Birds of Paradise

by Diana Abu-Jaber

  Avis is pleased that Stanley would remember—they were on a sort of family vacation. While Brian attended a contract law conference in Frankfurt, Avis had taken the kids on a day trip to a medieval town in Bavaria, its narrow streets crowded with porcelain shops. The children helped Avis pick out the paper-fine china, its intricate webbing of cracked glaze, a sprinkling of rosebuds along the rim of the saucers. Now she smiles thinly at Nieves, thinking about the pieces she’d smashed on the patio after Felice had left for good. Avis had worked methodically, a piece or two a day, destroying her prized possessions, the satisfying crunch, like flinging robin’s eggs. Until Brian quietly suggested that Stanley might like to have them someday. She stopped in time to save the cups and saucers.

  “I like old things,” Nieves says. She contemplates the cup again. “But these are lovely.”

  “I’m so glad you approve,” Avis says.

  Nieves looks up at her as Brian and Stanley rush to interrupt, Brian saying, “This tea is from—” just as Stanley says, “Mother made these meringues.” Mother—not Mom—Avis catches the remonstrance and she knots her hands together: Behave. Nieves puts the meringue in her mouth, as if to stop herself from speaking, and Avis knows what she’s tasting: a crisp folding air, then melting bits of shaved chocolate. Nieves’s mouth softens into a sigh. “Oh,” she says quietly, as if talking to herself. “Wonderful.”

  Avis stands, her eyes hot, and hurries into the kitchen.

  THE OTHER DAY, Avis had been in the kitchen preparing a batter when Stanley’s deliveryman had come to the door. Along with her usual baking supplies, Eduardo carried a cooler full of organic produce. She followed him back into the kitchen and watched him remove chilies, onions, garlic, and tomatoes from the cooler. A whole chicken. He opened the refrigerator and slid in cartons of milk and eggs, a wedge of lemon-colored cheese, bunches of lettuce, broccoli, and cauliflower. He closed the fridge, then flipped the cooler shut. “Your son doesn’t approve of your eating habits.”

  “No kidding.” Avis sighed as she filled a pastry bag. Once or twice a month a supply of unasked-for items.

  “Risky, though—giving someone a bunch of food they don’t like.”

  “He knows I won’t be able to let it go to waste.”

  The mynah started its shrieking: a fierce, shattering braaaah. He swiveled toward the window. “Wow. What the hell.”

  Avis piped tiny quenelles of tea cake dough onto a cookie tray. “He’ll settle down in a second.” She slipped the tray into the oven, then looked over Eduardo’s shoulder: they watched Solange walk down the steps, hair tied in a faded turquoise scarf, a teal dress fluttering with the air.

  “What’s the deal with her?” Eduardo asked. “She the housekeeper?”

  “Of course not.” Avis pulled out a tray of scallop-shaped molds for madeleines. “I don’t think,” she added quietly, pouring batter into her molds.

  Eduardo didn’t speak for a long moment. “Haitians were the first ones—you know—to throw a revolution, kick out the colonizers.” He lifted his chin, apparently at the neighbor. “Those kidnapped Africans—they’d adapted to Haiti but they never forgot who they were—they knew they were free people.”

  She slammed the cookie molds on the counter, settling the dough. “Huh.” She set those aside, then stooped to pull a ring of strawberry génoise from the lower oven.

  “Though, of course, it’s kind of funny . . .”

  She glanced over, took in the slight asymmetry to his face, flattened lower lip, shadowy outlines of the tear troughs beneath his eyes. “What?”

  “Well. Just. Here you are, still a slave to the French.”

  Avis straightened, hands on her hips. “I work for myself. That’s hardly slavery.”

  “Hey, we all choose our own masters.” He turned to the window. “Have you seen anything magic going on over there yet?”

  She laughed and placed the springform pans into the cooling rack, bits of parchment lining jutting up like feathers around the edges. On the top rack is a cooled and decorated seven-layered opéra cake. Her client—the Peruvian ambassador—had requested a “tropical” theme for a dinner party dessert. Avis had based the decoration on the view through the kitchen window, re-creating in lime, lemongrass, and mint frostings the curling backyard flora, curving foliage shaped like tongues and hearts, fat spines bisecting the leaves.

