The Burden of Significance ~ First Try
My great aunt kept doves in a hutch that rotted into the color of old teeth. She also poisoned pigeons with strychnine breadcrumbs, and when I asked her about this contradiction at seven years old, she said: "The doves are mine."
That's all. Mine.
I understood perfectly. Love has nothing to do with logic.
She taught me to hold them—thumbs on their backs, fingers wrapped around wings that wanted to explode into flight. "Gentle but firm," she said, "or they'll die of fright in your hands." I was terrified every time. Not of the birds. Of being the reason something died of fear.
At the doctor's office, the day we learned about the tumor, she whispered: "I should have let them all go." But she didn't say when. Before the diagnosis? Years ago? That morning? I held her hand—gentle but firm—and felt her pulse flutter like something caged.
The manuscript arrives four days after my mother calls about my great aunt's books. I haven't answered her yet. The story is about doves, which feels like the universe mocking me, but I've lost the ability to tell coincidence from cruelty.
Twenty years of reviewing has taught me to distance myself from text. But Tommy—Bertrand Thomas, who hated his real name so much he made everyone call him Tommy—my roommate who died five years ago from something so stupid I can't even write it—Tommy would have said: "You're not distant, Ambrosia, you're just scared."
He was right. He was always right when he was drunk, which was often, which was why he died the way he did, which was—
The story says: "Three billion passenger pigeons reduced to zero."
I write in the margin: "We get it."
But we don't get it. I don't get it. How Tommy is zero now. How my great aunt is becoming zero. How I sit here making everything mean something because if it doesn't mean something, then it's just gone.
Here's what I told people about Bertrand: We watched art films. We discussed Derrida. We were young intellectuals discovering ourselves through cinema.
Here's the truth: We got shitfaced on cheap beer and screamed at John Woo movies. When the doves exploded in slow motion, Bertrand would stand on the couch and shout "ART!" and I'd throw popcorn at him, and we'd laugh until we couldn't breathe. He'd call me "Ambrosia, Goddess of Bad Taste" and I'd call him "Tommy" because Bertrand sounded like someone who'd never spill beer on a couch.
The night before he died, he called me. 3 AM. Drunk.
"Do you remember the doves?" he asked.
"Go to sleep, Tommy."
"But do you remember?"
"Yes."
"Good," he said. "Someone should."
I should have gone over. I should have taken his keys. I should have done anything except say "go to sleep" to someone who would never wake up. But I had a review due. A fucking review about a novel I can't even remember now.
My mother calls again.
"Are you eating?"
"Mom—"
"The books smell like birds. I wanted to warn you."
I start crying. Right there, phone pressed to my ear, cat rubbing against my shins, three-day-old Thai food congealing on the counter. Not dignified tears. The ugly kind that make your nose run.
"Honey?" My mother's voice goes soft. "What's wrong?"
"I don't know how to review this story."
"What story?"
"Any story. All of them. I don't know how to do anything except make things mean other things."
Silence. Then: "Your great aunt used to say the same thing about her birds."
"What?"
"She said she didn't know if she kept them because she loved them or because she needed something to take care of after Uncle Harold died. She said maybe the difference didn't matter."
"Did it? Matter?"
"I don't know, honey. Does it?"
I poison the review. Mix criticism with confession until you can't tell which is which. Send it to my editor with the subject line: "I'm sorry."
Shannon calls immediately. Twenty years she's been my editor, and she's never used my name like this:
"Ambrosia, what is this?"
"A review."
"This is a breakdown."
"Yes."
"I can't publish this."
"I know."
"Are you okay?"
Am I? Mr. Whiskers (who was going to be named after Derrida until I realized I couldn't pronounce it correctly and settled for the dumbest name possible) jumps into my lap. He purrs against my chest, a small engine of uncomplicated need.
"I'm keeping doves," I tell Shannon.
"What?"
"Metaphorically. I'm keeping doves and poisoning pigeons and I can't explain why one and not the other."
"Do you need help?"
Yes. No. Not the kind Shannon means.
"I need to stop reviewing," I say.
The silence stretches. Finally: "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Send me something else. Something yours. Not about other people's stories."
I drive to my mother's house. The books are in a box that does, indeed, smell like birds—seeds and shit and that particular dust of creatures who beat their wings against enclosure.
The empty hutch still stands in the backyard.
"We should take it down," my mother says.
"No."
We stand there looking at it. Gray wood, not ash but not not-ash either. The color of aftermath, I think, then hate myself for thinking it, then forgive myself because what else can I do?
"She let them go," my mother says suddenly. "The morning before she went to the hospital the last time. Opened the hutch and just... let them go."
"All of them?"
"All of them."
"Were they okay? In the wild?"
My mother looks at me with my great aunt's eyes, that same terrible tenderness. "Honey, they were never wild. But they flew anyway."
*
For Tommy, who thought everything was art when you were drunk enough. You were right.
For my great aunt, who knew the difference between doves and pigeons was just who belonged to you.
For the three billion passenger pigeons, and for all of us who are becoming zero.
For Mr. Whiskers, who doesn't care about any of this as long as the sun still finds that spot on the kitchen floor at 4 PM.
Here's my story: I loved people who are gone now. I wrote reviews instead of saying goodbye. I believed in significance because insignificance meant they died for nothing. But they didn't die for nothing. They died because that's what people do, and before they died, they shouted at movies and kept birds and called me at 3 AM to make sure I remembered.
I remember.
That's all. That's enough.
Isn't it?
