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Thwack!
Amelia knew that sound; it was the sound of another bird hitting her plate glass
window, falling to its instantaneous death or permanent debilitation. It happened five
or six times a day in the summers, and when they had first moved here it disturbed her;
now it was a familiar sound, like that of the ocean on the rocks below, something her
subconscious wrapped around and defined for her the concept of home.
She arranged shortbread, melon, and cheese on a fish-shaped platter and
brought it out to the lanai; Sarah Jean, her sister, was coming over for a mid-day powwow
by the pool. It was because of the window washers; on her husband’s orders, they
came every day at noon, and she didn’t like being in her house, trying to go about her
business with the threat of someone leering at her while he feigned concentrating on
his squeegee. Once, she had emerged from the shower in only a towel, and they had
exchanged glances: the handsome sandy-haired man, his skin tanned from the Newport
sun, had at first startled her, but then he had smiled, revealing a gap between his front
teeth, and raised his hand in slow greeting.
“Sarah Jean,” she’d said earlier into the phone with her sister, “it’s the damn
window washers. They’re everywhere! Could you come over?”
“What? You have the nicest house on the Drive, Aimes. Somebody’s got to keep
it that way.”
She’d wanted to spill to Sarah Jean that what was bothering her was not the
washers’ presence; it was that she was pretty certain that if she were left alone, she was
going to jump one of them in the flower bed and take what she’d been missing for so
long.
“I’ll make margaritas. I just … don’t want to be alone.”
“Beer is fine,” she said.
Her sister arrived, brandishing a bathing suit and a copy of Leaves of Grass. “I
thought we might read some poetry to take your mind off things,” she said, trouncing
past her. The dishes in the cabinets rattled with each of Sarah Jean’s steps, and Amelia
thought she was as different from her sister as her gleaming house and the scrub-covered
cliff which rose behind it.
“You’re pretty lucky,” she said, “that Jack cares about making sure you live like a
queen.” Sarah Jean opened the refrigerator door and helped herself to a beer. “Window
washers, maids, cooks at night … Jeez. Must be nice.”
Amelia supposed it was nice, that Jack made such an effort to keep his wife of
thirteen years happy. She did live like a queen in what, to her, was a paradise; he had
rescued her from her filthy beginnings so she could pursue her passion, studying the tide
pools. Her degree in marine biology had yielded little more than aquarist positions, and
when she’d married Jack, she’d made the decision to independently study the thing she
loved most. But somewhere inside her she knew it was a … she didn’t know, a buy-off?
When he was home on the weekends, she was expected to throw fabulous parties on the
deck which overlooked Ocean Drive, while Jack, scotch in hand, bragged about his latest
contract. But she wasn’t stupid; she had a feeling, it was just a feeling but it was there,
that the way he admired his assistant Gracie’s dresses was not just because he had good
taste.
Thwack!
“They sound much louder today.” Sarah Jean shrugged. “Guess that’s the price
you pay for glamour. Did you know,” she said, padding across the tile floor, “that last
week I was working on teaching my students about color blending, and we went over to
the Fort so they could paint the reflection of the setting sun in your windows? ‘That’s
my sister’s house,’ I said. And they said, ‘Wow! You get to go up there?’ In fact,” she
pulled open the slider and stepped out onto the gray concrete that Amelia was thinking
of painting lavender, “I told them that whoever entered the school art competition this
year could come up here for an afternoon. I hope that’s okay.”
“Sure,” she said, thinking maybe they could do it at night so the birds weren’t
hitting the windows.
They retreated to the lanai. Sarah Jean worked nights teaching art at the community
college, so she spent most of her afternoons with Amelia, reading everything her parents
hadn’t been able to afford to buy them when they were kids.
Now Sarah Jean was stretched out on a lounge chair, reading aloud a poem
called “Birds of Passage.” While Sarah Jean thought it was profound, Amelia couldn’t
understand what it had to do with birds.
Thwack!
“Oooh,” Amelia shivered. “I hate that. You know, I read in a magazine that the
number of glass kills in this country is over one billion. Some scientists actually took
baskets and shoved them under the windows of this five-star hotel to see how many
birds would die in one day. The numbers were … overwhelming. And the first two were
mourning doves. Imagine. Sad.”
Sarah Jean gave up on her book and slammed it down flat against her thighs.
“Well, you could do something about that, you know. If you wanted to, you could put
tape over the windows, you know, like those big X’s?”
Amelia thought about the glass and what it meant to her, because it did mean
something. It was the reversal of back home, in Fall River. The filth and the bad air,
the second-floor apartment of an aging, decrepit three-family home. Mom had nailed
the windows closed, because she was afraid of germs the birds which nested in the
eaves might bring in. You couldn’t see out of the windows either; they were spackled in
grease from the constant cooking of chorizo and peppers. And the bronchitis, and the
colds, and the … dirt. The dirty papers, the dirty floors. And the shades, yellowed from
Papa’s cigar smoke. “We don’t want people looking in,” Mom would say. “This is a bad
neighborhood.” Even when Amelia had been able to look out, wetting down a paper
towel with water and rubbing alcohol, she would see in the depths of winter the yellow
and brown snow piled up on the corner of the Kwik-Stop lot with the windshield-less,
rotting cars behind it.
But there had been no dead birds on the sidewalks.
“You don’t remember back home, do you?” Amelia popped a piece of melon in
her mouth.
“Do I,” her sister sipped her beer.
“I don’t want to … get like that. I like the outdoors. I like the … health.”
“It’s your house, Aimes. Well, I suppose you would lose your fantastic sunsets, and
I’m sure Jack wouldn’t be too happy.”
