When the four sisters discovered their baby brother Paddy was turning into a bird, they raced to tell their father. “Paddy’s growing feathers,” they announced, four sets of chubby hands set authoritatively on chubby hips. “And wings.”
Sean Garrity put down his newspaper. “Are you sure?”
The sisters bobbed their heads in unison. They’d done a thorough investigation of their new brother’s body earlier that afternoon, while their mother was busy sorting laundry. “Pretend you have wings too, Daddy,” they squealed. “Make them flap!”
Too self-conscious for such silliness, Sean clamped his arms across his chest, each hand secured under an armpit. Much as he loved his girls, their silken skin, their sausage-link legs encased in white tights, their tufts of strawberry blonde hair nipped into place with yellow barrettes, he had no idea how to play with them. A policeman from a family of policemen, he knew only how to work. Child-rearing was his wife Eileen’s territory. Eileen was a natural. Nothing daunted her. If anyone could figure out how to raise a bird, Sean figured that person would be Eileen.
“Will Paddy be a big bird or a little one?” the girls asked.
He picked up his newspaper. “Ask your mother.”
***
After placing Paddy in a shoebox lined with dish towels still warm from the dryer, Eileen armed herself with a dropper-full of milk, determined to complete a feeding. As she tried to nudge Paddy’s mouth open, the girls burst in. “Mommy! Will Paddy be a dove or a cardinal or an eagle?”
Eileen had been dreading this moment. Her girls wanted answers; she had none. All she knew was one day she had a newborn son and now she had a baby bird on her hands. First came the blue-grey feathers sprouting across his back, along with shoulder flaps that were clearly turning into wings. His legs disappeared like landing gears tucked up into the body of a plane. In their place, small claws emerged, each with four thin toes, one facing backwards and three forward. Desperate to fend off questions, Eileen kept Paddy tightly swaddled during the day and appointed herself sole overseer of his nightly bath. Today, when Eileen hauled the folded laundry upstairs and discovered Paddy unwrapped, his swaddling blanket in a tangle on the floor, she recognized the four sisters’ mischief immediately. Now, prancing in excitement, the girls had her cornered.
“It’s too soon to tell what kind of bird he’ll be,” she said, feigning equanimity. Paddy’s body was becoming more delicate, more compact with each passing day. He was no eagle. Maybe Paddy would become a canary. Canaries liked to sing. They lived in cages. That, she could handle.
“When will he start flying?”
“Not for a long time.” The thought of Paddy flapping around the house made Eileen shudder. Keeping tabs on the four with legs was hard enough.
“Can we make him a nest?” asked the girls.
Eileen tapped the shoebox. “This works fine.”
After the girls thundered off to play, Eileen again brought the milk-dropper to Paddy’s lips. As his mouth clamped shut, his unblinking eyes met her gaze. So inscrutable, this one. Not like her baby girls, who let her know with a wriggle or a whimper what they needed. Eileen tried to swallow the lump in her throat. How hard could it be to raise a bird? Certainly not harder than raising humans. When her own mother developed a taste for the Guinness, Eileen, at age nine, took charge of caring for three younger sisters. At nineteen, Eileen began raising her own first-born child, along with half-raising a husband who couldn’t even buy new boxer shorts or cook a fried egg without her help. Sometimes the list of things Sean couldn’t do seemed endless.
That evening, while Sean worked and the children slept, Eileen dozed through a news report about Khrushchev’s meeting with President Eisenhower, rousing herself just in time to catch The Lawrence Welk Show. The Lennon Sisters, wearing identical plaid dresses and kerchiefs, were singing “Tonight, You Belong to Me.” Swaying together, smiling, the four sisters moved as one. Eileen felt a special affinity with the number four. Four promised balance. Four felt sturdy. Four embodied the natural order of things, like the four seasons, four points of a compass. After her fourth daughter was born, Eileen got up the nerve to ask a nurse at Saint Mary’s Lying-In Hospital if douching with vinegar or jumping up and down after having relations could keep her from getting pregnant again. After an uneasy glance at the crucifix over Eileen’s bed, the nurse leaned in close, whispering instructions about something called the rhythm method. Emboldened, Eileen left the hospital with the baby she believed would be her last and a lightness of spirit she had never expected to reclaim. But now: Paddy. So much for rhythm. She would have to take more drastic measures. Eileen pressed both hands over her mouth. She would not cry. Eileen’s mother claimed Eileen never cried, even as a baby. Of all the lies her mother converted into facts, this one struck Eileen as the most absurd. Of course she’d cried. When no one paid attention, she stopped.
