WHEN I BOTHERED TO THINK about it, which wasn’t often, I imagined my father’s home as flawless and pristine. A postcard house with geometric hedges around the perimeter, a perfectly cut lawn, windows reflecting the sun in bright, musical, hallelujah rays. No tire swings in the yard, no dandelions sullying up the place, no bikes, doghouses, not a hint of peeling paint. That, I admit, was my expectation.
But the house I’m looking at now…
I pull off to the side, listening to the tick of the car’s engine. There’s a broken fence spanning one edge of the property and an overgrown spruce along the other, its lower branches hacked away to create a small, passable tunnel to the backyard. In front lies a flower bed filled with knapweeds, thistles, piles of firewood neglected so long they’ve gone to rot. And the building itself: a brown bungalow with brown trim, brown stairs, and brown curtains in every tightly-shut window. The appearance of a flophouse or an abandoned hideout, a guilty place. But I didn’t come here to judge.
“Helloo-oo! You must be Dierk’s daughter. Wait there. I’ll come over,” someone says. It’s the neighbour, Rita. I recognize her voice from the phone, the pitch high and sharp like the ping of a barcode scanner. She’s a large woman, wearing a shapeless cotton muumuu dress with Eiffel Towers and French poodles all over it. When she gets close I smell the baby powder she uses to keep her flesh from rubbing together.
“Hello,” I say. “I’m Elena Werden.”
“Pleased to meet you.” At first Rita offers a big smile along with her hand but then she remembers why I’m here and lowers her eyes. “Sorry for your loss,” she says. “I’ve got the keys right here.”
She hands them to me and stands there, breathing. Waiting for me to ask about my father’s last days. Perhaps decide on the future of the house or explain why I’ve never visited though my father’s lived here for decades.
“Thank you,” I say. “This should only take a few days. I’ll be in touch if legal arrangements require.” I put the keys in my pocket and turn to get the supplies from the car. I move slowly, giving Rita plenty of time to leave. She stays motionless though, studying me like the eyes of a painting.
“Something else?” I ask, turning to face her.
“Oh. Yes, well, there’s the matter of the bird, of course.”
I wait for more.
“Your father’s parrot. Must have slipped your mind with everything that’s been going on, you poor thing. Don’t worry. I’ll wait until you’re settled before bringing him over.”
“Fine,” I tell her. “That’ll be just fine.”
FIFTEEN MINUTES AFTER the conversation at the car, Rita brings over the parrot I knew nothing about. How could I know? I haven’t spoken to my father since the day he left, back when I was nine years old. My mother hardly mentioned him and on those limited occasions when I inquired, she told me, “His choice, Elena, not mine. Just block it out. You’ll get used to it soon enough.”
That was her mantra right up until the day she passed, five years ago from an aneurysm of the heart. She shouldn’t have worried about my blocking things out though. There was nothing to block—the only correspondence I received from my father came last month, his official death certificate and will. Not that it upset me, being fatherless as a child; I was never the type to be thrown in the air or have my hand held while waiting for the school bus. My father’s leaving only helped nurture that independence, turning me into who I am today. Really, if anything, I should have thanked him.
I help Rita carry the blanket-covered birdcage to a corner of the living room with Plexiglas on the walls, presumably for mess control. We manoeuvre the stand into the flattened circle on the rug and step back. A threadbare armchair sits to the left of the cage; behind it, a stack of newspapers. There’s a remote lying on an ottoman, a TV on a silver base, and a tin-metal dinner tray at the ready. That’s it. A dingy place with poor lighting and heavy air, the smell of an oily basement.
“Here’s the food,” Rita says, putting a bag of seeds on the floor and rubbing some dust off her hands. She looks worried, like she’s selling me an appliance that doesn’t work. “He’s an African Grey and his name is Lowen. That’s all I know. If you need anything else, just call me. I’m always around, dear.”
“Thank you.” I guide her towards the door before she starts hinting at afternoon tea or some other cordial absurdity. As soon as she’s gone, I unpack my supplies. Paper shredder, the local phone book, laptop, a guide called Duties of an Executor and Trustee. Then I tape three garbage bags to the table and label them goodwill, trash, and recycling. It might seem obsessive but the more organized I am, the faster this will go. No feelings here to slow me down. No relishing of fond memories. I’d have the same level of connection scorekeeping a game of darts between two drunken strangers. And that’s fine by me.
