Imperfect Birds

by Anne Lamott

  He said, “Jeez, Rosie, you’re only grounded a week!” and they laughed like friends.

  In fact, she had read only thirty of the seven hundred seventy-four pages between the epilogue and the prologue, but that was because she had a gnarly project on Reconstruction due for AP history, in which she had to argue for the South, for its rightful rage and resistance to the North’s military occupation; and a paper in French on Simone de Beauvoir, of whom she did not approve because of her submission to the awful Jean-Paul Sartre.

  “You’re a Soviet hard-liner, Ro,” James commented at dinner. “No margin of error for the weaknesses of two people who changed life for the good, forever?”

  “Don’t hector the children,” Elizabeth said to James.

  “And I’m not a child,” Rosie said crossly to her mother. But then everyone smiled.

  Three dinners in a row were lovely, something that could not have been said any other time recently. But keeping the secret from James pained Elizabeth off and on. She had been cooking special dinners to compensate, and two nights ago they had made love. She was a bad person. Tonight she had made garlic eggplant, dragon prawns, brown rice, and as usual, salad from the garden. Also, she had bought everyone a cheap present at Landsdale’s variety store: socks for James, lip gloss for Rosie, a catnip Spiro Agnew for Rascal. It was like old times, Rosie jacking avocado off James’s plate, James responding with a droning air attack on Rosie’s last prawn.

  When Lank called later in the week, Elizabeth answered the phone. It turned out he was calling to talk to her, and a ray of gladness shone through and surprised her.

  “Are you doing okay, Elizabeth? Rae told me you were struggling after the bust.”

  “Maximumly.” She heard a quiet sniffle of laughter and a moment’s silence, the way Lank held space for you in case you wanted to continue, without crowding the words that might need a minute to form. She found herself desperate to ask him about the secret, but did not want to talk behind James’s back. “But we’ve had a few nice days in a row, and I’m trying to go with that.”

  “I’d say go with the flow,” he replied, “except James says that the people who tell you that are usually the angriest people on earth. Who’d stab you if they had a fork.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that riff.” She laughed. “I am grateful things are better, and at the same time, what comes most naturally to me is pretending everything is okay whenever I can, and that ends up making me nuts—my mom used to pretend I was okay when I was getting wasted as a teenager, and then she’d smoke three packs a day. So it’s a fine line.”

  “I hear you. It’s about paying attention. When people ask me how I am these days, I say, ‘Better than I think,’ because it’s good to notice that my life is pretty great, even if my mind isn’t.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “I think my inner groundskeeper drinks or does crack cocaine, probably both. But at least I’m starting to realize that this stuff with Rosie is something to get through, and not figure out. There is no figure. The only figuring I can do is work on my own equilibrium. So most days, or part of most days, I’m doing okay.”

  “That’s good to hear, but at the same time, I’m worried for you, Elizabeth. I remember that phrase you used after you had your little breakdown, to describe your feeling of cluttered numbness. I remember because it was so beautiful, perfectly descriptive of most of us most of the time, but for you, it was overwhelming, and it knocked your equilibrium out from under you.”

  Elizabeth caught her breath in the silence that followed. Then she smiled. “I love you, Lank,” she said. “I love that you reminded me of that. That’s exactly right.” She began to form the first words of the sentence she was so desperate to share—I’ve been keeping a secret from James—but Lank said he had papers to grade. Sigh: everyone else was so busy, James with his deadlines, Rae with her good deeds, Lank with papers to grade, Rosie with her lessons, her homework, her bucket kids, her all-consuming drive for independence.

  But then he asked her, “Hey—you wouldn’t by any chance be willing to help a bunch of us clean up dog poop on the Sunnyside fire road, would you? We’re in danger of losing it as an off-leash trail.”

  She paused. “Wait, what?” she then said. “You want me to help you pick up dog shit? What kind of crazy invitation is that? I don’t even have a dog.”

