The Tender Birds, page 5
“I guess you don’t remember me,” said Gavin.
Matt wondered how he might have known him, hoping to God he hadn’t heard his confession. It was not a thing he would have recalled, since until recent times, confessionals were booths where the penitent could hide his face.
Don’t worry, he told himself. He could be lying.
“I don’t remember you,” said Matt.
“No?”
“We make it our business to let go of things,” said Matt.
“I’m sorry,” said Gavin. “I should not have said that.”
“Find yourself some help, Gavin.”
“You were very kind to me,” he said.
Perhaps
LATER, MATT TOLD NATALIE AND ELIAS that he understood their reservations about Gavin, that not having been in Toronto when his case was in the news, he’d had little sense of what the fuss was about. He then told them for the first time that he’d had his share of troubles as a youth; no tangles with the law, but enough to warrant help from a compassionate priest who’d inspired him to find his calling. “I’m inclined to want to help Gavin, if I can,” he told them. He wanted to add, “Before he does anything he shouldn’t,” but he didn’t.
During his term in Toronto, Matt did not hear from Gavin again, but he read his book and felt unnerved by it, convinced that much of it was fiction, a fabricated change of heart, a calculated scheme to salvage his family’s reputation. No, he thought, it’s just mediocre writing by a man with a prominent name in this city. Even so, some parishioners back home might learn from it. He would occasionally see Gavin strolling across campus, then meandering along the paths in the quad, as if he had time on his hands. Sometimes, he came to St. Basil’s for the noon Mass, where he’d sit in the back and check his email during the Eucharistic prayers, shutting down his phone in time for Communion. Matt wondered if he had a girlfriend. He felt certain that Gavin was not pondering a call to the priesthood. He seemed too charming, smooth, and untroubled. He would have liked to have spoken to the man, to listen to his story of survival, provided he had one other than the fiction he suspected him of writing. Perhaps Gavin was a psychopath. Whatever he was, Matt wished he’d disappear.
Gavin soon vanished from campus, evaporating in increments, like a dirty snowdrift in April.
Loneliness
MATT WOULD HAVE PREFERRED REAL FRIENDS in Toronto. He’d enjoyed the company of Elias, who was himself reserved, a quiet presence. In his residence, he’d chat from time to time with Father Giles, an older priest from Paris who taught Theological French, who spoke good English, but spent much of his spare time watching French TV.
He knew himself to be shy. Yet in spite of loneliness, he felt it a paradox that he was at home with solitude.
He enjoyed watching the great hawks flying over the campus quad.
He did not enjoy reading email from people he would never meet.
On one occasion, he was about to hit “Delete” when he stopped at a fundraising pitch for the South Boston Animal Shelter. He didn’t donate. Instead, he clicked on “Our Patients” and opened a video showing Daisy, the injured falcon and Alison, wearing her blue smock and name tag. She was describing the creature’s progress toward health, showing off her large enclosure, her perch, water, and food supply. “She’ll never fly properly,” said Alison. “She can make it up to the perch, maybe fly to your glove, and that’s about it. But Daisy has a kindly temperament. Schoolchildren would love her.” She then invited online viewers to contact her at the shelter if they’d like to have Daisy visit their school.
Daisy, he had to admit, was a fine-looking specimen.
Alone in his room, he shut off his laptop, bowed his head, and at last remembered to pray for the falcon and her keeper.
Big Birds, Big Brains
ON REFLECTION, THAT DAY CHANGED EVERYTHING. Maybe it had something to do with praying for Alison; maybe her appearance online was a prayerful visitation, a reminder from Daisy that only those who become as little children would inherit the Kingdom. He’d left his office and was striding across the quad toward Brennan Hall, when he glanced up at the nest. Armande had just made a floppy landing, the fan of his red tail snapping shut, his talons gripping a wad of pages from the subway Metro paper.
Keeping up on the news, thought Matt. He greeted Natalie, who was standing at the base of the building, staring upward.
