Birds of a Lesser Paradise

by Megan Mayhew Bergman

  My father smiled and dropped my arm. He began to breathe faster. He moved toward her with as much energy and youth as he could muster.

  Link! Susan exclaimed, pointing at my partner, who was plunging PVC pipes into the sand so that Dad and Susan would not be entirely responsible for the weight of their fishing rods.

  You’re here to see Stu, Mother, Susan’s son said. He pointed at my father.

  I know who I’m here to see, she said, and sulkily crossed her arms. Link! she shouted. Come give me a kiss.

  Dad stopped in his tracks. She had not yet acknowledged him. His clothes were already damp with sweat.

  Link waved from the beach and jogged over. He was shirtless and bent down to kiss her cheek. He was in his fifties but carried only a slight amount of extra weight around his waistline. A small patch of hair spread across his chest.

  You smell delicious, she said.

  I most certainly do not, he said. Are you ready for your date? Dad was stoic. His mouth was set in a determined line.

  Susan nodded.

  Susan’s son and I stood back, giving the group space. He talked about his antiques business, some bureaus he was moving to New England, but I didn’t listen. I watched my father with concern but didn’t intervene, even though I thought some small talk might ease the tension. When possible I tried to let Dad exert control over his life, especially on a date.

  Can I escort you to your chair? Link asked.

  Of course, Susan said, clutching and patting his arm as they moved toward the two chairs Link had set up at the water’s edge.

  I offered Dad my hand, but he didn’t take it. He trudged through the sand, pausing to wipe his brow with a handkerchief before sitting down. I told myself that my father regarded Link as a son and was not threatened.

  Susan, he said. You look beautiful today.

  Hello, she said, looking him over like a stranger. I worried that it was not a good day for either of them, that the heat was not doing their faculties any favors.

  Link baited their rods with cubes of cheese and rattailed maggots.

  My custom lure, he said. He cast the line for each of them and placed the rods in their hands. Dad gripped the rod’s shaft with surprisingly sure and nimble hands.

  You can take mine back, Susan said, thrusting the unwanted rod at Link. Link placed her rod in the PVC pipe at her feet. She pushed the sand into piles with her toes. Clearly, Susan did not like to fish.

  Would you like a drink? Link said, playing host. He handed Susan a beer. Dad stared out at the ocean and the small waves rolling onto the rocks.

  How are your kids? Dad asked. I smiled. He’d remembered my advice.

  That one over there, Susan said, pointing at her son, is a leech. Tell me more, Dad said.

  I grabbed Link by the hand and pulled him a ways behind the chairs. Let’s give them space, I said.

  He uses my checkbook, she said. He buys bad art with it. I’ve never seen such a lousy—

  Dad stood up from his chair, knocking it over. I’ve got one, he said. Something’s tugging on the line.

  Impossible, Link said.

  It seemed to take Dad a painfully long time to reel in his line, but Link let him do it alone, and sure enough there was a small fish, hooked through the cheek. It curved its body in fight, nearly touching its tail to its head, an angry silver arch.

  Link! Susan said. Come get this thing.

  I’ve got it, Dad said.

  Disgusting, Susan said, wincing, cupping her chin with her hands.

  Throw it back, Dad, I said. It’s a shallow hook; the fish could live.

  I couldn’t help but root for this fish, a survivor in an oxygen-depleted ocean.

  Dad acted as if he didn’t hear me. He wiggled the hook out of the fish’s face with brute force and threw the fish onto the back of his overturned chair. He grabbed Susan’s beer bottle and began to club the fish.

  Damn it, he said, hitting the fish’s head with the bottom of the bottle. Beer ran down his wrists. He struck over and over again. Damn it, damn it, damn it, he said.

  Dad, I said. Stop. I grabbed his arm. He shook free and struck the fish savagely again, this time across the gills. The fish thrashed and fell onto the sand, eyes open.

  Susan ran to Link and threw her arms around his waist. Take me home, she said. Take me home. She started to cry.

  You know what else you can do for me? Dad said, turning to Link. Sleep with her. Take her to bed while you’re out playing hero.