  “I know, but I do, and this is the last place in Novato our dogs can run off leash. Look, I know it’s a long shot.”

  “No, no,” she said, “I’ll do it.”

  Rae was perplexed. “You say no to my offer of a free noontime concert at Lake Merritt? To Schubert and Bach? But yes to this?”

  “I haven’t told James, and it’s making me nuts.”

  “So tell him when we get off the phone. Jeez. Did you call Anthony?”

  “No. I didn’t want to rock the temporarily sweet boat. I have to betray either James, by keeping the secret, or Rosie, by telling, when I promised.”

  “You are betraying you, is whom you are betraying.”

  “It sounded therapeutic, to hang with Lank. And I’m on the side of the dogs.”

  “Jeez, Elizabeth, you are not getting out enough.”

  “Well, then, here’s my chance.”

  It was definitely counterintuitive, to choose dog shit over a quiet talk with Anthony in that bright and aromatic office. But at any rate, she met up with Lank and six other middle-aged people a few days later. The weather had cooled down. Lank looked five years younger in the Giants cap that covered his bald spot; he had begun referring to what was left as his hair spot. He gave her the greatest hug, and she looked over his shoulders to the dry golden foothill, covered with oak and laurel, spreading out below them like a hoopskirt, all the way to the glistening bay.

  It was heaven up here, sky unscrolling baby blue all the way to Berkeley and San Francisco, socked in with billows of gray fog to the west, on the way to the beaches. He handed her a wad of plastic bags, blue ones that had once held The New York Times, clear ones from the Chronicle.

  They worked together, commenting on the more prodigious piles, comparing notes with others. An hour in, just as she was about to ask his advice, Lank pantomimed throwing a knotted sack at her, like a discus. They’d stopped to laugh, and it took another half-hour for her to say the words, “Lank? I need to tell you something.”

  He sat her down on a log and took a seat beside her. She sighed, and began. She told him the secret she’d been keeping from James, of Rosie’s sneaking out while grounded, the lengthening list of Rosie’s lies and mistakes this summer, what a good father James was, but how unyielding he could be. And by the same token, how easily he caved when Rosie’s attitude improved; his wretched need for things to not trouble Elizabeth, for Rosie to be nice to them both. And how maybe, with James out of the loop and this incident behind them, there was a chance for the family to start afresh.

  He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, took off his hat and rubbed his head, looked old and squinty again. “Honey,” he said finally, “listen. I love Rosie almost like she’s my own. She’s everything cool in a person—she’s sharp, sensitive, funny, articulate. She’s got it all.” Elizabeth nodded, smiling, pleased. “But she’s also a lying suck.”

  Elizabeth did a double take. “Jeez,” she said. “That’s a little harsh. And besides, she’s my lying suck.”

  “I work with them every day, and even the good kids break your heart. They can be so wonderful, then just diabolical. They’ll all lie, even when the truth would work. And how much more evidence do you need that Rosie can’t be trusted? She’s trying to break free, to individuate. Like you are, from James, by keeping the secret. I know you feel too dependent on him. Rosie hates how dependent she is on you. Rosie feels cornered, and she thinks you and James are her problem. And she’ll do anything to win, to get away with more and more. But James—oh my God. Has there ever been a more loyal friend?” She shook her head slowly. “He’s a mensch, and he’ll stand by you through thick and
thin. He’s your guy, hon, your beloved. Don’t let Rosie win this round. I say, or rather Rae says, Tell the truth and shame the devil.”

  The next night, Elizabeth asked James to take a walk with her after dinner. They went out in T-shirts and rolled-up jeans. A glowing moon, still more than three-quarters of its disc illuminated, was ringed in a fuzzy corona. They held hands, walking under the branches of their neighbor’s persimmon tree.

  “Rosie’s in such a good place tonight,” said Elizabeth. She was working up to the half-sentence blurt that there was something she needed to tell him, and she knew by now that she did. After leaving Lank yesterday and heading home for dinner, she had tried to convince herself that she was keeping the secret so as not to endanger her relationship with Rosie. It was draped in virtue: I’m doing it for others. But she admitted the truth to herself as she’d drifted to sleep in James’s arms. Keeping the secret was a kind of protection from her daughter’s wrath.

