One Bird's Choice (16 page)

Initially I wanted to get a full physical, the standard once-over. But when I called, the nurse said I would have to book it a couple of months in advance. So I just said I wanted to see him about my eyes. “They’re bugging me,” I said.

I’m sitting on a padded table with a sheet of white paper spread across the top. My feet are dangling over the side. Whenever I shift or raise one buttock, the paper crinkles. It’s an antiseptic, lonely room. There are laminated placards on the wall detailing certain areas of the human body; others outline the benefits of vitamin D supplements and hand-washing. A stack of Kleenex boxes and two glass containers are sitting on the counter beside the sink; one jar holds cotton balls, the other tongue depressors. I hate tongue depressors.

The doctor enters, closing the door behind him. We say hello and share a few affable minutes talking about the cold weather and hockey. He asks me how things are going and what I’ve been up to. What have I been up to? I’ve gone days without writing an original word and have had nothing to occupy me but time and routine. One of my preferred methods of dealing with this slump has been to think of lengthy palindromes and print them on a blank sheet of paper. I read the words over and over in my head. For some inexplicable reason these phrases ease my frustration. If I were honest I would say,
Able was I ere I saw Elba
.

“Just keeping busy,” I say.

Then the doctor sits on his little stool and wheels closer. “So, what’s been bothering you?” he asks.

“It’s my eyes.”

“How so?”

“I’m not sure exactly. They seem to be more sensitive to light, and sometimes they’re bloodshot. They never used to be bloodshot. And whenever I look at something white, like a field of snow or a blank computer screen, I can see black dots.” He shines a small handheld light into each of my eyes and writes something on my chart. “It’s almost like someone has come along and put a few dots on my cornea with a black Magic Marker.”

“It’s nothing to worry about,” he says evenly. “And there’s nothing you can really do about it. They’re just floaters, and they’re quite common, although it’s rarely seen in someone your age. It mostly happens when people get older and the gelatin at the back of the eye starts to disintegrate.”

“Oh.”

“Are you feeling healthy aside from your eyes?”

“I think so. Well, mostly. I find that I, well, I find that I go to the bathroom more than anyone I know. Like, pee, I mean. I pee more than anyone. Even more than old people. Maybe I’m drinking too much coffee. I’ve been drinking a lot.”

It’s true. I’ve become an addict. I even find pleasure in the discreet gurgle and steamy hiss of percolating coffee. I love opening the bag of imported beans and plunging the lower half of my face into the skinny black packet before sprinkling the inky beans into the grinder and watching as they whirl into a fine powder. Hearing the hot water trickling through the ground beans while anticipating the aromatic offspring is my daily fascination. Seriously, I look forward to this process more than anything.

I’m reminded of the literary critic John Bayley, who noted, “Routine needs a change, and change finds some relief again in routine, like the people in Dante’s hell who kept being hustled from fire into ice bucket, then back again . . . Routine has no suggestions to make.” So it’s coffee that has become the anchor of my daily routine. Coffee has the amazing ability to change people, not fundamentally or recklessly like certain drugs, but by modestly nudging their mood into a warmer, more cognizant, more alert, and, most important, more confident direction. I’ve even pinned up above my desk the most recent palindrome I wrote:
Lived on decaf, faced no devil
.

“Again,” he says, “I don’t think that’s anything serious or anything you can treat or should be concerned about. It’s just your physical makeup. Have you always been that way?”

I’d forgotten one of my more endearing childhood nicknames until right now: Peein’ Iain.

“Yeah, I guess I have.”

“Nothing to worry about, then.”

“Well then, the only other thing is my wrists and ankles. I’ve been experiencing some pain after shovelling snow and carrying hay.”

“If I remember, you’ve had some history with bone chips, right?”

“Yeah, I’ve had a couple.”

He takes my left wrist in his hand and taps on either side with his index finger. “That’s something you’ll have to watch. Your mom has osteoporosis, doesn’t she?”

“Yeah, she does. But she never seems to complain about pain in her joints.”

“Well, you should probably start getting your bone density checked. It’s hereditary. And make sure you’re getting enough calcium.”

When we finish the consultation, the doctor follows me out into the hall. We instantly switch into acquaintances mode and away from doctor–patient mode. We don’t chat as though I’ve just confided in him the details of my overactive bladder, but rather as if we’ve just bumped into each other at the mall.

“Good to see you, Iain,” he says, shaking my hand. “Say hi to your parents.”

“Will do.”

Driving home, I’m questioning my decision to visit the doctor. I like him. He’s a very good, thorough doctor, but my back is still stiff. I realize we didn’t even talk about my back; I forgot to mention it. I feel the same as I did driving there. That’s not true. I feel worse. It’s been confirmed that I have the eyes and bladder of a seventy-year-old man and the bone density of an eighty-year-old woman.

Back at Lilac Hill I find Mom lying on her heating pad on the couch. It’s a sure sign her back is sore.

“Is your back sore now too?”

“It’s not a big deal. It’s just a little stiff.”

“What happened?” I’m standing only a foot or two away from the fire, warming my backside, wishing I could just sit down right on top of the stove.

“I hung a few of your Dad’s shirts on the shower rack upstairs, ’cause I like to not use the dryer whenever possible, and you know how heavy your Dad’s big shirts are when they’re wet.”

“No, not really.”

