The Tender Birds, page 10
Matt felt uneasy. “Can I help you with something?” he asked.
“Just drink the wine,” answered the man. “Isn’t that what the priest does?”
Matt raised the cup to his lips.
“Father used to let me do that in the sacristy after Mass,” said the man. “Get me good and hammered, then take me to his room.”
“I’m sorry,” said Matt.
Your turn now, said the look on his face. “Drink up,” he said.
“Excuse me,” said a woman’s voice.
Alison. She stared at the man.
“Show some respect, John,” she said. “Father said the Mass for you. It’s not his fault, what happened.”
The man looked stunned.
Matt drank the wine and tasted destitution. He drank indignity and suffering, and the bitter taste of innocence lost. He drank the anguish of his own troubled youth.
His throat felt scorched by fire, his body encompassed by a burning warmth that settled into his bones and flesh, then gripped it like a vise, as if holding together a piece of shattered crockery. He could not finish it.
“Don’t drink any more,” said Alison. “It’s no good.”
“How would you know that, little lady?” said John.
“By the look on Father’s face,” she answered.
Matt saw that the man was eyeing him.
“I’ll bring the wine again next week,” John said.
“You’re sure I’m coming?”
“I see it in your face.”
“We are required to drink the wine. No matter what it tastes like.”
“Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it.”
Matt turned around to see Alison staring at them both. Restless, Daisy rose to her full height and stretched her wings.
“You’re taking advantage of his good nature,” she said to John.
“It’s all right, Alison,” said Matt.
“No,” said the hammer’s clang in her voice. “It is not.”
All I Had to Do
STONEHAVEN, JUNE 2011
I was shocked, Matt wrote a year later, while recovering from his heart attack. The Mass had forced me to eat the hard bread of life and drink the gall of anguish, to face my own suffering in the mocking eyes of the man with the wine. I had been on drugs, I had killed an innocent soul, and now I found myself among the abused and derelict, and I didn’t have to preach a word to them. All I had to do was bless the wine and raise it to my lips, and they could see their own troubles reflected in the look of my distress. Better than some high-and-mighty priest with all the answers, better to be human to the core, but I knew that there was more to this, that I had left some things undone, avoiding pain that inconvenienced me, and so every week through the summer, I said Mass in the Common with the people’s humble bread and wine, and I blessed it all, confronting hell, returning from the grave. My soul would have to find a new way to live.
That, or end up on a park bench. “You will always have to watch out for addiction,” said the doctor.
And so, I said Mass in the Common. For a while, until I became ill.
Ready for Battle
AS MATT WAS ABOUT TO LEAVE, he noticed Alison seated on a park bench, with Daisy on her fist. He went over to join her.
“Do you know these people?” he asked.
“I’ve spoken to Bill a few times.”
He told her he wanted to come back and say Mass for them.
“They want to be outdoors,” she said. “They don’t feel safe in church.”
“You think so?”
Alison turned to look at him, and he saw in her eyes a luminous, steel-edged gaze, the tip of a knife that could pry his heart open. “They feel safe nowhere,” she said.
Daisy turned her head to Alison. Matt wasn’t sure what to say. Alison’s face had changed, its innocence erased by a fierce silence, a feral wariness. He imagined an angel with a flaming sword. “They remind us of our sufferings, don’t they,” he said.
She turned to look at him. “But that’s no reason to let them demean you.”
Matt was silent.
“You know how to be good to them,” she said. “To say hello. To give change, to say Mass. To eat their wretched bread and drink their wine, to take them into your body.” She paused. “But you don’t need to be insulted.”
Matt had never heard her speak like this. Ready for battle. Joan of Arc in the park, he thought.
Alison stood up, as graceful as a dancer, Daisy sitting tall on her fist. She had recovered her composure, her gentle look, as if the other Alison had been conjured up, imagined by the two of them. She turned away and drifted out of the park, a child as frail and invisible as wind.
