Birdie For Now

by Jean Little

  Birdie For Now

  Birdie For Now

  Jean Little

  Copyright © 2002 Jean Little

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Little, Jean, 1932-Birdie for now

  ISBN 1-55143-203-X

  I. Title. PS8523.I77B57 2002 jC813’.54 C2002-910032-1

  PZ7.L7225Bi 2002

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2002100303

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Department of Canadian Heritage’s Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), The Canada Council for the Arts, and the British Columbia Arts Council.

  Cover design by Christine Toller

  Cover & interior illustrations by Renné Benoit

  Printed and bound in Canada

  IN CANADA

  Orca Book Publishers

  1030 North Park Street

  Victoria, BC Canada

  V8T 1C6

  IN THE UNITED STATES

  Orca Book Publishers

  PO Box 468

  Custer, WA USA

  98240-0468

  07 06 05 04 • 6 5 4 3

  This story is for Ben and Jeanie; Ian and Douglas; Angus, Jack, Daniel and Katie; Melanie and Emilie; Liam and Sebastian; and Hugh and Donnie, with my love.

  My affectionate thanks also go to Susan Milton, who introduced me to Toby and Panda, my Papillons, without whom Birdie would never have lived.

  J.L.

  Table of Contents

  Left Behind

  On the Way

  “That’s the Humane Society…”

  Kids and Dogs

  “I’m Dickon Bird”

  Nothing You Can Do

  Apprentice Trainer

  Birdie in Training

  Mrs. Nelson and Mrs. Fielding

  They Might Want Birdie

  Battle is Joined

  Homecoming

  A Real Dog

  Birdie in Disgrace

  Saved

  Left Behind

  Dickon Fielding hurtled down the stairs that Saturday morning, still in pajamas. His feet were bare. His fair hair, which usually hung down smoothly to his eye-brows, was on end. And his dark eyes behind his glasses were anxious.

  What if she had slept in? He jumped the last two steps and skidded to a stop.

  But his mother was wide awake. Gazing sideways out the kitchen window, she stood and sipped her morning coffee.

  “When do we leave?” he yelled, his voice shattering the silence, his body bouncing up and down like a Nerf ball.

  She turned her head.

  “You need your hair cut,” she said.

  Then she gulped down the last of her coffee and busied herself at the sink.

  Something was wrong. No empty coffee cup needed that much rinsing. He sidestepped, trying to see her expression.

  “Mum?” he began.

  Then the truth hit him. She was going without him.

  She turned in time to catch the shock on his face.

  “Birdie darling, don’t look like that,” she began, reaching out to smooth his hair and straighten his glasses.

  She tried to sound ordinary, but her words stumbled and jumped like bare feet on sharp stones. Her cheeks were a tattle-tale pink and she did not look him in the eye.

  “Mum, you said …” he exploded.

  She put her hand over his mouth.

  “I know, sweetheart. I did plan to take you, but …”

  “You ARE taking me. Just last night, you said, ‘Get a good sleep. We have a big day coming up.’”

  “Stop!” she snapped and took a deep breath, huffing it out like the Big Bad Wolf. “Last night I faced facts. I cannot keep track of you and the movers at the same time. If you were there, I’d be worried sick. You could get lost or hurt or …”

  “Please, Mum,” he begged. “I’ll be good. I’ll be an ANGEL! You promised …”

  But she had not promised and they both knew it.

  “It wouldn’t be fun for you any-way,” she continued. “Hazel is coming to pick you up. You’re going to sleep over at her house. You’ve never been on a sleepover like other kids, Birdie. Here’s your chance. And tomorrow I’m coming back to get you.”

  “Kids don’t have sleepovers at their babysitters,” he said, but she swept on.

  “I’ll be back for you early tomorrow. We’ll go to our new home together then.”

  “Tomorrow?” he cried, boomer-anging around the room, missing the piled- up boxes by inches. When he fetched up in front of her again, she grabbed him and held on.

  “You’ll have fun at Hazel’s,” she insisted, almost shouting herself. Then, more quietly, “Birdie darling, be reasonable. Hazel will be here any minute and the movers are due in an hour. You have to get dressed!”

  “I don’t feel reasonable and I don’t want to stay with a babysitter,” he flung at her, pulling free. “I hate you!”

  She looked stricken and he was glad. He backed away and stood stiffly, ready to do battle. Then he glimpsed the tears gathering on her eyelashes. He hated it when she cried. It wasn’t fair.

  He whirled and shot up the stairs.

  If only his father had not taken off, this would not be happening. Mum was different before his dad walked out on them. She stayed home. Every afternoon when he came in from school, she was waiting with milk and homemade cookies or some other treat. She sat smiling at him, wanting to hear every detail of his day. She laughed more than she cried then. It had been great.

  Well, mostly it had been great. Sometimes, when his day was downright boring, he had wished she would just leave him to watch TV. Sometimes the true answer to her question “What happened to my Bird today?” was “Nothing.” Or, to be more truthful, “Nothing good.” He had trouble staying still and paying attention. They had parent-teacher conferences. But when he got home, both of them pretended he was doing fine. And he always came up with some little triumph to tell her.