“Reading matter,” she said. “So Josephine won’t get bored while she’s laying eggs.”
“Nesting materials, I would think,” he said.
“Naw. She likes the crossword puzzle.”
Natalie went on to tell Matt that last year, when she spotted eggs in the Brennan Hall nest, she contacted a reporter friend who worked for the Star. The woman arrived with a videographer, and they posted the nest and its brood of chicks on the newspaper’s website. They got so many hits that the paper offered to sponsor a live-streaming webcam of the nest, along with a chat room. It would start this spring; the college loved the idea.
“Wait’ll they hatch,” said Natalie. “It’ll be April. Exam week. Students going nuts.” She turned to him. “Matt, give this some thought. Think about getting involved. It’s anonymous.”
“And we’d discuss…?”
“Bird poop. And bird sex.”
Matt smiled. “A limited field of inquiry,” he said.
“We have to broaden the topic,” said Natalie. “Which is where we come in.”
She explained that the site needed knowledgeable moderators to provoke smart conversation and answer questions about hawks, so she’d pitched the idea to Elias and to Cameron Byrne at Fordham. Both were on board.
“Big birds, big brains,” she said. “You could do it.”
It would be the only chat room on the planet moderated by bird-watching theologians. Matt thought the whole idea was nutty, except for the fact that he knew Cameron Byrne, noted scholar and author of Earth and Cosmos, not some lightweight easy to dismiss. Nor could he discount Elias, a rational, well-spoken academic.
“I’ll see what I can do,” said Matt.
“Don’t do anything,” she said. “We thought it might be fun, that’s all.”
Gentle Soul
MATT GAVE IT SOME THOUGHT, then decided he’d give the chat room a try. As he got to know Natalie better, he began to feel more comfortable with her informality, more at home with her and Elias. It turned out that Natalie was an excellent cook. When Matt wondered where she found the time, Elias told him that she took after her foodie uncle — her hair, like his, the colour of a dazzling sunrise: red sky at morning, sailors take warning.
He wondered about this man who taught her to make crêpes, soufflés, and bouillabaisse — her mom’s brother, both devout and probably gay, from the sound of it. “The family speaks of how he offered grace and blessed their food,” said Elias, but Matt sensed a reason why the man was absent from their conversation, and he did not press Natalie for details. It was as if one day the man had dissolved, having kneaded his goodness into the fine grain of home-baked bread, having harvested life in the grape of a full-bodied Zinfandel.
Matt imagined that Natalie would forever be nourished by the memory of her uncle, holding this gentle soul in the breaking of bread and the blessing of wine, sure that God — if not the likes of Father Matt — might look upon the man with kindness.
FYI
To: Alison@sbas.com
From: FrMatt@utoronto.ca
Re: hawks’ nest
March 15, 2010
Alison,
This may interest you. We have a hawks’ nest at the college, and there will be a webcam and chat room. Log on at usmcHawkcam.ca. Blessings to Daisy.
Fr. Matt
Chat Room
SPRING CAME.
Natalie: Good morning, all.
Hawkette: Hello from Cape Breton!
Natalie: Hi from Toronto. I’m one of your moderators.
Cameraman: NYC here. I’m a mod, too. Welcome, guys.
Skywatcher: I’m all over.
Hawkette: Where’s all over?
Skywatcher: Home’s Indiana, but I’m in Afghanistan.
Hawkette: And they let you goof off online?
Skywatcher: Stress-buster.
Cameraman: You keep safe now.
Alison: I’m from Toronto, living in Boston.
Cameraman: Watcha doing in Beantown?
Alison: I’m a veterinary tech at an animal shelter. I’m fostering a falcon.
Cameraman: No kidding!
Alison: She hurt her wing and can’t fly anymore. I’m going to take her into schools.
Cameraman: Kids’ll go nuts.
Alison: Daisy’s a good girl. She’s OK with it.
Don River: I used to know a girl named Alison.
Alison: ?
Don River: Hot stuff. Good in bed.
