The United States of Us

by Kate Sundara

  The American carefully scoops the bluebird on the towel into the box.

  ‘Now what?’

  ‘We gotta keep him somewhere quiet,’ says the newcomer. ‘He’s in shock.’

  ‘Looks sticky,’ says Anna, observing the blood. ‘Should we wash it? Maybe I find cure…’

  ‘He has a broken blood feather,’ he says and turns to Anna. ‘D’you have flour?’

  ‘Flour? Yes!’ Anna flashes him a grin, happy to help. ‘I’ll fetch some,’ she says and races out, leaving the newcomer and Mia alone in the room.

  ‘The kitchen’s miles away,’ says Mia. It’s an exaggeration given the size of the community, but true it’s the furthest point from here.

  ‘I know.’ The American smiles beguilingly. ‘Zak Ryder,’ he says, looking at Mia – she’s struck by the colours in his eyes – aqua, turquoise, cobalt, green – his eyes are near hypnotic.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘I’m Zak.’

  ‘Oh… Why do you need flour?’

  ‘Gotta pack the broken shaft.’

  ‘You know how to do that?’

  ‘Sure.’ They find themselves staring at each other for longer than people usually do…

  ‘Did you find the reading room alright?’ she asks out of awkwardness.

  ‘Yeah…’ he keeps gazing at her. ‘Yeah. I returned your books. Like you asked.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Another silent stare.

  The bluebird starts to flounder a little. Zak turns his attention back to the bird laying on its side, head on the towel. Gently securing it there, he starts moving his free hand up and down in front of the bird’s beak without actually touching it, just keeps flickering his finger between its eyes as if he’s – as if he’s hypnotising it! Just like he near-hypnotised Mia. Keeping line with the beak, he continues the motion till the bird is out, but still breathing, perfectly calm. Mia’s speechless. Then, to her further disbelief, Zak takes his fingers to its wing and plucks out a feather.

  ‘What – why’d you do that?’ she exclaims. ‘I thought you were waiting for the flour!’

  ‘Had a better idea. He’ll be fine now. The bleeding stops after the broken shaft’s removed. Just give him food and water for the next few days, he’ll be right as rain.’

  ‘Are you a vet?’… Or an animal whisperer?

  ‘Grew up in the country, used to treating broken birds all the time.’

  A beat. ‘In the States? Where?’ she asks. ‘You’re the first person I’ve met here who speaks English. I mean…’

  ‘As a first language.’

  ‘Right.’ That should make conversation flow but it doesn’t. Not when he’s holding her gaze like that, an infinity of questions – each one attaching itself to the next – crystallising on her tongue. Instead, they search each other’s eyes; Zak’s irises bursts of colour, like aqueous planets – she’s lost in space: unanchored and floating in a small forever…

  Anna returns with the flour, Mia comes back to earth, ‘We don’t need it now,’ she tells her.

  ‘Changed my mind,’ explains Zak. ‘He’ll be okay. I removed the damaged part.’

  Anna sees the feather in Zak’s hand before he drops it in the bin, washes his hands. She looks as surprised as Mia did watching Zak spellbind that bird into submission and pluck out its plume. All Anna can do is regain her breath from her dash to the kitchen, then look to Zak and Mia and suggest, ‘Home-made lemonade?’

  Out on the shared balcony, ice cubes clunk in the jug, sun sparkles on the distant Tyrrhenian Sea. Mia, sitting down, takes one of the cubes to numb her injured toe.

  ‘Great views from here,’ remarks Zak.

  ‘Where are you staying?’ Anna asks him.

  ‘In that tree-hut right across there.’ He points to a cool-looking suspended den with colourful prayer-flags all along the front.

  ‘I see a nest above it,’ observes Anna, pointing up into the boughs. ‘I hope for no more falling birds.’

  Zak smiles softly. ‘First time I found a fallen bird was in the States when I was a kid. Playing on a tree-swing in a cornfield. Must’ve rocked the branches because a baby bird fell from its nest. I ran to my father for help but he came and stomped that little bird to death and buried it. I thought he was a monster, didn’t understand it was the humane thing to do. He went back inside the house, I sat in the yard and sobbed my heart out. I was five years old and thought it was all my fault.’

  Mia looks up at Zak.

