Blackbird

by Averil Dean

  Together they would prowl the secondhand stores, filling Celia’s room with clothes and costume jewelry. Darlene said it always started her day out right to see Celia coming down the stairs in the morning.

  Between them was a quiet sympathy, the same willingness to be pleased by small things. The only time, in fact, that Rory could remember them fighting was years ago, when he and Celia were in their early teens. The day his mother had cut Celia’s hair.

  And that wasn’t a fight, exactly.

  Rory had come home from a soccer game and found them in the kitchen. Celia was perched on a rickety kitchen stool, her face and neck a savage red, thick with hives, eyes shocky and unblinking. Her hair lay in drifts of golden brown, which clung to Darlene’s slippers as she circled the stool, scissors flashing, each swipe a dry screech like two rocks rubbing together.

  He stood at the doorway, slack with surprise.

  Celia’s hair was her only claim to what truly could be called beauty: thick, silky, the spirals always floating around her head as though caught in a slight updraft. She used to call it her cape—she said it felt like that, patting against her back when she ran. It was what people talked about when they referred to Celia: Oh, the girl with the hair? I know her.

  Now it was lying all around, in her lap and at her feet. The air was thick with the scent of Celia’s strawberry shampoo.

  Swapp!

  The scissors closed again, and a last long strand slipped to the floor.

  Darlene’s lips were set in a grim line, her face as ashen as Celia’s was red. Carefully she set down the scissors, wiped her hands and left the room without meeting Rory’s eye. Her footsteps retreated down the hall. The bedroom door opened and shut.

  Rory took a step toward Celia. She looked like a baby bird, all eyes and frail long neck.

  “What happened?” he said.

  She wouldn’t look up. Her voice sounded trapped, as if she were holding her breath.

  “She said it was too much. Too much, she kept saying. Too much.”

  Rory swallowed around the sudden tight ache in his throat. He took a cautious step forward, his hand outstretched as though to assess an injury.

  She flinched away with a shrill cry.

  “Don’t!”

  She leaped off the stool and ran from the room, slipping on the hair as she rounded the corner. Her feet pounded up the stairs.

  In the silence, he heard someone crying. It took him a moment to realize it wasn’t Celia.

  Slowly he shrugged off his backpack. He went to the closet and got a broom and a paper sack, swept up the hair and stuffed it in the bag. One long tendril was caught at the top of the bag. He lifted it out. It dangled from his hand like a spiderweb, twisting gently in the draft from the open front door. He found a piece of tape in the kitchen junk drawer, bound the cut end of the tendril and tucked it into his pocket.

  He stood with the bag in his hands. The thought of throwing it into the garbage can hurt him somehow, as if the bag contained the body of a beloved pet. Finally he took it to the side of the house and held a match to a corner of the sack. Celia’s hair turned black and frizzled, then faded to ash. It was very quick.

  When it was done, Rory kicked some dirt over the ashes and went inside.

  * * *

  Darlene apologized again and again. She offered to take Celia down to Telluride or even Montrose for a real haircut to clean up the ragged ends and make a style of it. Celia refused. She was quiet afterward but not sullen. She insisted to Rory that it was fine.

  “It’s only hair,” she said. “It’ll grow back. I just don’t feel like myself now, you know? My head feels...” She raised a hand to her bare neck. “Loose.”

  “You’re still pretty,” he lied.

  The truth was, he missed her hair. And so did Eddie Dark, who was angrier than Rory had ever seen him.

  “Goddamn it, Darlene,” he said, so drunk he sounded almost toothless, his tongue rolling around his mouth. He had been drinking steadily for hours, since first coming home to see Celia’s haircut. “Why’d you do that?”

  Rory pressed his ear to his bedroom door but missed his mother’s reply.

  “She ain’t your daughter,” Eddie said.

  “Of course she is.” Darlene’s voice faded and then returned. “Ed, I’m trying to help...”

