Silent Bird Read online

  I’d already spent consecutive days—even the occasional full night—in Jeannot’s apartment. I’d actually begun to neglect my own space, my own light coming in from my own windows. We had taken excursions into the countryside, a tour of a castle here, a hike or a picnic there. Once we packed nothing but a baguette and bought a chunk of fresh goat’s cheese from a farmer’s wife to eat in sandwiches with fresh thyme picked from the hillside; they were the best sandwiches I’d tasted. Ever.

  Jeannot was still busy writing and playing music and plotting how to play at La Peña, to no avail. And I was still sketching and reading and studying French and writing letters, and enjoying the plaza we lived on, along with my deepening friendship with both Monique and the American Library. If the dollar hadn’t been so strong, I would have run out of money. But France’s loss was my gain, and I spent pitifully little to live in peace.

  In good spirits, I finally called Mom, too. And yes, I suffered a nice strong dose of Jewish guilt for the lateness and brevity of that call. But to my surprise, she didn’t complain much. She did mention that it was hard on her, Grandma being so sick and my living out of the country. But that’s not complaining, not compared to what she is capable of. She sounded okay overall, like she really was holding up without me.

  So life was grand. I looked forward to the gondola races in the Palavas Canal and told Monique I’d join her to watch her husband engage in “water jousting”—and that yes, of course I’d be bringing my boyfriend. She loved that last part.

  Then, the next night it happened: my old problem; the nemesis of my childhood sleep and poor Mom’s good nights of sleep.

  Night Terrors. They came back with a vengeance.

  VI

  Mommy said not to open the door.

  She said Stranger Danger knocks on doors too. “Just pretend we’re not home. No one has to know I’m napping.”

  Knock, knock.

  “Pilar?” comes the voice—his voice. “Love, are you there? Daddy here. Can you hear me?”

  I squeal with delight then slap my hand over my mouth. Mommy is sleeping! She gets mad when she can’t sleep. She’ll get mad if I open the door.

  But this isn’t Stranger Danger. It’s Daddy!

  Unable to stop myself, I unlock the door and fly into his arms. “Daddy! You came to my house!”

  He presses his finger to my lips. “No noise now, moppet. It’s naptime for Mummy, right?”

  “How did you know, silly?” I ask, giggling. He always calls her Mummy and makes fun of her for napping. He still makes fun of her for it even though he hasn’t lived with us for a long time.

  Daddy hugs me tightly, chuckling. I squeal again because he’s tickling me—and we both put fingers to our lips: shhhhh! Then he makes a funny sound like he’s choking. I pull away to look. Tears are leaking down his cheeks.

  “Don’t cry,” I whisper. “She won’t wake up, I promise!”

  This makes his mouth go up. He hugs me and I hug him back though he smells like that nasty cough medicine. “I missed you so much,” he says in his funny accent. “I couldn’t stand to wait another day. You understand that, love, don’t you?”

  I nod. He explains that we need to go somewhere to meet my other Grandma. She’s the one who lives far, far away on an island and feels so lonely and wants to meet her only grandchild. “Mummy will understand as long as I bring you home again,” Daddy says.

  I start to ask questions, but he stops me. “Not now, love, there isn’t time.”

  But won’t Mommy be worried? Will she find our note? Will she think Stranger Danger knocked? Will she know I took Snowball with me?

  We climb into a strange black car, and I sleep against the door for a long time. When I wake up, I’m cold. Very cold. I’m shivering.

  I cling to Daddy’s leg, wondering if Mommy is up from her nap yet and if she’ll be mad at us. Daddy doesn’t talk as we rush through a huge airport. There are so many people and suitcases, so many lines. I fall asleep on his soft gray coat. When I wake up again, we’re inside the biggest airplane I’ve ever seen. It goes back and back and back to a pair of curtains like in a living room. The windows are dark. I’m crawling out from under Daddy’s legs when he stops snoring and grabs my arm.

  “Not so fast, love. Where are you going? Stay here with me.” He pulls a tiny bottle out of his pocket and drinks. “It’s the middle of the night. You need your sleep.”

