Love and Ordinary Creatures

by Gwyn Hyman Rubio

  “I hope ‘C. McCarthy’ is you, Clarissa. It’s Joe Fitzgerald. Sorry I missed you tonight. Something came up, but I promise I’ll be at Crab Cakes tomorrow. Can’t wait to sample your good food. Bye now.”

  He hears another beep and braces himself. The message plays again.

  “Something important came up. The reason he didn’t come,” she says, pattering gingerly into the sunroom. “Why do I always overreact?” she asks, squatting down low in front of him.

  He takes a wary step back.

  “Poor ole Caruso,” she says, rocking forward. “You’re the one who pays for my bad moods.” She gulps down a mouthful of air. “I’m sorry, so sorry.” She splutters into silence.

  She never says she’s sorry to him. So which selfish jerk is she apologizing to?

  “Give me a kiss,” she says.

  Relenting, he teeters toward her, and she brushes her full lips against his beak. “My oysters weren’t all that good, anyway. It’s not the season for them.”

  She plants her large hands against her thighs and rises. He fixes his eyes on her as she sways down the hallway, but this time she veers into the bathroom. Seconds later, the hooks on the shower curtain are clinking, and her bare feet are thwacking against the prefabricated plastic floor. He listens to the whooshing and spraying of water, then to her sweet soprano, singing a jaunty little tune he has never heard before.

  Six

  For hours, Caruso ruminates in his cage, like a cave now because she has covered it.

  “Good night, lovey-dovey,” she had twittered before cheerily skipping off to bed. Never before has she called him lovey-dovey. A lovey-dovey is a bird he would never want or pretend to be.

  Well, yes, he might be monogamous like a dove, but he is no ground feeder—no cooing, squatting target for lazy neighborhood cats. He’s a fighter—a fighter and a lover. He’ll fight to the death for himself and for the one he loves. “Lovey-dovey,” she had said, but he was not the lovey-dovey she was thinking of. Mr. Herculean Pecs is her dove, he fears. But how—with his long, muscular arms and broad, strong chest—did he ever qualify for such a gentle nickname?

  As soon as he raises this question, he knows what the answer is. It was her innate sweetness that named him this. He admires this quality of hers because despite the rage her brother inflicted upon her, his anger never took root in her nature. She is constantly saying that people can change. One day her brother will become a better person, she claims, and they’ll be like any other loving family. Desperate to change herself, she clings to the inevitability of transformation.

  He recalls a conversation she had with Beryl a few months back on the Gaskills’ front porch. The discussion unfolded, same as always, with Clarissa insisting that Randall could change, if only he tried, and Beryl asserting that he was incapable of it. Back and forth, they had argued until they grew bored and moved on to their favorite topic—ex-boyfriends. Why did most relationships with men begin with sublime passion, only to end in unambiguous disappointment? they asked themselves before delving into a long-winded exploration of man’s fragile ego and his gross inadequacies. At one point, after a jag of uncontrollable laughter, Clarissa’s mood took a turn, and, in a thoughtful voice, she said, “Have I ever told you about Priscilla Pincushion?”

  “I don’t think so,” Beryl said. “Sounds like a character in a children’s book.”

  “No…she was real, all right,” Clarissa said, taking a deep breath. “She was a classmate of mine, back when I was a kid.”

  “When you lived in the mountains?”

  “Yeah, during elementary school, before we moved to the Bluegrass. I was a very shy little girl. Afraid of everyone. Didn’t know how to speak up. Wallpaper, that’s what I was, and Priscilla was shy, like me, except somehow I blended in, and she didn’t.”

  “Why didn’t she?”

  “Her fire-engine-red hair, I think. It was the first thing about her that caught everyone’s attention. No one could be wallpaper with hair that color. The students would stare at it first, their eyes invariably drifting down to her forehead, thick with freckles round as coriander seeds, every bit as riveting. Next, they would become mesmerized by the freckles on her eyelids, on her cheeks, and even above her lip. There were freckles, like swarms of gnats, on her neck. She had them all over her arms, at the tips of her fingers, and on the skin between them. The pigmentation of her legs made them look like those of a speckled cricket. When she wore sandals in late summer, you could see the flecks of brown on her toes. The boys in our class, young and foolish, didn’t know how to act, didn’t know what to make of her, and so they teased her. Priscilla Pincushion, they called her, day after day.”

