Love and Ordinary Creatures

by Gwyn Hyman Rubio

  He stares apprehensively into her eyes, next the Galah’s, and is amused by the spectacle of its deeply colored eye rings and dull brown irises. He hadn’t noticed this before. Such human folly, he thinks as a low-pitched chuckle escapes from his beak.

  “You like her, don’t you, Caruso?” she says, smiling. “Such a pretty little bird, isn’t she?”

  She, he says to himself, chuckling with irony.

  “You’d better behave yourself, you naughty boy.” She wags a finger at him.

  He lets loose a rollicking hoot.

  “I knew you’d come to accept her,” she says, heaving a big sigh of relief.

  Another duped Homo sapiens, he thinks, staring wide-eyed at the bird and bursting into a long, sustained laugh.

  Matilda is a Matthew.

  Nineteen

  For several weeks now, she has been moving Matt and him around in an endless game of musical chairs. In the early mornings, she puts him on the T-stand and Matt in the big cage. Minutes before she leaves for work, she returns them to their respective cages, now only a few feet from each other. Then, after work, she takes the Galah out and gives him a little taste of freedom while leaving Caruso imprisoned. All this commotion—so that they will become familiar with each other, she tells them.

  Yesterday, he heard her bubbling in the living room on the phone to Beryl, saying that the Galah was a brilliant idea, that he and Matilda were becoming close, that Joe sends his thanks, droning on and on, numbing him down to his pinfeathers, and he had turned away from her voice to catch sight of the Galah flying audaciously off the T-stand. Teetering over the floor, he climbed up the leg of the blue chaise longue to perch on its cushioned seat—his pink-feathered chest swollen with self-importance.

  Caruso glared at the bird through the bars of his cage, but Matt wasn’t intimidated. Seconds later, with renewed confidence, he fluttered down and waddled over to the painted chest. Three times he flew upward and tried to reach the top, but his clipped wings failed to keep him aloft. Finally, on the fourth try, he made it, landing next to Granny’s Wedgwood plate, at which he stared in wonder. A cockatoo is an accident waiting to happen, Caruso had often overheard the staff at the pet store say, and Matt, though a Galah, remains a cockatoo, his inquisitive nature making him as accident prone as Caruso. For a brief moment, Caruso hoped that Warramurrungundji would will a mishap, that gawky Matt would brush against the plate and knock it off. However, the Galah had returned to the T-stand without incident. It was then Caruso realized that he could not rely on the Great Mother to act. If he wanted something to happen, it would be up to him.

  Caruso rappels all the way down to the bottom of his cage and picks up the dog biscuit reeking of the squatter’s stink. He will act without restraint, he thinks as he ascends to his perch, staring hard at the Galah on the T-stand while eating the smelly dog biscuit with fake relish. Stealthily, Matt sidesteps toward him, covetous of what he believes is his dog biscuit. To goad him on, Caruso chews it even more energetically. The Galah extends his neck and makes a noise that sounds like a greedy grumble. Immediately, Caruso drops the biscuit, hurls himself against the metal bars, and latches onto them—ferociously flapping his wings and hissing. The Galah scoots to the opposite end of the T-stand, his body thin with fear.

  At last he has been put in his place, Caruso thinks. Soon Clarissa will make them trade places again, but until then he will plot and scheme. For he is no simple-minded bird—no gullible, trusting parrot. From this moment on, he will be strong, will call things as they are, and will look at the world through clear lenses, unlike Theodore Pinter in his rose-colored glasses, transforming Olivia’s every gesture toward him into something more meaningful than it was.

  From the corner of his eye, far off in the distance, he spots a white carpet of ibises winging for the marshes near Ocracoke Village. Once Clarissa took him to see the flickering tongues of fire in the gaseous swamp, a place that reminds him lately of the hot anger he’s feeling. The screen door clacks when she comes in from picking herbs. He hears water running, and after that a thunk on the worktable. Within seconds, she is passing beneath the archway and into the sunroom, flinging her white floppy hat like a Frisbee on the chaise longue. “Well, look at you two in your cozy cottage,” she says, walking over. She opens his cage door and presents her arm. With sham collegiality, he steps up. “Good boy,” she says, and he feigns a contented squawk.

