Birdspell Read online

  I had no clue what to say to that, but it didn’t matter. She hoisted Molly up to her hip, said, “Thanks again,” and was gone.

  The door had barely closed behind Taylor and Molly when I saw that Izelle was getting ready to leave too. She’d coaxed Sitta to perch on her hand and was kissing his beak, which was her usual way of saying goodbye.

  “I have to go,” she said, turning to me. “My mom got a promotion at work and we’re eating out somewhere fancy to celebrate.”

  “You can come again another day this week if you want,” I said.

  “Thanks!” she said. “I’m not sure if I can, but I’ll let you know.”

  “Okay, well, see you tomorrow.”

  And she was gone. The apartment felt oddly quiet after having Izelle and Molly both there and I was considering asking Mr. Zinbendal if he wanted to have a game of crib, or his new favorite — Scrabble. Neither one of us is any good at it, but he loves to play anyway.

  Then Mom came in.

  “Hey, kiddo!” she said.

  A flush of fear raced through me. I took a couple of deep breaths and told myself not to panic.

  “You get off work early?” I said.

  “Sure did. It was quiet and after the rough day I had they must have thought I deserved a break.”

  Relief. Nothing to worry about. People get off early all the time when there are slow days.

  “What happened? I mean, what was the rough part?” I asked.

  “Customers and their crazy demands,” Mom said with a light laugh.

  I didn’t push it. Why look for trouble where there might be none?

  I told myself that for a couple of days. Then I snuck into Mom’s room when she wasn’t home and I checked her meds. Or, more exactly, I counted them. And I made a note of how many she had of each type of pill, and how many she was supposed to be taking each day. Because trouble usually starts when she decides the dosages her doctor ordered aren’t working. Then she’ll play around with them, making whatever adjustments she thinks are a good idea.

  It was the eleventh of the month. If I counted everything again in a week’s time, it would be easy to see if she was taking them as prescribed or not.

  Feeling guilty for being suspicious, for not giving Mom the benefit of the doubt, I hid the note I’d made under some old school stuff on the shelf in my closet. I promised myself I wasn’t even going to think about it again until the week was up.

  Twenty-seven

  I HELD OUT FOR five days before I did another count.

  By then, it didn’t matter anyway. By then I knew what I was going to find. But, in fairness, before I go into that, I need to stop and remember why.

  Why it kept happening.

  Why Mom decided time after time that she knew more than the doctors.

  “It’s my body,” I had often heard her say. “Who knows it better than I do?”

  She used to boast about how clever she was whenever she started mucking around with her meds. She’d describe how much better she felt and how much clearer her thinking was. She insisted that things were making sense again. When I was younger, she made me into a strange sort of co-conspirator, a child cheering on his mother’s bad choices and feeling the weight of their consequences later in an avalanche of guilt and confusion and fear.

  She doesn’t brag anymore. Now she hides and lies and denies. Most likely some part of her knows she’s heading for trouble, but I guess she always finds a way to convince herself it’s not going to happen again. That’s probably not hard to do between the short period of time she thinks everything is going well — and when the edges of her world start to shift and slide.

  I’ve heard her say she feels more alive and in control. More like herself. It’s hard to blame her for wanting that, or for letting herself hope each time that it will all turn out okay. Except it never does and I can’t understand why she still hasn’t grasped that it never will.

  There are always signs when trouble is coming and I’ve seen a few of those signs in the past five days, even though I was trying to stay cool and not worry. That turned out to be impossible. Things started to prickle and crawl on my skin, which is not something a person’s brain can just ignore.

  The first time that happened was last week, on the day she breezed through the door after being sent home early. And I guess I was playing a game of my own, trying to believe it might be totally innocent. She’s been at that job for a couple of months and had never been sent home before her regular shift ended, although there had to have been lots of other times when the place wasn’t busy.

  There was also the way she’d mentioned it being a rough day with customers and their crazy demands. If I’d been hearing that from anyone else, there’d have been no reason to doubt it. But I was hearing from my mother.

  One of the first giveaways Mom is headed for trouble is that she’ll start finding fault with her job. And not just one thing — there will be one problem after another. That’s definitely been happening.

  It began with Mom’s boss, Mrs. Ohanian. Mom had described her in the past as a nice woman, a bit demanding, but fair and someone who worked every bit as hard as her employees. The new version has turned Mrs. Ohanian into an incompetent who watches Mom like a hawk, complains for no reason, and is just generally horrid.

  Other workplace complaints that appeared out of nowhere this week were: the place is drafty, the customers are impossible to please, and other workers are deliberately putting items in the wrong order just to confuse and embarrass her.

  More alarming was the fact that Mom’s mood was shifting at home. A sullen undercurrent of suspicion had slid into place and I often felt her watching me, looking for evidence of … something. A sign of betrayal, maybe. A hint of rebellion.

  But anyone can have a bad week, so even with all of that — and, honestly, because I didn’t want to face it — I wouldn’t let myself be sure of what it meant. Until today.

