Rose's Garden (3 page)

He had walked to and fro, a pigeon on his shoulder, its throaty warbling in his ear. He remembered Lemuel pacing on the graveled rooftop of his own house in Brooklyn, conversing with his birds, nodding assent or disagreement.

The summer afternoons he had spent dozing in his easy chair, the one Rose called Sleepy Hollow for its comforting, deep curves.
From time to time he came upon articles of her clothing—a shoe, the pink blazer she'd worn when she'd been a volunteer at the hospital, a skirt with its elastic waistband—and took them on his lap. He sat, the minor weight of her cardigan resting over his shoulders, and attended to his own heartbeat. He took her purse down from the hook on the kitchen door and held it, his fingers resting over the clasp.

He spent his evenings sitting in the arbor with a pigeon on his lap, or laid out on the grass on the middle terrace, feeling the earth tug at the center of his body.

He could not cook at all—he had never learned and never imagined that he might have to—and so he'd been, in those early weeks after Rose's death, still and watchful around food, as if he were a pool of water inhabited by a hungry, muscled carp. He would lunge, with a ferocity that surprised him, at the pears that dripped from the trees. But though he could feel the sweet nectar drain down his chin, he had lost all sense of taste. Late at night, unable to sleep for the hunger in his belly, he would pull the ribbed chain to the light in the pantry, stand before the jars of roseate pickled beets and spiced apples, pale cucumbers and marmalade with its shavings of ginger, all put up by Rose her last autumn. He would select one jar, unscrew the lid, and plunge his fingers in, withdrawing them and skimming them across his lips. Nothing. The fruits were as scentless and tasteless as river stones. It had made him weep.

But one afternoon, two or three weeks after Rose's death and months before the angel came, he was standing listlessly behind the lace curtains in the dining room, staring out the window. His eyes traveled up and down the empty street, up and down and back across his small lawn, and then stopped at the sight of a small basket resting on the top step of his front porch.

The meditative sawing of grasshoppers' wings ceased when he opened the door and stepped outside. Conrad saw an unfamiliar little terrier, white, with black, pointed ears like two cocked dunce caps, veer sharply across the deserted road before his house and disappear around the corner. He'd scanned the street again and then picked up the basket and brought it inside.

He'd laid it on the kitchen table, where a long bar of sunlight fell across it. A residual heat rose from the woven lid, shimmering in the air; Conrad had been momentarily dizzy. Some scent, sweetly familiar yet belonging to a place so far back in his memory that he could not place it, rose to his nostrils. If a swarm of butterflies had risen when he opened the lid, if honeybees had built their wax paper combs inside, he would not have been surprised. The inside of his cheeks clenched; his eyes watered.

It had been his first real meal since Rose's death: a veal stew with tiny pearl onions and pink peppercorns; a half-dozen corn muffins, studded with a confetti of hot peppers in pink and green. There were sausages, brown and glistening, in an earthenware jar. A faceted glass bottle held wine. He ate two pieces of the chocolate cake, dense and rich and flavored with coffee, and then he pushed back from the table, his hands over his middle, tears running down his face.

This was Rose's cooking, yet with something slightly altered about it—some herb he did not recognize in the sausages, rum in the cake. But he had known, even as he raised the lid of the basket, that its contents would restore to him the flavor and essence of sustenance, the pleasure of Rose's table, which had made him, throughout his marriage, nearly faint with gratitude. He had known that the meal to follow would be good—he could smell it, and if he could smell it, he knew, he could taste it. And it had been so delicious, so satisfying; it had reached in and placed a kind palm
over the wound in his heart. Who, what kindly neighbor, could have done this?

That night, the night of the veal stew, for the first time in weeks and weeks, he had slept for almost six hours straight, sunk down into the chair by the window where he had made his bed since Rose had died. From far away he heard the sound of a dog baying. The yellow moon had sailed past the window over the bowl of Paradise Hill like a child's toy pulled on a string. Next door, May Brown, who was afraid of the dark, knelt under her orange porch light to clean her deep freeze, scraping bitter ice crystals into the ash bucket. Her radio, set on the windowsill and turned to face the evening so she could hear it out on the porch, had been tuned to a comedy show. Conrad fell asleep under the comforting tide of audience laughter rising and falling under his window.

