Birds of a Lesser Paradise

by Megan Mayhew Bergman

  Gray was competent—he could cook with nothing but a multitool at his disposal, start fires, do taxes, hang pictures. He cleaned his aging mother’s house, made her lasagna and eggplant parmesan, let me buy junk food and keep it on a shelf only he could reach. Gray knew what days I needed chocolate biscotti doled out.

  He had a fascinating collection of stolen bowling shoes and golf cleats, and tolerated my fear of predator cats, alligators, bears. He was an alpha presence in the house, an armed companion in the woods, a voice of reason in my chaotic life. Bottom line: Gray made me feel safe in a way I never had, and I did not want to give that up.

  I’m asking you to dinner, Gray said when he called that night.

  Even after I’d showered, I felt as if I smelled of sheep.

  Gray was waiting for me at the bar, his wing-tipped, cleatless golf shoes propped on the stool rung.

  I kissed him on the cheek.

  How are you? he asked.

  I burst into tears. I could not decide if it was because of the sheep or my empty bed at home.

  I let Gray jump to conclusions.

  Come here, he said, bringing me close. We can work this out. He gave me his glass of wine and ordered another.

  After dessert, Gray walked with me to my car and got in the passenger side.

  Are you sure? I asked.

  I drove home with his hand on my knee, then up my skirt. The neighborhood was quiet—it seemed as if everyone else knew something we didn’t, that there was a reason to be in bed with the lights off after dinner.

  When we entered the front door, the dogs greeted Gray with gusto, rubbing their muzzles on his thigh, leaning into his legs, whining.

  I missed you, too, he said, crouching down to let them kiss his face.

  The feral cats remained hidden. I imagined them still as garden statues underneath the couch, ears clipped, nails carved into the wooden floor.

  We went to bed with the door closed. Gray undressed me, rubbed my shoulders.

  I want to come back, he said.

  Prince began whining at the door.

  Gray moved his hands lower, began kissing my neck.

  Prince paced the hallway. His cart had a squeaky wheel. The sound was impossible to ignore.

  Gray pulled away. I can’t, he said in frustration.

  He flipped over on his side and put a pillow over his head.

  Lying back, I noticed I had wet dog food underneath my fingernails. I’d heard from friends what infants did to your sex life. I imagined disabled dogs did the same.

  Prince barked and rattled the doorknob with his nose.

  I’m coming, I said.

  When she was alive, my mother had a compulsive need to exhibit porcelain Christmas villages year-round. When I would visit on Sundays she’d make hot tea and show me the new figurines she’d acquired. Over time she placed cider stands in front of city hall; frosted fir trees, stray dogs, and hobos by the train station. I hated them all—houses with glowing windows, children with cherub cheeks, plastic geese on the frozen pond, men in top hats gazing sentimentally at petite wives.

  When she passed away, she willed them to me. All ten thousand dollars’ worth. As if she was saying to me: Live like this.

  I sold them immediately and used the money for a down payment on a new house—I needed more room. I knew it was wrong, using her money that way, funding a lifestyle she did not condone.

  You’d give those dogs your own bed, she’d once said, not realizing it was true.

  Mom had her villages, Gray his leaves. The dogs, the raccoon, the chinchilla, the feral cats—these were mine.

  When I was younger I grieved for birds nesting in the sickly dogwoods outside McDonald’s, the wet deer carcasses left to rot on the side of the road. I thought twice about killing bugs in the house, opting instead to usher them out the door on sheets of paper.

  One afternoon after we first met, Emory hit a bird with her car and called me.

  Talk me through this, she said.

  Can it be saved? I asked.

  No, she said. It’s suffering.

  She was standing over it in a parking lot, her car running. Run over it again, I said. You have to.

  She gunned her engine.

  We cried together, hysterically. I had finally found someone who understood me.

  If I come back, Gray said on the phone, the raccoon, the chinchilla, and the cats have to go. The dogs can sleep downstairs.