  Today was the first time we’d invited both Mike and Mr. Zinbendal over for supper. I was in charge of the cooking and had decided to make chicken thighs with rice and Caesar salad. That would have sounded impressive to me before, but not since Mike showed me how easy a lot of meals are to prepare.

  I sprinkled some mixed herbs over the chicken, put a bit of water in the pan, and stuck it in the oven. All it would need after that was a bit of basting. The rice came in an envelope with its own flavoring, the kind you dump into a pot with water and stir once in a while. And the salad was in a bag that included everything, so all I had to do was rinse the romaine and mix it all up just before we were ready to eat.

  Mr. Zinbendal arrived first. He had a cellophane package with six chocolate cupcakes in it. The kind with huge mounds of frosting on top.

  “I brought dessert — in case you didn’t have time to bake,” he said with a chuckle.

  “Thanks!” I told him. “These look great.”

  I’ve discovered that Mr. Zinbendal has quite a sweet tooth. His kitchen is never short on cakes and pies and pastries and when he’s invited me and Mom for supper there were always at least two dessert choices after the meal.

  We hardly ever have stuff like that at our place, so I suspected he brought the cupcakes to make sure there was a treat available after we ate. That was fine with me.

  He asked me about school — the usual questions except he paid close attention to my answers so I didn’t mind. And he had a funny talk with Sitta.

  “You ever think about getting married, bird?” Mr. Zinbendal cocked his head to the side, mimicking Sitta’s reaction. “Yes, it’s true, you’d have to share your cage, but a wife can be good company.”

  Sitta flew down the hall.

  “I see you’re not convinced,” Mr. Zinbendal called after him. “But maybe you just haven’t met the right girl yet. You have to keep an open mind.”

  “He doesn’t get
a lot of chances to meet other birds,” I pointed out.

  Mr. Zinbendal smiled.

  “When it’s meant to be, it will happen,” he said. Then, “Something smells awfully good.”

  “Chicken,” I said. I was going to tell him more, but a knock at the door drew me away.

  “You have a key,” I said, opening it to Mike. “Plus, it wasn’t even locked.”

  He gave me a one-armed sort-of hug before answering.

  “I’m still not going to walk in anytime I like.”

  “Not even when you’re invited?”

  “Nope,” Mike said, leaning around me and lifting a hand to greet Mr. Zinbendal.

  “How’s your team doing?” Mr. Zinbendal asked when Mike plunked down on the futon.

  Mike laughed. “I can’t help thinking you already know the answer to that,” he said. “They’ve had better seasons.”

  Mr. Zinbendal grinned.

  They trash-talked each other’s teams for a few minutes, which was fun to listen to when I wasn’t checking on the food and setting the table.

  Mom got there just minutes before everything was ready. She was in a good mood, which was a huge relief. She chatted and laughed with the guys while I filled water glasses and scooped the rice into a bowl, put the salad on the table, and sat the pan with the chicken on a folded towel.

  “Everything’s ready,” I announced, feeling proud. I’d been tempted to say that dinner was served, but decided at the last second it would sound dumb.

  They all came to the table.

  “This looks fantastic!” Mike said.

  We passed stuff around and started to eat. Everything was really good.

  It felt like it was going to be a great evening.

  Twenty-eight

  I’M NOT SURE HOW long it took me to notice Mom’s silence.

  I’d been distracted by Mr. Zinbendal, who had a bit of rice on his chin. It was moving up and down, up and down when he chewed or talked and I kept waiting for it to fall, but it was on there like someone had glued it in place.

  Mike was talking, but I’d missed the first part of what he was saying.

  “It’s true it’s something of a lost art, but you never know. Interest in old hobbies can be revived suddenly, and in surprising ways.”

  “True, true,” agreed Mr. Zinbendal, bobbing his head and the rice attached to it.

  “Carving can be really relaxing too,” Mike said.

  That was when my attention shifted to my mother, probably nudged there by an instinctive warning system.

  She was as still as a statue. Most of the food on her plate was untouched, although she held her knife and fork upright at either side, as though she was posing for a photo. You’d have thought she was in a kind of trance, except for the fact that her eyes were blazing.

  A jolt of cold sliced through me.

  I tried frantically to think of some way to prevent whatever she was going to say or do. Because I knew. Whatever was coming was not going to be good.

  It was hopeless. Panic had my brain on lockdown.

  Mom’s voice sounded distant at first. As though she was speaking from the edge of a tunnel. I doubt any of us would even have heard what she said, except for a pause in the conversation.

  “I guess you all think I’m stupid.”

  Mr. Zinbendal’s head turned toward her. He looked puzzled, but not yet alarmed. Mike, on the other hand, was instantly aware of what was happening. He’s been through this before.

  “I know exactly what you two are doing, so don’t think you’re fooling anyone.”

  “What are you saying, Rhea?” Mr. Zinbendal said. “Is something wrong?”

  “Is something wrong?” Mom repeated, mocking him.

  For a second or two there was silence. And then, like an explosion, the knife and fork Mom was holding were slammed down. Her hands smacked against the table as she stood.

  “You two men think you can waltz in here and turn my own son against me?” she demanded. “Well, it’s not happening. I’ve been watching and I know everything that’s been going on. Everything!”