A scratching sound comes from the cage. The parrot, stirring.
I pull the cover off and Lowen, behind the bars, backs away. He’s shabby and unkempt. A big grey mess. There are long patches of missing feathers on his body and if he wasn’t the only animal in the room, I’d think he was being picked on. I lean towards the bird—the complication I’m forced to deal with here—and he turns his head to the side and squints at me like a border guard.
“What am I going to do with you?” I say, flicking my nail against the cage.
He opens his beak wide enough to take down a nectarine. “Awwwk. What are we going to do, Lowen? What are we going to do now?” he says.
My skin goes cold, the chill piercing the centre of my bones. Even though it’s been a long time, there’s no mistaking it: the voice coming from the cage—tone, accent, everything—an exact carbon copy of my father’s.
JUST BEFORE BEDTIME, I put on some gloves to feed the ridiculous bird. He doesn’t say anything else, thank God, not even a squawk. When I approach the cage with a cup of seeds and some fresh water, Lowen drops his head and we ignore each other during the entire interaction. Precisely the way it should be.
After picking at his food as though sorting through floor-sweepings, the bird settles down for the night. I do the same, rolling my sleeping bag out on my father’s couch. As soon as I lie down though, I see water stains on the ceiling and splatters on the light fixture from a lousy paint job. It makes me want to scream so I close my eyes to block out the whole sickly mess. I think about happier things: the communications contract I just landed, sushi takeout from the new place on Cobalt, my minimalist furnishings. Eventually, I feel the tension in my jaw begin to relax. My neck muscles, loosening.
I actually start to drift off. Images of a dream take over and I’m too tired to fight them. I let myself glide, carried like a child from the backseat of a car. Floating safely through doors, upstairs, into a fresh warm bed. It’s pleasant, almost musical. And it feels a little bit like forgetting. I lose all track of time in the dream and I’m not exactly sure what year it’s supposed to be. Then I hear a voice. A whispering. The soft noise of someone crying.
“Elena,” the voice calls me. “Elena.”
I sit up, wide awake. The sound isn’t coming from the dream, it’s my father’s voice right here in the room. I’m not stupid. I know it’s only the bird. But still.
I hold my breath and stay motionless; all I hear is the rustle of the sheets, the water pipes, the crickets outside. Somehow this place has a way of making silence more powerful than it ought to be.
A few minutes later Lowen starts up again, filling the room with that voice. I let it wash over me and my skin tingles. The words get louder, the focus more precise. And my cheeks fill with blood when I realize it’s not Elena he’s saying after all. It’s Eva, a name I’ve never heard associated with my father before. Not in the will, certainly not from Mother, not anywhere.
It continues long into the night, so softly it’s almost inaudible.
“Eva, Eva, Eva.”
BY TEN THE NEXT MORNING I’ve filled three bags with garbage, two with donations, and one recycling. I find some official documents in a drawer and put them in a pile for later. Everything else I shred with the efficiency and single-mindedness of an ant colony. I don’t stop to read anything, don’t ponder the items my father collected over the years—ball caps, ceramic fruit, sixteen different cribbage boards—and although I’m slightly curious about it, Lowen’s weirdness last night changes nothing.
After a sufficient amount of progress, I sit at the table in front of the laptop to eat my lunch. While I’m at it, I make a list of some of the larger items in the house—the uncomfortable couch, the TV, the table and chairs—and enter their descriptions into Craigslist. Then I scroll down and click on the pets section. African Grey. Complete with own cage and food. Make an offer.
Lowen comes to life, running his beak back and forth against the bars like a tin cup. A coincidence, but I feel a tiny speck of guilt just the same. There’s nothing personal in any of this, though, divesting an estate means just that. Nothing more, nothing less.
Lowen turns his back to me. I hit enter and move on.
Thankfully, I have an appointment set up with a realtor this afternoon; going through my father’s debris is like trying to swim in a pool of dry-cleaner bags. I gather the will, the property title and the encumbrance certificate and put them in a folder titled, Residence. I don’t see anything else essential to the listing, but I do find something curious hidden between the pages of a bank statement. An old life insurance certificate.
