Page 15

AVIAN DEMISE , or Bruised Tailbones and Lost Sunglasses

The day that Into the Woods opened, a bird flew into the picture window at the Lily Pad.

It went like this: I was up early, was eating the (dregs) of (my) granola (that Touchstone had basically finished), enjoying what Phoebe assured me would be my last speck of free time. There were still two months of summer left, but the theater season was kicking into overdrive, and there was a lot to do in the costume shop. The next few weeks promised late nights of steaming garments and reaffixing rhinestones to Cinderella’s slippers. As I ate, I lost myself in the view out the picture window: the sparkling river, the sweep of the far bank. The tent we’d noticed our first week was gone now, and the view was pure and unobstructed.

Then came the bang. I jumped. Granola dust went everywhere.

“What was that ?” yelled Touch from upstairs.

I scurried out the side door to investigate. The bird was there, lying on the deck. It was pale brown, no bigger than my palm. I didn’t know what kind of bird it was. I didn’t want to know what kind of bird it was. I had yogurt and granola in my mouth, but I didn’t want to swallow it. The taste had gone off. Was it stunned, or dead? I couldn’t tell.

I went back inside.

Touchstone had emerged from upstairs, rumpled, pillow marks on his cheeks. He’d been out late with Audrey the night before. Clowning, it turned out, was a surprise aphrodisiac.

“A bird flew into the window,” I said.

“Oh, shit,” said Touchstone. “Is it alive?”

“I can’t tell,” I said.

We looked at each other, unsure of where to go.

“I’m getting Ros,” I said.

“Like they’ll know what to do,” said Touch.

Ros was still sleeping, sprawled on the bed chaotically, as if they’d fallen from a great height. Our room didn’t get a lot of light—even on the brightest afternoons, it stayed dim and cave-like. In the half-light, I looked at them.

The confusing thing about being in love with Ros was that it wasn’t always visible—sometimes it faded when I was preoccupied, like with the busyness of work. Loving them was like the moon—brighter and more obvious at times, and then sometimes you had to hunt for it, search for the black within the black. Sometimes it was so faint I convinced myself that it would be fine if nothing happened between me and Ros. That it would be all right if we stayed friends. Not all right: better.

But then sometimes, like now, I thought they were the most beautiful person I’d ever seen.

They opened one eye.

“What are you doing?”

“There’s a bird,” I said. “It flew into the window.”

“Oh no,” they said. “Really?”

“Come see,” I said.

We gathered around the bird. His little beak was open. I’d never seen a bird tongue before. It was pink, just like a person’s.

“Oh yeah,” said Ros. “He’s toast.”

“Toast!” I said. “I thought he was just stunned, maybe.”

“No way, man,” Ros said. “He’s dead. Or good as.”

“Rest in peace, little sparrow,” said Touchstone.

“May bird heaven be full of worms.”

“Endless cars to shit on.”

“How are you both joking ?” I said. I could feel my voice getting high and whiny, like I was about to cry. “I know it’s just a bird, but it was alive, and now—”

People forget that Capricorns can be deep feelers , my mother said often.

I missed my mom. She would have known what to do in this situation.

There was that familiar tug of homesickness.

“Hey,” Ros said. “Hey, hey. It’s okay.”

They hugged me then. They smelled like the woods. Like dirt, in a comforting way, that reminded me of building our fairy towns when we were little kids.

“Sorry,” I said. “I know I’m being sensitive.”

“You and my stomach have so much in common,” Touchstone said, and I laughed a little at the joke.

“Sorry we upset you,” said Ros. “Sweet Celia.”

They smiled at me. It was then that I noticed something different about them.

“What happened to your necklace?” I said.

They reached for their neck, as if confirming their chain’s absence.

“Oh,” Ros said. “I took it off. It was bugging my skin.”

“You’ve been wearing it forever. It started bugging your skin now ?”

“Yes,” Ros said.

“Can that happen?”

“I don’t know,” said Ros. “It did.”

“Huh. That’s so weird. Are you okay? Do you need, like, Neosporin or anything? I packed some.…”

“It’s fine,” said Ros. “I’m fine.”

“Should we focus on this bird?” said Touchstone.

“Yeah,” said Ros. “Good idea. I don’t want any of us to be late for work. Maybe we leave him for now and figure out what to do when we get back?”

“Okay,” I said, still trying to work out what happened with Ros’s necklace, still doubtful that you could really develop an allergy to something you wore daily. “Sure.”