  There was more. A torrent of words and movement. Accusations that made no sense — based on the splintered thoughts that had formed in my mother’s tormented brain.

  Poor Mr. Zinbendal tried to speak twice, which only angered her further. After the second time he shrunk back in his seat with his eyes focused downward.

  Mike stood up without a word and stepped to Mr. Zinbendal’s side. He reached a hand down and the old man took it and stood. They were on their feet just in time to obey my mother’s harsh order for them to “Get out!”

  I followed, just behind Mom, wanting to tell them how sorry I was about what was happening, but knowing if I did, I would only make matters worse. More than anything I wanted Mr. Zinbendal to know the person who’d just thrown him out was not the Rhea Hayes he’d been getting to know over the past couple of months.

  Mike, of course, understood. He knew it wasn’t Mom, but the torment of her illness taking control of her. Poor Mr. Zinbendal was another story, and I couldn’t stand to think about what he must be feeling.

  “And don’t come back!” Mom snapped at their receding backs. “I see either one of you anywhere near my son again and I will call the police so fast your heads will spin.”

  The door closed behind them.

  For the next few minutes I could barely hear my mother’s labored breathing over the rushing, thundering sound of my own heartbeat. I didn’t look at her and I didn’t speak. Finally, I forced my legs back to the kitchen and cleared the table, saving as much of the food as I could salvage, because I knew what was ahead.

  Mom stood in the doorway for a while, but I ignored her. Anything I said would only lead to a fight — especially the things I felt like saying then. It was my turn to do the dishes, but I left them stacked in the sink, got Sitta, and spent the rest of the evening in my room with the door shut.

  Mom left me alone, which was a bit surprising. Maybe she could feel how totally furious I was with her.

  That hadn’t changed by bedtime. As I lay there I thought about the night Mom had been taken to the hospital. And I admitted something to myself that I hadn’t thought about since then — the third reason I hadn’t tried to get into the room when the ambulance workers were trying to revive my mother.

  This is hard to say, but I’d had a brief, terrible thought that I didn’t care if they saved her. In that split second of time, it didn’t matter to me if my own mother was revived.

  That might make me the worst son on the planet. It probably does.

  The thought was gone as fast as it came, because I do love my mom. I just get so tired of living every day waiting for her to do the next thing that will tear our lives apart — again. I shouldn’t have to be watching, tracking her moods, weighing and measuring everything she says and does. Sneaking around, counting pills.

  The pills! I’d planned to wait until a week was up before counting them again, but it was obvious she wasn’t taking her meds. The only thing left to find out was how badly she’d gone off track.

  As quietly as I could, I got up and tiptoed to the hallway. I stood outside her room for what felt like an hour, listening hard. Finally, I nudged the door open and peeked in.

  Mom was curled up with a blanket clutched around her shoulders. She looked so peaceful and innocent in sleep. I felt a flash of regret for my earlier anger, even as I crept into the room and over to the closet. The bottles were on the shelf and I lifted them with as much caution as I could so as not to make a sound.

  Ten minutes later I returned them to the spot where they’d been and went back to bed.

  There was the exact same number of pills in each bottle as there had been when I’d checked them five days earlier.

  Mom wasn’t playing around with her dosage. She was of
f her meds completely.

  Twenty-nine

  I TRIED NOT TO think about what it would mean if Mom hadn’t left for work by the time I got up the next morning, but she was gone when I made my way to the kitchen.

  So, she still had a job.

  I filled the sink with hot soapy water and let the dishes soak while I had breakfast. It wasn’t until I turned to open the cupboard that I noticed, sitting on the countertop, the cellophane package of cupcakes Mr. Zinbendal had brought for dessert the night before.

  The sight of them was like a punch in the gut. I couldn’t help picturing him, happily having dinner here one minute, and then the next, alone in his apartment, heartbroken and confused. There was no doubt in my mind becoming friends with us had meant a lot to him. It had meant a lot to me too.

  For a moment I felt as if I couldn’t breathe. It upset me so much I had to bend over the counter and clench my teeth to keep the roar in my throat from escaping.

  How could I have been so stupid? It was as though I’d learned nothing … a big fat zero, from all the years of life with my mother.

  The number one rule is always, always, always, not to get to know people. Not at school, not in the community, and especially not where we live. That is never going to lead to anything except embarrassment, shame, and disappointment.

  As I slowly pulled myself together, I realized thoughts of breakfast were long gone. There was no way I could shove anything down at that moment, and I didn’t feel like bothering with the dishes just then either. They could wait.

  What I wanted to do, and did, was grab some paper and a pen and write a short letter to Mr. Zinbendal. If nothing else, he deserved an explanation.

  Dear Mr. Zinbendal,

  This is Corbin from across the hall. I just wanted to say I am so, SO sorry about last night. I should have told you this before, and maybe Mike already filled you in when my mom freaked out and kicked you guys out, but she has an illness called bipolar. It’s not that uncommon so you probably know something about it. That’s what makes her do strange or sometimes dangerous things, or act like she did yesterday. It happens when she goes off her meds, which I just found out she did again.