The Hummingbirds Page 6

  April looked at Ezra as if to say, princess, or something worse.

  Sybil put down her glass and exhaled. “Listen to me,” she said. “Rich starlet complaining about life. Is that not the height of privilege?”

  April shrugged. “Well, yes. It is.”

  Ezra couldn’t believe she said it.

  “I mean,” April continued, “I know a handful of folks who would be more than willing to trade situations with you, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

  Sybil’s shoulders rounded off and, for a moment, Ezra could have sworn that her eyes looked larger. But then it was gone and her poise returned. “You know what? Thanks for being honest. Few are, at least not to my face. I’ll get your number from Ezra. Maybe when my makeup artist goes on vacation you could do some work for me.”

  “Gee.” April pursed her lips. “That’s so nice of you.”

  “Not an honor?” She looked at Ezra and winked, then lifted herself from the pool, dried off, and let her towel fall in the grass bordering the pool. As Sybil walked back up to the mansion, Ezra managed not to watch. He stared at his feet.

  “She’s exactly how I thought she’d be,” said April.

  “How?”

  “Total bitch.”

  “Really? I mean, she seemed a little sarcastic, but—”

  “You were too busy gazing at her tits? But yeah, she seemed totally normal.”

  “You didn’t even give her a chance. She was trying to be friendly. She was trying—” He stopped himself, because he knew how it sounded. But he didn’t think Sybil had spoken to them like she was some massive star with everything going for her—at first glance, she seemed to feel the same about her life that they did: Dissatisfied. Wanting something else. Wanting more. “She seemed normal.”

  April scoffed and moved toward the edge of the pool.

  “She offered you a job,” he said.

  “Right. Maybe when my makeup artist goes on vacation you can work for me. Thanks for the scrap.”

  “What would you want her to do? Offer you full-time work after you called her a spoiled brat?”

  “Well, isn’t she?” April pulled herself out of the pool and stood. “And, anyways, I would never work for her. Think about it. If she wasn’t Grant Hudson’s wife, she’d already be out of work. She’s a slut, really. A prostitute, with what she does. I could never be a part of that.”

  “Don’t you think that’s just a little bit harsh? I mean, wow. How’s the view up there?”

  She stopped and stared. “Fuck you. You know what? You two are perfect for each other, pool boy.” She nabbed her towel and dried off. “I can’t believe you can’t see it. You’re straight from central casting. Fucking boilerplate.”

  “Whatever.”

  She scoffed and surveyed the mansion, the lawn, the property. “I have no idea why I never asked myself what the hell you were doing here in the first place.” Mocking Sybil, she let her towel fall crumpled to the grass before stalking away.

  Ezra sat there, dazed. She didn’t know a thing about him. This job, this life, it had nothing to do with Sybil. He’d been working and living here for years before she and Hudson ever set foot on the grounds. He stood up from the recliner and sat down at the edge of the pool and dipped his legs into the water. He felt as though he could swim a thousand laps. Behind the pool house, April’s car started.

  He took a deep breath and looked up at the mansion. He got up and took a picture of the towel that April had left on the grass, then another of the robe and slippers that Sybil had left. Then he took a picture of them both together, as they lay, side by side.

  SEVEN

  Ezra soaked in the bathtub, a finger from finishing the pint of vodka from the freezer. Even though it was midafternoon, it had seemed like a good idea to drink, because he didn’t know what else to do. He ladled a taste on his tongue, sucked it down like an oyster from its shell. He coughed and chuckled. He’d been such a fool, spending years in the delusion that if other people assumed him normal, he’d feel the same way.

  He downed the rest of the vodka and remembered an afternoon a few weeks before his mother died. He was thirteen and walking home from school along an alder-lined thoroughfare bordering a street-side creek. A sedan passed by; he recognized one of the kids from school in the passenger seat. He’d been over to their house for dinner once. He knew the name of their dog—Tucker—and that they had to be careful of the big old peach tree in the backyard because bees had built a hive in its upper branches.

