shepherd and hers was the closest leg he could get to after the urge had struck. She pushed him away, coldly thanked him for the movie, and never talked to him again. And it had occurred to her, at some point throughout the week, that that pathetic bungling on her doorstep happened to be the most interesting thing that had ever happened to her.
Sheâd never been an introspective person, had never lain awake wondering at the ceiling above, until the party last Saturday night, where everything changed. Since then, sheâd spent most of her time thinking, digging into her formative years, trying to find things that stood out, things that would make her life a little more than a simple going-through-the-motions. She hadnât come across much, but she had revisited one distinctive afternoon quite a few times, mulling it over, sure that there was something in it worth considering.
It had been a blue-sky day, early summer, and she was eleven years old, in the backyard and playing with her Barbie, a craze-toy that had been released the year before, in 1959. She remembers that she was sitting alone at a table near her motherâs flower garden, a table she appreciated for the fact that it was perfectly aligned with a birdbath in the yard, which rose out of a pool of chrysanthemums like a whale spout. She remembers considering the birdbath as being mythical or sanctified in some way. And looking back at it now sheâs sure that, if she hadnât been playing in the way a girl should, with her doll, sitting at a table being discreet and innocuous and complacent, she probably would have had her hands in its water, knee-high in the bee-drunken flower heads, maybe playing with the floating curls of down that birds sometimes left behind on the water, blowing on them like miniature sailboats; she could have been an epic wind to an epic ship on an epic voyage. But she was playing like she should have been instead.
She remembers why she held the birdbath in such a fabled light but isnât sure if what happened with the grackle took place that same afternoon, the same blue-sky day that her brother leapt from the garage roof. She doesnât think so.
The event with the grackle probably happened earlier, and it was a simple one, but striking, extraordinary. Sheâd been crouching down near it, at the edge of the flowerbed (maybe stealing a petal, maybe spitting onto the dirt, inspecting the gummy flesh of a worm that had surfaced, maybe even touching it while no one was lookingâwho could say?) when a dark form flapped into view and splashed into the water only three arm-lengths away from her. The bird, a common grackle, began to wash itself immediately, oblivious to her presence, shaking long drops into, then out of, its iridescent plumage, raising its head after every dip to survey the yard with its piercing yellow eyes, which never managed to pierce her, to see her as a threat, as a potential predator cloaked in a pink dress. She watched it, mesmerized, as still as a statue on the edge of a fountain. In the sunlight, glistening, the bird was almost candescent, a metallic sheen, like oil streaks filming over a dark puddle, every colour in a nighttime rainbow. When it flew off, abrupt and without warning, a drop from its feathers had landed on her arm, and sheâd held it up close to her face, as if to look for colour, for some kind of tint in its clarity. But it was only water.
Yet it wasnât. It wasnât only water. Now it was something more. It was a drop of water that had fallen from a flying grackle. Just because something was commonplace, she thought, didnât mean it had come from a place that was common. Wasnât it possible that the soot from a volcano was more than just soot, that the coating of frost that smudged a plum was more than just frost? Or that a piece of corrugated cardboard, from her brotherâs makeshift flying machine that heâd jumped off the roof with, was more
Sheâd never been an introspective person, had never lain awake wondering at the ceiling above, until the party last Saturday night, where everything changed. Since then, sheâd spent most of her time thinking, digging into her formative years, trying to find things that stood out, things that would make her life a little more than a simple going-through-the-motions. She hadnât come across much, but she had revisited one distinctive afternoon quite a few times, mulling it over, sure that there was something in it worth considering.
It had been a blue-sky day, early summer, and she was eleven years old, in the backyard and playing with her Barbie, a craze-toy that had been released the year before, in 1959. She remembers that she was sitting alone at a table near her motherâs flower garden, a table she appreciated for the fact that it was perfectly aligned with a birdbath in the yard, which rose out of a pool of chrysanthemums like a whale spout. She remembers considering the birdbath as being mythical or sanctified in some way. And looking back at it now sheâs sure that, if she hadnât been playing in the way a girl should, with her doll, sitting at a table being discreet and innocuous and complacent, she probably would have had her hands in its water, knee-high in the bee-drunken flower heads, maybe playing with the floating curls of down that birds sometimes left behind on the water, blowing on them like miniature sailboats; she could have been an epic wind to an epic ship on an epic voyage. But she was playing like she should have been instead.
She remembers why she held the birdbath in such a fabled light but isnât sure if what happened with the grackle took place that same afternoon, the same blue-sky day that her brother leapt from the garage roof. She doesnât think so.
The event with the grackle probably happened earlier, and it was a simple one, but striking, extraordinary. Sheâd been crouching down near it, at the edge of the flowerbed (maybe stealing a petal, maybe spitting onto the dirt, inspecting the gummy flesh of a worm that had surfaced, maybe even touching it while no one was lookingâwho could say?) when a dark form flapped into view and splashed into the water only three arm-lengths away from her. The bird, a common grackle, began to wash itself immediately, oblivious to her presence, shaking long drops into, then out of, its iridescent plumage, raising its head after every dip to survey the yard with its piercing yellow eyes, which never managed to pierce her, to see her as a threat, as a potential predator cloaked in a pink dress. She watched it, mesmerized, as still as a statue on the edge of a fountain. In the sunlight, glistening, the bird was almost candescent, a metallic sheen, like oil streaks filming over a dark puddle, every colour in a nighttime rainbow. When it flew off, abrupt and without warning, a drop from its feathers had landed on her arm, and sheâd held it up close to her face, as if to look for colour, for some kind of tint in its clarity. But it was only water.
Yet it wasnât. It wasnât only water. Now it was something more. It was a drop of water that had fallen from a flying grackle. Just because something was commonplace, she thought, didnât mean it had come from a place that was common. Wasnât it possible that the soot from a volcano was more than just soot, that the coating of frost that smudged a plum was more than just frost? Or that a piece of corrugated cardboard, from her brotherâs makeshift flying machine that heâd jumped off the roof with, was more
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