Fiction: SOMETHING BLUE
Short fiction from the collection Learning to Live Indoors, published with Porcupine's Quill Press, 1998 (out-of-print, 2021)
Though Nellie persuaded herself that she was not unhappy, one morning she awoke and discovered otherwise. She put her fingers to the cold outer layer of quilt, then retreated and thought.
I’m tired of being alone. But even more, I’m tired of looking for someone and waiting for someone.
She had been waiting, though of late, she rarely looked.
She curled her body under the quilts, stretched suddenly, pushed them away from herself all at once, felt the chill air. She reached for a long full skirt, shirt, vest, cardigan, warm socks for the cold wooden floor, and after coffee, honey and toast, she decided she would build a birdhouse—a feeder, really, with a large floor and sloping roof. She opened her file of newspaper clippings, found the diagram and photo she’d saved the spring before, and for wood, she spilt up an old apple crate.
Of course Sebastian heard her hammering nails in the tiny backyard of the townhouse. He’d probably heard her sawing, too, but he opened his back window to witness this.
“Nellie!” he shouted. He always shouted. “What are you creating there?”
She imagined other neighbours’ heads out of windows to see what they could. She held it up briefly.
“A bird feeder!” he announced. “Well, you know about them…”
“No, I don’t. I’ve never had a bird feeder.”
“Really,” he said. “You strike me as someone who would know everything about birds and feeding them.”
She wondered why he thought that, but didn’t ask.
She’d lived next to Sebastian for nine years. He wore too many Hawaiian prints in summer, shorts in late fall, indulged in magenta lights at Christmas, built plastic homes around his two living palm trees in terra cotta containers on either side of his carport. He took great delight in going out for the evening and returning early in the morning, with roars of Jaguar power and doors slamming. He was never out for the entire night.
At about ten on Saturdays and Sundays, he would stroll onto his balcony, coffee in hand, and always that hair on his head. Though he must have been near sixty, his hair was so black, and was patterned with cowlicks and whorls, so that in the morning—and often at other times of day—it stood in every direction and mostly up. For work, and his evenings, he controlled it with something shiny and wet.
“What is it I should know about bird feeders?” she asked.
“Once you start feeding the buggers, there’s no stopping, you know.” He closed his window then.
Later, he was on his balcony when she took the feeder up to her own, and fastened it to the railing. Still in his blue robe, hair in a peak.
She felt dismay, finding him there. Though the townhouses were staggered and allowed for some privacy, Sebastian seemed intent on thrusting his broad shoulders over the railing, over her basil and mint, into her home. Even when he was on his balcony with a woman, he would include Nellie in their conversation. Of course, she was able to hear every word, then he’d check with her: “Isn’t that so, Nel?” he’d say, or, “How did that go again?” Sometimes she spied out of an upper-floor window to make certain that his balcony was empty, and hers safe.
“What kind of birds are you going to attract?” he asked. He looked as if he could step easily over the railing that separated them, with one stride.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I suppose I need some of that wild bird seed.”
She regretted the words immediately.
“Sowing wild seed, are you?” His black eyes glowed. “Or just wanting wild birds?”
“Here,” he said, leaving her standing on her balcony as he disappeared into his living room. “Here,” he said again as he came outside. He handed her a book. “This was my mother’s. Keep it.”
Nellie didn’t hear sentimentality or grace in his voice. He didn’t seem to want her thanks and she was happy he left before she opened it. Birds of the West Coast, it was, with a chapter on feeding. Inside, she left the book on the arm of the couch.
The day was warming. She took off her cardigan and went to the store, bought a twenty-pound bag of mixed wild seed and a wide pan for water.
The bag should last until September, the woman at the store said, and she tried to talk Nellie into buying thistle seed and sunflower, but Nellie shook her head and returned home.
She set out the seed, filled the pan, and went into her home.
What an odd place, she found herself thinking as she stood in her living room. Though she’d never thought that before. This home is not meant for one person. Not meant for two either, or a family. It’s meant for visitors.
The centre of the room was filled with the bulk of her mother’s couch, and her father’s old chair, and two matching chairs she’d bought for herself, for guests. The coffee table was big and square, for board games, if anyone still played them, and end tables were scattered everywhere.
Nellie had worked as a researcher since university, and her books were tucked on ugly shelves downstairs, and her papers were hidden in drawers in her study upstairs, though often she’d paused in the living room doorway and thought how pleasurable it would be to have her desk there, before the wide glass doors, catching the morning sun as she worked.