***
Just before his shift ended, Sean happened upon a punk hefting cartons of Seagram’s Seven into a battered Volkswagen van. A stolen van, it turned out. Though he cuffed and booked the thief without incident, the fear Sean brought to work every day did not dissipate. Every cop he knew said a daily prayer: let me come home safe tonight. Sean prayed for an injury — not a bullet to the heart, just something serious enough to justify leaving the force he’d never aspired to join in the first place. Having flunked the entrance exam, he entered the police academy only because his father and grandfather, both retired precinct captains, called in favors. Each time Sean donned his uniform, he felt like a child forced to squeeze into an itchy, ill-fitting Halloween costume chosen for him by grown-ups who thought they’d given him a precious gift. The harder Sean tried to shake his fear, the more tyrannical it became, infiltrating his dreams by night, taunting him as he patrolled streets by day. Heading home, he wanted only to rip off that blue jacket, flop his six-foot frame into bed next to his slumbering wife, and let her baby-powder scent ease him into oblivion.
When Sean peeked in the living room, Eileen was staring at the test pattern on the television screen, helmet of auburn hair covered with a net, eyes rimmed in red.
“What is it?” he said, certain her averted gaze meant he had, again, failed her in some way.
His wife rose to switch off the television. “You have to sleep down here,” she said, tightening the belt to her bathrobe.
They eyed each other. “For how long?” he said, finally.
“From now on.”
Sean felt dumbfounded. Banished from the marital bed, he would be left with no way to reveal what was in his heart, no means to demonstrate his love for her. With uncommon daring, fueled by desperation, he faced his wife. “I’ll sleep upstairs. Or else.”
Eileen stared him down. “Or else what?”
Sean looked away. He hadn’t thought through that part of his ultimatum.
“You better not ‘or else’ me, mister,” said Eileen. “I take care of everything around here. In case you hadn’t noticed.”
Oh, he’d noticed. He just hadn’t expected to be ejected from his own bedroom. Except for the weeks she had back pain or neck pain or shoulder pain or leg cramps or migraines, she accepted his sexual overtures, occasionally with what appeared to Sean to be some measure of enthusiasm. Why was she banishing him? She was a mystery, his wife. But there was no arguing with her. That, he knew.
The mattress on the pull-out cot smelled of baby spit-up. Alone under a flimsy quilt, he missed the warmth of Eileen’s broad flank, the cool of her bony toes. Still awake at three a.m., he yanked a jacket over his pajamas and stalked out to the back porch. Years ago, he’d dreamed of transforming their yard into a children’s paradise: sandbox stocked with red pails, cedar picnic table laden with trays of raisin cookies and pitchers of pink lemonade, plastic swimming pool with a bright blue bottom, wooden fence lined with flowering shrubs. The one shrub he did plant had long since shriveled. Except for a hula-hoop and a rusty tricycle, his yard was bare. Now that he had a bird to take care of, a bird with no use for sandboxes or baked goods or pools, his dreams for the yard felt foolish. Sean sank on the bottom step, deflated. He didn’t know anything about birds, or about wives, or daughters, or even himself. Most of all himself.