  There was a pause, then a glassy crash and the bone-jarring slam of the front door.

  Afterward, an uneasy silence settled over the house. Celia rarely spoke, but took to following her stepmother around as she used to do when she was a younger girl, asking for chores. To Rory she seemed restless and vaguely apologetic, which baffled him. She helped with the meals and did the dishes every night after dinner without being asked. Then she’d go straight to her attic bedroom and stay there.

  Sometimes Rory would follow her, and they’d lie on her bed listening to music. Celia would rest her shorn head on the pillow, one long leg crossed over the other, flicking her ankle.

  He tried to find out what happened.

  Celia only shrugged. “She said it was a good idea.”

  “I don’t get it,” he said. “Why was it a good idea? Lots of girls have long hair.”

  “That’s what I said. But she kept saying, ‘Trust me,’ and that it was too much, and she had this funny look on her face, like...”

  “Like what?”

  “Like it was important.”

  “How could it be? That doesn’t even make sense.”

  “I don’t know.” Celia’s voice was sharp. “Anyway, what are you worried about it for? It’s not your hair.”

  She got up then to change the music. But Rory had seen something in her face, something that looked like anger but felt a lot like fear.

  * * *

  All that was behind them now, Rory thought as he helped set his mother’s table for Christmas Eve dinner. Celia had brought a white cotton tablecloth with a border of embroidered mistletoe. It was worn and aged to thinness, with a small stain in the middle, but so heavily starched that it stood out around the edges like a crinoline. Celia put a thick candle on the stained spot, took some ornaments off the tree and some pinecones out of her string bag, and in two minutes the old oak table looked like a picture from a magazine, making the cheap cotton curtains and nicked-up chairs seem somehow intentional.

  His mother brought in the roast turkey with corn bread stuffing, mashed potatoes and rich golden gravy. She might have left it at that, but Celia craved a colorful plate and had added a bowl of glossy green beans, cranberry sauce and honey-glazed carrots. For dessert, an apple crostata. They ended up with so much food that Chuck had to bring in a side table from the living room to handle the overflow.

  “This is enough to hold us until the spring thaw,” Darlene said, hands on her hips.

  “You’ve forgotten how much I can put away.” And Rory’s stomach growled, right on cue.

  “He’s not kidding,” Celia said. “Last week I saw him eat six cheeseburgers in a row.”

  “And they weren’t even that good,” Rory said, pulling out a chair for his mother. “Willy Pete’s.”

  “It’s amazing that place is still open,” Darlene said. “How is the old coot? And how’s Jeanette?”

  For some minutes they filled their plates, chatting about their friends in Jawbone Ridge, and the young couple who had bought Yard Sale, Darlene’s old shop on the High Street, where she used to sell secondhand ski gear and clothing.

  “The shop looks good,” Rory told her. “Christmas lights all year long, and in the summer they sell outdoor stuff. Camping gear and whatnot.”

  “How do they get customers in the door during the off-season?” Darlene wondered.

  “They don’t,” he said. “eBay.”

  “Huh. I wish I’d thought of that.”


  But there was no envy in his mother’s tone. She wished the young couple well and always stopped by to visit when she was in town.

  Rory looked at her affectionately. After Eddie Dark left when Rory was thirteen, the three of them had to struggle harder than ever to make ends meet. Both he and Celia had started working early—under the table at first, years before they could legally collect a wage in the state of Colorado. They did odd jobs, mostly. Cleaning the big houses dotted around the mountain, babysitting, shoveling driveways. At fifteen, Celia took a steady job as a barista at the Java Hut, and Rory found a maintenance gig at a small hotel in Telluride. His mother had always hated to take their money. She wished Rory could have stayed in soccer, maybe learned to play an instrument. She badly wanted him to go to college. But he was a lousy student; he’d only made it through high school at all because of Celia’s help. She had done all his reading and most of his homework—often at the expense of her own.

