Birds of a Lesser Paradise

by Megan Mayhew Bergman

  Big bears make big piles, I said.

  One apiary lid was pried open.

  I got chills as I scanned the tree line behind our house, knowing the bear was likely within a square mile, likely to make another go at our honey stash. Once bears find your apiary, they return night after night.

  Bad bear, I said, shaking my finger. I felt the unmistakable flash of adrenaline.

  I had very little experience with bears. Eastern black bears, Russ promised, are like big dogs.

  I’d fed them once behind a shopping mall in western North Carolina on a road trip with a group of friends. We tossed boiled peanuts into their mouths. The bears were jesters—fat and gluttonous—and leaned back on their haunches like begging pets.

  I knew I was more likely to die of a lightning strike, hypothermia, or even bee stings than from a bear attack. But bears can spread their claws nearly ten inches wide, run thirty-five miles per hour. At their worst, they can eat you alive.

  Big, bad bear, I said again.

  Poppy laughed and buried her head into my armpit, her sticky fingers curled into my open mouth.

  After Poppy was born, I couldn’t breast-feed. I spent a week and a half trying. We ended up on the floor most nights, Poppy failing to latch and screaming with hunger, me crying in frustration as Russ stroked my hair and shushed her.

  She’s losing too much weight, the pediatrician said, so I expressed milk for her, hooking myself up to a pump that tugged my milk down into plastic vials. Every two hours I woke to pump and feed her, rousing myself from a feverish sleep, breasts full and hot.

  In the white noise of the breast pump, I heard: Kim Jong Il’s noodles. Kim Jong Il’s noodles. Kim Jong Il’s noodles.

  Heavy components, I said to Russ one morning at three o’clock.

  We’re switching to formula, he said. You stopped making sense a week ago.

  I put my head underneath the pillow and bit my lip.

  Relax, he said, stroking my back. This is not a failure.

  I just want what’s best for Poppy, I said.

  Take cats, he said. Excellent mothers. Let little ones fend for themselves occasionally.

  If I carried Poppy in my mouth by the nape of her neck, I said, child services . . .

  I want to take the night shifts, he said. For a while.

  In the winter we left wine to chill in the snow. In the summers we kept a supply in the outdoor fridge next to the refrigerator pickles and spare zucchini.

  The first night Russ left the bed for Poppy, I got up for a glass that turned into a bottle.

  Russ was not well. He’d scrapped with an off-duty air traffic control guy in the back of a cargo hangar and come home with a busted lip and a screaming headache.

  What does vertigo feel like? he asked. He cracked open a beer, took two long sips, and reached for Poppy.

  I made him a peanut butter and honey sandwich. He slid potato chips into the center.

  I like to hear them crunch, he said.

  He fell asleep on the couch with Poppy on his chest. Her mouth left a puddle of drool on his softening pecs.

  I touched his cauliflower ears, the ridges of cartilage broken and scarred over from high school wrestling. I kissed both of them on the forehead and found myself loving them so much—their long eyelashes, the fat of their cheeks—that I could not move.

  The evening light gave our house a dreamlike quality. The carpet was warm on my bare feet. The curling wallpaper and inherited furniture were reassuring. The upholstery smelled of old chicken suppers and cigarette smoke. Instinctively, I looked for Vito, patted the loveseat as an invitation. Then I thought of him alone in his cage at the vet clinic.

  I lifted Poppy from Russ’s chest and took her upstairs to her crib. She rolled onto her side and began to suck her fist.

  Poppy’s skin made everyone else’s look old. Her hands and cheeks were milk white, downy. My hands were sun-stained, wrinkled, rough.

  Maybe I was old.

  At night I looked at my naked body in the shower. Once it had been something to look at. Now it was covered in jagged red stretch marks, soft skin. Now I made love with a shirt on.

  Back in the living room, I climbed on top of Russ, rubbed his chest with the heels of my hands, massaged his temples. His eyes opened to small slits, then closed. The corners of his mouth turned upward, a slight smile. I squeezed him with my thighs.

  Don’t knife me in my sleep, he said.