The Stain
THE MASS HAD TROUBLED AND MOVED ALISON, and she felt grateful for Father Matt’s strength of spirit. In his hands, the act of Communion had drawn out loneliness; in its sign of hope, it had opened wounds. Now, she felt memories leaking out of her, staining her skin like ink from a cheap pen. She feared that if she wrote them down, her soul would be dyed forever with the mark of what had damaged her.
Yet she had to remember. As she received Communion, she swallowed the rough bread of memory, the wine of sorrow. From the looks of the faces surrounding her, everyone had done and felt the same. Somehow, she would find strength in this.
Same As Always
DURING THAT SUMMER, MATT RETURNED to the Common every Sunday to celebrate Mass for the homeless. He came with empty hands, offering whatever bread and wine the people gave him. The man with the wine continued to bring it to the service. The bread was sometimes a baguette, sometimes pita, often a day old. What mattered to Matt was to feel his heart pried open by these gifts.
He lived in fearful camaraderie with lost souls. He prayed for them, and for lonely Alison and wounded Daisy, her companion who would never fly.
After Mass, John always waited, eyeing him while he drank what remained of the wine. “Big cup there,” he said. “Good for what ails you.”
Matt took that moment to thank him.
“For what?”
“For bringing better wine.”
John looked puzzled. “Never. Same as always.”
“Doesn’t taste the same.”
He laughed. “Told you you’d get used to it.”
All summer long and into the autumn, he prayed with them, spent time on the park bench listening to Bill’s music, watching Tom talk to Daisy the falcon as she clutched Alison’s gloved fist, absorbing rough talk and insults from John. “Hey, guys, Father thought I upgraded the wine, he really likes this plonk now, he said so, right, Father?”
On this particular occasion Matt was growing tired, but he said to John, “The wine’s been blessed, it’s God’s gift,” and at that point, Matt had the good sense to leave the park, to return to his living quarters to rest.
It was then that he wondered if he were headed in the right direction. He pondered what his superior might have to say about this as he imagined himself asleep on a park bench, succumbing to bad wine. Alone, he poured himself a Scotch.
Non-Human Guests
THE OUTDOOR MASSES CONTINUED into a mild October, but autumn drew Matt’s focus back to the college, stickhandling academic duties, speaking engagements, conference papers, along with weekend parish work. Meanwhile, he’d heard from his old friend Elias who had applied for a teaching position in Boston. “It would begin in a year’s time,” he wrote. “Natalie’s due next month!”
They will never be lonely. The words fell like precious coins — hard, metallic echoes through his body.
He had parish work this weekend for the feast of St. Francis: the annual Blessing of the Animals. Non-human guests would include dogs and cats, caged white mice (courtesy of the choir director’s daughter), the Parish Council’s president’s clutch of pigeons, a rat named Bingo, and, more than likely, one disabled but prayerful peregrine falcon. They had discussed doing the ritual in the Common, but the pastor had said no, people wouldn’t bring their pets there. Most didn’t share Alison’s ease with the residents of the park. “The parishioners are drifting away as it is,” Ron said. “Almost none of them come to the outdoors Mass.”
That Mass will stop when the weather cools, thought Matt, wondering what he’d do then.
Daisy Might Fuss
ALISON LEFT DAISY’S CAGE IN THE CAR, bore her on her gloved fist and found her way into St. Bartholomew’s parking lot, already crowded with other parishioners and their pets. Daisy’s reptilian head moved this way and that, her golden eyes aglow at the sight of pigeons, mice, a rat, two ferrets, a couple of hamsters. Alison held tight to Daisy’s tethers. “Don’t fuss, Daisy,” she whispered. “God loves them, too.”
