Birdie (19 page)

Birdie

I meant to tell
her. Katy. Every day while I get dressed for work, I think about how I would say it. How I would wrap it up in nonchalance and keep it light and airy and we'd chuckle and marvel at the small world coincidence.

But every day as the hours tick by, the resolve washes away like a sand castle with the tide coming in until there is nothing left of it but rubble. The details are delicious. I have no other link to Wes other than what she drops. I find myself engaging her in conversation hoping for nuggets, talking around nonsense about her dog and her favorite Thai restaurant and the job she had before this one. I nod politely. I smile. I even sometimes genuinely laugh or feel a twinge of closeness because really, she's a good person. But when his name comes up, my world tilts. 

"Wes tried to make chicken parmigiana for dinner last night because it's my favorite, but he forgot to dip the fillets in an egg wash first so we had sautéed chicken with a side of bread crumbles." Everyone at the break room table laughs and my smile is small but completely genuine as I picture him messing up dinner.

"Sometimes I think he should just quit his job. I told him to go for the promotion, but he's hell bent on teaching. Even if the instructional supervisor keeps micro managing his lesson plans." Still stubborn apparently.

"Ugh. He wore the Cowboys jersey to the game. We got booed by everyone in our section." White and blue loyalty. I already knew that one but I soak it up anyway.

I paint a picture of him now with her words and before I know it, one week has become six and everyday makes bringing it up more awkward until I'm at a loss on how to do it.

I start to avoid Katy. I work the reference desk when Claudia is on it and volunteer for projects with Mark which unfortunately means a lot of weeding in the natural sciences but it eases my guilt a little and I'd rather listen to Mark drone on about how Pluto got shafted with its dwarf planet demotion than face Katy.

But one night at home, she's there. In my face. In the form of a bright red Facebook friend request notification. I'm sipping a glass of white wine and eating Lacey's leftover pasta primavera when I see it. My feet, which were crossed at the ankle on the desk, drop in surprise.

"No way," I exclaim, staring at it. Her profile picture is of her and Wes, the same one I see everyday on her desk.

"No way what?" Lacey asks, walking into the room with a half-filled box. The day to move out is drawing near. She and Peter decided to get the living situation set up before the big day and like a true procrastinator, she's been banging around the house haphazardly mixing kitchen gadgets with shoes in large brown boxes since Peter will be by in just a few hours to help her transport them. I'm supposed to be looking up available apartments since I can't afford this rent on my own, but like her procrastinator twin, I am surfing Facebook instead. And with Katy offering me a wealth of information on Wes with one quick mouse click, apartment hunting is no longer in my realm of thought.

I stare at the invite, my mouse hovering, tempted.

"What?" Lacey asks, coming over to peer at the screen, pushing her dark bangs out of her face.

I quickly scroll down to remove the profile picture from the view on the screen. "A friend request from someone at work," I answer, turning towards her.

"Oooh. Making friends. Which one? The red head you always talk about?"

She takes the mouse from me and scrolls up, leaning in. "You said she's beautiful. I love seeing how red heads pull off their style. I wish I could wear my hair that color, it just wouldn't look right on me-"

She freezes when she notices the picture.

"It's not what you think," I say quickly, but she pierces me with an accusing look.

I fill her in then, starting with my discovery of the picture and how too many days have gone by to come clean. Lacey just shakes her head and then gets up to continue packing.

"I'm done telling you what to do on that front," she says, shoving things into boxes. Angrily.

"I'm not doing anything!" I exclaim.

"Exactly."

I don't know what she means and I don't like her tone. I turn back to the screen, but she rushes in ahead of me and grabs the mouse. "You
can't,"
she says firmly.

I glare at her. "I wasn't going to." She shoots me one more pointed look before setting the mouse back down. I click
Decline
and give her a pointed look back.

“Birdie, you’re my friend. But so was Wes. I love you dearly, so I shall forgive your faults and I will take your side. But when it comes to him…” she shakes her head. “Leave him alone, okay? I know you loved him, I do. But you didn’t know how to handle that and it broke his heart.”

