Plumage Read online

  Almost by mistake, prompted by some strange urging from beyond the hard air, he had annointed her plumage. Her limbs had lifted to him, her bare pale twigs had extended to him. He had flown to her; he had skreeked her and she had skreeked him back. It was the shellbreak day of his young life.

  Only Deity knew what marvels would now ensue.

  Sassy called in sick to work for the next three days and shut herself in her apartment, crying, contemplating her own sanity or lack thereof, looking in mirrors and trying not to look in mirrors because when she did, the parakeet that stared back at her remained as omnipresent and blue as ever. Sometimes it hunched its shoulders and stretched its wings. Sometimes it peered at her slantwise. Sometimes it bent into a U to preen its tail feathers, and once it scratched its own head, standing on one foot with the other foot stuck behind its wing, clownish. It wasn’t always the same, but like a budgie in a cage, it was always there.

  One time it gaped its beak at her in an infantile sort of toothless grin, which charmed her not at all. “Just go away,” she told it, but it didn’t.

  Sassy tried to think of sensible solutions to her dilemma, but none came to mind.

  The fourth day she had to go back to work, because after three days she would need a doctor’s excuse, just like in junior high school, and hers was not the sort of problem one took to one’s family physician. Also, she needed the hours. Her paycheck was going to be even more pathetic than usual this week.

  “I won’t look,” she muttered, brushing her teeth over the bathroom sink with her eyes closed against the bathroom mirror. But instinct made her look in the mirror as she reached for her hairbrush, and she almost burst out crying. She stamped her bare foot on the linoleum instead.

  “Ow!” she yelled at the bird in the mirror, because now her foot hurt. “You stupid budgie, what the—” But Sassy never said hell. “What do you want? I can’t even see myself to comb my hair!”

  It didn’t really matter. Her hair, baby-fine and as flaccid as spaghetti, was useless for anything except to be scrunched under a ratty old scarf on the way to work.

  The winter air breezed right through the scarf. Since when were these things supposed to protect your ears? Mama had always trained her to wear one to guard against earache, but then, look at Mama. Look at Sassy, her mama’s image. Here came the mezzanine maid in her ugly babushka.

  Sassy was supposed to enter the Sylvan Tower by a discreet back entrance, but she didn’t. The parking garage was filled, she had to find a spot on the street, which meant that she had to put her lunch money into the meter, and the February morning was as cold as Frederick’s heart, and damn everything. She scuttled in through the lofty doors to the main lobby and made her way through its labyrinth of gift shops and jewelers and haute couturiers and cafés and fountainside dining to the elevators, to go down to the swimming-pool level and the catacombs where she reported to work.

  The Sylvan Tower Hotel was rife with mirrors. The hallways were mirrored, the bottoms of balconies were mirrored, the undersides of escalators were mirrored, every surface the decorators didn’t know what else to do with was mirrored, including the elevator shaft, which was walled with gold-tone mirrors outlined in neon. Standing in front of one, waiting, Sassy braced herself and looked. Her parakeet was there, standing on air, as usual. Next to it, with its scaly black three-toed feet almost on the floor, stood a bored-looking six-foot brownish crane.

  Sassy yelped.

  “Something wrong, ma’am?” asked the businessman standing next to her.

  “Uh, no. No, not at all.” Babbling, Sassy glanced from the businessman to the crane, the crane to the businessman. Both were tall. There the resemblance ended. Yet—she knew it was him.

  “You sure you’re okay, ma’am? You look gray.”

  “Um, no, no, I’m fine.” Blessedly, at that moment the elevator arrived. In an inflamed frame of mind, Sassy rode it down and reported to work.

  By afternoon, when she cleaned the mezzanine, she had calmed down. After all, if she was going to be looking at a parakeet in the mirror for the rest of her life, what did it matter if she saw other people as birds too? Vacuuming, she observed with interest the beveled-glass mirrors beautifying the wall as hotel guests strode by. A fashionable woman minced past, and in the mirror a sparrow fluttered along beside her; how could that be? A teenage boy darted by with a gull skimming along in the mirror; that seemed more apt. A man stood talking to his wife, and there was a green-headed duck soundlessly quacking. The wife was a brown-mottled sort of quail or prairie chicken or something; Sassy wasn’t sure. The next woman was easy, a crow, but then came a whole series of birds Sassy didn’t know: a black-and-white pinto one, something that whizzed past trailing an immensely long tail, something large that stalked by on stiltlike legs, something red and blue that bobbed as it flew, a bird that (like its human) had an enormous mouth flanked by whiskers, and a bird striped like a convict, cowering on the mirrored floor.

