The Tender Birds Read online

  The

  TENDER

  BIRDS

  ALSO BY CAROLE GIANGRANDE

  FICTION

  All That Is Solid Melts into Air

  Here Comes the Dreamer

  Midsummer

  A Gardener on the Moon

  An Ordinary Star

  A Forest Burning

  Missing Persons

  NON-FICTION

  Down To Earth: The Crisis in Canadian Farming

  The Nuclear North: The People, The Regions and the Arms Race

  The

  TENDER

  BIRDS

  a novel

  Carole Giangrande

  INANNA PUBLICATIONS AND EDUCATION INC.

  TORONTO, CANADA

  Copyright © 2019 Carole Giangrande

  Except for the use of short passages for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced, in part or in whole, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanically, including photocopying, recording, or any information or storage retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher or a licence from the Canadian Copyright Collective Agency (Access Copyright).

  We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.

  Cover design: Val Fullard

  eBook: tikaebooks.com

  The Tender Birds is a work of fiction. All the characters and situations portrayed in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to persons living or dead — with the exception of historical personages — is purely coincidental. Names and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination and historical events are used fictitiously.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: The tender birds : a novel / Carole Giangrande.

  Names: Giangrande, Carole, 1945- author.

  Series: Inanna poetry & fiction series.

  Description: Series statement: Inanna poetry & fiction series

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190147792 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190147806 | ISBN 9781771336659 (softcover) | ISBN 9781771336666 (epub) |

  ISBN 9781771336673 (Kindle) | ISBN 9781771336680 (pdf)

  Classification: LCC PS8563.I24 T46 2019 | DDC C813/.54—dc23

  Printed and bound in Canada

  Inanna Publications and Education Inc.

  210 Founders College, York University

  4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3

  Telephone: (416) 736-5356 Fax: (416) 736-5765

  Email: [email protected] Website: www.inanna.ca

  For Brian

  There is the heaven we enter

  through its institutional grace

  and there are the yellow finches bathing and singing

  in the lowly puddle.

  —Mary Oliver

  Prologue

  2001

  MATTHEW REILLY’S RUNNING LATE. It’s early morning, he’s about to fly, his cab’s waiting. Last night, he dreamt about Valerie. Glancing in the mirror, he smooths back his thinning hair before he heads out the rectory door. There’s a chill in the air, autumn’s coming, but the clear sky is indigo blue, edged with dawn. He notices a fading star or two, perhaps a planet. In his youth, when Valerie had been his lover, she’d taught him the names of a few bright stars. He wonders if she still recalls them. By the grace of the internet, she’d come back into his life again. Email, he thinks, is a blessing — it allows one to keep a distance. He’d have to remember to ask her about the stars.

  In the cab, Matt recalls how he felt last night, busy to the point of desperation, knowing that what ailed him was an old dread, an unnameable fear of chaos made worse by exhaustion. Due for a vacation, he’d been packing for this early morning flight, a visit to his sister on the coast. In his carry-on: laptop, breviary, academic journal, cell phone. He’d set out his black slacks and short-sleeved shirt, his Roman collar for the morning. His identifying dress would get him good service in Boston, nods of respect at the airport, a quicker-than-average pass through security as they’d give him a look-see and find a decent, trustworthy man. The body doesn’t lie, as they say.

  Matt had a degree in psych, and he knew how they trained those guards. A screener would see a trim man with blond hair, blue eyes, a ruddy complexion, and a smile that was kind enough, though perhaps a shade cold. The metal detector would swipe his chest and shriek at a small silver crucifix on a chain. That would be it.

  He packed a few pairs of running shorts and sweat socks. Exercise paid off — he looked good on TV. Yet when he’d watch his videos or DVDs, he was perceptive enough to notice a hardening of his expression, that dreaded priestly visage of youthfulness stiffening into old age without the ripeness of maturity. On the screen, he’d glimpsed a man who was absent from his longings.

  Chastened by the thought, he paused from packing, took a deep breath, gripped his hands behind his head and stretched, feeling the pull of his muscles, trim against black shirt sleeves. At least he was presentable. He hadn’t gorged on junk food at Parish Council meetings, and he didn’t suffer with the lonely bottle that afflicted so many other priests. In his mid-fifties, he enjoyed good health.

  Much in demand, he’d overloaded every circuit — books, articles, reviews, interviews, teaching, pastoral work. So much had been given to him, so little of it deserved, he thought. He should be generous; yes, yes to every request, his hand gripping the phone in a fury of muscular spasms. Breathe, he’d say to himself, directing his breath to release his hand. Relax.

  He could have flown out to the coast that evening, but it was Monday, a teaching day, with office hours for graduate students who often came late. Traffic, they explained. If he’d turned them away, he’d be in L.A. by now. Yet he felt that life had been good to him and more than cruel to the drivers of Boston, with all the construction detours downtown, and the Central Artery backed up into the next life. It was no fault of theirs, being late. He knew of many worse sins.

  Even though weary, Matt was still a hopeful man. In his faith, the world was a gift, a sign of grace, and all of creation was the echo of this mystery. His every action — the movement of his hands in folding a garment, the choice of a book to read on the flight — made visible the blessing of the unseen. He was packing for a spiritual journey, as if there were any other kind.