  A couple of times, in desperation, he made up stuff. But that had back-fired.

  “The art teacher says I’m gifted,” he told her once.

  All the art teacher had ever said to him was “Can’t you keep still, young man?” But his mother almost phoned her to see if he should have extra art classes.

  “I don’t WANT art lessons,” he pleaded.

  “Leave him alone,” his father said. “You don’t want the big homecoming quiz every day, do you, Dick? You want her to treat you as though you can breathe all on your own.”

  This upset Mum so much that she forgot the art lessons.

  Still Dickon hated it when his father spoke in that hard, joking voice. Somehow, he knew that Dad was really speaking to Mum, not to him. But Dad hadn’t been home that much. He worked most afternoons and evenings. On weekends, he either watched the sports channel or slept. Mum made excuses for him at first.

  “Your father is overtired and mustn’t be bothered about us for a bit,” she said.

  But before long she gave up the little speeches about how exhausted Dad was. A few months later Dickon’s father moved out.

  Dickon was surprised at first by how little had changed. The days marched calmly by for a while. Yet that calm spell did not last. When Mum came to believe Dad was gone for good, she began to cry all the time. Dickon thought she might never stop. They moved in with Aunt Eloise for a while. Aunt Eloise’s apartmen
t was crammed with things he mustn’t move, mustn’t touch, mustn’t break.

  He smashed a porcelain figurine by mistake. Then his mother’s doctor told her it was time she made a new life. So Mum found a part-time job and they moved back into the house they had lived in before the break-up. Dad had taken all his stuff and gone out west. He sent Dickon one postcard, but all it said was, “Sorry, son.” His son threw it away before Mum saw it.

  The townhouse echoed with emptiness after that.

  “Where has he gone?” Dickon asked, bracing himself.

  But she just said, “Calgary,” in a dead voice. They left it at that.

  In those days, she came in after he did and she was often too tired to cook. They ate meals out of boxes and there were no more homemade cookies. She promised that soon things would change.

  Now she had a full-time job at the bank where she had worked before she was married. It was in Riverside, a town near Guelph. Because Monday was Canada Day, her new job began on Tuesday morning. She had landed the job because she was a whiz on the computer.

  “That’s one favor your father did me,” she had told Dickon, “insisting I do the tax returns and family accounts and answer any E-mail we got. It made me mad sometimes, but I kept up my computer skills. They were impressed.”

  Dickon dug a shirt out of a box of clothes. He was about to put it on when he saw it had a little gorilla on it with a balloon coming out of its mouth saying, “Aren’t I a cute kid?”

  “Yuck,” he grunted, shoving it out of sight. He hauled a plain blue one over his head and jammed his bare feet into his runners. Mum hated it when he didn’t put on socks. Then he pounded down the stairs to the kitchen.

  Mum was thrusting used bedding into a garbage bag. For a second, he thought she had forgotten him. Then she said, half under her breath, “After today, it will be as if we’d never lived in these rooms, Bird.”

  She fished out a Kleenex and blew her nose. He gave up the fight. He would stay at Hazel’s, but he would not comfort his mother. He grabbed his backpack and made for the door.

  “You mean you’re all set?” Hazel said, grinning down at him as he nearly careened into her. “I’ll bet you forgot your toothbrush.”

  “I did not,” he told her, dodging past. “So long, Mum.”

  “Birdie, you have to clean those glasses,” his mother called after him. “They’re filthy.”

  Pretending not to hear, he sprinted to the car, clambered in and buckled the belt. Through the car window, he watched Hazel hugging his mother. Well, let her. She had not been counting on seeing the new house. His mother waved. He paused, but finally held his hand up in a stiff salute like the Queen.

  Then they were off. As soon as they rounded the corner, Dickon relaxed. Hazel pulled into Jumbo Video and he chose three movies he knew his mother would not let him watch. Of all his babysitters, Hazel Henderson was the one he liked best because she did not try to make him keep all his mother’s rules.

  At Hazel’s he shoved in the first video and settled down to watch.

  Hazel slipped his glasses off his face and cleaned them on her shirt.

  “Thanks,” he muttered as he put them back on his nose. He was surprised at how much better he saw through clean lenses. He never noticed until he was reminded.

  “You are entirely welcome,” she said.

  She went away and came back with a glass of juice and a peanut butter sandwich.

  “Your mother said you had no breakfast,” she said.

  “Thanks,” he said again, not looking at her.

  She sat down to watch with him. The violence in the videos comforted him somehow. When he threw shadow punches at the tough guys on the screen, Hazel laughed and applauded. She thought he was cute. She said so and he clowned around, making her laugh even harder.

  Mum would not have laughed. Mum would have switched off the set and talked to him about how much she wanted him to be a “gentle man.” Not like his father was what she meant, he thought. After all, there was no chance he would turn out like one of the bad guys in the videos she hated. She must know that he just was not tough enough. If he only had been, the kids at school might have steered clear of him.

  That night, he lay awake wondering if his mother had been sorry that she had left him behind. Probably not. She kept telling him, “You’re all I have left.” She never seemed to notice that she was all he had left too.

