Ten #2
As Lionel talks, J.J. stares at me. “You aren’t married?” he asks. I’ve been resting my left hand on the wire, my ringless finger on display. “A pretty girl like you?”
“I’m widowed. My husband died in the war.” My thousandth time saying it.
“Ah,” he says, and looks away. “Condolences.”
“So,” Lionel says. “We gonna fly these birds or what?”
“Am I holding you up? Didn’t realize you were in such a hurry.”
Lionel lifts his hands. “What you’re hearing is pure enthusiasm.”
Clément squeezes me tighter and I think of walking him back down to the car. I still don’t understand why we’re here. But then J.J. opens the coop, and there’s an exodus, wings beating, birds darting up. I gasp at the suddenness of it.
“They got away!” Clément shouts, eyes wide, whole body stretched skyward.
“That’s the point, little man,” Lionel says, but his voice is reverent. “We’re here to watch them fly. Just look at them.”
The pigeons move in a group, changing direction every so often in the blue sky, far above the telephone wires and a tangle of branches.
“You just wait a moment and the real show will start,” J.J.
says. Soon, one of the birds falls away from the rest, spinning, plummeting, catching itself and flying up again.
Another does the same, spins and falls even farther than the first. I’ve never seen anything like it.
“What makes them do that?” I ask.
“It’s neurological. Just this one breed does it—the Birmingham Roller. No one knows much beyond that,” J.J. says.
“See those two?” Lionel’s close to my ear, pointing to a pair of pigeons breaking away from the rest. “They’re us.”
“Are they?” The birds spin and fall, and I’m not sure whether they’re ecstatic or struggling, if it’s freedom or an affliction. Either way, they’re mesmerizing. That Lionel sees us in them perplexes me, delights me. Moves me in a way I don’t fully understand.
When the pigeons go back in their coop, J.J. tells us we have to go. His wife will be coming home soon and they’re entertaining. Lionel asks questions about the birds all the way out to the street. “I want to fly them,” he says as we climb into the car. “Try my hand at breeding them.”
“You can have your own birds?” Clément asks. “That fall in the sky? And come back?”
“A man can dream.”
Clément scoots off my lap and onto Lionel’s. “A boy, too,” he says. My son, four years old now. Suddenly his own person.
Lionel starts the engine. “That’s right, little man. A boy can, too.”
Clément waits at the window on a Saturday a few weeks later, jumps up and down when Lionel pulls up just past four. He’s taking us with him to Union Station, where he has a bird set to arrive on the 5:15 train. None of the local breeders would sell him one.
“I was on a call with Ginny, long distance,” Lionel says as we climb into the car.
“How’s Montana?” If he hears any particular interest in my voice, he doesn’t let on.
“She likes it pretty well. Says every morning she greets the incoming train along with the Blackfeet Indians in their giant headdresses. She’s made friends with some of them.
Apparently, they don’t really dress that way, or live in teepees anymore, but the hotel pays them to do it for the visitors. It adds to the overall effect.”
“You and Ginny,” I say. “You’re both making your own lives.”
Lionel smiles. “Oh yeah?”
That burning in my chest again. But I’ll get there. Clément and me, a place of our own. Someday.
“’Scuse me,” Clément says. “Can we talk about birds now?”
I want to know more about Ginny, but the topic is pigeons all the way to the station, where Clément is struck by the majesty—the soaring ceilings and stone walls and giant wooden chandeliers.
It comes back: Lionel and me, Bernard and Claire, Al and Adele and Rudy, stepping off the train and into our new lives.
“We were right here, weren’t we?” I say to Lionel. “This platform. The night we got here.”
“That’s about right,” he says.
“Imagine,” I say. “Being a little bird, arriving to a place like this.”
“The bird will be in a crate. He’ll have no idea where he is. I only hope he isn’t too discombobulated by the journey.”
The train pulls up and passengers swarm the platform, suitcases in hand, scanning the station for where to go.
The crowd thins and Lionel’s searching the train cars for someone carrying a crate.
He bounces on his feet, nervousness setting in.
A Pullman porter appears in the doorway of the next car and we head toward him, but just as Lionel begins to explain what he’s waiting for, there’s a voice from behind us: “I have a special delivery for the one and only Lionel Dumas.” We turn to see another porter with a small crate in his hands, high cheekbones and smooth skin, a thin mustache over a full mouth, a glimmer of familiarity in his eyes.