  Eduardo edged closer. “You don’t believe it?”

  She began pouring chocolate pastilles into the bowl of her double boiler. “I thought you said voodoo was just another type of religion.”

  “It is. Religion with extenuating circumstances.” He leaned over the stove.

  “Uh-huh.” Avis adjusted the flame.

  Eduardo moved to another corner, trying to get out of the way. “Let me tell you something. About ten years ago? I was a production assistant for a crew that was filming on Haiti. It was supposed to be a documentary called Flowering Heaven—about home gardens in the Caribbean. I just went to hang out on the beach. Anyway, when we were there, we met all kinds of people who went to witches—like, instead of doctors? They had curses broken and got cured from all kinds of weird diseases and problems. We met people who used those little dolls, and spell-casters . . .”

  Avis hummed and stirred the melting chocolate, watching it turn black and glossy as it liquefied, seeding it with bits of chopped pastilles. “Oh right,” she murmured. “And the people they cursed, they’d get weird aches and pains, right?”

  He lifted his eyebrows. “Hey, you really think there’s an explanation for everything?” His voice was intent and confiding. “You think the world is only what you can see and feel?”

  Avis dipped the tip of her spatula into the melted chocolate and brought it close to her lips, checking the heat. “Our senses tell a lot more than we realize.”

  “All I know is we saw things there . . .” He shakes his head. “All kinds of people said they’d attracted their husbands and wives with charms.”

  “Sure, love potions.” She scraped a few more bits of chopped chocolate into the liquid to bring down the temperature. “Do you know what I do for a living?”

  “One man told me he woke up in the morning with this woman’s face in his mind. He’d never seen her before in his life, but he became obsessed with finding her. It turned out she lived miles away, in another town. She’d seen him once, at a market, and made a love charm to call him to her. A few days later, he was knocking at her door.”

  Avis looked up at the wobbly reflections in the stainless steel cabinets lining the walls. Sometimes when she baked, she thought she caught sight of some odd movement in the corner of her eyes—but it was always this reflection flashing from surface to surface. “So how did this guy feel about that? About the fact that she’d used a charm and tricked him into it?”

  Eduardo shrugged. “They got married. He loved her. I don’t think anyone particularly cared how it happened.”

  STANLEY IS GOING ON about work, how they might have to expand—the property developers circling Homestead like vultures—a reproachful look at his father. She observes the formal way he holds his cup on a saucer—letting everyone know that he too is a guest in this house. His voice has a buzzing tonality that irritates her. Makes it hard to listen to him: buzz, buzz, buzz. Whenever they visit him at the market, she’s noticed his customers and employees hang on his words as if he were some sort of saint or the head of a cult. People tell her: “Your son is amazing, Mrs. Muir. How did you do it?” She rubs her thumb over her knuckles, listening to Brian making chitchat, quizzing them gently. Nieves crosses her arms, lets her head tip back, watching Brian.

  “When did you two start seeing each other?” Brian asks.

  The girl smiles. “Seeing each other?”

  Stanley takes her hand. “Actually, Dad, Nieves and I are living together.”

  Brian gives a sort of huff at the same time that Avis feels something tighten, a bone pressing against her heart. “You’re living together?” he asks.<
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  Nieves’s crossed leg bobs up and down. Stanley has an odd, guilty expression now, his cheeks flushed. “She just moved in. This month.”

  “To your apartment?” Brian is openly astonished. Stanley lives above the market in a bleak one-bedroom in downtown Homestead. Attached to the apartment is a small studio he uses as overflow for the market’s storeroom. Brian and Avis used to joke about Stanley being married to his work. How quickly things change, Avis thinks. Brian squeezes her limp hand. “Now, but don’t you think you kids—”

  “We’re having a baby,” Nieves interrupts.

  “What?” Avis is breathless. “You mean someday?” But of course—it rushes in on Avis—she doesn’t mean “someday.” At last Avis understands what she’s been seeing all along—the blue shadows under the girl’s eyes and her puffy face. Avis turns to Stanley—who is staring at Nieves—and it’s like peeling back a series of transparencies. There are the sloping bones of his adult face; there is the sugar-milk skin of Stanley at four. “Stanley?”