“Jack’s not happy, anyway,” she sighed.
“What do you mean?” Sarah Jean shrilled. “He’s got everything he wants! A
huge house that’s everybody’s envy, a nice wife who does work trying to save the tide
pools - ”
“ - and has nothing in common with him.” It was out of Amelia’s mouth before
she could stop it.
Thwack!
Just then, there was a knock, and through the lanai’s screen door was the shadow
of the window washer.
Amelia sat up. “Yes?”
He pulled open the door tentatively, as though he thought that even though he’d
been given permission, he could still be reprimanded. The door closed behind him,
hitting his back.
Amelia stared at him, suddenly noticing the muscle on his left arm seemed more
developed than on his right. “You can,” she motioned, “you can come in.”
He shrugged and came toward their chairs and took off his painter’s cap.
“I’m Sarah Jean, by the way.” Her sister sat forward and extended her hand.
“Hello.” He nodded politely, but he was still focused on Amelia. “I’m sorry,”
he said, “I’ll have to come back later to pick up the birds. I forgot the container I’m
supposed to use.”
But Amelia was somewhere else, looking at the curve of his upper lip, having a
sunset-colored delusion of that lip meeting hers.
There was a weird silence, then, and her sister smacked her on the arm.
“What?”
He repeated his message, then said, “Your husband, he pays me extra to pick
’em up and dump ’em in the Sanctuary. Only I was in a rush this morning, and I left the
container back at the shop. But I could come back later, after lunch.”
“Is that why we never find any bird bodies around here?” Sarah Jean quipped.
“I was sure wondering.”
After lunch. Sarah Jean would be gone by then, and it would be just her, and…
just her, and him, and she could watch him, picking up the birds. She could notice him
sweating, she could notice him…she could invite him in for a beer…
“Aimes,” Sarah Jean said through clenched teeth.
“No, that’s all right.” Amelia blurted, setting her margarita glass on the small
wicker table beside her. “You can leave them for today.”
The man stood for a minute, then stepped a little closer and dropped his voice.
“Um, I just wanted to say that … is that a new bathing suit? It’s a much better cut than
your green one—I mean, green, it’s your color.”
Amelia blushed, her first instinct to reach for the shawl over the back of her
chair. But she didn’t move.
Suddenly she regretted that she’d told him not to come back.
“Well,” he said. “See ya.” He put his cap back on, went back out the door, and
disappeared around the corner. A few seconds later, she heard his truck start.
“Wow,” Sarah Jean said, “he’s hot and he’s got it bad for you.”
“Stop it,” was all Amelia could muster.
“That business with the bathing suit? Are you kidding me?” Sarah Jean motioned
with her beer. “He single?”
Amelia shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s the one who’s always looking at me when
I call you.”
“You call me over here because you’re afraid of that?” She popped a whole
square of shortbread in her mouth. “Damn, and then you don’t even introduce me?”
“It … it isn’t like that,” she said.
“Don’t tell me.” She drained the last of her own glass. “It’s sort of like an
‘I-might-sleep-with-the-guy’ type of thing.”
Amelia didn’t respond right away, because she felt the hot blush creeping up her
cheeks. She stood up and took off her sarong. “I’m going for a dip in the pool.”
Sarah Jean threw her head back and laughed. “Oh my God. No way! That’s what
you were going to do? That’s what’s always been on your mind?”
She answered her with a splash and scissored ten furious laps, like she was racing
to get away from a man-eating crocodile or a school of piranha. She knew she wasn’t
swimming in a straight line, but she’d forgotten her goggles, and when she opened her
eyes the chlorine stung and all she saw was through a liquid haze. She saw Sarah Jean’s
arm, which seized her and pulled her up.
“Hey,” her sister said, wiping water from her eyes. “What the hell was all that
about? It’s no big deal if you want to screw somebody else, you know.”
“It’s not that,” Amelia panted. “It’s that … I could lose all this. I could end up
poor, like we were back in Fall River. Christmases with Goodwill socks.”
Thwack!
Sarah Jean set a hand on Amelia’s wet arm, and laughed. “Oh, God, Aimes, I
think you’d have to go some to get all the way back there.”
Amelia felt gooseflesh break out; she could see her own dark hairs standing up.
“But if he found out I was cheating on him … ”
“And you believe he’s not out doing the same thing? Listen,” Sarah Jean said, “if
it’s not working out, then you should change it. I mean, you don’t have to change it all
the way, you know, running for divorce court. You could start with little things. Make
yourself happy, a little at a time. Do that, first.”
Thwack!
Amelia thought about the window washer, and how she had put him off for
today, but he would be back tomorrow. And the day after that, and the day after that. She
was going to buy more bathing suits, ones that were racier. She was going to invite him
to swim with her. It would begin there. Every day, he would clean the windows, ferry
away the bodies, and satisfy her. Every day, she would wash the sheets.
But eventually, it would get too dangerous. She would have to be done with him.
But she couldn’t fire him; Jack would figure it out. She would have no choice but to see
him, every day, when he came to clean the windows. Looking at him, but pretending she
didn’t see him.
Unless, of course … unless she took the windows out of the equation. If there
were no windows to clean, they wouldn’t need window washers, would they? Tape … like
those big X’s, you know?
She stroked to the ladder, grabbed its rail, and climbed out of the pool.
“Where you going?” Sarah Jean asked.
But Amelia didn’t respond. She went inside, fetched a roll of masking tape, went
out to the back deck, and began to completely cover the windows. They can’t clean, she
thought, what they can’t see. And she decided she would tell Jack that she was merely trying
to save the lives of a few birds.
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