In a way, Ros was telling the truth about their chain. Your skin could be fine with something for years and years, and then, suddenly, for no reason at all, you could become allergic to it overnight. Years later, long after we left Lovesick, I had a ring that I loved so much I never took it off. Then one day the skin grew scaly and red beneath it, and my body rejected it even as my heart still loved it.

Later that day, I hiked out to the Service Spot and checked in with my parents. It was good to hear their voices—so good, in fact, that I forgot about the bird waiting on the patio. I told them excitedly about the good things in my life: gearing up for Into the Woods . Phoebe working on the yeti costume. How Ros and Touchstone had made us veggie burgers.

When I hung up, I texted Ros: I just remembered there’s hydrocortisone cream in the first aid kit I brought. If your neck is bugging you.

They gave my text a thumbs-up.

It was a simple, polite interaction. But I spent a long time in the clearing staring at it, trying to figure out why I felt so awful. Something was off between me and Ros, and I suspected that something looked a lot like Jess Orlando.

As for the bird: When I got back from the dress rehearsal, it was gone, and Ros was nowhere to be found, in spite of what they’d said earlier that day. Maybe the bird had healed, flew away of its own accord. Or maybe something wild had carried it off into the woods, something that lived out there, furred and feral and hungry.

The first Into the Woods show went off without a hitch.

And the next show.

And the next show.

And the next show.

Which wasn’t to say that we weren’t busy. Even when the production ran smoothly, Benna always had work for us to do, which I enjoyed—steam this. Fold that. Wash that. Remove those stains. The nights were late, but the costume shop was busy with everyone working to make the shows come together. There was camaraderie that came with being there late into the night, all of us losing sleep to make sure the show went seamlessly, pun intended.

And still: No one in the costume shop, with the exception of maybe Benna, was working half as hard as Phoebe, who was doing everything we were doing plus furiously helping Benna design the yeti costume. Benna fought for her to get a raise halfway through the season, and Phoebe actually got one . Her process was very collaborative, which meant that Oliver Teller was often in the shop with us when he wasn’t in rehearsals, offering his thoughts on yeti character development, which I didn’t mind: in the first place because he was nice to look at, and also because it meant that Jacques was slightly more tolerable. His calls of existential distress had decreased considerably in Oliver’s presence, and once, he’d even let me touch the very tip of his tail.

“Hey,” Phoebe said one day. It was actually the first of July; I remember because I had looked at my calendar and been shocked at the passage of time, how quickly the summer seemed to be moving. “Oliver and I are going to get lunch at the Dropped Acorn. You want to come?”

“Touchstone said that place was supposed to be good,” I said.

“It rules,” Phoebe said. “They do strawberry shortcake for the Fourth of July.”

“ Oh ,” I said. “I forgot all about that!”

“You have the day off,” said Phoebe. “You better do something good. And then tell me every single detail. Come with us, now, though,” she said. “Honestly. You won’t regret it.”

The Dropped Acorn was adorable: an outdoor spot beneath the redwoods, set up with little tables in the woods and fairy lights strung overhead. Much to my delight, Oliver and Phoebe were down to feast . Everything on the menu and in the display case looked utterly delectable, and between the three of us we ordered heaping crunchy salads with peanut dressing, medium-rare salmon over forbidden rice, an avocado BLT on homemade sourdough, two orders of french fries, the Fourth-of-July-inspired strawberry shortcake plus the two extra cookies and a lemon tart that Oliver noticed at the eleventh hour and threw in to the order. He paid for everything before Phoebe and I could argue and waved me off when I tried to give him some money.

We took our haul out back, Oliver balancing four plates on his arm and a fifth in his free hand. A few people were staring at him in that way people did when they recognized someone famous, though I also wondered if it was because of how impressive it was that he carried all our plates, or if the stares had to do with how loudly he was moaning now that he’d bitten into a cookie.

“Why didn’t we get two of the double chocolate? You have to try this.…”

“Oliver,” I said.

“Celia,” he said.

“How do you deal with, like… all these people staring at you?”

“What makes you think they’re staring at me and not you?”

“Ha ha. Seriously. How do you deal with this?”

“I’ve been in way worse places,” he said.

“We’re used to actors in the summer,” said Phoebe, breaking off a piece of cookie. “We try to not treat them like zoo animals.”

Oliver nodded in agreement. “Everyone’s actually been pretty good about respecting my privacy. Besides the one person outside my window, and that one person who I caught spying on me from a tree.”

“I wasn’t spying ,” I said.

“Knew I could get your goat,” said Oliver with a wink. I had to take a bite of lemon tart to recover. Was he flirting with me?

“It’s really not been so bad,” he insisted. “Except when you, like, walk in on employees of the theater festival watching your sex scenes.”

