Birds of a Lesser Paradise

by Megan Mayhew Bergman

  I wondered: What am I prepared to lose?

  The next morning I packed a suitcase and made blueberry smoothies for Malachi and me.

  Did you wash the blueberries? he asked, artfully pouring his fair trade coffee into a thermos made of corn plastic.

  Always do, I said.

  Are you sure this is what you need? he said, kissing my forehead.

  I nodded. I was flying into Portland and renting a car. I was already looking forward to the drive from Portland to Camden; the road was quiet and old and flecked with lobster shacks and motels, sailboats hoisted into the air for hull repair, the barnacled landscape of my youth.

  I wish I was going with you, Malachi said. He looked sad that I was leaving, or maybe sad to be facing a decision he so easily advised others to make.

  Was there a part of him that looked at my abdomen wistfully? I wondered. That imagined a child of his own, with his hair and big ideas?

  I called the zoo to let them know that I was sick and would likely be back next week. I had a good relationship with my boss and plenty of time off stored up; my absence wouldn’t be a problem. You’re missing an Asian small-clawed otter this morning, my boss said. Renal failure.

  There’ll be others, I said absentmindedly.

  I hope not, my boss said.

  Malachi carried my bag and followed me to our car—a silver 1984 Mercedes wagon that ran diesel. We kept it parked in an underground garage a block from our town house like something we were ashamed of. That had been part of moving to a city, after all—more recruits, smaller individual footprint.

  Around us people in suits were walking to work and the metro station. Most of them wore practical shoes, sipped coffee, and glided thumbs across the screens of their phones.

  Malachi packed the car for me, topped off the wiper fluid, and set a roll of crackers in the front seat. He held my waist and kissed me.

  I’m only driving to the airport, I said.

  The wagon was hot inside and the scent of strange things baked into the upholstery across decades began to fill the air—orange juice, sweat, paint. I stuffed a cracker into my mouth to distract my senses.

  We’ll figure this out, Malachi said through the open window. His body language oozed anxiety. He fumbled with the buttons on his denim shirt and I pictured him smoking on the back porch when he got home. He was okay with smoking and other vices, anything that would do us in faster.

  Malachi waved as I backed the wagon out of our small parking spot, our fifty-dollars-a-month plot. He blew me a kiss that I pretended not to see and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

  When someone’s ideal is the absence of all human life, romance is kind of a joke.

  My uncle had driven up to my grandmother’s cottage in Camden that morning to make sure the heat was on. He lived nearby and had become the de facto caretaker once Grandma B moved into a nursing home. He’d left dahlias the size of dinner plates in bud vases throughout the house. Their yellow petals were beginning to brown. I lifted a vase to mop a damp circle from an antique pine sideboard with my sleeve.

  I’d not yet called my mother, afraid she’d hear something new in my voice. I wasn’t ready for her to be there—not when I wasn’t sure about my decision. I’d call later; she’d hear about my visit from my uncle soon enough.

  My grandmother and grandfather had built the Camden cottage in the 1940s when they were first married. He’d been a dentist in town; Grandma B had taught high school biology. Even now, as she was losing her faculties, she could still explain the Krebs cycle and attributed rapid aging to her “bum mitochondria.”

  Her cottage was gray and shingled with a pale green door and mature gardens. There was a water pump covered in thick black paint outside the front stoop. The antlers from a buck my grandfather had shot before he died hung over the garage entry. In the backyard, there was a small orchard of old apple trees that we stripped of fruit in the fall for cider.

  I pulled my rental car into the gravel driveway and gathered my bags. Inside, the cottage smelled of old trunks and, like most historic shore houses, mildew. The original wallpaper was still up—a cream-colored base flecked with clusters of red apples and blue flowers. All of Grandma B’s sticky notes, dog-eared cookbooks, test-tube shot glasses, and ceramic animals were in the kitchen as she’d left them. The late-afternoon sun fell on the honey-colored kitchen table. I put water on and made a cup of lemon tea.

  The apples are early, my uncle had written on a napkin. Cider’s in the freezer. Take some home with you.

