Thy Neighbor (9 page)

The second time I heard it, just minutes later—the same words in the same order—I was sure it was a recording and that Gruber must have had some electronics in his study after all, maybe an old tape player.

But again, a book on tape just wasn't Gruber's thing.

Was it?

And poetry on tape?

That was just beyond the realm of possibility.

But it was a poem. I became sure when, a few minutes later, I heard the next line floating across the darkness of Gruber's study out of nowhere.

To everything on earth the compass round
.

Yep. Sure enough. A poem. Google that and get? Robert Frost. Wait. What? Robert Frost?

And then I remembered.

Yes, yes.

Of course.

Iris.

It was Iris.

Mom had told me all about Iris. How could I forget? Iris, the African gray parrot, had been taught to recite poems.

Gruber had made his money from a chain of fancy pet stores that catered largely to impulse buyers, spoiled twenty- and thirtysomething Twin Pines type chicks mostly, who could be counted on to drop a grand or more on a puppy on a random Saturday afternoon because it was just too cute. That, or they'd get their hormonally befuddled boyfriends to do it for them. Always another whipped guy whipping out his credit card for Missy, thinking it a relatively small price to pay for a regular BJ and some peace of mind of a Monday Night Football. Before the poor suckers had left the store, they'd have been whined not just into the squirming purchase itself, but into spending another three hunge on a bed for the little pissmonster, too, and more still on the required paraphernalia: leash, toys, food, prophylactics.

For Gruber, it was a fine living. A very fine living, especially when you factored in the monthly groomings, which were the bread and butter of the business. Gruber had good relationships with local breeders, which is where he'd gotten his own dogs, and he could guarantee the health of his pets in a way that most other pet stores couldn't.

He always had a half dozen puppies at any one time, as well as a range of reptiles (boas, iguanas, turtles, lizards) and their live fare (mice, rats, crickets). He also had an impressive range of birds, which always included one or two African grays or a macaw among the usual cockatiels, lovebirds, and parakeets.

Gruber had read all about the famous African gray, Alex, who was owned and trained for thirty years by an animal psychologist. Alex, among other African grays who'd participated in longitudinal studies, disproved the notion that parrots could only parrot what they'd heard from their human owners or imitate ambient sounds. Over the course of his life, Alex had learned to identify objects by color and shape and to use his extensive vocabulary to construct original phrases.

Gruber liked the idea of having smart birds in his store, and charging appropriately for them, too. They usually went for six or seven hundred each—easy.

It's hard to know whether Gruber's special interest in African grays had been spontaneous, because, according to my mom's telling of the story, which is the only reason I knew about any of this, Gruber was actually turned on to the birds by Robin Bloom, who at her preposterously young age was not only reading Dante, but Iris Murdoch, too. She'd apparently come across an African gray in a Murdoch novel and had developed a fascination with the birds. Mom told me about the novel—she knew it, of course, and had actually been the one to recommend Murdoch to Robin in the first place. Apparently, the descriptions of the bird and its interaction with its owner were so captivating, so human, that Robin wanted to know if African grays were like that in real life.

She showed up at Gruber's pet store one day, where he did have one African gray in stock, and spent three hours introducing herself to the bird. Every day after that for months she'd show up, head back to the gray's cage, and play with it. She started training it to say hello and good-bye, and to give kisses. She even named it Iris, after Iris Murdoch.

I guess Gruber was really taken with this, and with Robin in general, as everyone in the neighborhood was. So on her tenth birthday, he presented her with Iris as a gift. Robin was over the moon, and after that she was almost never seen without the bird. Mom said that the Blooms bought Robin a hard-sided mesh backpack with a perch in it so she could walk the bird around the neighborhood. Robin was almost never without that backpack, either strapped to her back or propped next to her on the grass as she read.

After I left for boarding school, I think my mom had a rough time adjusting to the empty nest, and so she took on Robin as a kind of pupil adoptee. The Blooms didn't really know what to make of Robin's bookishness, or how to feed it, but they saw that my mom did. So they encouraged the friendship, allowing Robin to head to our place most days for an hour or so after school. Robin was at our house just about any time the Blooms needed a babysitter. Sometimes she even spent the night.

During our weekly phone calls, Mom mentioned Robin all the time. Robin and I are reading this—“It's cute, she's really inquisitive about the characters' motivations”—or Robin and I got an ice cream, or Robin stayed the night and we watched old movies until eleven and fell asleep in front of the TV. I came to think of Robin as my little sister, even though I had hardly anything to do with her.

