Birds and Birthdays

  Joe’s face darkened then, like tea spilled over a tablecloth, and remained that way for many days. But even after this, Joe was a dedicated husband and father. He deserved far better than me. He still spooned me at night, held me around my waist, pulling me into his hips and stomach. He still kissed me goodbye when he left for work and kissed me hello when he returned. After I revealed my true thoughts on motherhood, though, a flame died between us and he never looked at me with passionate regard again.

  It was not long after that I started letting myself into the model’s apartment. It began like this: one day she had a shoot with a famous Italian designer and asked if I could walk her dog at noon. “Of course,” I said, holding Jenna on my hip like a Depression era mother. Flowered housecoat, rollers in my hair. The model thanked me and thanked me, and at noon I put Jenna down for a nap and took the stairwell to the third floor.

  The model hadn’t given me her key, but that didn’t matter. I had my own key since I owned the building. It wouldn’t have mattered if I didn’t have my own key, though, because I knew how to pick locks from that locksmithing manual I’d checked out the night Joe checked me out. I could have picked my way into or out of any apartment in my building. In fact, I took great pleasure in picking a lock, and kneeled in front of the model’s doorway, slipping a hairpin from my rollers into the keyhole, letting myself in that way instead.

  The model’s dog was a tiny, yippy creature. I clipped on its leash and circled the block, allowing it to pee and to sniff other dogs out walking. Then I herded it back up to the third floor. After making sure the dog was comfortable in its cage again, I started toward the door. I was about to leave the model’s apartment, to return to my own life of wife and mother on the floor above, but a flash of something crimson stopped me before I closed the door.

  The model had placed a mannequin in one corner of her living room. It was wearing a classy silk ruby evening gown that clung to the mannequin’s lifeless body like red water, washing over the curves of the breasts, the hips, the legs, braced there, a second skin, a red skin. It made me feel naked. Suddenly I was unzipping my housecoat and shimmying into the gown without hesitation. A pair of matching high heels stood next to the mannequin, so I slipped those on too. I didn’t have the model’s body, so the dress was tight, but the shoes fit perfectly. I took my rollers out and pulled my hair into a pile, applied the model’s makeup, ionized a cloud of perfume from her crimson glass bottle, pouted in front of her mirror like a film star with overly large hips. I posed: one hand on my forehead, palm out, a suffering martyr; two hands holding up my cheekbones while I puckered my lips, the party girl; arms folded under my breasts while I smoked a cigarette out of a long, black cigarette holder, mysterious and powerful, the Sphinx.

  By the time I finished pretending, an hour had passed. I hadn’t realized how long I’d stood there looking at myself in the dress, trying on different expressions, talking to myself. Quickly I slipped out of the dress and back into my housecoat, then hurried upstairs to Jenna, who was thankfully still asleep in her crib. There was a moment or two that passed before her eyes creaked open, and in that space of time I thought: I’ve gotten away with something.

  My cheeks flushed, and I felt redder than that dress that had, just moments ago, warmed my skin.

  After this I began to let myself into the model’s apartment and other apartments on a regular basis. Each time I slipped into someone else’s dress or business suit — each time I lay down on a stranger’s bed and imagined myself being made love to by an anonymous lover — I told myself afterwards, this was the last time, as if I’d been cheating on Joe with someone. After the first few times, though, I became like an alcoholic: one more, just one more. I would be someone else and my daughter and husband and the rooms in which we lived would become a blank in my memory. I would forget the scent of baby powder, the rasp of stubble on my back at night, the heat of someone’s breath on my neck as I tried to sleep. When I returned to my regular clothes and opened the door to my own apartment, though, the world returned with a crash of cymbals. Yes, I would think. Now I remember.

  It wasn’t the easiest decision to make, but I finally told the model that I couldn’t renew her lease. She was shocked and thought she’d done something wrong: thrown a too-loud party, not paid her rent on time. I explained that it had nothing to do with her. The business I was selling the building to would restructure it as their headquarters. “Oh, that’s so sad,” said the model, but I didn’t understand and asked why. “Oh you know,” she said. “Family and all. This place has been here forever, Emma. Sorry to see you let it go, that’s all.”

