Love and Ordinary Creatures

by Gwyn Hyman Rubio

  It was then the grandfather clock began to chime. Caruso counted—once, twice, and then twice more. He shifted nervously on his perch as a stream of vehicles rumbled by—three sedans, an old battered farm truck, and a bright red sports car. “The van from Duncan’s. Where is it?” the old man said, peering nervously over his shoulder at Caruso.

  Five…six...seven. Caruso kept counting. “Hurry up…hurry up,” the old man said, rocking from one foot to the other. By the tenth chime, he whispered, “Please.” Seconds before the last chime struck twelve and “Ode to Joy” began to play, a tan delivery van rolled around the corner and groaned to a stop. “Thank you,” Theodore Pinter said softly. A young man opened the door, stepped down, and headed for the back of the van just as Pascal Robinson drove up in his black Mercedes and got out.

  “Sir!” the young man shouted, holding the box of roses up high.

  With a bland face that conveyed nothing, Pascal Robinson turned toward the voice and waved the young man over. Slipping his wallet from his pants pocket, he took out several bills, tipped the man, and retrieved the box.

  “No!” Theodore Pinter said, his voice deep and harsh.

  Nudging the lid up with his thumb, Pascal Robinson fished out the card and read it. He pivoted toward the old man’s window and, with a graceful, mocking gesture, raised his hand, disdainfully crumpled the card in his fingers, and shoved it into his coat pocket.

  Caruso looked on as Theodore Pinter opened and closed his eyes at least a dozen times, as if he couldn’t grasp what had just happened. “She will know they are from me…surely,” he said.

  The old man had spent that afternoon in the kitchen. From his cage in the study, Caruso caught glimpses of him through the open pocket doors, nursing a glass of red wine while he cooked. Caruso listened to water running, to a knife thumping against a cutting board, to a rolling pin creaking over a counter. Once he smelled something burning on the stove.

  “I’m going to bathe and dress,” the old man said, coming into the study right as the clock chimed six. “I want to be my best for the dinner party this evening.”

  What dinner party? What was the old man thinking? Caruso wondered as Theodore Pinter started for the hallway. He had lost contact with his friends years ago. So who could be coming? Caruso craned forward on his perch, waiting for the whooshing sound of water. A moth batted its wings against the shade of the lit floor lamp beside the sofa. The grandfather clock ticked. Still, no rumble of water.

  Bored, Caruso shifted toward the window and caught sight of Pascal kissing Olivia’s cheek in the living room next door, after that of Olivia closing the curtains. Outraged, he whipped back toward the hallway and to the sudden sound of the shower’s roar. Before long, Theodore Pinter rounded the corner.

  “Well, what do you think, Caruso?” he asked.

  Caruso liked the way he had parted his hair and neatly combed it back. He was dressed more sprucely than usual in a light-gray linen jacket, charcoal linen trousers, a white shirt, and a slate-blue silk tie.

  “Impressive, huh?” he said, clicking the heels of his old wing tips together.

  Caruso was surprised to see them polished to a high shine.

  “I’d better check on the rib roast,” he said, glancing at the clock. “Don’t want to overcook it. It’s best when slightly pink in the center, right?”

  What does a cockatoo know about roast beef? Caruso thought.

  Thirty minutes later, Caruso was in the dining room, perched on the back of the massive antique sideboard, admiring the splendid meal before him. In the center of the tablecloth was a rolled rib roast atop a Limoges platter, surrounded by a sea of pearly onions. Two pink candles glowed on either side of it, along with an array of steaming dishes.

  “Please have a seat, my dear,” the old man said, addressing an empty chair directly in front of him. He pulled it out. To the left of the place setting stood a single light-pink rose in a delicate cut-glass vase. “As you can see, I’ve prepared your favorite dishes. Roast beef and mushroom gravy, just the way you like it, creamy mashed potatoes, sugar snap peas sprinkled with toasted almonds, pickled peaches—I pickled them myself—and silver-dollar biscuits because I know how much you like them.”