  ‘I remember watching the sunlight bounce off the tears I’d cried in my hand and thinking – making a decision there and then – to keep things inside me – to keep anything beautiful and delicate to myself.’

  Mia’s staring at him now, unabashedly. They have something unthinkable in common.

  Silence… then the quiet birdsong.

  ‘Wow,’ simpers Anna.

  Mia pours herself a glass of lemonade.

  ‘I guess in telling you this I’m breaking my rule,’ shares Zak. ‘But hey, maybe I’m entering a new phase. Someone I met in Nepal told me I’m experiencing my Saturn Return. I don’t know about that, but I do feel incredible right now. This place! I figure the thing to learn is to be careful who you choose to share the beauty with.’

  ‘Are the flags from the Himalayas?’ enquires Anna.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘The coloured flags.’

  ‘Oh… yeah. Someone gave me those as a gift when I was trekking through Tibet.’

  ‘Wow’, says Anna again – Mia wishes she wouldn’t.

  ‘Was quite a journey’, smiles Zak. ‘Anyhow. I’m sure you ladies have things to do. Nice meeting you. Thanks for the lemonade. I’ll see y’around.’

  Zak leaves the balcony, picks up his guitar and goes on his way.

  Mia’s prediction about the island newcomer was right: he’s attracting female attention – she just never expected it would be from Anna. She should have, she now realises – Anna’s full-on about everything, and now she’s found another topic to try to bond with her over.

  ‘He’s amazing!’ gushes Anna. ‘Gorgeous! I would not guess he’s American with such exotic looks as his. And did you see the way he fixed up that bird – so capable!’

  Mia peers over the balcony, checking that Zak’s out of earshot – he is. She sees a group of young girls by the orange tree, all gawping and nudging each other as he walks by. She rolls her eyes. ‘C’mon,’ she tells Anna. ‘He’s a tool. Well, not a tool, but totally up himself, thinking he’s expert at bird rescue and climbing Everest or whatever. He probably did it barefoot because he thinks it’s cool.’

  ‘Mia, why you so hard against men?’

  ‘I’m not hard, I’m a realist. I know what they’re like. I’m discerning.’

  ‘Discerning?’

  ‘Careful.’

  ‘All men?’

  ‘The egocentrics. Notice how he didn’t ask us any questions when he was up here – the focus was all on him. Did he even ask us our names?!’

  ‘He was busy fixing Bluebird!’

  ‘And that whole I’m sure you ladies have things to do comment – he blatantly wanted us to ask him about his Himalayan conquests.’

  ‘What’s blatantly?’

  ‘It means – it’s like obviously.’

  ‘Ah, I note this. And you are – dis…’

  ‘Discerning.’

  Anna darts inside, returns with her notepad and adds the new words to her era-spanning vocab.

  As Mia falls asleep she can’t help replay that story Zak told, still not knowing what to make of it – of him. She pictures him in her mind’s eye as a little kid sobbing over that dead bird, thinking it was all his fault – Zak all sensitive, nature-loving, kind and guilt-ridden and all the things that now she cannot help but see in him. Then, in spite of herself, she finds the child in her entering that scene, where he sits on the grass watching the sunlight in his tears, reaching out to hug the child in him.

  * * *

  Mia never consider
ed herself the jealous type. But then she never considered herself the type to get swept up in infatuations either.

  She’s heading for the fig-orchard when she spots Anna and Zak through the trees. She came here to dig worms for the bluebird – the fig-grove the best place for that. Although Mia doesn’t eat meat she’s not squeamish about feeding it to the bird, who’s fast regaining strength. Tomorrow, before she leaves the island, she’ll set him free if he can fly.

  Zak appears to be showing Anna some trick involving a glass of water.

  ‘That’s so cool! How do you do that?’ squeals Anna coquettishly as Zak’s dripping fingers emerge from the water with a coin.

  ‘Just a trick of the light,’ he tells her, laughing softly.

  Mia watches from a distance, concealed by the fig leaves. Anna’s flirting is utterly overt – she doesn’t do subtle – her enamoured body-language, all giggling, leaning in, for a moment she even starts toying with her hair. Mia watches on, assigning her discomfort to the fact that Anna has a boyfriend, a sweet Portuguese guy she’s seen coming and going from Anna’s room, adjoining her own.