  “It’s time for me to move on,” I said, and the model nodded knowingly. Placing a hand on my arm, she squeezed and wished me good luck with my future.

  My future was exactly what I’d been thinking about. After she moved out, I moved in and ordered new furniture to be delivered: zebra-striped and leopard-spotted, everything table-topped with glass. I paged through rich people’s magazines and picked out useless trinkets, mother of pearl teaspoons and brass candlesnuffers. I did not inform Joe about my proceedings, though I did attempt to hint at the situation. I was in the shower at one of these moments, he was shaving at the sink. I was singing a Madonna song at first, then I broke into a song of my own.

  “I’m going to start a new life!” I sang out in high soprano, peeking around the shower curtain to see if Joe had any reaction. But he was concentrating on scraping his jaw clean.

  “I’m going to be someone different!” I sang, raising my voice another octave. But again, no response from my husband.

  Since Joe seemed unconcerned, I didn’t feel so bad about leaving. And I moved out very slowly anyway, in order to make the change more bearable for him. That first night I spent an hour in my new apartment. The next night, two. Before the month was over, I was gone completely.

  Except for visiting with Joe and Jenna, I spent my time alone. I left the harp and my books in the old apartment and retuned my radio from NPR to a station that played only popular songs. I watched MTV and paged through Vogue. I spent a lot of time painting my nails and arranging my hair in various styles. I exercised until my hips began to melt and the body buried beneath the mother exterior emerged once more. Beginning to feel a bit of satisfaction, I decided to rejoin the world.

  I started off by working out at a gym most mornings. Then I’d spend my afternoons sipping espresso at outside cafes. I’d prowl shopping centers during the evenings, and at night I’d slide into slinky dresses and go to dance clubs. I would drink and dance like I’d been born to do this. I never danced alone. Someone — a man or a woman — would always come up and ask me to join them. This felt really good. I was the kind of woman other people wanted to dance with.

  Sometimes I would take these men, these women, home with me. We would make love and I would find myself surprised at this as well: that I could make love to strangers, women even, and not feel a thing the next day. I’d always thought of myself as virginal. Before Joe, I’d only kissed boys and indulged in heavy petting. I wondered what the old Emma would think of the new. She would probably have been shocked and a bit afraid. People who have a lot of casual sex are scary. How do they do it? I used to wonder. How could they give themselves up like that? How could they sacrifice themselves on someone else’s altar?

  I met August during my cocaine period. Like Picasso, I went through phases, only not on canvas. My cocaine period was like Picasso’s blue period, both of us feeling mystical and sad and searching. My teeth and upper palate were so numb I felt pretty blue about it. My nose would sometimes bleed, and the blood was blue, I thought several times when I looked in a mirror. Then I’d tilt my head back, looking at the ceiling in some strange bathroom. “Where am I?” I’d say out loud, stuffing tissues into my nostrils. When I looked at the tissues a few minutes later, though, the blood was wet and red, not blue at all.

  August was tall and lithe, with round brown eyes and hair as black and shiny as crow
feathers. He had pale white skin and bee-stung lips, very kissable. He knew how to kiss me: lifting my chin with his thumb and forefinger, placing his other hand on the back of my head like a cradle. Very controlled and strong, like a shot of whiskey. He deejayed at Odalisque, a chic nightclub I frequented. One night his voice came over the system, saying, “This is for the gorgeous lady in the silver dress. Will you dance with me?”

  I was, of course, the lady in the silver dress. I looked up at the balcony where the DJ was positioned like a bird in a nest with a view of everyone below him. I grinned at him, and August disappeared to the back of the balcony, only to appear on the dance floor a minute later. He put his hand on my back, pulling me tight against him. We danced for six minutes, the length of the song, and then he returned to his post. Later, when the club closed, he came home with me to the zebra-striped, leopard-spotted apartment where we inhaled white lines of powder on my glass-topped coffee table. I lit candles. Then we had sex for several hours, taking breaks to snort another line. In the morning, I snuffed out the candles with the brass candlesnuffers. We walked around the apartment naked, and I kept thinking about how Joe and I had always seemed to have our clothes on.

