It Lights Up the Night [Birdie/Leland]

She used to bring us together. When we were younger, we used to not pay attention to all the little things, the things that would have us at each other’s throats. Guess it was easier to have that little mop of hair in front of me, wondering about things, all quiet and weird – but god was she wonderful. I could forget about how Birdie would complain about the things I didn’t get done because I could keep Dam happy. I could give them both what they needed. Even as mad as Birdie could get we wouldn’t go to bed angry.

But Birdie’s always wanted someone that’s going to wait hand and foot. The type of guy that’s going to hold the door for her like she’s some sort of damsel, or put my underwear in the basket instead of leaving my clothes in a pile by the corner of the room. It wasn’t one big thing, you know? It was a million little ones, that showed us we were together, we were two separate lives moving in different directions. By the time Dam had died, we were standing on opposites sides of the world.

Why did you come here? You wanted to see me? You wanted to talk about the fucking weather? Or did you just want to berate me, because clearly you’re doing so well for yourself, and I’m just a bitch with a stick up my ass.

I fold my arms across my chest, and stare back at the hysterics she’s projecting. She couldn’t even recognize how I could get sad, too. Or that maybe even if we hadn’t been together or there for each other, I still wanted to talk to the only other person that really knew Dam, instead of the folks that were just going to nod their heads and go, ‘yup.’ That’s what you get, you know? The folks that look at you with dead eyes, and want to feel something, but just sort of give you that, sorry ‘bout that buddy, sort of bullshit. And if there was one thing Birdie didn’t give me, when it came to speaking about something that mattered, it was bullshit.

Everything has to be a fucking shitshow with you. You think you’re the only one that misses her? I’m the one who has to wake up in this house every morning. Christ, Leland, she’s fucking everywhere.

It’s like a punch to the gut, the way she lets it all come out. I see the cast on her arm and I want to say something, anything, but a part of me is ashamed I had no idea she’d been hurt at all. And I look around, at the house – our old house – the way that there’s little piles of letters on the coffee table, or a crack coming down from the ceiling along the doorframe by the kitchen. I wonder if I could’ve offered anything other than another fight, even if I’d been there. We’re worse than oil and water; we’re a hurricane, just wind and air that can be together but break things apart.

“Birdie, you know I—” But she beats me to it.

Sometimes I think I’m going to wake up and come downstairs and she’ll be there on the couch, just like she always was, but she never fucking is, because she’s dead. And you know what? You know what, Leland? I think she would be really disappointed in you.

Fuck.

I sit forward in the couch, and take off the cap on my head. I run a hand through my hair, all tangled, and sigh. I want to fight back, to really go off (you think she’d want a mother that locks herself up like she’s afraid of the world?), but instead I’m just… tired. I know I’ve pushed her past where she needed to go, I know I’ve brought out something primal. Something ugly. The two of us were stuck going in circles like we were still living like we used to – lovers, parents – but we were neither of those things, and it hollowed us both out. I pressed both hands down along the edges of my face and sat, quiet.

“Yeah. You’re probably right.” I whispered out. This was hallowed ground, and she’d invoked something true that I couldn’t disagree with her.

“I’m trying, Birdie. I’m fucking trying.” I think it’s true, but somehow the words don’t sound it. “You know, I just – “ I let out a little laugh because she doesn’t fucking care, “When I think about her, I think about us. And it sucks. Seeing you, and me, like this. I don’t know if she ever wanted that. She sure as hell didn’t deserve it.”

If she were here, I think I’d tell her she’d have done better to just get the hell away from the both of us.

“What happened?” I say, nodding at her arm. But the question’s open ended – the storm can rage some more, if it wants to. I can take it.

Out of the corner of my eye, Birdie’s shadow draws, and she slides into a spot at the edge of the couch. I think about the distance between us. There’s a few inches, but it’s a whole mountain of grief that stands in the way. Cold peaks and jagged valleys of regret underneath, neither of us have the bodies to bridge the gap. Instead we’re stuck on our own sides, looking past each other. I keep my gaze forward, knowing better than to try to look at Birdie while she’s upset, like she’s going to see the resting expression and interpret it as some kind of attack. She and Dam could be the same way, taking folks at face value, wondering about those first few moments than the seconds or hours that came after.

She was too good for us.

I nod my head. You might’ve seen her and not thought too much, quiet as she was. But man – she was everything. There’s this little girl, hair tumbled around her shoulders, sitting at the edge of a couch, looking at her cards and up at me, and – you see her, just careful with how she holds the cards, how she puts them on the table. How she’ll quietly ask if she could have some apple juice, even if there’s not much left in the fridge, like she’s scared I’d ever take something away from her. That when she was older and how she’d curl up under a blanket and say that she didn’t want to spend on minute outside and I’d sit down beside her, and we’d pop some popcorn and watch the old black and white films we’d seen a hundred times (I’d say all the women’s lines, and she’d hold back, until I could get her to join in, too, two of us laughing).

