The Colours of Birds

by Higgins, Rebecca

  The Business

  When Dara first started, she worked alone in her basement, surrounded by fruit a day away from taking a turn for the worse. She forced herself not to eat any of the rectangles of milk chocolate she’d found on sale because it would have gouged her profit margin. The phone never rang, and when it did, she could hardly ever hear it over the crinkling of cellophane.

  These days, though, business is good. She has a little storefront in a decent neighbourhood, and she’s hired a kid to answer the phone so she can concentrate on putting the baskets together. She buys good-quality dark chocolate wholesale and nibbles on it as she works. Nowadays the fruit in her baskets wouldn’t dare be overripe.

  Her friends say it must be the increased demand. They tell her she’s got business savvy now. But Dara knows what’s behind her success: she’s recommitted herself to the work. All it took was Cam leaving her and taking up with somebody else, some other teacher at his school. That was what she needed to renew her passion for the business of divorce gift baskets.

  The Colours of Birds

  The smell of blackening eggs wakes Maud Lewis up. She opens her eyes to a squint and makes out the shape of Everett, bent over and rattling at the woodstove.

  “You’re burning the eggs,” she says.

  “None for you, then,” he says brightly.

  She closes her eyes again and tries to remember the bits of her dream that wafted away when the eggs woke her. Her dreams are always complicated—plot twists and slips unlike the neat threads of her waking life—but these days, there is also music in the background, church songs from her childhood. Her sleep is thick with it. But the dream began to disintegrate as soon as Maud opened an eye—and a few minutes later, she can only find the ashes of it.

  The dream gone, Maud turns her attention to becoming awake. Under the quilt, she taps the fingers of each hand against her thigh. Her right fingers feel as though she’d knotted them into a fist as she fell asleep, clenched until morning. She tries to move her wrist in the beginnings of a circle, but she frowns in pain. Stops.

  Knowing her routine of checking her bones, Everett asks, moving the pan from the stove, “And today?”

  “Right one’s bad,” she says.

  “I’m sorry, Maud,” Everett says, as she knows he is.

  “No eggs for me, please,” Maud tells Everett gently, because she hates the smell of burned eggs. She watches him put the two ends of a loaf on the broiler for her instead, and in the smell of bread browning, she discovers a little more of her love for him.

  1970.

  Everett is kneeling in the graveyard, working in the last of the light. The mosquitoes are at him this evening, landing in the sweat of his neck and on his forehead, even his temples. Sometimes he pauses to swat at them, but mostly he keeps to his task, chipping the letters into the base of the stone: U D. He focuses all of himself on this task, concentrating on each press and tap, holding the letters carefully in his mouth so he doesn’t make a mistake. No one is in the graveyard but Everett. Between words, he rests. He tells himself to remember to take the shrivelled, weeks-ago flowers with him when he goes—some greens and snapdragons and another wildflower he’s forgotten the name of. I’ll ask Maud, he thinks. Then he remembers. Grits his grief between his teeth and begins to tap out the second word: D O.

  Everett’s knees are damp and starting to ache, but he doesn’t hurry. A mosquito buzzes near his ear. He leans closer to the stone and squints to see in the deepening dusk.

  W L.

  He rubs his eyes with the heel of his hand and colours pop behind them: red, green, blue—he thinks of the blue jays on the kettle, the backdrop of sky behind the daybed. When he opens his eyes, the blue is gone.

  He leans in, peers at the stone. A mosquito hovers in front of the L as if it is reading, and Everett almost laughs. I must tell Maud, he thinks.

  E Y.

  The graveyard empties of light.

  Maud is not self-conscious about having been born with almost no chin, doesn’t flutter her hands in front of it or keep her eyes fixed on far-away spots like some women do, like he has done. When she looks at him, she sees him, and at first he is uncomfortable. He knows he is skinny and quiet and alone in most things. If he had a chin like hers, his hands would always be covering it. But Maud is not interested in hiding herself. At first, he is uncomfortable. Later, this shifts.

