The Man Who Loved Birds (7 page)

Smith sat to the motor and started it with a savage pull to the cord. “Last time I ask you to bless the waters.”

“Be careful what you pray for,” the priest said.

Officer Smith sucked on his wounded hand. “I’d just as soon be shut of the sermon, if you don’t mind.”

The priest sighed. “Let me give you some advice. It’s too late to do me any good but somebody might learn something from my life even if I haven’t. The world is filled with trouble. You sit where I sit and you hear and see it all the time, and you live long enough and it will come to you. I can’t get away from it, it follows me to the ends of the earth, even to this godforsaken little pond in the middle of nowhere trouble follows. So I say, next time it comes to you to bring more trouble into the world, think about how much there is already. Mercy is by definition a virtue reserved for the powerful, a fact I learned from having no power and so never having the luxury of exercising it. So next time life presents you with an opportunity to exercise your power, think about how maybe you can bring a little less trouble into this weeping world.”

By the time they reached the bank the trees were a line of jagged black teeth against a sullen gray sky and the air was chill. The officer emptied the minnow bucket into the lake and held up the stringer, with its single flapping perch now glistening, now dull in the slanting sun. “No pleasure in a single perch,” he said. He bent to the water, unclipped the stringer, slid the fish from its tine and released it into the lake, where it floated on its side, bleeding and dazed.

The Smiths lived in a brick shoebox of a house across the highway from Dr. Chatterjee’s office. Two small double windows, their curtains always drawn, framed a white door. Mangy grass struggled to get a purchase in the yard, rocky and uneven from the digging of the foundation. A yellowing boxwood hedge grew under one of the windows. In the center of the yard, a dogwood sapling with two or three blossoms was staked to the ragged dirt. Dr. Chatterjee searched for the doorbell but found only wires, wrapped in black tape, dangling from a hole. She knocked once, then again. Officer Smith’s wife opened the door. Dr. Chatterjee held out her hand. “I have come to inquire after your son. I stopped by his room at the hospital to discover he had been discharged.”

The door opened to the width of Mrs. Smith’s thin shoulders. “That’s awfully nice of you, ma’am. He’s doing just fine. And you got no need to worry about the bill—”

“I am not concerned with the bill but I feel his situation is unresolved and as his admitting doctor I am responsible. Perhaps we could sit and talk for a moment?”

Mrs. Smith’s hand strayed to her hair. “Oh, ma’am, that’s so very sweet of you to trouble yourself but I’m in the middle of spring cleaning and the place aint fit for a pig. You just let me know how much we owe and I’ll see to it that my husband—”

Dr. Chatterjee took her hand. “Please, dear Mrs. Smith, I am
not concerned with the bill. Your husband’s insurance will cover all but the most incidental expenses, and those we can attend to in due time.” She brought forth a package she had concealed at her side. “I had promised you a fresh shirt.”

Mrs. Smith drew back. “Oh, no, ma’am, we couldn’t, my husband would never accept charity, not after you’ve already done so much, it wouldn’t be right. We should be buying a present for you.”

The afternoon sun streamed into the front room. Dr. Chatterjee caught a glimpse of quick movement behind Mrs. Smith’s back. She thrust the package into Mrs. Smith’s hand. “It was so very little, a pleasure, you will allow me, please, it may be too big but they assured me you could exchange it.”

“I thank you very much, better to buy too big, by the time you wash it for the first time he’ll already have outgrown it, I’m much obliged, I’m sure he’ll like it just fine. I’ll be sure to let you see him wearing it.” She was closing the door.

“Do stop over for a visit any time you would like to discuss the matter further,” Dr. Chatterjee said, but the door was closed.

As she turned to go the officer drove up in his police cruiser. She lifted her hand in greeting. He did not glance in her direction but continued to the rear of the house. Her grandmother, half a world distant and long dead, spoke at Dr. Chatterjee’s ear.
Some day you will have to go to your father-in-law’s house. You must learn to be a good wife or you will be disgraced
.

