“Do you want me to read you some poetry?” He asked.

Lidia shifted in her chair and faced the window. “Then I won’t be able to hear the
bird.”

She had placed the cage on a stand in the space between their two chairs. The bird
chirped and she hummed along.

He held his book of poetry heavily in his hands. It mostly consisted of Frost, the
wintry poems that reminded him of their New Hampshire visits in the years before their
daughter, Alexa, was born. In the years when they were deeply and softly in love. In the
years when they were best friends.

He sat down. Shortly after hearing the news of her deteriorating vision, Lidia
asked him to read her Frost. They would sit for hours in their chairs, until his voice was
hoarse and her glassy eyes closed, her lips in a smile. They were falling in love again.

They did this every afternoon, until one day Alexa swept in on the morning
breeze, as she always did, with a songbird in a cage dangling from her arm, and Lidia
dropped everything, as she always did. His wife lapped up Alexa’s attention like a stray
over a puddle. Only after Alexa moved on, leaving as quickly as she had come, would
Lidia then remember to pick up all the things she so promptly discarded, one of them
being her husband.

His hand fanned through the book, the pages like velvet under his
thumb.
“Do you want me to open a window?”

They left the door to the cage open so that the bird could “feel free,” as his wife
always said. Now, it was summer and, as the windows were all closed in the apartment, the two of them had to move through the thick, stuffy air, dripping in the heat. Mostly, he
was doing the moving—making their meals, cleaning the apartment, getting groceries,
feeding the bird, making sure everything was in order for his blind wife.

The bird danced on the wooden beam inside the cage, cocking its head from left
to right, watching him.

“Shh.” She waved him off, her eyes closed. “The bird.”

“It never flies out, though,” he said.

“Oh, I don’t think it would ever leave.” She drew her arms close to herself,
grinning and swaying slightly in the chair. He knew she meant to say it would never
leave her. Abandon her, fly off on the wind. He nodded, though he knew she couldn’t
see.
“I just don’t want something flying in and hurting it,” she finished.

As if, God forbid, they couldn’t find another songbird exactly like this one.

She was humming “La Vie en Rose”, a song that they discovered together after he
bought her an Edith Piaf record for their first apartment. She was the only one who could get him to sing, loosen up his tone-deaf vocal cords and belt out verses that were either too flat or too sharp. Only around her, with her swinging hips and her snapping fingers, did he not worry about the way his sound polluted hers.

“What a great song.” He said.

She nodded. “It’s Alexa’s and my favorite.”

He took off his reading glasses and rubbed his forehead. That’s right. Their
daughter could sing before she could talk. By the time Alexa was up on her feet, she was
sticking her hips out and clapping her hands in the shadow of her mother’s silhouette. He used to watch them, pleased that his Lidia now had a partner to match her ability. His
forehead just crinkled at the thought that it was never him. He placed his gold-rimmed glasses back on.

“What about me?”

“What about you?”

One time he joined in on their duet, the sound so beautiful, it was too hard to
resist. Alexa was a teenager then, her hips swaying smoother than her mother’s, her
fingers snapping quicker, her voice ringing prettier. Envy clouded Lidia’s eye, but she
didn’t dare take it out on their daughter. When his voice burped out into the air, flattening theirs, both stopped and stared at him. Then Alexa began to laugh, high and clear like her song. The look of envy melted from Lidia’s gaze as she joined her daughter’s giggling melody. His face burned and tingled, and felt as though their snickering was peeling off his skin.

“Dad,” Alexa said, her voice weak with laughter. “You tried.”

He then joined in, chuckling loudly and flatly so as to not be excluded from
everything, even his own mockery. He strained so hard, the force pulled a muscle in his
side.

His face burned and tingled now, even remembering it. He rubbed his arm, the
metal of his wedding ring leaving red lines on his skin. At least it had survived the
flaying.

“It was my favorite song, too.”

Lidia hummed the chorus and did not respond.
He tipped his head back against the chair and let the book slip through his sweaty
hands and drop to the floor. The bird chirped. She harmonized. He sat still. After awhile, her low murmuring stopped. Then, the bird ceased. He opened his eyes to his wife, asleep in her chair, a smile on her face. The bird was perched on its wooden bar.
He stared at the way it stayed in the cage, even though it was free to fly around in
the apartment. Lidia insisted they never clip its wings.

He stood and approached the window. He pulled the wooden frame upwards and let in a flood of cool air. He gestured towards the opening as if to say “there you go.”

The bird’s small black eyes watched him. Normal birds would leave her. Normal birds would leave him. His hand reached inside the cage, grabbing the bird in his fist and pulled it out. Its feathers were silky, like the velvet pages of his poetry book. It chirped and squirmed but when he opened his palm, it rested in his hand. He offered it out to the open air.

“You’re free, now.”

It tilted its head to one side, then the other. It did not flap its wings. It did not float
away on the morning breeze. It would not leave them alone.
With his other hand, he gripped its head, the beak cold and sharp under his thumb,
and snapped its neck.

Now, it was him who was free.

“Did you just say something?”

He froze, his wife stirring in her chair. He still made eye contact with her, a 50-
year-old habit that was too hard to break. He hid the bird behind his back. He knew she couldn’t see but the way her cloudy eyes seemed to fixate on him sometimes made him think otherwise.

“What?” He asked. He couldn’t tell her.

“I thought I heard you say something.” She said.

He needed to tell her. “No, I didn’t.”

“I’m blind, not deaf.”

He should tell her. “The bird. It—”

“The bird, what?” She bolted upright. Her papery fingers dug into the arms of the
chair.

He stopped. There was a concern in her face that he hadn’t seen since Alexa still
lived with them. He always thought the way a mother dotes on her daughter, in spite of
her simmering jealousy, was unparalleled. He had accepted long ago that he was
replaced. Part of him knew it the day they brought their baby home, when he was looking at his best friend, while she was looking at Alexa. Yet, now a songbird held the same amount of her attention, of her concern.

He should tell her—his hand tossed the bird’s body out the window—but he won’t.

“I opened the window to get some air in here and it flew out,” he said.

“What?”

He sat down in his chair. “It left.”

She blinked rapidly, tears brimming on her bottom lids. She slumped back in her
chair. “Oh.”

“Do you want me to read you some poetry?”

For a while, she didn’t move. Then, eventually, she nodded and turned her face
slightly away. She wiped at her cheeks but he just opened the book. He knew that now
they could fall deeply and softly in love again. They sat for hours until his voice grew
hoarse and her glassy eyes closed, her lips in a frown.

Isabelle Mongeau