Gazing at the night sky, a flickering light caught his attention. Was it a planet? A star? A comet? Sean knew nothing of astronomy. As a child, he was educated by a band of sour-faced nuns who viewed the sky as the Holy Father’s home, a perch from which God could surveil His children and punish them duly for sins large and small. As an adult, deeming himself too puny to warrant God’s attention, Sean experienced only the ache of loneliness when he looked upward. Now, imagining this sky might be Paddy’s territory someday, Sean felt drawn to its vast beauty, its mystery. This sky was the same sky pondered by his Celtic ancestors, the men who’d come before him, men like his great-grandfather Seaghán, for whom he’d been named, about whom he knew so little. Handwritten notes in the family Bible said only that Seaghán, a farmer, died at thirty-nine, leaving a wife and five children. Imagining the life of a man who tilled the soil, tended fields to feed his family, whose blood was his blood, Sean drifted into an unfamiliar state of ease, cotton pajamas soft against his skin, cool air caressing his face, mind clear of fear, limbs relaxed. Hope took root inside him, as surprising as an orchid rising from a hunk of rotting bark.
***
Each morning, Eileen forced herself to check Paddy’s body for changes. He was now small enough to fit snugly within her cupped hands. His lips hardened into a beak that steadily grew longer, pointier, and less canary-like. His tongue developed a fork at the tip, which sprang open to suck up sugar water, the one liquid he would consume. When feathers sprouted on his head, Ellen dressed him in a cap fashioned from an infant-sized sock, hoping to divert attention away from his birdy-ness. With a head shake and an irritated trill, Paddy shook off the disguise. Though his wings appeared too weak to sustain flight, Eileen began rigging mosquito netting over the baby carriage to keep Paddy safely confined when she strolled him outdoors. Accustomed to being praised as an exemplary mother, Eileen was taken aback when neighbors began to assail her with advice. Convinced Paddy needed more stimulation, one woman prodded Eileen to stock his carriage with chew toys, bells, and mirrors. Another woman spoke directly to Paddy in a babyish sing-song voice: can you say Polly want a cracker? Can you? Turning to Eileen, she frowned. This one’s a little slow, am I right? Train him. Give him a treat each time he speaks. Yet another woman told Eileen she simply must procure a second bird, to keep this one company. Eileen resisted the urge to lunge for the woman’s throat.
Mortified, Eileen slunk home. That night, she dreamed she was bobbing in the basket of a blue hot-air balloon. Enveloped by mist, a litter of fat piglets wriggled beside her, eating daisies out of a pink plastic trough. One piglet began to float away. Though its tiny hoof was within her reach, she did not grab it. Bye-bye, she chirped, waving the piglet off into space. Half-asleep, still in the grip of her dream, Eileen felt an overwhelming wave of relief, as if she had been yearning for this freedom her entire life. Awakening more fully, she was overcome with shame, certain her dream revealed something unnatural about her. Eileen stopped taking Paddy outside in the neighborhood, afraid of more criticism. She stopped going to church, afraid of what she might find herself praying for. She slept poorly, afraid of what she might dream.
***
Sean found Eileen slumped at the kitchen counter, still in her nightgown, staring at an empty picnic basket.
Sean cleared his throat. “Happy Mother’s Day?”
Eileen pressed a finger to each temple. “The park will be a nightmare in this heat.”
“We promised the girls.”
“You promised.” She pushed the picnic basket at him. “You can make lunch. And you can keep tabs on Paddy.”
Sean suppressed an eye roll. All week, she’d been pressuring him to surveil Paddy more closely. She believed Paddy was trying to escape. From her. On purpose. To torment her. When she turned to scrape breakfast plates, he’d vanish. Distraught, Eileen would ransack the house, only to discover him perched on a pantry shelf preening his feathers or nestled inside one of the girls’ shoes. Sean felt Eileen was overreacting. Maybe Paddy just being playful. Maybe he liked to hide. As a child, Sean used to hide in the laundry hamper, his father’s closet, the tool shed. Quiet places. Once his father stopped yelling and his mother stopped crying, he would emerge. Paddy didn’t have to worry about his father yelling or his mother crying, since Sean never yelled and Eileen never cried. Maybe Paddy liked quiet places too. Nothing wrong with that.
Upon arriving at the park, the sisters ran straight for the seesaws. Eileen pawed through the picnic basket Sean had prepared. “The girls hate ham sandwiches,” she announced. “Good thing there’s snack bar across the street.”
Sean’s face flushed. He would not argue. Especially not on Mother’s Day. As Eileen stalked off to buy cheeseburgers, Paddy began chirping. Sean bent over the carriage. “What’s up, buddy?”
