The Tender Birds, page 6
For a moment, he wondered where he was.
Natalie had stopped singing, and her silence nudged him back into the world as his eye caught something — no, someone — a slim dark-haired man in a well-tailored jacket and silk tie, one whose stylish attire stood out from the rumpled assortment of student jeans and hoodies. He wasn’t taking photos, just scanning the crowd, elbows folded across his chest, a caustic look of disapproval in his eyes. Gavin Moore, he thought. The man who’d barged into his office. He wondered why he’d come.
Matt took a spruce bough and dipped it in water. “May God bless this nest,” he said, “which nurtures the gift of new life.”
He watched dozens of hands raise cellphones high as if they could both give a blessing and capture some radiant image of its presence as he swung his arm high, scattering droplets into the air and down on the steps before him. Looking up, he noticed that Josephine was sitting on the nest, eyeing his blessing, calm and attentive, as if she were aware of the solemnity of the occasion.
At that moment, Matt saw Armande soaring, flying eastward toward the nest, clutching a rat in his talons. He landed beside his hungry mate and began to eviscerate the rodent, tossing the unwanted bits over the edge of the roof and feeding the rest to her.
He noticed TV videocams tracking Armande. It’ll be the last item on the local news, he thought. The hawk swooped above him, calling its silvery kre-e-e-e note. It flew low enough to cast a shadow.
Hawks are messengers, the native people say.
He’d grown fond of Armande and Josephine. He admired their detachment, their lack of complication. It touched him that he looked forward to the hatching eggs. Alison would have enjoyed the blessing, Matt thought.
Later, he mingled with guests and spoke to parishioners, struck by their interest in the nest. He noted that Gavin Moore was nowhere to be seen, and he wondered if that dapper critic had been him or someone else. Meanwhile, Elias and Natalie were giving interviews to local media. He didn’t catch the stations, but at one point, he heard Elias speaking French to a reporter. He made a mental note to watch the news.
That Man
HE DECIDED TO WATCH TV LATER that evening, making his way to the lounge, knowing Father Giles would be there, tuning in to the French news. As he greeted his colleague, he saw on the screen the reporter who’d interviewed Elias. “Shall I translate?” asked the priest, and Matt said “Yes,” listening to the man’s rendition of Elias as he described the hawks’ spectacular plumage, their dedication to the nest, the treat in store for thousands of online visitors who would observe the second brood of loveable young from Armande and Josephine.
“Oh, and here is that man,” said Father Giles, laughing.
Matt wondered what he meant, until he realized that the interview had ended, and the program’s anchor had returned to the screen. “He’s so funny in French,” said Father Giles. “Just his tone of voice. So serious, almost mocking. Listen…”
“Le bénédiction des faucons,” the man intoned. The blessing of the hawks.
“And look how he raises his hand to bless.” Father Giles laughs as he points to the screen. “Que Dieu vous benisse.” Such irony in his voice. He is making fun of the whole idea.”
Matt looked at the screen, startled. That face. The man’s hair was white now.
“You know he reported from Rwanda,” said Father Giles. “He cannot take this seriously.”
He had not set eyes on Gerard Lefèvre in over forty years.
He excused himself and left.
Gerard, his house super during that fateful summer when the man threw him out for disorderly behaviour, then married Valerie when he himself refused her. She was pregnant, but he didn’t want a child. Not yet.
Gerard Lefèvre raised his son.
He was going to forget about this. Put it out of mind.
It was a condition of his acceptance into the priesthood that he never tell anyone he’d fathered a son.
He went to the campus gym, worked out, forgot it all.
Supper, then plenty of papers to mark. Then sleep.
A Note Matt Wrote to Himself
TORONTO, APRIL 1, 2010
It’s Holy Week and classes are over. Exams coming up, then meetings.