  Whew. After a while, feeling dizzy from trying to remember them all, Sassy stopped watching.

  Nobody else was a parakeet. Or even a parrot, for that matter.

  Sassy vacuumed her way past the boutique in which Racquel loomed behind the counter sweet-talking customers and bossing her employees. It occurred to Sassy that she owed Racquel an apology. She had been quite snippy to Racquel the other day when Racquel was only trying to help her.

  It occurred to her, also, to wonder what sort of bird Racquel was.

  Hey. This new affliction of hers could conceivably become fun. Finished vacuuming, Sassy snapped off the Hoover with panache and trotted across a quarter acre of pristine carpet to unplug it.

  As she turned, a green-and-yellow blur whirred toward her.

  “Hey!” Sassy flung up her hands, flailing. “Go away!” She windmilled, defending her glasses, batting wildly at the air and the parakeet. For an instant her fingers encountered the fluttery dryness of feathers, and she nearly screamed. Only her lifelong inhibitions kept her from shrieking.

  They did not keep her from feeling a moment of triumph, however, as the parakeet zoomed away toward the treetops. Good. It could just go pick on somebody else.

  Sassy got through the rest of her day in a lighter mood, and took the elevator up to the mezzanine after work, to see Racquel.

  PLUMAGE Boutique specialized in featherwear for fancy and frivolous occasions. A feathered cape worthy of an Aztec priest shimmered in the display window, plumed hats perched on racks, glorious and scary feathered masks stared down from the walls. There were feathered earrings and barbaric feathered necklaces, feather boas to go over slinky quilled evening gowns, feather-trimmed jackets, feather fans. Peacock, pheasant, egret, ostrich, marabou, jungle cock, nameless exotics and fabulous fakes. A small disclaimer posted on the door stated: “PLUMAGE stocks only the finest garments and accessories made from naturally shed feathers from free-range domesticated birds. No-kill. No endangered species.” Hang-tags on garments declared the feathers used on them to be fade-resistant and hypo-allergenic, but did not say whether the feathers came from a happy hand-fed emu named Judy or from a nameless white turkey later to be rendered into croquettes.

  “Yo, there!” Racquel called as Sassy walked in. Sitting behind the cash register, Racquel wore a regal ice-green faille dress with an ornate high collar, a ruff that, even though made of feathers, was more reminiscent of Queen Elizabeth I than of a grouse. Her hair was lacquered into a metallic-gold crest tastefully tufted with a few platinum-colored plumes. Blessedly, Racquel sat nowhere near any mirror, which allowed Sassy to focus on the task at hand.

  “Um, hi.” Sassy lagged toward her, feeling shy about this; Sassy had never been socially apt. “Listen, I’m sorry I was so huffy—”

  “Hey, you were upset. You’re entitled to be upset when you get pooped on. S’okay.”

  Obviously the tall woman meant it. Sassy knew with relief that she could quit apologizing—but now she felt an awkward friendliness, a need to hang around. “U
m, nice place you got here.” Aaak, what a dumb, standard thing to say.

  “Thank you.” Racquel sounded bored.

  Sassy flushed and peered through her thick glasses at the dainty feathered toe rings and ankle bracelets under the countertop. Quail feathers. Sassy took in their translucence, their scalloped overlappings, their subtle fox-colored mottlings. Pretty. Had feathers always been so pretty? She turned to look at a downy dove capelet hanging from a rack, then wandered farther into PLUMAGE to gaze at feathers upon feathers, barred, speckled, laced, streaked, ticked, stippled, frizzled, iridescent, faux, bleached, dyed. So many feathers they gave off a pleasant, dry, spicy scent. Sassy breathed deeply of feathers, breathed in the infinitude of plumage, facing the blindly staring feral feathered masks on the back wall—

  “You like feathers,” said Racquel from right behind her.

  Startled, Sassy turned. Racquel stood in front of a mirror, and in the mirror stood a large raven-black bird with brightly colored wattles—saffron, scarlet, cobalt blue—and a huge swelling hooked bill.

