Outside the PerimeterAtlanta Tales, Part 1

by J. Sutton

Purchased as a download from ATLANTATALES.COM for the private use of the purchaser. Not for duplication or re-sale.

© 2008

�  Outside the Perimeter ATLANTATALES.COM

Lily was the first one to die. By the time that year of death was over, I realized we were lucky Bill lived as long as he did. Experimental drugs left Bill weak and uninterested in the chocolates our friends sent. I ate them myself, licking raspberry filling off my fingers while we stared at the weather channel.

Lily had her last heart attack in the clinic waiting room. (If they can’t save you there, you truly can’t be saved.) I was shocked. I guess back then I did have hope for the new drugs; I must have still thought Bill had a chance. Lily seemed to know what was coming, although in my memories of her, she is pink-cheeked with a wide, lets-do-it grin. A group of us—patients and spouses who had met in the Atlanta clinic waiting rooms—had begun meeting for coffee. Whenever the barista suggested pastries, Lily would clap her hands and demand everyone’s attention. “Don’t stop ’til you get enough,” she’d sing. Later, I came to think of this as Lily’s Law.

I got the job at The Bird Barn six weeks after Bill died. At his memorial service, everyone felt free to tell me what I should do. “Volunteer at the hospital,” one friend suggested. “Tutor at-risk kids. It’ll keep you young.” This from a niece of Bill’s, now in law school at Emory. “Get a boyfriend,” my most outrageous pal said. I assumed she was joking about the awkward evening when Lily’s husband showed up at one of our group dinners with a new woman. None of us had been quite ready for that. “Travel.” A lot of people suggested that, even my two boys. I nodded and smiled, but I couldn’t imagine a life by myself. No one coming home for dinner. Nothing that had to be immediately washed or mailed or have its oil changed. I sipped my glass of wine—Bill insisted we celebrate his life with a case of cabernet sauvignon—and tried to look as if I were interested in my friends’ suggestions. But I’d had enough of sickness and people who needed me. I certainly didn’t want a boyfriend, and I didn’t want to travel anywhere just to eat dinner by myself. I especially didn’t want to trudge around Europe, my swollen ankles spilling over white walking shoes, while I stared out of bus windows with other pathetic widows.

So I ended up spending my days with customers and parrots.“I like your shirt,” Nikki said.“Thanks,” I said, straightening my polo.“Wanna come out.”“You’ve been out today, Nikki.”Nikki’s beak tugged at the cage door. “Wanna come out again.”The job at The Bird Barn had just sort of happened. After Bill died, it seemed

everyone I’d ever met had called and invited me to lunch, but that wasn’t what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Sitting by Bill, listening as each breath struggled in and hissed out, I’d begun to imagine days on my own. I’d pictured driving by myself to visit the boys, eating salads for dinner while watching an old

�  Outside the Perimeter ATLANTATALES.COM

movie, and having friends over for coffee and high-cholesterol desserts. I noticed how the doctors spent less and less time with Bill. How they came in groups. As they filed out, one would pat Bill on the shoulder, as if admitting that they had done all the new drugs and elaborate machines could do. I knew Bill was dying. I had closed my eyes and thought of all the things I wanted to do before I lay in that same cold bed.

I started to think of steps—you know, like the one’s alcoholics take. Steps to the rest of my life. I remembered Lily saying in a rare serious moment, “It looks like I’m going to die. Die without doing a lot of things I’ve been curious about. Things I thought I’d always have time to try.” So I began to list those steps—in the order they occurred to me—under Lily’s Law. Get a job—find something to do happened first.

My friends were horrified when I told them I was working. “Don’t you have enough money? I mean, I know the stock market tanked, but…” I tried to explain it was not about money. The boys were annoyed. They seemed to want me to stay exactly the same. When they visited, they looked carefully around the house. I could feel them searching over my shoulder even while they gave me a hello hug. Were they checking to see if I’d begun to give away their father’s law books? Were they looking for signs I couldn’t live alone? Neither suggested I live with them.

Friends had earlier joked about me finding a boyfriend, but I felt quite ready to live without a man. Bill and I had made a good life together, but the simple fact was I’d never had a real job or done anything significant on my own. The summer after college, I’d helped my sister in her yarn shop. And there was the local farmers’ co-op I managed while the kids were little. My identity had been “Bill’s girlfriend” or “Bill’s wife” or “Will and Charlie’s mom.” At this point, my name, Mildred, seemed to sum it all up: old, predictable, proper, boring. (It is old fashioned; I was named for my mother’s best friend.) On one of those surreal nights at Bill’s bedside drinking bad coffee, I’d decided to discard Mildred and become Milly.