  “So do you,” I tell him. “Is that your medicine?”

  He laughs, his breath tickling my hair.

  And suddenly…oh God!—a terrible noise shakes the sky. I cry out. Is that thunder? Will the plane crash? I press my face against the cold glass of the window at blackness, trying to see. I’m not scared, though. I’m not afraid of things.

  Somehow I fall asleep again. I feel us moving, speeding: whoosh! Voices are talking. Daddy’s carrying me over his shoulder like Santa’s toys, from plane to taxi—a funny taxi with the steering wheel on the wrong side—and finally this boat.

  “It’s a ‘fairy boat,’” he says.

  Fairies! I like boats with fairies. When the sky explodes some more, booming like crashing cars and planes, I don’t hide under my coat anymore. I don’t crawl behind his leg or bury my face in his lap.

  I stand on tippy toes searching for Tinkerbell. “She’s not here,” I tell Daddy, and he answers: “No worries, love, we’ll ring her tomorrow.”

  I want to call Tinkerbell! I’ll tell her about the Giant making thunder by clomping along in his big shoes. I know the giant needs rain. If giants need permission to come down out of the sky and land on our fairy, then what—

  —There’s another bang. I fall to my knees.

  Somebody screams.

  Is it me? Did I scream? Am I afraid of things? Am I afraid of Daddy?

  “Don’t worry, sweetheart,” he whispers, helping me back up. “The water is rocky because of a storm, but soon we’ll be there.”

  I wonder how the water can be rocky instead of liquid and if this means that the rocks will cut the boat in half so it will sink. And if the boat sinks, what will happen to Tinkerbell? Maybe we’ll never reach Daddy’s island and that’s why he’s so cross.

  We’ll never ever see Mommy again…

  He’s talking into my ear:

  “There’s no car noise on the island, just the whistling of the wind and the sea gulls cawing night and day. When I was a boy, I used to watch them dive for fish. I’d ride over every inch of Sark on my bicycle. There was always more to explore—the hills and the fog and the town. You’ll see it too. You’ll have a view of everything from your bedroom window.”

  I stare up at his red eyes while he places his palm against my cheek. All around us people lie under their coats and talk or sleep.

  There are no fairies, I realize. Just all these people—-and no Mommy.

  She’s crying now; I can hear her calling my name. She’s screaming for Daddy to bring me back. “Pilar! Pilar! Oh my God, baby, are you okay? Come home!”

  Where is Mommy? Why didn’t she come with us? I’m climbing over the railing when I feel Daddy’s hands pull me back.

  “Let me go! I want to go home!” I yell, pounding my fists against his face, his coat; his big hands.

  He keeps holding me until I stop. Until I fall down on the deck floor, staring up into the eyes of a man who is not Daddy.

  Stranger Danger?

  Where am I?

  “Ca va, Chérie?” the Stranger says.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I

  I couldn’t speak; couldn’t figure out where I was, or who this man was, and why I knew him and didn’t know him. Was I lost? Mad?

  “Pilar,” he said.

  My name.

  “Ca va pas?”

  Ca va pas, indeed. I understood the French though I wasn’t sure how I understood it.

  “Chérie, talk to me. Please.” The man led me to a chair. I continued to stare, working furiously to orient myself.

  Adult. Awake no
w. In France.

  Jeannot Courbois.

  Night Terrors again. Holy shit. How is it possible? I’m not a little kid!

  He brought me a glass of ice-less water and a blanket. Only then did I notice the shaking of my body. I wrapped myself tightly like a papoose and drank the water. He continued to watch me. Through the windows a faint pink hue flushed rosy on the stone buildings. Madame Nony’s tables were stacked and chained against the wall so that they wouldn’t escape.

  I turned back to Jeannot. His hair was wild: snakes hissing. His brow furrowed with worry. His eyes rimmed in red. He looked like hell.

  “I had a bad dream,” I said tentatively, in French.

  “That was more than a dream, Chérie. Your eyes were open. You seemed to be—seeing things. Hearing things.”