  “You’re a toucan or something,” Sassy blurted. Then like a child she clapped her hand over her own mouth, feeling her face go hot.

  But far from being offended, Racquel laughed with delight. No longer bored, “You’re a funny little bird yourself,” Racquel said.

  That was what Frederick had called her. A bird. At first, when she was young, a skinny-legged chickie, he had meant it kindly. Or at least lustfully. Back when they were first married. Later, as she got older and gravity took hold, he had said it far less kindly. She was turning into a bird, he said disgustedly. Like her mother.

  That was why he had left her.

  Or, some days she thought that was why. Other days she thought that it was because he didn’t have the character to handle midlife, which was equally true. Or because he had been seduced, which might also be true. Or because he had watched too many James Bond movies. Or because he was confusing her with his mother, who had napped with him until he was twelve. Or, on her worst days, Sassy thought maybe it was because she didn’t watch TV with him, wanting to read instead, or because of something else she had done or not done, that was why he didn’t love her; why should he? Other days she thought she would never be able to stop thinking because she would never know the true answer. She thought, and thought, and thought about it, and all her thoughts made sense at the time, and all were useless.

  Sassy became aware that Racquel was eyeing her with interest and something more—warmth? Concern? Racquel asked, “What’s your name?”

  Sassy told her.

  “You don’t seem real sassy.”

  “It’s short for Sassafras.”

  “Sassafras?”

  “Don’t ask me what my mother was thinking.”

  “What’s your mother’s name?”

  “Magnolia.”

  “Oh. Was she a Southern belle?”

  “More of a Southern frump.”

  Racquel laughed again, even more diverted. “Let’s go get you a cappuccino or something.”

  “No, that’s okay, I—”

  “Come on. After being pooped on, don’t you deserve a cappuccino?”

  Undeniably true. Sassy followed Racquel meekly.

  TWO

  At the coffee bar on the third floor of the lobby levels, Sassy and Racquel sat at a circular white wrought-iron table overlooking the ficus-on-steroids trees.

  Sassy curled her permacold hands around the warmth of her coffee cup. “So tell me all about it,” Racquel said, her interest as warm as the cup, so warm it made Sassy want to cry. She couldn’t speak, and Racquel seemed to take her silence as a need for elucidation. “You mentioned a soap opera’s worth of troubles the other day. I seem to remember you telling something about a runaway husband, Alzheimer’s, a lost jewelry collection—”

  “It was just souvenir jewelry,” Sassy mumbled.

  “Just?”

  “You know. If we—” Damn, she had to stop saying “we.” It was the hardest thing to stop thinking in “we” now that she was just a “me.” “When Frederick would take me somewhere on a vacation, I’d get myself a necklace or something.” She would wear the trinket, whatever it was, for the few days of what she always hoped might become a second honeymoon. Then she would go home to waxing floors, scrubbing the sink, degreasing the stove, and the souvenirs reposed in her jewelry box. Sometimes as she swabbed the john she would think of her jewelry lying in the dark like paramours, like promises, garnets and zircons nestled in red velvet like the sparkly dreams casketed in her heart. Just the standard dime-store dreams: togetherness, faithfulness, love forever, that sort of thing.

  “So you had what, a couple hundred pieces?” Racquel asked.

  Sassy didn’t know. Not that many. “It’s all gone now.”

  “Along with the souvenir husband?”

  “He—” Calling him a souvenir was way too good for him. Souvenirs were to say that her whole life had not been entirely wasted. “He took everything.”

  Racquel nodded her sympathy. “Cleaned out the bank account?”

  “No, not like that.” Bank account, ha. “Frederick got moved up to customer service from the meat department but he still doesn’t make that much.”

  “Huh?”

  “He works at Food World. So I shop anywhere else now.” Sassy struggled for a way to say that it was her selfhood that Frederick had cleaned out, not a bank account, that she was emptied, that she felt like last year’s robin’s nest unwinding in the wind. “I mean, I was so proud of—you know, the marriage. But he threw it out like—like last week’s TV Guide.”

  “What a meatball.”

  “I knew something was wrong. He kept on saying no, everything’s fine, trust me, trust me, she’s just a friend. And then Binky dear calls on the phone and he gets that coo in his voice.”

  “That’s hard to take.”