  She is quiet like him, most of the time. When she paints, she hums. Soft, unrecognizable things. At the beginning, he interrupts to ask what the tune is, but she never knows. She paints and the music slips out of her mouth, unnoticed. After he stops her and she returns to her painting, there is always a silence before the humming begins again. The silence jars him, reminds him of how the little house was before Maud. The interruptions cease. He prefers knowing the sound to knowing its details.

  When visitors gawk at the little house and it fills up quickly with their questions, Maud tries to explain.

  “I just … have to,” is all she manages as they peer at her painted things. Stove, cups, cookie sheet, tobacco tin.

  “Look! Even the egg cups!” somebody squeals.

  “Look at the birds on that tin!”

  “There’s a meadow on this baking sheet!”

  Sometimes she feels like the roof has been pulled off the house and they are being peered at and picked over by giants. Clumsy fingers grazing over the art, flicking at the curtains, knocking about the kitchen without cooking anything.

  Sometimes this makes her tired, and she circles her wrists to wake herself up, arthritis opening her eyes again. She is puzzled by the interest of the visitors.

  “I don’t understand it, really,” she says to Everett one night, just after he has blown out the candle beside the bed. Smoke floats and fades. The room smells like church.

  “What, Maud?” he says.

  “Why they all seem so interested. They’re just my paintings. They’re just what my life is, nothing more. Am I supposed to be more interested in what their lives are?”

  This is much more than she usually says. There is no resentment in her. Only confusion. Everett is thinking about how to answer, when—“Oh, don’t mind me,” she finishes. And their old joke: “There isn’t much to mind,” and she turns toward him.

  The rustle of the blankets as Maud moves toward him is the other sound that Everett loves.

  1968.

  These mornings, her routine is different. Pain covers everything; she feels it before she wakes up. These mornings, she pinches her eyes shut for the treat of opening them to the paintings. Opens them wide and waits as long as she can before blinking. She feels the muscles above her eyes pulling, a tug at the hairline, eyes wider, wider until her head aches. She looks at each painting for long moments, so long the colours melt as her eyes water.

  A pair of deer standing together, looking through an opening in the trees. Maud loves the stillness of these deer, poised between her gaze and motion, between herself and the river. She paints them again from another angle and again on different surfaces. Some mornings they are especially familiar, and Maud catches them in the dregs of her dreams.

  Around her bed are other pairs. Clydesdales trudging through snow (fresh snow—she loves the clean white and repaints the snow at their hooves and backs when it fades). Cattle standing in flowers, and above them, a handful of butterflies frozen in flight.

  At last, Maud blinks. When she opens her eyes, they are still there, nearly the same—only a bit brighter.

  Rain splatters the windshield. Everett rolls up the windows of the Ford. When they drive along the roads near their home, the wheels kick up pebbles that clink and tap against the old Model T. Maud likes the sound of the stones, but Everett winces, imagined dents plaguing him.

  Outside the McGillivary house, before they get out of the car, Everett and Maud argue.

  “Maud, it isn’t enough.”

  “It’s enough,” she says.

  “It isn’t! We’re not even paying for half
the fuel we need to get home with what you would sell these for,” he mutters, looking at the packet of newly painted cards in his hands.

  Together they’ve made a small business out of Maud’s painting. She paints, he drives, she waits while he carries the cards onto porches, knocks with one free hand. These parts of the business are clear. About money, they disagree.

  Outside the McGillivarys’, the close car air is too heavy to sit in. Everett clenches his jaw. “Maud,” he says between his teeth.

  “It’s enough. I don’t paint for money,” she says, folding her arms under her breasts. He bites down on the something sharp he wants to say. He opens the door of the Ford, and the rain gets louder, splashes across the steering wheel. He slides the hand holding her cards inside his jacket to protect them from getting wet.

  Squatting in the McGillivary foyer, Everett spreads out the cards on a dry patch of floor. Mrs. McGillivary loves the cards and buys five. Everett asks for his price and gets it. He declines a cup of tea. On the porch, he puts the few dollars difference in his shirt pocket. Glances at Maud in the passenger seat as he does it, but Maud doesn’t see him. She is looking out the window at a crow perched on the fencepost despite the rain, its feathers shiny like wet tires. The crow flaps into flight as he approaches. Maud turns and notices him, and he sees in her look that the argument is over.