  I’d brought Malachi here a couple of times. He loved the solitude of Maine. It’s almost postapocalyptic, he’d said, as if that were a landscape he might enjoy, a place he might take vacations.

  Last November the family had gathered to do a final Thanksgiving dinner in the house with Grandma B before she moved into the nursing facility. The fall sky had been bleak and Grandma sat near the woodstove. My mother, trying her best to ignore Malachi, had doted on her mother, caressing her worn hand, topping off her wine, placing a generous dollop of crème fraîche on her strawberry rhubarb pie.

  Are you tired? Mom had asked her.

  Just a little oxidative stress, Grandma B said, pulling her thick black glasses low on her nose and raising her eyebrows playfully.

  Now the house, without my family, was bare and hushed. Yet I felt connected to my grandmother, my mother, this rugged line of hardy women with sharp ideas and heirloom casseroles, so in love with the world. Their nails packed with garden dirt, their speech full of sayings from old songs and relatives: Does last night’s fun bear the light of morning’s reflection?

  I wanted, then, to become what I most admired, what now seemed most real to me. I wanted to be that exalted, complicated presence in someone’s life, the familiar body, the source of another’s existence. But I knew what I wanted was not always what I needed.

  Between the cat-worn sofas and antique lamps there were long shadows in the house, filaments of lives. Maybe I’d rent the house for the year, take a leave from my job, hunker down with family support and raise a child. But was it practical?

  I’d be coming into motherhood alone. This would not be my mother’s life, or my grandmother’s marriage. There would be no family portraits, no husband to share in the late-night shifts or stomach flu. No partner, at least in the immediate future, to trade anxieties with—worries about vaccines, the school bus, dwindling water supplies, pollutants from small-engine vehicles and lawn mowers.

  I envied my mother’s childhood, the awe with which she’d turned to her country and the world, the confidence she’d had in her right to exist and bear children. The world and mothers alike, I knew, had lost a little freshness.

  It was four in the afternoon, and I had roughly two and a half hours before sunset. I threw on an extra sweater—something of Grandma B’s that was left in the closet—grabbed a few apples from the tree in the backyard, and drove the car through an old campground to the summit of nearby Mt. Battie. I ate an apple as I drove, juices running down my hand and wrist.

  The view from the mountain had always been one of my favorites. Below, rocky beaches framed the Atlantic into Penobscot Bay, a blue expanse punctuated by sailboats and the humps of small islands, hundreds of them, covered in evergreens.

  I pictured Mom steering her red kayak around the islands, watching serenely as a humpback or minke lunged and dove before her, coming up to blow near the bow of her boat. She’d told me two things about whales last summer. One was that today’s whales sing lower songs, and no one knows why.

  I drove into Camden through inn-lined streets. The town’s window boxes were full of late-summer flowers and creeping Jennie. The leaves on the trees were tinged with yellow, a suggestion of the bright foliage to come. Chalkboards advertising lobster rolls and bisques flanked restaurant doors.

  I remembered the second thing she’d told me, her hand placed on the small of my back: When a calf is born, she said, the mother pushes her baby above the surface of
the water to breathe.

  I’d rolled my eyes then, at her motherhood propaganda. Now it made me want to cry. Everything did, for that matter.

  Back at the cottage, I avoided calling Malachi. Instead, I daydreamed about marrying into a big French family, and what it would be like to eat dinner with them, lamb on our forks, babies at our feet. I imagined a man who’d fill the roles Malachi didn’t want.

  But finding a new man was out for now. Funny how pregnancy validates and neutralizes your sexuality at the same time.

  I made a tomato sandwich and brought it to Grandma B’s desk, a small walnut heirloom pushed into a sunny nook at the top of the steps. I opened the drawers and sifted through paper clips, expired oatmeal coupons, and stickers until I found a stack of letters, roped and set aside. I slid my finger underneath the rope and tried to open the first envelope. It was postmarked 1976, Charlottesville, Virginia—my mother writing home from college. The lip had refastened itself; I gently pried it open and pulled the letter out.