Paddy was fluttering his wings, hopping around the base of the carriage, flapping, cheeping, in the throes of what Sean sensed was a full-on tantrum. Who wouldn’t want to escape from such an oppressive little prison? Heart racing, Sean pulled back the netting. “You want out?”
Paddy let out a burst of staccato chirps. Lifting Paddy out of the carriage, Sean placed his son on the grass. With a quick turn of his head, Paddy snapped up a flying beetle. Sean grinned. So quick! Such focus! Paddy snaring his own insects was a milestone, like the girls graduating from formula to solid food. After a quick scan to ensure Eileen was out of sight, he scooped Paddy up and swung his arms upwards, giving him a small heft towards the sky.
“Go, go!” he called, as he’d done when he first removed training wheels from his daughters’ bikes.
Paddy didn’t move.
“It’s okay, buddy. Another time.” Disappointed, though relieved his wife hadn’t caught him, Sean placed Paddy back in his carriage and loped over to where his daughters were playing hopscotch. Though he didn’t understand the rules of the game, he marveled at their exuberant leaps. For a moment, he felt as if he were seeing them for the first time. Who were these agile little girls? Who taught them to play this game? Did the girls ever quarrel? Did they play to win or just to have fun? Would they stay close as grown-ups? Jolted out of his reverie by a finger jab to his shoulder, Sean turned to find his wife glaring at him, bag of burgers clutched to her chest.
“You promised to watch him,” Eileen said.
Before Sean could counter her reproach, she marched him to the carriage. The mosquito netting lay crumpled on the grass. Paddy was gone. “What should I do?” he asked his wife.
“Search the sky,” she snapped. “I’m sure he’ll be easy to spot.”
Hot with guilt, Sean called to his daughters. “Quick! We need to find your brother.”
“Paddy’s not lost,” they informed him. “He’s having an adventure.”
For once, Sean held firm. “Find him!”
Eileen flopped on the grass, arms across her face. Undaunted by their mother’s paralysis, the girls fanned out like a well-trained police search team, roaming between rosebushes, calling for Paddy. Sean checked underneath the jungle gym and inside the rims of tire swings and he sprinted to the wading pool to check for a floating bird body and he felt sweat sting his eyes and he heard his girls singing a tune he didn’t recognize and they shouted Daddy, Daddy, he’s back, and Sean ran to them, ran to his daughters, his precious daughters, and he could barely breathe and he saw Paddy — Paddy! — encircled by his cooing sisters, one of whom was holding him and stroking his tiny head. Near tears, Sean rushed to his fifth-born, kissed his feathers, touched his wing tips. As Paddy’s black eyes met his father’s, Paddy emitted a series of high-pitched chirps and tipped his beak towards the sky.
Sensing Paddy’s exuberance, Sean turned to his daughters. “Why’s he so excited?”
“He’s showing you where he went. He can fly now.”
“How did you find him?”
The girls giggled. “Silly Daddy! He found us.”
Squinting upward at the cloudless sky, Sean imagined his son soaring, dipping, buffeted by wind, sensing how high to ascend, how far to travel, how to find his way home to his family. So brave, this son of his, sailing the sky dressed only in his feathers. Cradling Paddy in his hands, he jogged back to where Eileen was waiting, knees drawn up to her chest, bag of burgers abandoned at her side, face stoic, eyes dry. Sean crouched beside her. “Paddy went flying,” he said, trying to sound matter of fact. “Just a short trip.”
“Take me home,” she said.
***
Eileen stormed upstairs to her bedroom and shut the door, still stunned her husband had spoken with such pride about this horrifying development. Paddy could fly. By himself. Leaving her no clue where he’d gone or when he would return. Fathers could get away with not knowing their children’s whereabouts, but mothers? Ha. Mothers got crucified for that kind of negligence. Hearing Sean’s footsteps, she ignored his first knock, and his second. She was in no mood for one of his hangdog apologies, offered reflexively, with no idea what he had done to upset her.
He opened the door a crack. “Are you okay?”