  Shortly before eleven she came for him, a Cheshire cat smile pasted on her face. When her eyes were squinched up like that it always meant that her head ached.

  “Come here, my son,” she said, stretching out her arms. “I need a hug.”

  He let her hug him, but he didn’t hug her back. Headache or no, she should have taken him with her. When he stepped back, he saw that she was hurt. He was sorry, but it was too late.

  “Poor Julie,” Hazel said, giving her a quick kiss that landed in the air next to her ear. “You look beat.”

  “Who me?” his mother said, rolling her eyes. The two women exchanged a grown-up look. He hated that.

  “Let’s GO, Mum,” he urged, heading for the car. “You said today’s the real moving day, remember?”

  He ran around and opened her car door for her.

  “I remember,” Julie Fielding said, and her Cheshire cat smile warmed into a real grin. “And we’re off, the two of us, into the wild blue yonder to make a fabulous fresh start on life.”

  As he slid into the car, he studied his mother. She did look tired. She was faking excitement for his sake, but her heart wasn’t in it. She took a deep breath and burst into their theme song, “Side by Side.” He joined in, changing the words.

  “We ain’t got a nickel for spending …”

  He hesitated and she made up the next line.

  “And the world we are used to is ending. But we’ll make it through…”

  “Just me and you,” he added happily.

  “Side by side,” they finished together.

  “Oh, Birdie, you are such a comfort,” she said.

  “I know it,” he told her. “Now step on the gas, Mum. I want my fresh start to start!”

  On the Way

  “I have to stop by the pharmacy,” Mum said, “to get your pills and something for me.”

  “Headache pills,” he said, wanting her to know that he was as smart as Hazel.

  “How do you know my head aches?” she said.

  “Psychic,” he shot back, grinning.

  She parked in front of the drugstore and got out. Then she paused, peering in at him.

  “Promise me you will not stir from this car,” she said.

  “I promise,” he said, sounding as bored as he could.

  She sped away. Dickon reached out to turn on the car radio, but his mother had the keys. He pulled off his glasses, folded them up and shoved them into the glove compartment. He yanked off his runners and wiggled his toes inside his striped socks. He bunched them up, stretched them wide apart and spoke kindly to them.

  “Want a fresh start, toes?” he asked.

  His toes were too hot to chat. They drooped. He stripped off the socks and put his hot, sweaty feet on the dash-board to air. His toes liked that. They frisked like excited tadpoles.

  His mother was taking FOREVER.

  Then he saw a lady walking her dog. Snapping open the glove compartment, he fished out his glasses for a better look. How he longed for a dog of his very own! He’d never get one if his mother had any say in the matter.

  “A dog attacked me when I was three,” she said whenever the subject came up. Dickon had seen the tiny scar on her little finger where the dog had nipped her. She still shuddered at the memory of the brute beast.

  But that was silly. His mother had not been three for a long, long time, and he had much bigger scars. He had a huge one on his leg from catching it on a nail when he was climbing a fence. He was not afraid of nails. Or fences.

  The lady was walking an Old English sheepdog puppy. It bounced and bumbled around
her feet, almost tripping her. She was laughing out loud. He opened the door a crack to listen.

  “Stop it, Ebeneezer, you daft creature,” he heard her say.

  The puppy sat down with a bump and gazed up at her, his head cocked a little on one side. He looked more cuddly than a stuffed toy. Then he bounced up and romped ahead, tugging his mistress along. When they passed close by, Dickon longed to jump out and ask to pat Ebeneezer. He opened the door wider. It would only take five seconds.

  With one bare foot halfway out, he remembered his promise. His moment of happiness blew away like a helium balloon. Glowering, he pulled his foot back in and shut the car door.

  Then he spotted Jim and Jason Bridgeman across the street and his mother coming back from the pharmacy. He ducked down. What if Jim yelled, “Hiya, Dizzy Dick,” or “What’s new, Twitchy?”?

  Dickon had never told his mother about the teasing. Now they were moving away. If Jim didn’t spot him, she need never know.

  Twitch. Spacey. Dizzy Dick. Boy Jerky.

  Jim’s jeers sounded again inside Dickon’s head as he crouched low, keeping his head turned to hide his face. The names were as hard to brush aside as black flies in June. They stung like fly bites too.

  The teacher had called him Mr. Fidget twice, but the twins hadn’t heard. When she brought a jumping bean home from a trip to Mexico, though, Jim had called him Beano for days.

  “Here I am at last,” his mother said, sliding in next to him. “That store is so crowded. Are you all right, Bird?”

  “Sure. Are we leaving now?” he asked, twisting to see if the boys were out of sight. Tension sharpened his voice.

  “We are leaving this minute,” she said. “Please, Birdie, forgive me for yesterday and cheer up. Today should be fun.”

  Her hand, reaching to insert the ignition key, shook. He scowled. She made such a big deal out of everything. His glasses had slipped down. He shoved them back so fiercely that the nosepiece dug into him. She was waiting for an apology. If he didn’t give it, she’d start in at him again. Just in time, he muttered, “Sorry.”

  She swallowed and said, “Me too. Are you hungry?”