  Stay strong, he tells himself. The mask is doing its magic.

  “Time for some major steps,” she says cheerily. “First, a little taste of mutual freedom.” She sets Caruso on the chaise longue before placing Matt on the floor near the table.

  Caruso flutters off the cushioned seat. Putting on his best behavior, he puffs out his cheek feathers, coos, and waddles toward the Galah.

  “What good friends you’re becoming,” Clarissa says when Matt moves forward. Just then, the telephone rings. Abruptly, Matt comes to a standstill. “I’ll be right back,” Clarissa says.

  As soon as she passes out of sight, Caruso trills sweetly at the Galah, who rises to the bait and waddles toward him. Time for his own perverse tango, Caruso thinks. Time for the back-and-forth dance, the mixed signals, the pull and tug of war.

  Lifting a menacing foot, Caruso seethes like a death adder. Matt freezes, parts his beak as if to screech, reconsiders, and snaps it shut. Caruso fakes a happy-go-lucky twitter. Uncertain, Matt rocks on one foot and then the other. Come to Papa, Caruso thinks, chirping benignly like a sparrow, and Matt teeters on the way to him. What is it with this bird? Caruso wonders. What compels him to risk disappointment over and over? What makes him think the outcome will be different this time? Is he dull witted? Naive? Crazy? Hopeful? No fight, flight, or acceptance for him. He is choosing an altogether different path. The path of foolishness.

  Whipping boy, Caruso thinks, unleashing the full strength of his hot fury. With an aggressive flap of his wings, he charges at the Galah, who stops dead in his tracks. Caruso stares icily into the bird’s dull brown irises. With a slow and deliberate motion, he raises his foot and brushes his claws gently over the bird’s chest.

  “I knew you two could get along without me,” Clarissa says when she reappears and sees them crouching side by side on the sunroom floor. “Now, let’s try something else—something even bigger,” she says, offering each of them a forearm and taking them to Caruso’s cage. “Such sweetness!” she gushes when Caruso steps up on the perch beside Matt.

  On their bicycle built for two, he thinks acidly.

  “Thank you, Caruso,” she says, beaming fervently at him, “for making us one big happy family now.”

  Twenty

  He listens to Clarissa singing while she washes dishes. Before, he loved the sound of her voice; lately, he hates her thin soprano. Those habits of hers that he once adored now grate on his nerves. Her giggle is as off-putting as the shrill cry of a magpie. The sway in her walk seems forced. He dislikes how she closes her eyes whenever she drinks tap water. The little moan she makes after eating something tasty annoys him. He hates the way she caresses the underside of her arm, hates the way she baby-talks him. Her sensuality is a pose, he thinks, false and phony.

  But then she will do something, some new little thing—like slipping the tip of her thumb into her mouth—and suddenly he’s a goner, tumbling and spinning through the air, grounded no longer. He eyes Matt on the perch beside him and feels only disdain. Yet he’s confused about Clarissa. Does he love her or hate her? Can he feel both emotions for her at once?

  “Love and hate are two sides of the same coin,” the old man had said. “I love her, and I hate her,” he confessed one cold, wet January day when they thought the rain would never end. Though early, it seemed as if the evening had swallowed the afternoon, and Caruso remembers that he could see only a drizzling gloom through the study window. There was no birdsong—no sound of any living creature, just the pounding rain.

  “I wish those raindrops were snowflakes,” Theodore Pint
er said, nudging his glasses against the bridge of his nose. “One winter, long ago, it snowed here. Not much, just a few inches of heaven.” He rubbed the corners of his eyes and twisted his lower lip in memory. “Olivia and I were young, not quite teenagers, but even then she had begun to pull away from me. That day in January, we grew close again. As soon as it began to flurry, we dashed outside simultaneously—she from her back door, I from mine. Snow! we squealed, our voices mingling. We scooped up handfuls of it, washed our faces in the cold flakes with movements that were perfectly synchronized, as though we were dancing. We ran through the white fluff toward each other, coming to a standstill at the property line where our backyards met. We stared at each other and knew intuitively what the other was thinking. We leaned over and packed snow in our palms. Laughing, she pelted me on the nose, but I—forever the gentleman—would not throw snow at her delicate face and waited until she turned her back to me. That day, Caruso, we were fully present. We lost ourselves in the seamless whiteness of the moment. Snow,” he murmured over and over before spluttering into silence. Meanwhile, the rain continued to fall.

