Nothing That Meets the Eye (29 page)

“Miss Trott?”

“Yes, Mrs. Holpert,” Louisa called. “Couldn't you take some milk toast and some weak coffee?”

“I was just going to say,” Mrs. Holpert sighed.

In the kitchen, preparing Mrs. Holpert's breakfast, Louisa hummed to herself as she generally did only on Saturday afternoons, when she pottered about at her own tasks. She cut one of the roses and put it in a single-stem flower vase on Mrs. Holpert's tray.

She thought of Mrs. Dusenberre, of how she had closed the door upon her stupid face, of Mrs. Dusenberre's kindness in bringing the chicken soup and crackers. And smiling in a way she would have thought rather stupid herself, had she looked into a mirror, Louisa went to the big vase and removed five of the white roses.

I'll take these to Mrs. Dusenberre, she thought, and started with them toward the door.

Then, remembering the early hour, she stopped and looked at her watch. It was only six-twenty. She had better take the flowers up later.

Besides, she must look dreadfully untidy herself. She stumbled into the bathroom, got the washrag and towel she had brought down from her own room, then climbed upstairs to the bathroom at the end of the hall. The house was silent. Neither Mr. Noenzi nor anyone would thwart her this morning.

She closed the door, and felt content with the room's familiarity. Then, as she went to draw her tub, the handle of the ventilator caught her eye. But strangely, it did not chill her with a sense of violence as it always had. It did not look as though a murderer held its other end. It was just a homemade handle. Maybe that was how tired she was, she thought. She wondered when the doctor would come that morning, and imagined how pleased he would be with his three patients. Then she remembered Mr. Bramford. He would call this morning, and ask her where she would like to dine. And she would suggest the Plaza.

The Plaza Hotel!

Louisa dropped the washrag and the towel and leaned back against the door. She could envisage it now, Mr. Bramford and herself opposite each other at a table laid with white linen and silver, with candlelight in a big room filled with soft music. Of course, Mr. Bramford would like the Plaza Hotel, too. . . . The ski train, the black Persian lamb coat, even the week at the Plaza. . . . Suddenly, ever so dimly but surely, like the light of the morning she had just watched enter through Mrs. Holpert's back window, it all seemed possible, and within the realm of truth.

Part II

MIDDLE AND
LATER STORIES 1952–1982

A BIRD IN HAND

A
s Douglas McKenny neared his door with the new parakeet from the dime store, a neighbor called out, “Hello, Mr. McKenny! Got a new bird?”

His neighbors were under the impression that he bought quite a few birds and gave them away to children, perhaps.

“Nope,” said Mr. McKenny. “Lampshade. How're you, Mr. Riley?”

He walked on. Just as he reached his stoop, a small girl skipped up and stopped, breathlessly.

“Oh, Mr. McKenny, can I see it?”

“It's not a parakeet, honey, it's a lampshade,” Mr. McKenny said, smiling at her. “How's little Petey?” He had given her the parakeet four years ago, when she was hardly higher than his knee.

“He's swell, Mr. McKenny. He can say the first part of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.' But he always gets stuck on ‘what so proudly.'”

“Well, you bring him around to me sometime and we'll see if we can get him over that,” he said kindly, patting her on the head.

“Okay, Mr. McKenny!” She darted off like a bird herself, whirling a broken yo-yo around and around on its string.

Mr. McKenny trudged up the stairs. He hadn't wanted to tell a lie. But the less his neighbors knew, the better. He went in and out of the house with parakeets all the time, and always took the trouble to make the bundles and packages he carried them in look different. Sometimes he put a cage into a pillow slip, so that it would look like his laundry. Often he carried a good-sized Schrafft's cake box in a paper bag to the dime store and brought a bird back in it with his fingers under the string, just as if it were a cake from the Schrafft's around the corner.

He put the new parakeet in a cage by itself, talking to it soothingly all the while. “Here, Billy, Billy. . . . Nice Billy. You and I are going to get along fine, aren't we?”

The gray-breasted parakeet eyed him suspiciously and sulked, dumb, on his perch.

