She is a rueful bird endowed with death’s clarity, but she is misremembering her life. It is my mother no one crosses streets for. My grandmother caused car accidents.
In short, the bird concludes. With regard to aging. Compared to the alternative, I recommend it. But you! Thin eyebrows. Pressed hair. You’ve been trimming yourself like a hedge. Do you realize you’re still alive? Would you recognize yourself if you met you on the street? She flits from cushion to cushion as in life she’d shift from foot to foot. So! You’re getting married! Et cetera! Blood-colored sparks flare from her tufted neck and fade. She burns and spits. You’re thinking there’s no harm to it. There’s no philosophical right or wrong about making bad decisions. You’re correct. Lie, be a shitty friend. No one’s keeping score. Be as much of a dick as you like. Shitheads get as far as the nice. You can wait for justice. She pauses as a hack of shivering overtakes her. It’s not coming. Where it lands is your ability to hear music. You can’t tame yourself over and over and expect your self-worth to keep its shape.
Her rebukes hammer a tender place only she can access. “Stop,” I say.
Morning sun emerges through the curtains. Outside, an Inn worker shakes a trash bag into a breeze. I can’t imagine searching for my tornado brother during a regular week, let alone the one in which I marry.
“I’ve made my choices, Granny. And I’m grateful you’re here,” I say. “Have you ever missed someone so much that the missing gains form, becomes an extra thing welded to you, like a cumbersome limb you must carry?”
She tacks. Dramatic.
“I can’t do what you’re asking.”
Do it, she says, and I say, “I’m sorry. Anything else.”
She rises from her perch into an eruption of flapping feathers. The commotion grows violent. A loud, clutching whistle. The outline of the beak and feathers wobbles and expands.
The bird disappears.
Replacing it is my grandmother-shaped grandmother, frowning with a human mouth, legs crossed at the ankles. Her skin is dewy and hair neat, as if instead of being interred for ten years she’s been at the salon having her hair reaffirmed metal gray. Death has not been a good diet. She is still barrel-shaped due to a lifetime of keeping a chocolate drawer in the refrigerator where others store cold cuts. However, her affectation is gentler, out of focus, as if whatever light is illuminating her is losing wattage. Like the bird, her eyes are lined in blue. Zaftig from sweets. Except for the sour smell, it’s her, undeniably.
I understand the reasoning of whatever force sent her as a flying thing because when I see the unmistakable thickness of her thighs, the ashiness of her November calves, her herness overwhelms the strand tethering me to calm. Now that she is present I miss her intensely. My throat constricts and issues a sorrowful coughing spasm.
Emotionless, she waits for me to settle.
There is no anything else, she says. If you can’t respect a dead woman’s wishes you’re a disgrace. Mark my words. If you defy me, shit’s going to get fucked up. After it gets fucked up, it’s gonna stay fucked up. And after you can no longer bear it, it’s gonna get more fucked up. The things you do to make it less fucked up are going to fuck it up even more.
She dims. I hold out my hand. She doesn’t accept but clucks (still bird) in disappointment. Affection, like crying, is a bother and a waste of time. I don’t want you to suffer. Find your brother. Her body vanishes, her neck fades. Dress short or long?
“Long,” I croak.
I would have gone short. You have my gams. I always got compliments.
Her hairline rewinds over her scalp. The painting behind her comes in and out of focus. A pastoral scene of a carriage in a field of corn.
“Don’t leave,” I say.
She’s gone. I experience her death a second time. The birdless room carries on with the climbing sun, Band-Aid-colored carpet, carriage and the corn, seeming so undisturbed even I wouldn’t believe there’s been a specter sitting in it. The woman brightening the world has left it again, without ceremony or sound. Not one feather remains. Even the stench is gone.
Rose doesn’t answer her phone. I consult my face in the mirror to see if it has registered any change but see only the flat cheeks of a woman late for an appointment. I dress. My suitcase is still packed because the honeymoon suite is currently being occupied by another bride and groom. The Inn overbooked and regrets the error in the form of a free bottle of champagne and occasional check-in phone calls that please no one.
In the main room, I find my wedding dress, strewn across the tablelette, covered in bird dirt. That troublemaker grandmother bird has disseminated her business evenly from its sweetheart neckline to its hem. The piles of gauze are thick with shit, the destruction so complete I marvel. When did she do it? I was with her every moment. No dry cleaner would be able to repair it in time.
I take the elevator but when I reach the lobby, the doors do not open. The lit panel near the ceiling confirms: lobby. I check the panel, the door again. Stuck. I call the front desk.
“This has been happening since the renovation,” the concierge says. “Still a few kinks. The new generator doesn’t have the same lid. A bird flew into it. James said it was fixed, but then.”
James, I think. I think, Joyce, Stewart, Baldwin. “A bird?”
“Like it had a death wish,” she says. “The weirdest thing.”
The elevator’s walls are composed of mirrors. I watch myself wait. The box makes a triumphant ding! The doors fly open as if the issue had been only mine.
In the lobby, the concierge notices my grief-stricken pallor and apologizes. “Getting stuck in an elevator can be so scary.”
“It’s not that,” I say. “My grandmother died.”
“I’m so sorry.” She is immediately sorrowful. “When?”
“Ten years ago.” I cling to the banister for support. The landing knob comes off in my grip. I hand it to her.
She slides it into her cardigan pocket. “We’re falling apart,” she says. There are still good people living on the Earth. She bears witness to my tears, rests her hand near mine on the banister I’m positive in a month will be garlanded in tinsel because it’s a perfect banister for that. I remember dancing with my brother to the Cars in our socks and one of my clients who was hit by a truck while walking and now doesn’t understand the idea of a face.
The concierge’s kindness emboldens me to confess. “And she shit on my wedding dress.”
“Yes.” She whispers, like it’s a password: “Family.”
DON’T FORGET TO GET MARRIED
Danny lives in a three-bedroom standalone in Coney Island. Heavy weather and the ocean’s nearness give the house a terrarium feel. When I arrive for our final interview, he is red-eyed from sleeplessness but for once in pleasant spirits. He scuttles ashtrays from the coffee table to make room for my glass of water. Sits on the couch while I sit on the recliner. After a few clarifying questions, I will be finished with him forever. I want to leave and think about birds.
Danny worked as a big-rig driver for a company that produces the cheap dessert products popular in six-year-olds’ lunch boxes. He was refilling at a truck stop when the apparatus holding the hose cracked. Industrial hoses weigh a ton. This one fell onto his head and pinned him on the pavement, shattering his pelvis against the plinth.