  I’ll have to think about it, I said. I can’t make promises.

  At the shelter we stared coolly at people dropping off dogs, had no sympathy for those who didn’t trust cats around the baby or whose boyfriends were allergic to dogs.

  But I missed Gray. I missed his shoe collection in the closet. I missed watching him brush his hair, as if I was seeing something I shouldn’t. He said he felt effeminate styling his hair in front of me, pulling it back into a slick ponytail. I missed his body in the bed, the way he slept with one arm tossed across my back.

  But when I lay in bed at night I saw the deep abscesses on the chests of the sheep, dragging themselves to food and water across a rock-strewn lawn. The scared eyes of the feral cats underneath the sofa. I felt the warm bodies of the retrievers next to me, the kind of limitless love other people dreamed of and I had—all to myself.

  Procter and Gamble arrived in the backseat of Emory’s jeep, freshly castrated.

  At first we could not coax them from the car. I pulled dog treats from my jean pockets and offered them in my hand. They stared at me with slivered eyes and split lips. Both sheep were chestnut brown with black spots.

  Grazers, Emory said. Probably not interested in faux bacon.

  For a minute I thought it best if they stayed in Emory’s car, cowering in the backseat. It might save me from what I was about to do.

  You’re going to keep these guys in the dog run out back? Emory asked.

  Sure, I said.

  Emory and I pushed and pulled the sheep into the backyard.

  Two things you’ve got to do, she said after we’d gotten them into the pen. First, you’ve got to deworm these babies. You put the pill in the back of the throat like this.

  Emory deftly pried Gamble’s mouth open and shoved the pill in.

  You want to bypass their first stomach and get the pill directly into their second stomach, she said.

  Fine, I said.

  I wanted to act as if I were not intimidated, as if this were not the first time I was learning of multiple-stomach scenarios, of pilling sheep.

  Second, she said, you’ll need to trim their hooves regularly. With what? I asked.

  Trimming shears, she said. Hold the foot by the ankle in your left hand, the shears in the right.

  Emory flipped Gamble upside down to demonstrate. His stomach was the color of oatmeal.

  Good ram, I said.

  A castrated male is a wether, Emory said. Gamble hasn’t been a ram in a week, have you, Gamble?

  His body was rigid, inflexible. He did not respond to her voice.

  These guys will take your yard in two days, Emory said. Then they go bipedal on you, standing on their back hooves and eating the leaves off your trees. I’d recommend getting some hay. You don’t have a neighborhood association, do you? she asked.

  Not one with any bite, I said.

  As the sun went down I found myself afraid to leave the sheep untended in the backyard. They huddled together in the dog run. I peeked at them through the blinds every ten minutes.

  That night, while I was watching Mr. Ed reruns, the raccoon crept onto the back of the couch and grabbed my necklace, snapping my head backward.

  Rodent! I said.

  Later, I found the retrievers licking plates in the open dishwasher.

  Get! I said. Get out!

  I was embarrassed by the desperate, angry sound of my voice. Sam lowered his head, then raised his large brown eyes.

  We are just being dogs, he seemed to say.

  One of the feral cats brought a rubber
band to my chest during the night. A gift I consciously mistook as gratitude.

  Gray and I had a tradition when it came to rashes. We named them after members of the Jackson Five. Gray once had a patch of poison ivy named Tito. I had ringworm named Jermaine.

  A new ringworm had appeared on my elbow. The doctor said I had gotten it from Procter and Gamble. Emory said I had washed them too much, removed natural lanolin that protects them from the worm.

  I broke with convention and named it La Toya.

  I thought of the pristine sheep in my mother’s Christmas village, their white coats like fine cashmere, led down cobblestone streets by fungus-free children.

  Gray and I had started home-improvement projects before he left, painting the front door pale blue, planting bulbs, laying sod. It had taken Procter and Gamble a day and a half to work over the back lawn after I’d let them out of the dog run and into the fenced yard for a change of scenery. We’d planted a melon patch in the side yard that was beginning to come up. I figured the sheep would get that, too, given time.