  “Sad.”

  “Very sad,” Clarissa agreed. “I mean, if they had focused less on her freckles and a little more on what was inside her, they would have realized how sweet she was, but they didn’t really see her and bullied her instead. We can either fight with or flee from those things that frighten us. Fight or flight—the two choices we have, or so the experts say. Priscilla chose to flee. Strange, because I thought I’d be the one in that situation. Me—with these huge hands and these tiny feet. I was the freak. But I was spared. Why? I asked myself as I looked on, watching them taunt her mercilessly at recess every day, but then this epiphany came to me, and soon afterward, things changed for the better.”

  “She did some serious ass-whupping.” Beryl grinned.

  “I’m talking about something important.” Clarissa huffed. “I’m talking about change. How people change, how attitudes change, how growth occurs.” Annoyed, she nibbled her bottom lip. “And you start your ass-whupping stuff.”

  “A good ass-whupping is a powerful catalyst for change.”

  “Please,” Clarissa moaned.

  “Oh, go on.” Beryl relented. “I’m intrigued now. Finish your story.”

  Clarissa cleared her throat and shot Beryl a reproachful look.

  “I mean it,” Beryl said reassuringly.

  Clarissa drew herself up in the porch swing and began. “It was really cold that day at recess. I was pounding my boots against the walkway to revive the feeling in my toes when I caught sight of her standing beneath the pin oak at the far edge of the playground. She had her arm stretched out and her palm open. ‘Ain’t no food in it,’ she had said, looking up at the bird feeder as I struggled through my shyness and walked over, ‘but I got me some cornbread here.’ She showed me the crumpled pieces in her cupped hand. ‘I don’t like any critters going hungry, especially birds.’ On the branch above was a cardinal. ‘I love redbirds,’ she had said, gifting me with her smile, ‘but I love people better.’

  “‘I love birds better,’ I quickly said back. ‘Birds come into this world perfect, but not people. They gotta work real hard to be as good as birds. So you shouldn’t let those boys bother you. It ain’t important what they think. Ya wanna hear something that might help you with them?’ I asked her.

  “‘I reckon,’ she said, in almost a whisper.

  “‘Whenever they tease you, just accept it. Act like you don’t care.’

  “She stood there, nodding her head, attentive to my words. The very next day, she did exactly what I told her. When the boys began to pick on her, she didn’t turn and run but faced them head-on with a smile, and within weeks their teasing came to an end.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “Married with kids, living somewhere with her musician husband in Nashville,” Clarissa answered. “I don’t know much more about her, but her predicament made me realize that we have more than fight or flight to choose from when we’re scared. Sometimes, acceptance is the answer. Sometimes we have to accept the situation we find ourselves in and have faith that it will change. Then we are fearless in a totally different way.”

  “Riding out the storm with dignity.”

  “That’s right, and we can do it if we believe in change,” Clarissa had finished. “If we believe that nothing is static, that nobody—ever—stays the s
ame.”

  Nothing is static. Nobody—ever—stays the same, Caruso muses, mulling over her words. It’s true that birds have changed over eons from dinosaurs into the flying creatures they are today, but does this mean that he must continue to change? Hasn’t he—in his short life—already changed enough?

  The instant the net was thrown over him, he was forced to change, and he has continued to change through the years. Change shaped him into the sensual creature he is today, endowing him with his greatest asset—his capacity to appreciate where he is and with whom he is at the moment. In the bush of Victoria, he had loved his family of cockatoos as they flew haphazardly through the white-hot sky. Now, he loves the orderly V of Canadian geese migrating. As a chick, he was comforted by the strident tang of eucalyptus leaves around the tree hole where he slept. Today, he loves the soapy scent of lavender on Clarissa’s skin when he sleeps beside her on the blue chaise longue. After he was kidnapped, he taught himself how to appreciate the harmonious singing of the birds in Greensboro, knowing full well that he would never again hear his parents’ raucous song. He sharpened his ear once more and became entranced by the old man’s Southern accent as he recited Emily Dickinson to him. Then, after that, he fell in love with Clarissa’s twang and drawl. Years ago, he had loved the taste of papayas, mangoes, and pineapples fresh from the fruit groves of Australia, but lately he relishes the sugary white grapes that Clarissa buys for him at Styron’s. Once, he was soothed by the softness of his parents’ wings around him. Nevertheless, he was able to experience that sensation anew in the blanket of Theodore Pinter’s words. Nowadays, it is Clarissa’s thin, sweet soprano that sustains him.

