The Tender Birds, page 2
He had pulled out his scratch pad and began to draft a letter of condolence. Dear Valerie, I am writing to express my sorrow at the passing of…
He had torn the page off the pad, crumpled it up, and tossed it in the garbage. He had thought that the least he could do was send her a Mass card.
He did not have the name of the bereaved.
He’d had to give a homily that Sunday, words of comfort for a rattled congregation. Something about people who’d said their last “I love you” into their cellphones.
He had wondered if Valerie had received such a call.
Curious, Daisy gripped her perch, her talons like the curved tines of a sharp fork, her wide eyes dark at the centre, ringed with gold like two great suns in eclipse. Having settled into the large cage that Alison had placed in the corner, she eyed her keeper and the dark-suited man. She was restless, in need of a stretch, and so she stood tall, flexing her wings. They were an elegant falcon’s wings, but awkward, unbalanced, injured in her fledgling days. A prideful rustle and flap were all she could manage, a short leap to a higher perch. She settled down again.
“Daisy, don’t fuss,” whispered Alison. She glanced at Matt. “Is it okay if I…”
“Sure,” he said.
Alison slipped on her glove, opened the cage door, and enticed Daisy to her hand with a lifeless mouse that Alison dangled by the tail. Hope she didn’t find that in the church, Matt thought, but the falcon, having managed awkward flight, snapped up the treat, arranged her wings, and settled down on Alison’s gloved fist.
“There’s a good girl,” said Alison, and she kissed her head.
“It’s safe to do that?” asked Matt.
“We’re friends.”
He sensed a trace of annoyance in her voice. As if I didn’t know that, he thought.
“Daisy is from God,” she said.
It wasn’t the first time he’d heard her say this. She’d speak the words with such tender conviction that Matt felt churlish for doubting their truth. Yet she seemed strange, a pilgrim on a winding road, one either laced with mines or lit by the grace of God. He found her perplexing.
Alison was a spinning top, sending off sparks. Yet she was also feral, silent.
Daisy was as still as a fire about to start.
He wasn’t sure what to make of the pair of them.
She was a helpful parishioner, a quiet participant in church activities, a veterinary technician in an animal hospital. She displayed her falcon in schools, wrote poetry, and volunteered to do odd jobs around the parish. More than that, she’d taken up sitting on park benches with Daisy, talking to homeless people about her fierce little friend, showing kindness to some of the same poor souls who drifted into Mass with occasional grunts and shouts and loud, off-key singing. People were drawn to her. She said little but listened with her whole body as if her nerves were woven of confessions and secrets, a nest for the nurturing of others, and not a body at all.
She insisted that the great birds were her calling.
Daisy was never far from her, an injured creature that she nursed back to health. A peregrine falcon, nonetheless; a bird of prey. There were times when he wondered about Alison’s state of mind.
He sensed that she had not had an easy life, that she needed protection, as a daughter might. Unlike most parishioners and students, she did not tell family stories. Home had been Toronto, but her mother lived in Montreal. Somehow, she had ended up in Boston. Perhaps her wandering spirit made him feel, as many did, that he could talk to her, as if she would receive and absorb his words till they evaporated like a puddle of rain in brilliant light.
“I believe that Daisy is capable of love,” said Alison.
“Well, who knows?”
“Would you like to hold her?”
Matt paused, transfixed by the wild creature. “I think for now that I should just … contemplate her,” he said.
“Yes, she puts me in awe,” said Alison.
In few words, Matt told her that he had learned to enjoy birds, to see their great migrations as avatars of grace, as healing for a sky so wounded on that cruel September morning. He was not as adept as his younger friends at the skill of identifying them. He did his best, taking comfort in the beauty of their flight, in the goodness of creation.