She hadn’t expected to hear such genuine concern. She bit down on the tip of her tongue, hard enough to spike pain but not hard enough to draw blood ––- her foolproof method for stopping tears. “None of this would’ve happened if you’d fastened the netting over his carriage.”
“He had to start flying someday,” Sean mumbled.
Ellen folded her arms across her chest. “Says who?”
“Should I do some laundry?” Sean asked, sheepish. “The basket’s overflowing.”
Eileen dismissed him with a flick of her freckled wrist. “Do you know how to get grass stains out of playsuits? Clean lint out of the dryer?”
Of course he didn’t.
Sean lingered at the door. “Anything I can get you?”
“Not a thing,” she said. Even before he turned away, she regretted her sarcasm, her peremptory dismissal. He was trying to help. She would have loved a cup of tea. Something in her refused to let him comfort her.
***
When Sean reappeared downstairs, the girls pounced. “We want our baths!”
“Let’s skip baths, just for tonight.”
No. His girls wanted baths. He had to give them baths the same way Mommy gave them baths. An hour later, having sopped up a flood of strawberry scented bubble bath water and wiped away trails of sudsy footprints, he tucked his daughters into bed wearing grimy undershirts excavated from the laundry basket. Paddy had already curled up on a pile of damp towels. After transferring the sleeping bird to his shoebox, Sean felt a flash of fury with his wife. The house was in shambles. How could Eileen leave him alone with this mayhem? Animated by righteous zeal, Sean tackled the back porch debris, filling a bag with broken stubs of chalk, empty chocolate milk cartons, moldy beach towels, dog-eared copies of Highlights for Children, and baby-dolls with missing limbs. Hauling the trash outside, he caught a whiff of something sweet, reminiscent of the vanilla extract Eileen used for baking. Following the scent, he discovered a cascade of yellow and white honeysuckle by his back fence. Shocked, Sean realized he had planted the honeysuckle bush himself, years ago, then promptly forgot about the nondescript tangle of leaves. Now that the bush had finally bloomed, Sean was enchanted. Something beautiful had prevailed, despite his neglect. His great-grandfather Seaghán must have known how to nurture withered plants, how to coax life from untilled soil. Leaning over the honeysuckle, breathing in the scent, he imagined a life closer to nature, closer to the magic Seaghán must have possessed. Sean’s body relaxed. His clothing felt weightless. He wanted to fly. Imagining how he would look if he sprouted feathers, he made himself laugh.
When Sean headed upstairs to rouse Eileen the next morning, she could not, would not, leave her bed. Faced with four whimpering daughters who needed to be dressed, fed, and taken to school, Sean reached for the phone.
“Personal time? Are you kidding?” said his sergeant. “I already have two guys out with injuries.”
“My wife is sick. Looks like it’s serious.”
“Are we talking about the cancer, something like that?”
“Something like that.”
His sergeant sighed. “I can give you a week. That’s it.”
Sean hesitated. Eileen’s incapacitation worried him. A longer rest for her would give him a break from his loathsome job. “Look. My wife and I, we’ve got no family in town. I have to take care of the kids.” He swallowed, hard. “I need four weeks.”
“Jesus, Garrity. You’re killing me here.”
And my job is killing me, thought Sean.
When the sergeant begrudgingly granted his wish, Sean let out a silent whoop of joy. His first initiative as captain of the home beat was to create a master schedule, hoping this would render the vast, amorphous responsibilities of family life less daunting. New daily routines soon fell into place. Rising at six-forty sharp, he would put on his uniform of t-shirt, Levi’s, and Keds. At seven, he served breakfast on the porch. The girls got Sugar Smacks and orange juice. Paddy would flit around in the morning light, snapping up mosquitos and annoying his sisters by dropping beetles in their hair. At eight a.m. sharp, Sean ferried the girls to school, leaving Paddy free to fly, or to nestle in his shoebox if he wanted a rest.