  Dear Mom, it said. My roommate is allergic to cats, but I’m feeding one on the back stoop anyway. I miss having cats around. I’m homesick—for the cats, you, Maine. . . .

  The next letter was written when she’d moved to Steuben with my father and I was little, maybe four.

  I took Lauren to her first swimming lesson today. She hated it, wouldn’t put her face underwater or blow bubbles, and kept pulling the front of her swimsuit down. God bless her; I love that little face. She tells me she’s afraid of “shawks” in the water.

  I read a few more.

  How do you explain Boy George to a six-year-old?

  The flea beetles have taken the kale this year. What do you recommend?

  Grandma B had saved them all. Though Mom had not lived with her since college, their intimacy never faltered. The letters were full of play-by-plays, carefully selected anecdotes in familiar handwriting.

  I closed the desk, gently wrapping the red rope around the letters, leaving them the way I found them, the way I knew someone else would find them when Grandma B died, or her house was sold. I walked to my mother’s old bedroom, sat on her bed, and called Malachi. He answered on the first ring.

  Lauren, he said. He sounded spent, his voice hushed. What have you—

  I haven’t made a decision yet, I said, but I’m thinking about going through with it.

  You can’t, he said. Listen to me. It doesn’t make any sense, bringing a child into this world.

  I can’t live my life waiting to die, I said.

  What, he said, you’re pro-life now?

  This isn’t a political act, I said. It’s a vote of confidence.

  It’s selfish, Malachi said. Grossly selfish.

  It’s like something within my biological makeup wants me to have a child, I said, and maybe I trust that more than—

  Than who? Malachi said. It’s about good decision making, and I can help you—

  I’m a thirty-year-old woman with a steady income and supportive family, I said. I’m not ready to admit the world is dying. I can’t go on believing that.

  Believe it, Malachi said. Another ice shelf the size of—

  Look, I said. I’m plenty scared. You don’t have to pile it on.

  I can’t believe you’re doing this, he said. He was beginning to choke up. I’ll call you back, he said, and hung up the phone.

  I lay back on my mother’s bed and cried until it felt like a needless thing to do. Her vintage Nancy Drews lined the wooden shelves. Her blue and red ribbons from years of horse shows were still pinned to the walls. A Fleetwood Mac concert poster hung from pushpins over the bed. Something in Stevie Nicks’s eyes told me sex was better in the seventies, when people weren’t waiting for the world to end.

  It was almost nine o’clock, and the house had darkened considerably. Energy conscious, I’d neglected to turn on the lights. My back and head ached.

  I called home. My father answered. Hi, Daddy, I said. Can I speak to Mom?

  One minute, he said. I think she’s outside with the dog. How are you, honey?

  Dad was infinitely reliable, the quintessential father. The type who sent me flowers on my birthday, called regularly, kept my elementary-school art framed in his office. At that moment, hearing his voice, I wanted to be ten again, ignorant about the world, safely ensconced in my backyard watching Mom garden and Dad grill burgers, worrying about spelling homework or riding the bus. Or hiking with them in the Camden woods, riding in the backseat on a drive down the winding Kancamagus Highway with public radio on.

  I’m okay, I said. Just okay.

  “Just okay” sounds like a conversation for Mom. I’ll yell for her. Thisbe, he shouted. Thisbe. Lauren’s on the phone and she’s just okay.

  Lauren? Mom said a moment later. Her voice was high, on alert, already leaping to conclusions. What’s wrong?

  I’m at Grandma’s house, I said. I need to talk to you about something. I hate to ask, but can you come down?

  I’ll be there in the morning, she said.

  I fell asleep in Mom’s old bed. I woke hours later to the whoop-whooping of coyotes. The harvest moon was low in the sky, and the entire yard was gray but illuminated. Looking at the moon, I felt something ancient and indefensible stirring within the pit of my body.

  I woke up when Mom walked through the front door of the house at six a.m., meaning she’d left home at four. I heard her clogs on the wooden stairs, the familiar rhythm of her steps that used to wake me on Saturday mornings when I wanted nothing but to sleep in.