Alison held Daisy and sat across from him, her posture erect, as statuesque as a dancer’s, her gaze as primal as the bird’s. He could feel her eyes as they traced the lines of sorrow etched into his skin. He felt certain that she must feel his words inside her, their frantic wing-like beating. He told her — with as much brevity as possible — that after the attacks, he felt as if he’d been given a second life, one he was unsure he deserved. He’d renewed his efforts to be a good pastoral psychologist, a professor who might offer insight into the world’s calamities. He worked; he never stopped working. He wrote a book about recovering from grief, another about the relevance of the Cross in a time of sorrow and fear, another about blessing the stranger in our midst. He gave seminars and workshops on bereavement counselling, said two Masses at St. Bartholomew’s on weekends because they were short of priests, spent some time in an online raptor chat room in Lower Manhattan because there were frightened, lonely people who needed the reassurance that they and the great hawks were held in the embrace of God. He also studied his Field Guide to the Birds of North America. He loved warblers, their springtime migration, their jewel-like beauty — their quick brush-strokes of colour and sunlight.
Alison listened, no doubt sensing what he’d left unsaid. She did not pry. He saw her eyes gazing at his hand, which rested over his heart as he spoke.
“This is close to your heart,” she said.
He lowered his hand, embarrassed. He did not speak of his palpitations nor of his near breakdown and loss he suffered. “It is,” he said. “True enough.”
“You were blessed to miss that plane,” she said.
“Sometimes we are blessed,” he said, “at the expense of others.”
“You came to this parish. It’s a simple place. A retreat.”
“And now it’s closing.”
“I’ve given up trying to understand the world,” she continued. “I live with mystery enough.” She glanced at Daisy as she turned her head in Matt’s direction.
“Yes,” he said. “I can see.”
“The care of falcons is a spiritual practice. I can show you.”
Matt thought about this. He had not found relief in telling his story because he had not told all of it. Yet he liked reading about falconry, its majestic creatures, its lost Eden of the soul. To win the trust of a bird of prey, it was necessary to be kind and patient, to cultivate an inner stillness, to become for the hawk a perch, a branch, its source of food and safety—its servant, not its friend.
He wanted to empty himself, to love, to be at peace. To live a life of service, not one of punishing exhaustion. “I am curious,” he said, “about every spiritual practice.”
She hesitated. “I can try to explain how it came to me. I can write things down.”
Matt thanked her.
Moved by their encounter, Alison wrote a reflection — in her own mind, a prayer.
“Words are a gift from God,” her email said.
The Mother Hawk’s Soliloquy
IN OUR AERIE, out of twigs and paper scraps, we have built the nest that is our home. One of us hunts. The other watches over our young. Both of us survey the grounds below — the fountain, the rooftops, the green leaves stirred by daybreak — all the places they will light upon when they are old enough to fly.
With our talons, we open each ripe segment of the unfolding day; with our eyes, we uncover its dangerous beauty, offering safety while we can. Underneath me, my little ones shelter from the terrible strangeness of the world. Under my wing, they sleep.
Not long ago, they slid out of my body, encased in brittle shells, and I warmed them into life until I felt them stirring, drawing air, a sharp protrusion breaking through the frail crust that held them, their slight voices crying out for food. Then a beating of the air, the blue sky sliced by wings as their father returns, carrying prey for me to feed them. Small and brave and curious, the hatchlings nudge their way into place, taking the food that I put in their mouths.
Each day they grow. Feathers appear, stubs grow into wings. Each day, I look outward, and their eyes follow mine. Here you will fledge; there you will roost. See where I have hidden food; see where I perch in the rustle of green. Behold the frail earth below, the eggshell sky where no one is safe.
Matthew read her composition, then wrote an email. “Alison, you write with great empathy. You make God alive in our world of uncertainty and beauty. I will ponder these words. Blessings, Fr. Matt.”
He read it over again to make sure it struck the right tone. Pastoral, but not too personal. Almost forty years a priest, he’d become adept at keeping his distance.
He hit, “Send.”