She’s right. She’s usually irritatingly right about everything. And even though she delivers her brilliant verdicts in soft tones and comfort, they still grate me and make me feel raw. I answer her by downing the rest of the wine then asking, “Do you need help packing?”

She grins. “Avoid the subject by offering free labor? I’m not an idiot.” She tosses me the packing tape off a nightstand. “I’ll take it.”

Birdie

“Are you going home
for Christmas?” Katy asks me, handing me some scotch tape. Laughing, I take it with my mouth because I have both hands occupied, holding a ribbon I fought with for at least three minutes. She laughs too and snatches it back.

“Let me,” she offers, sticking it over the crucial point of the tie, sealing it in place. “Next time just ask me to tape it for you instead of handing you a piece.”

I shake my head. “Gift wrapping was never my thing.”

We survey our work. We have about twenty books wrapped in colorful paper underneath our tree with card tags that read To: Customer, From: Pine Oak Library and cute handwritten scrawl that reads lines like
Check me out!
and
Christmas is a week early for you!

“I think it’s great the customers won’t know what they have until they get home,” Katy gushes, expertly tying off a ribbon in seconds. It’s bigger, more intricate, and has a lively flourish that dwarfs my limp attempt. I flick the ribbon like it’s letting me down.

“Yeah,” I agree. “I would have loved something like this.”

When I suggested the idea to Linda in the last staff meeting, she was over the moon for it and immediately assigned me and Katy to the task. It made me think of Shenoah. It’s where I first came up with the idea. I shared it with Miss Shirley but was never around long enough to see it come to fruition. By fall, I was long gone. I wonder now if they’d ever run with it.

“So are you going home for Christmas?” Katy repeats and I snap out of my memories and look at her. “You’re not from Houston, right? I thought you’d told me once you went to school in San Antonio.”

“Oh. Yes. But I’m not from San Antonio exactly. My…um…we moved around a lot.” I shake my head, trying to get my words straight. “My uncle is coming over to my apartment. It will be a small Christmas.”

I had briefly called Darla as well. She lives in California now and we don’t talk a lot. We talked enough to cement that we would once again spend the holidays apart. She followed her architect boyfriend to Los Angeles three years ago and each year the phone calls are a little shorter and farther in between.

“He should come to my get together,” Linda says, coming up to our debris field of colorful paper and bows. Her eyes graze over our work. “Looks great, ladies.”

“Thanks,” we reply in unison.

“So, Sunday?” Linda asks. “You can bring your uncle?”

“Oh, he won’t be in town until Christmas day. He has to work.”

“Oh. Too bad. You’ll be there, right?”

Linda’s looking at me expectantly and I trip over excuses to bail. “I, uh, well…”

“Her eggnog is the best,” Katy chimes in, oblivious to my hesitation. “And her spinach dip. Anne, I’m telling you, you’ll be begging for the recipe.” She sighs. “Too bad I can’t make it this year.”

My head snaps to hers. “You can’t?”

“No. Wes and I have to be in Austin. My grandmother is flying in to my parent’s this weekend and that’s the night of her birthday dinner.”

My eyebrows arch. “Oh. Yes. Too bad.”

Linda frowns. “Yes. It won’t be the same without you this year, Katy. So Anne? Seven o’clock?”

With the threat of running into Wes out of the way? I grin. “Yeah. I’ll be there.”

Birdie

Linda’s house is large
, or large in my opinion for a family of two. Linda and her husband, Gary, moved to the area about ten years ago when Pine Oak Library was first opened. They own a five bedroom, two and a half bathroom, brick exterior ranch house in an older, upper scale gated neighborhood. The guard on duty gives me directions and I find it easily, pulling my truck up behind a line of cars already parked on the curb.

Mark and Claire are already here and I get to meet Claire’s husband, Kyle. He asks me how I like it at the library and I give my standard, “It’s great!” response, which it really is. Besides the commute (because Lacey can’t bear to leave the city limits) it’s the kind of place I always envisioned spending my time.