…...
Cameraman: Knock it off, Don. We’re pulling the plug on you.
…...
Don River: You can run, but you can’t hide. Bye-bye.
Natalie: Just what we need on Day One.
Kestrella: How do you stop a creep like that?
Natalie: Pull their account. Trolls’ll get us kicked off the website.
Cameraman: Alison? You here?
Natalie: Gone. Let’s hope she’ll be back.
Hawkette: So OK, deep breath. What do you do, Cam?
Cameraman: Shoot birds with a camera. Teach during the day.
Kestrella: Ornithology?
Cameraman: Environment. New branch of theology.
Kestrella: I do vid. Local TV docs in NYC.
Skywatcher: I do hawk patrol. :)
Natalie: Alison, if you’re still here, it’s safe now. We’re all gonna be nice, right?
Kestrella: Chirp, chirp!
Cameraman: Kreeee! That’s hawk for You Got It. You guys are too young to have heard of Jackie Gleason.
Hawkette: Whoozat?
Cameraman: TV personality from the fifties. He’d look over the audience and say: “You’re a goooooooooood group!!!” Ditto for youze guys.
Kestrella: Hey neat! You speak Bronx.
Cameraman: Born in the borough. Got a nine o’clock class tomorrow. Gotta sign off.
A thousand people crashed the site on Day One.
“If you ever need a job…” said the Star reporter to Natalie.
“You’d hire a theologian?”
“I’m thinking you could blog about birds,” she said. “Just in case the God thing doesn’t work out.”
Lurker
THERE WAS NO RECORD of the dialogue in the chat room; Matt only made note of what he recalled of its rapid back and forth — in his view, verbal birdseed flung on the ground and pounced on by pigeons or their human equivalent. He followed the rapid postings and observed the interactions. Snappy wit, and that one distressing interruption during the first chat, most of which he did not include in his notes. He wasn’t used to the vile side of the internet, and more to the point, he was convinced that Alison wasn’t, either. It was at his invitation that she joined the chat, so he felt he ought to be protecting her. But how, he wondered.
At least he could offer kindness, a reassuring presence.
Don River. What a weird nickname. At least it suggested a Toronto person, no one who would track her down in Boston.
Yet Alison had mentioned where she lived.
He hadn’t yet joined the chat room, yet he couldn’t shake the sense that Alison might be in danger, that someone might be stalking her. It didn’t help that she came wrapped in innocence, swaddled in it like a newborn. A predator would find that enticing. Worse, she didn’t protect herself, didn’t use an alias. She drifted inside her own cloud, indifferent to the online convention. Clear as glass, she allowed others to peer inside her, no doubt secure in the knowledge that few could decipher what they saw. Perhaps in the end, that was her best protection.
Remembering Natalie’s invitation, he decided to join the group so that he might look out for Alison. He began to search for an alias, something obscure and biblical. He pulled out his study Bible and started noting avian references. He began with the Book of Revelation.
“Has not my inheritance become to me like a speckled bird of prey that other birds of prey surround and attack? Go and gather all the wild beasts; bring them to devour.” Jeremiah, 12:9.
He underscored the words.
From: FrMatt@utoronto.ca
To: Alison@sbas.com
Re: hawk’s nest
March 18, 2010
Alison, I am so sorry about what happened to you during the first chat, especially since I encouraged you to join the group. I’m about to become a moderator, and I’d like to assure you that should you join us again, you’ll be safe with three of us in charge. What you must do is to give yourself an alias. You need to protect yourself.
You remain in my prayers.
Fr. Matt
Custody of the Eyes
APART FROM MATT’S CONCERNS about the chat room, the nest was alive with a new and mysterious kind of life, one that touched everyone, delighting the students and gracing his own table with improbable conversation. “We have permission,” said Elias one evening over dinner, “if you would like to bless the nest.”
Matt paused. “My pleasure,” he said.
“The Star will cover it for sure,” said Natalie.
“They’ve probably noticed that Armande is lining his nest with the Star,” said Matt.