  In my mother’s Christmas village there was a cottage garden overgrown with ivy and wisteria. A woman with golden ringlets sat on the stone steps, a baby in one arm, a cup of tea beside her.

  Live like this.

  Even at two in the morning, my house felt alive. I could hear the raccoon chittering at the cats, Sam dreaming, the chinchilla knocking his head against his water dish. Salli had taken Gray’s spot in the bed, her legs outstretched, head on the pillow.

  I was outnumbered, outmaneuvered. There was no one to do the dirty work for me. The dirty work wasn’t lifting hair balls from the living room carpet. It wasn’t mashing Sam’s dog food with water and fish oil tablets. It was discipline.

  I did two strange things that week. I began sleeping with Gray’s flannel shirt underneath my pillow. Then I took a volume of his leaf collection—the one with the pressed, waxy leaves of the mountain camellia—and hid it in the drawer of my bedside table.

  When he came back for the remainder of his things, these I would keep.

  Gray called me at home the following week to see if I’d had a change of heart. Have you thought about us? Gray asked. Are you ready to make some adjustments? Ditch the chinchilla?

  I’d love to have you here, I said. But you know I can’t get rid of the animals.

  I’m not asking you to get rid of all of them, he said.

  You know I can’t, I said. Not any.

  I’m looking at a job in Texas.

  I understand, I said.

  You could go with me, he said.

  I couldn’t.

  I’ll call before I leave, he said, and hung up the phone.

  For my birthday Gray had given me an antique display case lined in white canvas that held a mounted Amazonian parrot wing, emerald green with flecks of blue and yellow. Pinned below was the skin of a small marsupial, then two leaves that looked like lace.

  It’s beautiful, I told him, lying. He beamed. I knew it was an expensive gift, something he thought represented the convergence of our interests. Something we might pass down to our children.

  A conversation piece, he said.

  I was too embarrassed to display it, worried Emory would see the remnants of animals pinned like trophies behind glass when she came to the house.

  That night I took it out of the china cabinet and opened the glass lid. I stroked the soft wing and marsupial pelt, then touched the leaves. They crumbled like dust.

  Recipes began appearing in my mailbox, compliments of neighbors. Braised lamb shanks with rice. Curried lamb stew. Lamb kebabs. Tandoori-spiced leg of lamb.

  You should move farther out, Emory advised. Get into the country.

  For an animal activist, moving to the country meant moving across the line from hobby rescue to sanctuary. I was not ready for that.

  I’m happy where I am, I said.

  How are the sheep? Emory asked.

  Sheeplike, I said.

  Procter and Gamble reminded me of garden gnomes, frozen when I was outside yet surprisingly destructive when unwatched. They stiffened when the retrievers sniffed their tails, flattened their ears like Yoda.

  Remember, Emory said. Dogs have double lives. They can kill the sheep when you’re not looking.

  One of my dogs has no teeth, I said. One is bound to a cart. The other has one ear and fear issues.

  Over fifty percent of sheep attacks are launched by domestic dogs, Emory said.

  There are other things I’m losing sleep over, I said.

  To Emory, all living things were in danger. It made her feel like a hero.

  I spent the afternoon laying stones for the sheep, hoping the friction would help wear their hooves down. The spring sun was warm. I drank lemonade and vodka and let the dogs loose in the backyard.

  Sam found a rabbit in the ivy patch. He gummed the rabbit by the neck, brought him to me.

  The rabbit was half dead, but not because of Sam. He had silvery blisters in his ears. He was mite-ridden, missing an eye. Soon, he’d be caught by a cat or a hawk. He shook in my arms.

  Gray would tell me to snap its neck. He’d shown me once with a squirrel he’d run over in the driveway.

  I placed the rabbit underneath the porch with water and food. I was the shepherd of a strange flock.

  You are looking for things to put between us, Gray had said when I told him about the sheep.

  Maybe it was true.