It’s one of those no-medical-exam-TV-infomercial things with a pittance for a payout. The name of the beneficiary, however, has been scribbled over in ink. Crossed off so vigorously the paper’s actually torn from the force of the pen. I smooth it out and hold it up to the light. Only the first name is legible and although there’s no reason to feel this way, I get a little jolt when I notice it’s not me. The name, instead, is the one Lowen whispered over and over last night in the dark. The enigmatic and increasingly annoying Eva.
I HAVE FOUR DISTINCT MEMORIES of my father. The first, my sixth birthday. My mother took pictures while Father held the cake. “You missed a candle, darling,” he told me, though I hadn’t really. “See here, Elena? Look close. A little closer.” What’s memorable is it was the first time I realized my father had an accent. I’d been so used to hearing his German frankness, the crisp pop of syllables, that it hadn’t occurred to me before. The candle smoke wisped between us, disguising my father’s mischievous grin. And although I knew exactly what he was up to I couldn’t stop staring at his mouth, waiting for the next word to come out. I stayed like that, fixated on his lips, until he pushed the cake right into my nose. Rubbed icing all over my expectant face.
The second memory, Darden Lake. Walking out on Grandmother’s Arms, the fallen, floating tree that had been there forever. There were branches coated in gelatinous moss stretching underwater in every direction. The wood was slick, the lake, clear and deep. “Go ahead. I’m watching,” Father said, already at the far end of the tree, his hands reaching out to urge me on. I knew I was going to fall even before I took my first step. What I didn’t know is whether I’d hit my head, end up trapped under a branch, sink like a stone. And when I looked to my father for reassurance, I couldn’t tell if he’d dive in after me or not. If he’d actually be there to save me.
The third, my father sitting on the porch watching a thunderstorm at night. It was a month before the divorce, and he’d been sitting there a lot. I went outside to join him and the sudden clack of the screen door startled us both. “Come, Elena,” he said. “Sit with me a while.” The rain pounded on the corrugated roof, ran off the grooves in steady streams. I climbed on the bench next to him, smelled chewing tobacco on his breath, spiced apples and new leather. Despite the coolness in the air, his body heat kept me from shivering. I remember a lot of lightning that night. The sadness, lit up on my father’s face with every blue-white strike.
The final memory, the day my father left. I watched from the upstairs window as he placed his suitcase, tools, and a box of Louis L’Amours in the truck bed. He wandered back and forth across the lawn. Then stood in the driveway for a long time while Mother, at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, pretended to read a newspaper. Finally, my father came in and I heard him plead, “She’s just a girl, I should say goodbye to her. At least that.” But Mother refused. “You want to go? Then go,” she screamed. “We’ll get used to it before you shut the door!” I heard her cup smash on the floor, the stark resolution in her voice. And even though I didn’t feel the way my mother did, I copied her. Yelled the very same thing from my perch upstairs, the doorway of my tiny bedroom.
I CALL THE LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY but they find no evidence of that policy number. “It’s likely been cancelled,” the man says. “We purge records on all defunct policies every five years. Sorry.”
The document whines as it goes through the shredder. And then everything’s quiet.
I lift the cover off Lowen’s cage and he shuffles over, opening his beak to reveal a wrinkled tongue the colour of dryer lint. I ignore him. Instead, I think of my father.
I can picture him as he was when I was nine but I can’t imagine what he looked like before he died. Can’t get a fix on how he must have changed. “Not that I care, but what were you doing all this time, Dierk?” I whisper.
Lowen drops to the floor of the cage and begins hitting his head against the bars. After a while, he curls into a ball, making some sort of avian-moaning sound. It’s mesmerizing. Then I realize I’m not only wasting time, I’m also late for my appointment with the realtor. I grab my jacket and purse, scoop up all the documents. As I’m racing for the door, I hear Lowen’s voice again.
“Goodbye?” he says, quietly. “Goodbye?”
The idiocy of it makes me laugh. “Get used to it,” I tell him. And I exit the soon-to-be-on-the-market house.