But my new life took a while to get started. First, I spent weeks writing thank-you notes and trying to get someone to eat the casseroles and cakes friends brought me. I rejected the boys’ invitations to come visit them. Charlie was married and lived in Savannah. Although I enjoyed his wife, they would both be at work all day. I loved Savannah, but wandering there alone didn’t appeal to me. Will lived about an hour away in Athens with two roommates. He had a busy life—including playing in a band—and I couldn’t picture myself having much of a role in it. If I visited the boys too often, I could see myself falling into a pattern of driving constantly and eventually being irritated when I was expected to take them (and in Will’s case, his friends) out to dinner each night.

Not that my life at home was all that exciting. Before I began working, I took naps and watched TV late into the night. I hadn’t watched TV seriously since I was a kid—Bill only watched sports while I read murder mysteries—but I quickly became a Law and Order addict. And I discovered the movie channels. I talked on

�  Outside the Perimeter ATLANTATALES.COM

the phone a lot, mostly to the other wives I’d met while Bill was sick. After Bill died and the coffee group eventually broke up, I stayed friends

with Mary Helen and Dolly. I seemed to have more in common with them than with my old friends, the ones who brought over disposable dishes of food, sent house plants and told me how well I was doing. Mary Helen and Dolly knew about screaming heart monitors and bleed outs. Dolly, petite and usually wearing expensive tee shirts and slacks, was 74. Her husband died soon after Lily. Mary Helen’s husband Pete was the youngest in the group and the last to “pass on,” as she insisted on saying. Mary Helen was only 56 (I’m 64), but looked thicker and more matronly than Dolly and I did. Dolly’s hair was platinum, but Mary Helen’s was yellowed bleached blonde. Mine’s gray. By the time Mary Helen’s Pete died, we had all been to too many memorial services and heard too many kind words. I think we remained friends simply because we didn’t have to talk about any of it to each other. It was great being with people who knew the genuine sadness I felt about Bill, but let me laugh without prickles of guilt.

Dolly looked like today’s elegant southern lady. But she wasn’t sweet and understanding; she was quick to tell everyone how she felt and rarely compromised.

“You need to live. Get out there. You aren’t fat.” That might have been a reference to Mary Helen who was stocky and drove a lumbering SUV. Dolly could never forgive Mary Helen for being a Republican and tended to pick on her. “Join a hiking club or something. That’s what I’d do if I weren’t so damn old. Meet active men.”

Mary Helen, with her carefully applied makeup and outfits purchased in Ladies Sportswear, was more traditional. “You need to do something meaningful, useful,” she liked to say. Although she rambled on about “ways to give back to society,” Mary Helen was focused on redecorating her house. I thought this was to eliminate any reminder of Pete’s illness, but it might have been because shopping was one of the things she did exceptionally well. She was never happier than when pushing an oversized cart while discussing the merits of white linens or the economics of tomato juice by the case.

At some point during this foggy time of mourning, Get a job—find something to do became my Lily’s Step 1. One Tuesday, I woke up, filled my garbage can with frozen chicken casseroles, half-eaten cakes and wilting plants, and began the rest of my life.

I began by resolving to fill the wild bird feeders that we had neglected during Bill’s illness. As I was buying a sack of sunflower seeds at the Bird Barn and chatting with the owner, Ted, he mentioned needing another clerk. He wasn’t shocked when I said I was interested. He didn’t know I had been “Bill’s wife” or that I usually bought my bird seed

�  Outside the Perimeter ATLANTATALES.COM

at a cottage in the new mall’s fake village. I told him my name was Milly. I loved working. I liked waking up and knowing there was a place I had to

go. And I was good at it. Good with people. I’d worried about the cash register and handling money, but I had no problems. The cash register was just another computer. Best of all, I liked working at an ordinary place where I didn’t run into my old friends. The days passed quickly, and I forgot about sickness and death and learned quite a bit about birds.

Although wild bird seed and squirrel-proof feeders were our best sellers at the Barn, from time to time we sold one of the exotic birds Ted’s mother raised. The budgies and conures were pretty popular, but no one ever asked to buy the two big birds, Nikki and Krazi. This Bird Bites the cage signs said, although I’d never seen one of them actually chomp on a finger.

