Inexplicably, she appears like a specter gliding over the dry grass toward him, and, stunned by this vision of her, he blinks in confusion. Is this another dream? he wonders after the screen door bangs and she breezes into the sunroom. “Too much solitude is bad for a bird,” she carols, unlatching his cage door, presenting her arm to him. “Truth is, too much solitude is bad for anyone.”
Could too much solitude be the cause of his bad dreams? he muses, stepping upon her arm, ascending to her shoulder.
“My, my…you’re heavy,” she says, eyeing him from top to bottom. “A plump little butterball you’ve become.”
He is no turkey, but he may be soon, he thinks cheerlessly.
She puts on her floppy white hat and sunglasses. “I’m taking the rest of the day off,” she announces. “Have saved a month of vacation days. No reason why I have to work. We’re going to Beryl’s studio.”
They head out through the kitchen door. He inhales the warm air, feels it flowing through his lungs and into the tubes that fortify the rest of his body. From that single breath, he can extract more oxygen than a mammal with its baggy lungs. She takes the sandy back lanes until they come upon Beryl’s studio—a small wooden structure built by her brothers—separated from the family home up front by a thick row of tall beach grasses. Clarissa opens the screen door, crosses over the porch, and briskly knocks three times, then waits a few seconds before knocking once more. The secret code of blood sisters, she has told him. “I’m letting myself in!” she yells, taking off her sunglasses, tucking them into her shirt pocket.
She passes beneath the doorway and into a sunlit place of wonder with two walls of continuous windows as well as a skylight in the center of the roof. Hanging from the white rafters are Tibetan prayer flags in vibrant colors of pink, orange, red, blue, yellow, and purple. Baskets of every make and kind are lined against the interior walls. There are intricate baskets from the islands of South Carolina; rustic wicker baskets from Haiti; round double-weave grass baskets with stripes of cream, red, and black from Ghana; and sturdy, square baskets from Amish villages in Ohio. All of the baskets are filled with tubes of oil and acrylic paint, brushes of various sizes and thicknesses, mineral spirits, rags, smocks, palette knives, and art books about famous painters piled up crooked, or catawampus, as Beryl would say.
“Hi, there,” Beryl says, pitching them a smile over her shoulder. “I saw ya coming through the window.”
“Me, too,” comes a voice from behind an enormous canvas.
Caruso doesn’t have to see the face to know that it’s the nice waitress who brought him the dish of fresh pineapple that day at Iris’s Coffee Shop.
“Caruso!” the girl bubbles when he releases an excited squawk.
Clarissa sidesteps away from the canvas. Sure enough, it is the koala bear girl, sitting on a stool, tilting forward with her arms around her waist.
“Hey, Sam,” Beryl says, loudly tapping her paint brush against the edge of her easel. “You lost the pose again. That disgruntled look I wanted. Now, get it back.”
“I’m tired,” Sam moans. “Been disgruntled almost an hour now, been holding that look for days.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Beryl says with a grin. “Okay…okay. Let’s take a break and visit some with Clarissa.”
Sam slides off the stool. Wiggling her shoulders, she scrunches up her nose, pulls her chin down, opens her mouth wide, and yawns.
As addled-looking as an emu, Caruso decides.
“This modeling stuff is hard work,” Sam says to Clarissa. “Much tougher, I bet, than taking care of a parrot, especially one as sweet as Caruso.”
“Remember, Caruso? Sam here brought you a plate of pineapple,” Clarissa says, looking up at him.
She should know he never forgets an act of kindness, Caruso thinks, fixing his eyes on Sam.
“Y’all go sit down,” Beryl says as she positions her palette beside a jelly jar of mineral spirits on a small table next to the easel, then dunks her paintbrush into the jar. Lacing her fingers together, she raises them high above her head and cracks her knuckles. “I’ll be back in just a minute. Gonna fetch us some lemonade and a plate of gingersnap cookies,” she says, disappearing into a small kitchen tacked to the back.
At once, Sam moves ahead of them toward a raspberry-pink table. She slides out a matching raspberry-pink chair with powder-blue roses painted on the back slats and slumps down. “I like what Beryl has done to this place,” she says brightly. “She ain’t no sissy when it comes to color.”