It’s that gravity of love. Pulls us back down to earth, makes us heavy when we lose someone. Love’s still there, you can’t get rid of that. But we have nothing to pull us toward it. We’re just – drifting.

No matter what we did, she always loved us. We didn’t deserve it.

“No, we didn’t.”

I wish I could say I disagreed with her. I remember saying it, standing in front of her casket. Words coming out like there was static between my ears. Not feeling how empty I could’ve been, just drifting on. We didn’t know who we were, losing her. Dam pulled us together, better or worse and we, we couldn’t make it work. Not enough for it to be the way it should’ve been. And I want to forgive her, to tell Birdie that she’s the reason, but I just can’t.

I fell. I got too drunk and I fell down the stairs, and then I just laid there at the bottom thinking about how pathetic I was.

“Holy hell.” I run my hands through my hair again, and cover my eyes. I can’t unsee Birdie at the foot of the stairs, broken, too stubborn to call anyone for help. And I can’t shake the feeling that I’d not bothered to check in on her so long that she’d already been plastered over, and moved on. She wouldn’t have bothered getting me to come, and – I don’t know if I would’ve picked up the phone if I knew it was her. Argyle might not have even told me if she did.

I think she would be really disappointed in me, too.

I turn my head to face her then. My hands drop slowly into my lap, fingers extending and clenching as I stare over the dark circles, the cast, the way she’s smiling. Maybe, I want to say.

She’d be disappointed in a lot of things. Probably starting with that she died, suddenly, violently. That she’d held on and it was some big beast that took her down, not another kid. But maybe that was better, instead of having to have a real killer. Disappointed that we were still here, screaming at each other. Spiraling downward, going nowhere.

“You remember when she was little, they had that, little carnival? We took her out and put her on some swings that went round and round, did some ring toss? Ate cotton candy?” I don’t remember the reason, but I remember the fairgrounds, and the old metal death traps they’d set up along one of the avenues. I remember how her eyes were big as dinner plates looking at the things, and I had her up on my shoulders, Birdie there with me, all of us smiling, together. “All I can think about is sitting there with you and her, and she was falling asleep. And the sun was setting and the sky was all orange and – we just, we were good to her. We could be good to her. We weren’t always, but… we could be.”

I wonder if almost counts after someone’s died.

“You raised a good little girl, Birdie.” I offer. I stretch back on the couch, arms pressed back, head on my shoulder, looking at her.

Leland Durrow

‘I didn’t. Sometimes I think she just raised herself, you know? I mean, she was sad, but she was just… she didn’t get any of her personality from me, that’s for sure. She was so much better.’

She’s modest. In the shadow of the light, among the cool afternoon rain, she’s lovely. It’ll be for a moment, just a little bit of time when the universe hasn’t set us against one another. But looking at her face now, the little lines under her eyes, the gentleness of her hair, tumbling down along the couch – I want to hold her. Have it be like the times when we shared in each other, because we didn’t have that weight between us. When she could understand who I was, and I didn’t think she was speaking some other language.

‘I mean, isn’t that what parents are supposed to want? For their children to be better than them?’ She sighs, and I lean over, arm atop the edge of the couch scooching closer hoping to support that head of hers, let her rest on my shoulder.

We didn’t always mean to hurt each other, I think. Didn’t start out wanting to cut out all the parts that’d made her glow, but she faded anyway. I’d wanted to keep finding myself but she’d wanted us – our daughter needed us – to set all that aside and live just for her. And Birdie, she’d been strong enough to push aside whatever it was youth was supposed to be and just, she just lived for Damaris. And I looked at the two of them and couldn’t let go, not of the part of me that wanted to keep living.

I didn’t think I’d love her the way I loved myself. It felt like they were asking me to be what I wasn’t, just so that the three of us could be unhappy together.

‘I don’t know. It doesn’t even matter anymore.’

It didn’t, not the way it used to. We had our chance at it and now we were free. Except it felt a lot lonelier, chasing this ghost. They don’t tell you it eats you up inside, when you look back at all the things you fucked up before.

I always feel like I know what would be right, but then I just don’t. I let whatever gravity is pulling me on tear me away from what I should be doing. And it’s right there, in front me, but each day I know it’s a little bit further away. At some point it just won’t be there anymore, and I think that’s what I’m aiming for. Better it fades away and disappear than for me to have it all happen at once, and be the cause.

