Silent Bird (11 page)

Jeannot steps with me through a gap between the windswept dunes of Fire Island, down a slope into a forest that ducks under the sand.
Knotted branches reach high into the sky for seagulls, and the trees lean together overhead as I giggle: my arms pinwheel.

“
This is Sunken Forest—I'm home! Can you believe it, Jeannot? I'm home!"

My big old house in the Hamptons—it’s so close!
How did it get so close? Shingles gray like fog, and huge picture windows that grab and trap the sun.

But the front door is locked.

Stranger Danger.

“
I’m not supposed to open the door,” I say urgently. “He couldn’t steal me if I didn’t open the door!”

Suddenly we
’re in the new house, in Mama's small kitchen where she stirs chicken and rice. She looks young and sad and oh so pretty, her hair black and glossy; her eyes so sweet and blue, I can’t stand to see her cry. I’ll do anything to help her not cry!

“
I never noticed,” she sobs. “Why would I? I’m a bad mother.”

No.
No
. Don’t say that, Mama. I’m bad, not you. I’m the one who opened the door!

“
Hug me, Pilar. You are my sun and my moon.”

Le soleil et la lune.

“Grandma and Grandpa live here too,” I tell Jeannot, pulling him toward the old woman at the table. She is turning the pages of an old photo album that are stiff and brown as dead leaves. The TV is blasting so she can hear it. And Grandpa shuffles to his winged chair, where he beckons me close and talks about the insects outside and the rotation of the earth, and how you need to hold on to your dreams with both hands.

“
I won’t let anyone hurt you,” he says.

His voice is
so real
. I feel what I haven’t dared hope—that it's all going to be okay as long as I stay in this room. I can smell Mama’s cooking and Grandma's mothballs and the pine trees outside. I am completely, breathlessly home. And Grandpa is alive! They are
all
here with me…keeping me safe.

“
Look, my dress—wasn’t it beautiful?” Grandma asks, preening. “This crown of flowers—like a queen. For seven days there were celebrations. But I couldn’t join in because I was the bride; I never left the house.”

She turns another page…and there I am with
him
in that other place.

The room with wallpaper of children in dresses and suits.
The toy-box in the corner, where Snowball is supposed to sleep. It is important to be good, really good, so Daddy doesn’t cry either.

“
You like cough medicine,” I tell Da-da.

We are in a boat on a freezing sea, and it’s raining, and Bad Grandmother is waiting for me outside the fairy boat.

Where’s Grandpa?
He’ll help me, if I tell him!

I look around in a panic—but
I’m not on the boat anymore. Everyone has gone, all of them, including Jeannot. Why does everyone leave or die?

With blind, bottomless rage, I throw my crayons and kick my feet.
Take that—and that! And that!
Good Grandma is angry too, shouting at Mama.

“
You can’t look at a man in his twenties! A man in his twenties is dressed for a party. Bah! It's like this American custom, grab bag. You don’t know what you have till you open it and you’re stuck with junk!"

Then—with almost comical clarity—I realize: I have
n’t thrown my crayons in years. I’m grown up now.

I turn to Mama, to finally, finally, tell her everything—when I see that she has no mouth, and no face.

Blank, an unfinished doll.

I scream, but nothing comes out.

Large hands on my shoulders squeezed gently.

“Pilar? Wake up. You are dreaming!”

S
truggling to clear the cobwebs of time and place, I slowly opened my eyes.

They felt grainy, sand caught under the lids. I blinked; cleared my vision.

Jeannot’s fatigued face watched me closely. His sour sleep-breath on my face.

But n
ot cough medicine!

His blond hair stood straight up: the hair of a stick figure drawn by a kid. The balcony doors in our bedroom
stood wide open.

“
Thank God you are awake,” he said in rapid French. “You were walking around opening the doors and screaming. Did you know that?”

I shook my head.

“
You scared me. What did you dream,
Chérie
?”

“
Water,” I said. “Please? I’m thirsty.”

He brought me a cold glass and I drank sitting on the edge of our bed.
Outside, rain had begun to fall. It dripped from the roof, dribbled down the back of balcony chairs, pooled and pattered and tapped along the drainage pipe. Comforting sounds.

“
Feel better now?”

“
Yes.” I drained my glass and placed it on the nightstand.

“
You really did sound terrible, as if someone were murdering you. I can imagine what the neighbors think.”

“
I’m sorry.”

“I am
glad you are all right.” He flopped on the bed and stretched his arms. “Ah, the rain.” He titled his head to peer at me. “You look better. You look alive now.”

“
Thank you. I think.”

“
Tell me. What was it?”

