Chapter 13 Barn Swallow
Thirteen
Barn Swallow
Hirundo rustica. The vagabonds and acrobats of the air, barn swallows live much of their lives on the wing, drinking, feeding, courting, and
even mating in midair. Aerobatic fliers, they perform twists, turns, swoops, and lunges, often just above the ground. They
also face the longest journey of any bird on their annual winter sojourn from the Americas to the tropics, traveling in huge
groups, up to six hundred miles a day, a pilgrimage that many say gave rise to the expression “snowbirds” to describe individuals
who flee cold climates for sunny destinations. In African legend, swallows symbolize the need to start over. Shakespeare wrote
that “True hope is swift, and flies with swallow’s wings.” But long before that, Aristotle warned, “One swallow does not make
a summer, neither does one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy.”
In the weeks after the trial, I set about making a new life for myself.
They (they, whoever they are!) say that it takes twenty-one days to get over a breakup.
I could not count the two weeks of the trial, when my guts literally rebelled every time I saw Sam.
But after it was over, I tacked one of those little calendars from the bank on the wall next to my bed.
I didn’t feel guilty about the tack; after all, it was a box room and a pin hole.
Then I began to mark off the days. By the time I reached sixteen, my body’s reaction to this loss had stabilized.
I was no longer throwing up everything I ate.
I still had fantasies in which Sam woke up and realized that he still loved me.
I dreamed that he came to the door of my sister’s house with a huge bouquet of yellow roses.
He did not, of course.
With my research completed and the basic shape of the story in mind, I turned my interview notes in to the transcriber at
Fuchsia so that I would be ready to write when the time came. I requested the transcripts. The trial had lasted not nearly as long
as I’d expected so I still had the luxury of time and expenses. I’d always been a fast writer. The actual composing of the
story would probably take no more than two weeks, perhaps less than that.
I did new kinds of research.
I looked up strategies for emotional renewal, although I’d always made fun of anything that smacked of “self-help.”
One particularly perky website suggested that the way to healing was to become your very best self. Learn new things. Develop
new skills. Cultivate new sources for building your self-esteem. I’d already learned how to make a soufflé, even using Nell’s
geriatric oven. I’d mastered the brown-butter chocolate chip cookies that would make me a star at any holiday gathering for
the rest of my life. Joining a travel group might be something I’d consider when I was forty. A book club? That was a definite
possibility; I would post something at the library and the independent bookstores. The thought of going on a dating website
filled me with terror and disgust: I was still too reminded of what “dates” meant in the world of escorts.
What I did decide to do before anything else was to get in the best physical shape of my life.
Every long walk I pounded my way through would exhaust me past thinking.
Every barre class I showed up for would banish Sam from my mind.
I hiked for miles around Madison, circling the lake, rubbing blisters on my heels, trying to run a little and getting shin splints for my effort.
I pedaled on my sister’s stationary bike and read all the books that I’d ignored when they were assigned in school.
I studied the classic crime and mental health reportage of Truman Capote, Emmanuel Carrère, Calvin Trillin, Bill Lichtenstein, Joe McGinniss, and Janet Malcolm.
The reward was that I fell into bed at night and slept like a tired child. There were times when I even fell fast asleep during
the day.
Despite all that exercise, I didn’t lose any weight, but I reasoned that muscle weighed more than fat, and, for the first
time since I was an adolescent, I was seeing things on my body I hadn’t seen—like biceps.
I signed up with a career counselor to see what other kinds of work I might do (maybe I could be a writer! Maybe I could teach . . .
writing!). I took tests to determine where in the country, or even the world, I might find my destiny. (North Carolina was
a strong contender . . . )
At last, I visited a therapist and told her the unvarnished truth. She looked surprised by the revelation of what I had done
so long ago, but then she surprised me. “If there is love,” she said, “everyone deserves a second chance.”
My so-far-successful quest to avoid any place that I might set eyes on Sam backfired one night when I was trying out yet another life-enhancing strategy—dining out alone at a fine restaurant.
Feeling like a show-off in my white crepe Alice + Olivia pants and vest, all yearny as I watched the cooing couples around me, I told myself to concentrate on the menu.