“She’s channeling Frida Kahlo,” Clarissa says, plopping her floppy hat on the seat of the chair beside her. Caruso wobbles sideways along her arm to perch on the top of its slatted back, at which point Clarissa eases out a chair and sits.
“Who’s Frida Kahlo?” Sam asks.
“A great Mexican painter,” Clarissa says. “If Beryl’s not channeling her, she’s channeling Gauguin.”
“Yes, ma’am, she’s been going on and on about him since I got here.”
“Ma’am?” Clarissa repeats.
“Sorry,” Sam says. “A habit. I even slip up with my sister, and she’s only twenty-one.”
“Well, I’m not a whole lot older than she is,” Clarissa says.
A curtain swishes, and Caruso inches around to see Beryl pattering rapidly across the floor. Forever in a hurry, he thinks, noticing a new streak of red in her coal-black hair. “Here we are,” she says, setting down a metal tray. “Some pink lemonade,” she says, handing each of them a glass. “And you can help yourselves to the cookies.”
Caruso is crestfallen when he spots nothing on the tray for him.
Clarissa picks up a gingersnap, tosses it into her mouth, and crunches. “Not bad for store bought,” she says, taking a sip of lemonade. “Amazing,” she adds. “This is tasty, too, and I’m sure there’s not a drop of lemon juice in it.”
“You can thank the Martha Stewart in me,” Beryl wisecracks.
“Bottoms up,” Sam says, dribbling a dark wet spot of lemonade on her halter top as she swallows.
“Wondered when you’d add some color to all that dreary black,” Clarissa says, pointing at the red stripe in Beryl’s hair.
“Black, dreary? I love black,” Beryl says thoughtfully. “Black is honest, true to itself. It never plays games and is way more interesting than other colors. Whenever a ray of sun hits a crow just right, the purple, blue, and red hues in his feathers shine. I decided to create the same effect, so I got out the dye.”
“Why don’t you add a blue streak?” Sam suggests, taking a bite of her gingersnap cookie.
“Yeah…the wings of a crow…purple, blue, and red alongside each other,” Beryl says.
“My hair is boring brown,” Sam says.
“I could change that for you,” offers Beryl with a laugh.
“No way—no, ma’am—my mama would kill me.”
“There you go with ma’am again,” Clarissa says, shaking her head.
“Sorry,” Sam says. “Like I said, I’ve been slipping up with my sister, too. She came home this summer to work for Daddy, but there was a problem, and she moved to Roanoke Island to work in his agency there.”
“Did they butt heads?” Clarissa asks.
“Oh no, not at all,” Sam says. “Daddy’s a sweetie.”
“Who’s your daddy?” Beryl says, swallowing a mouthful of cookie.
“Garland McKenzie. He’s the State Farm agent here.”
“Oh, you’re Garland’s girl—Maggie’s little sister,” Beryl says, surprised. “I haven’t seen you in years. Didn’t recognize you. Just assumed you were from the mainland, spending the summer on Ocracoke with your parents.”
“I’m away most of the year,” Sam tells her, “at boarding school in Greensboro.”
Trudy Fenton pops into Caruso’s mind.
“Ocracoke School did okay by Maggie. She got into a good college, but Daddy wanted something different for me. Don’t ask me why.”
“Mag
gie was a couple of years behind me,” Beryl says. “I ran into her at Styron’s a few months back. She’s still drop-dead gorgeous. She’s at Duke, right?”
“She was real happy at Chapel Hill, but Daddy kept insisting on Duke.”
“Parents are like that,” Clarissa says. “They think they know what’s best for us without taking the time to find out what we think.”
“Yeah, that’s Daddy.”
“So why did Maggie leave?” Clarissa asks.
“It’s complicated. Loads of drama and heaps of hurt.”
“Must be a guy.” Beryl sniffs.
“You bet,” Sam says. “He’s studying law at Chapel Hill. They dated hot and heavy for almost a year, but she felt one thing and he another.”
“He was feeling something between his—”
“Beryl,” Clarissa interrupts, “let Sam finish her story.”
“If a man from elsewhere and Ocracoke are in it, we already know the plot,” Beryl says. “It’ll hang on the foolishness of men and the stupidity of dingbatters.”
Clarissa groans.
“Or maybe the stupidity of men and the foolishness of dingbatters,” Beryl amends.