Two Weeks Later Came Easter
MATT WAS NOT FEELING WELL, his body clouded with light-headedness, a trace of nausea. He had just finished celebrating the final Mass of the day, after which he greeted parishioners, grateful to return to the sacristy to remove his vestments. He wanted to go home, to lie down.
The eggshell sky where no one is safe.
He now understood that Alison did not feel safe, and why.
She must have gone to an earlier Mass, he thought. He’d been told that she was taking Daisy to an Easter Sunday raptor display at a local park, a family event. He felt certain that she was avoiding him. Just before Holy Week, she had come to his office to continue sorting and boxing books, and she learned, by accident, that the two of them had once met. It was a brief encounter. She had been desolate and wanted prayers. He had ignored her, conversing with a rather superficial young man who seemed far more aware of her than he did. He should have noticed her desperation. He should have helped her. He didn’t.
Enough. He’d save it for another day when he was feeling better. Alison was upset and needed space; he understood that.
Alone in the sacristy, he took off his embroidered chasuble and was about to untie the cincture on the white robe underneath when a hard fist of pain crushed his chest, tore down his left arm, and knocked him to the ground.
A young woman in front of the church in Toronto, years ago. He doesn’t know her name, but he knows it now. Her dark hair is spiked and erratic like a wild bird’s crest, she is fading into the crowd, he cannot see her. All but the eyes — they burn with a sunlike fever. They ask him why he was living, why he will not acknowledge her. She reaches out to hand him something. “Prayers,” she whispers, as she begins to vanish. All but the eyes, which said, “Save me.”
The thought that ran through his mind: No one will save him.
Yet what of the red-tailed hawk in flight, looking for height and a place to roost. It’s a female; she finds herself a crossbar on an old-fashioned telephone pole in a country outside of time. Soon, she accepts a mate, but there are no high trees for nesting. “Spring will find us a place,” says the great hawk to her mate. “I will lay eggs and protect them; you will cover me with your wings.”
“Pray for me, for the hawks carry our prayers to God,” said Alison.
He watched the hawk, fierce and maternal, her wings brushing his face as his body drifts between the raptor and the world.
Before the priesthood, before the Vietnam war, he’d had a lover named Valerie. He ran away from her. He felt her absence in the fist of pain that grips his chest.
God save me, he prayed.
It was too much to ask God to spare his life again.
The sacristan found him, called 911.
I cannot ask God for my life back. The thought consumed him.
Pain knifed him, tore his chest open.
Other thoughts crowded in.
Gasoline from the plane, and then he caught fire.
Valerie’s son, trapped in the building. How he must have died.
His son.
Another prayer. God, take me now. I owe you a life.
Matt is not sure what he sees in the doctors’ eyes.
He thought of a young man, lost; of the plane he missed.
“My turn.” He struggled to say the words out loud.
The absence of Valerie pierced his chest, his side.
Crucifixion story. Good thief, bad thief.
Roll of the dice. Could be either.
Electrodes on his chest, hooked up to a monitor, zigzag lines telling the doctors what his injured muscle couldn’t do. Blood thinners, nitro, beta blockers. They’d given him an angiogram to see how much damage had been done. Someone asked him, “Have you any family members you could call?” He did not. Both parents, dead of heart attacks. No siblings. His university colleagues were busy. The pastor would come, Father Ron, a kind-hearted man who was grateful for his help. “You’ll be here close to a week, Father,” said the intern. “Someone will have to take you home.”
Matt had visitors in the hospital — parishioners from St. Bartholomew’s, colleagues from Boston College, in publishing and media. Cameron Byrne came up from New York — his theologian friend who could not have come here just to visit him. In town for a lecture, he was sure. He asked Father Ron to email his friend Elias — not to bother him, just to let him know.
Except that Elias was at Mass that day. He’d been the first to know.
Alison had not come.
“Family history?” his cardiologist asked. “Your father and your mother both.”