  She took James’s hand under the moonlight and said again, “She’s in a good place.”

  James was silent for a while. “Tick, tock, tick, tock.” This pissed her off, and she reconsidered telling him, but the imps inside were pushing out and through. He had noticed her preoccupation at dinner. “You seem far away,” he’d said, but she had shrugged it off. She hated to admit that it gave her the power of double-dealing, playing Rosie off James. Now, walking around with him, she tried to say the first words. “James?” she managed. So far so good. She almost said, “I’ve been keeping something from you,” but now he seemed distant, and at the same time, it was so lovely to be alone, holding hands, and she knew what he would say: “How could you!”—the mantra of the betrayed. Then, “We’re supposed to live in trust, Elizabeth, and you’ve dumped all over that.”

  Then he began to talk. “Even though I get so angry with Rosie, I know things could be a whole lot worse—look at what other parents are going through. Some of these kids are total lushes already. I don’t actually think Rosie is. We need broader-spectrum tests than the ones you got—her eyes are clear most of the time, and she doesn’t smell boozy.” They both sighed loudly at the same time, and this made them laugh. “Hey, want to walk to the Parkade?” he asked. “At least we can see how much worse her scary little friends are doing. That’ll cheer us up.” Elizabeth poked him, and he laughed enthusiastically at his own awfulness.

  They walked along for another five minutes, and came up the steps from the movie theater. At nine p.m., the Parkade was crawling with teenagers, some huddled in groups, plopped on various stairs, furtively peering out from the bus kiosk. There was a random milling quality, and yet a sense of cohesion and sanctuary. “I want to write a piece about this place,” James whispered. “Don’t tell Rosie.”

  They knew many of the players tonight. Some of them had been friends of Rosie’s since kindergarten, in the school district she was in before they moved to Landsdale. Alexander, a friend of hers from kindergarten who’d moved to town a few years ago, stood leaning against a tree near the liquor store, a beautiful blond hippie boy now, the former Eagle Scout who was doing smack. The senior class lushes who had overdosed on alcohol and ended up in the emergency room.

  Antonio Brooks, who was leaning against a car near the kiosk, and who had accepted a full basketball scholarship to Marquette, was said to be dealing hash oil. You baked it into brownies, or somehow smoked it using the tube of a Bic pen. It was hopeless: you could close every smoke shop in the county and the kids would still find a way to get high.

  “What would the angle be, James?”

  “Let’s sit here on the curb.” They lowered themselves, groaning. “I would go into the medieval-modern aspects of their lives, how they try to come off as nomads, from olden times, even though they’re rich kids with homes to go to, even when they’re wrapped in blankets for a few days. Maybe they stay out nights, and sleep in cars, but their homes are up the street. Some of them go too far, like Alexander, and become primitive, and dirty. The parents keep bailing them out. Setting new and lower standards.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “The Al-Anon mothers tell me. The ones who are trying not to let their kids live at home when they’re using.”

  “How on earth could you turn your child away, if he or she were suffering?”

  “What if trying to save them was helping the kids stay sick? What if your help is not helpful?”

  “Oh, stop, James. That’s dereliction.”

  “Some of the older ones really are street people,” James said, ignoring her, pointing to an older boy who was obviously on a long-term brute course, a preppy caveman in a button-down shirt, with dread-locks and a slack mouth. “I know they are lost cases, and I feel for them and their families. But they buy beer for the kids—for Rosie.”

  This was true. She recognized Fenn coming up the Roastery steps, stopping to talk to the young street guy with the floppy hat whom she and Rosie called Gilligan. “That’s a sweet guy—Fenn. We say hi to each other,” she said. He looked his usual sun-streaked self, shaggy but composed, in a button-down shirt, dark glasses tonight instead of the wire rims. He fished a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, handed it to Gilligan, then reached into his back pocket and took some cash out of his wallet.