  His naked chest was warm from the late sun streaming through the window, and I slept there until midnight, one hand cupping his jaw.

  I dreamed I was standing over Russ’s bed with Poppy, teaching him to talk.

  His dark eyes were hidden in pockets of swollen flesh. His head was shaved, his forehead was raw, his lip split. I held Poppy in the crook of my left arm, stroked Russ’s hand with my right.

  Poppy recited the pilot’s alphabet.

  Lima, Mike, she said. Oscar, Papa.

  I woke up and walked out into the yard. The grass was cool. The birds were quiet. I could smell wild dill in the fields. Next to the moon, Jupiter was the brightest thing in the sky. I sensed the bear in the forest behind our house. I pictured myself in his eyes, my body a small shadow on his horizon.

  My milk was drying up now and my breasts stung. I clutched my chest and returned to the house, pausing to look over my shoulder before opening the door.

  It occurred to me that I did not yet know the sound of Poppy’s voice. What it would sound like when she spoke for the first time, called for me.

  Russ was still on the couch, missing work.

  The light hurts my eyes, he said. And my body—my body just feels like shit.

  I called a friend of a friend who would write prescriptions for us without an appointment.

  Let me jog over to the pharmacy, I said to Russ. I’ll pick something up for you.

  I watched the lumpy shadow my body made on the hillside, my torso backlit by the sun, my rump a shadow on the grass. I hoped my silhouette was a liar.

  What happened to the beautiful woman I always meant to become?

  First Russ was a body. A big, rippled body, ripe and stone strong. Sweat beading on his skin as a fight wore on, blood slick across his teeth. A strange smile in anticipation of the next punch, a resilient swagger.

  Watching him fight was a high. I gripped my thighs, tugged my hair, screamed at his opponent. The light shone on his wet skin. I could hear his breathing, see him planning his next move from my ringside seat.

  The first time I went home with him after a night at the gym, he was still in his black silk training shorts. He took his clothes off and walked to the bed as if giving me a minute to take him in.

  I had never been attracted to muscular types, but Russ was different. He used his body. It had a function.

  Now, married, we slept on a borrowed bed and linens from our grandmothers. I’d learned to appreciate the impoverished elegance of heirlooms, but somehow felt that our own bodies had aged less beautifully.

  The next morning we went to the veterinary clinic as a family. It was a split-level house converted into an office. Split-level houses always depressed me.

  Given Vito hasn’t passed the sock, an exploratory surgery is our best option, the vet said. The cost of foreign-body removal is two thousand dollars.

  We can’t afford that, I said.

  I ran my hand down Vito’s body, paused to scratch the base of his tail. He lifted his black nose, then lowered it to his front paws.

  Poverty, Russ liked to say, is a state of mind.

  Is there a chance he could still pass the sock? I asked.

  A small chance, the vet said.

  But there is a chance, I said.

  He may well pass the sock, the vet said.

  I had a feeling he was trying to make it easier on us.

  Heart of a fighter, Russ said, patting Vito’s head.

  How do you step into the ring, I asked Russ on the way home, knowing how bad it’s going to hurt?
/>   It’s like labor, I guess, he said. You anticipate the pain. It’s productive. Makes me feel alive.

  Maybe that’s why, the next day, he head-butted a marine behind the DMV and came back smiling with a broken rib.

  This is how Alive looked: dried blood on the corner of its mouth, bald head perspiring, a ripped T-shirt, shit-eating grin.

  Months before, my father helped me move into the new house. His mind was slipping, but we didn’t talk about that.

  I’m worried about you, he said.

  He drove me down the dirt road to the new house. Dog-eared barns and sagging fences hugged the rough-and-tumble road. The truck he’d borrowed from a friend churned up gravel. I laced my fingers over my pregnant belly. You know, he said, motherhood is hard. Marriage is harder. I never pictured you living in a place like this.

  He could’ve said anything and left a bruise.

  I know what I want, I said. I can take care of myself.

  Give up the illusion of control, my father said. Now.