  Before I could get up, she was there at the bedroom door. She wore yoga pants and a thick sweater.

  My eyes were tired. I sat up; she came to the edge of the bed, ran her thin hand over my hair, and hugged me. We had not been this way in years. Living apart, we talked frequently but with busy ambivalence; we saw each other on holidays. Our intimacy was rusty, but only for a moment. Mom’s embrace tightened. She knew something was wrong.

  She pulled away. Our eyes were wet.

  Thanks for coming, I said.

  Mothers, I believe, intoxicate us. We idolize them and take them for granted. We hate them and blame them and exalt them more thoroughly than anyone else in our lives. We sift through the evidence of their love, reassure ourselves of their affection and its biological genesis. We can steal and lie and leave and they will love us.

  I’ll put tea on while you get dressed, she said. I brought muffins.

  I pulled on a pair of sweatpants and brushed my hair, which had gotten long, because Malachi liked it that way. I headed downstairs. Mom handed me a warm muffin and a thermos.

  I’m five weeks pregnant, I said, leaning over the kitchen island.

  She took a deep breath and nodded. She wrapped her arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. For minutes we stood that way, her warmth the most comforting thing I’d felt in days.

  And Malachi? she said. Is he supportive?

  No, I said, closing my eyes to keep the tears from spilling out.

  Are you going to keep it? she asked.

  I don’t know, I said.

  I drove myself home from the airport. Dulles was black and wet from a fall rainstorm; street and landing lights made disconcerting signals in the dark. Malachi, I knew, would be hosting his weekly EWU meeting at a friend’s place, a run-down subdivided Victorian house on the edge of Adam’s Morgan.

  I parked the car outside on the slick ebony street and let myself in through the heavy mahogany doors. It was a cold sixty degrees out; the rain gave the air a chill. An old chandelier with missing and cobwebbed bulbs hung over me in the pastel yellow foyer, which was crowded with bikes and shoes.

  I let myself in to our friend’s apartment and sat in a folding chair in the back row. There were twenty or so attendees, most of them thin and hip with snug jeans and black winter hats pulled down over their hair.

  These people who professed to love nature, it seemed to me, would be quickly lost within it.

  Malachi, riffling through
papers at the front of the room, nodded solemnly at me, eyes widening as if surprised by my presence.

  He rose, cleared his throat, and began the meeting as he always did, with a reading of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Apostrophe to Man”:

  Detestable race, continue to expunge yourself,

  die out.

  Breed faster, crowd, encroach . . .

  Have you thought of protesting at the fertility clinics? one guy asked, raising his hand, scanning the room for approval. All the multiples—

  It’s an idea, Malachi said, but probably not the best place for recruiting sympathizers.

  I cringed, picturing the scene, the people so desperate to conceive a life, their insides poked, tested, and fragile. I knew, then, that the secret I was carrying made me an outsider at EWU, forever sympathetic to the enemy cause.

  What we’re trying to cultivate is awareness, Malachi said, the realization that every human life drains the earth’s limited resources. Our reproduction is excessive and disgusting.

  Yes, someone said. Amen.

  The people gathered in the room sipped their tea and took notes. We wanted the same thing, I think, an earth less taxed by human presence. But giving up on life now, I felt, was like leaving the party early.

  Would there be water shortages? Yes. More starving babies? Unfortunately. Would our quality of life soon be diminished by global warming? Probably. But who, I wondered, but the strongest among us could hold those ideas in their heads and find happiness? Get out of bed in the morning?

  Remember, Malachi said, not having a child is the best thing you can do for the planet.

  As the meeting ended, people mumbled about Freitas’s notion of ecophagy, nanotechnology gone wrong. They spoke of ecocide by asteroid, sterility by route of too frequently ingested GMOs.

  Afterward, Malachi stood behind me and massaged my shoulders. His flannel shirt was missing buttons and he hadn’t shaved in days. He kissed the back of my head.

  Come with me, he said, leading me to the empty dining room. The fireplace was cemented over. A beer-pong table was shoved into a corner, and the smell of old beer in the carpet began to turn my stomach.