There’s a piano in the corner and I sit at it and tentatively run my hands over the keys while everyone else makes chitchat around the spinach dip. Howard used to keep a grand piano in every house we lived in because once upon a time before I was born, my mother liked to play. I suddenly have a vivid memory of sitting next to her in front of it on the bench, tracing my finger through a thin layer of dust as she ran her hands over the keys just like I’m doing.

And then one of her fingers pressed down, sending a tinkling sound out into room and I had stilled because I could feel the note. Then another finger pressed down and another until her hands were flying over the keys, playing a ballad I didn’t recognize but loved instantly. When she was done her shoulders were shaking in sobs and I was patting her thigh trying to give her all the comfort a five year old was capable of giving. She hugged me, her arms circling my head. Then she drew in a noisy sniff, straightened, closed the wooden panel over the keys, stood up, and left the room. I never saw her play again.

“Do you play?” Mark asks me and I look up at him with a small smile.

“Not in the least. Do you?”

“I’m more of a guitar man.”

I raise my eyebrows impressively because his face has those traces of pride as he tries to deliver that fact casually. The gesture causes him to duck his head and shrug.

“Just a hobby on the weekends. I play with some guys in some of the local joints.”

He leans an elbow on the piano which causes his body to draw a little closer to mine. For some weeks now, I’ve had the inkling that Mark may be interested. He’s a bit older than me in his late forties but still hangs onto his youth with a sharp hair cut and a gray goatee, light on the hair. The look suits for him, especially at work in his button down shirts and khakis and flavorful ties, but I have no interest in him other than professional and I ease a little to the right to redefine the space between us.

“I’m just going to find the bathroom,” I tell him, standing and edging around him.

“Past the dining room to the hall on the right,” Linda calls out, overhearing me. I lift my hand in gratitude and make my way into the restroom.

I’m only in there a few moments when I hear the doorbell sound. Drying off on a fluffy hand towel, I emerge from the bathroom and make my way back down the hall. At the dining room entrance, I freeze and duck back behind the wall.

Shrugging out of his jacket in the living room is Wes. Katy’s next to him detailing to Linda about her grandmother’s canceled flight but her voice soon runs together incoherently in my ears and my focus zooms in on Wes. He looks much like he does in the picture on Katy’s desk. His hair is still short like it was in the hospital except the front of it is a little longer, untamed, blonder.

He smiles and kisses Linda on the cheek then shakes Gary’s hand firmly. Seeing him steals my breath and I instinctively rub my chest where it’s gone tight. He looks amazing. He looks more than amazing.

Oh, shit. He can’t see me here.

I dart across the dining room opening and slink along the wall to the kitchen. Linda’s home still has an older floor plan in which the kitchen is segregated from the rest of the house. She’s been mentioning renovations at work and Claire tells me sometimes she even checks out kitchen remodel books from time to time over the years but that she and Gary always end up pushing it off one more year in favor of a trip to Europe or China or Chile.

Their love of travel saves me now as I find refuge in their kitchen. I lean on the island to catch my nervous breath for a moment. My eyes dart around and I see my salvation in the form of a door that leads to the backyard.

I run over to it and yank but it’s locked. With a deadbolt.

The key’s not in it but my eyes flick to a thick wooden board about a square foot in size with lots of tiny hooks and from each hook dangles a key in brass, metal, and even some old school looking nickel keys.

I moan, but I don’t have a lot of time. There’s no way I can stay at this dinner and the front door is not an option. I have no idea where the garage exit is, so I start trying keys.

Who even has this many keys?

“What the hell are you hiding Linda?” I mutter as I try key after key.

I’m only on my fourth attempt when I feel a gush of air as the kitchen door swings. My hand stills on the lock and I stand there gripping the doorknob like it will give me strength. I don’t even need to look to know who just entered. I can
feel
his presence. I hear the clinking of wine glasses before the sudden pause of activity.

“Oh, hello?” he asks in a startled voice.

I suck in a deep breath and then turn slowly to face him. We lock eyes and his mouth drops open. My heart plummets into my stomach and I give a feeble wave.

“Hey, Wes.”