  With exams, though, he was hopeless. Celia had tried to get him to cheat. She said he was clever with his hands; he could probably learn to palm some notes to boost his scores.

  “It would make your mom happy,” she said.

  Rory was offended. “I’m not a cheater.”

  Celia gave him a crooked smile and handed him a book report to copy in his handwriting.

  “That’s not the same thing,” he said, his neck growing hot.

  “No,” she said.

  But there seemed to be a lot of opinion behind that syllable.

  Now, across the table, Chuck was asking about the Blackbird. Where were they with the renovations?

  “Well, the floors are done—” Celia said.

  “Thank God,” Rory put in.

  “Rory...” his mother said.

  “Sorry.”

  “The plumbing’s good and the roof is solid, and I’m almost finished with the walls. Hopefully I’ll have the kitchen done within the next month or so, and that’ll be the last of them.”

  “And what are you doing about decorating it?” Darlene said. “Where will you get all the furniture?”

  “A lot of it’s done already,” Rory said. “Celia has the magic touch, Mom. You wouldn’t believe how good the place looks. Julian calls Celia the gypsy queen, decorating her palace.”

  “Gypsies don’t build palaces,” Celia said. “They keep moving—that’s the point of being a gypsy.”

  “He means it as a compliment.”

  “Does he?”

  “Sure. Why would he be there if he didn’t think it was cool?”

  “That’s a good question.”

  “Wait,” Darlene said. “Who’s Julian?”

  “Julian Moss,” Rory said. “He’s kind of a legend, actually. Back in the day he was a world champion downhill skier, took home a bronze in the Olympic Games. Anyway, he’s building a house right now in Telluride and wanted to stay someplace nearby, so he ended up with us.”

  “But I thought you said the place wasn’t ready.”

  “No, it’s not, not at all. But Julian’s cool with that. In fact, he’s been pitching in with a lot of the work. Even—” Rory hesitated. Julian had been quietly siphoning money into the place. A lot of money, much more than Celia was aware of. Julian wanted to keep it on the down-low.

  “Even what?” Celia said.

  “Nothing. Pass the green beans, will you, Chuck?”

  Rory took a heaping spoonful, trying not to notice the look in the older man’s eye. He wondered how much Chuck knew or guessed about what went on inside the Blackbird Hotel.

  * * *

  After dinner, Chuck said to Darlene that it was time to go. The Christmas service would be starting soon.

  “Last year we were late and had to stand in the back,” Darlene said. “And by late I mean twenty minutes early.”

  “Go,” Rory said.

  “Why don’t you come with us? It’s the reason for the season, you know.”

  “Naw, you know we’re only in it for the stocking stuffers,” Rory said. “We’ll do the dishes and watch A Christmas Story.”

  “I’ve raised a pair of heathens,” Darlene said.

  But she didn’t argue. She and Chuck shrugged into their coats, gathered up two bags filled with gifts for their friends at church and they were off.

  For a few minutes, Rory and Celia raced back and forth between the TV and the kitchen, calling out the lines they’d learned by heart during one epic childhood Christmas when they were both down with strep throat, entrenched on the couch while the show played on a loop in the living room.

  When their favorite scene came on, Rory reached out and dragged her into his lap.

  “Ho, ho, ho. What do you want for Christmas, little girl?” He drew his head back and leered at her. The curve of her ass was pressed between his thighs. His dick began to rear up against his jeans.

  This girl, he thought. Goddamn.

  She glanced at his crotch, both hands clasped under her chin in mock delight.

  “Just what I wanted! Oh, Santa...” She pulled at his waistband, peering down his pants like she was opening a Christmas stocking.

  “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid,” he said.

  She crumpled against him, shaking with laughter. He kissed her open, breathless mouth, pulled her closer with one hand as with the other he unfastened his jeans and the buttons of her shirt.