  How would it be if I just went on vacation? he thought.

  The phone rang. He let it ring through to his voice mail as he squeezed his running shoes into a pouch. Done. He zipped up the suitcase and shoved it into a corner. Then he sat down at his desk, hiding his face in his hands, pressing his fingers into his temples, as if to massage away an intensity of feeling, one that was unfamiliar and disquieting. For weeks, he’d been seized by the thought that he needed to leave his calling. He was too alone, afraid of spending his last years in a narrow, empty room, denied forever the intimacy that gives married people solace in their old age. Yet the layman’s life appeared to be a jangle of distractions, a tiresome maze he’d have to learn to navigate. He’d never owned or rented a home, never shopped or cooked or taken his shirts to the cleaners. Unskilled in the tasks of ordinary life, he had no idea how he’d cope.

  Matt hadn’t been sleeping well. Before retiring, he’d pray Compline, the night prayer of the Church. May the Almighty Lord grant us a peaceful night and a perfect end. He had to rise early to catch his plane, but after an hour or two of fitful sleep, he woke up. Darkness slammed into him the way a twister hits the ground.

  A soldier in a southeast Asian jungle — the image blurred in his memory like torrential rain on a windshield, the wipers going full tilt. Even now, there was only so much visibility. The rain had poured down, a monsoon, a howl of danger. He opened his breviary and prayed, Oh God, save me, and by your mercy free me. Yet his hands were chilled, as if they still held a rifle, and he felt an old madness, like a terrible thunderstorm battering the earth.

  At times like this, he asked himself why he’d want to leave the priesthood, where he was safe. He feared the absence of prayer in his life, what the end of discipline might mean. He wondered if he hadn’t prayed enough.

  Matt stares out the taxi window. Irritated from lack of sleep, he’s dreading this ride to the airport. Traffic tie-ups even before dawn — how inconvenient the city’s become. Roadblocks and detours, the Big Dig like some monstrous worm grinding and tunnelling its way underground; hideous orange garbage trucks, their iron mandibles poised to crush cabs and bikes; the side streets plugged with FedEx deliveries and September’s lineup of student moving vans. It’s outrageous, he thinks — the jackhammering chaos of downtown Boston. When the cabbie asks “Where to?” he’s about to say, Where the hell do you think, at this hour?

  He catches his own reflection in the rear-view mirror, the white edge of his Roman collar.

  “Logan,” he says. “Terminal C.”

  Matt’s driver is a brown-skinned man, his head covered by an embroidered cap. Nowadays, many of Boston’s cab drivers appear to be Muslim, and he wonders how they juggle their fares to accommodate their religious practice of praying at regular hours. Thinking about these devout men brings solace on his rides to the airport. As he gazes out the window, he imagines a city full of reverent souls, hu
ndreds of Muslim cabbies pulling up to the curbs on Tremont and Boylston, Charles and Beacon Streets, all of them unaware of irritated shoppers, women loaded with bags from Macy’s and Filene’s, trying in vain to hail off-duty cabs. Each man with a prayer rug under his arm is walking along the criss-crossed paths through the flower beds of the Public Garden and the Common, each prostrating himself by the fountains, or alongside the statue of George Washington or Charles Sumner; each man a compass-needle swinging eastward. Oblivious to staring tourists, bongo-drumming buskers, lunchtime strollers on their cellphones, the devout would send up their insistent murmur to heaven, that Allah most merciful might hear them.

  Such faith, he thinks. He feels a twinge of sadness.

  He pulls the breviary out of his computer bag, and in the dim light, he begins to read. Oh God, come to my assistance. Oh Lord, make haste to help me.

  Matt has a fondness for cab drivers, whatever their faith and whatever the road conditions. He relies on them because he doesn’t drive. As a youth in a New York City suburb, he suffered a blackout on the Tappan Zee Bridge. He was ill, his licence was revoked, and he’s never tried to get it back because its loss taught him humility.

  He’s thinking this as his cab enters the tunnel, a tube of darkness lit by the headlights of oncoming traffic. His watch says seven-fifteen, Eastern Daylight Time. The plane is leaving in an hour, and nothing’s moving. The long line of vehicles appears to congeal into a glistening gel squeezing its way out of the tube. It’s getting late. He lets his mind idle, trying to imagine the French island of Saint Pierre where Valerie’s gone to contemplate the flowers of a harsh terrain. Lacking more casual language, he’d told her he’d pray for the success of her retreat. He glances up. The cars ahead aren’t moving.

  “Rush hour,” says the cabbie. “Volume of traffic.”

  “Is it always this bad?”

  “Some days worse.”

  The cabbies always say that. The traffic starts moving again, and as soon as the cab emerges from the tunnel and into the light of day, Matt looks up at the cloudless sky and remembers a pious sister from grammar school who’d describe such blue as the sky of Mary, perfect and unsullied by the cloud of sin, an azure garment embracing the world. He finds this image saccharine, but he also finds it calming to imagine each morning as a new creation. In his heart, Matt has always thanked that sister, who’d done for him what he felt the Church did best — how it haunted reality with signs and symbols, with ghosted layers of meaning.