“Well, they’re very heavy, and the next thing I know the whole shower curtain has fallen down. So I tried to put it back up and I must have tweaked my back.”

“Why didn’t you call Dad to help?”

“I would have, but
his
back is sore right now, and I thought if I asked for his help he might hurt it even more.”

She thought the shirts were too heavy for Dad to lift up without hurting his back, so she did it? I bow my head and close my eyes instead of trying to explain to Mom how preposterous her logic is. I hear Dad’s study door creak open. He joins us in the living room.

“How’s your back?” he asks Mom. “Any better?”

“Yeah, a bit better, I think.”

“I wish you had just called me,” he says.

“What about you? How’s your back feeling?”

“I would say better.”

“Better’s good,” says Mom.

“Yes.”

“How much better?” she asks.

“Not
better
better,” replies Dad, “but better.”

“Like mine,” says Mom. “Just better.”

“Yup, better, but not all better.”

I can’t take it. “Butter,” I say.

“What?”

“Nothing,” I mumble as I stagger upstairs to bed.

My brother Jimmy joins us for Sunday dinner. We haven’t seen much of him since Christmas. He’s been busy with work. He’s just returned from a trip to Australia, where the weather was hovering around thirty degrees Celsius. He looks good, tanned and fit.

Apart from the cutlery scraping along the plates, the table’s quiet. I tell Jimmy about my sweet banana. And about my hairy orange. He’s unmoved. I tell him about the duck. We debate whether the duck flew away or blew away. I want him to see how the lack of impetus, the lack of choice on the duck’s part, makes the story much sadder. But Jimmy’s showing only slightly more interest in the story than Sheldon. He wonders what else has been going on around the farm.

“Our backs have been sore,” says Dad.

“All of us,” adds Mom. “Tight and sore.”

Jimmy is busy cutting through pieces of baked trout with the edge of his fork.

“You know, I had this same cheese today at lunch,” Dad says, holding up a piece of broccoli with melted cheese. I’m not sure if it’s also a response to my brother’s question or simply a general declaration.

I put my fork down and jump in. “No, no. Mom makes your cheese buns with the old cheddar when you lecture on Tuesdays. She uses the processed cheese for grilled cheese.”

Dad looks at me ponderously and nods. I look over at Jimmy; he too sets his fork down.

“How do you know what cheese Dad eats?”

A great question; how do I know that? “Well —”

“You know what? It doesn’t really matter.” He picks up his fork in his tanned hand and continues eating.

After dinner Mom’s circling the table, retrieving and stacking empty dishes. My brother has gone home with the leftovers. He’s scheduled to be in Florida in a week.

I haven’t moved from the table. Dad’s watching TV upstairs and I’m asking Mom how she’s feeling these days. I’m wondering if the winters are getting harder for her too.

“I feel a little tired, I guess. It’s just age.”

“What about Dad?”

“He’s feeling good. Although I think you’re right — winter is getting a little harder for him.”

“I think they might be getting harder for me too.”

“Well, it’s always around each new decade you feel changes,” she says. “Fifty, sixty, seventy. Your dad and I felt it when we hit sixty, and I think you’re grandma felt it at ninety. That’s why she bought her new car last year in the winter. Buying the new hybrid just gave her an extra boost.”

“What about thirty?”

“Well,” Mom replies, “thirty’s possible.”

“Isn’t that too early for a dramatic change?”

“You never know. Age affects everyone at different times of their lives. Everyone gets older at a different pace.”

“I guess.”

She puts the stack of dirty plates back down on the table and sits in her chair. “So, have you been doing much writing lately?” she asks.

“A bit,” I say. I want to explain how I know I should be doing more. How without the constraints of a day job I have the time here at the farm. I want to make the comparison to basketball and how a wide-open shot, when you have all the time you need to set yourself up and shoot without rushing, is often a more difficult shot to make than just catching and shooting in rhythm, without thinking about it, even if someone’s pressuring you. I have the time to write but it’s still a struggle, and the results are suspect. Some days are better than others, and there’s nothing else I’d rather be doing, but I feel like I’ve been missing a lot of open shots.

“Well, there’s nothing you can do,” she says. “If you’re a writer, you’re a writer. It’s a calling.”

“I suppose.”

“No point in trying to fight the inevitable,” she says, as she clears my plate.

I stay at the table for a few minutes, gaping at the wall. Mom’s humming in the kitchen as she washes up and puts food away. I’m wondering exactly what I have to show for the past couple of months when I hear Dad call me from upstairs. “Iain, I think you might enjoy this.”

I find Dad seated in his armchair. “I’ve seen this one before,” he says, “but it’s quite interesting: a biography of Shakespeare that focuses mainly on his love sonnets. I imagine they’re airing it now for Valentine’s Day.”

I collapse onto the couch, grabbing the heavy wool blanket from the back. Within a minute my eyes are slipping shut. Dad nudges me softly on the arm. I cough, blink a couple of times, and stretch out my legs so far off the end of the couch that my slippers fall off. I blink again. Dad raises the volume of the TV a couple of notches. He levers out the footrest of his blue La-Z-Boy. I look around the room. The curtains aren’t shut tight, and the outdoor sentinel light, reflecting off the snow on the roof, is beaming in through the two-inch gap. A pale yellow path runs from the window along the middle of the floor to me and Dad. I can hear the wind rattling against the glass.

“You shouldn’t nap now, bud,” he says. “You’ll never sleep tonight.”

Spring