  August moved into my place several weeks later. He brought his cat, Artemis, with him. When we met and I bent down to stroke her, she arched her back and hissed. August was in the kitchen, sliding wine bottles into my rack. “Screw you, too, bitch,” I hissed back. When August came out a moment later, I smiled and Artemis smiled, curling around his legs like a wreath of smoke. Later I caught her alone in the bathroom and called her a liar. She flipped her head one direction, her tail the other, and sauntered away without a word.

  Several months later she had scratched up my zebra and leopard-spotted upholstery, padded across my glass-topped coffee table after dipping her feet in the water bowl, puked up hairballs on my rugs, my bedspread, and still she wouldn’t let me touch her. August, too, made many messes. He drank a lot when he wasn’t doing cocaine and vomited wherever he passed out. His vomit and her hairballs frequently showed up in close proximity to each other. He never washed dishes, never took out the trash, he rarely bathed, he borrowed money and did not repay it. He didn’t know how to make love without cocaine or alcohol in him. He didn’t know how to speak English, I thought on several occasions.

  One day I found myself sitting in my apartment with Artemis on the ripped-up zebra couch, elbows on my knees, hands propping up my forehead. Artemis lay at the other end, her eyes slits of pleasure, her purr a song of victory.

  “Fine,” I said, knowing when I was defeated.

  I got up from the couch, fumbled through my toiletries to find my old hairpins, and left with my head held high.

  Within six months, I had made a new life for myself with Ophelia, who wrote poetry and painted self-portraits in which she was drowning. Ophelia wasn’t Ophelia’s real name. She had changed it legally when she was eighteen, after leaving the constraints of a rural community in Indiana. I admired her courage to leave such a small, defined world for one in which a person could lose herself entirely. The city is no place for people who need road maps. The streets change quickly. What you once knew as your way home can be a dead-end within the passing of a day.

  I myself hadn’t left the small, defined world of my apartment building, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t understand her. Sometimes you leave a place without ever actually moving. Ophelia understood this, understood me, I thought, which became the reason why I loved her. Whenever another person looked into my eyes and said, “I see you,” a light flickered on inside me, and I didn’t know what else to do but love them. If not love them, then at least make love to them. When Ophelia looked at me, her gaze didn’t feel the same as when men looked at me. She would look intently without staring crudely. This was a great relief. Also, she didn’t make messes and leave them for me to clean up afterward.

  I’d met Ophelia while out shopping for groceries in the open market one afternoon. I was shaking a cantaloupe beside my ear, and across the street, Ophelia sat in a chair, surrounded by paintings. She looked a bit hopeless sitting there with her creations, everyone passing by without a second glance. So I bought the cantaloupe I’d been shaking and crossed the street to see if they were really that ignorable.

  The paintings were all of women, some nude, some clothed, some partially clothed, some metamorphosing into landscape. Spirit women. Part tree, part wind, part water. Looking at them made me blink a lot. I wanted to stare hard, but no matter how I tried, my eyes would slowly slide to the side to notice a crack in the sidewalk or a pigeon pecking at breadcrumbs.

  “What do you see?” a small voice asked. This was Ophelia, rising from her chair, hands awkwardly slipping into her pockets. She was beautiful, wearing a tattered green sweater and paint-stained pants. Her hair fell over her shoulders carelessly. She wore square, black framed glasses, and her eyes sat in the center of those frames like two blue moons under glass.

  “They’re very beautiful,” I said. “The paintings.”

  “Thank you,” she said, extending a hand. I shook it. Then she said, “Which do you like best?”

  I looked for a moment, trying to concentrate so I could give an honest answer. Finally I pointed to one of a woman’s face half turned to the viewer. Part of her face was covered in reddish-brown feathers; the other half looked human.

