fiction by gryphon beyerle

Still Birds

The light came in white sheets and laid itself in angled patterns across the hardwood and bedspread. Elise watched idly as it wrapped around her outstretched forearm, fingers limp over the creased pillowcase, the sun a fickle tattoo that flickered on her skin as if time lapsed, as if the morning ate away into afternoon in minutes. Her neck was stiff, chin bent into the cavern of her collarbone, and she thought briefly of the dolls in her old home and their hard porcelain faces heavy on weak cotton necks, their eyes half-shut as they laid lifeless in their disuse across the playroom floor. 

Elise was an adult by definition. She knew it, she knew she had grown up and would never get any taller and would never get any smarter and would never get any prettier. She even knew she could be edging past her prime by now. Her bathroom mirror had two lights, one on each side, but the right had burnt out weeks ago and now the left was the devil on her shoulder, cruel and wicked, showing the contours of lines her face had made, emotions folded into her features, time weaved into her kid skin. Shadows made half-teaspoon bags under her eyes. How could it be the truth of herself? 

Her apartment was built for adults. One white-walled bedroom and one white-tiled bathroom and one white-applianced kitchen. No living room because there was no room for living. Some adults had money and some adults made families and some adults got living rooms for it. 

On Mondays, Elise worked, then got coffee from the corner store downstairs, then home. Tuesdays and Wednesdays the same. On Thursdays: work, coffee, then she fed her neighbor’s cat as an ongoing favor (apartment 12A, Mrs. O’Donnell, a widow, visited her daughter on Thursdays, ornery gray cat with green eyes, 6pm, wet food only, cabinet above the sink). Fridays were for work and then wine and then calling someone she loved to check in (last week: Dad, week before: childhood friend, Heather, week before that: too much wine and a sloppy voicemail to ex-boyfriend, PJ, who now lived in New York and never answered the phone). Saturdays were for cleaning and groceries. Sundays were for pacing (and laundry, $1.50 to wash, $1.00 to dry). 

This Tuesday was stale. Elise was a law office receptionist in wool pencil skirts and crinkly linen blouses—very grown up. Elise had a history degree (still tucked into the mailing envelope in which she received it, stored in a banker’s box with last year’s tax paperwork and a collection of old birthday cards from family. The banker’s box fit perfectly under her bed frame, so there it stayed. College, taxes, and birthdays were 10 ¼ inches high, 15 inches across, 24 inches long). Elise worked at the law firm because the office was in a pretty building, one that looked more like it belonged in Europe than America with its stained stonework and intricately carved entryways, windows. The kid thing to do was to dream of living in a castle—the adult thing was probably to work in one, and this was close. Unfortunately for Elise, her desk was a splintery thing from the 80s, her computer a dusty dragon that only huffed and puffed when starting up Excel, and her view from within the castle was a moat of crumbling asphalt roads and mountains of beige strip malls. 

“Elise.” The voice of her boss, a very lean lawyer dressed in perpetual shades of gray, a statue with a bit of a hunch. His teeth were impossibly white, his wedding band a thick slab of platinum, his eyes always far away as seen through thick-lens glasses. 

She turned to where he craned over the back of her chair, her neck too stiff to look all the way up at his eyes. Instead, she fixed on the stack of paperwork she’d just set in his office, now held loosely in his hands, the entire pile smudged with a glittering red. 

“I need you to print me new copies of each of these,” he said, his attention turning toward her desk.

“Are you bleeding?” Elise asked, watching the overhead light shift on the wet blood on the pages. 

He shook his head, still looking at her desk, something turning over in his face. He had many more lines than she did, all of which collected around his mouth and eyes, more wrinkles than when she’d started working for him years ago. She was pretty then and unambitious, which seemed to qualify her perfectly for the job. She wondered if receptionists were meant to grow old and die in their castles, or if they were like wealthy men’s wives—to be replaced once their 20s had dried up and thus stopped adding to the aesthetic allure of a home (office, castle, living room). Dad always seemed to have a new receptionist whenever she called.