That night she fell asleep on the couch, as she had so often as a child, on a Sunday afternoon when the rest of her family was at the beach (when she was feeling unwell—those memories stayed), or on December nights by the lighted tree.
And the following morning she saw the first bird—a sparrow. Not a real sparrow, of course, but a house sparrow—what we’ve come to think of as sparrows. House sparrows find everything before other birds do; Nellie read that much in the book. The brown and black-striped head attacked the tiny mound of seed, spread it over the wooden floor of the feeder and onto the balcony. Through the open glass door, Nellie could hear the seed scatter to the ground below. Then the bird flew away with the news.
Next door, on his balcony, Sebastian discussed bagels with a woman and raged about white or poppy seed: poppy were his favourite. The woman’s voice hummed through and between his words, and finally Sebastian was quiet.
Nellie watered her herbs and watched the two go inside, the woman with a marching step and Sebastian silent, his hair shiny and restrained.
They emerged through the front door downstairs, and she could hear the woman’s voice again, and went to the Jaguar parked on the street. As he pulled away from the curb, Nellie couldn’t hear the woman’s words, but could see her lips moving still, behind the glass of the car window. The car went down the street without its usual roar.
So that was how to beat the man, Nellie thought. Drone.
But she had no desire to beat Sebastian, or to have anything to do with him, and so she finished her watering, set seed in the feeder, and returned into the house.
In July the days were hot and in the mornings the sparrows splashed and ate greedily. At noon, Nellie would put out several handfuls of seed and fill the pan, and again at suppertime. She could see the sparrows in the fir by the street; in the heat of the day the tree was quite still as the birds moved in a comfortless shuffle. Every so often, briefly, they would skirmish, perhaps to create some bit of wind. It was too hot even for bugs, and the birds waited for the day to cool again to feed.
Nellie rid herself of several end tables—she set them out on the sidewalk and they were gone within an hour—and she relocated her father’s chair to her bedroom, and moved the bookshelves into the living room. She spent hours in that room and the sparrows came to know her movements, and she grew sensitive to theirs, and so it was that she forgot that there were birds who weren’t sparrows.
One morning there was a bird with a black hood and a cheering yellow beak, and at first she thought it was some kind of chickadee—her knowledge being the size of that beak—and then she realized it was not, and she took the bird book from the shelf.
The bird was an Oregon junco, she discovered. She watched each morning for him and the junco seemed content with the wild seed. Others came, and as they did, she was forced to be still again. Other birds, she discovered, were not as curious or as brave as the (house) sparrows, and would flee if she stood suddenly or looked directly at them.
“The juncos.” Sebastian nodded when, over the railing, he asked her what had been to her feeder, and she told him, and he said juncos so easily—as if he knew more of her new friends than she did. And he probably did, in his own loud, casual way, and that made her uncomfortable. She wanted to correct him, say Oregon juncos, but she didn’t.
Chickadees did begin to come too. Black-capped chickadees, she learned, though she called them chickadees. They moved so quickly, never doubting their own bodies, and they plucked the sunflower seeds from the pile. (Nellie had had to return to the store for those.) The chickadees were so cautious of the sparrows, and circled, fluttered, never angry or defensive, just waiting. They were absurdly happy.
There was something satisfying to her simple judgements: sparrows, curious; juncos, self-assured; chickadees, happy.
Then came a nuthatch—red-breasted, Nellie found. The red-breasted nuthatch never let her know anything about him. He was quick, and he didn’t seem to like her feeder. He tap-danced the spine of the fir in his grey-blue uniform with the red umber cravat, and his made-up striped face, and he ignored her offerings.
Nellie tilted her head to acknowledge him, the nuthatch, and his freedom. He skittered sideways and she turned away from the window, went back upstairs to her desk.
Sometimes, when her work was done, she spread a blanket out on the warm floor of the balcony—near the wall adjacent to Sebastian’s so that, if he looked, he wouldn’t see her—and she watched the seagull silver high in the blue above her. Round and round. Sometimes a flock. Sometimes she felt she was with them, but often it was only one up there circling.
More and more often now she found her job unsettling—it was a puzzle of perfect-fitting pieces, except there were too many pieces. She’d find the pieces, every one of them, and then she would assemble however best for the person asking for the research, and send off, and that would be the end of it. Except she was left wondering what the piece might be. She would rearrange her cupboard—all pot handles to the right—or wash her cutlery tray, or sort the linen. Finally, look at her client list—who was next? Forget the piece; remember that she was good at what she did. Now that she’d made the decision not to look or wait for someone, she was free.