  Stanley lowers his gaze to the floor, forearms balanced on his knees. He’s the picture of remorse and Avis feels an almost pleasurable impulse to scold him. She reminds herself, he isn’t much younger than she’d been, barely twenty-seven, pregnant with him. “Obviously the timing isn’t the greatest,” Stanley mutters. “With the business taking on all this new debt, plus the tax hike . . .”

  “How pregnant, or, I mean—far along—are you?” Brian asks Nieves. Avis hears a bounce in his voice. “Are you taking folic acid? Have you seen a doctor?”

  Folic acid! Now Avis reaches for her husband’s hand. She wants to protect him. Nieves looks at him warily. She’s dressed in low-rise jeans, shiny sandals with just a filament of leather over the toes, a satiny, clinging top that looks like underwear, and a pair of sparkling loop earrings. “I’m probably due in the winter I guess.”

  “It was pretty, you know, unexpected,” says Stanley, as if he’s learning all of this for the first time. “We’re still figuring things out.”

  “It’s marvelous!” Brian blurts; he turns to Avis: his eyes are damp. “We think it’s wonderful, of course,” he says. “Congratulations, you two.”

  “But we need money,” Nieves says. “Stanley was supposed to tell you? We really do. Right away.”

  Stanley’s face is a dark putty-color.

  “Oh. Yes,” Brian says.

  “You already knew about this?” Avis releases his hand.

  “No, no—not the baby! Nothing about the baby.”

  The baby.

  “Stanley was supposed to tell you,” Nieves says.

  “What?” Avis’s voice wobbles; her neck feels hot.

  Brian puts his hand on Avis’s arm while addressing Nieves. “Remind me—”

  “One hundred twenty-six thousand dollars,” Nieves says. “We have to get that much, or it won’t work.”

  “Oh, this is ridiculous!” Avis says. She doesn’t care for this girl. She places her hands square on her knees—they feel knobby; the bones in her back feel sharp as piano keys. Already a querulous old lady. “A hundred twenty-six thousand? My God, how do you expect us to come up with that sort of money?”

  Stanley starts shaking his head heavily. They’ve bailed him out a number of times in the past with small gifts, disbursements, a few thousand here and there; one loan of twenty-five thousand, which he’d partially paid off and they’d forgiven the remaining seventeen. But this sounds like extortion to Avis—this dreadful girl, using the threat of a grandchild. Another thought comes to her: could they even be sure that the child is Stanley’s? She must discuss this with Stanley in private. But he’s looking at her now as if he were embarrassed or disappointed. “Mom, I talked with Dad—I mean we thought we could get away with eighty thousand before but our other investors—their money’s tied up—”

  “It’s true, dear,” Brian interrupts, his hand curved around her forearm. “We did discuss this—Stan and me. I’d been meaning to talk it over with you—well, we’ve both been so busy.” He lowers his head, touches the back of his neck reflectively. “It’s hard to know exactly the best moment for these things.”

  “Stanley—tell them,” the girl says.

  Stanley’s gaze rests a beat too long on Avis. “I didn’t want to worry either of you.” He rolls forward to put down his cup. “The thing is . . . the owner of my property keeps getting approached by commercial developers—I guess Homestead is getting kind of hot all of a sudden.”

  “I knew it,” Brian bursts out. “Dammit. Goddamn gold-diggers.”

  “He’s a good guy—Calvin Mails, the owner. He’s trying to work with us, but there’s all these sorts of crazy numbers flying around and he’s ready to sell.”

  “We can buy the building and land for five hundred K,” Nieves cuts in. “Basically, that price? He’s doing us a huge favor because he loves Stan. He could probably get almost twice that. But it means we’ve got to raise twenty percent just to qualify for the loan. Plus a little extra for closing costs and expenses.”

  “Of course, of course . . .” Brian mutters, glaring at his lap.

  “All our money’s been going right back into the business—it’s been strictly subsistence living—for both of us,” Stanley adds, linking his fingers with Nieves’s.

  “You remember?” Brian chides, brows lifted. “I warned you!”

  “Dad.” He sighs through his nose. “I didn’t have the money to buy the place five years ago any more than I do now. Twenty thousand or a hundred. It might as well be the moon.”