  Six weeks later, we used the same truck to move him into the veterans’ home, a place where he had to record his bowel movements, ask permission to smoke.

  The hummingbird feeder’s empty, Russ said. You can’t just stop feeding them. They might die.

  He had an old towel tied around his torso to hold two ice packs to his side and back. He never went to the doctor—not for noses, ribs, or wrists. He let them heal on their own.

  I whisked sugar into boiling water for the homemade nectar.

  I think I’ve got a loose tooth, he said. He held on to his eyetooth with dirt-stained fingers.

  If you didn’t before, I said, you will now.

  He curled up on the floor beside Vito, who slept on a pile of towels.

  Think he’ll last the day? I asked.

  I think he’ll last the year, Russ said.

  Vito did not move. His breathing was labored and shallow.

  I picked Poppy up from her play mat. She sucked on my collarbone.

  Have you been down to the hives? Russ asked.

  I will, I said. Soon.

  The truth was, I was afraid to go.

  Just big dogs, I thought.

  That night I decided to sleep on the screened-in porch with my sword.

  See you in bed, Russ said, raising his eyebrows.

  I’ll scare him off, is all, I said.

  I could tell he thought I was being ridiculous, and I was relieved he didn’t say more. I made a bed for Vito next to me on the porch, set a bowl of leftover rice near his head.

  Anything you want, boy, I said, massaging his ears.

  I thought of my father as the night wore on, as the cicadas tuned up and night sounds drowned out the washing machine.

  If you must cede ground to your opponent, he’d say, break rhythm. Change the tempo. Remember—nature is mercurial.

  Vito growled low and long. I sat up from my sleeping bag and saw the silhouette of a bear, illuminated by the porch light, just a screen between us.

  I could not move. My mouth watered. My chest tightened. A small sound came from my lips.

  Years later, when I told this story at parties, people imagined me defiantly raising the sword above my head. But I was paralyzed. My hands never touched the sword.

  Vito growled again, and the bear tumbled down the steps, his musky coat gleaming in the floodlights.

  He could smell the rice, Russ said later.

  I heard Poppy crying upstairs, awake for a night feeding, or perhaps from the commotion.

  I ran up the stairs, past Russ making a bottle. Poppy whimpered in her crib. I didn’t bother to turn on the light and crashed into the bed frame with my shin. I reached for her, brought her to my chest, wanting her skin against mine. She put her lips around my breast, but I was dry.

  Russ went to the doctor the next morning. He was worried that the vision in his left eye was failing.

  How did it go? I asked after he came home. Everything okay?

  I’ll live, he said.

  Sometimes, I wondered if that was true.

  It seemed like the harder I tried to manage my life and the people in it, the more it fell apart. The more I fell apart. Now the woman I meant to become was on vacation, on the other line, otherwise engaged. She’d eloped with my free time, taken my figure, seized my sense of control.

  Every time I thought I was unhappy I looked at Poppy’s face, studied her. Once I watched her, standing where she could not see me. She stirred in her crib, tried to calm herself with steady breathing. Her eyes searched the doorway. Her arms stretched outward—come back for me.

  Russ was watching a fight on television.

  Turn that off, I said. It’s not the same.

  The television went dark.

  Russ got up from the couch and limped over to me. I pictured my body as a salve, ran my hands the length of his back. We held each other without words until Poppy woke from her evening nap and Russ went to her.

  I could hear her melodic sobs, Russ trying to placate her with Rolling Stones songs.

  Later, Vito and I made our beds on the porch. I had rehearsed my moves. The idea was to scare and not to kill. I placed another plate of rice in front of Vito.

  I lay down next to him. I lifted his lip as I had seen the veterinarian do and pressed my finger into his gums. They were pale. His breathing was shallow.

  Vito heard the bear first.

  I’ve read stories of mothers who found strength from nowhere, lifting cars to free their children. Vito’s sprint was no less remarkable. He opened the screen door with his muzzle, sailed like lightning down the porch steps and into the night.

  I could not stop him. I could not bring him back.

  Russ would tell me later of his retinal detachment, the early tremors of Parkinson’s the doctor had found, the fact that he was done flying.