THOUGH LEMUEL CAME
to be the man Conrad loved most in the world, their friendship did not begin auspiciously. It began, Conrad considered, as so many men's friendships do—though he had been just a child at the time—with what those who raise pigeons call
la guerra
, with war, the battle waged for fun and profit among pigeon fanciers. Mumblers, they call themselves, to describe their vague and limited attention as boys in school, more interested in the wheeling flight of birds outside the window than in the crabbed and distant writing on the blackboard. The teacher would ask them a question and they'd mumble a reply, for they hadn't, in truth, been paying any attention at all. They'd been looking out the window at the spokes of light thrown from a bird's wing.

Conrad was just a child, eleven years old. He first came to know Lemuel Sparks without ever meeting him, without ever laying eyes on the man, for Lemuel had been poaching Conrad's pigeons—and quite successfully, too—for some months before Conrad finally met him face-to-face or even knew his name.

All he knew was that someone was stealing his birds, though the thefts were executed fairly, according to the rules of the sport. Week after week his pigeons were hooked down one after the other into someone else's flock, birds so expertly trained and organized that they rose together like a puff of smoke and then fell in unison, movie footage reversing itself in fast motion. It was an old trick: a perfectly synchronized flock would surround a lone bird,
usually young and probably poorly fed, and draw it down in a captivating embrace to a foreign roost. Conrad had seen it happen, watching from his fire escape, his heart sinking. Whoever this poacher was, Conrad understood the man knew what he was doing.

And as the rules required, Conrad paid up at the pigeon exchange on Marion Street, one quarter a bird. By the time he arrived at the exchange after school, his loss having festered in his heart all day, his opponent would already have brought in the band from his latest captive. It always seemed particularly cruel to Conrad that he could lose not only a pigeon but his dignity and a quarter, too. Soberly, Conrad would hand the money over to Frank Pittilio, Marion Street's proprietor, who enjoyed the joke of keeping Lemuel's identity a secret.

“Lost another one, I see,” Mr. Pittilio would say when Conrad placed his coin in the man's hand. “Your personal
nemico
has just been here. He's knocking down your birds just as easy as taking candy from a baby. Aww, Conrad! Don't look so sad! You should be happy he takes only one at a time.” And then Mr. Pittilio would laugh, put Conrad's change in an envelope, slide the envelope back into a drawer, pat it shut.

“I want my birds back,” Conrad would demand, red faced. That was the rule; he paid the price of losing, and his pigeons would be returned to him.

“All in good time, little man. All in good time,” Mr. Pittilio would reply, laughing, leaning closer. “He's waiting for the good fight. A worthy opponent.”

Conrad would leave then, defeated. He'd stand at the window of the pigeon exchange a moment, looking in at the birds, the homers in yellow, white, and isabella, that color of spun honey, the low light of the setting sun illuminating their feathers. And then
he'd go home, back to his fire escape, back to his flock diminished by yet one more bird.

Conrad knew that his experience with pigeons was limited by his youth and his wallet. He bought cheap birds, small racing homers Mr. Pittilio was willing to let go for a song, and kept them on the fire escape in orange crates.

“Street filth,” his father would mutter. “Going to catch a disease from those.”

But he had an ally in his mother. He'd find her sometimes, still in her housedress, leaning on the radiator with the broom in her hand, watching the pigeons in their crates, making little kissing noises at the glass. “It's something, what he can do with them,” she'd say to her husband. “Let him be. It's harmless.”

At night, when she smoothed the child's blankets, tucked them in, she'd stroke his head. “They won't be too cold out there? We shouldn't bring them in?” she'd ask.

“No,” the boy would say, smiling. “They're meant to be outside, Mama. They're used to it.”

“So cold,” she'd say softly, shivering a little, shaking her head. And then she'd kiss him good night. “Sleep well, little bird boy.”