  I pulled Dad away; he was a ball of confusion and hurt on the inside, bursting open in public. I glanced back and saw Link pause to pick up the fish by the tail and hurl it back into the sea. A hopeful act.

  I turned to apologize to Susan, but her son was already escorting her toward his car. He flashed an angry look of disapproval over his shoulder.

  Dad was sweating and had clearly overexerted himself. I knew we couldn’t walk back to the house. I stood on the side of the road and tried to flag down a car, hoping for a neighbor. I felt like a disappointed parent. His failings were now my own. I felt Dad’s pain acutely, but part of me wished my responsibilities were over. I was tired. The feeling reminded me of the look I’d seen in a friend’s eyes as she repeatedly corrected her special-needs child, who bit the other kids in his playgroup—embarrassment, love, determination, fatigue.

  We could help him die, I realized. Link knew ways to stop his heart. We could move on, sell the house, relocate even. I felt guilty, selfish, calculating.

  I never wanted to be this way, Dad said. A practical man living an impractical life.

  I was too mad to answer. I knew my grip on his arm was too rough; I wanted him to know I was disappointed. But there were multiple emotions colliding inside of me. I had to take some responsibility. What was I thinking, pushing love on my father at his age? What could be expected between two people with half their brains carved out by time?

  A cop car pulled over. The officer rolled down his window. He was thin and deeply tanned, and worked a toothpick between his teeth.

  Get into some trouble there? the officer asked. Old man okay? Wandered off on you?

  We could really use a ride home, I said.

  Close by? the officer asked, looking me in the eye, critical, as if he was onto my thoughts. I nodded.

  Mind dusting the sand off your feet and drying the old man off? the officer said. I try to keep the car clean. He fetched a towel from his trunk and handed it to me. I gave it to Dad, who stared at the neatly folded towel in his hands as if he did not know what it was for. Chivalrous to the end, he tried to hand it back to me; I shook my head.

  The officer helped us into the car and pulled away from the curb.

  Where to? he asked.

  Eight blocks down, I said, leaning over the front seat. Shore side.

  Why am I wet? Dad said, looking at his beer- and sweat-soaked shirt.

  You went swimming, I said, teeth clenched.

  Why are we in a cop car? Dad asked.

  We’re on our way home, I said. Stop asking questions.

  We passed familiar houses, pink stucco facades, white clapboards with green hurricane shutters. The people on the streets—we knew them all, though not their names. The cop’s radio scratched and buzzed. Dad looked nervous. He didn’t know where he was or why he was here.

  Are you in trouble? Dad whispered. Take one of those houseboats from the marina and paint over the name. Drag a block of frozen chum off the side near the reef and you’ll eat well. I’ll send someone for you.

  For a moment, I was speechless. His eyes were certain and his words authoritative.

  I know you will, I said, realizing that Dad might lose his short-term memory, but not his pride, his sense of dutiful fatherhood.

  A wreck or rock pile will work, too, he said. You’ll find snapper and mutton.

  There are no more snapper and mutton, I said. Everything is changing—

  Why am I angry? Dad asked, a hand over his heart. I feel—You fought with S
usan, I said.

  Who’s Susan? he said.

  I thought for a minute that I might tell him the truth, fight to keep him in the present, refresh his memory. But my feelings for him were beginning to warm and I reached for his hand, the blued knuckles that had, moments ago, held a bottle like a crude mallet.

  No one special, I said.

  Why am I wet? Dad asked. His shirt hung from his collarbones, clung to his thin skin.

  A fish pulled you in, I said. One with a lot of fight.

  Cruise ship comes in this afternoon, the officer said. I’m expecting a long night.

  I ignored him the way my father had taught me. Only acknowledge authority when it’s earned, he’d said.

  Perhaps it was only his body, not his ideas that were outmoded. I was surprised that our small, personal tragedy felt sharper than the broken ocean, that this man’s one overextended life troubled me more, in this moment, than the epic loss of life underwater. I was surprised at the lengths I’d gone to protect his life, enrich it, prolong it. Moments after murdering him in my imagination, I again felt as though I’d do anything for his comfort, his temporary happiness.