  “Oh my God, is this a drug deal?” James asked. But Fenn gave Gilligan a bill, gripped his shoulder like a politician, smiling, and took off down the steps.

  “You’ve gone crazy, James. He’s helping out a street person.”

  James continued to glare in Fenn’s general direction. Without answering, he pulled out his notebook and scribbled into it. She read what he had written: “Clusters of arrogant young people filled with self-loathing, sharing beliefs in a circular cage of parked cars, holding beliefs that make them feel safe, connected, guarded. Surfer Samaritan, or dealer?”

  Elizabeth remembered herself at ten, still lonely and always worried, about how crazy her parents and the friends of theirs were scaring her half to death with their moist affection, their fights and crying, and the drunken end of their night dancing. She remembered how much time she’d spent alone in the backyard, setting up horse jumps with broom handles, being the jumper, being the horse. Blink, and she was twelve again, and she had huge breasts and boys ogled her, and men did, too, and shouted things to her from cars and construction sites; blink again and she would sleep with a teacher in high school, who would give her all the great books in the American canon, and with whom she would start drinking, and who she would feel had finally thrown on the lights for her.

  After a while they got up and walked home, without Elizabeth’s telling him the secret.

  James started a draft for his Parkade piece that night. Rosie was on her bed with Rascal, reading Robertson Davies. She came in later to say good night to Elizabeth. Rosie smelled clean and delicious, and lay down beside her mother, burrowing. She had brought Rascal with her, and flicked lightly at his ears to pester him, and when he batted at them, Rosie and Elizabeth laughed; it was silvery and warm, heaven. “You didn’t tell James, did you, Mama?” Elizabeth shook her head.

  “Thanks. That’s great.” Rosie sighed. “Hey, let’s get James a dog for Christmas.”

  “I’ll get you a drug-sniffing dog, is what I’ll get you,” Elizabeth said in a menacing voice. Having a secret gave you a hit of power, a kind of self-esteem, and love was unleashed in her; love that had been dormant during the recent bad weeks flowed. It was like a magical opening: she and Rosie were learning to love and trust each other in a new way. Maybe it was an illusion, she thought, but hell, she would take it.

  Elizabeth was asleep when James finally came to bed, and when she woke up in the morning, he was already back at work. He’d left her a first draft on the kitchen table. It wasn’t good yet—there were too many details, and no ending in place. She did not like it when he needed her to read new material before he’d nailed it; so when she finished reading the draft, she only said it was going to be great.

  “
You hate it,” he said, which he always said.

  “I love the material,” she responded, “but it’s just not there yet.” She liked the stuff about the wealthy kids dressed alike in rags, how afraid they were underneath it all that they might lose their individuality. She liked where he’d said that even with their piercings and tattoos, with all that was so alive in their souls—their wildness, spontaneity, silliness, spirit—they were consumed with thoughts of death, their own, and that their parents lived in a kind of death, gray and hassled, multitasking, microwaving organic food, plopped in front of the TV, because these things were all they had energy for. So yeah, they loved coke and speed and Ecstasy, driving too fast, dangerous sex with people who had had dangerous sex with multiple partners. But what, she asked James, was the story?

  She had been too brusque, had hurt his feelings. He went into his office and slammed the door. She sat down at the kitchen table and stared miserably into a cup of black coffee: This was not about his work. It was about the distance between them now because of the secret. Having it had been like nectar initially, even last night, lying with Rosie in bed. Then it was like nectar that has gone off. Now she held on to her stomach because the secret was indigestible, sitting there in her solar plexus, where indigestible emotions lodged.

  She went into his office to apologize, and started to try to tell him the secret, but he had already moved from having his feelings hurt to gratitude for her great job editing him, and it seemed a shame to muck with his love and reliance on her. “You saved me from looking like a jerk,” he said, and kissed the back of her hand.