  Was there room for me in the porcelain village? My run-down house, my dogs, my sheep? Would my figurine be coated in hair?

  The sheep huddled in the corner of the yard, leaned into each other, suspicious of my stones, Salli’s strange gait, Prince’s squeaking cart.

  I went inside to top off my vodka and lemonade. I thought of Gray’s leaves in the drawer of my bedside table and went upstairs to retrieve them. The raccoon had nested in my pillow. He looked so gentle, so asleep, that I did not shoo him away. I took the album outside and sat on the back steps—the one-eyed rabbit underneath me, the dogs beside me, the sheep watching me with their slivered eyes.

  People always say: Don’t give up so easily on things you love. But you can, and I did.

  I ripped the leaves from the album’s pages and threw them into the air like confetti.

  Feast, I said to the sheep.

  And eventually, they did.

  The Artificial Heart

  2050

  My father was ninety-one and senile but insisted he could still look for love. The dating service paired him with Susan—an octogenarian feminist who listed skee ball and container gardening as her primary hobbies. She was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s and chewed nicotine gum when she talked. They’d been dating a month, and when he was lucid, Dad was smitten.

  Companionship of any kind is important, the dating service director assured me on the eve of their first date. The couple comes to the Senior Center and we serve them a steak dinner followed by tea and cheesecake on the center terrace. Love keeps them in the present; a relationship is a tether to the future.

  Help appealed to me; keeping Dad in the present was a lot of work for one person. It meant constantly exercising his memory—note cards, photographs, detailed answers to his repeated questions. Each month I could feel him slipping further into dementia; our conversations were his life raft. I quizzed him over meals, moving from our shared history to details from the morning: What did you have for breakfast today? Who won the US Open this week? What was the name of my first dog? Explain to me the design of your homemade water filter, the one you patented in 2025.

  Dad muddled through explanations but always excelled at questions directed at his earlier years—it was the last ten years he couldn’t hold on to. I worried he’d become proficient at duping me with general expressions, clichéd answers, pronouns instead of proper names. He was often too proud to admit his failing faculties and limited short-term memory. He always ordered “the special” at restaurants because he couldn’t read the menu, and he’d
suffer through rich bisques or adventurous pastas when what he really wanted was a burger or chicken sandwich.

  Dad had never been one for romance, but watching him with Susan was heartening. I’d observed their third date. Susan and Dad held hands throughout dinner, and he’d offered her his dinner jacket to keep warm.

  It’s Florida, she said, waving him off with one hand. It’s always hot. And I have my own sweater. But thank you.

  I like your eyes, he said. They’re so blue.

  I have cataracts, she said. Are you Jim?

  I’m Stu, he said.

  He seemed to forgive her missteps and poor temper. In all honesty, I’m not sure he was in love with anything except the idea of her company.

  They’d moved onto dessert served on a terrace surrounded by potted tomato plants and fruit trees. Susan wiped the cheesecake from Dad’s chin. He appeared to relish the simple pleasure of being touched. When we got home, he asked me to write her name on a piece of paper, which he kept by his bedside. That way, he said, when I wake up I can think of Susan.

  I didn’t mind helping him remember to love her.

  I’d become one of many cash-strapped caregivers with no children of my own—just the responsibility of an aging parent modern medicine had turned into an invincible robot, a robot puttering around outmoded and diapered, trying to make sense of tangled strings of thought. We lived in my father’s oceanfront house in Key West, Florida. Residing on an island had enabled Dad and me to live an almost antiquated life in a small neighborhood between resorts. People come here to escape real life, he’d once said. We live somewhere between real life and respite, a sunny kind of purgatory.

  My partner, Link, lived with me in my father’s house, but Dad was so old, so near death, that we’d begun calling it my house in private. Dad lived in a suite we’d made for him out of his old bedroom, the one he’d shared with my mother for seventy-three years. He’d had an artificial heart installed fifteen years ago, a blood-compatible, synthetic ticker that pushed his body beyond its intended mortal means.