“Maybe you should take the day off. Clean up and go on home,” he said, sort of softly, like a tiptoe around the ears of the office. He made to step away, back to his office, the conversation over. 

Elise turned to her desk, where blood was smudged across everything. Some dried, some like fresh squashed cherries. Little fingerprints of it across the keyboard. A palm print on the stapler. An oil spill of red floating on the surface of her coffee. She recoiled, her own hands crisped and stiff with it, caked under her nails as if it were polish, the front of her shirt streaked and spattered. 

“I—” she started, turning to the door of the office where her boss was rubbing hand sanitizer into his palms, spreading it all the way up his wrists, nearly wetting his rolled sleeves. “I was looking at the pigeon. It came back, I’m sorry, I didn’t see.”

He just nodded, not looking at her. “Go on home,” he repeated, and then shut the door to his office. 

Elise could feel the blood drying and flaking on her face and hands. She didn't wash up in the office bathroom, too fearful of crossing paths with another employee in her state. On the street, passersby turned to her, then quickly turned away. Only a few blocks to home. She’d skip her coffee for the day, so as not to frighten Ahmad, who would no doubt try to clean her up and give her a drink for free and then she’d feel guilty all day. 

In her bathroom, the left light made her the devil incarnate. A nosebleed, of course, she had been prone to them as a child (maybe once a month for a few years after her parents’ divorce, one ER visit when the blood wouldn’t clot, where both parents convened in the hospital room and moved their plastic chairs so far apart that they ended up just being far from her so as to be far from each other). Dried blood, ruddy brown, flaked the edges of her lips and sunk into the lines around her mouth. She breathed through her teeth as her nostrils were clogged and shut tight. 

She called Mom, and it went to voicemail. She called Heather—voicemail, too. Her fingers hovered over PJ’s contact, but didn’t dial. Alone, she wet a washcloth and cringed as the crisped blood pulled on the tiny hairs on her face. Mom called back within minutes.

“It’s Tuesday,” was her mother’s clipped, nervous greeting.

“Hi Mom,” Elise said, sink still running. 

“What’s going on? I left a baseball game.” Elise could hear Mom shut a car door. Though she’d never been to Mom’s new town, she had a mental image of her stepbrother’s baseball diamond and gravel parking lot, where Mom and new husband Rick would cheer on their tiny athlete. On Elise’s typical Friday calls, Mom would sit in her car alone to talk, sometimes there at the field, sometimes in her driveway at home. Elise wondered how she’d become a secret, a phone call never to be taken indoors or in public. 

“I got a nosebleed,” Elise said. She sounded childish, she realized, so added: “at work.”

“Okay,” Mom breathed, the sound of her purse thumping onto the passenger seat, her sunglasses being folded and set in the cupholder. “Is it bad? Do you need to go to the hospital?”

“I don’t think so,” Elise said, and then wondered why she’d called at all. Adults handle things by themselves unless they need a doctor (the times when they need to pay someone else to handle something). 

“Well, did you go home?”

“My boss sent me home. I bled on his paperwork.”

“That sounds like a lot of blood.” 

This was the part of growing up that was maybe the hardest for Elise. Everyone was like therapists—never answering questions for you, never deciding things for you, but instead waiting for you to make the connections yourself. It briefly occurred to her that her boss had made a decision for her by sending her home, and she suddenly loved him for it. 

“I’m okay,” Elise decided, and dried her hands on a bath towel. “I’m sorry you had to miss the game.”

“I mean, you scared me. It’s a Tuesday. This is such not-Elise behavior,” Mom said, but quickly added: “I’m glad you’re okay, though, honey. Maybe get yourself a humidifier. Maybe you’re dried out.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

Elise let her go, told her she loved her, and imagined Mom taking a deep breath, putting her sunglasses back on, and going back to the bleachers. Sitting next to Rick and smiling, saying, It was nothing, no big deal, what did I miss? Elise wondered what Mom was wearing. If she still carried the same purple thermos. 