  Did I get it? Dad whispered. The fish?

  I draped the towel over his bony shoulders and pulled the ends together across his chest, where I could feel his artificial heart thumping like a piston, impossible to stop, impossible to break.

  Of course you did, I said. But in the end you let it go.

  The Two-Thousand-Dollar Sock

  Vito was lethargic, curled up in his fleece bed with sad eyes. He wasn’t eating. I touched his distended abdomen and he recoiled as if it was sore.

  Six times he’d eaten a sock. Five times it had come out the other side, worse for the wear, composted. But not this time.

  It was the sixth sock that did not pass. Not Poppy’s baby sock, or Russ’s wool hiker, but my sock. An old sock. A sock that had been with me longer than my husband. A sock with a cotton ball on the back like a rabbit tail. A cute sock. A sock that blocked my shepherd’s intestines.

  Anything, I said to the vet. I’ll do anything.

  It was that kind of week. The kind where I put face wash in my hair, ran out of milk, bruised my shin on the bed frame in the night. The kind where my infant daughter discovered she preferred my husband to me, turned to him with the cry of a kitten, cooed at his touch.

  It was the kind of week where a black bear discovered my honey stash, rifled through two hives in the backyard. It was a character-building week, a week that thinned my hair, put circles underneath my eyes.

  Once bears taste honey, a neighboring keeper told me, they’ll stop at nothing to have it. I’ve seen them take shock after shock from an electric fence just to shove that sweet stuff into their mouths.

  They’re gentle, he said, but determined. First they sniff out the honey. Then they go bipedal, ripping the top from your apiary, pushing the hive to the ground.

  Put away bird feeders and buy a bear-proof garbage can, we were told.

  A fed bear is a dead bear, my neighbor said.

  We didn’t listen.

  Russ taught Poppy the pilot’s alphabet.

  Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, he said. Victor, Whisky, X-ray.

  I liked the way the s in whisky rasped through Russ’s missing teeth.

  Poppy grinned an empty grin, her teeth only beginning to bud. It was hard to tell if she absorbed his words, or if she just liked the sound and attention.

  So P is for Papa and M is for Mike? I said. What gives?

  Russ smiled his fighter’s smile. Where’s Poppy’s Bink?

  Bink was Poppy’s comfort toy. Bink had the head of a bear and the body of a soft blanket, rimmed in lavender silk. I pulled him from her diaper bag and handed her the toy.

  Poppy brought Bink to her mouth and looked up at me with shy eyes. Her eyelashes were long and thick.

  You eat that bear! I said, tweaking her nose. Eat him!

  Russ was an amateur boxer. A former college wrestler, he scrapped for fun, for money, for pride. He boxed in gyms, back-alley rings, parking lots if the mood was right.

  Lower death rate than horse racing, he told me.

  We’d met working out at the gym, Russ pummeling the punching bag. Me sparring with my father, who’d learned sword fighting in Thailand. Dad thought I was good enough to get acting work.

  Maybe you could be a stunt double, he said. For that Xena chick. A warrior princess.

  The problem, Pop, I said, is that I don’t look like a movie star.

  Get porcelain veneers, he said, pushing his dentures forward.

  I want a family, I said.

  Dream bigger, he said.

  Dad and I had just moved to Massachusetts from North Carolina. He’d inherited a house from his uncle. It was a free house, but the move disconnected Dad from his past. We kept training and looking for work. The best gig I got was fighting a team of actor ninjas with a trick sword on the stage of a thumping private nightclub in the city where the guests were too coked to notice.

  But Russ found the sword skills sexy and let me hang a Taiwanese sword with a beveled edge over the bed, a fencing foil over the couch.

  Dragon slayer, he said, kissing my neck.