Crossing the highway to her office Dr. Chatterjee was a roiling mass of emotions dominated by a fierce anger. She bent to the street’s graveled edge and picked up a stone to throw it at . . . whom? The stone fit perfectly in her hand, gray and round and smooth, and gave at least that satisfaction. She stuck it in the pocket of her suit.

The county attorney, Harry Vetch, had a smooth oval face with pink cheeks and eyes that changed color depending on the time of day—in full sun they were palely and innocently blue but in shadow or at night they were some complex shifting color closer to green. In bright light they twinkled—the result of overactive tear ducts—but they gave him an earnest air, the look of someone who needed mothering. His hair was fast disappearing but he could still claim to be blond. He was as tall as he needed to be but slight of build—in high school he had played football mostly to be popular, though on the field he had been doggedly, foolishly fearless.

He was a churchgoer and a believer—not in the window dressing of doctrine or dogma but in the institution, the great edifice of the Church. As an attorney he understood that the Church was less about principle than about precedent. Precedent translated into continuity, continuity enabled stability, stability enabled civilization, civilization enabled prosperity. “People want strong leaders,” he said to Maria Goretti as she helped her daughter into her pajamas. “People want to be led.”

“And you want to lead them.”

“I think that is what I have been called to do.” He swirled the last of his drink before downing it in a gulp. “Does that sound too, I don’t know. Grandiose?”

“Well,
called
. How about just saying, ‘I’m ambitious’? That’s OK with me—I like ambitious.”

“How about
dedicated?
Dedicated to public service. It’s not easy taking on responsibility. People envy the power and the perks—”

“—and the money.”

He sighed. “I could make a lot more money moving to a big city and going to work for a corporation. You know that.”

“Where everything would be a lot more expensive and you’d be one of fifty lawyers working in cubicles.”

“I’m just pointing out the burdens of elective office. Dealing with every crackpot telephone call. Trying to help people bring some order into their messy lives.”

“I want a story, Mom,” her daughter said. “You
always
read me a story.”

Maria Goretti scooped her up. “I always read you a story except for tonight, Baby Doll. You’re old enough to know that
always
always comes with some exceptions. Mamma needs to spend some time with her guest.” She lifted the little girl onto her shoulder. “Say night-night. You want to give Mister Harry a goodnight kiss?”

Vetch held out his arms. Baby Doll buried her head in her mother’s shoulder and he laughed. “That’s OK. Next time I come
I’ll
read you a story, how about that.”

Baby Doll raised her head and let out a long wail. Maria hastened her down the hall and for the next fifteen minutes he heard her wails and whimpers until Maria Goretti returned, shut the door and flopped on the couch next to him. “Jesus. I don’t know what’s got into that kid, she’s usually so sweet. That jealous phase, they all go through it around her age but that doesn’t make it any easier to put up with. You want a refill?”

“Sure, why not.”

He spoke to her over the comforting noises—the suck of the freezer door opening, the slam of its close, the clink of ice against glass. “I like that. You stood firm and that was the right thing to
do. Kids want discipline, just like grownups. We think we’re so different from kids when the fact is we’re pretty much the same, only bigger.”

She returned with his drink and sat. “You’re right so far as you go but you forgot the other half of the picture.”

“That being?”

She snuggled closer. “Kids need love too.”

He took a careful sip. “Well, sure. So talk to me about the new doctor. You’ve met her at the hospital?”

“Sure, of course, the director brought her around and introduced her to the lab staff. I’d say we’re lucky to have her, much as you can tell from a ten-second introduction. She’s very—
serious
.”

“India is a pretty exotic place to come from for somebody who ends up just past the middle of nowhere.”

“Well, if by
exotic
you mean dark-complected, she is that. Olive-skinned, with that beautiful coal black hair they always have—at least the ones I’ve seen on TV. Short. All business. A little—not
fat
, no, not at all fat, but let’s say
full-figured
. She wears her hair pulled back so tight you’d think it’d give her a headache. She has these dark eyebrows that almost meet in the middle—they make her eyes big and dark and round, but it’s not off-putting, just—different. Attractive. She’s not your bleached-blonde homecoming queen, if that’s what you mean, but I’d call her—well, pretty. In her way.”