  He stood there, his arms behind his back, rocking on his heels, perusing the meal he had laid out. “Ah, I know what’s missing,” he said at length. “Music. What would you like to hear, my darling?” Confused, Caruso stared at the vacant chair. “Gardel,” he said all at once, loudly. “Carlos Gardel.” He made a frantic dash to the living room, and within minutes a melancholy Argentinian tango permeated the air.

  “A taste of pinot noir?” Theodore Pinter asked in a calmer voice as soon as he came back. “Yes, my darling, I know—just a little,” he said, bending over, taking hold of the bottle, pouring red wine into a fluted glass. He set the bottle on the table. “And small portions of everything,” he said, spooning a little from each dish onto the gold-rimmed porcelain plate before him.

  He walked around to the opposite side of the long rectangular table and filled up another plate, directly across from hers. “You love your Scotch and soda while I love my wine,” he said, seizing the bottle again, pouring himself a full glass. He put the bottle down and raised high the wineglass. “Happy seventieth birthday, darling,” he toasted, taking a sip, the candlelight bouncing off the etched stem. “You’re still beautiful, my dear,” he said somberly. “Age has not stolen any of your loveliness.”

  With those words, he pulled out his chair and settled gracefully into it. Cutting off a sliver of roast, he chewed it lavishly. “It’s very nicely cooked, isn’t it?” he said, dribbling gravy over his mashed potatoes, then tasting them. “Delicious,” he said, swallowing. He dabbed his thin lips with his napkin. “I hope you enjoy it. I’ve had so much fun planning it. From your favorite meal to your favorite flower. No…no…it was no trouble at all, although I went to a half-dozen places before I found the candles. They had to be pink—not red, not white. ‘Pink smells tender, the way it looks,’ you once told me. There was no shade of pink you didn’t like. Pink Pepto-Bismol, pink cotton candy, pink sunsets, pink lipstick. Remember the time I bought you cotton candy at the fair? Remember how you got it all over you—on the tip of your nose and in your hair? You were mortified, you told me, but I thought you were adorable.”

  Whipping up his fork, he stabbed a sugar pea and popped it into his mouth. “It’s easy remembering the things you liked,” he continued with a swallow, “but I also remember those things you seldom talked about. For instance, heights. You were afraid of high places. Whenever we climbed the staircase at your house, you would hug the wall. You doubted your intellect, although I’ve always known how smart you are.”

  He quit speaking and leaned back into his chair, sipping his wine and eating. “I’ll never forget the year, the month, the day, the minute you were born, my love. I can recall every one of your birthday parties,” he said as he laid down his fork and made a tent of his fingers, leaning forward, staring longingly into the face that wasn’t there. “Your seventh is the one I remember best. Your mother brought out a three-tiered dreamsicle cake, covered with fleecy white icing. I had never eaten orange cake before. There were seven small pink candles on it, along with a big candle for you to grow on. Exquisite, that cake was! I can still taste the pungent flecks of orange peel and the honeyed citrus in it. When the Happy Birthday song was over, you blew out all of the candles with one long breath. I gave you a doll, I recall, and you said she was beautiful.”

  Draining his glass with a flourish, the old man announced that it was time for dessert. Rising quickly, he gathered together the dirty dishes and took them to the kitchen. A short while later, he reappeared carrying a large cake, ablaze with pink candles.

  “Happy birthday, Olivia,” he said, setting it on the table. After that, he sang the birthday song to her in a fragile but inspired voice. With flushed cheeks and feverish eyes, he vowed, “There will be no more games between us. We’ve been p
laying together for so long. At first, kids’ games, then even sillier, adolescent games…all that back and forth during high school…still playing games, games, and more games. But I have no regrets because in the midst of all those ridiculous, pretentious games were the moments that felt real. For me, and I know for you, too. The talks we had, the tangos we danced, that kiss…those moments were real for both of us and have led us, like stepping stones, to this…to this moment when we are no longer pretending…no longer wearing masks.”