  Everett hurries toward the Ford to get out of the rain. His shirt is beginning to cling to him.

  1964.

  “I’m running out of paint, again,” Maud tells Everett after breakfast. She shows him what she has left: enough red for a coat or two, maybe a sled, and only a small sky’s worth of blue.

  She paints every day, from early morning until supper, pausing for toast and tea and a nap if she’s feeling sore. Some evenings, she paints until the light goes. If sleep is slow to come, she paints by candlelight, although it is difficult to see the colours as they really are. Sometimes, when she wakes up the next morning, she is surprised by how the paintings have turned out. They are always a little disappointing in daylight. At night, there is the possibility of something hidden outside the puddle of candlelight. More to the painting than she can see.

  Everett turns from the tub where he is collecting the breakfast dishes, which are nearly ready to be taken out to the pump.

  “I saw that. I’ll go over today. The Finches just finished another boat down at the water, and they said we could have the leftovers.”

  “What colour?” Maud asks.

  “Blue, and they’ve got some leftover green and red. Maybe white? A bit of yellow from the Wilson boat, also.”

  “That’s good. Thank you,” Maud says and touches his arm with her small hand.

  Everett smiles and turns back to the tub.

  Later, Everett is carrying the paint back from the dock. He has left the Ford at home. It isn’t a far walk from the little house.

  He is carefully carrying the paint in two egg cartons, one in each hand. There is paint in each of the spaces once lived in by eggs. Blue, green, red, yellow. The inner parts of Everett’s forearms are starting to ache. The cartons aren’t at all heavy, but holding them like this is awkward. Everett begins to feel irritated.

  Out of the corner of his eye: a flash of black.

  He turns to see a crow, very close to the road, just a few steps away from a blue jay. The blue jay and crow are staring at each other. The crow is still, but the blue jay hops from foot to foot.

  Watching the birds, Everett does not see the fist-sized stone in front of him. He stumbles. He nearly falls but manages to find his balance before his knees meet the road. Everett swears as he feels wet on his hands. He looks down. Paint is spilling down his hands, onto his wrists. He looks into the cartons and sees that the paint pools have become a mess of swirls, all leaking into one another. There is blue in the red cup, and yellow has slid all over the carton. The colours are ruined.

  Stupid birds, Everett thinks. When he looks back, they are gone.

  Back at the little house, Everett hands the soggy cartons to Maud.

  “It’s okay,” she tells him. “I know how to use this.”

  Outside, she dumps all of the remaining paint into an old bucket and stirs the mixture with a wooden spoon.

  That night, she dips her brush into the bucket and paints a pair of deer, their backs to her.

  In the candlelight, the shade of brown is perfect.

  1969.

  The sound is a hum, nearly a moan. Maud’s eyes and lips are both pinched tight, but the sound makes it out anyway. Everett, sitting in a wooden chair by the stove, watches her. He waits to see what the sound will turn into. But the note doesn’t change. In her sleep, Maud pauses for breath and then the sound begins again, the same, steady, and grows haunting.

  In the morning, Everett asks about it.

  “What were you dreaming last night, Maud?”

  “What?” Maud asks. “Oh. I don’t quite know.”

  Everett shrugs and turns away. He doesn’t mention the humming.

  But Maud does know.

  It had been a while since she thought about the baby, and longer since she dreamed of her. In the dream, she was fourteen again and in her brother’s house, still Maud Dowley. And in labour, almost as it had happened, except Everett was now—impossibly—there. He was burying something under the bed as she screamed and pushed in pain. She peered over the bed and could only see his legs—bare for some reason and thin as ever—and two wooden shoes, sky blue with crows painted on them.

  She woke up before the baby was born.

  But the dream did not dissolve quickly as dreams usually do. All day she thinks about Everett’s strange wooden dream-shoes, and wonders what he was burying under the bed.