Late September there was a week of storm—wind and rain—and the sparrows made quick flights between the feeder and the blowing fir in which they huddled. One sparrow spent an entire morning sitting by the wide post in the feeder, to keep from the wind. His feathers bunched and his shoulders protected his head. He didn’t look at Nellie, though she was certain he knew she was there, passing her hands over her books. At ten o’clock, she realized she’d accomplished nothing.
Her younger brother’s son was coming by that afternoon, as he often did. She asked if he would help her to move her desk downstairs.
“Here?” he asked, looking around the living room.
“We’ll have to move these two chairs,” was her answer.
“Where too?” he asked, hoisting a chair easily to his shoulders.
“You can take them home,” she said. She knew he wanted to leave his parents’ house soon. He left with the pair sticking out of his car trunk.
The sparrow was gone from the feeder and she was sorry she’d missed his leave-taking. She hoped he was all right.
But her desk was moved and she opened her computer and settled in to make up for lost time.
The rain finally stopped and Nellie was aware of a sound she’d not heard for some days—not since the fall rains began. No. Not since cool summer mornings.
Birds were talking after the rain. But their sound was something more.
She opened the door to the balcony and at that sound, the birds spread buck-shot—from below the balcony, from the railings—to the fir tree or over the street. Nellie walked to the edge and looked down, and there was the sparrow, on the cement. She hurried down the stairs, out the front door. She knew without touching him that he was dead. She hunched over and could feel the tail of her skirt caught in a deep puddle. The fabric was heavy as she rocked forward to see the bird’s eyes. His eyes were dull, though she knew they shouldn’t be. He couldn’t have been dead for that long.
What was she to do? Birds were filling fir and spruce with noise.
She tried to stand, but her left knee ached and she stayed where she was. That was when Sebastian drove up, climbed out of his car, with hands of takeout bags.
“You killed one, did you?”
She tried again to stand. “No call to be cheerful about it.”
He turned the bird gently with his boot toe. “Poor thing. You had him for awhile though.”
Nellie half-stood, weight on one leg, the other cramped. Sebastian held out his hand to her, which she ignored as she straightened slowly.
“I didn’t have him.”
“But you did.” He looked up at the feeder on the railing over their heads. “You were blessed.”
Nellie stared down at the bird. She wouldn’t have known him from any of the sparrows that visited. Really, it might not even be the one that had sat in the feeder all morning. “Why do you think he died?”
Sebastian bent over. “Salmonella, perhaps.” He was calm.
“Salmonella"?” Nellie didn’t want to crouch again. She was afraid her knee wouldn’t make it a second time.
“How often do you clean the floor of the feeder?”
What else did he know that he wasn’t saying?
“It’s all in that book I gave you. You read it, didn’t you?” His voice rose slightly and he reached into one of the bags and pulled out a deep-fried wonton. He held the bag out to her. Nellie shook her head. She had no interest in eating.
“Are you saying I poisoned the bird?”
“Could be.” He shrugged. “Don’t take on now.”
What was taking on? Had her voice risen? If so, only to match his.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He was standing, another wonton in his hand, and he had a strange look on his face. Nellie looked down to see if the buttons of her shirt were fastened.
He pulled a hand through his hair, and it peaked after a day of downtrodden hours. “I can’t tell you everything.”
Nellie hadn’t yelled in years. She didn’t trust herself so she went into her home and sat at the kitchen table, away from the living room—though it was now hardly that—and away from the feeder.
And some time passed before she realized she’d left the bird and even as the thought passed through her mind, she heard a clunk of metal from out back and she went to the window to look. Sebastian was in his backyard with the light on in the dusk, and he had a shovel in his hand and was digging a hole. He moved the shovel in rhythmic arcs, as if he’d been digging that hole for some time, though it was shallow and could only have been minutes. She watched as he lowered his hand in the hole for a moment before replacing the dirt and the bit of sod. The bird. The man bent to press his hand against the earth and then went quickly into his home without noticing her in the window.
Who did he think he was? The bird was her responsibility—she would have taken care of it.
It was dark when she stepped out to bring in the feeder. She never should have done this. Why had she thought to build a feeder? She took it downstairs to the front door and opened it just enough to push it through, and left it in the carport.
For two days, the sparrows managed to find seed that had fallen to the ground. The juncos stayed away, and so did the chickadees.
On the third day there was silence. A waiting silence. A brief movement in the fir, a black head, grey chest, then gone.