“Both,” Sam says, stressing the word. “I mean, this guy really tore up Maggie’s heart. Then comes here to apologize, but acts like the mindless dingbatter he is. ‘What you been up to? I’m here to surf,’ he said.”
A silence, thick enough to drown in, engulfs the room. Caruso glances at Clarissa, whose cheeks have lost their rosy color; at Beryl, whose green eyes are warning Sam not to say another word; at Sam, nervously biting her bottom lip.
“What was this guy’s name?” Clarissa asks, her voice uncertain.
“Joe Fitzgerald,” Sam mutters.
Clarissa places her hands firmly on the table and rises to her feet. “I best get—”
“Yeah, I know,” Beryl rushes in. “Crab Cakes. I’ll call you later.”
Clarissa offers her arm to Caruso. Jittery, he gently presses his beak against the back of her hand to gauge his balance and steps up. Seizing her floppy hat, she walks stiffly to the door and mechanically draws it open, the hot whiteness of the day a kick in the gut.
Twenty-seven
After leaving Beryl’s studio, they head home in silence. Clarissa clutches her floppy hat in her fist and walks dully along while he perches rigidly on her shoulder, afraid to move lest she might split in half should he disrupt the eerie composure holding her together. He has never seen her like this. Even her hair seems different—the rich, deep red faded by the sun.
For the first time ever, she locks the kitchen door after they go inside. Unmindful, she puts him on the worktable. He flutters to the floor and waddles behind her into the sunroom, hotter than usual with the overhead fan off and the air conditioner set to click on sporadically. She lies down on the blue chaise longue, crosses her hands over her chest, and stretches her eyes wide, as if she is trying to expel her feelings through them. Still as stone, she is, except for her parted lips, quivering with the intake of short, shallow breaths.
It’s not long before the phone rings. Caruso expects her to answer it, but she doesn’t.
“Hey, it’s me,” Beryl says on the answering machine. “Sam just left. We should talk about this. I know you want some time to mull it over, but we both know you’ll start brooding and blow everything out of proportion. So call me the minute you get home.”
“You must be there by now,” Beryl says on the machine fifteen minutes later. “I promise I won’t talk hard at you. I’ll shut my big mouth and listen. Please, call me back.”
“Clarissa, I’m worried,” she says, after another five minutes. “Please, pick up. Pick up the phone. Pick up…”
Finally, Clarissa heaves herself off the chaise longue and trudges down the hallway with Caruso at her heels.
“Pick up, or I swear I’ll come right over…I’ll…”
“Beryl,” Clarissa says coldly into the receiver. Her profile is a puzzle, while Beryl whooshes panic at the other end of the line, but then Caruso notices her mouth, moving silently, rehearsing her response.
“I’m fine,” she says the instant Beryl quits speaking. “No need for you to worry. Really. I am fine. Need to think, that’s all. I’ll call you later. I promise…” Her face impassive, the phone loose in her hand, she listens some more before replying stonily, “No, I haven’t heard from him.” She takes several short breaths, holds the phone away from her ear as Beryl begins talking. “Bye now,” she says, cutting her off. “I love you, too,” she says and quickly hangs up.
After that, she punches in the number for Crab Cakes and tells Rick that she is sick and wants him to cover for her tomorrow. She places the receiver in its cradle and lets her hands drop to her sides, passing through the living room, down the hallway, and into the sunroom. She assumes the same pose on the chaise longue—her hands crossed over her chest—though this time she closes her eyes and talks to herself, her words thick and unintelligible.
Alarmed, Caruso flitters up and keeps watch by her feet. Soon, her utterances come to a stop, and her face appears calmer, except for the sheen of perspiration washing down her forehead.
Flying into the kitchen, he lands in the sink and twists on the spigot. He squats beneath the water until his feathers are soaked, cuts the flow off, and waddles back to the chaise longue. Scaling up its leg to the top, he vigorously flaps his wings and cools her off with a spray of water.