  Everett is almost home when he realizes he has left the old flowers from his parents’ grave by the stones. He stops on the road and thinks for a moment about going back, but he has spent too much time there today, fixing the stone. He will get them next time, he thinks.

  His knees and fingers are sore from his work in the graveyard. He wriggles his fingers and taps them against his thighs as he walks, testing them out.

  It is dark now, and Everett knows that if he bothers to look up, he will see stars. But Everett does not look up.

  At home, he creaks open the painted door in the darkness. He moves slowly around the edge of the room. At the table, he fumbles for the candle and his matches.

  In the limited light, he lifts his eyes and sees the pair of deer. Brown backs and legs leaning together, connected, looking away from him at something he can’t see.

  This Life

  After you left, I had to take the streetcar someplace. I don’t remember where, but it was rush hour. There was a skinny guy standing near me. We were both penned in by the crowd. The guy was talking out loud to himself or me or somebody else. And he said: “My brain is too sophisticated for this world. So now I’m stuck in this fucking stupid life.” I inched away from him and down the streetcar steps, wishing I had the guts to tell him I understood.

  The End of Everything Fun

  After tai chi, Dorinda walked out to the parking lot with Alfred again. Alfred was shorter than she was, but he was in good shape for their age. The weight around his middle was more of a steering wheel than a spare tire. His blue eyes were only a little watery, and he had some hair left, thin but combed neatly. Also, his shoes had laces—they weren’t slip-ons or, God forbid, Velcro. Dorinda’s friend Siobhan had a husband who wore Velcro runners. There was no dignity in those shoes. When Dorinda saw Neil with those shoes on, she felt like she’d walked in on him on the toilet. No wonder Siobhan made him sleep in the basement.

  It was the second time that Dorinda and Alfred had left tai chi together. The week before, Alfred had walked her to her car, chatting about how he was going to be taking care of his grandson on the weekend and smiling warmly at her as he headed to his sedan. As the week passed and it got closer to tai chi night, Dorinda found herself thinking about Alfred and
hoping they’d get a chance to talk after class again. They did, and this time Alfred seemed to want to know about her, which was even nicer. He asked her if she had any grandkids and listened with interest as she explained that her daughter had decided she didn’t want kids, not that Miriam had a husband to make the decision with anyway. Dorinda rolled her eyes and then felt a flutter of regret. Not only would Alfred think her awful, but as ridiculous as Miriam could be, Dorinda usually didn’t criticize her to anybody but Siobhan, and only then after they’d had a few glasses of merlot and Neil had shuffled off into another room.

  But Alfred didn’t seem put off. In fact, he seemed to be listening very carefully. Of course, it was possible he was hard of hearing. But either way, he was paying attention in that particular way that reminded Dorinda of beery declarations of love when she was a girl, and it had been a long time since a man had paid attention to Dorinda like that. She wasn’t too surprised when he asked for her number, but she was pleased.

  A lot of the women Dorinda knew (or Siobhan knew and told her about) were on their own too. Some were lifelong bachelorettes—maybe quiet lesbians or women who were just smart enough not to get clogged up with a husband. Some were divorced like Dorinda. Some of them were widows—that seemed the most distinguished and honourable way to be single at their age. Dorinda wished that Bill had died. Certainly it would have been more dignified. But he had just left her, not even for somebody else but just because he didn’t feel like being married anymore. It had been years, but Dorinda still remembered his face when he told her, sweaty and pale like he was ill when he was really just a coward.

  Bill left when Miriam was twenty. She had moved out the year before, and so most of the time, it was just the two of them in the house. Operating in different orbits but in the same universe, more or less. It wasn’t like Dorinda was so crazy about Bill, either, but when you got married, you stayed that way. He had a vaguely off-putting smell clinging to him, even when he was just out of the shower, a whiff of sweat with a barely detectable note of urine. He had grown square-shaped over the years, and he rarely said anything interesting. Still, Dorinda was angry and hurt when he left. She had planned to live out their twilight years with this sweaty square of a husband and make do about it, and then he took the option away from her.