The Aviary (21 page)

“Let me try. I promise, I won’t be long.”

The birds fluttered to their various perches, and Ruby went back inside. When the kitchen door closed behind her, Clara knelt again to face Frances. “It’s just as well that you all know, I have extraordinary news,” she said.

Frances cocked her head and waited.

Clara lowered her voice. “I have been told, just this evening, that my father believed he was Elliot Glendoveer. I don’t know what to think, Frances.”

The mynah looked up at George the Cockatoo, and they nodded at each other.

“Do you believe this might be true?”

Frances fixed Clara with a red eye. “I believe.”

“I believe,” echoed George.

“Tsip-tsip!” said Citrine as Arthur and Peter circled the cage.

Clara didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. She looked up to the stars. “I want to believe too!” she said. But before she could trust this affirmation from the birds, she had to find out more.

“But how do you know?” Clara asked. “Is there a resemblance? Can you see him in me?”

“In your words,” stated Frances.

“You can’t mean I sound like him, do you?”

“Your words. Break spell.”

“I broke the spell?”

“Need WORDS,” said Frances with a little of her old impatience. “Words from you!”

Clara knew her earlier guess had been right: the more she spoke to Frances, the more words Frances had to speak for herself. George was the same, only slower. “Have you begun to speak because there is a bit of Elliot in me?”

“Yes,
genius
,” Frances said. “At last.”

Clara lit up inside. “If I have Elliot inside me, then I must be his daughter. This is just the proof I’ve wanted!”

“Yes,” said Frances. “NOW MORE WORDS.”

Feeling dull-witted, Clara was about to ask where to find more words until it became suddenly obvious. “I could read to you, couldn’t I?”

“Yes!” Frances said, exultant.

Clara bit a nail and thought about which books might
be best. “All right. There are so many here in your own library. My goodness, if anyone can enlarge your vocabulary it must be our beloved Mr. Dickens. Or maybe I can start with Mother Goose for the young ones. George can learn more words, and Helen and Peter and Arthur can listen. Would you like that?”

The three youngest Glendoveers gabbled excitedly among themselves.

“Yes,” said George. “Thank you.”

Clara curtsied to him. “You are quite welcome.”

“Start now,” said Frances. “Read.”

“Yes. Read, please,” said George.

“Let’s see. I can do a nursery rhyme from memory.” Clara paced until she thought of one, then stood and recited:

The birds chattered their approval. “More, please!” said George.

Clara went through “Hickory Dickory Dock,” “Three
Blind Mice,” “Miss Muffet,” and “Bobby Shaftoe,” becoming bolder and more theatrical with each recitation.

“Don’t stop now,” said Frances.

“All right. One more,” Clara assented. She opened her arms like an opera singer and declaimed:

Here Clara faltered, realizing that she was about to make a grave mistake. “Let’s not do this one,” she said. “I have better rhymes.”

“More!” said Frances.

“But I can’t. I don’t want to offend any of you.”

“MORE!” repeated Frances.

Clara closed her eyes and felt her throat grow dry.

Oh, the awkwardness!
She opened an eye and found all the birds absorbed and waiting.

“More?” asked Frances.

“A little,” said Clara. And she rushed through the rest.

The birds didn’t chirp or cheer. They might have been appalled, for all Clara knew. It was Frances who started in with a long, low chuckle.

“Upon a summer’s day?” she laughed.

George tittered from above.

“Sliding on dry ground,” said Frances, giggling.

“PRAY KEEP THEM SAFE AT HOME!” said George to Helen in a booming bass voice. She chattered until her “tsip-tsip” sounded more like hiccups.

“Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaahp!” Arthur let out what had to be a mock belch, and Peter hung upside down, swinging on his perch.

“It
is
a ridiculous poem,” Clara said. “I’m glad you found the humor in it.”

“A ridiculous poem!” Frances repeated. “Thank you, Clara.”

Thank you? Clara felt a smile spread across her face. “My pleasure, Frances.”

“Thank you!” said George as the others twittered.

“I am surprised the drowning part didn’t make you sad. It has to be a painful memory, I would think.”

“We are here,” said the mynah. “SAFE AT HOME,” she added in a mocking voice.

“Safe at home,” said George with a sigh.

Clara wanted to ask them what they meant, but she heard her mother calling her in and had one more important question. “Do any of you know if my father is alive?” She automatically crossed her fingers and waited for a reply.

“We believe,” said Frances.

“Then I believe as well,” said Clara.

Her mother called for Clara again.

“Good night,” said Frances.

“Good night, Frances. Good night, George. Good night, my friends!”

As Clara passed her mother in the kitchen, she wished she could tell her what she had learned from the birds. How satisfying to be able to say, “Mama, my father was right all along. He
is
Elliot Glendoveer!”

Not until she retired to her bedroom and blew out her candle did a fact occur to Clara: if Elliot was her father, then Mrs. Glendoveer was …

“Grandmother!” she cried.

In front of Clara’s eyes, the extinguished candle lit up again.

“You’re here,” Clara said, looking around. Quickly, she blew out the candle and watched it light once more by itself. The feeling in the room was nothing like the cold, sickly air that had descended on the dining room the evening of their fancy dinner. The candle’s flame was large and steady and bathed the walls in yellow light.