  “I know. But I’m better now. I must be”—the word?—”walking with sleep again. I did that when I was small.”

  He considered this. Then he picked up my empty glass, walked into the kitchen and came back with more water. As I drank it down, he asked, “What did you dream?”

  “It’s a long story.” Explaining it in French would be…well, pinning Jell-O to a tree.

  So I gave him the watered-down, preschool level, Cliff’s Notes version.

  II

  A little kid doesn’t wonder how her mother stays sane through so many years of Night Terrors.

  Kids are naturally egotistical, right? It’s normal. At first I didn’t think about Mom. I hated bedtime and hated sleep and felt afraid of the furniture in the living room glaring at me and grabbing me and eating me alive—but that was it. So what if I also wandered around the house, eyes open, terrorizing that poor heartbroken woman with my waking nightmares?

  The stab of empathy came later on, with adulthood.

  Imagine her side, I eventually told myself. Imagine the shock of seeing your innocent little girl walking bug-eyed around the house in the dead of night…talking…crying…screaming: a thing possessed.

  No wonder Mom thought something was wrong with me! No wonder she bought into Grandma’s superstitious gobbledygook about hexes and Evil Eyes and who knew what else.

  No wonder she didn’t see the real-life demons sitting in her own living room. It’s not her fault. It’s not. For so many years I couldn’t consider anything else.

  Night Terrors are hallucinations; the cerebral firing of a nightmare. Except they are not nightmares in the normal sense; not images recalled in the safe light of morning—no, no. Night Terrors are NOW Terrors, the horrible thing right here in the room. The monster breathing. The furniture with eyes coming to get the kid while you watch. The kid losing her father, then her mother, then her father again while you witness it, helpless to intervene.

  Yes, that was my poor mother’s lot. “She’s dreaming at the wrong stage of sleep,” the doctor explained. “I know it’s frightening. Just comfort her, and be as gentle as you can. She’ll outgrow it.”

  And I did outgrow it. I did. So how could it resurface now, in my twenties?

  After one of my episodes my mother would sob things like, “Oh my God, baby, are you all right?”, and: “What’s wrong with you, sweetie? We need to go back to the doctor!”

  But tonight the person freaking out was Jeannot. Poor guy. Three thousand miles from home my old nemesis had sneaked up with the stealth of a jaguar and snatched me out of Jeannot’s arms.

  I’m baaaack…

  III

  When I finished explaining, Jeannot came over to me and kneeled on the floor. “Je t’adore,” he said. “You know that, don’t you?”

  His eyes were pleading. I knew they were asking to be let in; for me to trust him in some new way that I could hardly imagine. And I stared back, wondering if everything in life would feel as treacherous as this: a sweet summer love affair that promised to be the biggest source of warmth I could imagine, if only I stayed the winter.

  How much was this man going to ask of me? Would I have to offer my soul and more?

  I kissed him hard on the mouth. Then I un-wrapped the papoose and announced that I was going to get ready for our holiday at the Bastille Day celebrations at Palavas. And I went into the shower alone, more than a little relieved that he did not try to follow.

  IV

  Hours later we stood with Monique and her son on the docks next to the Canal at Palavas-les-flots, awaiting the start of “La Fête Nationale,” which commemorated the storming of the Bastille in 1789 and the birth the French Republic—along with the blood-dripping death of a lot of her aristocracy.

  The event promised to be relaxing despite the crowds. The blazing July heat had conveniently diminished. Tour boats and fishing boats and pleasure crafts, either docked or out to sea, reflected a brilliant afternoon light that winked off the water, car windows, and glass-encased porches. The awnings of cafes and restaurants vaunted red and white and yellow and blue, and under them silverware clinked and laughter rang out like that of contented children at a birthday party.

  Over the canal arched a narrow bridge crawling with people: suave, tanned locals, camera-laden tourists, children hoisted on strong masculine shoulders, couples holding hands, and teens on their horrible mopeds.