I glanced
around the room searching for a beginning. How to explain the long thread of a life that I’d never shared with anyone? How on earth was I supposed to describe Night Terrors? I’d need a dictionary or paper and drawing pencils. Maybe it would be easier to talk to Monique and have her translate. Except explaining these things to any human being seemed so…unpleasant. Intrusive. Just thinking about it made me feel naked.

I said,
“I, uh, have strong dreams sometimes. And I don’t know I am dreaming.”

Jeannot smiled faintly.
“Most people do not know. We are asleep, yes?”

“O
f course, but…I
really
don’t know. I believe I’m in the past. Then—”

He waited, smile frozen.

“—and then I feel afraid.”

“
I hope the problem is not about yesterday. About meeting my family. You seemed tense, and then you got sick.”

“No. No,
I dreamed like this as a child, too. It can’t be them.”

We listened to the rain:
tap-tap-tap
, like a knock on the door.

Jeannot said,
“My sister Carole loved you, you know. She told me that you are lovely and sweet and intelligent.” He paused. “I realize my parents are slow to warm. My father is…
particulier,
”—meaning
peculiar
?—“but everything will get better,
Chérie
, I promise.”

Pinky promise
? The shadow of my dream flitted over my heart.

Jeannot continued:
“If we dine with them every Sunday, they will grow to understand you. And you will understand them. Villefranche sur Lez is such a small village. My parents are provincial. They are good people though.”

“
Of course.”

A low-pitched bong sounded—the doorbell.

“
Merde
,” Jeannot muttered. “I am not in the mood for visitors.”

“
Me either,” I said, and oh boy, did I mean it.

Only a couple of Jeannot’s friends liked to drop by our apartment
without calling first—the primary candidate being his damn preschool buddy Thérèse Bonnet. Yes, she of the high heels and dead gopher purse. Thérèse had already “dropped by” twice after meeting me at the American Library, and I dreaded her third visit the way you dread a trip to the dentist when you know what the drill feels like.

Jeannot
sighed and got up to answer the door while I threw on a clean T-shirt and jeans and brushed back my hair and tried to look less—well, shlumpy.

Ready to face this Frenchwoman who
m I knew was in love with my fiancé.

“What do you plan to do with all these flyers?” she asked when I joined them in the living room.

She was standing by our dining room table eyeing the stack of concert flyers that Jeannot and I
were going to post around Montpellier’s town center. And she looked exactly how I expected her to look, down to the same mummified animal dangling from her shoulder. Yellow heels that I would need crutches to walk on. Cropped pants and clingy black and white top. Oh, and let’s not forget the scarf knotted neatly around her long neck. Her skin showed not a speck of sweat despite the humidity. She came across as...arresting. Effortlessly sexy and nonchalant and oozing with the kind of
savoir faire
that enables French women to wrap scarves around their necks and not strangle themselves.

Do
n’t give me any ideas
, I thought. Though it worried me that I didn’t care for Jeannot’s parents
or
his oldest friend. Wasn’t feeling this way kind of like shooting myself in the foot?

“
I will be performing my own music,” Jeannot told her proudly, and explained the arrangement he had made with La Peña.

Thérèse
gave a startled little cough. “Your own music? Jeannot, I am so pleased that you are still playing and composing. Believe me, I respect that. You are very talented. But a concert? I did not realize you were serious about that.”

I started to say something, but
Jeannot cut me off.

“
Of course I am serious. I thought you knew.”

“
Ah, bon
. Well, then.” She sat down and crossed long bare legs. “Did you do the drawing?” she suddenly asked me, pointing at a flyer.

“Yes.”
It was a charcoal rendition of Jeannot at the piano with his eyes partially closed, his vision tuned to the inside.

“
Jeannot said you are a gifted artist.”

“
Thank you.” Or him.

“
Are
you
trying to make art a career?”

“
I hope so,” I said, wondering why I felt like I was on trial. As far as I knew, art aspirations were not yet illegal…

“
Look, here is more of Pilar’s work.” Jeannot beckoned Thérèse to our recently redecorated wall, where she blew smoke all over my charcoal sketches of the city. The medieval arches of the Montpellier medical school, its corners as dark and primitive as the amputations done there centuries ago. La Place de la Comédie, the largest pedestrian plaza in Europe and a great place to sell watches and useless mechanical birds. A French waiter who was not Jeannot, standing on the sidewalk, dishtowel over his arm as he stared at a woman sashaying by. The woman wore low-rider jeans, pierced belly showing, her thin arms dangling leather bands that probably came from Italy and cost a fortune, though they looked like something an eighth grader would make in Home Economics.

I might never develop a knack for French style, but it
sure was fun capturing it on paper. I stood straighter and squared my shoulders and gazed directly at Thérèse, who was staring fixedly at my boyfriend—looking, in fact, as if she wanted to dip him in some nice Dijon and lick him clean. A frightening image.