  The car drove past. No one acknowledged him or offered a ride.

  Ezra waved anyway, equal parts the instinctual reaction of his mother’s son, performing his duty, as well as to show them he understood what had just happened. As he walked and watched them drive away, he nearly stepped on a small garter snake sunning itself in the road. He started and it slid into the grass and disappeared. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He couldn’t ignore the truth any longer. Maybe his mother could, now that she’d been put on paid leave by the group of elders who had, up until that morning on the beach, been at her beck and call. Only a handful still believed—like he wanted to—that she’d made a mistake, and that her mistake didn’t nullify her prophetic gifting.

  They let him stay in the church’s K-12, though his class size had diminished by half, and many who were still there wouldn’t speak to him. A part of him wished that he could go to school somewhere else, but where would he go? His mother had long been estranged from her own family. When it came down to it, she was all Ezra had. And she was in no place to make any changes, holed up in the living room, barely eating, talking to herself, reading, scribbling manic notes for sermons she could no longer deliver.

  Ezra turned down the cul-de-sac and saw his house. One story, white siding with a weathered shingle roof. Mortgage paid by the church. He took a deep breath. Even though school wasn’t a joy, it had at least provided a break from home. He walked up the steps and the wood creaked beneath his feet. The door was open. It was shadowy inside. A few finches on the rim of a lampshade chattered. He flipped on the lights and the birds hopped away. He heard a cough from the kitchen. “Mom?”

  “Ezra,” she said. “Come. I need to show you something.”

  He set his backpack down on a spot of the couch that wasn’t filled with spiral-ringed notebook pages. As he walked toward the kitchen, he noticed that the small cross that had hung above it—as one did in every room in the house—was now turned sidewise. He reached up and righted it.

  In the kitchen, his mother was squatting on the floor in a faded blue bathrobe while peering over a photograph torn from a book or magazine. She snapped her fingers. “Come. Come down and look at this.”

  She smelled of sour milk. As far as he knew, she hadn’t showered in a week. It took a few moments to grasp what he was seeing in the photograph. It looked to be a bald man in robes sitting in the middle of a city street. His hands were on his knees, like hers. A few cars were parked nearby. Beyond stood a small crowd of onlookers. It appeared to be a prank. The man sitting in the street was completely engulfed in flames.

  “How did he do that?” Ezra asked.

  She looked up at him and blinked. “This isn’t fake.”

  It was impossible. The flames seemed to be emanating from him, yet he was sitting indifferently, as though they weren’t in fact consuming him. He looked peaceful, meditative.

  “It’s gotta be a trick.”

  She took a deep breath through her nose and shook her head. “This generation.”

  He ignored her insult. Her unwashed hair was stringy and there were a few sores up near her widow’s peak. He could feel it on her, a more profound darkness than before. Her pulpit gone and he was now her only audience. This was like one of her difficult nights stretched out over weeks, only she never left.

  “I want you to really look,” she said.

  “I’m looking.”

  She shook her head.

  He tensed up and tried to cork his
anger. Was it his fault? Is that what she thought? What had he done wrong? Far less than her. He’d done everything he was supposed to do, at her request. Yet that still wasn’t enough.

  “Son, move beyond the trivial.”

  He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. No one else was going to help her, and she wouldn’t allow it if they tried.

  “A burning man,” he said.

  “Son, beyond. You are more than that answer.”

  He studied the man’s peaceful face. “A man allowing himself to be burned.”

  “Allowing,” she said. “Yes. Yes.” She swiped her hand over the picture and put her hand to her lips. “But it’s more than that.”

  He said nothing.

  “Context.” She hit her forehead with her palm. “Of course. You know nothing of the context. How would you? I’m sorry. Ezra, honey, this man lit himself on fire and changed the world. Decades later and thousands of miles away, we still can’t avoid its symbolic power.”

  He saw in her eyes what he’d seen many times: a certainty. He felt sick. “There’s other ways to change the world.”