  “I love her, and I hate her,” the old man said at last. “I love her because I’ve always loved her. I hate her because I’ve always loved her. I love her because she is what I am not. I hate her for the very same reason. I love her because I can’t seem to move forward. I hate her because she has. I hate her because, while I suffer, she seems happy. I love her because the sight of her smiling face through this window makes me feel glad. I love her because she is someone without me. I hate her because I am nothing without her.”

  Sighing wearily, he reached for the drawstring to close the curtain, just as Olivia Greenaway materialized, like a beckoned spirit, in the lamplit living room across the way. That day, she was not smiling. She was sobbing, her shoulders heaving. “My darling Olivia,” Theodore Pinter groaned, taking her sadness into his very being. She came toward them, pressed her forehead against the window—the raindrops trailing down the glass. “I’m here, Olivia,” he said with a step backward, reaching behind him, searching for the chain on his desk lamp with his fingers.

  Tug on it, Caruso thought. Illuminate yourself in our darkness. Let her see how much you care.

  Caruso could hear the old man’s inhalations quickening in his throat, see the lamp chain gripped in his fingers, and sense his desire to act. Still, he just stood there—motionless—in the dim room, while Olivia anguished in the light. Do it! Caruso thought.

  “I can’t,” the old man gasped. “She’ll see us. She’ll see me and be so embarrassed. I can’t take her dignity from her like that.” And, letting go of the chain, he had dropped his arm like a weight beside him.

  Caruso shifts toward the Galah and gives him another hard look. Had the old man ever acted spontaneously? he wonders. On that snowy day in Greensboro, had he really lived in the moment? It seems to Caruso that spontaneity should be a part of every present-centered act. If so, why had Theodore Pinter hesitated to throw the snowball until Olivia turned her back?

  Clarissa cuts off the flow of water, then clinks a pan against the counter as she dries it.

  Theodore Pinter’s thoughtfulness had restrained him, Caruso reasons—had prevented him from acting impulsively. The trait of which he was most proud, the trait which he felt most distinguished him from Pascal, had kept Olivia from choosing him. Best to be selfish, Caruso thinks. Best to be mindful of tricks and division. Best to remember how to win the game.

  From the bottom of the cage, Caruso retrieves a gum nut, which he has been hiding. He climbs back up to the perch, the gum nut in his beak, and takes a sidestep toward Matt, already crouching and flattening his feathers against his body, and, strangely, Caruso feels ashamed.

  He misses the clarity of his life in Australia. He misses the simple things—the deep orange sun at twilight, the bush, the outback, the mountains, the rain forests, the beaches, pink Galahs in the blue-white sky. He pines for the warmth of his parents and mourns the life he could have had if he had not been stolen from them. The mate. The clutch of eggs. The chicks. The fledgling that looks and acts like him. He yearns for that feeling of interconnectedness that made him a part of something bigger and grander.

  He hears her footsteps over the floor and instantly comes to his senses. He will stick to treacherous kindness.

  “Oh, how precious!” she says from the doorway when he gives the gum nut to Matt.

  Yet as he watches the Galah eat it, he’s not gratified by his deception but experiences another emotion altogether. Real is how he feels, as though he’s a part of something bigger and grander, the way his father must have felt while feeding him as a chick.

  Twenty-one

  “You should have seen it,” Clarissa is saying to Joe in the kitchen. The rich smell of the sauce wafts into the sunroom, where Caruso is nibbling on a pinecone in the middle of the floor. “Right before my very eyes, Caruso gave Matilda his gum nut.” She releases a whoosh of air that sounds like a grateful sigh. “My sweet ole Caruso is back, and he’s stopped that awful plucking, too.”

  “That’s the best news yet,” Joe says.

  Caruso drops the pinecone and waddles over to the kitchen doorway just as Clarissa stops stirring the sauce. Enough sauce in there to feed an army of boyfriends, he thinks mockingly when she lays the wooden spoon on a plate.