  Inhaling deeply, he blew out all of the candles. Next, he sliced off two thick wedges of the orange cake. “One for you and one for me,” he said, sitting down, forking up a bite, and eating it with closed eyes, as though savoring the memory of eating it when he was a boy. Opening his eyelids, he tilted forward, his stiff shirt bunching against the table’s edge, and said softly, “Remember, my darling, no regrets. Regrets are for cowards. No regrets, now. No regrets, ever. I’ve loved you forever, Olivia,” he said, coming to his feet. “Back when we were souls waiting to be born, I loved you. When I was but a spit of vapor and you a morning star, I loved you. I loved you when I was a homely starling and you were a pretty yellow finch. Life after life, I’ve loved you, but always from afar. Today, though, my darling, I’ll love you up close, in my arms. Shall we dance?”

  Caruso could almost hear the swish, swish of the old man’s blood pulsing in his neck, could almost smell the ardor of love on his skin, taste the hope on his lips, as he stood there holding out his hand. Caruso followed the birth of a smile on his lips, which grew into a grin, then collapsed into a frown—his eyes sinking into their sockets, as though the hard-earned lessons of his life were weighing them down. After that, his face changed again—his lips taut, his eyes dark and troubled, as he stared at some unwanted memory that had ambushed him. One second he appeared contented, the next depressed. Courageous, then cowardly. Unassuming, and after that, vain. Over and over, his features remolded themselves as he donned mask after mask, experienced emotion after emotion, until it seemed the masks were wearing him and not the other way around. The kaleidoscope of his feelings came to an abrupt end, and he simply stood there—his face so distorted by regret and rapture that Caruso had to look away.

  Twenty-five

  He has devolved into an ordinary creature, no better than a dog really, waiting for his master to come home, grateful for a few pats on the head, Caruso thinks, shoving the carrot into his open beak as he stares into the darkness.

  Birds cope with their fears by winging upward, by finding sanctuary in the sky, but not Caruso. Lately, he eats and eats and eats. Which makes Clarissa think he needs more protein in his diet. As a result, she gives him a hard-boiled egg each morning. She consistently brings him leftovers from the restaurant. One night, she served him a ramekin of cooked pasta. Not your typical fare for a parrot, and he drove himself to distraction looking for the hidden meaning in her gesture. Is he gradually becoming like the old man, seeing love in Clarissa’s every overture to him? he asks himself, the thought so disturbing that he frantically scans his cage, hunting for more food. This constant eating keeps him from thinking.

  Where is she now? he puzzles, his worst fears taking over as he envisions the two of them holding hands, passing by the row of empty rockers on the porch of Blackbeard’s Lodge, a smile capturing her face as they step inside the lobby and climb the staircase to his room. He tries in vain to shut his mind off, but once the images begin it’s hard to make them stop. Panicked, he prods through his food dish with his beak, searching for vegetables. He finds a half-eaten corn cob and gobbles down the milky kernels. Still, as soon as he’s finished, another vision of the lovers rushes in—Joe’s body pressed against hers—and he must look for something else to eat. He spots a wedge of pomegranate hidden among the scraps in his feeder and swallows it down, the red juice staining his feathered chest. Relief is what he feels—the same relief that plucking once gave him.

  What if he could substitute eating with a more mindful activity? he wonders. Perhaps he could find a vocation that would fill the empty hours of his days, now that he is no longer the one responsible for making Clarissa happy. He could become a poet, like Emily Dickinson, he thinks. He could write about life and, in this way, cope with his heartache. The difference is he would not write about the moon, the sea, and human love but about bird love. Poems not only about birds but also for them. Birds will be his audience, he thinks. But what species of bird will he write about first? Who will be the birdsona of his verse? Not a cockatoo, he decides, for he needs some distance from his subject. A sparrow? A pelican? A kookaburra? No, no, no, he thinks, as the distance between them and him is too great. A parrot it must be. A parrot who suffers from lovesickness, same as he. A parakeet? A lovebird? A macaw? A lory? He swings his head—no. A quetzal? A trogon? A lorikeet? All no.

