Street Symphony by Rachel Wyatt Page A

the impossibility of cardinals. They played snap on the computer and followed a Wonderland serial on TV.
    Dan looked at Erin now with those untroubled eyes and said, “I’ll be fine.” And she did love him. This version of him was easier to love than the previous brave, questioning Dan. But still she longed for the excitement, the arguments, and the rush of life that he used to bring into a room with him, and the rush sometimes to bed.
    “Your lunch is in the fridge, honey,” she said.
    “I know.”
    But how much did he know? Did he know that without her work she would go insane? Did he know that last Friday, talking to Mel, she’d cried when she’d had to pack up her laptop and leave the building on King Street? There was no reason why she couldn’t work at home, but the two days a week downtown and trips to the library for research that she could have done online were necessary escapes. Time spent dealing with other people’s words gave her the patience to consider Dan and what he’d lost. Sometimes she looked in on him as he measured pieces of wood and chose paint colours, and wondered whether, if he did return to his normal self, he would ever be as happy again.
    “I’ll be taking them in next month,” he said. “Before the snow.”
    Across the path, he’d bent a wire coat hanger to make a hook and had attached the twenty-third birdhouse, this one made of birchbark and shaped like a wizard’s hat, to the fence. Carefully, he copied the designs from the book his brother had sent him. The last one was yet to be made and he seemed reluctant to begin, as if perhaps a door would close when it was done.
    Passersby stopped and stared into their front yard at the ten hanging from the two maples on the lawn as if it were a special display. Two people had asked if any of the houses were for sale. Thoughtful neighbours stopped their kids from laughing and making jokes. He was a soldier. He deserves respect.
    “Creative work will help his recovery,” the doctors, all three of them, said, though none of them had suggested an end date; give it a year, give it a decade. “Avoid TV news.” They were agreed on that too. A sudden shock, they also said, could bring Dan back to normality, a trigger. Erin wished they hadn’t used that word. Now and then, she thought of dressing up in a freaky costume and leaping out at him or even, but she suppressed this quickly, of buying a toy gun and pretending to shoot him.
    The thirteen houses in the backyard, boxes, towers, cottages, remained uninhabited except for the first one, the yellow duplex with a floral design round the “doors” that was attached to the metal washing-line pole out of squirrel-reach. It had attracted a sparrow family last spring, and Dan watched the couple as they took grass and scraps to line their temporary home. He listened to their cheeps and chirrups and marvelled as they flew to and fro with food for their infant. In August, after the nestling had flown away, he climbed up the pole using his arms and legs like a chimpanzee and cleaned out the dwelling ready for the next occupants. It was important to do that, he said, because there could be residual mites.
    Was his hobby compensation for the destruction he’d witnessed and suffered and caused? Not being religious, Dan wouldn’t be able find solace in blaming a careless god. He did, though now and then, quote lines from his Sunday school days about falling sparrows and “whatsoever you do for the least of these”. But there had to be something else that prompted him to construct these careful shelters and decorate them with shells or symbols. Each one had to be perfect, no rough edges.
    “The last one’s for the apple tree,” he said.
    “Will it bear it?” Erin carefully asked. Planted last year, the tree was thin, no more than a sapling.
    “I’m using light material. It’ll be special, a surprise for you. And you’re not to look into my workshop.” He poured muesli into a bowl and sat