The online group is watching the eggs, waiting for a pair of hatchlings, two bewildered, fluff-headed young, dark eyes full of whatever the dark eyes of a tiny bird are full of. No doubt, they’ll observe them, tweet and post Facebook photos and videos on YouTube. The chat room troll has left the scene and Alison’s come back (New life would probably bore that guy to tears).
It was a shock to see Gerard Lefèvre on TV, his hair white, bereaved by the loss of his son. For so long I have carried him in memory as a young man. I had forgotten this.
We are made up of so many isolated souls. School kids in classrooms, shut-in seniors, internet junkies with time on their hands.
Old folks sitting on park benches.
People who find themselves alone.
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LATER, AT SHOREHAVEN, Matt remembered how he would pray for the anonymous souls seated before their screens, for all those who gathered, nest-like, to encircle and protect the clutch of eggs about to hatch. He found himself praying for the eggs as well, but he would have been embarrassed to tell anyone he did.
Peregrine: Hello there, anybody home?
Kestrella: Chirp. Might as well be sitting on the nest, that’s how “home” I am.
Hawkette: Two chicks hatched this morning. Aren’t they beautiful?
Kestrella: Awww! Little fluffballs. Do they eat rat?
Cameraman: Fresh off the bone. Here comes dad with takeout.
Skywatcher: Hi guys. Love those chicks!
Peregrine: Little factoid: the correct name for a hawk chick is eyas.
Cameraman: Eye-ass? Sounds rude.
Peregrine: It’s the same for falcons. I’m a Raptor Educator.
Cameraman: Wazzat?
Peregrine: I’ve just earned my licence to keep falcons and display them, too. Now I can take my Daisy to the schools.
Skywatcher:You’ve got a falcon named Daisy?
Peregrine: She was in an accident. She’s very sweet-natured.
Skywatcher: We could use her in the army!
Peregrine: She’d be good company, but she can’t fly well.
GSB: How long before they fledge?
Kestrella: Six weeks, maybe. Look at those teeny talons!
Skywatcher: Mama’s feeding them rat bits. Look how she skewers that rat.
Natalie: Hi folks, sorry I’m late. How do you like the chicks?
Cameraman: The term is “eyas.” No, it’s not a cuss word.
Natalie: OK, chickadees :) It’s our job to name them. How about we thank the college for letting us do this? Name the little ones Carr and Teefy.
Kestrella: Are they the Canadians who discovered penicillin?
Natalie: Uh-uh. That would be Banting and Best.
Kestrella: Oops.
Cameraman: Carr and Teefy played goalie for the Leafs!
Natalie: Carr and Teefy are two campus halls.
Cameraman: The green stuff’ll roll in.
Hawkette: I feel so protective of these little ones.
Peregrine: So do I.
Hawkette: Awesome. Blessed be the birds. Shit, I still believe in God. Night, all.
What He Couldn’t Write
ONE YEAR LATER, MATT BEGAN to write in his journal about the hawks’ nest. He did this with hesitation, haunted by a dream he’d had of a tree nest that ended up on the town beach, one that was woven of perfection, twigs, and darkness; one that the tide — or some predator — had snatched away, its grown birds absent, its nestlings destroyed. It was as if all nests were woven of that single one, made of the same frail symmetry. All young birds emerged from its eggs, all were held in the same mysterious circle of life and death. To speak of a nest was to tread on holy ground. To write of it was to set words adrift in the tide that had drawn it away from him. All he could do was remember.
Still, he recalled good things that happened during the time of the great hawks Josephine, Armande, and their young, the growing and fledging of the two eyasses, Carr and Teefy. How the students clustered around tablets and smart phones as if they themselves were nesting parents, along with thousands online, not to mention the chat room: Cameraman teasing young Alison/Peregrine who seemed to like the attention, one or more trolls having been banished from the site; Kestrella and Hawkette oohing and aahing over the nestlings, watching as they tottered out on the Brennan Hall overhang, jumping and flapping their wings.