  But who, who? he asks himself. For a long while he ponders the answer until—out of nowhere—the birdsona of his poem emerges from some mysterious place deep inside him. The kakapo, the largest of all the living parrots. Flightless and near extinction, he clings to the hope of love and still believes in it, though he lives a life of utter solitude in the mountains of New Zealand.

  Yes, the kakapo will be the voice of his poem, Caruso thinks, as words upon words, images upon images present themselves like gifts to him, as though Warramurrungundji Herself is whispering them in his ear:

  The kakapo digs a shallow grave—

  No Wings to carry him to Love,

  Booms a call into the dead of night

  Counterfeit cry of the Namaqua dove—

  It ricochets off the mountain ridges,

  Lonely Echo in the empty Dark—

  Enchants no female to him,

  A desolation of his Parrot Heart—

  Driven by a pure blind faith,

  Not enslaved to any single mate—

  He puffs out his chest once more

  And blows Hope against the face of Fate.

  Even though hope is only a flight of fancy to him, Caruso longs to believe the final line. Didn’t the Great Mother whisper the words to him? On the other hand, what did Theodore Pinter’s hope give him? Caruso can see no difference between the old man speaking across a dining room table to an empty chair and the New Zealand kakapo calling out for love from the ridges of Fiordland into a void where females no longer dwell.

  No, he’ll stick to truth. He has lost Clarissa. He will take the path of acceptance. No more fighting, no more fleeing. This love cannot be saved.

  He imagines two kangaroos boxing their affection, a pair of platypuses swimming side by side, his parents pairing in flight.

  It is then that the same old argument begins to run like a tape inside his head. Hope—without risk—is impotent. Truth—without hope of success—lives a woeful life. He remembers how he felt as he dropped grapes into Clarissa’s mouth, how her eyes smiled as she gave the plumpest ones to him. No, he will not—cannot—accept a loveless life. Not even in the name of truth. For isn’t it also true that some hopes are worth fighting for, some loves worth saving?

  Worth saving the birds of Australia—the kookaburra with its rollicking laughter, the colorful rainbow lorikeet with its brushy tongue for removing a flower’s nectar. Worth saving the odd-looking black swans and the black-and-white feathered pelicans. Worth saving the Australian stork, fish eagle, sacred ibis, and heron. Worth saving all of the birds on this spinning, swirling planet. Worth saving their efforts at procreation, their mates, their chicks, their meaningful, connected presence. Worth saving even an old, tiresome, romantic cockatoo like Caruso. Isn’t he worth saving, too?

  A wave of hope washes over him, and he holds fast to the memory of Clarissa stroking his neck, his heart brimming with devotion. And so, unable to control himself, he surrenders to the hope of her and booms his call of love into the desolate night.

  Twenty-six

  Awful dreams have been plaguing him lately. In the beginning, they came like ghostly visitations in the night.
Now, they come whenever they please. Perhaps they’re products of his constant eating, he thinks. This morning, she gave him some leftovers of baked mackerel and coleslaw, and at noon, when the heat is most brutal and the sunlight most blinding, he had a dream. No, a nightmare, he corrects himself.

  In it, the Great Mother finally hears him and wills an earthquake off the shore of Ocracoke Island. Beneath the ocean, the sand shifts slightly, the plates of the planet groan, and the waves begin to crest just as Joe paddles away from the breakers, his face eager, his arms strong, his body ready to ride the swells. Which are growing bigger and bigger, higher now than their cottage on Fig Tree Lane. They tower over Joe and crash down upon him, sending his surfboard downward, shattering it against the ocean floor. When Caruso parts the waves with his beak and stares into the deep, dark water, he feels not the relief he’s been waiting for but only horror at the sight of Joe, half-buried in the sand, and Clarissa, lifeless beside him.

  Startled, he awoke, gasping for breath.

  Now, he dreads the long hours ahead, fearful that these nightmares will continue. He is definitely not her sweet Caruso anymore, he thinks, bracing his eyelids open.