  Abruptly excusing himself, Zak gives a little salute to Anna, who, after watching him leave, turns and starts in Mia’s direction. Mia hesitates on the spot.

  ‘Mia! What are you doing here?’ asks Anna.

  ‘I came to find worms for the bluebird. What are you doing here?’ she retorts defensively.

  Anna’s dark eyes sparkle mischievously, then, ‘I was with Zak!’ she gushes. ‘He’s into everything – art, nature, music, writing! He’s a travel-photographer – explains all those pictures in his cabin.’ It doesn’t matter that the girls aren’t close; Anna’s about as capable of containing her enthusiasm as Mia is her curiosity.

  ‘Wait, you went back to his cabin?’ The notion thumps Mia in the stomach.

  ‘Yes, but Zak wasn’t there. I climbed up the back through the branches. I’m a dancer, I can bend.’

  ‘You did what! Why?’

  Anna shrugs.

  ‘What if he’d caught you?! Why didn’t you use the ladder?’

  ‘He might think I was – what’s the word?’

  ‘Stalking?!’

  ‘Stalking. Yes, I like it. I must write this one down…’

  Mia, lost for words herself, eventually asks, ‘Well, what did you see?’

  ‘His walls covered with most wonderful photographs – misty mountains and peoples like the such I have only seen in books. What you call this… National Geographic?’

  ‘Unbelievable.’

  ‘Yes, really!’ says Anna, ‘A hundred beautiful photos!’

  Mia wasn’t referring to the photos.

  ‘He’s my dream-man, Mia. Like something from fairytale!’

  Mia has learnt that life can be harsh, but even she wants to believe in the fairytale.

  ‘Don’t you have a boyfriend?’ Mia says, for once doing the probing.

  ‘Yes, but Zak is far more interesting! So much creative energy,’ she swoons. ‘He’s so inspiring, so accomplished, so gallant!’

  ‘Gallant?’

  ‘Yes, it means…’

  ‘I know what it means!’

  ‘Are you vexed?’ enquires Anna.

  ‘Vexed? No, I’m…’ Mia doesn’t know what she is.

  ‘He does seem to me untouchable though. Like a statue carved from the purest soap!’

  Mia recalls that imagery from The Little Mermaid – how the mermaid describes her prince.

  ‘Yes,’ decides Anna, ‘Zak is like a statue you’re not allowed to touch.’

  I’m sure it won’t stop you trying, thinks Mia.

  ‘I will keep trying,’ says Anna.

  ‘What’s the use? We’re all leaving the island within the next few days.’

  ‘So time for one final romance! He’s just rather closed-off. Like you.’

  Unsure of how to respond to that, Mia doesn’t. She kneels and starts digging a hole in the grass. Now with someone new to make a project of, Anna leaves her to it.

  Assuming both Anna and Zak have left the grove, Mia’s wrist-deep in the soil when she hears the quiet snapping. She freezes. Might Zak still be here? she wonders. When she saw him with Anna she’d noticed a camera around his neck – one of those big, professional looking jobs. She slithers through the flora till she sees him, not far away, squatting down, peeking through the viewfinder, photographing a dragonfly on a leaf. She watches him. Maybe she’s got him all wrong – maybe it’s not all about him – his hints of Himalayan conquests – maybe he’s genuine. Like a butterfly unfolding its wings, like a flower unfurling, in her eyes his beauty blooms – we’re so unified that I see what she sees, beyond the boundaries of my former self. While I’ve lost many things, my ego, I’ve gained a whole new level of insight.

  To Mia, Zak is absurdly attractive – thick wild hair, cheekbones like apples and geometry, chiselled jaw – Anna had a point: he does look sculpted, with a masculine-feminine duality, Venus in the fairness of his brow. Yet here he is appreciating all the beauty outside of himself.

  Mia stands. He moves slowly towards her. Hiding in the shadows, she can’t move – can’t let him see her, not now – that’d just be weird. He moves closer, so close she can hear his breath; the camera stops snapping and there’s no sound except for the crickets, the birds in the trees. She quietens her own breathing but he’s so near she’s sure he feels her. She can smell him, that intoxicating scent that floats up her nostrils and goes down, doing something funny to her insides. Testosterone so tangible she can almost taste it.