Skywatcher saying, “What a beautiful sight, a comfort,” as he’d just lost two buddies outside Kabul to an IED, at which point Matt thought, I know what you’re going through, but he didn’t write it. He didn’t want to get going on Nam and maybe that was selfish. He wrung himself out over that and finally he said, “Peace, brother, I’m old enough to remember the war,” and Sky said, “Thanks, GSB, you’re a bud,” and then he went on to say, “My heart goes out to all of you. You’re good people. You don’t know how much this means to me. In memory of my lost buddies, I wish the fledgling hawks good flight,” and there were a lot of tears when he wrote that, even from Falco who’s a tough nut, and Downtown who lost his brother on 9/11.
Everyone’s got their own worst memory, thought Matt, both personal and of this world so full of mayhem. It didn’t take much to set it off. He understood Sky’s anguish, Downtown’s grief, but he could never talk to a man who’d lost a son. Even though he himself had lost a son, it was not the same; his son was not a loved one. What right had he to live in thrall to that late-summer day of aerial homicide and collapsing towers, to cling to that prayer card that Valerie had sent him, a life raft against the surging tide of new calamities, inevitable forgetting? He should just let go of it, and yet he could not, would not.
Even so, new things had enticed him. Natalie and Elias organized a Fledge Watch for those in Toronto keeping vigil on a bench outside Brennan Hall, and it seemed as if everyone on earth must have been watching on that warm May afternoon when little Carr and then Teefy lifted their uncertain wings and flew with an amateurish, unhawkish flapping from the nest into a nearby tree where Armande was waiting with a small cache of pigeon bits to reward them. Josephine followed along, and there was a round of applause from a crowd of onlookers on the ground.
Matt had wondered what would become of the online chat, now that the eyasses were gone from the nest. It had surprised him that he cared.
Yet he did not write that down. That he cared.
Cool Wind of Silence
EASTER SUNDAY MIGHT HAVE BEEN the reason Matt stopped writing about the nest. In 2010, the feast fell on April 4, a month before the hatching of Carr and Teefy. Images drifted through memory, foretelling nothing more than a happy occasion — Sunday Mass, a mild spring day, a walk to Natalie’s on St. Joseph Street for brunch.
Elias greeted him, just as one of his guests asked, “Did anyone check out Armande this morning? Flew in with a humungous dead rat and dropped it! Right on the steps of St. Basil’s Church!” Laughter all around.
“And did Armande go back for it?” Matt asked.
“Either he did, or a certain college president is going to pick it up by the tail and drop it on Natalie’s desk”, said Elias. Howls of laughter.
Then Elias raised his hand for silence. Natalie handed him a bottle of champagne and a towel. “Easter is a time of special happiness and new life. So we have brought all of you here to let you know that we are going to be married,” said Elias. “In June. Here on campus. And you are all invited.” Everyone applauded while Elias popped the cork and poured champagne.
“Bravo!” said Matt, sipping his drink. Feeling mellow, he offered a toast. “To the wedding of theology and the culinary arts,” he added. “With the blessing of Armande and Josephine.”
Everyone raised their glasses. Matt was feeling more relaxed than usual, or it may have been the champagne. He couldn’t take his eye off the photo of the young red-haired man, and when he went into the kitchen, he said to Natalie, “I hope I’m not being rude, but there’s a photo of a man you resemble. Is that your uncle?”
She smiled at him. “Yes,” she said. “It’s an old picture, taken years ago, at his boyfriend’s house.”
A look crossed her face, one he knew well from parish work. Oh my God, I’m talking to a priest. I shouldn’t have said that.
“There’s a story behind it,” she continued. She looked hesitant, as if she were waiting for permission to go on.
“So, tell me.”
“They’d made a feast for Andre’s parents,” she began, “but his dad didn’t make it back in time. He was a reporter, stranded in — God, I don’t remember. The Middle East. Something blew up over there. Anyway, Uncle James was trying to cheer up Andre and his mom. They loved each other so much, those two men. Yes, Uncle James used to come over and bake with me. Apart from Elias, he’s the kindest man I’ve ever known.”