Mr. McKenny had seen in the dime store that he was a sullen little fellow, but he had been the only one today with a gray breast. “Bil-ly,” Mr. McKenny said slowly and distinctly. “Bil-ly . . . Bil-ly . . .” Very slowly he filled the water cup in the cage from a little pitcher and dropped a few seeds into the feeding trough to show his goodwill. Then he stood behind the closet door, out of sight of the bird and yet only a yard away from him. When teaching a parakeet to say something, it was better to stand out of sight so the bird had the minimum of distraction and could concentrate on imitating the sound it heard. “Bil-ly,” Mr. McKenny said slowly. “Bil-ly . . . Bil-ly . . . Bil-ly . . .”

“Bi-eee!” chirped Queenie, a mischievous, spoiled green hen in a cage with her mate across the room.

Mr. McKenny began again, patiently. “Bil-ly. . . . Say something, Billy. Kiss me. Kiss me. Kiss me.” If he could hit on a phrase a parakeet knew, it sometimes stimulated further talk. But this bird probably did not know a single word.

“Tin-ng! Rrrrr-rrrr-r!” the parakeet said finally.

Mr. McKenny sighed. If he was not mistaken, that was the parakeet's attempt to imitate the sound of a cash register.

The telephone rang, and Mr. McKenny left his position behind the closet door to answer it.

“Hello, Mr. McKenny?”

“Yes.”

“This is Jack Haley of the Evening Star. I understand you returned a lost parakeet named Chou-Chou to a Mrs. Richard Van der Maur yes­terday?”

“Yes,” said Mr. McKenny, very much on his guard.

“We'd like to get an interview with you. You know, tell us how you captured the bird and all that. Could I—”

“Well, thank you, but there's nothing to tell. The bird flew onto my windowsill, I started talking to it and it hopped in, and that was that.”

“Just a little story and maybe a photograph,” the reporter begged. “It'll just take a few minutes. I'll be over in about a quarter of an hour.”

“Oh, please—”

But the reporter had hung up.

Mr. McKenny spent the quarter of an hour trying to tidy his one-and-one-half-room bachelor apartment, and debating at the same time whether to run out and just not be here when the reporter arrived. Should he hide the eleven parakeets he had? He could put the four cages in the closet with covers over them and the birds would be silent. Or should he display them boldly and say that he had been a parakeet fancier for years? Two minutes before the reporter was due, Mr. McKenny decided on the former course. He set the cages on the floor of his closet atop shoes and a soiled shirt, and closed the door. He wondered if the reporter had heard any parakeets in the background when he telephoned. Well, he'd assume that he hadn't.

The doorbell rang.

After a final glance around and a tug at his vest, Mr. McKenny went bravely to his kitchenette and pushed the release button. He heard quick, youthful footsteps on the two flights of stairs, then a knock. Mr. McKenny opened the door.

“Good morning! Mr. McKenny?” The young man smiled. He had a tablet and pencil in his hand and a camera around his neck.

“Yes,” Mr. McKenny said. “Won't you come in?”

“Thank you. Is this the window the bird flew in?”

“No. This one,” said Mr. McKenny, pointing.

The questions came fast. How long had it taken him to coax the bird onto his finger? Had he immediately looked in the papers to see if a parakeet had been lost?

Mr. McKenny told his story with an economy of detail and in a disparaging manner. “After all, a thing like this is bound to happen once in a while in a city as big as New York. Where else can a parakeet go except into somebody's window? They're friendly little birds, you know, and they get hungry often. They'd either pick somebody's window or fly straight into a restaurant.” Mr. McKenny managed a laugh.

“Still, you made Mrs. Van der Maur very happy, Mr. McKenny. Lots of people would have kept the bird and not bothered to try and return it to the owner. Mrs. Van der Maur called up last night to cancel her ad, and she took the trouble to tell us she was delighted with the fast results. I went over to see her this morning, got a picture of the parakeet and so forth. She sure was happy to have it back. Now, how about a shot of you here sitting by the window where you caught it?” The young man opened his camera.

“I'm rather camera-shy,” Mr. McKenny said.

“Aw, come on. Just a little picture for our second section.”

Reluctantly, Mr. McKenny sat down in the straight chair the reporter had pulled near the window.

“Now stick your finger out the way you did for the bird and look at me as if you're talking to me. Tell me what happened again.”

“I was—the parakeet was right here on the brick part—”

Click!

Mr. McKenny started to get up.

“Just one more, please, in case the first one doesn't turn out.”

“—on the brick part, when I—”

Click!

“Thank you, sir. Do you know a lot about parakeets? Have you any pets of your own?”

“No,” Mr. McKenny said. “I used to. Not anymore. Parakeets, I mean. I suppose that's why I was able to get this one to come in the room.”