When I finally made my choice and glanced up, there was Sam nervously looking back at me from a distance of about ten feet.
Across from him was a very pretty woman about his age who seemed to be describing an art heist. She was one of those gesturers whose hands flew around like butterflies.
Of course, she could have been a client.
She could have been a new associate at the firm.
And I could have been a pterodactyl.
The waiter arrived with my artichoke risotto. Quietly and forcefully, I asked him please to box it up. “It doesn’t travel
well,” he told me with the hauteur of someone who thought that, instead of waiting tables, he should really be in movies with
Ryan Gosling.
“Okay,” I said. “Then throw it out.”
The waiter rolled his eyes and sighed, oblivious to how close he was at that moment to losing a finger. I gave him my card
and studied the pattern of the tablecloth until the bill arrived, then grabbed my risotto and departed.
Once out in the street, I noticed that my anguish was undergoing a transformation. I was furious. I wanted to break windshields,
trip passersby, kick over trash cans.
Granted, Sam didn’t owe me any special allegiance. We’d now been apart much longer than we’d ever been together. I had told
him something that would have blown anyone’s mind. And yet, we didn’t discuss it. I didn’t get a chance to tell him about
the solid year I went to therapy twice a week, the volunteer work I did at the animal sanctuary cleaning up after cats that
had three legs and no sphincter, the meals I prepped at the domestic abuse shelter. I didn’t get to tell him how I had learned
to transform my abysmal opinion of my looks, the price for growing up alongside Nell, the American beauty, how I found the
root of my anger and tore it out, how hard I had labored to see myself again as worthy.
I went back to my sister’s house and tried to sleep.
But sleep would no longer come to me.
“The curse is come upon me, cried The Lady of Shalott.”
I got up and pulled my sweatshirt on over my pajamas. I drove to Sam’s house and strode up to the front steps.
“Sam!” I called. “Sam Damiano! Come out!” There was at first no response. Then the lights flicked on. I saw a shadow at his
window. “You are a coward, Sam! You don’t deserve to be a defense attorney because you don’t believe in second chances! You
don’t really believe in redemption! You’re a fraud! You don’t deserve me!”
Sam appeared at the door, at the moment that the sky cracked open and a deluge of rain poured down.
“Reenie! For Pete’s sake, just come inside!”
“I will not come inside. I hope the whole block hears me!”
Nobody would hear me. Rain was crashing down like a waterfall.
I turned and ran for my car. While Sam called my name from the porch, I got in and rattled out of the driveway, my wheels
spinning in the river that was now coursing down the street. Back at Nell’s house, I skinnied out of my wet clothes on the
porch, sliding unseen and naked into my dark room. There I pulled on underpants from my suitcase, but my boxes were on the
top tier and I was afraid of bringing them all crashing down on my head in the dark. Instead, I pulled on the first thing
I could root out of one of the boxes marked with my sister’s name, which happened to be a lacy patchwork cotton maxi-dress.
I fell once again on the bed.
Was I glad that it was over, really, finally over? Only as glad as you can be when a death puts an end to suffering. There
would be time to mourn, time and place, but I took some comfort in the notion of freedom, of turning a clean face to the future.
I really could move to North Carolina. People were probably nicer there. I could do it right after I finished this story.
I didn’t need to be tied to the Midwest; my parents were going to be heading south in the near future anyhow.
Maybe I could even convince Ivy to let me work remotely, just visiting the office in Chicago once in a while. That was what more and more people with portable professions were doing.
I hadn’t been asleep for more than an hour when I heard the pounding at the door. I got up and could see, through the windows,
that although it was still pouring, the sky had lightened. If it was not morning, it was close to it.
The pounding continued, growing in volume and intensity.
From within the house, a voice slurred with sleep, not my sister’s, called, “Who in the hell could be at the door? It’s goddamn
five in the morning!”
“I’m handling it!” I called and then addressed the door. “Hey, crazy person! Stop banging on the door! Leave whatever you
have out there! We’ll get it later, okay?” In response, the banging began again, louder and faster. Maybe someone was hurt
and needed help. Maybe someone was out there with a gun. In a movie, I did the last thing you should do, the thing that would