Both Father Matt and Father Ron were there to bless each animal, accompanied by altar servers who carried small buckets of holy water. They made their way from pet to pet, sprinkling them, murmuring words of benediction over mutts straining at the leash and restless cats in their containers. Things were going well enough until there came a mighty beating of wings, a horrible thumping sound against a wall of air, and the choir director’s daughter screamed because Daisy managed awkward flight from Alison’s gloved fist, coming in for a clumsy landing, talons gripping the cage full of mice. Clinging hard, she swung back and forth. The mice crouched in a corner and squealed.
“Daisy!” From her pocket, Alison produced a dead rat, and the falcon returned to the glove for her snack, forgetting the tiny rodents.
“I’m so sorry, everyone,” said Alison. “I should have realized that Daisy might fuss.”
Daisy nibbled away at the rat, tossing its claws and tail on the ground.
Alison heard a chorus of “Yech…. Gross…. Disgusting.”
“You should have realized that Daisy might snack,” said the pigeon fancier.
The child with the cage of mice began to cry. “She’s terrified of your bird,” said her mother. “That beak. Those talons.”
“Yes, I see,” said Alison. She stroked Daisy’s head and kissed it, while the mother turned to comfort her daughter.
Then Matt approached her.
“Will you bless Daisy?” she asked him.
Muttering rumbled in her ears, like distant thunder. She watched Matt as he eyed the glares, the unhappy faces. He glanced at the rat bits on the pavement. “Meet me in the sacristy,” he said.
Who Her Father Was
MATT WATCHED ALISON AS SHE ENTERED the small room behind the altar, Daisy still on her fist. That creature, so wild and instinctive, seemed to share a kind of moral innocence with its keeper. Alison’s eyes held a gaze as astute as the falcon’s yet tinged with a puzzlement and sorrow that was hers alone. “Father Matt, I apologize,” she said. “I didn’t consider the presence of rodents and pigeons.” Her voice dropped as she said the words, as if she were afraid that mentioning them might agitate Daisy.
“Well, Daisy is a first for us,” said Matt.
“I should have known better. I was afraid of hawks as a child,” she said.
“I guess you’ve had a change of heart.”
He could see that Alison was clothed in good intentions, garments that did not snag on the edges of his sarcasm.
“God sent Daisy to help me remember my father.”
“Did your dad keep hawks?”
“He was a falconer before I was born. But he had to quit when he came to Canada.”
Matt wondered if there was some Canadian law against falconry.
“He had to focus on a whole new life,” she said.
She makes him sound like a convict on the run, Matt thought.
“He didn’t want to go to Vietnam.”
Matt could feel his silence thicken the air. Her father would have been my age.
“Will you bless Daisy?” she said at last.
Matt made the sign of the cross over the falcon and recited the prayer:
“Lord God, we ask you to bless Daisy. By the power of your love, enable her to live according to your plan. May we always praise you for all your beauty in creation. Blessed are you, Lord our God, in all your creatures! Amen.”
Matt sprinkled holy water over Daisy’s head. She lifted her eyes to look at him.
“Thank you for being so kind to her,” said Alison.
“You have an unusual vocation,” he replied.
“I appreciate you saying that,” she said. She explained that only her colleagues who worked with wild birds understood the depth of her attachment to Daisy.
“I’m saying that you have a strong spiritual sense,” he continued.
“Well…” She looked away.
“I don’t mean to embarrass you, but it’s a gift from God that we don’t see often.”
“Daisy is part of the gift. She’s almost my spiritual director.”
Matt had never heard anyone talk like this. Taking direction from a bird of prey, from Daisy the rodent-slayer. He found it sad that such a bright young woman, so apparently devout, seemed to know so little about the richness of her own faith-tradition. Yet he thought of his own youth, how ill-equipped he was to handle a spiritual crisis.
Her father fled the war. I didn’t have the courage to do that.
Years later, the least he could do was to offer guidance to someone whose strong moral sense came from a man far braver than himself.
“I don’t want to push this,” he said. “But have you ever thought of religious life? It gives wonderful formation, good companionship, constant spiritual direction.”
