She Had Been a Bird Once
By: Tommy Paley
Tags: Short Fiction, Short Story, Satire, Humor, Funny

She Had Been a Bird Once

Photo by Jan Meeus on Unsplash

“When does the fun happen?” she asked me as we sat there looking at the streamers and balloons around the room.

Everyone had gone home early. The clown was horrible. The music blew.

We’d been planning and hoping that this party would be the fun we all needed and were looking for, but it had crashed like a bus driven into another bus because the driver thought that would be “fun”.

She stood and took the balloon shaped sort of like a giraffe — the balloon artist should have been arrested or fined — and bit it, hard.

It was the pop heard around the world; our world.

“I won’t stand for this any longer, Steve!” as she stormed out of the room.

~~~~

She had been a bird once — not literally, you fool. She flew so gracefully, up in the trees, near the water, so pretty. Then one day, she plummeted (it was almost as if she realized she wasn’t a bird and had no business flying).

I remember it well. I was downtown. I was always downtown. I hate downtown.

The trolleys, the traffic, the signs telling me where to go and when to move and when to park. Where were the signs telling me how to park? In my world, everyone could park everywhere, all day long.

Then she called, weeping about something, it was hard to tell what. She was stringing words together, seemingly at random, in an order that was non-sensical. In that moment I was glad she wasn’t a kindergarten teacher or operating heavy duty machinery.

All I knew was she needed me and possibly some anti-depressants — in that order — so I dropped everything and ran — before going back to tidy up as I hate litterers — and then resuming running.

A man who looked vaguely familiar stopped me on the street.

“Kids these days don’t appreciate what they’ve got” he said in a tone that was either annoying sarcastic or annoyingly helpful. Then he opened his umbrella and looked like he was attempting to float away like Mary Poppins.

But he had a point, I had to admit, we didn’t — her and me — appreciate what we had. And we were kids, albeit not in the traditional sense of the term.

We’d had it all, approximately, and it had come crashing down like a pile of toy blocks with no sturdy foundation. Our architect skills were obsolete.

Now all we wanted was a return to the days of fun. We wanted to fly again. We wanted the prophetic words of randos on the street to not smack us in the face like whole Atlantic salmon that had been on sale at the store for $22 a pound.

~~~~

“I am fearless, daring and lonely,” she announced at our wedding to the gathered crowd. It was possible she was a little tipsy, but I didn’t care. I also didn’t disagree with her assessment.

It was her fearlessness that had saved me from a life of roads not taken. It was her ability to be daring that gave us thrills and spills and, once when we didn’t pay the bills, chills. And she was lonely, very lonely. And now that we were together, maybe I could help rescue her from a lonely existence.

I pulled her close, as if to kiss her, and instead whispered “let’s be lonely together”. She looked at me like I was a frog who may or may not turn into a prince if she kissed. Then she looked at me like she was wearing glasses that were really smudged but she was just too lazy to unsmudge them.

“Steve, you need to stop talking and kiss me.”

I opened my mouth with mock awe — it was my go to look — before obeying her wishes.

Who was I to argue?

~~~~

We had a life that would make some jealous, although those people are probably prone to jealousness.

Walls covered with paint and art, not to mention the dry wall. Kitchen full of pots and pans and memories of meals that teased and tempted and fried our taste buds.

We made noises and sounds that, when taken out of context, would make the average tax-paying citizen blush three shades of red past crimson. We kept an advanced colour wheel on hand for such moments.

We had fun with a capital F because she insisted on capitalizing words like “fun” and “family” and “fettered”, before the fun went out the window with the bath water — don’t blame me for keeping with traditions.

I missed what we had as I ran to her, out of breath, hair messy.

I wanted us to party with balloons and streamers — mostly because I invested heavily in party favours — and I wanted us to kiss like there was no tomorrow, frantic and out-of-breath and with final “to do” lists in our sweaty hands.

I just hoped she did too.