At nine, Sean fixed a breakfast tray for Eileen. Listless, she picked at her food, barely speaking. His attempts at cheer only darkened Eileen’s mood. Desperate to pierce the silence, he hauled her beloved Motorola phonograph up to the bedroom and played The Clancy Brothers singing “Lily Marlene,” “Brennan on the Moor,” and “Why Paddy’s Not at Work Today.” After a week, he bought her a new record, Margaret Barry’s Street Songs and Fiddle Tunes of Ireland. These tunes made Eileen smile. Listening to music together became part of the daily schedule. He started to notice which melodies pleased her, which rhythms made her shoulders sway, which lyrics left her wistful, which songs brought her peace. The clues to her heart had always been there. He just hadn’t been paying attention. Those hours of wordless communion became the most intimate time he’d ever shared with his wife.
***
In time, Eileen began rising to join her family for dinner and read Dr. Seuss books to the girls at bedtime. Mornings, she stayed in bed, waiting for Sean. Eileen blushed to realize how avidly she was listening for her husband’s footsteps, anticipating the thump of his feet with a gladdened heart. Sean always ascended the stairs quickly, his long legs allowing him to take the steps two at a time. He always knocked. She appreciated having a moment to pat her hair and straighten her bed jacket before he entered, offering an apology for breaking her favorite teacup, an embarrassed account of pouring bleach into a load of colors, a query about how to coax tangled hair into pigtails. And he offered food, welcome now that her appetite had returned. Here was Sean now, pushing her bedroom door open with one hip, holding a tray. Accepting help from Sean, the very help she used to reject so righteously, was starting to feel natural. Sitting up, Eileen propped a pillow behind her bony back. Sean handed Eileen her breakfast: tea with milk, wheat toast spread with strawberry jam, two slices of bacon.
“The girls finish school next Friday,” he said.
Nodding, she reached for the bacon. She’d been looking forward to those salty slabs all morning, knowing Sean would deliver them cooked to a perfect crisp.
“My leave ends soon, too.”
As Eileen stuffed bubbles of fat and maple-flavored strips of seared flesh in her mouth, Sean’s voice became background static. Only after pressing up the last bit of bacon with her forefinger did she make an effort to look attentive. Her husband was still rambling, something about a relative named Seaghán, something about feeling trapped. He sounded nervous. “What was that again?” she asked.
“I’m quitting the force.”
He was talking nonsense. His father and grandfather were cops until they died. “Is there more bacon?” she asked.
Sean squared his shoulders. “That guy Tom, over at Mahoney’s Landscaping? We’ve been talking. They need day laborers, guys to pull out rotted stumps, move boulders, dig irrigation trenches. Trim bushes. Plant trees. Build flower beds.”
“So?”
“Tom says he’ll hire me. No night shifts. Wages we can live on, if we’re careful.”
“Hearing this kind of talk, your poor father must be turning over in his grave.”
Sean shrugged. “Guess that’s his problem.”
Eileen felt her head jerk back. This man ––- was this her Sean, moving his dead father out of his way with such quiet force, speaking in sentences that didn’t end in question marks? Even her husband’s body seemed to be changing. The red hair on his forearms looked thicker. His jawline seemed more angular. His shoulders strained against seams in his shirt. He was bulkier than she’d realized, stronger. While her husband’s new confidence stirred her desire, it also aroused her resentment. Sean had gone and dreamed up a whole different life for himself, just like that. Lucky him. She couldn’t just pick out a new life. What choice did she ever have? She didn’t get to pick a husband; she’d had to wait for someone to pick her. She didn’t even get to pick how many children to have. Swelling with grief, Eileen bit her tongue. She could not tell Sean how guilty she felt for not wanting a fifth child, how furious she felt when that foolish rhythm method failed, how demoralized she became upon realizing Paddy was never going to become a canary. And she could never, ever tell Sean about her bad dream, the shameful relief she felt when she let that piglet float off in space, gone forever.
“Paddy’s gone for good,” she burst out.
Sean’s eyebrows shot up. “Where’d you get that idea?”
“What am I supposed to think? He disappears for days at time. I haven’t seen him at all since Mother’s Day.”
“Him being gone more?” Sean paused. “It’s nothing personal.”
“Well, it sure feels personal. Like he doesn’t want to be around me.”
“I don’t think that’s it.” Sean looked at the ceiling. “It’s just -–– he’s made to fly. It’s his nature.”