Nikki, an African grey, was the smartest. She didn’t waste her time doing high fives like Krazi, the blue and gold macaw, or whistling while performing acrobatics like the smaller birds. She talked a lot, but you had a feeling it was only when it made sense to her. She liked me.

“Wanna come out?” Nikki asked when she wanted me to open the door to her cage. She preferred to sit on top and watch earnest birdwatchers lug bags of seed to the register. Amber, the other cashier, pointed out to Ted that these were not the kind of people who buy exotic birds. “It’s probably against their values,” Amber said. “You know, keeping living things in cages.” Amber hated having to clean up after the birds. Nikki was especially bad about tossing her food around. But Ted displayed the budgies in the front window and argued that they brought in customers.

We did get a lot of mall walkers with strollers. “See the birdie?” And a few of the nerds from KRAS, the software place across South Atlanta Road. The computer geeks never seemed to buy anything. Once Ted put a sign on the budgies—Take a Bird to Work Day—but no one got the joke.

We did sell a lot of sunflower seeds, and a small but devoted contingent of bird lovers bought the boxes of custom seed Ted blended. Another popular pet item was poop-tray liners. Input and output, Amber said. She attended computer classes at the community college and thought she was much smarter than I was.

I was surprised at how happy I became. My days consisted of work, a simple dinner at home (another step: Eat less), a call or email with one of the boys and an evening reading mysteries or watching TV. On my days off, I met Dolly for a movie or had lunch with Mary Helen. I missed Bill, but I didn’t feel overwhelmed by grief. I wondered if some part of me just didn’t accept his death. Or, maybe I liked my new life, although I was lonely. Sometimes I’d wake up in the night and think about the other life steps I wanted to take and wonder if I was wasting precious time working at The Bird Barn. Occasionally I called Mary Helen, who claimed she never slept. It soothed me to listen to her talk about how hard it was to find a decent sofa. But by morning, as I dressed for work, I felt I was doing the right thing.

�  Outside the Perimeter ATLANTATALES.COM

I tried to talk to Dolly about my goals too, but with Dolly you mostly have to listen. I brought up Lily and her don’t stop routine, and Dolly just laughed and began telling me a story of how she and her sister went to Cancun one spring and slept with the pool boy. Dolly liked to shock people. “I’m taking dancing lessons,” she told me. “The tango.”

It was Ted’s customized seed blends that made me understand Dolly’s hint about the pool boy. A customer wanted a specific blend: shelled sunflowers so there would be no shells in his yard, a few peanuts for the woodpeckers, chopped dried peppers to discourage the squirrels and some tiny millet seeds for the doves. He insisted he needed it right away. Ted was in the back, and I wasn’t sure where Amber was. So I locked the register and headed to the storage room to find Ted.

I found him with his pants around his ankles, pushing Amber against the seed inventory. I think I sort of froze and watched for a while. Eventually I said “Excuse me.” Of course, I should have said nothing and just turned and walked out. Then they wouldn’t have noticed me.

I’d thought about my sex life while making my mental list. If it was over, I couldn’t decide if that was a relief or a tragedy. Wasn’t passion for the young—the fumblers finding exciting hidden things? I couldn’t imagine undressing in front of anyone. As you age, your body gets ugly. Veins push out, skin ripples and sags,

�  Outside the Perimeter ATLANTATALES.COM

and hairs and brown spots appear in the oddest places. You’re probably supposed to be lumpy and undesirable. Yet seeing Ted and Amber together was surprisingly exciting.

Later Amber said, “You don’t have to act like it didn’t happen. Or like you don’t know what we were doing.”

But in a way, I didn’t know what they were doing. Of course, Bill and I had had sex—when we were young, people called it making love. But for years it hadn’t been exciting. More like just another thing I had to do. I apologized to Amber. “I was just surprised,” I said. “Hey, go for it. Don’t stop ’til you get enough.” I almost fell over as Lily’s words came out of my mouth. Is that what she meant?

There were things I’d missed in life. I’d never had hair down to my waist or driven a convertible along the coast or eaten an entire chocolate cake. Sexual things too. Were they fun or just another deception? Most women don’t look good with long hair, and it gets dry with split and broken ends. Surely most of the time convertibles are too hot or cold or too wet or dusty. And that much chocolate cake would keep anyone running for the bathroom. So I’d always just assumed all those stories about sex being so great, so varied, were myths too. I wanted to talk to Dolly about this, but I’d risk having her laugh at me or tell me a lot more about her life than I wanted to know. Mary Helen, I was pretty sure, wouldn’t be interested.