She whips up. “You insufferable creature,” she says, wiping her face with her hands. “Can’t you ever leave me alone?” Plunking her feet on the floor, she stands quickly. “I hate this damn house,” she says, her skin reddening with rage. She seizes a pillow from the chaise longue and flings it down. “I hate my life. I hate myself,” she says, sobbing, tears rolling down her cheeks and falling onto the white linoleum. “I’m not doing this anymore.” She grabs another pillow. “I’m not feeling this anymore.” She wheels around and hurls it like a javelin. It hits the painted chest with enough force to send the Wedgwood plate toppling over. The blue porcelain breaks into a dozen fragments against the floor. He ducks his head in case she decides to throw another, only she slumps down.
“Oh, Granny, Granny,” she moans, wrapping her arms around herself, folding her body over. “Granny…Granny…Granny,” she repeats. Her shoulders shake as she rocks to and fro. Minutes later, she is crawling over the floor toward the broken pieces, picking them up. She comes to her feet and tenderly piles them on the painted chest.
The phone rings again. A short, soft, high-pitched call emerges from her throat, reminding him of the seet call of a hedgerow bird, not a shrill alarm that would attract a predator but a delicate signal to warn the other birds of an approaching sparrow hawk. Caruso releases a seet call in turn, doing what a hedgerow bird does to pass the alert along.
“Clarissa, it’s me,” Joe says. “Only calling to let you know I’m taking the ferry to Hatteras. The surf is up, and I wanna catch the waves at Rodanthe. This is my last chance to do some serious surfing. Wish you could come, but know you can’t. I’ll be away a couple of days. Will call you as soon as I get back.”
“Will call me,” she says dispiritedly, setting out for the kitchen with Caruso following her. She flings open the top cabinet door beside the sink, pushes the canned goods aside, and retrieves a fifth of Booker’s—a small-batch, cask-strength bourbon, 127 proof—which the owner of Crab Cakes gave her months ago and which is almost full because she sips it sparingly. “In case of emergencies,” she says. She pulls out the cork, puts it on the counter, and grabs a juice glass from the drainboard. She fills it halfway. “A toast to my never-changing life,” she says, a note of self-pity in her voice, and takes a sip.
She gazes at the smoky, amber-colored whiskey and sips again. “You must think I’m stupid,” she says, glancing down at him. “You tried to warn me, but I chose to ignore you. Why?” she asks, staring beyond him into space. “Mostly because I am stupid and because, after all, you
are a bird,” she says bitterly, drinking the Booker’s on her way to the sunroom. “But you’re a whole lot smarter than I am.” This time, she gulps down a mouthful. “Wow! My, my,” she says. “I better pace myself, or I’ll get into trouble.” She drinks a little more and keeps it in her mouth a few seconds before she swallows. “The water back home is what makes this bourbon so smooth,” she says. “Maybe I should’ve stayed there.”
She drags a chair out from beneath the table and sinks down. He climbs up and squats on the chair seat beside her, studying her face while she drinks in silence. “If I had feathers, Caruso, I’d pluck them out like you do,” she says after a little while. She breathes in deeply, her nostrils quivering, and murmurs, “I’m sorry, Caruso.”
But she need not apologize. He is putty in her hands whenever a man hurts her.
“It’s not about Maggie,” she says. “It’s that he didn’t tell me about her. He picks and chooses the details of his story, so in his mind he’s not lying.”
“Law…yer,” Caruso squawks.
“Yeah,” she agrees. “You’re my sweet boy,” she says, sipping. “A loyal cockatoo. A truthful bird. I wish more of us humans were like you.” She stares sadly through the windows, and he looks where she is looking. “Insipid pink blossoms,” she says when a breeze ruffles through a stand of crape myrtles.
Her words give him a start. He thought she liked pink, as much as Olivia had.
“I like hydrangeas better,” she adds, slugging the bourbon down, “’cause their blossoms are snowy white, fat, and brazen.”
He doesn’t know her as well as he thought he did.
She drains her glass and tilts it to one side. “Empty. Time for another,” she says, pitching tipsily against the table as she straightens up.
Back in the kitchen, she spills more Booker’s into her glass and lifts it to the afternoon sunlight shining through the window. “Nut brown,” she says, taking a swig, going over to the refrigerator, and opening it. She peers inside. “Just like a chef. Nothing much in here.” She finds a brick of cheddar cheese, so old her best German knife won’t cut through it. She tosses the cheese into the trash can. “But there’s some fruit for you,” she says, glancing over her shoulder at him. “Are you hungry, Caruso?”
Love and Ordinary Creatures Page 19