“Um-hm. May I ask what business you're in, what you do for a living?”

“I'm retired. I was a civil engineer. I have a small pension.”

“I see,” the young man said, writing. Then his eye fell on a row of seed boxes on a shelf against the wall. There were also some cuttlebones and a couple of plastic bird toys—a little horse on rockers and a round-bottomed clown that stayed upright however it was pushed. The reporter went closer. “You bought all this for the parakeet?”

“Well—yes,” Mr. McKenny said. “I wanted to do the right thing for it. It didn't like the first seed I gave it.”

“You're a very kind man, Mr. McKenny. And you only had the bird about three hours, didn't you? From two o'clock when you caught it until you called Mrs. Van der Maur at five?”

“That's correct,” Mr. McKenny said.

“Well, it's been a pleasure meeting you, Mr. McKenny. You'll see your story in the afternoon edition. I hope you'll like it. Good-bye.” He smiled and opened the door.

“Please don't make too much of it,” Mr. McKenny said.

Douglas McKenny was a religious newspaper buyer. He bought the afternoon edition of the paper that had his picture and the parakeet story in it, and read it through with an effort at detachment, as if it weren't really about him. Then he checked carefully. There was a notice about Billy, the same one he had seen in the early morning paper, but no new parakeets were lost. Just as well. He could spend the rest of the afternoon and evening on Billy. Billy was not easy to work with, but there was a twenty-dollar reward at stake—not so much as Mrs. Van der Maur's thirty yesterday, but still worth trying for. And the notice about Billy said also that he was a children's pet. Mr. McKenny liked to place birds in homes where there were children.

For over thirty years, Mr. McKenny had been a parakeet lover and a parakeet breeder in a modest way. Up until a few years ago, parakeets had sold for at least five dollars apiece—and were not to be found in dime stores—and Mr. McKenny had been able to supplement his pension income and thus make a small living by breeding and selling them. Two of the birds he had at home, Freddie and Queenie, were the youngest of a couple of dynasties that went back to the time his wife Helen had been alive and even fairly young. In a sense, it was like keeping Helen with him in something more than his memory, having parakeets that were the offspring of offspring back to the many generations that Helen had known and loved. Mr. McKenny had had about forty parakeets in his apartment when the market had taken a slump. He did not mind selling parakeets at a dollar ninety-eight instead of five dollars—he had given enough away to children and grown-ups on his block who couldn't pay five dollars—but a dollar ninety-eight instead of five dollars meant simply that that much less money would come in to pay his rent and buy his food. And really by accident one day, because duplicity of that kind would not have popped into his head out of the blue, he had seen that ten dollars was being offered for the return of a parakeet that had escaped from its home in the Village, a parakeet whose colors were the same as those of a parakeet he happened to have. It had taken some courage for Mr. McKenny to go downtown to the people with his own bird and say that it had flown into his window. But when he had seen the family's face light up at having their pet back, he had felt a little better. After all, parakeets looked very much alike to the average person, and more than likely the bird he had given them was a healthier specimen than the one they had lost. Later, Mr. McKenny had grown able to push his birds a bit. If the people looked doubtful at finding that their bird had forgotten its name or was speechless, Mr. McKenny would say that it had responded at home for him and that it was probably frightened from having just been on the subway. Very seldom were Mr. McKenny's parakeets turned down, and when they were, he could always say, “Well, I guess it's a coincidence that this bird flew in my window.” Naturally, he tried to avoid publicity. The reporter who had called on him that morning was the first who had ever crossed his threshold. Most of the time, if the people he brought birds to asked his name, he gave a false one. When he had called on Mrs. Van der Maur with a parakeet, a butler had asked his name, and he had been so surprised that he gave it without thinking.

Mr. McKenny did not answer every lost parakeet notice, only about three out of five, but there was a notice in some paper nearly every day during the summer months. He took in on the average about twenty dollars a week. His pension amounted to another twenty-one dollars a week. On this he could just live.

Billy was accepted the following afternoon by a rather dubious mother and a screaming, wildly happy trio of children. It was Billy, the children insisted, and the parakeet confirmed it by repeating, “Bu-eee! Bu-eee! Bu-eee!” though with an air of annoyance at the noise the children were making. The mother said she was almost positive Billy was a little bigger and also had a darker blue tail. Mr. McKenny did not insist.