“I wonder if you knew all along that I was yours?” Clara said. “I suppose in one way, it doesn’t matter. We had such good times together, and you gave my mother and me so much.”

She rested her arms upon her bureau and looked deep into the flame. Although this was a single candle, Clara felt it give off a penetrating warmth that was almost as comforting as Mrs. Glendoveer’s embrace.

“I will always love you,” she said. “You must know that.”

The candle’s flame deepened to a gorgeous orange, and Clara thought she would gladly stay here with Mrs. Glendoveer until all the wax had melted away.

“Mrs. Glendoveer—I mean, Grandmother,” said Clara, “I am only beginning to understand what has happened in our family. I have unearthed the Great Glendoveer’s diary, and I have spoken to Frances and George. They want me to find Elliot, and I want to, but I don’t know how.”

The candle burned steadily.

“If only you were here to answer my questions. The children try to help, but I fear there is much they may not know. And then there is the question of Mr. Booth. I have a letter from him, you know—”

The flame went pale, and shuddered and smoked.

“He says that you and he were friends, once.”

The candle’s flame shrank as the smoke grew sooty enough to sting Clara’s eyes.

“I know you think he was responsible for taking the
children,” Clara said. “It makes me wonder if … if he might set me on the right path to find Elliot?”

Clara watched the flame leap up and tremble as if with rage, then plunge down, leaving nothing but an ember on the wick and that awful smell of scorched feathers saturating the room.

“Come back!” said Clara. “Don’t go yet!” But the candle did not relight, and she was forced to throw open the windows for fresh air. The moon was half-full, pale and serene behind the new-leafed branches.

Hundreds of miles down the coast in Newport, Mr. Woodruff Booth was enjoying the same moon, the same spring evening. How in the world could Clara get to him? And when she did, what could make him tell her the truth?

Clara had so many things to do, she had trouble figuring out which task to perform first. She pulled
The Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen
from the library shelf to read to the birds. The morning was still chilly and the light was thin, but the birds were happy to see her.

“Read now!” said George.

“I will. I mean not to waste time,” she said. “If I rise early and read each morning, and again in the evening, you shall be speaking as well as I in no time at all.” Clara leafed through the book and found the tale “The Wild Swans.”

“Say, would you like to hear a story about children who were turned into birds?” she asked.

“We know it,” said Frances flatly.

“Yes, I suppose you do,” Clara said, and turned the page. “How about ‘The Emperor and the Nightingale’?”

“Tsip!” Helen called out.

“No?”

“No thank you,” said George.

“No birds!” said Frances.

Clara understood what the Glendoveer children wanted from a story: to be taken away. She had always felt the same about books. If she had been forced to read about a young shut-in with a weak heart, she might never have picked up another novel.

“I have just the thing,” Clara said. “It’s about a foolish king who parades down the street naked.”

Arthur the Grackle nearly pushed Peter the Kiskadee from his perch, flapping his wings and laughing with his raucous “Chaa! Chaaa! Chaa!”

“Thought you’d like that,” said Clara.

She finished the tale about the emperor and another about magic galoshes that made wishes come true, and made it halfway through the book on Sunday. When the clock struck eight on Monday, however, she excused herself and quickly made her way inside the house. She planned to stand at the front door and peek at the passing schoolchildren to get a glimpse of Daphne. To her surprise, no children passed by at all. “And here it is a school day,” she said. “Where could they all be?”

She ran back to the aviary to continue reading and heard a noise on the other side of the gate. “Who’s there?” she asked.

The answer came in the form of a sharp whisper. “It’s Daphne!”

“Daphne?” Clara exclaimed. “I’m here! I’m here!” She lifted the latch and flung open the gate.

Daphne, bareheaded today with her curls in blue ribbons, stepped back and stifled her giggles. “Careful, Clara. You almost flattened me! I take it there is no one home?”

“Actually,
everyone
is home.” Clara pulled Daphne into the yard. “We don’t need to hide. My mother said I may have you over, and when I saw no one on the street this morning, I was so disappointed.”

“We’re out of school for the summer,” said Daphne. “So I thought I’d try to catch you alone out here.”

“May I tell you how happy I am that you tried? To know that you’ll be free the whole summer is almost too much for me. And I can see you without all the sneaking.”

Daphne groaned. “I wish I’d known you could see me! We’re going to the shops in half an hour. So hurry and tell me why your mother changed her mind.”

“I will,” Clara said. “But first, would you like to meet her?”

“Delighted,” Daphne said, extending her hand.

Arm in arm, the girls skipped inside. Clara’s mother, who was pulling a sopping pile of laundry from a copper tub, promptly dropped the bundle and pushed back the stray hair that had fallen over her eyes.

“It’s Daphne Aspinal, Mother,” said Clara. “Isn’t she the loveliest girl you’ve ever seen?”

“Clara, really,” said Daphne.

“She is quite lovely,” said her mother, out of breath. “I’m glad to meet you, Daphne. It has been Clara’s greatest wish to have you as her guest.”

“She can’t stay long,” Clara said. “But I’d like to have Daphne over tomorrow.”

Her mother wrung her apron with her hands, and Clara knew she was ill at ease. “In the morning would be all right,” she said. “I will be gone later in the afternoon.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Dooley,” Daphne said. “I hope I can return the favor and have Clara over to my house sometime.”