*

On Wednesday, Elise found her desk clean, despite leaving the smudgy blood behind the day before. Her boss didn’t make much eye contact, which wasn’t new, but seemed for once calculated and purposeful. 

Around noon, the pigeon appeared again on the windowsill. That was the problem yesterday, that she and the pigeon had this relationship. It only came now and again, perching haphazardly on the stones jutting out below the window directly across from Elise’s desk. Its feathers shone jewel-toned greens and purples and danced so beautifully in the sunlight, how could anyone look away? Elise had once pointed it out to a legal assistant, Miranda, who was not at all captivated by the bird (“I see pigeons outside my apartment all the time. They shit on the sidewalk, drives me nuts”). Elise tried again with a visiting client, who told her that all pigeons are domesticated, so they make surprisingly great pets. Elise had never stopped thinking of what she’d said, the sweet little fact, and loved her for it. 

The pigeon would sometimes look at her, though she wasn’t sure it could see her through the reflections in the glass. When she’d step close, she’d see her own face outlined in the window, the pigeon standing there sort of right at the heart of her own reflection. Today she approached the glass, standing so her shadow met the pigeon, and didn’t even hear the phone ring. The twitches of the bird’s head were as fast and nervous as Mom when she was venting about something. The shifting of its feet reminded Elise of Dad when he’d pace on work calls. But the eyes were inherently Elise, wide, watchful, but a little distracted—

“Elise, the phone’s ringing.” Her boss was leaning his head out of his office doorway, staying long enough for her to turn and apologize before disappearing again. 

By the time she answered the phone, the pigeon had gone. 

*

Ahmad was perched on his stool behind the corner store counter when she came in at 5:15, his posture as impossibly perfect as ever. He smiled at her, maybe the first smile she’d seen all day, maybe longer than even that. 

“I didn’t see you yesterday,” Ahmad said, standing to move for the coffee machine. Elise hovered by the counter, her own mouth pulled up a bit at the corners as she watched him make her usual (medium, cream, lots of sugar). His beard was a little darker than his hair, his eyes a little darker than the beard. He had five pairs of the same exact sort of running shoes, all in different colors (today: blue). 

“I got a nosebleed. I looked really gross.”

Ahmad turned to her, “Are you alright?”

“Yes, I just didn’t want to be a health code violation by coming in here.”

He laughed, tilting sugar packets into her styrofoam cup. “You’re a welcome violation here.”

As he rang her up and she fished for change in her purse, she said, “How’s school?”

Ahmad went to the university in the daytime and took over the shop in evenings so his father could rest. He got better grades than Elise ever had, usually doing his homework at the counter until he closed up at 2:00 a.m. 

“It’s good, actually. My advisor says I could graduate a semester early, I’ve got enough credits.”

Elise really smiled and congratulated him, stuffing the remainder of her singles and change into his makeshift coffee-can tip jar. He shooed at her hand, but she stuffed in a few more quarters just to spite him. 

“So, why the nosebleed? What happened?”

She shrugged, but said, “I was so busy looking at the pigeon, I didn’t even know I had bled all over everything.”

Ahmad laughed, and it made her laugh, too. He knew all about the pigeon and Elise and everything else.

“You know, I heard a mourning dove this morning. They’re like cousins of pigeons,” he told her. “Leave your windows open up there, maybe you’ll hear it, too.”

Elise did exactly that when she climbed the stairs to her apartment, opening her windows wide, just a few floors up from Ahmad. Below her, she could imagine him on the stool, blue shoes balanced on the rungs, biting the eraser of a mechanical pencil as he pored over his school papers. The image was so clear, she maybe even dreamed it, and the next morning she heard the coo of the dove. 