The first year after Bill’s death passed slowly. I climbed several more steps. Have a milk shake at least once a week (one made with real ice cream). Only floss every other day (then you can tell your hygienist you floss most days). But what about sex? What step was that going to be?

I tried to get Dolly talking on the subject of sex. I was curious about her and wondered if she’d had the exciting sex life she hinted at. Was she still doing it? And if so, with whom? She went out to dinner a lot and had mentioned Tango lessons, but I hadn’t heard her speak of a specific guy. I had assumed the dance lessons were at one of those scam studios where young men and women on the staff tried to make the lonely feel special. One of Bill’s secretaries had invited me to a dance exhibition a few years ago. Women swirled in what my mother called cocktail dresses while men sweated in ill-fitting tuxes. Some of the students were really good and obviously loved to dance, but there were a few that stumbled and careened awkwardly around the floor. The less skilled ones also won awards. I assumed it was a reward for paying for months of lessons.

“Tell me about your tango classes,” I asked Dolly the next time we got together.

“Fun,” Dolly said. “A lot more fun than the gym. You move, stretch.” She swooped to the left nearly knocking over her iced tea. We were having a rare lunch together. Dolly had a horror of being over-weight, and I doubted she ate more than once a day.

�  Outside the Perimeter ATLANTATALES.COM

“Do you clench a rose in your teeth?” I asked. Somehow I had to get to the romantic details.

Dolly poked her fork at her salad. “It’s a sensual dance. You should have the right expression on your face—clasp your partner’s hips to yours—be imagining how sexy you look—you don’t really need a rose.”

“What do you think about,” I asked, “when you’re dancing?”

Dolly studied a grape tomato. “I see myself as a young woman. I can’t believe I’m old. I think about dancing nude with my partner. Not love—I don’t want to move in and do his laundry—but I think of him as a lover. Someone who will touch me exactly where I want to be touched.” She sighed. “Right now that would be right under my right shoulder blade. I’ve got to get a massage. I don’t know what I did to myself.” She pushed back into her chair.

“I’ve got a gift certificate for a massage,” I said. This was not the direction I wanted the conversation to go. Sometimes I wished I could keep my mouth shut and not be so helpful, but I couldn’t stop myself. “And two for pedicures.”

“I’ve got three for pedicures. I was going to offer you one. People seem to think a pedicure will end my grief, but I feel worse thinking about those poor Vietnamese girls. Imagine sitting there trimming corns and polishing little toe talons all day. Do you know Mary Helen told me she never tips?”

“Maybe she just doesn’t know you should. She can be kind of out of it sometimes.” I was distracted by the image of those toe talons. Yuck.

“She must tip hair dressers. I mean, a manicurist is just a hair dresser for your fingers and toes.”

Now the talons I was picturing sprouted hairs. I really didn’t want to talk about Mary Helen. I wasn’t sure why she was still my friend. Her values got on my nerves, but then I’d find myself calling her back anyway. “And massage is a hair dresser for your skin, your muscles really,” I said. “Let’s get one. A massage, I mean.” Being touched, oiled, relaxed. Maybe then, over cups of warm green tea (no sugar), I could steer the conversation toward sex. Senior sex? What would it be called? Was it the same thing kids did or different in some way I didn’t understand?

“Ah massage.” Dolly kneaded her neck. “I took ice dancing lessons when I was a teenager. I was pretty innocent, if you can imagine that. Then my partner offered to massage me—my sore shoulders, my aching thighs. Well, you can imagine where that led.” She sighed.

“So what about your tango partner? What does he like to massage?”She sighed again and changed the subject.We scheduled massages for my next day off. Dolly, of course, knew the best

�  Outside the Perimeter ATLANTATALES.COM

place—not where I had a gift certificate. As the weeks passed, I enjoyed my job even more. Ted spent a lot of time

on the computers, and I ended up being the person who took care of the birds, especially Nikki and Krazi. Amber had a fidgety way of flapping her hands when she talked. Probably charming when you’re hanging out on a bar stool, but scary for birds. Once I saw Nikki lunge at her, beak open, fat gray tongue extended as if hoping for a taste of Amber’s quick fingers. Nikki never bit me. I sneaked her sunflower seeds—roasted but without salt. “Thank you, dear,” Nikki always said.