  This was what they needed. Things had been so heavy between them lately. They were working too hard, stressed out over money. But everything would be better soon. She still was his; she still knew they belonged together. She turned to straddle his lap as he pulled her clothes aside and bent to take her breast in his mouth, both hands sliding up her bare back to pull her closer, and his mind tripping in circles as he stroked her soft skin. This girl, this girl...

  Abruptly she turned away.

  A key clicked in the lock. The door sprang open, and his mother walked in.

  “We were all the way to the 145 when I realized I’d forgotten Michelle’s—”

  She stopped in the doorway, her face blank with surprise.

  Rory grabbed a blanket and pulled it over his lap.

  “Jesus, Mom.”

  Celia was slower. She adjusted her shirt, lined up the buttons and began to fasten them. A deep red flush suffused her face, and her lips were pink where Rory had bitten them.

  For several seconds, no one spoke. His mother stood where she was, swaying a little as if hypnotized. The TV carried on in the background, an eerie parody of childhood, no longer comical but grotesque and damning. Rory reached for the remote, but his mother’s voice stopped him.

  “There’s something you should know,” she said. “I was wrong to keep it from you. I see that now.”

  Her voice was colder than Rory had ever heard it. She was looking straight at Celia.

  A jolt of alarm passed through him. “Mom—”

  “He left because of you.”

  Next to him, a huff from Celia, as if she’d been punched or had fallen flat on her back.

  Rory felt his own breath snag in his throat. The words were out there now, part of the atmosphere. They formed a box around Celia and another around his mom, and he felt the walls close around him, too, as real as the floor under his feet. Across the room, the Christmas lights flashed red and green and the TV children screamed as they slid away from Santa’s lap, but the sound was tinny and hollow as if it were coming from the bottom of a well.

  His mother was sturdy now with her feet wide apart, one hand on the doorknob. She repeated the words carefully, with equal emphasis on each one. Her eyes were locked on Celia’s face.

  “Your father left because of you.”

  She bent stiffly to pick up a gift from the hall table. Then she left, shutting the door behind
her.

  The room had gone hollow, and a metallic ringing filled his ears. Celia got to her feet and Rory followed, pulled her cold hands into his as he rushed into speech.

  “What the hell,” he said. “Don’t listen to that. I don’t know what she’s thinking to say a thing like that, Jesus Christ.”

  He struggled to keep his eyes still, suddenly hyperaware of every muscle in his mouth and cheeks. She stood looking up at him, her eyebrows tightening with suspicion.

  “What do you know about this? Tell me—what did she mean?”

  “Nothing.” Too fast, and his eyes were too steady, but he couldn’t think where to look.

  “Tell me.”

  “I don’t know. It’s nothing, swear to God.”

  Celia gave him a withering glare as she yanked her hands free. She turned and went down the hall to the guest room.

  Rory followed her to the door. “What are you doing?”

  She pulled her battered suitcase from the closet and dropped it on the bed, sprang the clasps to open it.

  “She doesn’t want me here,” she said. “She won’t want me here now.”

  “She was just surprised. I think we can give her that—come on.”

  Celia turned to him, blazing with disbelief.

  “Surprised,” she said. “Surprised is, ‘Oh my God, you little slut, get your fucking hands off my golden boy.’”

  “Jesus, Cee—”

  “Surprised is, ‘Dear Lord, heavenly father, a semi-incestuous love affair under my own roof. And on Christmas, too!’”

  “All right—”

  “This was anything but a surprise. She’s been waiting for this. Waiting to say that, you saw her. And you—” Celia’s voice broke, but she paused and held it together. “You won’t even tell me what the hell she’s talking about.”

  He reached for her. Celia shoved him away with one hand flat to his chest.

  “Leave me alone, Rory. You’ve got nothing to say.”

  A sudden righteous rage surged up his body, carrying his voice with it.

  “Hey, you’ve been waiting, too,” he said. “How long were you going to let it go on like this? I’ve been loving you since we were kids. It’s sick how much I love you—”