  He doesn’t need to change anymore. From the confines of his cage, he has learned how to love those pleasures that Warramurrungundji has given him, and his ability to be grateful for each and every one of them is growth enough, he feels. He chooses to accept himself exactly as he is.

  Seven

  She looks sexy and beautiful tonight, he thinks as he watches her from his perch inside the ornate Victorian cage under the live oak at the restaurant.

  She had spent more than two hours primping for the evening—painting some thick, white liquid on her ivory skin to make it even lighter and following this with a whisk of peachy-colored powder across her cheekbones. She outlined her eyes in brown. “Mascara wand,” she explained, holding up a stick with a brush at the end of it and sweeping her lashes until they were as thick as his wing feathers. After snapping up her freshly starched chef’s tunic, she made a conch shell of her hair. “It’s a French twist,” she said. “Remember The Birds—Tippi Hedren? She wore her hair like this. Sexy, isn’t it?” They had watched this unflattering movie about birds late one Sunday evening last summer, and throughout it, she had vehemently contended she was on his side.

  As they headed out the back door toward Crab Cakes earlier, she had looked like an imposter to him, but now—as he regards her every gesture through the wide glass panels—he changes his mind. She is still his sexy, beautiful Clarissa, even though she made herself more beautiful for Joseph Hampton Fitzgerald, not for him.

  “How beautiful she is!” the old man had said that summer morning while they were spying on Olivia Greenaway, her shapely legs crossed in the overstuffed chair that faced the window. “Pascal Robinson doesn’t deserve her.”

  “Pas-cal Rob-in-son,” Caruso repeated, dandifying the name the way Theodore Pinter had.

  “He may be the mister to her Mrs. Robinson,” he said bitterly, “but she’ll always be Olivia Greenaway to me.” Binoculars in one hand, lunch in the other, he took another big bite of his tuna fish sandwich. “It still hurts…right here,” he said, swallowing, holding the sandwich over his chest.

  “Pas-cal Rob-in-son,” Caruso said again, his voice quavering with resentment, for he could list all of Theodore Pinter’s grievances against the man.

  “I never stood a chance. Not a snowball’s chance in hell,” he said, looking somberly at Caruso. “Pascal had it all. Born of a good, old Southern family. His father a well-respected judge.” Rolling his lower lip between his teeth, he shook his balding head. “My father owned a bookstore, jam-packed with used books. A dreamer, he was, like I am. My mother’s family had money. She bought this house. The facts speak for themselves,” he said, sighing wearily.

  Caruso eyed him from head to toe and trilled.

  “You’re a loyal bird,” Theodore Pinter told him. “But I know the good and bad of me. Pascal, with his hard, impassive chest; I, with my soft, sensitive one. Pascal, with his law degree from Duke; I, with my master’s in English from a state school. Pascal, rich and powerful; I, a retired teacher and headmaster with a small pension. Pascal,” he said, with an exaggerated French accent. “Pascal Robinson. Exotic and melodic, isn’t it? Teddy Pinter,” he spat out, sharply stressing the T and P. “Puts me in mind of one of Gogol’s fussy bureaucrats. Need I say more?”

  Caruso squawked to disagree.