Nellie rattled at her computer, made more coffee, pulled her socks off, rubbed her feet where she imagined them sore. Wished she’d left her desk where it had been, upstairs, facing a wall.
Instead it was the window she faced, and what was outside of that window, and what she saw was empty. Her boxes of plants with all their life drawn in, into the twisted roots, like cantankerous shopkeepers setting out the Closed signs and drawing the blinds, leaving behind dead-brown for winter months. And the cold rain splatted down.
She was waiting again.
Down to the carport and she took up the feeder again, to the laundry tub where she scrubbed with cold water and bleach. In her head she could hear that man.
“Be quiet!” she cried out, and imagined a new stillness next door.
Back to the balcony to fix the thing, downstairs again to fetch the seed, and when she returned there was a flutter of grey-brown to the tree to safety. Their waiting she could live with.
Two handfuls, and she knew when she turned her back that they were there.
The next morning the juncos and the chickadees returned, and the next, a black and white and red bird sat on the roof, curious.
It had to be a woodpecker, though Nellie couldn’t remember ever having seen one. A downy woodpecker, with his red patch and white freckles, she found in the book. She took a sticky-backed notepaper, scribbled the date on it and affixed it to the page.
She spent the day reading Sebastian’s mother’s book, and note-taking.
Winter was coming. Seed would not be enough. Suet—go to butcher’s, she wrote. Black oil sunflower seeds, peanut butter, mixed 50-50 with cornmeal, broken dog biscuits for chickadees. Dog biscuits. Chickadees. Really? Raw apple, raisins, cut-up fruit for waxwings.
Waxwings. She looked it up in the index. Bohemian or cedar.
Cedar on the west coast.
Melted-butter bandits, she thought, as she looked at the photograph, the rounded-smooth body, the black mask. Imagine one of these in my world.
October was cold and Nellie wore her cardigan always, and by early November there was ice and that silence that means snow.
The butcher gave her chunks of suet. “Render it,” he said, “and it won’t go bad.”
Nellie read the book, and rendered, mixed the suet with seed, set it out.
Sebastian heard her on the balcony and came through his doors with a small box. “Grit,” he said. “Broken seashells. They need it this time of year.” He turned away.
“Good of you to tell me,” said Nellie and her voice was loud. She couldn’t recall reading about grit in the book.
“You’re welcome,” he said.
Her voice was louder. “I don’t remember thanking you.”
“You’re going to frighten the birds.”
“Forget the birds.”
“I can’t.” Why did he have to grin?
She was amusing him, she thought. “Don’t laugh at me.”
He leaned over the railing. “I’m not laughing at you.”
How was it possible to yell without anger? she wondered after him.
She buttoned the last few top buttons of her sweater after she went in from the balcony, and she found a long scarf she wound several times around her neck and shoulders. It was brown and black, like a fall night, and it warmed her. The box of grit she placed on her desk. She would read about it first. She must have missed it in the book.
The next morning the wood floor was colder and she slipped long johns under her skirt before heading downstairs. She was expecting a file, and she huddled over her old fax machine, and blew on her hands. The file had not come. She made coffee, and stood at the window, over the heat duct, and was startled to see the wide back of some bird whose head reached almost to the roof of the feeder. She fingered her own scarf when she saw his brown and black chevron stripes. He turned crookedly and she saw a flash of red at his neck as he poked at the suet, and her skirt filled with air warm from the duct.
Sebastian chose that moment to step out onto his balcony… and the bird was away.
“You scared him!” she called out even before she’d opened the door.
Sebastian knew what she was saying. “Don’t yell at me!” His hair stood.
“Don’t frighten my birds.”
“Are you going to curse at me again?” He was grinning. “And shout?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. “I’ve waited a long time for you to care. Do you know what that bird was?”
There was a loud cry from across the street, in the maple, almost a crow sound.
“A norther flicker?”
Another cry swallowed his next words, but Nellie caught something about ‘grit.’
“Grit yourself!” she said.
“Nitty-gritty,” he said.
Caw. Except the sound was more like keeeer. It was either the grin or the raw sound that made her push back in through her door. He was gone.
She heard a keeeer again, and another, but she didn’t see the birds until later, at dusk. Something blue and dark-crested, and there were two. One landed at the feeder, played with the suet, called to the other, shimmeying the tree. The second one waited for the first to move, then came and scattered seed over the balcony. Both laughed, and Nellie felt a sharp pain low in her belly.
Page 276. Stellars Jay. She tucked the book inside her vest, went downstairs out the front door, and next-door to show Sebastian.
