Chapter 11 Save the Crows
Save the Crows
The crow army came the next week. Jack was sitting by the pool when they swooped in and landed on the lemon tree. It was a small army, only three soldiers’ worth. But three crows in a lemon tree: that wasn’t something a person saw every day.
“Hi,” he said, slowly closing his computer so as not to scare them, and had he just greeted a minimurder of crows?
And given that the answer was apparently yes, he had chosen a mere “Hi”?
He might have summoned them, but he was going to have to up his game.
They contemplated him silently. Should he give them some food?
He swung his legs to the ground and slowly, deliberately, smoothly, got up and went inside and ripped open a package of the granola he’d been giving them on the hill.
Had he Ubered to a fancy-ass grocery store to buy more of the fancy-ass granola?
What if he had? He’d needed some other stuff, too. Some normal, non-fancy-ass stuff.
On impulse, he pulled down a bowl and poured the granola into it.
If one was going to offer dinner to one’s potential crow army, why not do it in style?
It was one thing for a bird to eat off the literal earth, another for it to eat off a man-made patio.
Though why a man-made bowl was any better than a man-made patio, he couldn’t say.
He was going with his gut here. They would probably be gone by the time he got back out there anyway.
They were not. They remained in the tree, unsettlingly silent.
He inched toward them, keeping his eyes on the ground. If anyone could see him, it would look like he was kowtowing to a bunch of birds. Maybe he was.
Halfway to the tree, he sensed them getting restless, so he set the bowl on the ground and reversed course, backing up until he was at the door of the pool house.
They did nothing. He went inside and stood by the window, and only then did they start vocalizing. Not the classic crow squawking, exactly, more like they were discussing among themselves.
And then one of them—the crow general?—hopped down and delicately helped itself to a piece of granola. Soon the rest followed. Once they were done, they took flight, whooshing off into the blue sky and out of sight.
He stood looking out the window for a long time, and then he called his mother. The restaurant was closed Mondays, so he thought he might catch her.
“Jack!” she exclaimed when she picked up his FaceTime call. Something in her voice reminded him of the way Blair sounded when Esme called. He had never noticed it before. “Is everything OK?” Her tone had shifted there, from delight to concern, because he so rarely called. Because he was an asshole.
“Everything’s fine. I just thought I’d call and say hi.” He paused. He didn’t know how to ask what he wanted to ask, to say what he wanted to say. So he settled for “How’s life at Mulligan’s?”
“We’re back to pads and paper, which I appreciate.”
“You mean for taking orders? I didn’t realize you’d moved away from them.”
“About a month ago they decided to give us mini iPads. You can imagine how that went with all the old biddies we’ve got there, and I include myself in that.” She made a silly face.
He chuckled, because that was what he was supposed to do.
She saw through him. “Are you all right, sweetie?”
“I’m fine.” He paused. Well, shit. He had called her for a reason, and he wasn’t going to let himself off the hook. “I just wanted to say that, uh, you were a good mother. You are a good mother.”
There was a long silence. He had made a mistake. She was either going to freak out and assume something was seriously wrong or brush off what he’d said and try to give him credit for her parenting.
She surprised him by saying, “Thank you, I appreciate that. Being your mother has been the great honor of my life.”
And then she surprised him again by saying, “And not because of In Time.”
He gasped. Audibly. Dear God. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t take offense.” She held up the hand that wasn’t holding her phone. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I didn’t take offense.” Quite the opposite.
When was the last time someone had told him they appreciated him aside from that fucking book?
Probably not since his last year of teaching when a girl called Vivian had written him a card telling him his class had inspired her to switch her intended major at college the next year from engineering to English.
Even Blair, who right now was pretty much his biggest—and only—cheerleader, had the gig because she’d been a fan of In Time.
“Of course I love In Time,” his mother said. “I love that you wrote such a thing. I know it was hard.”
It was interesting to hear his mom say that writing was hard. His dad, the actual writer, had never said such a thing.
“Can I ask you a personal question?”
“You can ask,” she said with laughter in her tone. “Will I answer? Let’s find out.”
“Were you and Dad together, when I was a kid? I know you didn’t live together, but were you together?”
She did answer, but the laughter had gone from her voice. “We were for a few years after you were born. We thought we’d try out the whole being-a-family thing, even though we didn’t live together.”
“And he couldn’t do it,” Jack said.
“I wouldn’t say that necessarily,” his mom said after a pause.
“Mom. I appreciate your unrelenting commitment to not bad-mouthing him, but I’m an adult. I can take it.”
She sighed. “I’m not sure there’s much to tell. I fell in love with him. He fell into bed with me. It took me a while to fully sever those ties.”
“I’m sorry,” Jack said.
“I’m not. You know that thing I always say about how sometimes people are in your life for a reason or a season?”
He did know. His mother often leaned on clichés, and that was one of her favorites.
“You were the reason for your dad to be in my life,” she said. “The best reason. The greatest reason.
“Are you sure everything is OK?” she asked when Jack couldn’t muster any words. It wasn’t that he didn’t know what to say, though he didn’t, it was that a lump had risen in his throat.
He swallowed it. “I’m having a bit of trouble with the next book.”
“What kind of trouble?” she asked, and he realized that when his mother asked questions like that, they were never prurient, the way they felt from the public. He defaulted to being defensive when questioned; maybe he ought to stop doing that. At least with her.
“You mean the leak?” she pressed. She knew about the leak; they’d spoken briefly after it happened.
“Not the leak.” He told her about the pushed deadline, the writer’s block.