“Helloo-oo!” Rita calls from the other side of the fence. She’s watering a flower bed with one of those long wands, wearing a chili-pepper muumuu and sunglasses big enough to shield the space shuttle during re-entry. “How are you coping, dear? Anything I can do?”
“Everything’s under control. Just late for an appointment.”
“Oh, well. Off you go, then.” She gestures towards the car with the sprinkler.
“Actually Rita, I do have a question.”
“Yes?”
“Do you know someone named Eva? Connected to my father, I mean?”
She takes off her huge glasses and taps them on her chest, thinking. “No, Deary. No one I remember,” she says. Then she picks an orange pansy from the tray of flowers she’s about to plant and shows it to me. I nod, though everything about the flower, the yard, her garden, is completely unremarkable.
When she reaches for another, I cut her off. “Do you recall seeing any guests over here? Maybe someone you didn’t know?”
“No, no. Nothing like that. Dierk kept to himself for the most part. Other than Lowen, your father was pretty much alone the five years I’ve been here. Strange, isn’t it? You don’t suppose he actually liked being alone, do you?”
THE REALTOR IS A GUY NAMED STEPHEN with obviously dyed hair who also knows nothing about my father. He’s more than happy to take on the job of selling the house though. I sign a contract instructing him to put it on the market at whatever price he sees fit. A realtor’s dream. Sell the house. Take the first offer. No haggling, just get rid of it. Clients like me don’t come around very often and Stephen smiles so enthusiastically I can count every single filling in his mouth.
“Shouldn’t take long,” he tells me as we finish things up. “People are always looking for a good starter place.” He guides me towards the door and hands me a folder of documents with his business card stapled to the front. “It’s a difficult business, selling a relative’s home. Lots of hidden emotion. Lots of worry. But I’m here to help in any way I can. My motto: Let Stephen be your stress-sponge,” he says.
The first thing that comes to mind—other than that’s a stupid motto—is asking him if he knows anyone in town named Eva. But saying that over and over is starting to sound a little birdbrained. So to speak.
“That’ll be all, thank you.” And then as a joke, I add, “Unless of course you want to adopt a parrot.”
“Oh,” he replies. “That’s a tough one. How’s it doing?”
“I don’t know, it’s a bird. What do you mean?”
“My aunt had a parrot years ago and they’re sort of in it for life. When she died, her bird started freaking out, wouldn’t eat, kept chewing at himself,” he says. “As I recall, the parrot only lasted a couple of months before he expired too. Vet said the animal just couldn’t figure out how to handle grief.”
I feel my body vibrate and the space between us go cold. Then Stephen gets fidgety like he just realized he’s on the verge of losing his commission. Which he is.
“But hey, I’m only a small-town realtor,” he says, patting me on the back. “What the hell do I know about these things?”
I’M ANXIOUS AS I HEAD BACK to my father’s house even though Stephen, as he rightfully implied, was way off base. His aunt was a million years old and her parrot more likely died from second-hand smoke or eating its dinner off Styrofoam meat trays than anything else. That’s the bottom line here and it’s what I tell myself the entire drive. Lowen—even though I don’t care one way or the other—will thrive in the end, living a happy, fruitful, meaningful life. Whether he deserves it or not.
When I get there, I stumble out of the car and drop the realtor’s booklet in the driveway. Thankfully, Rita’s not in her yard this time, waving her big hand and helloo-oo-ing me all the way to the nuthouse. I gather everything up, and enter the house.
The phone rings as soon as I get inside, making my heart pound again. “Who’s calling please?” I ask.
“Oh, hi. I’m just inquiring about your ad, about the African Grey,” the voice says.
“Yes?”
“Well, I wonder if I could see him. Is there a good time?”
Lowen’s lying on the floor of the cage, his head resting on a patchy outstretched wing. He’s motionless, stiff-looking. It doesn’t really seem like he’s breathing anymore.
“I’m sorry,” I tell the man on the phone. “The bird’s been sold.”
“Oh, that’s too bad. I was hoping…”
I hang up and drop the phone on the table. Then I stand there for a while and tell myself it’s not my fault, it’s not my fault. When I can’t take it any longer, I walk over to the cage and begin tapping on the bars. Once. Twice. Six times. Finally, Lowen lifts his head. And I release the breath I didn’t know I was holding.