  “People listened. Even governments listened.” She closed her eyes and moved her mouth, as if responding to an unknown voice. Then she opened her eyes and scanned his body. “I’ve always wondered if you would get the gift.” She turned over on her back and stretched out on the ground next to the picture, putting her hands over her chest, as if preparing for a burial. “Sometimes I hope you don’t. The life of a prophet is one of suffering.”

  He stood up. She’d talked of suffering many times before, but not like this. “Stop it.”

  She said nothing.

  “Get up,” he said, and yanked on her hand. “Do something. You’re just sitting here all day every day.”

  She pulled it away and scowled at him, retreating to her pose. “Your generation wraps themselves in cloak upon cloak. Perhaps it’s the only way to get through.” She closed her eyes and began humming some tune he didn’t recognize.

  He stood there for a moment and watched her, feeling angry and afraid. The desire to help her. The desire to escape. The desire to go back in time to when things were smoother. To be part of a family that drove right by when people they knew needed a ride. It’s simple, he wanted to tell his mother. All of these birds? They weren’t anything more than what they’d been created to be. They ate, flew, reproduced, and tried their best to make the most of what they had. They weren’t remarkable in the way she thought of them. They couldn’t be if they tried. They were just birds. Birds! Her vision was just a dream. Doves were sacrificed whole. Christ was sacrificed whole. The point had been made. Nothing more needed to die that wasn’t already dead.

  “The dove, mom,” Ezra said. “It was a symbol. An important symbol. But nothing more. And that’s okay.”

  She blinked and frowned from there on the floor. Then she stood up, reached out, and brushed the bangs out from his forehead. “You can resist,” she said, smiling. “But in the end, it captures you.”

  “It’s not the end.” Ezra turned from her and retreated to the cupboards, retrieving the last remnants of an old package of spaghetti noodles for dinner, even though it was only three-thirty.

  So often since then, he’d agonized over the question of whether he could have done more. Looking back, with decades of hindsight, he knew he’d had many avenues to help his mom and himself. But he’d been so sheltered, and been taught to distrust those very people whose job it was to help. Did that let him off the hook? Maybe. But it didn’t feel like it. Never had.

  Back in the pool house, Ezra left the vodka bottle on the soap ledge lining the far end of the tub and got out, drying himself with a damp beach towel while the water funneled down the drain. He pulled on a fresh pair of board shorts, a gray V-neck T-shirt, and covered it with a navy-blue hoodie. He left the bathroom and went to the window overlooking the grounds. The midday sun broke beneath the palms. Ezra rubbed his eyes, forgetting he had contacts in; one popped out, limp and pathetic. He moistened it with his tongue and placed it back on his eyeball, and blinked until the stinging stopped.

  He gazed out the window once again. The gray stone mansion seemed unimpressed. He’d probably be better off living in a cave or on the top of some desert spire. He took a deep breath and laughed to himself. What was left? Maria and Bryce were getting married. His tryst with April was an utter failure. And by staying silent there in the pool, he’d all but scorned Sybil.

  He imagined this might be how his mother felt while appraising that photo of the burning monk, but immediately felt guilty for how trivial his situation was in comparison to hers, not to mention the monk’s. God, to feel so deeply, yet to have those feelings so reasonably dismissed.

  It was only a few dozen yards to Sybil’s back door. All he needed to do was knock. He’d never be like Bryce, never be what April wanted. He’d never be his mother’s saint. He wanted Sybil, every molecule, every atom, and wanted just as dearly the escape her arms provided. Did that make him a monster? So be it.

  He opened his door and the smell of chlorine calmed him. He passed the pool and deck furniture and made his way up through the lawn past a crowd of starlings pecking blindly at the parched grass. Above, the thick, papery palm fronds gossiped in the wind. He felt loose, gummy. The Ezra he’d contrived would never have taken such a risk. But what was a risk? Hadn’t the last decade without risk been its own quiet catastrophe?

  Ezra heard a deep thrush of wind and spotted a large shadow overhead. He turned around. A heron, wings outstretched for balance, landed near the pool and began stalking around the edge, scissored beak and wiry neck ready to spear any fish gurgling up from the chlorine.