Mom gave Robin reading lists, just as she had done with me, and fed the kid's addiction to poetry. They did an odd range, mostly stuff my mom liked and had rustled out of the canon: Auden and Elizabeth Bishop, bits of Frost (most of it she said she found too farmhouse macho to bear), Merrill, Milton, the Bard's sonnets to death, of course, and a host of new unestablished poets they'd found in
The New Yorker
and
The
Paris Review
.

They laughed at Plath and Sexton, reciting “Daddy” while swooning in a nightgown.

“I mean, honestly, rhyming ‘shoe' with ‘achoo,'” Mom would howl, “and likening herself to a Jew. Really. It's too much.”

Robin was a more willing and dedicated pupil than I had ever been, probably because she was unencumbered by the lusty shackles of male adolescence, which had made seersucker pornographers of more than a few gifted American writers of the twentieth century, so why not their buck devotees as well?

Robin wasn't whacking off to Henry Miller's description of a female orgasm—an accordion collapsing in a bag of milk, I mean, my God—or fantasizing about bending Elizabeth Bennet over her desk and really giving her something to write home about.

Robin had her mind on the material, and her battered old soul locked onto it like a heat-seeking missile. All the pain in those pages, all the thwarted desire, the longing and the channeled ire. She knew it by heart. It was her pain and her loneliness, her alienation that these writers were shouting down the years. Nothing spoke to her more truly, or so Mom said.

“She's such an odd girl. So profoundly sad. So sensitive. So much more seasoned than her age would suggest. It's enough to make you half believe in reincarnation. I keep saying to myself: How does she know this stuff? How does she feel it?”

I'm sure Mom saw herself in Robin, the precocity—both intellectual and spiritual—the knowing more than any kid that age should know about the crushing disappointments of life, and the isolation. It was all there. Mirror image. One silvered surface facing another, and reflecting it back, and back, and back, and back, endlessly until it was almost enough to give substance to nothing. What more could Narcissus himself have asked for?

Robin taught Iris to say lines, and so she did, even after the girl disappeared. Well after. Gorgeous lines and memories echoing through the house, until the Blooms couldn't take it anymore. They asked Gruber to take the bird back. And he did. Gladly, I'm sure. Because he loved Robin, too, and was touched by her, it seemed, as by no one else.

For thirteen years, Iris had been in his study, reciting, keeping the lost girl alive to him. And now to me, as I shuffle around with those lovely, lovely words in my head, going around and around again.

Strictly held by none, is loosely bound

By countless silken ties of love and thought

To everything on earth the compass round.

9

“What are you thinking about when you sit there?” I asked.

Monica was at the window as usual, staring out. I was lying on the couch as usual, staring at her. I'd been on the Net for hours, fully absorbed in articles on
Slate
and
The
Huffington Post
, and at first I hadn't noticed her wake and move to the window behind me. But by the time I had, I'd also noticed a strangeness about her, a sense of tension or anticipation, like a mood waiting to break. We'd fallen asleep at dawn as usual, and she'd stayed through the morning and afternoon. She'd slept deeply, and now she was still here, perched on the edge of something, it seemed, but reluctant to step in.

“What to do,” she said finally.

“I'm sorry?” I said, momentarily confused.

“I'm thinking about what to do.”

I felt my stomach squeeze. No one says that when the thoughts are good. No one had ever said it to me before, not like that, or if they had, I hadn't been attentive enough to care.

“Is it so hard to know?” I asked, trying not to sound afraid.

She turned from the window, placed her feet on the floor, and looked at me with a pitying expression.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, it is.”

“Why?” I asked, stupidly.

She laughed lightly.

“If I could tell you the why, I wouldn't need to worry about the what.”

Okay. True enough. What was the incentive to talk if she had nothing to gain by it?

“What are the options, then?” I said. “Can you tell me those?”

“The usual,” she said.

“Stay or go?” I said.

She nodded. “Pretty much.”

“Every time you come here, you're thinking that?” I said, a bit fatigued by the idea.

“More or less.”

She gave me the pitying look again.

“You're sorry you asked.”

I wanted to slap her.

“Heavy silences scare me,” I said.

“I don't get it,” she said, screwing up her face. “Do you like to hear bad news?”