  “Yes, you’re kind, way too kind,” he said, scrunching up his dimpled chin. “‘Oh, Teddy, you’re as soft as a girl,’ she’d said that day, pressing her hand against my chest, as if my sensitivity were a flaw, as if it made me less of a man. Girls are attracted to guys they think they can’t have. Olivia knew I was hers completely. There was nothing she could do that would make me turn away. Whereas Pascal…well, she had to win him. I was no challenge, you see, so she took me for granted, the way I take so many things for granted—food in my belly, a warm house in winter, clothes on my back, flowers every spring, the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Strange—since it is Emily’s vision of the world that shakes me out of my complacency and makes me see that everything on this earth is a blessing, that nothing and no one should be taken for granted. Olivia’s lack of regard for me back then still hurts.”

  Distractedly, he combed his neck with his fingers. “The instant we entered junior high, she set her cap on Pascal.” He paused momentarily, seemingly to find the right words. “It disheartened me to watch her mooning over him, trying much too hard to catch his attention. At the time, I was her very best friend, and I felt it my duty to warn her. ‘Olivia,’ I said, ‘open your eyes. See him for what he is. You can do better.’ I could never understand why she failed to notice that crown of entitlement on his head, but she was bowled over by his exaggerated sense of self-worth, and my words fell silent on her ears. She began to avoid me soon after.

  “Before Pascal came on the scene, she would stare right into my eyes while we talked. She trusted me, you see. She never flinched, never looked away, never refused to meet my gaze, even if she had something tough to tell me—but then, after she met him, she began to look slightly above my eyes whenever we spoke. I would lean into her, demand her attention, but as soon as I did this, she would pull away and stare past me, over my shoulder, and into a distant place where I wasn’t allowed to go. Those glorious blue irises of hers would shut me out, alighting everywhere but on my face. At first, these little changes of hers were almost unnoticeable, and I was able to pretend them away. Yes, Caruso, I knew in my heart of hearts what was happening, but can you blame me for not wanting to admit it?”

  Caruso rocked from side to side on his perch.

  “Gradually, Olivia stopped coming over to my house after school. Whenever I rang her, her mother would answer. ‘Olivia’s too busy to talk right now,’ she would say. ‘She’ll call you back later.’ But, invariably, the time between those laters grew longer and longer until she quit calling altogether. After that, she ceased eating lunch with me at school and ate, instead, with her girlfriends. Next, she deserted them, as easily as she had me, to eat with Pascal. I ate alone, observing her with him, the worshipful way her fingers touched his shoulder, the way her eyes latched onto his, and at last I was forced to acknowledge the truth of how she saw me. I was an old friend whom she’d outgrown.”

  With rapt attention, Caruso watched as grief mottled the old man’s eyes.

  As a fledgling, he’d witnessed that sa
me grief in his mother upon returning from a flight with her flock. They were scouting for mango groves on the outskirts of Coffs Harbour, abreast the silver-blue South Pacific, when they spotted a small roofless shelter beside a country road. The mangoes—stacked high on a wooden shelf inside it, along with a payment box for coins— signaled to them that the orchard was close by. Hungry and eager for the taste of mango, they kept flying. Within minutes, they caught sight of the bright red flowers circling the farmhouse, and then, on the steep hill behind it, the bull’s-eye—the grove of fruit trees, heavy with the orange-red orbs. Oh, how they shrieked as they descended, swarming like locusts, squawking ecstatically as they bit into the luscious flesh! It was then the shots rang out, felling a dozen of them at once, their bodies plummeting downward, as if they—not the fruit—were being picked. Five more of them died before they clearly understood the danger. With a loud, panicked beating of wings, they rose upward, the curses of the farmers rising also, the blue steel of their shotguns gleaming in the sun’s hot rays, the leaves of the mango trees trembling crimson with the blood of the flock, grief mottling his mother’s eyes, the way it had the old man’s that day.

  “So I built a wall between us, kept my world small to avoid getting hurt,” Theodore Pinter went on. Dutifully, he ate the last of his sandwich, dusted a bread crumb off his cheek, and shifted back to the window. In the house opposite them, Olivia Greenaway uncrossed and crossed her legs again, apparently unaware that they were looking at her. “Her blue eyes never fade. Her lips remain full. Her legs are still shapely. Ah, my beautiful Olivia!” the old man had gushed when she delicately pulled the hem of her dress over her knees.