body, stronger than any other wish.

  She says, “I accepted the fellowship.”

  “What?”

  “At the Max Planck Institute. I wrote to them this morning.”

  I tip my forehead against hers. If I can put enough time between myself and her words, it might be possible to believe I have imagined them.

  But now she is speaking again, drawing away from me, sitting up: “It’ll be good to get some distance from this place, whether or not I end up getting tenure. And besides, we need some time apart.”

  A trial separation, she does not say.

  “What happened here?” she says suddenly, holding up my palm. The four cuts from the wharf have scabbed over.

  Instead of replying I reach for her, struck by the question of how she will die. Cancer? A ruined car? Time has always been kind to her. I picture the deep laugh lines, the soft white hair.

  “You’re the best thing in my life,” I say.

  She is quiet. The finches sing. We hold each other, no longer speaking, until the sky goes dark.

  Twenty-two

  Prue moves a box of her things to Walt’s on Wednesday, and on Thursday I resign from the College. After recounting my behavior with Natasha to the dean, I mail two letters of apology to her and Dalton. Then I drive Frank—who has been discharged from the hospital with a new prescription and, thankfully, no fines to pay—back to his home in Vermont. Prue had offered to do it, but I insisted, and there had been no argument.

  Frank lives in the converted attic of a shingle-style house, walking distance from town. When we arrive I follow him up the three flights of stairs, prompting a symphony of creaks. Prue and Walt have been trying for years to find him a more practical arrangement. Last spring, he finally agreed to see a first-floor studio several miles away, but he hadn’t liked the smell, and besides, it was too far from the library.

  “Warmer today,” he says.

  It amazes me that, after all we have been through this week, we can still talk about the weather. When I tell him this, I expect him to come back with some riposte—when we talk about the weather, we’re never talking about the weather—but instead he gives me a funny look.

  As we step inside, Frank’s cat, Cordelia, leaps off of the futon. I have offered to help him set out a week’s worth of food for her, since his knee still prevents him from bending down.
/>   She trots over to us, already purring. When I scratch under her chin, the sound deepens. Her yellow ear—torn at the tip, from her years as a vagabond—folds over as she nuzzles my shin, closing and then opening her eyes.

  “She puts up with me,” Frank says. “Even though I’m a goon that can’t hunt.”

  While he pours me some water, I shake out three bowls’ worth of food pellets, setting them beside the automated drinking fountain Frank bought for her. Other than that new addition, and Cordelia herself, the apartment looks the same as it did on my last visit, three years ago, with Prue and May. Books dominate the space, stacked in slanting towers. Before the futon is a glass coffee table filled with curios. There is a tiny phonograph, its horn sprouting a four-leaf clover, and a set of anthropomorphized chess pieces. Beside them is a fragment of a wildebeest’s skull Prue smuggled back for him from the Serengeti, and an album of Frank’s honeymoon with Nadia.

  I open it. Frank appears, occasionally, but the photographs are mostly of her. Nadia wrapped in Spanish moss, shielding her eyes against the sun; Nadia smelling bougainvillea; Nadia in a city square, drinking from the mouth of a stone lion.

  “You sure you’re feeling okay?” I say, when he hands me my water.

  On the drive up we had been mostly quiet, listening to part of a blues album Frank dug out of his bag, and then to NPR.

  “Says the guy who got himself kicked out of a psych ward?” He grins. “Folks were still talking about it yesterday. A regular McMurphy.”

  I take a sip, studying him. The bloating in his cheeks has faded. His gestures are still sluggish from the lithium, but the old glimmer is back in his eyes.

  We still have three songs left on the album, so before I leave Frank loads it into his CD player. When he collapses beside me on the futon, Cordelia leaps onto his knee, turning three circles before curling up between us.

  The last song ends and the player clicks off, but we keep on sitting there. I pet Cordelia, following her gaze to a triangle of sunlight inching across the spine of one of Frank’s tomes.

  Finally I say, “Would you like to come to the Galápagos with me?”