Abby’s dad was pouring seed from a bag into a trough. “Want to start feeding them?” he asked. She took a plastic pitcher they kept there and fil ed it with the feed. She poured the right amount into each of the birds’ feed bins. Every time a bird came clucking up to her, she stuck her tongue out at it.
Thea cal ed that afternoon. “I heard what happened,” she said. “Mom cal ed and left a message. That’s rough.”
“Yeah,” Abby said. “I guess you get out of your maid of honor duties, though.”
“I guess.” Abby could hear her light a cigarette and take a drag.
“Mom and Dad are being real y calm,” Abby told her. “It’s like nothing happened.”
“You know how they are,” she said, exhaling the smoke and choking just a little bit. “Plus, they never real y liked Matt.”
“Yes, they did.” Abby felt wounded to hear this.
“Oh, Abby. I don’t mean that they hated him. But you know. He wasn’t their type.”
“Why? Because he showered and wore clean clothes?”
“No, because he always thought he knew everything. You could sense it about him. Not that I minded him. He had a real y interesting energy.”
“Right.”
“Do you want to say hi to your niece? She’s right here.”
“Sure, put her on the phone.”
Abby heard rustling and then she heard Thea say, “Say hi to your aunt Abby. Tel her hel o!”
“Your mother is a moron,” Abby said into the phone, and then she hung up.
“We should go snowshoeing,” her mother said on the third day she was home. “It wil do you good to get out in the fresh air.”
“Okay,” Abby said.
“You’re so young,” her mom said as they trekked across the snow. “You’l see that this is for the best.”
“I’m twenty-five,” Abby said. “When you were my age, you already had Thea.”
“Wel , I wasn’t married.”
“So you think I should get pregnant?”
“Oh, Abby,” she said. “I hate to see you so sad.”
“Thea cal ed,” Abby said. “She told me that you and Dad never liked Matt.”
“That’s not true. We like anyone that you bring home. Anyone you like, we like.”
“But that’s not the same thing. Did you real y like him? Are you happy we’re not getting married?”
Her mom sighed. “Abby,” she said. “You have always known what you wanted. I never doubted you. But things happen for a reason, and if there was trouble, then yes, I am glad that you aren’t getting married.”
“I didn’t say there was trouble.”
“People don’t cal off weddings if everything is hunky-dory.” Her mom’s nose was dripping, and she wiped it with her glove. Abby looked down at the snow and pressed her weight forward on her snowshoes. “Come on,” her mom said. “We should get back. Your father wil be worried.”
Abby watched her mom pat her arm, but she couldn’t feel it through al the layers of clothes. She watched her go pat, pat, pat on her sleeve. Then her mom turned and started off ahead of her, stomping in the fresh snow. Abby waited until she was about ten steps in front of her, and then she fol owed.
Before Abby left New York to come home, she sent an e-mail to al of her friends that said: “The wedding is off. No one reason, just lots of little ones. I’l explain more later. Abby.”
She was sure her friends had been cal ing and e-mailing, but she didn’t get any cel service at her parents’ house. For once, she was relieved.
Usual y it drove her crazy, and she would stand on chairs and hold the phone up in the air to try to get some sort of signal. “Come on!” she would say to the phone. “Give me something.”
This time, Abby hadn’t even taken her phone out of her bag. She knew she’d eventual y have to go back to New York and face it. She would have to see her friends and drink vodka and listen to them tel her that it was for the best, that she’d be happier in the long run. She would exhaust herself, going out almost every night, deconstructing every part of her relationship with Matt until it wasn’t hers anymore. She would do it, but just not yet.
“We can stil live together,” Matt said, after he told her about the wedding.
“No,” Abby said. “No, we can’t.”
Abby’s parents didn’t have cable, so she watched old movies until she thought she could fal asleep. She read the books that were left in her room: Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, A Day No Pigs Would Die , and Bridge to Terabithia . She didn’t remember them being so sad. They were al so sad.
Abby didn’t want her mind to be free for even a second. Because when it was, she heard Matt saying, “Abby, I don’t know about the wedding.”
“What don’t you know?” she asked him.
“I don’t know if I can do it,” he said. He didn’t even sound mean when he said it. Actual y, he sounded nice and a little apologetic. Like he was sorry for what he was doing. Like he was sorry for ruining her life.
When she didn’t feel like reading anymore, she wrote. She made lists of things to do when she got back to the city. A list of things to buy for the apartment now that Matt was gone. A list of shows that she could watch now that he wasn’t there. She wrote down names of people who had been through worse things than this: her aunt Eda, the war widow; her friend Crystal, whose parents were kil ed in a car crash; Helen Kel er; Baby Jessica.
When she tried to go to sleep, her head was fil ed with the weird things people had said to her. She lay and listened to them, and then final y she got up to write them down. She thought maybe if she got them on paper, they would stop bothering her. She got out a pad of paper. The neighbors are neglecting their exotic birds, she wrote. Then, I won’t drink the Kool-Aid. Then, It’s a more humane way to kill birds. Then, We can still live together. Then, I’m not getting married. She read these over again and again, until the sentences didn’t mean anything. Then she closed her eyes and fel asleep.
Abby woke up to the sound of a child screaming and sat up in bed with her heart pounding. She’d been having a nightmare, but she couldn’t remember what it was about. She walked downstairs, and found her mom peering out the kitchen window.
“It’s the peacock,” she said, without turning around. “He’s been getting noisier. One of the peahens is sick, and we think he’s upset.”
The peacock bleated and bobbed around the pen, and the peahens fol owed. One of the peahens was slower than the other one, and she limped as she tried to keep up.
“Why is she fol owing him like that?” Abby asked. “Why doesn’t she just take care of herself?” It made her angry, that stupid fucking bird, using al of her strength to waddle after him.
Her mom shrugged. “If we knew that,” she said, “we could solve al the mysteries in the world.”
Abby watched the peacock raise his feathers, and they were beautiful. The peahens raised their feathers too, but they were shorter and not nearly as magnificent, which seemed unfair. The peahens waddled around, fol owing the peacock wherever he went. He couldn’t see in the night, so he wandered aimlessly in the pen. Go the other way, she wanted to scream at the gimpy peahen. Stop worrying about where he’s going and just rest.
It seemed to Abby that the peacock was strutting, showing off his feathers to an invisible audience in the night. It didn’t look like he was worried about the peahen. He looked selfish and self-absorbed, like he knew he was beautiful. Abby watched his feathers blow in the wind, and she watched as the peahens fol owed with al of their strength. They fol owed because it was al they had ever done; they fol owed because it was al they knew how to do.