  “That’s one of my favorites too,” said Ophelia. “What do you like about it?”

  “If she keeps changing like that,” I said, “one day she’s going to fly.”

  “Let’s make a deal,” Ophelia said. I could feel my eyebrows furrowing. “You can have that painting, and in return you’ll sit for me.”

  “You mean like a model?”

  She laughed. “Yes. Like a model.”

  “But why?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” said Ophelia. “I see something in you. I think I can capture it. What do you say?”

  I said yes and took her back to my new apartment and made love to her. Both of us were a bit surprised but happy. The new apartment seemed happy too. Two months earlier, it had been occupied by a construction worker named Rufus who I had hoped might do a little work in the building for me, restructuring hallways and doorways and elevators and stairwells. After our affair ended, though, I told him it would probably be best if he left the premises. He did so, his head hanging low as he packed his belongings. He understood that he would never be able to restructure this building in any way, shape, or form that could make me happy. After he left, I stayed in his apartment, since August and Artemis were still in the model’s place and I could not abide their mess. Neither could I return to life with Joe and Jenna, who was now walking and talking, and once I saw her as I got into the elevator and she pointed at me and said, “Mother,” and as the doors slid closed I thought, Oh God, Oh God, she almost had me.

  The new apartment was a bit bare when I brought Ophelia back, but within weeks we had covered its naked walls with her paintings. Women looked at me from every possible angle. I asked Ophelia, “Why don’t you paint men?” but she said she couldn’t see them. “Really?” I asked.

  “Really,” she answered. “It’s a blind spot I have.”

  I said, “Hmm.”

  She got to work right away, painting me each morning. For the first one I stretched out naked on a burgundy plush couch, posing a hand over my forehead like I had that first day in the model’s apartment.

  “No,” said Ophelia. “That’s not you.”

  “Paint it anyway,” I said, so she did.

  For the next one I wore a silky white dress and stood over the ventilator shaft that blew hot air, lifting the dress up to my waistline. I held the dress down over my bare legs and blew kisses at her.

  “I’m not sure what you’re doing,” said Ophelia.

  “Paint!” I said. “Paint!”

  When it was time for my third portrait I came out in a long black evening gown with the model’s long, black cigarette holder clenche
d between my lips and Ophelia said, “Enough. Take that off and let me paint you.”

  I sighed but took the dress off and said, “What now?”

  “Just sit in the window where the light’s falling.”

  So I sat, and over the next few weeks, Ophelia painted. I knelt on the window bench and looked down at the city, watching people as they carved through the streets. Dogs trotting behind or before them. Wind blowing paper against streetlamps. What a sad affair it was to be blown about without direction. I saw Joe leave the building several times, Jenna beside him, her tiny hand clasped in his. He had dressed her in a frilly pink thing I’d never have chosen for her, but I had given up those choices long ago. As they walked farther down the street and turned a corner, I wondered if she liked that dress. Did she feel right about wearing it? I would never know.

  I rarely saw August leave the building. Only at night did he venture out to DJ at Odalisque, which was no longer Odalisque. The club had changed hands, and the new owners had renamed it The Fool. They placed a neon sign outside in the shape of a playing card, the Joker, and it glowed like a radioactive valentine.

  Rufus called once, but I let the answering machine pick up. He was in the midst of a coffee break downtown where his crew had just demolished a building. “I miss you,” he said. “Can I come back yet?”

  I pursed my lips, guilt rising from my stomach. “Oh, Rufus,” I said aloud to no one. “You know that’s not possible.”

  Finally one afternoon Ophelia said, “All finished,” and when I scrambled from the window to see what she’d made of me, this was what I found:

  A naked woman sitting on a red cushioned bench, skeleton thin, her ribs pushing at her skin, her hair framing the scythe of her jaw-line. Behind her, darkness, with the edges of the armchair beside her caught in the light from the window. It was warm light that lit her face up, but there were no features. No eyes, no mouth, not even a nose.