Little Bird

photo by mollycakes.

Sunday morning in the family room. I love my wife and kids dearly, but all I can think to myself right now is “Leave me alone.” I announce that I am going to my den now to write, and I slip away to that corner of the house where the windows are small, where potted palms sit on the floor in what little pools of light gather in this corner of the house. At first, I avoid the typewriter perched on the desk. I still use a typewriter. I am a walking cliché. I smoke a pipe, leaf through nineteenth century novels, scratch notes on scraps of paper, and eventually sneak up on my type writer and settle slowly into the wooden desk chair, careful not to spook it. I stare at the keys for a moment, afraid it is going to burst into a flapping of wings and escape out a window. That’s it. My typewriter on the desk is like a bird trapped in a room, panicked, breast thumping, trying to find a way out. My fingers must be gentle with it. Once it least expects it, I clamp my hands around it so that it can’t get away. I stop typing to scribble this metaphor on another piece of scratch paper for later.

There’s a quiet knock at the door. Must be my son. “Come in.”

“Dad, will you play Chutes and Ladders with me?”

“Not now, Sam. Your Dad’s working. Didn’t Mommy tell you not to bother me when I’m up here?”

“Yes,” he says in that little mouse voice that usually allows him to get his way.

“Why don’t you go play with Elizabeth?”

“She’s over at Jacqueline’s house jumping on the trampoline.”

I pull him up into my lap. He’s still in his pajamas. What time is it, I wonder? Why hasn’t Susan gotten him dressed yet? She’s probably down at the computer, chatting with her sister or with her friends from work. Jesus, she sees them all day during the week; why can’t she give it a break on the weekends to get her children dressed? “Why don’t you go get your big boy clothes on and we’ll play in a little bit. I’ve got to do some stuff yet, and then I’ll come out. Don’t knock though. I’ll come out when I’m ready.”

“Okay,” and he slides off my knee, leaves the room and gently closes the door behind him. I smile at this gesture of his, so careful around me, but then I see how like an invalid I have become, tucked away in a closed room, not to be disturbed. How long have they been tiptoeing around me?

I try to get back to my story, but the characters have wandered off, the backdrops faded, and in the world of my imagination I am losing the light. Damn it. But if it hadn’t been Sam, it would have been something else. A loud truck out in the street. A blue jay flashing by the window. I was able to finish three sentences, though, before the little bird died in my hands. I guess I clutched I clutched it too tightly.

It began with a letter. Ever since I received the envelope addressed to me in a hand faintly familiar, I could never return to the old life I knew. I have since burned that first letter, but it went something like this…