2004
Genevieve was home. It had been a while. She left her home half a dozen years ago for the Pacific Northwest because--reasons. And going back home was not like home at all--especially not her mom's apartment. She didn't even really see her mom except once. She got told off for not making it work with Steve. She got asked five or six times what her job was, but her mom never really understood what she did anyway.
Not since high school. probably.
She wound up the East Windor office and changed the registration on her LLC. Her IPO took off based on what she homed in on--longevity, plasma, stem cell research. There was a lot of promising stuff going on, and she wasn't doing it from Philadelphia or Princeton anymore. She thought the future was west. But she had so much baggage.
And then her mom had to do some stuff and asked her to come see about the bird.
Barry. She loved that little fucker. He used to be her Uncle Tony's bird before he died, then her mom had him, but she and him were LIKETHAT--though she hadn't been around lately and felt guilty. She didn't even feel as guilty not being around her mom as she did that fucking cockatoo. They were partners in crime, once.
Her mom left her the key. When she let herself in, she said "Barry?"
"gurl."
"Good boy, Barry." He was on a perch and the tv was set on PBS. He had a huge cage and she knew he didn't love being in it.
Then she stopped. How long was it? A dozen years. He didn't talk when Uncle Tony died. Actually, he ripped up his chest feathers. He was a sad critter. But now he knew to say "Gurl?"
She was happy he vocalized for her. And his chest was back to feathered.
"Que cosa, bello, tutt' appost?"
"pos-oh."
The fuck.
"How about I feed you? You hungry?"
He made big wings, and she checked out what mom had. Broccoli. Pellets. Basically, millet crumbs which made her a little mad. And a couple pints of berries, some with white fur on them. She started pulling out things and he settled on the kitchen counter.
She remembered when he was such a mess. When she was in college. When the thing happened. She didn't like to think about it. She was trying to use a retrovirus to insert a novel SNP because (?)
Or so she remembered. The way she didn't remember anything the right way was as wrong to her as the way she remembered the parts she did.
It was wrong. She was doing something. There was an accident. There was an explosion. She lost three days. She was not harmed. She was back in her off-campus apartment. She woke up naked and unscarred. (Even scars she remembered from before were gone. That was the messed-up part.)
Was the explosion something she did?
She didn't know she did that, but she might have had to. If the virus wasn't safe. Something wasn't safe.
And she used Barry and his mutilated chest to try and recover the lone lab rat that survived the accident (on purpose?). And--
She tried to figure out why the rat survived, and it was a totally normal rat, and the virus wasn't present, and she was definitely changed by whatever took place.
She hated thinking about it. She scratched her head and looked down at the loose hair and skin--the cellular turnover just fucking happened all the time. She didn't scar, but she was always exfoliating all over the place. It was like being an alien in her own body.
And Barry back then was the only witness to at least some of that shit.
She wandered around her mom's place, something she wouldn't do when Mom was there. There was a picture of Barry with her uncle Tony. It had to be old--like in the 70;s. "Barry" was supposed to be short for "Baretta", because there was a Sulphur cockatoo on that show. But Tony always had said Barry picked his own name. And he had him since before. He got him from some guy.
He insisted Barry picked his own name. And got him from some other guy.
What was the name?
Sean McMannis?
She looked at Barry, Eating, Happily. She softly sang to him, remembering a thing he would do back when she was little kid:
"Don't do the crime..."
"Can do a rhyme!"
How long ago was that?
"Remember Tony?"
"Goo'boi."
She didn't remember Sean McMannis. He was some kind of guy in that neighborhood, Probably a big fucking photo of JFK in the dining room.
How the hell old was Barry? "Ask not what your country can do for you?"
"You DO, You DO for a cunt!"
She tried something: "When Irish eyes are smiling?" she sang doubtfully.
The bird bobbed his head a few times. "Anny Boi Anny BOY!"
"Did Sean call you" Dannyboy"?"
He preened. Thinking. She thought he was thinking.
Nothing about this told her how old Barry was, but it was older than she was, and he wasn't OLD. His chest feathers grew back. The way her skin always...
And the feathers in his cage and the peelings of his pinfeathers and the litterbox under a perch (did her mom train him to use a fucking litterbox? Or did he just---)
She looked around and just suddenly KNEW.
Barry had to come HOME with her. Because that was HOME for a bird who was THIS old.
"Wanna go for a ride?"
He whistled the Godfather theme song at her. The whole fuck. It was stupid. But it was the only thing that made sense. He was really old, and very smart, and her mom flaked out, and she had to do something.
***
She didn't close the cage all the way when every last thing was in her place. She lay down and started to have BIG FEELINGS. because everything made that happen anymore. She didn't think she would sleep, because lots of times she didn't, unless she drank her thoughts down. But she heard a skree of a cage opening, and then--soft feathers on her face.
"gurl."
No comments:
Post a Comment