“I’m sorry,” said Phoebe. “Come again?”

“Okay, I want you to know that I did put that episode on, but it was because of the Kenna/Louisa storyline. I honestly forgot that scene was even a part of it,” I said.

“You forgot that I had sex while on roller skates while on a merry-go-round ? Do you have any idea how hard that scene was to film?! 16 And now you’re telling me it was forgettable ?!”

“It’s hard to compete with Kenna and Louisa!”

“Ugh, I know. They’re so cute together. That scene where they finally kiss…”

“It was so good ,” I said.

“I know. I know. We all just about lost our heads reading the script. We were so excited,” he said. “I know Phoebe’s above it all.”

“A hater,” I agreed.

“I’m not a hater ,” said Phoebe. “It’s just not exactly my cup of tea. I’m sort of surprised you like Power Jam , Celia.”

“Why?” I said.

“I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like your style necessarily.”

“What would my style be?”

“ Sixty Minutes ?”

“ SIXTY MINUTES ! How boring do you think I am?!”

“That was a joke . I don’t know what kind of stuff you’d like to watch. Law and Order , maybe. Or, like, Hitchcock.”

“I haven’t watched a lot of Hitchcock,” I said.

“It’s good,” said Oliver.

“So I’ve heard.”

“It surprises me that you’re into something so… fluffy,” Phoebe said.

“But it’s not fluffy; that’s the thing,” I said. “I mean—it’s definitely outrageous , but it’s not shallow . The plotlines are all ridiculous, but the characters all feel so real to me.” Oliver handed me a corner of a homemade Pop-Tart, which he must have ordered and I missed entirely. I accepted. “And ultimately, it’s, like— fun . There’s a lot to be said for fun.”

“Yeah,” Phoebe said. “Speaking as someone who’s been totally consumed by work for the past sixty hours, fun does really matter.”

Our conversation turned and kept turning—we discussed whether the strawberry shortcake or the double-chocolate cookie was better; caught one another up on the latest exploits of Oliver’s director (she was last seen dancing on a table at a bar in town—“my agent owes me for doing this show,” Oliver said); and how I’d gotten much better on the sewing machine with Phoebe’s help. It was the perfect lunch, and we left feeling stuffed and happy.

“Would you all mind waiting for me for two seconds?” I asked as we headed back to the car. “I want to buy some stuff to bring back home.”

“Sure,” said Phoebe. “Take your time.”

I made my way back into the storefront and purchased a sourdough loaf, which looked so delicious it might send gluten-free Touchstone into tears. I was on my way out when I saw her walk in: Jess Orlando, carrying a bouquet of flowers.

“Hey,” she said to me. “I know you. Celia, right? Ros’s friend?”

I couldn’t believe she remembered me. Both our meetings had been so brief.

“Oh, hi,” I said. “How’s it going? Is Ros with you?”

“No, they’re back at the shop,” Jess said. “Take a look at this, though. Ros built this bouquet.”

She showed off the bouquet to me, a mix of poppy reds and oranges and yellows.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it? They’re learning so fast,” she said, and I could hear the pride in her voice. I wondered how the two of them being just colleagues was going.

“It’s really nice,” I said.

“Here, take a closer look,” Jess said, and handed me the bouquet. She nodded at the counter. “It’s for one of the baristas. From her mom, for her birthday. Isn’t that cute?”

The flowers were so heavy they practically sprained my wrist. I turned them this way and that, made a great show of admiring Ros’s handiwork. It was amazing, how much they’d learned in so short a time. I was overcome with a feeling of gladness, that they were doing well at work, that they were getting back to feeling like their old self. I handed the bouquet back to Jess—which was when I noticed the chain. The chain that looked exactly like Ros’s, circled around their neck.

“I like your necklace,” I said before I could stop myself.

Jess’s hand went to her neck. “Thanks,” she said, but otherwise gave no clues as to the necklace’s provenance.

I walked back to Phoebe’s car clutching my sourdough, slightly stunned by what I’d seen. Maybe the chain meant nothing. Maybe chains like Ros’s were a dime a dozen. Maybe Jess had been, once upon a time and two and a half hours away, to the very same store Ros had been to; maybe Ros really had been allergic to it, had donated it to a thrift store in a classic fit of Ros-pique, and Jess had picked it up one day, casually, because she thought it made her look more like Rocky, or Sylvia Plath, or whomever it was she was trying to emulate, with her punches and her poetry.

Maybe Ros hadn’t given their necklace to Jess.

Maybe they weren’t falling in love and leaving me behind.