  But that night he was a warm chest. He squeezed the back of my neck.

  Be brave, he said.

  The next morning Vito’s black and tan coat was covered with dew. His side was still. Unscratched and beautiful he lay, all of him spent.

  We buried him out back, next to a rusted steel till and a swath of wild honeysuckle.

  There was an unsigned check in my wallet. I had written it on the way to the vet, thought of passing it to him when Russ was not looking. An empty promise.

  I knew there would be lips to suture, ribs to mend, mouths to feed, socks to buy.

  I like to think of it—the way Vito ran that night. Fast. On point. Nose to the ground. Fearless.

  There is no need to explain to our daughter the death of her first dog. Poppy, better than any of us, understands the urge to have what you must have. She can still wring what she wants from the world. It has listened to her cries and delivered. She still trusts the raw pull of desire. One day it will tear her away from us, take her down a dirt road to a place she does not recognize, and there she will make her home. Away from everything she understands, and close to everything she wants.

  Acknowledgments

  I’m grateful to the teachers I’ve had who have offered advice, edits, and inspiration. George Singleton, you were first, and reeled in a girl who was, initially, just as enthusiastic about the Furman cafeteria French fries as your writing workshop. I’m thankful for my instructors at Bennington, all of whom helped turn raw ideas into publishable work, particularly the dog-friendly and skillful trio of Amy Hempel, Bret Anthony Johnston, and Nick Montemarano.

  These stories were further shaped by the generous editors and journals that published them. My sincere thanks to: Karen Seligman and Hannah Tinti at One Story, Carol Ann Fitzgerald and Marc Smirnoff at Oxford American, Tom Jenks and Mimi Kusch at Narrative, David H. Lynn and Tyler Meier at the Kenyon Review, Ian Stansel at Gulf Coast, James May at New South, Jim Clark at the Greensboro Review, Cara Blue Adams at the Southern Review, and R. T. Smith and Lynn Leech at Shenandoah. I’d like to thank Ladette Randolph at Ploughshares, and also guest editor Jim Shepard, who works magic.r />
  My sincere appreciation to the editors who included my work in recent anthologies: Geraldine Brooks, Heidi Pitlor, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for The Best American Short Stories 2011; and Amy Hempel, Kathy Pories, and Algonquin for the 2010 edition of New Stories from the South.

  Next, I’d like to thank the wonderful team at Scribner for taking me on, particularly Kara Watson and my editor, Samantha Martin. Sam, you are kind and brilliant. Thank you for making my work better and understanding my intentions.

  I’m also deeply indebted to my agent, Julie Barer, of Barer Literary, who, despite her charming urban savvy, takes the time to understand and do right by my rural musings.

  Rhombus, Dad, and Emily: You are good readers and patient believers. And even though I moved to New England, you’ll always have that Fort Macon video to remind me where I came from; don’t use it unless you have to.

  To the Dogtor and Wumpus: Before you, I had nothing to write about. Dogtor, you enable, inspire, and help me write intelligently about urinary wall tumors and cows with mastitis. I am undeniably lucky with you in my life.

  Wumpus, you are the most beautiful of muses. You cried and cracked the world wide open.

  Introducing a new story by Megan Mayhew Bergman

  Almost Famous Women

  THE SIEGE AT WHALE CAY

  Georgie woke up in bed alone. She slipped into a swimsuit and wandered out to a soft stretch of white sand Joe called Femme Beach. The Caribbean sky was cloudless, the air already hot. Georgie waded into the ocean and as soon as the clear water reached her knees she dove into a small wave with expert form.

  She scanned the balcony of the pink stucco mansion for the familiar silhouette, the muscular woman in a monogrammed polo shirt chewing a cigar. Joe liked to drink her morning coffee and watch Georgie swim.

  But not today.

  Curious, Georgie toweled off, tossed a sundress over her suit, and walked the dirt path toward the general store, sand coating her ankles, shells crackling underneath her bare feet. A lush, leafy overhang covered the path, which stopped in front of a cinder-block building with a thatched roof.