  When he wasn’t fighting, Russ was a pilot for hire. He’d flown F-15Es in the first Gulf War and then got a commercial license, but work was scarce in western Massachusetts. I’d worked as a receptionist at a trucking company until my third trimester. When I quit, we lost our benefits. We rented a house from Russ’s mother, down a dirt road, on the edge of a national forest. There were heirloom currants in the backyard, rusted-out tractors and stone-pile fencing behind the trees. The vinyl siding was dirty from hard winters. A stone fawn curled up between two boxwoods near the front door. All that land, staring us in the face.

  The thing about an old house, I’d said, is that you have to pick up where someone else left off.

  A transitional period, Russ called it.

  I took Vito to the veterinarian’s office while Russ idled a jet at the airport for some CEO.

  I’ll keep him here for observation in case he passes the sock. We could do an exploratory, the vet said. See if we can locate the foreign body.

  You’ll let me know before you operate? I said.

  Of course, the vet said.

  I couldn’t look at Vito when it was time to leave.

  I said we’d do anything, but I was worried we couldn’t afford to treat him. I knew his eyes would convince me to mortgage the house, become a one-car family, eat ramen noodles five days a week. I heard the cage close.

  I could sense Poppy’s hunger as I signed a form at the checkout counter. She began thrusting her head into my chest, rooting for my nipple.

  No, honey, I said, readjusting her.

  By the time we reached the car she was sobbing, her lips pursed like the beak of a small bird, wanting.

  I mixed a scoop of formula and water into a bottle and sank into the sun-warmed passenger seat to feed her. I stroked the short fuzz of new hair on her head.

  I looked at Poppy the way I would look at my own heart—with confusion and gratitude. There were days when I burped her too hard, prayed for her to fall asleep. There were nights I couldn’t put her down, her fresh face burrowed into my body, hand around my finger.

  Mommy’s here, I said, though I felt like a fraud.

  Before Poppy was born, we’d discussed ways to make money.

  We could distribute the census, I said.

  Become freelance property managers, Russ said.

  Or keep bees, I said.

  We received our first mail-order queen in March. She’d arrived with four worker bees in a candied box.

  I’m not doing this to fit in, I told Russ. I’m doing it to sell honey. A work-from-home operation that will pay for itself.

  I bought a smoker secondhand, sealed an old jacket and leather gloves with duct tape. I used my fencing mask for a veil.

  I’m glad you found something, Russ said.


  I was eight months pregnant, thirty pounds heavier, and desperate to be happy.

  There were days when I could ride my bicycle without a helmet and smoke a cigarette at the same time, I said. I was once practiced in the art of fire breathing. Give me a bottle of vodka and a lighter and I could show you.

  Russ grinned and pinched the seat of my maternity jeans.

  I’ve still got it, you know, I said.

  When we returned home from the vet, I propped Poppy on my left hip and took a walk around the property. The sunflowers were budding. The corn was calf-high. The barn swallows swooped over us like stunt pilots.

  Vito usually took the walk with us, his back sloped and hips low, nose to the ground. I missed his lithe body weaving through the grass, brushing against my legs. I missed watching him charge the moles and chipmunks that lived beneath the brush pile, sprint after the garbage trucks that used our driveway for a turnaround. He was a runner, a stalker, a too-fast-to-call-off dog.

  We loved his gusto, the way he ran at things he wanted with what my dad would call a devil-may-care sprint, saliva streaming from his mouth, his bear-sized feet tearing up the earth.

  That morning, Russ and I had talked about him as if he were already gone.

  Remember how he used to dive underneath his bed in winter and wear it like a turtle shell? Russ said.

  How about the time we took him to the Christmas-tree farm? I said. He was small enough to fit inside your coat.

  He raised his leg on a tree, Russ said. That’s the one we took home.

  But now Poppy and I walked down the slope of our backyard alone. We paused to refill bird feeders with sunflower seed and grease poles with Vaseline to keep squirrels away.

  The pediatrician told me: Narrate your life to encourage language. Speak in the third person.

  Mommy and Poppy are walking through the green grass, I said. Mommy and Poppy are outside. See the blue sky? See the white clouds?

  Poppy’s chin glistened with drool. Her wide eyes scanned the ground.

  Bear scat during berry season is unmistakable—seedy, fragrant, copious. We passed two piles near the blackberry brambles.