  Everyone was French, even if just for the day. Like me. My Night Terrors seemed far away already—as if they had hightailed it out of here to New York where they belonged.

  Monique linked her arm through mine while Jeannot looked on, smiling. “This is your first fourteenth of July in France, Pilar,” she said. “So we celebrate the French way!”

  “Yup. I mean: ‘Oui-oui,” I said mockingly.

  She turned to the child dangling on her hip. “Papa is almost ready! You see, ma puce? Down there!”

  The skinny dark-haired man from her library photos waved up at us. He stood in one of six brightly painted gondolas floating like flower petals in the shimmery canal.

  “I will introduce you after the joust,” she told me. “You will love this, I promise.”

  “Funny tradition. I’m glad you don’t re-enact beheading.”

  “Oh, Louis might prefer beheading. He hates jousting. He does not wish to be collected from the water. It is dirty. He wishes to say non to his friends, but it is not possible. Poor Louis. So we will cheer him.”

  Her husband, like the others on his team, dressed sharply in white, a blue band at the waist. The men in the other gondolas also wore white, but with different colored bands to differentiate their teams—and match the gondolas. Blue and red teams had already lined up parallel in the narrow inlet. Poles in hand, waiting to begin, they teased and elbowed one another in a high-spirited way that needed no translation.

  I wanted to understand the game better, though. Monique explained that the blare of trumpets from the “musical boat”—including drums and oddly shaped noise makers—would signal the first two gondolas to launch. But what was their goal? To score points or simply knock members of the other team into the brackish water? The musical boat had towels handy, I noticed. And when one of the players briefly fumbled while perching at the bow, drums began to pound. The crowd hooted and cheered; they wanted to see these immaculately dressed men get dunked…

  Monique turned back to her little boy, peeking under the brim of his hat at his chubby, cerise-cheeked face. “Coucou,” she murmured, smile brighter than her yellow sundress. Louis Junior swatted the tip of her nose with his small fingers and giggled “Arête!”

  He was adorable, this child. I had the impulse to reach out and touch his silky hair, his downy skin—but of course I didn’t. It was an instinct I distrusted.

  I shoved my hands into my pockets and looked away.

  V

  The first two gondolas faced each other from about twenty feet apart: six men, three in each, confidently raising their long poles. Then, as trumpets blared, spilling long brightly striped streamers, the rickety boats attacked. Poles clacked and pushed; the boats rocked and tipped, and the canal jostled like water in a glass. One player on the red team staggered an
d—to the whoop of catcalls—fell. Splash!

  “Allôns-y-Louis!” Monique screamed.

  Little Louis echoed “Looey,” his face shiny and exuberant. And though I noticed Jeannot grinning at the child, I also noticed that he didn’t try to chuck the baby’s chin or stroke his fat little hands or silky hair or whatever else adults thought they had the right to caress just because they felt like it.

  He continued to surprise me, this man, though I didn’t trust it. How could we ever know what dwelled inside a man’s heart?

  “Le bleu, le bleu,” called one section of the crowd.

  “Non…le rouge!” cried another.

  Louis Senior, the scrawniest on his team, grasped his pole with smooth, cat-like movements and pushed hard. The other player had foolishly taken the time to smile at a girl—and staggered and tumbled unceremoniously down.

  Splash!

  The crowd screamed and hooted, especially when the guy bobbed his head out of the water and sheepishly waited for the musical boat to quit tooting and drumming and come fetch him.

  The Blue Team had won the first round.

  “Oh dear,” Monique said in my ear. “My husband must play nice, yes?”

  “Look, a problem. The Red Team needs a new player,” Jeannot said, pointing.

  The men in white and red were huddling in a circle as a guy in black—the referee?—gesticulated wildly.

  “The captain is from my village,” Jeannot muttered. “I should help.”

  Before I could respond, Jeannot called out something across the crowd. The man heard him and nodded and beckoned, and then called something to an old guy in an idling motorboat. I didn’t know who the hell that old guy was but suspected he was from Jeannot’s village too. Friend or family?

  I really knew nothing about my “boyfriend,” did I?