  Were his mother here beside him, he knew that she’d immediately turn this heron into a metaphor. Like the heron, you’ve been looking for a meal where nothing could live. The water appears beautiful, though, doesn’t it? He kept walking. The mansion grew with each step.

  “Fuck it,” he said. “I’m the most sentimental motherfucker on the entire planet, and I want Sybil Harper.” He coughed and wiped his nose. “I want her for her body and looks and nothing else.” A lie, but it felt good to say it. A strong breeze picked up and cooled him. He crossed the patio and saw himself reflected as a dark shadow in the checkered windows of the sliding patio door.

  Sybil’s image appeared next to his and the door slid open. She stood in her two-piece, unconcerned, one hand holding the door handle, the other the top of the awning.

  “I don’t know what more I need to do,” she said.

  He took her by the waist. She grabbed a fistful of his T-shirt. He pressed his lips into hers and slid his tongue into her mouth. She tasted of guava. For a passing moment, he thought of Hudson and what would happen if he found out. But she pressed her fingers into his shoulders, and he let his fingers slide down. He closed his eyes as his insides gnashed and sang.

  EIGHT

  Morning. Sybil slipped from beneath her covers. Wiped sweat from her forehead. Could have sworn her phone was ringing. Over the last few days she’d been hearing phantom calls, both in her dreams and awake. Grant. She was afraid to talk to him, afraid he’d guess what had happened. She really didn’t know what he’d do if he found out, what particular form his rage would take, or whether he’d care at all.

  She saw a brief glimpse of her body in the full-length mirror as she walked by, enough for a familiar dread to set in. Her beauty was fading, as was her career; matter of fact, they seemed to be competing for which would collapse first. She had a front row seat and no say in the outcome.

  Her phone was charging near the sink. She picked it up and checked for any important messages. Nothing. No auditions. No meetings. There’d been times, in the height of her rise, when she would have yearned for a time like this, not realizing that quiet was the sound of a career flatlining.

  She let her robe drop outside the open shower. It took her a moment to find the right water temperature. As the stream ran through her hair, she
took a few deep breaths and focused on the feel of the air filling and escaping her lungs, trying to be mindful of her body, the touch of the water on her skin, the sense of being here: not in the future, not in the past, but in the present, physical world, that balm for a struggling mind.

  She’d gone off her meds a week ago, tired of feeling numb. So far, the mindfulness exercises had been enough to temper her nerves. She’d been off them once before, and two weeks in, a bad night visited. She woke, midmorning, on a lawn chair on the patio covered in towels, miserably hungover, having no idea how she’d gotten there—though the towels had to be Ezra’s doing, of course, because they were from a hutch near the pool house, and Grant was gone, and none of her people had any reason to visit.

  Her people. She chuckled. There were fewer and fewer of those each passing day. More seemed to flee with each emerging wrinkle and cellulite pock.

  She hadn’t spoken of the blackout to anyone, but took the event as a warning. A reminder that her diagnosis was legit. That modern medicine was legit. She’d once again boarded the SSRI train and chugged along. But the tedium of the passing days and the absence of those bright, wonderful highs and rich, dark lows of a pharmaceutical-free life quickly became its own confinement. Less like a prison than suiting up for a winter snow day, like those she experienced growing up in the Pacific Northwest. Mittens, long johns, puffy bibs, parkas, and all the rest of those layers that her parents threatened her into wearing so that she’d never get to experience how snow felt on bare skin.

  She noticed a dark hair on the bar of gritty exfoliate soap. Ezra. He was probably already outside working on the grounds. He was quiet most of the time. Brooding, and in that way, the opposite of Grant. In so many ways, the opposite. Grant’s confidence forced itself upon others; Ezra didn’t seem to need any more space than what he was given. He seemed grateful, in a word. How the public wanted lovers to appear onscreen. There was a reason for that. It was attractive in a warm way. It felt good to be someone’s good fortune.