I climbed into the back seat of Phoebe’s car, and as she piloted us away, the tears began to fall. I fished around for my sunglasses, which were reliably in one of three places: propped on my head, in the front bib of my overalls, or in the front pocket of my backpack. Only my search for them came up empty.

“Do either of you see my sunglasses up there?” I asked.

“Did you have them at lunch?” Oliver said.

“No,” I said. “They should be here.…”

“Do you want to go back?” Phoebe said.

I did not want to go back. I did not want to see Jess again, wearing Ros’s chain. I didn’t want to wonder what that meant and what was happening between them. I wanted everything to be in the right place, right where I expected it to be.

“It’s fine,” I said. “I’m not attached to them. Honestly.”

“We’ll steal you a new pair from the Togshop,” Oliver said.

“I’m pretending I didn’t hear that,” said Phoebe.

I leaned my head against the window, watched the trees zip by in a blur. It wasn’t a huge loss. They weren’t even that nice. They were just shitty plastic sunglasses we’d bought on the way to Lovesick. Boring, tortoiseshell sunglasses that I’d tried on at the gas station and showed to Ros, and their face had lit up, and they’d said, Yes, yes, those are the ones; you have to get those .

“Where’s Ros?” I said when I got home that afternoon.

Touchstone was lying on the living room couch, reading a book that Audrey had lent him called Discovering the Clown . “Oh, hello, Celia, it’s so nice to see you, too. Yes, the Young People’s Workshop has been going rather well, if you don’t mind my saying so, and Audrey is just terribly smart, I don’t even mind that I have to stand on my tiptoes to kiss her.…”

“Touchstone. Where are they?”

“I don’t know,” he said, rolling his eyes and picking his book back up. “Out.”

They didn’t come home until after we’d eaten. My cooking skills, in spite of what I’d promised my parents, had hardly improved any since our arrival at the Lily Pad. I’d had such high aspirations for what we might be eating together—roasted chickens and rosemary potatoes, slow-roasted soups, salads topped with watermelon radishes—but I was so tired after getting home from the costume shop that most of the time I felt lucky if I could get it together to make toast (Touchstone joined me in a slice that was sure to upset his stomach, though he deemed the bread “worth it”), which is what I was eating when Ros walked through the door.

“Hey,” said Ros brightly. “Ooh—is there any more of that bread? I’m starving.”

“Big day?” I asked. Their neck looked oddly naked without their chain, and I was reminded of the fable about the girl whose head fell off when she removed the green ribbon she always wore around her neck. Only Ros seemed healthy, digging into the bread with gusto, more alive and energized than ever.

“I was alone at the shop while Jess did deliveries. Weirdly busy. You wind up walking a ton, even when you’re just in the shop,” they said, helping themselves to a slice of toast from the pile I’d made. “ Damn , this bread is good.”

“It’s from the Dropped Acorn,” I said.

“ What? ” Touchstone yelled. “I’ve been eating secret Dropped Acorn bread this whole time? You went to the Dropped Acorn without me? I was the one who told you about that place! You knew I wanted to go there!”

“It wasn’t my idea,” I said. “Phoebe and Oliver were going, and they invited me along.”

“Wait, you didn’t just go to the Dropped Acorn without me, but you went with the dick from Power Jam ?”

“Oliver’s actually very nice,” I said.

“It’s not Blade’s fault he’s a dick,” Ros said, taking another big bite of their toast. “His character has a very difficult home life.”

“Yeah, I bet Old Fish Eyes is being nice to you, Celia,” Touchstone said, with a waggle of his eyebrows. “He’s just trying to get into your pants.”

“Whoa! That is so not what’s happening,” I said, though my eyes flicked over to Ros to see if they’d reacted at all to the suggestion that someone else might be showing a shred of interest in me. Unfortunately, they were still hoovering toast, unmoved by Touch’s suggestion. “Look, we’ll go to the Dropped Acorn again; I promise. It’s delicious. My point was that guess who I ran into there.”

“You certainly didn’t run into me, because I was waiting to go with you,” Touch said.

“Ros? Any guesses?”

“Um… I don’t know. Mr. Greeb,” said Ros.

“Our history teacher?”

“Do you know another Mr. Greeb?”

“It wasn’t Mr. Greeb. Guess again.”

“I don’t know, Celia. Virginia Woolf.”

“She’s dead .”

“Just tell me who you ran into!”

“Jess! I ran into Jess Orlando.”

It wasn’t how I intended the conversation to go, but I watched Ros receive this news. They didn’t look caught. They didn’t look guilty. They looked relieved, almost excited. Like I’d opened a door to a room they weren’t allowed in and told them, It’s now fair game .