“Felix!” I say. I’m searching for the last time I saw him. Maybe it was my wedding day. Yes. He was holding an arm out, catching me when I stumbled.
Lionel’s shaking his head. “Unbelievable.”
“Once I saw your name on the label of the box here, I resolved to treat this little guy as well as my first-class passengers. Figured odds were slim there’d be another Lionel Dumas in Los Angeles, let alone one peculiar enough to have a bird sent to him by train.
But I didn’t dare imagine you’d have this angel here with you.
” He hands Lionel the crate and puts his arms out to embrace me.
“I feel like I’m dreaming,” I say, my head against his shoulder. “I was just remembering what it was like to leave home and arrive here, and now here you are.”
“And who is this fine young boy?”
“Clément,” I say. “My son.”
Felix bends at the waist, offers his hand. “I’m a friend of your family’s from back home, in New Orleans,” he says. “It’s an honor to meet you.” Clément straightens, smiles, shakes Felix’s hand.
We peer into the crate, between the slats. The pigeon is beautiful, cream with blue markings, puffing his feathers and warbling. “It’s been a long journey for the little guy,” Lionel says.
“Sixty-eight hours,” Felix says. “I checked on him every now and then, made sure he didn’t get jostled.”
“What’s his name?” Clément asks.
“Doesn’t have one yet.”
“Can I name him?”
“I’m open to ideas,” Lionel says, “but this here’s a professional bird. I see a big future for him, so the name’s got to be dignified.”
“Felix,” I say. “Are you staying in town? Can you come for dinner?”
“Wish I could, but I’m getting right back on board. Got a little more work to do. Then it’s a night in a sleeper car before heading back to Chicago. That’s been home for me for the last couple years. But I have been considering exploring Los Angeles.”
“We’ll show you around if you come stay sometime,” I say. “The others would be so happy to see you.”
He tips his head, thinking about it. “You know, I would truly love that.”
“We’re in the phone book,” I say. “Call us anytime.”
The next week I spot my friends in the lunchroom. Ivy’s holding a cigarette in one hand and the newspaper in the other when I set my tray down next to her and take an open seat.
“We’re going to see a picture,” Sally says from across the table. “Want to join? My husband’s working late tonight so I don’t have to fix any dinner.”
“Can we make it a second run?” Janine asks. “I’m on a budget.”
Ivy hands me the paper. “I’ve seen everything. You choose.”
I skim until a title leaps out. “The Snake Pit,” I say, remembering Olivia de Havilland on the cover of Time magazine.
“We don’t want a comedy?” Sally says. “Or a romance?”
“The Snake Pit sounds swell to me,” Janine says.
“Me too,” Ivy says.
“It’s playing at the Admiral at six o’clock,” I say.
Sally shrugs. “Okay, fine. I’ll tell the others.”
Later, we stand in line at the ticket booth on Hollywood and Vine.
I’ve gone to the pictures a few times since we’ve been here, but I’m briefly nauseous as we near the clerk, afraid we’ll be turned away, remembering our separate entrances at the theaters back home, climbing the stairs, craning our necks from balconies.
This group of us from the plant is as varied as can be.
Janine, born in the Philippines. Ivy, Black Irish with ocean-blue eyes.
Sally, blond hair tied in a bow. Claud and her brother, Lawrence, colored and glamorous and tall, Angelenos since birth.
And then there’s me, hazel eyes, wavy dark hair, skin just barely brown—a chameleon in more ways than one.
Marcus comes jogging up when we’ve just about reached the booth.
Sweet-faced, lanky, and young. He looks so much like Cyril.
The first time I saw him, my chest got tight, a pressure in my eyes that I had to blink away.
“I found a good spot for my car,” he says.
“Made sure the For Sale sign was positioned just right. I’m upgrading to a Kurtis.
” He glances at me to see if I’m impressed.
He’s asked me out several times, has always been nice about it when I say no.
One by one, we pay without hesitation from the cashier.
We have to split up into two rows, and we girls save seats while the boys buy popcorn and sodas and boxes of Sno-Caps and Dots. The theater is dim, warm, a sense of expectation about it, loud with voices and laughter. The curtains part.