They hoped it could be in early April, before the eggs hatched.
Matt felt touched. “I’ve never blessed a nest before,” he said.
“We don’t know anyone who has,” said Elias.
Matt laughed, helped himself to seconds of poulet aux pruneaux.
“You’re a fine cook,” he told Natalie. “Michelin Three-Star: Exceptional.”
Natalie thanked him. Opening her notepad, she began to list the possible order of the day’s events.
She doesn’t dwell on compliments, thought Matt. Strange, the look on her face, as if his compliment had scalded her, as if she’d touched a hot saucepan, then dropped it into the sink, a sizzle of cold water dousing her words. Don’t be ridiculous. She’s modest, that’s all.
Although most times, Natalie was anything but shy.
He glanced at a photo on a table; teenage Natalie chopping veggies alongside a red-headed man who resembled her. Another photo showed the same man, his arm around a buddy.
That must be her uncle. The chef Elias said she resembled in looks and culinary skills. Yet he had the old priestly habit: custody of the eyes, mind your own business. Natalie drew silence around herself, as if she were pulling a drape around a hospital bed. She was in no hurry to reveal who she was. As if she were carrying something, a wound she didn’t want known.
Like a Pilgrim
From: Alison@sbas.com
To: FrMatt@utoronto.ca
Re: chat room
March 18, 2010
Hello, Fr. Matt, thank you for your encouragement. I’m going to wait a bit before trying the chat again. That troll gave me a scare, as if he were lying in wait. It felt personal. It was my own fault for not using an alias. Here is my new one (hint – one word — like a pilgrim), so you can know it’s me when I log on. As a rule, I enjoy online chatting. I offer prayers with Daisy, and I’ve never been bothered on Twitter.
Best wishes,
Alison
You’ve never been bothered on Twitter because your obsession with Daisy makes you look a bit odd, Matt thought. Yet Alison was young, nimble with language, skilled at the digital life in a way that he was not. He felt certain that with her avian training, she’d be an asset to the chat room, that she’d soon be back. He was the outsider. He didn’t get the rambunctious chat, the website ticker that rolled up past a thousand on the first day, the students who chronicled these events in a blog called Egg Roll (where did they find time?), the daily updates on the Star online. More within his grasp were the students clumping around the steps in front of Brennan Hall, congregating along the lane running south from Brennan Hall to St. Joseph Street, smart phones and binoculars in hand.
Even so, he found the whole thing remarkable.
“Because the Holy Ghost over the bent/ World broods, with warm breast and with ah! bright wings,” wrote Hopkins, a poet who was also a priest. The hawks were stunning, after all.
Nest Blessing
THE NEST BLESSING WAS HELD MID-WEEK, on a warm and sunny afternoon in late March. It happened that in 2010, the rituals of Holy Week and Easter sprawled across the first week of April, and the blessing could not be put off until later. By then, the hatchlings would have appeared, and the protective parents might attack Father Matt or anyone else who approached the nest.
So, March it was, and Matt performed the ritual from the lane below the nest, at a distance from Josephine, fierce protector of her clutch of eggs, and away from Armande, perched in a nearby maple, rustling his feathers on full alert for predators. A fine spring day, and some parishioners from St. Basil’s Church joined the students, lining up in the lane that ran south of Brennan Hall. Elias welcomed everyone, and then Natalie stepped forward and began to sing.
She sang in praise of birds and of plants and of all living things. She sang with a beautiful soprano voice, and the sound of it drew Matt into the woods of his youth, into the memory of Valerie and her guitar, a song she had written — “Lost in My Island Time” — and the wooden bird he gave her because he’d let her be bullied and hadn’t stood up for her. Valerie’s singing still adrift on the breeze, a silken ribbon of sound, and in the distance, the bonging and whirring of his father’s clocks that had trapped that man in the passing time. Yet he believed that in memory, the past was alive and eternal, somehow redeemed and blessed inside the compassionate heart of God.