Anyway, I was the only one who paid much attention to the big birds until Mario showed up. When you work in a store, you find certain customers hang out there. Like Mrs. Brantley with the seventeen budgies. (When I called her Mrs. Budgie by mistake, she literally chirped with pleasure.) Ted saved Mrs. Brantley torn seed bags, and we gave her a special discount on millet sprays. I’d first noticed Mario poking through the toys and treats section while juggling a cup of coffee. He’d pick up a toy, hold it in his hand as if testing the weight, and then shake it and listen to the bell. He didn’t buy much. I tried to figure out what kind of bird he had—a cockatiel? Finally, I asked him.

“I’m buying this for a friend’s bird,” he said.“So, does the bird like bells?” Amber asked. She stepped in front of me and

slipped the cheap plastic ball he’d purchased into a bag. Mario was slim with steel-gray hair—younger than I was—I guessed about 50—and Amber never missed a chance to chatter with handsome men.

“No,” he said, accepting his change. Usually men paid a lot of attention to Amber, especially the older ones. Her clothes were tight, and something was always on display like her shoulders or a strip of tan skin between her jeans and her shirt. Mario kept his eyes on his purchase.

As soon as he was out the door, Amber laughed. “Another weird one.” She gestured at the gray KRAS building across the road. Ted’s roommate worked at KRAS too. He stopped by one night to see Ted, and Amber and I had joked about his clothes: orange stripped shirt with neon green pants and a battered UGA baseball cap. “Now that’s a real Dawg,” Amber had said. KRAS was a software development place, but like everyone else, I’d heard rumors. Security was so tight you couldn’t even turn around in their driveway. It seemed logical the nerds there did more than develop bookkeeping software. Mary Helen’s neighbor worked there, and Mary Helen had told me she thought KRAS was doing something secret for the government.

But Mario was okay, not weird like Amber said. He was slow and quiet, the kind of person birds trust. He always said hi, and every now and then brought us cookies and cups of coffee. Mario stopped by at least a couple of times a week. I figured he was just a lonely programmer, the type Bill used to call a poor lost soul. (And although Amber hinted, believe me when I say that I did not see Mario as a possible companion for me.)

One day when I was busy stocking shelves, Mario took Krazi out of his cage.

�  Outside the Perimeter ATLANTATALES.COM

I guess he asked Ted if he could. Most people are afraid of macaws, leery of what one of those beaks could do to a finger or nose. I’d been piling up five-pound bags of safflower seeds. When I looked up, Krazi hung upside-down from Mario’s hands, his wings folded, doing bat bird.

I kept working, but watched the two of them. Mario handled Krazi with complete confidence, scratching the top of his head just right and slipping him almonds between each trick.

“Krazi’s a good bird,” Nikki said, from where she perched on the open door of her cage. She didn’t sound happy.

After that, Krazi began to call “Cracker” as soon as he spotted Mario, but Nikki looked the other way.

“Step up,” Mario tried, holding out his fist to Nikki. She ignored him.By then, I was sweeping up the feathers that had drifted under the cages. “I

don’t think she likes men,” I said. Then my face got hot. Mario knew she was Ted’s bird. “Since Ted’s so busy, she’s used to me.”

Mario held up an almond, but I accidentally bumped the cage with the broom and Nikki squawked.

“Oops,” I said, but I wasn’t really sorry. I was tired of Amber’s teasing that Mario liked me. I wished he’d find another store to hang out in, and I’d begun to think of Nikki as mine.

Mario continued to bring Nikki’s favorite treats: apple slices, almonds in their shaggy shells and plump raisins. If she was bored in her cage, he opened the door. Eventually she agreed to step onto his hand. Soon he was scratching her head and murmuring to her. Poetry, I think, because I heard her saying later, “Nevermore Lenore.”

One Saturday Mario was still there when the store closed. He’d been around most of the afternoon. I even saw him try to help Amber with one of the computers. It ended up that the three of us left at the same time, and he sort of walked me to my car. He stood there while I unlocked my car door. I thought he was just being a gentleman. Frankly, it made me feel old. Then he said, “Maybe we could get something to eat. If you’re not too busy or anything.”

“Sorry, I can’t,” I managed to say. I wasn’t ready for that—for men. I’d created a comfortable life for myself. Both Dolly and Mary Helen had dated, but I didn’t want to. I’m not sure why, but I just didn’t. Mary Helen had been urging me to have dinner with her widowed brother, Rick. Can you imagine a blind date at 64? As for Mario, I knew he wasn’t seriously interested in me. He was younger and handsome, so if he were, there was probably something wrong with him.