Having a child, you see through time. You see the past, looking down at all the mistakes she’s bound to make. All the hurts her heart’s going to feel, and you want to reach out, stop them from happening. You can’t know what you’re supposed to do, not with the first – never knew if what I was doing was best for her (sure seems now like it wasn’t). And then you see the present. You’re aware of how each little argument rattles the walls, makes her shoulders hang a little bit lower. Takes the spring out of her step, or the glow from her face. You’re left looking down the long barrel of her future, and you know – you break your heart, thinking about what it might be.

‘So, is this all you’re doing today?

It’s too quiet, then.

I look down at the floor, the dust collecting on the hardwood.

I could let it fade away. Let it fall apart and get buried, just like we buried her. Let it be gone, let it die. It’d hurt for a while, might kill the both of us. But somehow I think it might start us over. Take us off the track that’s leading us nowhere, around in circles. Making us the same as we’ve ever been.

I angle closer to her face, my head pressed against the cool of the couch cushion. I smile, and move a couple of fingers through her hair, to push them back. It’s the same old song, same old woman calling out to lightning, to the child. My heart beats faster, breath a little shorter.

“You had something better to do?” It’s a whisper then, not louder than the jingle of the cat’s collar on the stairs. I grin, and raise a finger before she can answer. “And don’t say it ‘cause I know anything probably would’ve been better.” I angle back on my elbow, hand behind my head.

“Maybe it’s all I wanted to do today,” I offer back to her, smile wider, “Is try to spend some time with you.”

Leland Durrow

And it all comes down to you

Well, you know that it does, well

Lightning strikes maybe once, maybe twice

Oh and it lights up the night

Please don’t let me go and fuck this up.

It’s as though we’ve forgotten a lot of things.

When Damaris died, we started to forget parts of ourselves. Not that we ever knew how to hold the memories close. I thought that was half the problem, that whenever we got hold of a fresh one, we’d go and spoil it. As though it was so easy to ruin something with an unkind word – like me saying that she wasn’t trying hard enough to be happy, as though it were a weight she could lift if she was just a bit stronger – so that we wound up yelling past one another, red in the face.

I think it’s easy to be unkind when you’re hurt. A part of it is all the laziness. It takes effort to love, and when you’re already half exhausted, being unkind feels like a way of getting some of that back. When Damaris was a teenager, we found ways to make each other unhappy so that we could forget about being lonely. At least, I thought – maybe I wouldn’t have to feel lonely if it meant that the both of us would be unhappy. Especially when Damaris bathed in her depression as though someday she’d come out clean.

‘You don’t want to spend time with me. What about that girl who always bothers me at the grocery store? I’m sure she’s not doing anything right now.’

Shauna’s never said an unkind word about Birdie. I assume it’s more out of fear that one of these days I’d turn on her for it. She told me once she admired Birdie because she spoke her mind about things, even if it doesn’t come out the way she wanted (which was her first mistake, thinking Birdie didn’t say exactly what she meant). I remember sitting across the table from her in the low light of the bar and thinking, this is a girl that feels sorry for herself more than she feels sorry about me. She’d never leave me, because it’d be a lot lonelier for her to start over. And all I’d wanted for so long is someone to lay down beside me that it didn’t matter I’d never love her.

She was warm, and kind. And sometimes that’s all you need.

‘Sorry. It was a bad joke. I didn’t mean it. You can—‘ I bristle at the apology, expecting the worst. ‘ You can stay. If you want. But I want you to stay.’

I want to run.

She’s pulled me back into that same gravity, childless grace and sadness wrapping her up as a vision of my past.

Except there’s a soft rain coming down outside, and I don’t want to walk home alone. I don’t feel like listening to the sad old songs again and again.

When she kisses me, I push into her, lips parted, our hungry souls finding one another. She reminds me of pressed flowers, the scent faint enough that you’d think it was about to disappear. I ease a hand over her waist, and another behind her head, soft. I steal another kiss, and another, and I wish that this was the moment that I’d remember later, not the yelling or the shouting, or that we had a daughter who’d never walk through the door again.

“Birdie, I,” I’m breathless, pulled back and voice at a whisper, “You know it’s always been you,” I spit out, and it’s the truth, escaping like the bastard he is. Forget about Shauna, I want to tell her, forget about that we’ve always driven ourselves into a ditch. Just remember me, I think, and not the man I’m about to be.

“I want to stay,” I move my knees to the couch with a squeal, and move my body closer to hers, hoping to swallow her up in a hold. “If you’ll let me just lay down next to you.”

I grin.

“So I can hold you.”

Fleetwood Mac