“They’d never take Daisy.”
“True enough.”
“I suspect that I’m meant to be a hermit,” she said.
“Have you no family?” he asked her.
“My mom’s in Montreal.” She seemed indifferent to her own words, as if they were lint she was picking off her sleeve.
“Try to pray about it, Alison,” he said to her. “It’s never good to be too alone.”
“I’m glad I have Daisy.”
“Your mother only has you. She may be lonely with your father gone.”
“She’s with her boyfriend. Not Lucien, but someone else.” She spoke as if Matt weren’t there, as if she were talking to herself. Or to God.
She isn’t living in the real world.
Earth to Alison. Over and out.
Alison’s visit troubled him. She seemed eccentric, but not ill; engaged in an inner dialogue, one she’d let escape into sound and language, like a clumsy kid who’s yanked the earbuds out of her smart phone and sent a flood of rock music into the street. Perhaps she’s talking to her father.
From Alison’s Journal
BOSTON, OCTOBER 4, 2010
The incident at the animal blessing was my own fault. I apologized to Mrs. Malley, whose daughter was so frightened of Daisy, but she just told me that birds of prey had no place around children. I had a lot of explaining to do, since I believe that Daisy is also one of God’s children, and, with her imperfect wing, one of the least of these, as the Gospel says. Yet nothing excuses the fact that I’d forgotten my childhood, how frightened I had once been by a hawk. The circumstances were not the same, it’s true. Yet even more true is the fact that I longed to forget what happened. Maybe I will, once I have written the whole thing down.
Alison
When I Was Afraid of Hawks
BOSTON, OCTOBER 5, 2010
I remember that I was about to turn eight years old, and my mother, small and quick as a kestrel in flight, was taking off with her colleague Lucien for a photo shoot in Quebec. She was going to miss my birthday, and knowing this, I wept.
“Sweetheart, don’t cry,” she said. “When I come back, we’ll have a big party.”
Dad didn’t try to stop Mom. Instead he promised to take me birding for my birthday. He pulled out his handkerchief and dried my eyes.
He loved to sit with me, sharing his books full of grand, extravagant birds of prey — the peregrine, the great horned owl, the red-tailed hawk. Having once been a falconer, he still yearned to fly these sparks of light, and he would speak to me with joy about each of these magnificent birds, but I would see only talons and claws, and feel the blood, the torn flesh of absence, numb with disappointment at my mother’s indifference.
Yet because of her flight, I wanted to be close to my father, I wanted to fly to retrieve her, and so I sat with him and gazed at the raptors, the circle of light they drew around my one loving parent, so that the fierce enormity of these creatures didn’t matter. What mattered was that in my father’s generous heart, there was room for myself and the great hawks both. “Haggards,” he called the grown-up hawks, their special name. He talked to me about them, compared them to tiny songbirds, showed me pictures of red-tailed hawks, how tender they were as they fed their chicks.
“A hawk chick is called an ‘eyas,’” he said.
Why?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart. It’s just an old word.”
Eyas. The fluffy hawklets had a name all their own, which meant they were beloved creatures, and so I let the word loose in my mind as I reached out and touched the baby bird on the page. I imagined that I was smoothing the feathers of the mother hawk, patting the little ones, and then I closed my eyes and slipped underneath the haggard’s wing — as if I, too, were an eyas, gifted with a special name, a slight creature of wind and air, helpless, not yet able to fly.
On my eighth birthday, we drove to a beautiful location, Golden Willow Conservation Area, just a ten-minute drive north of Toronto. “Raptor Experience,” said the sign, and I imagined a nest, a great mother hawk, her pale breast feathers tipped with amber light, and her tiny eyasses, mouths open, waiting for her to feed them. I was going to see this. Experience it. What I did not see was the look of consternation on the guide’s face. “She knows a lot about birds,” Dad said to the guide. “She’s very mature for her age.”