Though he loved his mother's touch, Conrad fancied himself a daring flight guy. That's what they called themselves, Conrad knew, those pigeon fanciers willing to take risks with their birds, willing to let them duel in the air. But Conrad was, in truth, cautious, even as a child. The only risk he took was stealing grain—a handful at a time, sifted into his pocket from the sagging bags on the floor of the Marion Street Pigeon Exchange. The stolen grain on his palm, he taught his pigeons to loft up into the late afternoon sky and then butterfly down for their meal. He would sit cross-legged on his fire escape, looking out over the low roofs and chimney pots of Brooklyn, the fading sun and black
funeral wreaths of smoke hanging low over the city. And he imagined himself a magician, drawing doves from his hat, the ladies in the audience exclaiming at the beautiful sight, at his most marvelous gifts. Sending his pigeons wheeling up into the sky, he imagined he could make a lightning bolt spear from his fingertips, make the thunder crash with a clap of his hands. He thought he could darken the sun itself.

And how he hated that man, that man stealing his birds.

“
Ad ultimo sangue, ad ultimo sangue
,” Mr. Pittilio would say, backing off, laughing and waving his hands at Conrad's furious assault as he rushed into the exchange after school, ignoring the men at the stoop smirking at him and drinking their coffee. “It's a caution, Conrad! Remember! He could be stringing them up by the neck. I happen to know he's taking good care of them. He pities you, poor boy.”

At last, though, it was too much for Conrad. It was autumn. The high and gusty winds were playing roulette with his pigeons. Sitting on the fire escape after school one afternoon, he looked up and confused his few remaining pigeons with the falling leaves blown topsy-turvy over the rooftops and through the streets. The strange, indirect light of approaching weather gave everything a sad and sinister veneer. The world was lost to him that day, and he felt sentimental about his defeat. He knew he was a child, just eleven years old, and he knew he was being bested by a wiser and more experienced flight guy, a man who was enjoying the terrible game of bleeding him dry, one bird at a time. His nameless enemy had won his birds, fair and square. Conrad had paid him the money, a quarter for every one he'd lost—child's wages. His enemy had Conrad's pigeons and his money. Sooner or later, if he was a gentleman, he'd give the birds back. But meanwhile, Conrad had nothing.

He had not a cent to his name that particular day. He kicked through the gutters for a penny or a glinting nickel, to no avail. He lifted his mother's pocketbook from the hook in the hall, took it to the bathroom, and locked the door. He unfolded the faded bills from her little change purse but couldn't bring himself to steal from her. He importuned Mrs. Findley, his neighbor, for an odd job, with no luck. And
il nemico
, his nameless enemy, had added another pigeon to his roost.

“I want to meet him,” Conrad told Mr. Pittilio, banging his fist at last upon the counter at the Marion Street Pigeon Exchange, tears in his eyes. “I want to meet this man who is ruining me.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Pittilio, softening. “Such dramatic words for such a small boy.” And he came out from behind the counter to kneel in front of Conrad, cuff his shoulder, take his chin in his hand. “It's only
di buona guerra
. It's just a game,” he said gently.

But Conrad burst into tears then, for all his birds now lost, for all the feed he'd held out hopefully in the palm of his hand for a pigeon who would never return, for all the ways in which he felt he would never grow up, never become a man, never take something for himself and fight to the death to keep it. Mr. Pittilio knelt, put his arms around the boy. Conrad smelled the cigar smoke in his hair, in his collar with its frayed edge. Conrad felt him tremble.

“Come on,” Mr. Pittilio said, rising painfully, his knees cracking. “Can you be a little late for supper? It's time we went to shake down Mr. Lemuel Sparks. It's time he gave you your birds back.”

Mr. Lemuel Sparks. That's his name, Conrad thought as he wiped his hands across his face, across his pants. He combed his fingers through his hair, tucked in his shirt, sucked air into his cheeks. He trotted along beside Mr. Pittilio, who, after locking the door to the pigeon exchange, cocking his head at the birds, lit himself a cigar and clapped his hat on his head. He nodded good
evening to the proprietors of stores they passed, men in aprons leaning in door frames with their arms crossed over their chest. Conrad imagined them whispering, laughing; he imagined they knew where he and Mr. Pittilio were headed, were relishing the scene they could see pictured in their mind: little one tilting at Goliath, little one come to beg his birds back. Mr. Lemuel Sparks. Conrad thought he could see him, looming from his rooftop among the chimney pots belching devil's fire. He was afraid.