“You think it’s that simple?” she asked, incredulous.
“Yeah. I do.”
***
One day after Sean resigned from the force, one week before he was slated to start his landscaping job, he caught a glimpse of Paddy hovering by the purple azalea Sean had just planted. Now that Paddy sometimes stayed gone a full week, these sightings felt poignant, more precious. He would ask Eileen: do you want to see him? Are you ready now? She would shake her head no and burrow under her bedcovers. This time, he insisted she’d feel better if she saw him for herself. This time, she agreed.
Rising from bed, Eileen pulled on a housedress and rinsed her face with Noxzema. She let Sean brush her tangled hair. Outside, one daughter was already crouched in the sandbox, constructing a lopsided castle. Another lay in the grass weaving a clover chain. A third perched on the picnic table, stuffing raspberries into her mouth. The fourth, seated like a Buddha in the center of the blue pool, brought her hands down flat on the water over and over, splashing and splashing, oblivious to everything except her own delight. After he got Eileen settled in the wicker chair next to the bird feeder, the girls hurtled towards Sean as a single unit, a kinetic sculpture of plump limbs, downy skin, and silken hair burrowing under his armpits, tickling his ribs, kissing his eyelids, pulling him into the grass, saying daddy, play with us. They begged him to play their “Who Am I” game. One would pretend to be an animal. The others had to guess what kind. When his turn came, Sean fought a wave of self-consciousness. Hesitant at first, he lay on his belly, eyes closed, arms flat against his sides, and began to wriggle across the grass. One daughter guessed snake. He wriggled another few yards, twisting side to side with more verve this time. Fish? No. Lizard? No. He’d stumped them. Standing up, arms raised as if bursting through tape at a finish line, he called out, “I’m an earthworm!”
“Ick,” the girls squealed.
“Hey, earthworms make soil healthy. They make plants grow better.”
The girls exchanged skeptical looks. Laughing, Sean settled back into the wicker chair next to his wife. “That’s a good game,” he said, brushing dirt off his shirt.
“When did you turn into such a goof?” Eileen asked.
He shrugged. “Just now, I guess.”
As they sat side by side, as their children played, a hummingbird appeared at the feeder and dipped its beak deep into the amber liquid.
“There,” Sean whispered, pointing.
Rapt, Eileen leaned forward.
The hummingbird hovered so close they both could hear the buzzing of his impossibly fast wings and see his unblinking black eyes. Wings beating at a frenzied speed, the tiny creature hung miraculously still in space, his head a sleek black, his body a mosaic of iridescent red, purple and green. In his beak, he held purple azalea petals. In slow motion, Eileen reached her hand out, inch by inch, and spread her fingers. In complete stillness, she waited. The hummingbird moved closer, wings whirring, jewel tone feathers glinting in the sun, hovering, hovering, alighting, just for a second, on her forefinger. The purple petals dropped from his beak into her lap, where they lay a moment before blowing away.
“He knows us,” she said.
Sean nodded.
He had never seen his wife cry before. Raising her chin, she let him wipe her eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. As she wept, Sean took her hand — her freckled hand, her worn and weary hand, her precious hand — and pressed it to his lips.
Image by Townsend Walton on unsplash.com, licensed under CC 2.0.
- The Natural - August 26, 2025
Janice, I don’t know if you’ll remember me or not, but I’ve been following your stories. They are fantastic! Congratulations! I believe it was the Leslie College summer program with Hester Kaplan as instructor where we met, then we followed up with a mini-writing group together. (I could be wrong as it was years ago – it could have been a different setting.). I’ve not written fiction since those early days, but continue to write personal essays and poetry since then.
Whenever I see your name via Grub Street’s “Congratulations” posts, I read your work if I can.
This time, a chance to say Hello and Well Done!!!
Janet Banks
janet.e.banks@gmail.com
What a treat to read. I couldn’t put it down. Such a delightful, charming story and beautifully written. Keep ’em coming.
This is quite a story! What a curious and interesting idea of a bird as child? The characterizations of husband/father and wife/mother are such interesting portrayals. I certainly enjoyed reading this story and considering it’s layered meanings.