  They stand silent, unseen, only fig-leaves between them. It feels like forever. Then the snapping recommences and grows quieter as he moves away. She goes to take a shower to cool down.

  In the days that ensue they keep catching each other’s eye: Zak talking with a group, seizing up as Mia passes; Mia painting on the leavers’ wall, colour splatting from her brush as she spots him help carry supplies and send her a smile from afar; both seemingly trying to approach the other at various moments, but being interrupted. Later, noticing him perform circus skills with a glass contact-ball – rolling the bubble liquidly across his body, energy channelled and focused like a wizard of movement manipulation – she appears before Zak, a speechless spectator among many, finally finding an excuse to just watch him.

  * * *

  Mia hurries to the abbey by the light of the full-moon. It’s her last night on the island and she’s late to the mass that wraps up the week-long Festival of Light. She had to finish her packing then drop her backpack off at the dock, ready for tomorrow’s departure.

  Everywhere’s quiet, everything still. Later the place will flare in festivity, music from every corner, dancing around the bonfire as happens every Saturday night.

  The floor of the church is an ocean of luminescence. The entire interior of the abbey radiates with soft light made up of single candles flickering in the palms of countless hands. Even the bright colours of woven tapestries and rich rugs of berry red fade into darkish shadow beyond this light. Islanders and mainland villagers are packed into every inch for this vigil of peace, love and reconciliation for the world. Walking into this scene on her last night nearly makes Mia’s eyes well-up. But not quite. Mia never cries. I haven’t seen her cry since That Day.

  She searches for a space near the doorway. Despite the mass of people, the whole building reverberates with deep silence, interrupted only by a scattering of far-off coughs and the gurgles of a baby somewhere down front. She settles into the habitual stillness; throughout summer the community have passed collective hours sat in these states of consciousness. You don’t have to be particularly religious to be here – many who come are searching. Although the permanent residents are an ecumenical brother and sisterhood, everyone is welcome so long as they are respectful, abide by reasonable rules and participate in the practices of this peaceful supportive micro-nation.

  The light from Mia’s little flame flickers orange against her eyelids. Even
with eyes closed she feels the glow around her, senses the warmth from candles bathing everyone in soothing light. Sitting in silence, the realisation glimmers in her brain that if she looks to her left, along about half-a-dozen people, sitting in the candlelight, Zak will be there. Now he’s not performing circus tricks, she has no bonafide reason to pay him attention.

  Time drifts a long while until twinkling notes from the piano mark the end of silence. Eyes open and a shifting ripples through the crowd. Voices lift into a peace-chant ascending to the rafters and through the incense lingering around the beams as candles melt into liquid on fingertips then harden back to white.

  Unable to constrain her curiosity any longer, Mia steals a look Zak’s way. He’s watching her. In the split-second their eyes meet they don’t smile. She looks away to the darkened window above the religious icons glistening in the half-light, down in the centre of the abbey. That majestic stained-glass could be playful when sunlight flickered through its prisms of ruby-red, purple, emerald-green, but now night has fallen and the window rests in one dimension, retired until morning – staunch, stubborn, opaque. Mia has become like that window: closed-off – just as Anna had said, not wanting to play.

  Mia feels Zak still watching her, wanting her to notice him, but the atmosphere has grown too loaded for her to make even the slightest movement. With his eyes upon her comes the return of her ego and she assumes a forced indifference, too afraid of what an exchanged glance might imply. She cannot let him see into her eyes. She wonders what it is about this man that makes her hone in on his whereabouts, how she seems to have developed this sixth- sense whenever he’s around.

  At last the congregation releases its stillness, the villagers the first invited to receive blessings and broken bread. Mia’s still on the carpet when a hand lands on her shoulder and when she looks up it’s into the shining saucer-eyes of the little shell-collector boy. The child from the bay stands so close above her that she can smell sweet biscuits on him, even through the incense in the air. Shyly he smiles in rec- ognition, seeing the shell he gave Mia around her neck – she turned it into a necklace the evening he gave her that shell in the bay. The boy’s mother smiles at her too as she takes him along to join the growing queue. Accidentally, as Mia looks away from the two of them, she lets her focus fall on Zak – fortunately his eyes are shut.