*

Thursday went slow, no pigeon, but an excited conversation with Ahmad about hearing the mourning dove and resolving to never shut her windows again. He suggested leaving birdseed on her windowsill to see if it would visit her (he even offered to order some into his store, to which she agreed). 

Thursday was for feeding Mrs. O’Donnell’s cat, so at 5:55 she slipped the spare key from under the doormat and went inside 12A. The cat was nowhere to be found, but Elise went to the cupboard above the sink and filled its bowl with chunky nasty fishy stuff, setting it on the linoleum floor. She waited, but no cat. 

Mrs. O’Donnell had asked that she always make sure the cat ate, so Elise wandered about the old woman’s apartment, looking for the cat. Every room had stuffy artwork in faded frames and mounts, woven blankets all within a pastel color palette, fluffy ivory slippers by the bed. It was the first time she’d allowed herself to snoop, and couldn’t help but peek at bookshelves, into cabinet drawers, in linen closets. The apartment layout was essentially identical to Elise’s, but was so cozy with time, so full of treasures, so unrecognizably lived. 

In the bathroom, there was a litterbox, old perfumes, embroidered hand towels. On the fridge, weathered children’s drawings, maybe from her daughter or even grandchildren—Elise had never asked. She hardly even saw Mrs. O’Donnell, not for many months—she only visited the cat. Elise returned to the bedroom to look more closely for it, and noticed the lump in the sheets. The bed was piled so high with blankets and pillows, it was easy to miss the first time. But not now—unmistakably human, unmistakably thin, and the hair above the comforter, dyed yellow and white, cold old white at the root. 

Elise backed up against the wall and felt the light switch poke into her spine. Everything was silent and nothing moved (nothing moved). 

Adults handled things by themselves, unless they needed a doctor. Unless they needed to pay someone else to handle something for them. Futilely and senselessly, Elise thought about how she’d given the last of her cash to Ahmad for coffee today. She still had money in her bank account, of course, but only a little. Why did money suddenly matter? And the mourning dove, she was going to invite it to her window with the birdseed. Someone would mourn this woman. Their apartments were so identical. There was no living room. 

Elise was blind as she ran down to Ahmad, who closed the shop with a swift key and joined her upstairs. They stood together in Mrs. O’Donnell’s bedroom, both as still as the bed. 

“I can’t find the cat,” Elise said, stupid—a child. 

Ahmad took a step toward the bed and Elise followed, thinking of the people who passed her on the street when she was covered in blood, thinking of the bystander effect that she learned about in a psychology class, thinking how there were so many people she could never love. They lifted the bedsheet together, and curled against the woman’s side was a dead gray cat. 

Together they called the police, Ahmad’s phone cradled in both of their hands. Together they stood against the wall in the hallway as people carried out Mrs. O’Donnell, covered in a new sheet, no hair sticking out this time. Elise wondered if they took the cat, too. Elise wondered if Ahmad was thinking the same. 

Together, too, they went back to the shop, and Ahmad locked the door behind them so he and Elise could be alone with living, thinking, being. He insisted that she take his stool, and her back ached on it, fingers burned around her coffee cup. 

“I’m sorry,” Elise said (about making him see that). “But thank you,” she said (because he handled it, because she didn’t even have to pay him, because he was younger than her, but he was an adult, too, because the look on his face was a window-reflection of her own, because he ordered her birdseed, because he understood about the pigeon, because he was here every day, because she could love him).

Ahmad squatted on the floor a few feet from her with his own coffee, which she rarely saw him drink. He told her he was glad she came to get him, said he was glad to help, that he would always help. If Elise were really still a child, she would have cried. 

They stayed until 2:00 a.m., when the store would have closed had it been open at all, and Elise said she had to work in the morning. Ahmad had school. They had to go on living tomorrow even though, even though, even though (Mrs. O’Donnell had so many lines on her face, she was so old, she was so grown up, she was so alive and living even without the living room, and then she wasn’t). (The police said she was probably dead for a couple days). (They said nothing about the cat, whether the cat died first, whether the cat died after, whether the cat starved waiting for Elise).

