The Aviary (4 page)

Later that evening, after putting an iron kettle on Mrs. Glendoveer’s stove to moisten the room’s air, Clara retreated to the kitchen and cut herself a length of string. Next she took an old butter knife from the sideboard. Then she slipped out the back door to the herb bed that her mother had edged with stones. She was on her own secret assignment and squinted in the dark, hoping to find a rock just the right size.

“Elliot!” screeched the mynah from the corner of the yard.

“Shhhh,” Clara said. “Hush now.” She was surprised that the birds could see her at this distance at this time of night. Never before had she attracted their attention from as far as the kitchen garden.

“Appropinquo!”
said the bird.

“What did you say?” asked Clara under her breath.

“Statim!”

The hair stood up on Clara’s arms. “Are you speaking Latin?”

“Appropinquo!”
repeated the bird. “Elliot!” As the mynah screeched, he tore at his nest of newspaper and flung the bits like confetti.

Clara tucked a stone in her pocket and walked backward slowly as the mynah continued to shout commands. She had only the slightest idea of what the bird was saying. Whatever it was he wanted Clara to do, he was demanding that she act quickly.

“I don’t understand,” she said. And when she reached the back porch, she ran in, slammed the door, whirled around, and found Ruby standing there with a mason jar and a garden fork. “What are you doing outside at this hour?” she asked.

“They’re speaking to me,” Clara said. “The birds. In Latin.”

Ruby cocked an eyebrow. “Sounds like you’ve been doing a bit of moon bathing, to me.”

“I’m telling the truth. Oh, Ruby, have they ever spoken to you?”

“No, Clara. And if they should want to chat with a human being, you can be sure I’d be the first in line. After all the bugs and crawly things I’ve bent my back fetching for them.” She held up her jar. “I’m just about to
go out for earthworms. Let’s see if they have anything to say.”

Clara waited by the back door as Ruby went forth into the garden. The birds were silent as statues, and as still.

“How are you enjoying this spring evening?” Ruby asked them all. “I’m getting dinner for you, Mr. Kiskadee. Any preferences?” The birds stayed quiet. Ruby turned toward Clara. “I think that means he’ll have the usual,” she said in all seriousness.

“Don’t tease me,” Clara said. “I swear, the mynah said the word
statim
, plain as day. That means ‘hurry,’ Ruby.”

Ruby shooed her inside, chuckling. “Now, now. You’re not the only little girl to get the phantasms when out alone in the dark.”

There was no use trying to convince Ruby, but Clara would tell Mrs. Glendoveer about the Latin tomorrow. In the meantime, she made her way to her bedroom, where she took out her writing paper and pencil.

Clara paused and put the pencil to her lips. Was it proper to express deep affection to someone she had only waved to on the street? In the end, she decided that it was more important to tell the truth—and she wanted Daphne to know she regarded her with a special fondness.

After folding the page into a narrow strip, she wrote “FOR DAPHNE” in her best script, wrapped the note around the stone from the garden, tied it with the string, and placed it under her pillow with the butter knife for safekeeping until the morning.

Before anyone in the house had stirred, Clara woke, put on her robe, and climbed to the turret window. She took the butter knife and worked it hard between the casements, putting all her weight against the handle. She was sure she felt a promising creak in the hinges until all of a sudden, the knife bowed in her hand as if it were soft as lead.

“Stubborn old thing,” she said, and gave the glass an angry shove.

It opened. Not far—just about eight inches—but that might be enough. Clara was reaching for the stone with the note in her pocket when she heard footsteps on the stairs. She quickly gathered up the crumbs of dirt and chipped paint that littered the sill and threw them down into the yard, then lightly closed the window without securing the latch.

Her mother was at Clara’s door by the time she got downstairs. She was carrying a pitcher of warmed water. “Up with the sun, I see,” she said.

“Yes, I am,” Clara said, hiding her dirty hands in her pockets.

“Good,” she said, pouring the water into Clara’s bedside basin. “I could use some extra help this morning. I’d like you to wash up quickly and make tea and toast for Mrs. Glendoveer while I go check on her, please.”

“Of course!” Clara said brightly. She washed, dressed, rebraided her hair, and headed for the kitchen. As she set the kettle on the stove and put the bread in tongs to toast it, Clara’s heart pounded with the thought of the stone in her apron pocket, the note wrapped around it.

“I’m not doing a bad thing, exactly,” she told herself. “I’m only letting Daphne know that I can’t see her. If you look at it a certain way, I’m really doing what Mama wants.” But inside, she heard another voice making plans. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to wave to Daphne each morning? What if, after a while, her mother saw that the friendship was harmless and allowed the girls to exchange letters, like pen friends?

Filled with anticipation, Clara readied the tray and went along, humming, to Mrs. Glendoveer’s room.

“Please, Clara, help!” her mother said. She was leaning Mrs. Glendoveer forward over doubled pillows as she slapped her pink, bare back.

“What’s happened?”

“Her lungs are congested. We need to help her cough it up. Please get her handkerchief and her bed jacket.”

Clara set down the tea tray and got her mother a hankie.

“Cough, Mrs. Glendoveer,” she said. “Don’t be shy.”

She did, and the ragged wheeze that followed disquieted Clara.

“Again, dear,” said Harriet, wiping Mrs. Glendoveer’s mouth.

“It’s painful,” rasped Mrs. Glendoveer. “Here in my back.”

“And it doesn’t help, me beating on you,” Clara’s mother said sympathetically. “I promise you, we’re nearly done.”