“Has she said anything about her office? A converted gas station. What were they thinking? I would have tried to talk a private provider into coming here.”

“She hasn’t said a word to me but if she uses my name she’ll be the first doctor to remember it. Doctors only remember the names of other doctors. She can be awfully—I don’t know. Cold. She’d be a hard woman to love.”

“Maybe she needs somebody to take the lead.”

Maria sat back and folded her arms. “Harry. You can be such a pill.”

“That was a joke, Maria.” He leaned over and kissed her forehead.

“Every joke contains a grain of truth, is what my mother told me.” She laid a hand on his arm. “Your chance to prove my mother wrong.”

He took a sip and set down his glass. “Really, I have to be going. I’ve got a big trial coming up. We’re trying Johnny Faye for growing pot. Again. It should be an open and shut case except the officers didn’t do their job right, on top of which it’s Johnny Faye and between his cousins on the jury and who knows what threats and promises he’s laid down I’ll be lucky to get him fined, forget about doing time. And then I have meetings with some potential Ridgeview Pointe investors. And
then
I’m going to talk to some folks about raising money to furnish that gas station. Doctor’s office. Can you imagine a doctor in that place in the summer? She’ll roast.”

Maria ran her hand up his arm and onto his shoulder. “I was hoping you’d stick around to play some piano.”

“Air piano?” He struck a chord with his hands.

“I was thinking of a different kind of piano.”

“Look. Uh, Maria.” He took another sip. “You know I’m an honest man.”

“You’re afraid you’re leading me on. And you don’t want my feelings to get hurt.”

“Well—yes, something like that. I don’t really have the time to talk about this right now. I just don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I hate to have to remind you, but this was your idea. You’ve been very understanding, but I’ve been clear from the first about where this wasn’t going.”

“Harry, I’m not understanding, I’m smart. I am
touched
that you’d be so considerate of my feelings, but my feelings are my business, not yours. Now. Can we fuck?”

“Not tonight. Next time.”

“Harry. You’re always saying that. Meanwhile I’ve lost track of the last time we actually did the deed.”

“A couple of weeks. OK, three. Anyway, you’re old enough to know that
always
always comes with exceptions.” He downed his drink. “This will be the third time I’ve tried Johnny Faye and I’m going to go home and come up with a new approach. I’m going to appeal to, I don’t know. That’s what I’m going home to think about.” He gave her another kiss and stood.

“Suit yourself.” She stood and opened the door with a bow. “Maybe think about how sex might be something other than a weapon.”

He grinned. “To the warrior everything is a weapon.”

On the drive home he thought not of Johnny Faye but of Maria Goretti. She had the complexion of a woman not a day over thirty except for the fine lines at the corners of her lips. She was smart and full-breasted and full of fire without being annoying, a tough act for an older woman. He did not know who had fathered her child and had never asked—knowledge of a detail so intimate opened the path to responsibilities and he was not interested in responsibilities, not with a hospital lab tech with an illegitimate daughter, but they were reaching that point where responsibility was hard to avoid. He had always been up front with her, but he had stayed too long at the dance.

Of course he could let this thing with Maria Goretti continue and nobody would ask questions. “But that’s just the point,” he said out loud. “They won’t ask questions, they won’t say a word, they’ll smile and shake my hand and they might even give money and then once they’re in the voting booth they vote for the guy whose life is just like theirs.” He had been given a mission, he understood this, he had felt it from his earliest consciousness—the guiding hand, the summoning voice, in service to which one must make sacrifices. This affair with Maria Goretti was dallying by the wayside, dodging his destiny.

And now there was a stranger in town—a doctor, who could have imagined that coming to pass, and
well, pretty, in her way
. New to town and a stranger . . . it might not be a bad idea to make her acquaintance.

Judge Drummond was a Presbyterian running a Catholic county and it was not an easy job. On bright and sunny days (today was not one of them) he thought the combination felicitous. He kept the Catholics in line with his Presbyterian rigor and upright tone, while their inclination to place having a good time above all other considerations—well, he was sure it served some good end, the Lord worked in mysterious ways and it was not his place to question, only to bow his neck to the yoke.