Elise was heartbroken only because Ahmad had really tried with the mourning dove, which felt now like the deep dark stain of an omen. Maybe because she could have loved Ahmad with his bright shoes and kid laugh, but now they both had a big dark ruddy brown stain of being adults who saw things that adults saw. Because they would both die or tire of loving each other, because they would give their kids nosebleeds and she would die in bed with the cat. Ahmad would remarry because he was beautiful and a little younger.

Ahmad looked worried, his dark eyes sort of twinkling for Elise, watching as she stood and walked to the door. Elise hovered with her hand on the handle. 

“Do you still want the birdseed?” he asked. 

“Tomorrow is Friday,” Elise said. “I don’t know who to call.”

*

Friday was work, wine, calling someone she loves. Friday was also the pigeon. Elise, having not slept at all, having stayed up the whole night wondering if Ahmad could sleep, was without restraint when the bird appeared. She stood from her desk, walked to the door, and went outside. For the first time, she saw the pigeon without the pane of glass between them. 

“Hello,” she said. It didn’t turn to her. 

Elise leaned over the rail of the stairs, getting closer to the windowsill. Maybe three feet between them. “I wanted to talk to you,” she told the bird. Its head rotated and twitched. 

“I don’t know what to say,” Elise said, and the pigeon bobbed and shuffled.  “You’re always around.”

The bird looked ahead, over the asphalt moat, over the strip mall mountains. It was not a fantasy thing, it was not a dragon or a dinosaur. It was not Mom, or Dad, or Elise. 

“I won’t make you my pet,” Elise said like a promise. “I don’t want you to die in my apartment.”

The pigeon sort of looked, sort of at her, sort of at the stairs, sort of at nothing. 

“I’m not mad at your cousin,” she said. 

The bird looked at the window, and saw its reflection. No one stared from the other side of the glass. Just the bird, and everything behind it. 

She realized then that the bird stood straight up and never bent. Even when it reached for its feet, for food, it was straight-backed. It did not waver. 

Elise stuck her head back in the door and said to her boss, who sat with his office door open, that she needed to go. 

“You can’t leave. I have a divorce client coming in 20 minutes, I need you here to take notes,” he said. 

“Then I think I quit,” Elise said, and paused a moment before shutting the door behind her. The pigeon stood unblinking on the sill, and she said to it: “You can come along if you like, but I understand if you want to stay. The view from the outside looking in is prettier.” The pigeon did not move, its greens and purples like a gem against the castle walls. Elise waved goodbye. 

*

Ahmad had class in the science building on the other side of town. It took Elise 30 minutes to get there, and then she waited on the steps for another half hour. She had never seen him anywhere but the store and Mrs. O’Donnell’s room. Maybe it was that he wasn’t working, or maybe it was that he saw her waiting for him, that she had come to find him, that she had remembered what he’d said about his classes and schedule, that they fell right into step together, maybe that was why he looked different. Green shoes today, and the daylight on his skin, and an arm full of books, and a kid laugh when she said she quit. 

“I usually have wine on Friday nights,” Elise said. 

“I don’t close the shop until two,” Ahmad said. She knew. 

“I’ll wait for you,” she told him. 

Ahmad opened a textbook, one he said he found in the campus library. Just birds, bird biology, sweet little facts. He’d marked a page. 

Ahmad handed Elise the book, where a green sticky note pointed to a passage. It read: the coo of the mourning dove, though mournful-sounding, is a mating call. 

Elise laughed and laughed, the omen washing away from her, the blood running down the drain. 

Ahmad’s straight back never bent, not even when the sun rose and the bottles were empty. 

Gryphon Beyerle is a bookseller in Willoughby, Ohio. She has a BA from Ohio University and her work has appeared in Sphere, Fangle, and Remington Review.