  “Well, but twenty is a whole other—”

  “Dad, believe me—we’ve tried—literally—everything we could to avoid coming to you. But once we’re owners, it’ll be different. The market’s really healthy. I don’t know exactly when, but—I swear—we’ll pay you back soon. With interest.”

  “Interest isn’t the point here, son. And actually, interest rates on business loans—”

  “It doesn’t matter!” Nieves erupts. “What matters is that if we don’t buy the building we’ll lose the market. We can’t even afford to relocate—there is no place cheaper.”

  Avis’s body fills with adrenaline tremors. She holds the lapels of her blouse closed in her fist, presses the silk against her throat. It is intolerable. The problem, as she sees it, is this—this Nieves. Where did she come from? Look at her, slouching, her tight shirt, the blebs of fat just beneath the corners of her sulking mouth. She thinks she can just waltz in here and take their son and their money? And now she’ll produce a child to torment and blackmail them with—threaten to never let them see the baby unless they do as she says. The first grandchild. Their feelings are immaterial: Avis and Brian will have to dance to this girl’s tune. It is unbearable, absolutely unendurable.

  Avis stands. She is gratified to see a spark of anxious curiosity on Nieves’s face. “No,” Avis says, her voice ridged with emotion. “It’s not fair. This isn’t right or fair.”

  “Dearest.” Brian’s hand lingers on her wrist; she yanks it away.

  “I won’t do it—I won’t do any of whatever you think you’re cooking up,” she says to Nieves. “I’ve been tortured enough already, thank you very much.”

  “Cooking up?” Nieves looks at Stanley. “What?”

  Stanley’s expression opens to incredulity; his eyes flick between his parents.

  Avis’s pulse is pounding so hard it seems it must be visible. In some way, this girl is the reason that things aren’t right. Because that’s what a girl like this does—breaks into a family, sets them against each other.

  Brian stands beside her now, sliding an arm around her shoulder. Is he shaking? “Oh . . . She doesn’t mean that at all! Avis hasn’t been feeling well,” he says lightly. “There’ve been these—disturbances—in the neighborhood lately . . .” Was that a chuckle? “Please—kids—we do—we want to help you—your mother and I both,” he says to Stanley. “We just haven’t had a chance to discuss any of this between the two of us.
It is a lot of money. And—well—now a baby coming! It’s all just a bit overwhelming, you know? I think Mom’s just in a state of, like, shock—aren’t you?” He gives Avis’s shoulders a squeeze. She lowers her eyes and finds she’s staring at the navy polish on the girl’s toes, the thong of a silver-sequined flip-flop.

  Stanley rises as well. “Well,” he says quietly. He clears his throat. “Well I guess this wasn’t the way I expected things to go.”

  Avis interposes herself between Stanley and the girl (which isn’t difficult, as the girl remains seated after Stanley has risen, Avis notes, as if it’s all a matter of supreme indifference to her if they stay or go) and puts her imploring hands on his chest “Stanny . . .” She is reassured by the solidity of her son’s chest, his familiar smell of toothpaste and grassy earth, his boy scent. “You’re trying to replace her. Felice turning eighteen—a little like losing her again, isn’t it? I think it is. Almost worse in a way . . .” Her eyes darken. Brian clears his throat as if about to speak and her focus returns. “I have—just a suggestion. Why don’t you and your girl try staying here—with us, for a while? We’ll give you some money and we can cover your living costs while you figure things out with the market. Would that be nice? Let’s just try being a family together again,” she says quietly, ignoring Brian, who keeps trying to cut in. “My goodness, Stan, you’re practically still a baby yourself! Let us take care of you. I mean both of you, of course. We’ll help with the money. But just come home for a bit.” As she speaks, Avis feels buoyed by this idea: Stanley needs to come home! They would make it up to him—whatever he thought he’d been missing. It wasn’t too late—they could show him. And if he insists on bringing this girl—fine. “It’s a bit of a mess,” she says as gently as possible to Stanley. “No, of course—this baby is wonderful news. But you two don’t have any idea what you’re in for. You’re going to need us.”

  Only then does she realize that her son’s face is growing remote, sealing up, just as he used to do in his childhood. And Avis can feel her insides start to crumple, a fernlike twisting-in. “Oh—I. I’m sorry.” She steps back, as if she could pull away from the words. “Just—never mind. That didn’t come out right, maybe.”