As soon as my face gets close to the cage, Lowen stands and walks towards me, seemingly okay again. I’m relieved but then angry, like someone just pulled a fast one. Like I’m being led to an ultimate failure. And for some reason, even though it’s crazy, I get the impression this whole episode—the sick bird, Rita the judgemental neighbour, the life insurance debacle, maybe even my father’s death itself—is the fault of one person and one person only. Eva, the deceitful, behind-the-scenes, stay-in-the-shadows conjuror.
“Okay bird,” I say. “No more games.”
He closes one eye.
“Tell me, who’s Eva?”
He climbs up the cage, sits on his wooden bar.
“Eva and Dierk.” I say slowly. “E-v-a and D-i-e-r-k.”
Nothing.
“Eva. Eva. Eva,” I say, trying to keep my voice at a non-frictional level.
Finally, he reacts. “Beautiful,” he tells me, softly. “My beautiful, beautiful girl.”
I close my eyes. Not only do I hear my father’s voice but I see him, the physical words spilling from his lips. I feel his fingers on my cheek, smell the tobacco in his shirt. I picture it all and for some reason it stings.
Out of the blue I say, “I’m Elena, Dierk’s daughter. Is that who you mean?”
Lowen stares back, vacantly, like I don’t exist to him at all. And suddenly I feel very stupid.
What am I doing? He’s just an animal, a parrot, a mimic for Christ’s sake. He doesn’t give answers, he does impersonations. Another thing comes to mind: the realization I haven’t yet visited the cemetery. Like that has any relevance here at all.
“You think I care?” I yell through the bars, holding the cage like I’m about to shake it. “I don’t want your charity, I want a name. Goddamn it, Eva, what is your last name?”
Then it hits me.
I run to the laptop and type in Werden, Eva. I refine the search with my father’s name and, on a hunch, I add announcements.
In the archives of the local paper I find:
Eva Werden (née Cooper) entered into rest suddenly at Merritt, BC on Tuesday, July 11th, 2006. She leaves behind a loving and devoted husband, Dierk Werden, and brother, Jake Cooper of Auckland, New Zealand. Funeral services will be held Saturday, 2:15, at The Church of St Nicholas. She will be dearly missed and never forgotten.
“Got you,” I say.
Inexplicably, tears run down my cheeks. It’s hard to breathe, my shoulders actually shudder with the force. And my stomach, my heart, every inch of me, feels like a towel that had been twisted for a long time and has now, suddenly, been released.
“My God, get it together, Elena.” I wipe my face, hard. “This is none of your business. You have your own life and this is just another irrelevancy in it. Move on. Get it together. You’ll get used to it soon enough.”
The second I stop talking, Lowen says something as well. Mumbling some phrase over and over. I don’t know why but I walk up to the cage, open the door, and put my hand inside. Right next to Lowen.
At first he just sits there, snapping his beak like a pair of shears, making me nervous. But then, bit by bit, he sidles over and steps up onto my wrist. He’s heavier than I imagined, his grip tight on my arm. I lift him out of the cage and bring him close to my ear. I feel the heat of his breath on my skin. His beak, smooth and dense.
He starts to speak.
“Got you,” he whispers.
“What? I… I don’t…”
“Get it together, Elena,” he goes on. “Get used to it. Get it together. Get used to it.”
The words are clear, very plain. But it’s not my father’s voice I hear. It’s mine. He’s using my voice now. Except his version is all wrong. His version sounds desperate and bitter and lonely.
I kneel on the carpet and Lowen hops off my arm, walks a few feet away. He’s at my father’s chair now, standing beside the empty seat, tilting his head from side to side. Everything around us is quiet but it doesn’t feel particularly peaceful, it feels like being smothered. All I want to do is pick Lowen up again, feel his warmth, breathe the same air he’s breathing, have an actual conversation.
But that doesn’t make sense. None of it makes sense.
Lowen flaps his wings and turns away from the chair. He takes a single step towards me, the two of us, face to face.
“Say something,” I whisper, holding my hands out towards him. “Please. Please. Say something else.”