Hopeless Things

Of all the foolish things Lena had brought home –– the broken grandfather clock, the rusty candlesticks, the chipped china cup (she had a penchant for hopeless things) –– this muddied mess of slush-gray feathers had to be one of the most idiotic. A pigeon is not an aesthetic creature in the best of circumstances, and this was not the best of circumstances.

After thirty two years of marriage, how did she think Jonas was going to react?

Not well: that was evident from the way her eyes darted to the clock above the oven before she knelt to rummage under the sink. She extracted a collapsed cardboard box and re-assembled it with more luck than skill, strips of duct tape wrinkling and twisting in on themselves before her harried yanks persuaded them into grudging compliance. Finished, she glanced over the box and pressed her lips together at a scar-like tear curving up from one corner. (Lena, of course, recycled. Jonas, of course, let her break down her own damn boxes if she was so bent on saving the world.)

The turquoise lines on the oven clock flickered and rearranged themselves: 5:47. She had about ten minutes, fifteen with bad traffic, and even she knew that wasn’t much time to inconspicuously situate a dysfunctional fowl in a condominium. Her hand went behind her ear, less to tuck away a cinder-gray strand of hair -- she’d pulled it all into a too-tight bun today -- than by force of habit, a memory of the sporadic mess of curls it used to be. She lined the box with a faded blue towel, scooped in the bedraggled bird, and stepped back to survey her handiwork.

“I guess you’re hungry, arentcha?” she asked. Wasted words; the pigeon, lying still and stunned on the towel in a duster-like heap, offered no hope of response. But then, she tried to talk to her husband too, didn’t she? Hopeless things.

She scattered a few pieces of sesame-seed bagel in one corner of the box, then set a little dish her niece had made in pottery -- ugly, lopsided thing, painted with indelicate streaks of yellow-green -- in another. Carefully (and you could say this for Lena: she knew the importance of a careful touch) she lifted the box and brought it into the guest room closet, wedging it next to a stack of fitted sheets. She filled up a dusty plastic watering can, poured a little water into the dish, then lingered in front of the closet.

He’d be home soon, and her hand twisting at her skirt said she knew it, but before she shut the door and went to put on a little lipstick, she leaned forward and whispered some private thing to the bird. It’ll be alright, maybe, or just a prayer to last longer than the china cup, which got shattered on a bad night a few days after she found it.

But Jonas came home tired and went to bed early. The only close call came after midnight, when the ridiculous bird let out a warbling coo. Lena lay awake, still except for the fingers that worried at a button on her nightshirt, holding her breath and watching the mountain slope of Jonas’s back stall for a moment. Then it sank as he exhaled, long and deep: still asleep. The hooting trailed off, a call unanswered, and Lena released her breath and let her hand drop and didn’t close her eyes for a long time.

The morning passed without incident; it was like that with him sometimes. A quick shave, tie knotted, toast and coffee ingested in silence, navy jacket buttoned, and he was gone.

And then: in the closet, a small wonder. The bird had picked itself up and sorted its mess of feathers. Now, it paced back and forth around the bottom of the box, pecking at stale bagel crumbs and bobbing its head like a clock pendulum in reverse.

“Well, would you look at yourself! Not half bad, love.”

Smiling a little, Lena pulled a fitted sheet over the top of the box and carried it to the porch. She set it down, lifted the sheet, stood back, and waited…

For a moment, it stayed stone-still; then there was a chaos of flapping –– it could not be called aerodynamic –– and the pigeon at last launched itself aloft.

A stupid, risky secret to have kept, this bird. And close to pointless, saving one pigeon of a flock of millions. But what a picture it made: the bird, stout and smudgy in the vague morning light and rising, still rising, on its clumsy ash grey wings, and Lena, hair stirred by the wind, watching from the doorway.