Matt was struck by her ease in talking. She’s on her second round of champagne, he thought. Like me.
“Culinary mystery solved,” he said. “I think you were blessed.”
“I’m relieved, Matt,” said Natalie. “I was shy about sharing this. Not all priests are okay around gay people.”
He laughed and said, “Don’t worry. I’ll look forward to meeting him at your wedding.”
Rather than the smile he expected, poor Natalie dropped her voice and said, “He’s no longer with us. He had a career in New York, poor Uncle James…” Matt was thinking HIV/AIDS, but she said, “he was a sous-chef at the restaurant in the Twin Towers.”
Matt whispered, “Oh, my God,” and she went on to say that his partner was in the opposite building. He did web design or something. Neither made it out.
Matt felt dizzy. He asked her the name of her uncle’s partner, and she said, “Andre Lefèvre. His dad’s an anchor on Radio-Canada. Why did you want to know?”
Matt said, “So that I can pray for them both.”
The conversation ended, and Matt helped her serve the meal, but he ate little. He said he was tired and left early.
He sat on a bench in the quad and watched the hawks’ nest.
He stared at the ledge above the entrance to Brennan Hall, its chiselled Gothic facade streaked with the chalky residue of bird poop.
Andre.
My son was gay.
The mother hawk was brooding on her eggs.
His mother Valerie married Gerard.
If I’d raised my son, maybe he would have been straight.
A crowd was gathering to watch the hawks. He ignored them.
He’d thought he’d gotten over this. For God’s sake you wanted her to get rid of it. She refused. You ran off to Vietnam. She found herself a husband.
He glanced upward, and a cool wind of silence swept across him, as it does when the moon’s shadow is about to eclipse the sun. He vanished into its dark penumbra. He did not wish to re-emerge in daylight.
Reverie
ONCE, HE CARVED VALERIE A TENDER BIRD, and she became that bird and sang. She’d pull music out of the air, as if the strings of her guitar were made of light. Her music shivered inside it until he couldn’t bear it anymore, until he took her inside, until he kissed her, until he undressed her, and she began to cry. But she was ready and he said, “Now,” and she said, “I’m afraid,” and he said, “Don’t be, I love you.” And he got her on the bed and together they began Andre, and she said, “I love you,” and he said, “See? It’s good, isn’t it? Tell me it’s good,” and she whispered, “It’s good,” but he meant their pleasure, while Valerie meant what was happening inside her, what would grow between them and beyond them. And when he found out, he wanted it gone, and he almost got his way. Thank God he did not, but Andre died anyway, and now he wondered if his foul wish was a curse that pursued his innocent son and finally doomed him.
Alone
MATT MARRIED NATALIE AND ELIAS in the student chapel under St. Basil’s church, just east of Brennan Hall and the hawks’ nest and the quad where the two magnificent red-tails were teaching their fledglings to hunt and fly.
“Elias, will you take Natalie to be your wife,” and Matt noticed their faces alight with joy. He watched Elias take Natalie’s right hand. Natalie placed her left hand on her stomach, and Matt caught the slight curve of her slender form, the life for whom these vows were made.
The couple left the chapel, then stood in the walled garden by the entrance to receive the good wishes of their families and friends. There was a reception afterwards at Brennan Hall. As the pair approached the entrance, one of the great hawks swooped down over them, calling out its elegant kre-e-e-e note, then ascending to the sky. “My grandfather would say that is a blessing,” said Elias to the guests.
“I think it’s his wedding gift,” said Natalie. “A greeting from Nigeria.”
“A gift of grace,” said Elias.
Matt went to the reception, mixed with the guests, said a few goodbyes. He would be leaving Toronto soon, heading back to Boston, to his academic duties and to an understaffed parish in need of a part-time priest.
Elias will make a good father, he thought. A generous man.
You’ve been another sort of father, said his heart.
My last chance, that’s why.
God forgives if you ask. You know that.