“Oh, good,” Ros said. “Did you say hi?”

“I did say hi,” I said.

“I still would like to meet this person officially,” Touchstone said. “We’ve talked about her so much it doesn’t seem right that I haven’t.”

“Come visit us at the shop,” said Ros.

“She showed me the bouquet you’d built. It was really pretty.” I waited a beat, to see if Ros would bring up the glaringly obvious fact of their chain around Jess’s neck. When they did no such thing, I took matters into my own hands: “She looked like she was wearing your necklace,” I said.

If Ros hadn’t had any reaction to my running into Jess Orlando, I thought at least they would have a reaction to this . But instead they took the last bite of their toast and took time to chew thoroughly. I felt them turn the slightest bit cool, like they didn’t like what I had told them, and when they finally spoke, I was flummoxed by the brevity of their response.

“So?” they said.

So? So?

“So you never take that necklace off, and now you’ve given it away to someone, which seems like a fairly significant gesture of fraternity. Which is interesting given that the last time we talked about her, we decided it’d be best if you and Jess just stayed colleagues. I’m not aware that colleagues have the sort of relationship where they trade jewelry.”

“What on earth do you mean by ‘significant gesture of fraternity’?” said Touchstone.

“ You decided it’d be best if we stayed colleagues. But things changed,” said Ros. “I decided to show her the poem. And now we’ve been hanging out a little.”

“Dang, Ros’s got game,” Touchstone said, and offered them a pound. My stomach dropped. This was getting worse and worse: the poem, the chain, and now hanging out ? How was this all going so thoroughly sideways?

“What do you mean, hanging out?” I said, trying to keep the wailing out of my voice.

“I mean—hanging out. I don’t know. We go to her house. We go for walks. What’s with the third degree? Why do you even care?”

I was almost insulted by the question. Why wouldn’t I care? Ros was my best friend in the whole entire world. Maybe I was jealous, that was always possible, but let’s not forget they were now involved with someone who, last time I checked, had punched someone at a party. I cared because our first night here, they had walked headlong into the river, without knowing how deep it was or how strong the current was, and they were doing the exact same thing, only now with their heart.

And I had followed them the first time, but I couldn’t follow them now.

“Phoebe says she’s bad news,” I said, pathetically repeating my same lie.

“You said that the first time we talked about Jess,” Touchstone said.

“Who’s Phoebe, anyway?” said Ros.

“Seriously? You met her. She’s my coworker at the costume shop. See, this is why I care about the chain—because we came here, the three of us, and the whole point was that we were going to spend time together, but I feel like I haven’t seen either of you in weeks. We’re the Triumvirate! And we have only two months left in the summer, and we don’t even know the basics about what’s going on in one another’s lives.”

“Yeah,” Touchstone said. “Like how some of us wanted to go to the Dropped Acorn.”

“It’s like—we’re sleeping in the same room, but I feel like we’re living in different worlds,” I said to Ros.

It wasn’t just that we were living in different worlds. It was that Ros was carefully, and deliberately, constructing another world without me.

“So come hang out with us,” Ros said.

“Okay,” I said, sort of surprised at how easy that was. “When?”

“The Fourth of July?” said Ros. “We’re gonna go to Lovers’ Lagoon. It’s supposed to be a good swimming spot. Back in the day it was where you went after you visited the spring, to meet the new person you were going to fall in love with. Do you want to come?”

No , I thought automatically. I did not want to spend a day with Jess, who inspired poetry and was wearing Ros’s chain. I wanted to spend the day just me and Ros, convincing them that I was the one they were really in love with.

“Can Audrey come?” Touchstone said. “We were maybe going to do something that day.”

“Sure,” said Ros. “The more the merrier. Celia? How about you?”

To reiterate: I did not want to come. Certainly not with Ros and their new squeeze, Jess, and certainly not to a place called Lovers’ Lagoon . Couldn’t these people come up with any normal landmarks, things that didn’t revolve around love? Faces carved into cliffs, say, or extremely large balls of twine?

“Earth to Celia,” said Ros.

“Sounds great. I’m in,” I said.

“Easy peasy,” Touchstone said, and Ros and I finished, in sync for one brief moment, “Lemon squeezy.”

Footnote

16 In fact, I did have an idea how difficult it was to film, thanks to the special edition magazine that Ros had bought me for my birthday. Not only had Oliver sprained his wrist when filming this scene but his costar had sustained a severe bruise to her tailbone when she fell when Oliver first kissed her. The injuries were significant enough that the showrunners decided never again to film a sex scene on wheels, which was a real disappointment, if you asked me.