  “What airline?” asks the cabbie.

  “United.”

  The cab pulls up to the curb. There’s construction at the airport, and in order to get to the check-in, he has to wheel his suitcase through a jerry-built entranceway of plastic sheeting and wooden planks, leading him to the escalator that descends into the main lounge. It’s seven-forty — they start boarding his flight in five minutes. Below him, the check-in hall is jammed, and the passengers form a long, meandering sausage-link, its human casings stuffed and bulky with backpacks and carry-ons. He gets off the escalator and makes his way to the United Airlines check-in. There’ll be a lineup; there always is. A passenger’s holding things up, showing his passport. Great moments in human stupidity, Matt thinks. It’s probably expired.

  His turn. The agent glances at his ticket, stamps his boarding pass and looks at it with concern, with a deferential nod that frames her face in tight black curls. As she turns her eyes on him, he catches the gleam of a tiny gold cross around her neck. “You’re running late, Father,” she says. “Just go. I’ll call and ask them to hold the plane.” Matt hears a Spanish lilt in her voice. What a little sweetheart, he thinks.

  This sort of thing happens so often that he accepts it as routine, at least in Boston. Grateful for the grip that the Hispanic church still has on its adherents, Matt hits the escalator two steps at a time, then dashes off to security. He shows his ID and boarding pass, then sees that one of the screening-posts has no guard. On other flights, he’s noticed the lack of staff, along with a few harried passengers who’d slip through unchecked. He’s tempted to do that today, and then he remembers that his Roman collar had attracted the ticket agent’s notice. It could also be noticed by a guard. In any case, it would set a poor example if a priest took advantage.

  “Over here,” says the guard at the next post. There’s a line ahead of Matt. He empties his pockets of keys and change and places them in the plastic box. He shoves his briefcase through the X-ray machine. As he walks through the metal detector, it squawks at the cross he wears under his shirt. “Sorry, Father,” says the woman who runs the wand over his body. When he goes to the counter to claim his carry-on, the guard asks him to turn on the computer. Matt does, then glances again at his watch, an ancient one that belonged to his father. Patience and fortitude are gifts of the Holy Spirit, he thinks.

  While his laptop boots up, he eyes the TV monitor overhead. A travel ad — the face of Big Ben, about to chime the hours over London. A mesmerizing sight, all Roman numerals and giant hands. He shoves the computer back in the bag.

  Wonder if that little gal got through to the plane. The gate’s up ahead. Matt’s running.

  Matthew

  Why He Loved Birds

  “I MISSED THAT PLANE,” said Matt. “I don’t know why God saved me.” He did not think it appropriate to tell his parishioner that he had never offered comfort to Valerie, his love before entering the priesthood, the woman whose quiet retreat to a French island left her in anguish on a tragic day. She had lost her son to the plane he missed. It crashed into the tower where the young man worked. Ten years on, and he mentioned none of this.

  “You know about…?” he asked.

  “Everyone does,” said Alison.

  He felt embarrassed, having almost stumbled into an idiotic question, as if the woman before him had been cloistered on that tragic day, without TV or the internet.

  “All of us were meant to die that day,” she said. “Yet some of us lived. Who knows why?” She looked at him with a fearless seeing that went beyond sight. He felt her eyes capture him as a camera’s shutter freezes time. Or as a hawk’s eye holds its prey, with the same fierce, unguarded innocence. She had thick dark hair that she wore in a glistening braid, a pale face as calm and serene as moonlight. Saint Alison, he’d think sometimes, amused by her earnestness, but not prepared to dismiss it.

  By her side was a cage containing a peregrine falcon, a fierce-looking creature that could neither hunt nor fly. Daisy was Alison’s best friend, a peculiar companion, a proud species with a humble name. Peregrine for wanderer.

  Her keeper had been sorting and boxing books in the library that served as his part-time office. The church was about to close; the books were to be sold. Alison was intrigued by the fact that some of the volumes excluded from the sale were falconry guides, attesting both to the Father’s interest in the subject and to his failure to cloak the sport in any form of spiritual drapery. It was while she was putting these books aside that Matt told her the dreadful story of the plane he missed, and the terror of that day that had so injured humankind.

  Alison had asked him an innocent question. She’d asked him why he loved birds.

  “Because of a terrible thing that happened,” he said. “Because I needed to love something.”

  Ten years earlier, he had supervised a doctoral student from Toronto whose mother owned a plant nursery. This fact, otherwise of no concern, piqued his interest since his old friend Valerie ran her own lawn and garden business. Mentioning her name, he learned from his student that Valerie’s gardening truck was a familiar sight in her neighbourhood.

  He thought no more of it until the attacks, when his student emailed him to let him know that Valerie Lefèvre had lost a son that day. He ought to write her a letter of condolence, he had thought at the time. He had her address; he’d sent her his books. Yet although they’d renewed their friendship, it was sustained by intellect and bounded by restraint. By unspoken agreement, they did not discuss her children or their names.