“I’ve just been… stuck. It’s going better now, but I’m still concerned about meeting the deadline.
” Not to mention the question of whether the book was any good to begin with, but one soul-baring revelation at a time.
“I’m actually in LA right now. I’m staying in the pool house of Blair Kellermoon. Do you know who she is?”
His mom laughed. “Well, that’s a plot twist.”
“It sounds like I don’t need to catch you up on this.”
“Oh, my beloved. I read the news. I know all about your Blair Kellermoon snub.”
It was his turn to chuckle, and amusement, even at his own expense, was so much better than the sadness that had come over him earlier, as he thought of his mother trying to be a family with his dad.
“Well, as improbable as it seems, we struck up a friendship, and she invited me to finish the book out here.”
“What is she like?”
He hadn’t expected that question, and he had to think about how to answer. “She’s chipper, perky, relentlessly optimistic, and slightly mercenary. She’s basically Los Angeles in human format. She also makes me watch TV.”
His mom laughed louder and longer than he thought warranted. When she got control of herself, she said, “I’m tempted to issue some platitude about how you’ll get your book done, but I don’t know anything about writing.”
“But you know me. Do you think I’ll get it done?”
“I think the best way for you to do that is to get out of your own head. Out of your own way.”
He chuckled. “I notice that wasn’t a ringing endorsement.” He also noticed that her words were similar to Blair’s when she’d said a TV character who reminded her of him was “up in his own head.”
“Sounds like the LA trip was the right idea,” his mom said. “If you want my advice, which I realize you didn’t actually ask for, I’d say look for more opportunities to do that. You used to be tough to drag out of the apartment, but you always seemed better for it.”
She was right. She used to take him to Sebastian Joe’s for ice cream when he was stressed about school. They’d sit on the steps of a nearby church and eat their cones, and somehow, when he went back to his homework, he was refreshed.
“What if I can’t get it done, though? I’ll have to give back the advance.”
“If you don’t get it done, you don’t get it done. You go back to teaching. Any school you can name would fall over themselves to have you.”
“I lost my seniority when I quit. I should have just taken a leave of absence.” He was aware that this conversation was sounding a lot like the one Blair had had with Cal.
“I don’t know what you want me to say. I don’t want to assure you you’ll get it done and make a promise I can’t keep.”
“You mean a promise I can’t keep.”
She smiled fondly, and Jack’s heart twisted. She was her same familiar self, but when had the lines in her forehead and around her eyes gotten so deep?
“Jack.” She pressed her hand to her cheek, and she was wearing the turquoise ring, the one that was the same color as Blair’s pool. “It’s a book. I’m not saying it’s not important, but no one is going to die if you don’t get it done.”
“Right. You’re right.” It hurt a little, being reminded that what he was doing wasn’t, ultimately, earth-shattering.
But at the same time, it was oddly calming to have things put into perspective.
He wasn’t saving anyone’s life, or saving the rainforest. He was only doing his best, and maybe, just a little bit, saving the crows.
Jack was sitting by the pool again the next afternoon waiting for the crows—look at him, he’d gone completely soft—when a motion from the edge of the yard caught his attention.
It was the cranky neighbor, her puffy, blue-gray hair clearly visible above the fence.
“Hello?” he called, though he had no idea why.
She started to sink.
“Wait! Don’t go!”
She floated back up. “Yes?”
Now what? “I wanted to introduce myself. I’m Jack. I’m a friend of Blair’s. I’m staying in the pool house for a while.” I’m a friend of Blair’s. That had rolled easily, automatically, off his tongue. The funny thing was, it felt true.
“Is she home?” the neighbor asked.
“No.”
“Why is she gone all day?”
“She goes to her office.”
“What does she need an office for?”
He regretted having initiated this conversation. “I don’t know. I guess she works better there than at home. And her staff is all there.”
“You look strong.”
Now he really regretted having initiated this conversation.
“I had a delivery of something heavy this morning. Can you help me get it inside my house?”
Well, shit. He heaved himself off the chair. “I’ll walk around and meet you out front.”
“Why can’t she ever bring her garbage bins in?” Mrs. Afonso asked when she met him on her porch. “She thinks she’s so important?”
Wow, this lady was sour, and Jack was somewhat of an expert on sour. He took a risk. “Why do you dislike her so much?”
She wrinkled her nose. “If she doesn’t know, she’s dumber than I thought, and I already thought she was pretty dumb.”
Speaking of dumb, Jack was dumbfounded.
“Are you going to help me or not?” She pointed to a big bag of something that was resting on the porch. Soil, maybe? No, it was fertilizer. “I’m stronger than I look, but I have trouble bending over. Thursday is Double Gin Night, and I can’t have this on the porch.”
“Double Gin Night?”
“Gin rummy and gin and tonics.” When he didn’t respond—he was still processing the mental image of Double Gin Night—she added, “My friends come over and we get drunk and play cards.”
Maybe the friends weren’t just coming over for an innocent card game. Maybe Mrs. Afonso was in a coven. It would explain the levitating.
He hefted the bag, which probably weighed fifty pounds, over his shoulder. Her driveway was all gravel, nary a blade of grass in sight. “Putting in a lawn?”
“It works for plants, too,” she said, with a defensiveness that wasn’t called for because Jack didn’t give a shit what Mrs. Afonso did with her yard.
He worried he might have trouble extracting himself after he followed her around to her backyard. But she must have only wanted him for his brawn. After he set the bag where she indicated, she waved at him—which he chose to interpret as a thank-you—and said, “You can see yourself out.”