To my relief she f
inally dragged her attention away from him. A long, awkward silence passed as she decided what to say next—and measuring my threat. How could Jeannot not notice? I was starting to worry about this too, about his judgment in people.

People like me?

Thérèse reached into her purse and pulled out a little metallic case of cigarettes: thin brown cheroots that smelled like the East River on a bad day. “Very nice art,” she said finally, in her smoke-gritty voice. “Good luck with it.”

“
Thank you,” I said.

She turned back to Jeannot.
“But tell me, Jeannot, are you really hoping for a career in music? At our age?”

Both of them were twenty-nine.
Twenty-nine here had to be like, well, fifty in the States. I was younger by only five years. Still youthful enough to be allowed dumb dreams?

“
I know I am a little old,” Jeannot said, and I wanted to smack Thérèse—forget strangling her with the scarf.

She seemed pleased with his admission of agedness.
“To begin a career that is difficult enough when you are young—”

“
This is just a concert. There is no guarantee about the career.”

S
he drew in her breath, tendrils of smoke escaping as if from a dragon. “Are you saying you do not care whether your concert succeeds? Please,
mon ami
, be honest! I have known you since—what age?”

“
Five? Six?”

“
Four.”

Why not three?
Before my eyes, they shared a look, a whole yardstick of memories. I inched closer to Jeannot.

“
Believe it or not, we attended a two-room schoolhouse,” he told me as an aside. “The younger grades in one room, the older in the other. They do not have that anymore, of course. Our graduating class was—what? Thirty-five?”

“
Sixth grade graduation?”

“
No, high school.” He chuckled. “Listen, anyone want coffee?”

“
Oui, merci
,” said Thérèse.

“
Oui, merci
,” I echoed, though the last thing I needed was more jitters.

Poised with her cigarette stub like a magazine advertisement that should be banned for its power over kids,
Thérèse continued to eyeball me. I chose a chair. She ground out her stub in our only ashtray. Jeannot came back into the room with our coffee and said, “Anyway, if it did become a career, so what? I am not quitting my job. And twenty-nine is not old.”

He was quoting me.
I felt a thrill of both pride and dismay.
What if I’m wrong?

“
With all respect for your music, I cannot see you hitting the clubs like some kid,” she said.

“
This is a restaurant, not a club.”

“
You mean this place you work, where you are already known as a waiter?”

“
Oui.”
Spoken reluctantly.

“
And now they give you this chance as a musician? They are paying you?”

“
Non
. Not yet.”

Thérèse nodded
as if everything was beginning to make sense. “So what will this concert bring you? You do not see yourself going to America like they all do, trying to make a name. You admit you have no interest in living there.”

Jeannot glanced at me sheepishly.
He’d told
her
that he never wanted to live in America? Of course, I didn’t want to live there either—not now, anyway. But how could he say such a thing? He’d never seen Long Island, never mind the rest of my country. He didn’t know.

Damn
Thérèse!
This was dislike, not jealousy. She was a pompous judgmental pain in the ass; what did Jeannot see in her? As I watched him conversing with the woman he might have married if he hadn’t met me, an odd foreboding poked into my side like a flash of indigestion. I pressed my hand to the spot.

Jeannot really did lie to himself about people. About his father; about his oldest friend?

About me.

“
I am not looking for roads paved with gold,” Jeannot was saying. “But I must try this. If it turns out I enjoy doing concerts, why not?”

“
Yes, why not? But please, do not lie to yourself.”

This statement, so close to what I’d been thinking, felt like a slap.

“I do not plan to lose touch with reality,” Jeannot said dryly. “I am simply trying to think big—outside the box, you could say.”

How many times had we discussed the risks of his venturing outside of the proverbial French box
of “this is allowed” and “that is NOT allowed”? And I’d spouted my optimistic, probably outdated, I-come-from-the-land-of-opportunity ideals that I didn’t remember learning but somehow still believed in?

Everything is possible if you try hard enough. The American Dream.

But in France?

I took a deep breath. “In the States, people start new things at all ages. Grandmothers take aerobics classes. Middle-aged people go parachuting. It doesn’t mean they’re crazy. Musicians can be any age unless they’re trying to sell to teenagers and get a contract. I believe Jeannot will be great. In America no one would notice.”

“
Yes, but in America, fat people wear Spandex,” Thérèse said.

My eyes narrowed.
All of a sudden I felt very protective of those unknown fat people, wherever they were. Why shouldn’t they wear Spandex if they wanted to?

“
Sorry to change the subject,” Jeannot said. “But, Thérèse, I do have something to tell you: Pilar and I have news.”

“
Oh?” She glanced at me, expression suddenly wary.

“
We told my family yesterday. We are getting married. Pilar, show her the ring.”