“Dad, what’s going on?” Abby asked.
“The neighbors are neglecting their exotic birds,” her dad said. He stood in the doorway and stamped his feet on the welcome mat. “The neighbors are neglecting their exotic birds,” he repeated, and her mother just nodded, as though this was a normal thing to say. “I know,” she said.
“It’s so sad.”
“The neighbors have just let the birds out of the pen. They’re wandering al over the property and we need to get them. Mary Beth, can you help
me find a flashlight and a bag large enough to fit a peacock?”
Abby wanted to die. This was worse than she ever could have imagined. Isabel a and Kristi sat in silence and her mom got up to gather supplies.
“The neighbors have these birds,” Abby started to explain.
“Exotic birds,” her dad said.
“Right,” she said. “Exotic birds. And they aren’t taking care of them.” She turned to her dad. “Are you going to steal them?” she asked.
“No,” her dad said. “We’re just going to convince them to come here. Bob up the street is helping me.”
“Bob’s a vet,” Abby explained to Isabel a and Kristi. She felt like she was interpreting.
“We have to wait until it’s dark,” her dad said. “Peacocks are blind at night, so we can just put it in the bag and get it to the truck. The peahens are easy. They fol ow wherever the peacock goes. Did you know that?”
“Fun farm facts,” Abby said under her breath.
“Be careful,” her mom said. “I don’t want you to get arrested because of the peafowl.” Her dad nodded, took the bag, and he was gone. Abby looked at her friends and tried to think of something to say.
“Your parents are so cool,” Isabel a whispered to Abby later that night. They were lying in bed after smoking her dad’s pot on the back porch. Kristi was passed out in the other bed. Abby had offered them the pot as soon as they were done with dinner. It seemed the least she could do after the exotic bird hoopla.
“They real y aren’t,” Abby said. “They’re horrifying.”
Isabel a laughed. “That’s not true,” she said. “You just can’t see it because they’re your parents.”
“You wouldn’t feel that way if they were your parents,” Abby said. “Trust me.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But I think they’re great.”
When Abby stayed at Isabel a’s house, her mom made them spaghetti and meatbal s and they ate at the kitchen table with the whole family. They watched movies in the basement, and Abby slept in a guest room with a flowered comforter that matched the wal paper border in the room. Her mom wore a bra the whole time. It was the perfect weekend.
Later that night, Abby heard her dad’s truck drive up the road. She got up and went to the window. Isabel a got up and stood next to her. Kristi snored behind them. “What’s going on?” Isabel a asked.
“I think my dad has the birds,” Abby said.
They watched as he unlatched the back door to the truck and then stepped back and began making a series of loud noises.
“Oh my God,” Abby said. “He’s making bird noises.”
“How does he know how to do that?”
“He doesn’t.” But they watched as a peacock bobbed its way out of the truck and fol owed her dad to the pen.
“Oh!” Isabel a said. “Oh!” The two peahens hopped out after him. “Look at that,” she said. “Look at that, they’re fol owing him!”
They were both stil a little stoned, and they stared as the birds made their way to the new pen. Once they were there, the peacock opened up his feathers into a tal spray of blues and yel ows. The peahens stood on either side of him. They were pure white, which made his feathers seem brighter.
“Wow.” Isabel a sounded like she had just witnessed a miracle. Kristi snorted in her sleep.
“Don’t tel anyone about this, okay?” Abby asked her.
Isabel a nodded but didn’t take her eyes off the birds. “Okay, sure.”
Abby had asked her mom once why they’d sent her to the schools they had. Why couldn’t they have put her in public schools? “We just wanted you to get a good education,” her mom said. Abby found this a stupid reason. Didn’t they know she’d be al alone? Didn’t they know that as soon as they sent her away, she’d be separated from them and she could never real y go back? Didn’t they know that they couldn’t send her to those schools and walk into the kitchen and say, “The neighbors are neglecting their exotic birds,” and expect her to be okay with it?
When Abby met Matt, she knew that he was going to save her. He was the answer, of course, the thing that would make her real y normal. He worked at Morgan Stanley, was from a suburb of Boston, and liked the Red Sox. He was so normal that it made her heart pound.
“He’s a great catch,” Kristi said to her. Abby knew this before Kristi told her, and for once she didn’t care whether Kristi approved.
New York made Abby happy. This was, she thought, because she was not even close to the weirdest person there. Every day she was there, she started to relax a little more, and soon she wasn’t looking around at people wondering what they were thinking of her. She left the apartment without looking in the mirror a hundred times, and when she walked down the street and tripped a little, she wasn’t even embarrassed.
Abby and Matt moved in together after a few months of dating. “That’s real y quick,” Kristi said to her. But Abby didn’t care. And when they got engaged, she knew that al of her friends were surprised, but again she didn’t care. She was on her way to a normal life, and she wanted to get there as fast as she could.
Matt came to the house in Vermont only once. He’d met Abby’s parents twice before, when they came to the city for a visit. Out of their element, they could almost pass as normal. But after the engagement, Abby decided it was time to bring him home. She warned him that her parents were different in the house. “Abby,” he said, rol ing his eyes, “I get it, okay? I don’t care if your parents are nudists. I can handle it.”
“How did you know about the nudist part?” Abby asked him. He looked at her for a moment and then smiled. “You think you’re so funny, don’t you?” he asked. “Just relax. It wil be fine.”
Abby’s sister, Thea, came home for the weekend too. “I should meet your intended,” Thea told her on the phone.
“Sure,” Abby said. “I guess you should.”
Thea came home and brought her new baby girl, Rain. Thea and Rain lived on an organic farm in Vermont. “We work the farm and earn our keep,” Thea explained to Matt that night. She was breast-feeding Rain and let her breasts wag back and forth as she switched Rain to the other side. Abby could tel that Matt was trying hard not to look at them.
“Is this making you uncomfortable?” Thea asked him.
Matt shook his head. “No. No, this is fine.”
Thea smiled. “Breast-feeding is the most natural thing in the world, Matt. I forgot what it’s like with most people on the outside. At the farm, if Rain
is hungry and I’m not around, one of the other lactating mothers wil feed her.”
“What kind of farm does she live on?” Matt whispered to Abby in bed that night. They had shared a joint walking around the farm and now he was giggly. “That’s like Jim Jones shit,” he said. “Lactating mothers … what the hel is that?”
“So you don’t want to move there with me?” Abby asked, and he laughed.