Pure DNA. What irony. Father Fitness, twice a week at the gym, stuck with clogged-up coronary arteries. He’d gotten the bad news a few years back. But he’d lost track of his meds in the crush of Easter. Parish life did that.
usmcHawkcam.ca
Natalie: Bad news, everyone, Great Speckled Bird had a heart attack. He’s in Mass Gen Hospital.
Hawkette: You’re kidding.
Falco: Don’t get it. Told us he worked out.
BigBird: Poor GSB. Something must of got 2 him.
Downtown: U mean like stress.
BigBird: No, I mean like the Catholic Church.
Kestrella: Or bad genes.
Natalie: He collapsed after Mass. The sacristan found him.
Elias: We must go visit, Nat.
Downtown: Just never know, do you. Right out of the blue.
Falco: Hell, when your time’s up, it’s up.
When he was well enough, Matt opened his laptop and discovered an e-greeting card from his online friends. “Hope you’re flying soon. Get well, Great Speckled Bird, from the Chatters,” and they’d listed their silly nicknames: Hawkette, Downtown, Jumpflap, BluebirdofHappiness, Kestrella, BrightWings, MobyChick, BigBird, RatChow, ItsTimeToFly, Falco, Aero, Shalom, Peregrine (for Alison), Cameraman, a.k.a. Alison’s new buddy, Cam, the theologian.
He read it over and over again. Their names no longer seemed silly. They read like an awkward incantation in a foreign tongue, a twenty-first century liturgy.
Kyrie Eleison. Lord, have mercy.
Everyone needs friends, he thought.
Shorehaven
IN MAY, WHEN MATT FELT BETTER, his superior decided that he should take a year’s leave of absence from academic duties, posting him to a small parish on the ocean side of Cape Cod. It sat on Route 6 at the south end of Shorehaven, a weathered town of clapboard-fronted shops, its tiny streets clam-shacked and flower-basketed in summer, yet still a workaday place for trawlers and fishers’ nets, for the dredging of clams and oysters. It had a small bayside beach popular with families, most of whom rented the cottages on its shore road. Matt was too exhausted to come up with a different plan, and so he gave up the urban comforts of the life he’d known.
He was fine with Shorehaven, its salt wind and spray, its changeable weather — the morning sky greyed out, as if it were a foggy window, later to be scrubbed clean by sunlight and the passing day. There he would live for a year in rest and retreat. He’d say Mass, spend time with parishioners, do cardiac rehab with a visiting nurse. He’d walk and read and pray and try to be open to the simple kindness of his neighbours. There were two light-filled rooms in the rectory set aside for him.
He was still in shock from the fact of his illness. Rest and pray, he thought, but I’ve never learned how to rest.
He remembered his breakdown after Vietnam and then he tried to forget it.
Our Lady of Mercy Church was a bland modern structure that, absent its steeple and cross, might have been mistaken by passing vacationers for a Holiday Inn. Matt didn’t care what it looked like. He spent much of his time in the rectory, where a deck provided him with a quiet place to read and a view of the ocean in the distance. He did not want to mingle with vacationers, and having neither a car nor a licence, he had to rely on cabs or buses to get into town.
He soon met a parishioner who worked early hours on the docks. Since the birds were active and visible at dawn, he would sometimes ride into town with the man for a birding stroll on the bayside beach, then take a cab home. Afterwards, he’d celebrate Mass, assist with parish tasks, do some reading and gentle exercise, email his friends and colleagues. There were oceanside beaches close to the church, but Matt could not yet manage a steep climb — or even the stairs — across the dunes to the water’s edge. He would build up his strength, he thought, for a hike that in his better days would not have taxed him at all.
From time to time, he logged on to the chat room, reassuring the hawk-nest watchers that he was well. He had other gentle distractions. In this tiny hamlet, there was a library, a summer theatre, even a bookstore. Parishioners introduced him to the town and often invited him to dinner. Yet for the most part, he kept to himself.