  “Yeah.” Sassy managed to smile with simulated courage but she was feeling the familiar ache. Remembering that fleecy softening of his voice, remembering sitting at the kitchen table listening in and looking down at her chapped hands and thinking how long since he’s talked to me that way? and knowing she’d do just about anything if he just loved her and then trying to tell herself it was nothing, of course he loved her, he was her husband, wasn’t he? That was it. She was the wife. She’d been his wife for twenty-seven years. Of course he took her for granted. How silly of her to think there could be anyone else after all this time. She didn’t want to be a jealous nag, did she? That would really turn him off. She had to trust him.

  Yeah. Right.

  “He turned into kind of a jackass,” she said.

  “No duh.”

  “I mean, he wasn’t always. At first he was sweet. Lots of fun. Boyish.” Kind of Huck Finn with a wayward forelock of straw-colored hair, with russet freckled skin. “But I guess he never grew up. The last few years—I don’t know how many times I looked at myself in the mirror and whispered, ‘I am married to a jackass.’”

  Racquel laughed. She had a laugh that flowed like a deep river, that eased the ache in Sassy’s narrow chest and made her wonder at herself. The man was a jackass; had she loved him? Or had she just wanted someone, anyone, to love her?

  “So he lied to you,” Racquel said.

  “He sure did. For years.”

  “What a dingleberry.”

  With every new epithet Racquel invoked upon the head of Frederick, Sassy felt a little bit better. Racquel had to be only about half Sassy’s age, but Lord, Racquel was good to talk with. Racquel was saying for her all the things she barely knew how to think, let alone say, for herself.

  A dingleberry. Yes. “A big one,” Sassy agreed. “If he’d just said something—” All her life, practically, she’d been reading Ladies’ Home Journal, “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” And it always could. But Frederick evidently hadn’t read those articles. He never gave her a chance to save it. “If he was going to do something like that,” she burst out, “why
couldn’t he have done it years ago? While I still had a chance?”

  Racquel leaned back in her chair, her long strong hands curled as brown as coffee around her cup of cappuccino, peering at Sassy with a shadow of a frown. “A chance?”

  “While I still had some looks.”

  Racquel scanned Sassy in silence, her frown deepening.

  “Not that I was ever anything much,” Sassy added.

  “Honey, you ain’t bad-looking.”

  Sure. Right. Racquel was just being nice. “I wish I could blame him for the gray hairs and the extra pounds,” Sassy said, “but I can’t. The last ten years or so, I look more and more like my mother.”

  “So what’s wrong with that?”

  But—everything was wrong with that, didn’t Racquel understand? Women were supposed to look like adolescent boys, not like their mothers. Or maybe it was different for black people?

  “Frederick didn’t like my mother,” Sassy said.

  “So how many people do like their mother-in-law?”

  Sassy blinked. Racquel had a point.

  “Anything in particular wrong with your mother?”

  “Right now? She has about one functioning brain cell left.”

  “Okay, I remember. Alzheimer’s. But before?”

  Sassy tried to remember. It seemed to her that Mama had been a nice little mama for the most part. She missed her.

  “She was just kind of a bird, that’s all.”

  “Aren’t we all?”

  Given her peculiar personal circumstances, Sassy sidestepped that. “I guess.” She murmured with belated wonder, “Frederick made it sound like the worst thing in the world that I was getting like my mother.”

  “Screw him.”

  Another nice sentiment. It made Sassy keep talking. For the next hour she spoke of Frederick, Frederick, Frederick, as Racquel listened with unwavering sympathy. She told about how Frederick had invited Binky to his and Sassy’s twenty-fifth anniversary party. She told about how he would go places with Binky and tell Sassy casually after the fact to make it all right. She wondered whether Frederick, who was kind of a limp dick anyway, had maintained technical fidelity, sort of like the technical virginity some girls had been famous for in high school, so that he could look her in the eye. She told how Frederick would thank her for being “understanding,” then tell her she was crazy for being unhappy, feeling left out he hadn’t asked her to go along with him and Bink to the hop, hadn’t he told her Binky was just a friend? “What a salami dick,” Racquel said. Every few minutes Racquel slipped in amens of this sort, as if she were listening to a Baptist hellfire-and-brimstone sermon. Over the next hour she called Frederick a trouser snake, a frequent whacker, a petercheese, and a slimelicker as well as some other, more routine obscenities. With every epithet that Sassy could not herself dream of uttering, Sassy felt better.