After I said I couldn’t go get something to eat, Mario frowned and didn’t say anything.

I found myself blathering, “But maybe another night. Usually, I don’t have anything to do.” In spite of my misgivings, I was instantly sorry I had refused. Maybe coffee or dinner with a man was something I should do—another

�0  Outside the Perimeter ATLANTATALES.COM

milestone in widowhood I needed to climb past. What would the Lily step be? Try a relationship—maybe you’ll like it. Mario gave a quick smile, nodded and walked away. I went home to hand-wash my white sweater and read my email from the boys. Will told me about a trip his landlady (widowed and my age, he said) was taking to London. Charlie’s wife wrote that Charlie was out of town on business, how lonely she was and how she wished I lived closer so we could have dinner together. She didn’t have to say: somewhere expensive, your treat. I knew that’s what she was thinking.

The next week, Amber told me a man had been in asking if she knew Mario. “I said he didn’t talk to me,” Amber said. “He talks to birds.”

I couldn’t imagine who’d be quizzing us about Mario.Amber continued, “Maybe he was Mario’s boss. You know, wondering why

Mario was hanging out here all the time.”“He asked me to dinner,” I said. I have to admit, I was pleased to tell her this.

I’d been expecting him to ask me again.“Ted? Mario’s boss?” Amber squeaked, almost dropping a stack of cage

covers.“No, Mario.”“Jeez, Milly,” Amber said. “Aren’t you seventy or something?”I turned away. Amber and I both got very busy. No one came in asking about Mario while I was working. I tried to ignore him,

but he was there most evenings putting Krazi through his paces, whispering to Nikki or perched on the bench near the door drinking coffee.

When Mario disappeared, Amber was the first to notice. “What happened to your boyfriend?” she asked. “You know, Krazi’s gray-haired pal.” That’s when I realized Mario hadn’t been in for maybe a week. Ted had put me in charge of inventory, and I’d been working nonstop, even dreaming of columns of numbers and missing boxes of toys.

A customer interrupted us. “Can someone help me? I want to buy that bird.” A man pointed toward Nikki. “The gray one.”

I was pretty sure Nikki wasn’t for sale, but no one had ever asked to buy her. He walked closer to her cage. “How much is that bird? She can talk, right?” The man wiggled a finger in Nikki’s direction, and Nikki side-stepped along her perch to move as far away from him as possible.

“Maybe you should see the manager.” I was sure Ted would never sell Nikki. Especially to someone who had bristly gray hair in his ears.

Amber added, “He should be in about eleven.” I frowned at her. No reason to encourage the guy.He glanced at his watch. “I’ll wait,” he said.

��  Outside the Perimeter ATLANTATALES.COM

“Where can I get coffee?”Amber pointed. “The Cuppa Java. Third store on the left.”I fussed around Nikki’s cage. I remembered how Ted had agreed to sell an old

cash register he’d kept up front. It had belonged to his grandmother, but he said he needed the money. I guess I panicked. The Bird Barn was my new life; I didn’t want anything to change. I decided to hide Nikki.

I could say she needed to go to the vet across town, maybe to get her nails clipped. I’d think of something. Then, when Ted showed up, if she were for sale, maybe I’d buy her. I could imagine her watching old movies with me in the evening while we shared the cherry tomatoes in my salad.

Amber was at the register and didn’t notice as Nikki let me take her to the back and put her in one of Ted’s largest seed boxes. I cut a slit for light and air and went out the back door. I was nervous. Get a pet was definitely not on my list of steps, nor was Steal something expensive, but this felt like the right thing to do. I fastened the seat belt around the box and started the car. As I pulled out, I thought I saw the man who wanted to buy Nikki walking towards me. I stepped on the gas.

I remember Bill teaching the boys to drive, trying to tell them how loud a car accident is, how sudden the stop and how fast it all happens. Yet it takes place slowly enough for you to feel every moment. I wasn’t afraid—that surprised me too—I was just mad. Mad that some idiot had pulled into me, mad that I could have been hurt and mad that my car was damaged. I pressed my head against the steering wheel and tried to remember if I’d put the newest insurance card in my wallet. I didn’t think about Nikki until later, when a woman was helping me out of the car.

“The bird,” I said. “In the box.” But Nikki was gone.

Read more. Buy the book.