Clara almost couldn’t bear to watch. The sharp bones of the old woman’s spine seemed ready to break through the skin. And her lovely white hair was damp and stringy, showing her naked scalp.

After Mrs. Glendoveer coughed into the hankie one last time, Harriet motioned for Clara to bring the bed jacket. She clothed Mrs. Glendoveer and laid her back gently, propping her upright with pillows.

“I’m going to call Dr. Post,” she said.

Shivering, Mrs. Glendoveer waved her hand as if she wanted no part of it.

“Please, Mrs. Glendoveer,” Clara said.

“There’s nothing he can do for me that you girls can’t,” she said.

Harriet put her hands on her hips. “I will give you this
morning,” she said. “If your temperature rises or your pain worsens, I
will
call him.”

The patient fell back into the pillows without another word.

“I am going to brush your hair, Mrs. Glendoveer,” Clara said, “and put a cool cloth on you.”

“Would you?” asked her mother.

“Whatever Mrs. Glendoveer wants,” Clara said. “Then I’ll leave her in your hands for now. But I’ll be back.”

Clara took the pearl-backed brush and some hairpins from the vanity, but when she approached the bed, Mrs. Glendoveer laid her hand on Clara’s arm.

“Clara Dooley,” she said, “I would like to speak to you.”

There was nothing playful about Mrs. Glendoveer’s demeanor, and Clara listened carefully.

“Shall I tell you something about what it’s like turning twelve years old?”

“That’s not until July.”

“Doesn’t matter. You may think I don’t remember. But I do. I don’t know what your mother has said to you, but—” Mrs. Glendoveer held up a hand. She coughed lightly, then hoarsely. When she began to speak again, the coughing came back worse than ever.

“Mrs. Glendoveer, you mustn’t try to talk now,” Clara said.

Catching her breath, the sick woman shook her head. “It’s now or never,” she said.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Mrs. Glendoveer’s blue eyes focused on her with riveting directness. “You don’t know what’s ahead. But I can warn you now: at your age, it is not uncommon to be seized with a frightful restlessness. If you haven’t felt it yet, you will soon, I promise.”

Clara was speechless. How could she know?

“So many things become a source of dissatisfaction. Your heart can pull you in different directions, and you must decide the right way to go.”

“What did you do,” Clara asked, “when you were my age?”

Mrs. Glendoveer took a deep breath. “I started planning my escape. Oh, I didn’t run off until I was seventeen, but I believe it all started around age twelve. I went to every carnival, every traveling show. And when the caravans left, I cried as if I’d been abandoned. Twice, I saw the young magician George Glendoveer, and on the third time, I convinced him to let me assist him onstage. I was very pretty,” she said. “Like you.”

Clara blushed. This was the second time in two days she had been called pretty. “If you are warning me against joining the carnival, you needn’t worry,” Clara said. “I don’t have the strength to keep up, even if I wanted to.”

“No, I’m telling you something else: a mother needs to have her loved ones close. I broke my mother’s heart, and in turn mine was broken. Don’t do it to Harriet.”

Clara shook her head. “I would never, ever.”

“This is advice for your mother as well as you. No happiness built on another’s pain can come to a good end. I wish someone had told me this when I was young.”

“I understand,” Clara said.

Mrs. Glendoveer clapped her hands together softly. “Good. That’s done.”

Clara then took the hairbrush and ran it back from Mrs. Glendoveer’s brow. The old woman closed her eyes. “Aah,” she said, “I’m so very tired.”

When Clara finished smoothing Mrs. Glendoveer’s hair into a topknot, she found that the tea had turned cold. “I’ll get you a fresh cup,” she said.

Clara stood outside the bedroom door for a moment with her hand over the apron pocket holding the letter to Daphne. She had to wonder how Mrs. Glendoveer had chosen that moment to warn her about inner restlessness and bad behavior.

She walked down the hall deep in thought, until a sight in the turret window startled her. There on the other side of the glass was her mother, standing on a ladder, wielding the claw end of a hammer. Clara could make out the squeak of a rusty nail being pulled from the clapboard. She approached the window seat and knocked gently on the glass.

“What are you doing, Mama?”

“I’m rehanging the shutters,” she called. “But I’m going to need some larger nails.” She held up a bent penny nail. “These are worthless!”

As Clara watched her mother descend the ladder, the
clock tower struck seven. Soon the shutters would be hammered back into place. She closed her eyes and imagined Daphne Aspinal staring up at those closed shutters. In time, Clara supposed, the girl would become absorbed in her new life in Lockhaven, find real friends, and stop looking up at the old Glendoveer house altogether.

And then what?

Clara threw the window open. With all her might, she heaved the letter-wrapped rock, hoping to arc it over the yard and box hedge, down onto the sidewalk where Daphne would soon be walking. But she could feel the weakness in her arm as the stone left her grasp and watched it fly high in the air and drop smack into the bushes.

The air left her lungs. Who would ever find that note now? She closed the window and walked slowly down to the kitchen, dabbing her eyes as the terrible hammering began.

Clara fixed tea and brought it up to Mrs. Glendoveer, who had managed to fall asleep despite the banging. She clasped the old woman’s hand. It was dry and hot, and she kissed it. By the time the clock tower chimed eight, the shutters were up and fastened with a new latch.

“My dear Mrs. Glendoveer,” Clara whispered. “You are my only friend.”

Mrs. Glendoveer slowly opened her eyes, which Clara noted were now dark and exceptionally shiny. She smiled like a china doll, a shiny red patch marking each cheek. “George and I are going away,” she said.