Cage Bird Society, №2

When his first wife finally left him, he told her he couldn’t sleep, and to ease her own mind, she bought him a pair of turtledoves to help with the silence around the house. He’d often been irritated about her singing as she moved from room to room — a habit she’d had since she was a girl — but now, he had admitted he missed her voice, and it rattled her conviction. Instead of returning home, she came by one day while he was at work, left the birds in a cage on the kitchen table with a note — instructions on feeding and care — like she had sometimes left dinner nights he worked late.

He came home that evening, flipped on the light, found them cooing to one another, and read the note. His first impulse was that for her to leave these birds was an act of cruelty. Then, after a night’s sleep, he thought of it as a test: if he cared for them well enough, she would come back. So he started coming home from work at a decent hour. He became diligent in feeding them, in cleaning out their cage. He made a point to speak to them sweetly.

At first, he was afraid to let them out. But, once he knew she was not coming back, he decided it was the thing to do to give them exercise, and one weekend afternoon, he turned off all the ceiling fans, opened the cage door, and waited. It took nearly an hour, but, finally, the female stepped to the door of the cage. The rest of that evening, he lay on the sofa, watched them fly from makeshift perch to makeshift perch around the house. He fell asleep, woke in the early morning to find them back in their cage.

Over time, he found that he liked the chirping, near-song coos of the turtledoves, especially on Sunday mornings. He had grown up going to church, enjoying the hymns, but lost the habit in college. The truth was he had loved music, but he had not stuck with piano nor the voice lessons forced on him by his mother, and as an adult, it intimidated him.

His second wife was suspicious of the birds, complained they made too much noise. That is, until, seven years into their marriage, the female died of a rare disease, and she encouraged him to replace her. With the new bird, she felt differently, now occasionally taking them out of the cage to let them perch on her fingers, to stroke their chins — especially the male. And when the neighbor’s cat stayed with them for a week, got into the cage, she was stricken to find them eviscerated in the living room, had recurring dreams about it; though, not too long after, despite being only forty-seven and an ardent non-smoker, she got lung cancer which was not treatable.

He always kept two, one male and one female.

He never had children.

His third wife, whose children were grown, became a bird lover when she met him. They added parakeets, cockatoos, turned the shed behind the house into an aviary. For their first anniversary, she bought them memberships to The Cage Bird Society. He received his own laminate membership card, which he kept in his wallet, though there was no need to keep it on him.

Even once the aviary was finished, the turtledoves lived in the house. Except for the three months in which it was remodeled and a little nook built for them, they had their place in the kitchen. When his second wife was alive, he took up cooking, and he liked to be able to watch them when waiting for the oven to heat or for water to boil.

Over the years, the turtledoves died — there had been at least three sets of each. While he was always saddened, it seemed part of the process. Once, he woke early, entered the kitchen, made coffee, and was taking a carton of eggs from the refrigerator when he noticed the cage. The female began moaning. He went over, sat in front of the cage, gazed at the male lying still, listened as the female sadly cooed. He was not religious. He did not believe in heaven — never thought much about it, truthfully — but now at the strange, long age of eighty-one, he believed in this.

He was the cage, not the bird.

Not long after, he had a seizure, spent two weeks in the hospital. Aside from a two week trip to Europe five years prior, in which his wife’s children cared for the birds, he had never been away from them for more than a long weekend. When the doctor gave the prognosis that he would get sicker and sicker over the next year, then die, he was more perplexed than grieved. He was not worried for his wife — she had her children — and while she was alive, he knew he would not have to worry for his birds.

He refused the treatments.

A year passed.

He waited to get sicker, but it never happened. The oncologist had no explanation. He just stared at the lab results, thumbed his goatee — ordered another MRI. And each night in bed, next to his wife, he knew she was unsettled, waiting for something — like house guests arriving from out of town, or a plane in holding pattern awaiting clearance to land.

Then, one day, his third wife went out to the store one Sunday morning. She kissed him on the cheek as she went out, said he looked tired, that he should lie down. She was not gone long, but when she returned, she saw the birds were not in their cage in the kitchen. She dropped the groceries. She rushed into the living room, found him, on the sofa, eyes closed, his mouth just open — as if he were about to begin a song.

Photo: Michael Ruther