The desire to hit her was so strong then that I had to shove my hand between the cushions of the couch and sling my leg over it.

“I'd rather have the storm,” I said, “than the threat of it.”

She cocked her head quizzically, amused, surprised. The goon had said something
sub-tile
. Almost. Gee.

“It's coming anyway,” I blundered. “Either way.”

“Sooner or later,” she agreed, playfully.

I took my hand out of the couch.

“Right.”

She smiled broadly, showing her teeth, her eyes telegraphing the thought: Dummy doesn't mind teasing. Could be fun.

She liked this game, so I would play. It would chafe. But fine.

“Do you dislike me?” I asked. “Or is it that I'm lousy in bed?”

She chuckled.

“You're okay in bed, and I like you. That's the problem.”

“Feeling guilty?”

“A little, maybe, because I'm nice.” She frowned jokingly. “But not really, because you're so awful.”

“Not everything people say about me is true.”

She clapped her hands victoriously. I had fallen into the trap.

“It's not what people say about you. It's that you know what people say about you, and you wear it like a badge.”

“But it's not me,” I said.

“You wear it—”

It was as if I hadn't spoken.

“Like a badge,” she finished. “Just so that you can say, ‘It's not me.'”

“But it isn't,” I said.

“I know,” she said glaringly. “So why not be yourself in the first place and stop trying so hard?”

She was serious by the end without quite intending to be, her tone curling sharply around the question.

“Because I don't know how,” I said, somberly. “I really don't know how.”

This sounded cheap and unfair, the way it quashed the fun we were having at my expense, the kind of thing a weak person says to avoid the truth, except that it was the truth and I was weak.

“You're really not that awful, you know?” she said. “Even awful you isn't that awful, which is why it's so funny. Awful you is like sweet you's idea of awful, and it's kind of transparent and annoying.”

“And that's why you want to go?” I complained. “Because I'm not very good at being a jerk?”

She threw up her hands.

“Have you heard a thing I've said?”

“Yes, yes, all right. Look, I told you. I don't know how else to be. I'm trying.”

“Trying what exactly?”

“Trying to relax, be myself, figure out what that is. I've never had to do this before with anyone. I didn't even think it was possible.”

She turned back toward the window, leaning into the embrasure wall and drumming her head softly against it. She looked bored, disappointed. I was confirming the worst.

“Your mind is a hard place to live, isn't it?” I said, lunging further into the mistake.

“Why do you say that?” she said, raising her head.

“You're just very intense, that's all.”

She snickered softly and settled back.

“Ah, right. Intense,” she said, closing her eyes. “Yeah, I get that a lot. I guess it's the only word in most people's range that comes anywhere close to reaching me.” Her eyes flashed open and darted toward me, then away. “Except that it doesn't.”

“Most people have limited vocabularies,” I said apologetically.

“Yes,” she said. “But you don't.”

“So, therefore, I should do better.”

It wasn't a question.

“Yes, you should, but it doesn't matter. You're just being lazy, talking the way everyone around you talks, picking up bad habits, covering your difference. We all do it.”

“That's gracious of you.”

If she heard this, I couldn't tell. She had tilted her head to the side dreamily and was watching the slow progress of something on the street outside—a passing car, maybe, or someone picking up the mail.

“You want to know why I'm looking out the window? Why I'm always looking out the window?” she said with taut exasperation.

She turned toward me, narrowing her eyes cruelly.

“Because this is the quality of your conversation.”

She had been watching the garbage truck outside. It was close now. I could hear the whine of its compressor and the jolting release of the brake. The back man called something to the driver—“Up” or “Yep”—and they lurched the twenty yards to the next drive.

“How do you want to talk about this?” I asked. “I'm just trying to find a way in.”

“Suddenly now you want to know?” she said. “Or is it just to relieve the discomfort of the silence?”

“Is there a difference?”

“Yes, there's a difference. A big one. Either you want to know me or you're scratching an itch—which is it?”

“I'm trying to minimize the damage,” I shouted suddenly. “I'm sitting here looking at you sitting there, way off somewhere in your head the whole time as if you didn't want to be here. But you always come back. And so I ask myself, why? Why does she keep coming back if she doesn't like it or need it or something? What's the reason? Except that I don't really want to know the reason, because I have this terrible sneaking suspicion that it's going to make me feel like shit.”

