The Bird House A Novel - By Kelly Simmons Page 0,2
and I wondered about that doll. I’d thrown out most of my father’s gifts, and given some to my mother to sell at auction. But I couldn’t picture the doll. Pity; perhaps Ellie would have liked it.
Later that night, we watched the fireworks from the deck off my bedroom. They were far enough away that we could appreciate their expanse, but close enough that they were terribly loud, and Ellie snuggled into the curve of my shoulder during several startling booms. Afterward I taught her how to light and hold a sparkler, and she promptly went through the whole box, her blond curls bouncing as she wrote her name and mine in the sky. When I close my eyes I can still see them there, the loops of her e’s and the bumps of my n’s burning an electric trail.
Theo and I had done that with sparklers, too, on one of our earliest dates. He took me for a walk in the evening near the library, around the art museum circle. We sat on the towering steps in the dark and when he reached into his book bag and pulled out the sparklers I was struck by the romance of it, by his organization and forward thinking. Not by his thriftiness, or the student-y simplicity of the date. Funny the things you remember and the things you forget. He always had sparklers for Tom, too, and now I had them for Ellie.
It had grown late, and a mere ten minutes after the last sparkler fizzled down to a glowing silver nub, Ellie fell asleep clutching her worn stuffed bear and breathing heavily, mouth open, in the guest room. I call it the guest room, but it used to have another name, another purpose. Another child once slept in it, in another life, in another bed. I didn’t remove anything; only Theo, of course, would have thought to change the furniture. He was the one who spent a whole weekend putting away her toys and books and clothes, keeping only a few cherished photographs around. One day I walked in and her maple canopy bed was gone; a wrought-iron headboard as delicate as filigree jewelry stood in its place. It was impossible to imagine my daughter against that frilly backdrop, and I suppose that’s why he chose it. Its pattern circled round and round; you could lose yourself trying to find your way out of its curves and whorls.
I stood over Ellie a long time, making certain she was fast asleep before I stepped forward and snipped a locket of her golden hair. It was only when I stood above her with my sharpest scissors that I realized the import of what I was doing. The scene below me—the cottony pillow interrupted by the swirl of flaxen hair; the graceful indents below her ears; her neck, as tiny as an animal’s, pulsing with her soft breath—was something only a mother or a criminal would be privileged to see. Or someone, like me, who was both.
February 11, 2010
SIX MONTHS EARLIER
Yes, I’ve taken up my journal again after many years away. Let’s see how long I can sustain it. I gave it up twice before; once, when my father left, and then a second time after all that business with Peter and my daughter. It’s as if I knew there were some things I wouldn’t need to write down to render them indelible. I remember, for instance, that both of these men cried the exact same way, their tears so heavy they made an audible splash. My father’s rained on the letter he held out to me. Peter’s plunked on the wax paper of the cheeseburger he’d brought from that greasy spoon we used to go to. Parting gifts. After everything else fades, we seem to remember what people give us last, don’t we?
It hardly seems fair, since we get the best of everyone at the beginning. My father, in particular, seemed to float through the rooms of my youth, carried in on a cloud, all smiles and ease. My mother’s cheeks always flushed in welcome; it was like witnessing roses at the precise moment they unfurled. But when my father left us, her cheeks went pale, and stayed pale. She never looked healthy again. When I stare in my own mirror, I’m always happy to see a sprinkle of brown sunspots, a constellation of blue veins, or a redrimmed eye. At least there is color. Where there is color, there is life.