  “You raise good parrots,” Joe says.

  “I know I do,” she says, glancing at Caruso, who lets their flattery roll off his back.

  “Yeah, Caruso’s a decent guy at heart.”

  She smiles over her shoulder at Joe, then repositions the red lid on the pot so that there’s a small slit through which the steam can escape. “This sauce has been simmering all afternoon,” she says, shifting around to face him. “It has everything under the sun in it.”

  “I thought this meal was going to be light and easy,” he says, laughing as he leans toward her.

  “Hit’s right hard for me to do easy,” she jokes back, slipping into her mountain twang.

  Joe plants his hand, as big as an albatross’s foot, on her shoulder. “You’re pretty intense about cooking,” he says, giving her shoulder a little squeeze. “If a dish doesn’t work, you’re mighty hard on yourself. I wouldn’t wanna be inside your head.”

  “You sure know how to compliment a gal,” she says, shrugging his hand off.

  “What I’m saying is…you don’t give yourself a break.”

  “Well, that’s obviously not your problem,” she fires back.

  “No, I guess not,” he admits.

  “All those doting sisters,” she says, “hanging on to your every word. Letting you know how special you are, thinking that no girl is ever good enough for you.”

  “At least they don’t bite.”

  “Maybe not with their teeth.”

  “What do you mean by that?” he asks, going over to the bench at the worktable, sitting down. “Okay…okay, I confess,” he says moments later. “I’m a confident guy. My sisters love me. Don’t expect me to feel bad about that. No sane person would want it otherwise. But my oldest sister never lets me off the hook. Jo Ann will give me hell if she thinks I deserve it. She’s my moral backbone—my saving grace, so to speak.”

  “If you knew my family, you’d cut me some slack,” she says with a reproachful look. She draws her mouth to one side, thinking. “I tried to be perfect when I was a kid,” she tells him. “No matter how hard I tried, I never got what I needed from my parents. They were always tough on me. So I’m tough on myself. Learned behavior,” she adds, sighing. “It took me years to understand why Randall was spared their criticism, why they treated him so differently. His flaws, I finally figured out, made them feel needed. His imperfections demanded their unconditional love.”

  Joe comes to his feet. “You’re perfect to me,” he says, reaching out and catching her hand. “I’m way too cocky for my own good. Always think I’ve done my best when I haven’t, but you…you push yourself to do better. A
n exacting passion drives you, and I love you for this.”

  You’ll change your mind when she’s more passionate about her cooking than she is about you, Caruso thinks scornfully.

  She lets her gaze linger on Joe, her lips half smiling. He releases her hand. She fills up a boiler with water, thunks it on the stove, and twists the flame up high. As soon as the water bubbles, she opens the cabinet, retrieves the sea salt, pours some into her palm, and spills it into the pot. After that, she adds the pasta. “Is al dente all right?” she asks, lowering the flame.

  “You’re the chef,” he says as he comes up behind her and kisses the back of her neck.

  My swan neck, Caruso thinks, averting his eyes. Seconds later, Matt patters over the linoleum past him to pause slightly beyond the doorway, near the worktable’s leg. Fascinated, the Galah seems, by the clouds of steam rising from the pot of pasta.

  Clarissa cuts off the burner and drains the pasta into a colander in the sink, then douses it with olive oil. She takes the lid off the pot of tomato sauce and puts it on the counter. “My Neapolitan ragù smells scrumptious,” she says, leaning over and whiffing in deeply. “Oh,” she says peevishly. “I forgot the parsley. I like to garnish with it. It won’t take but a second,” she says, starting for the back door, Joe following after her.

  Caruso watches as they laugh and flirt near the herb garden. She has already set the small table on the deck with a bright floral tablecloth and matching napkins, her bone-white china, pearl-handled cutlery, and goblet wineglasses. A bottle of Italian red wine and a small vase of Catherine O’Neal’s red zinnias rest in the center. The salad plates are filled. The bread is in its basket, loosely tucked into an embroidered tea towel. He looks for her again. She is bending over, pinching off sprigs of parsley.