“How could it possibly do that? You do this all the time.”

“I don't. I've done it with dozens of people who have nothing going on in their heads. People I picked because they were drunk and willing.”

“So you're like everybody else. So what? I told you that already.”

“And you're not. You said that, too.”

“Yeah, I did, which means you don't have the depth for this kind of conversation. Get it?”

That pierced. I was shouting again. “You don't have any idea what I'm capable of? You've known me all of what? A few months? And that only in snatches between fucks. And suddenly now you're sure of everything about me. Forget it. I'm sorry I asked. You're the one who's incapable of this conversation, clearly, but you'll make it look like it's my shortcoming and, worse still, I'll believe you.”

“
That
is definitely not my fault.”

“No, you're right. It isn't. And I guess now I've answered my own question. You're here because you enjoy making people feel inferior and stupid, and I put up with it because I think I deserve it.”

“Oh, don't be such a victim. God, you sound like one of those weepy fat women who's always whining to her girlfriends about getting dumped every few months by the unobtainable man who wipes his boots on her. Your low self-esteem is not a virtue, and I didn't put it there or worsen it. I'm not making you feel anything. You're here to get laid, and you buzz around me before and after because you can't crack me. I'm not one of your Tic Tac lays that you can spit out after the suck-off, and that bugs you. You don't quite know what to do with it. Well, so what? You're intrigued and you're horny, and you think that means you're in love. Sorry, but it's just not very interesting.”

“I never said I was in love.”

“I didn't say that, either. I said you think you are.”

“What if I am?”

“You're not.”

“So you know that, too, huh?”

“Yeah, I know that, too, and not because I know you so well, but because it's so commonplace.”

“That doesn't make it any less legitimate. I'm confused and I'm a little scared, to be honest. I wish I could brush this off and you off, too, but the thing is, I want to know you. I want to talk to you. I'm lonely, and not just that, I'm lonely for someone like you who feels things deeply and has been through a lot.”

“You don't know what I've been through.”

“I know I don't. But I know damage when I see it, and I know you're the only person I've met who can talk to me about my parents, and I think you could only do that in the way you have if you'd been through something terrible yourself. I just want to share with you. I want to know something more about you. Please don't be angry at me for that.”

This seemed to calm her. She sighed loudly and put her feet on the floor once more. She stood and came and sat beside me on the couch. She placed her hand lightly on my thigh.

We sat that way for some time.

“I'm sorry,” she said, finally. “I'm used to people who don't care or can't understand, and I guess I've blocked myself off from everyone. I've forgotten how to talk.”

I put my hand over hers.

“I know it's a lot to ask, but would you tell me something about yourself? Anything?”

She smirked.

“You mean like your raspberries?”

I squeezed her hand lightly.

“C'mon. Don't do that. I'm not a threat.”

“Disclosure is always a threat.”

“Okay. I get it. But maybe you could think about trusting me just a little. I'm not saying now. It doesn't have to be now. But just think about it. Just think about telling me one thing. Even if it's hard. Will you do that?”

“I'll think about it.”

“You'll think about thinking about it?” I said, smiling.

She laughed. “Yeah.”

“Okay,” I said, putting my arm around her and pulling her to me. “Fair enough.”

She made a move to lie down and I squirmed in behind her lengthwise, sorting the cushions beneath us. She folded down into me, wrapping her legs around mine and putting her face into the open collar of my shirt. The tip of her nose was cool, the breath moist and sweet.

I lay back, propping my head gently against the hard arm of the couch, and looked down the length of our bodies, letting my eyes roam aimlessly over our twined limbs and then up the walls and over the ceiling, coming to rest on a shifting pale trapezoid of shadow above the door.

The light was going. The room was blue-gray. The air had turned still with the onset of the evening, and every sound was amplified and dampened, like the felted thump of the pedal on a bass drum. I could hear the huff and squeech of Gruber closing his back door, and the whisper hiss of a passing car, and I could see the single bulb in Mrs. Bloom's upstairs window going on for the night. I thought I could even make out the head of the sleeping giant in the trees over the Blooms' house, and I smiled at myself for being such a baby, still.

Darling,

You must keep our secret.

You must hide it as you hide your heart and mine

In the place where we whisper and smile.

If you tell, if you betray our silence

Life as both of us know it will end forever.

Do you understand?

I will defend this to the last.

You cannot imagine what I would do.