Bird In The House

“Let’s get married,” said Tom.

I had a choice to make: Marry Tom, or kill myself.

Tom was a carpenter and a heavy metal singer who had a pentagram on the wall of his living room and wore a wild wig of heavy metal hair. I found out about the wig the first time we were rolling around on the couch. He suddenly sat up, ripped it off, and threw it in the corner where it lay like a small wounded animal. How do you like me now, he yelled, beating his chest, gorilla-style.

Not enough to marry him. Lately, I’d been thinking I might be better off dead. My chest was weighted with a tombstone of dread; when I closed my eyes, the word ‘DOOM’ appeared, in sickly neon-green block letters. Strange superstitions swirled around in my fuddled brain: no hats on the bed, no shoes on the table. Black cats made me change direction. I even avoided cracks on the sidewalk. I didn’t want to be the cause of my mother’s death, even if I was hastening my own.

All I wanted to do was drink. Tom didn’t mind, because he liked to drink too. Mostly, I stayed at his place, where I would drink all day while he worked. I was on welfare. Before we met, I’d play my guitar on the street for spare change, but Tom made things easy. Every night, he came home with a bottle of tequila and a case of beer. My guitar sat in the corner of his bedroom, collecting dust.

“I can’t marry you,” I said. “I don’t love you.” It was true. 

“If you don’t love me,” he said, “what are you doing here?”

“Drinking,” I said. The word came out unexpectedly, like vomit. I was surprised at my own honesty. And I knew I couldn’t stop.

“You know what?” said Tom. “You’re like a bird in the house. You’re flying around banging against the windows and walls and someday you’re just going to knock yourself out.”

The tombstone in my chest turned to ice. Now, Tom was no poet. Most of the time, his conversation revolved around such topics as Satan, sex, steak, and wrestling. But he’d caught my attention. When a bird flies into the house, it means someone is going to die. Me.

I ran into the bedroom and locked the door. I was shaking. I thought about how I’d come to Vancouver looking for fame and fortune. What a joke. I didn’t even care about making music anymore. Writing a song used to make me feel alive, but you can’t do it when you’re dead inside.

I reached for my guitar like someone who was drowning. 

Suddenly, for the first time in months, a song was coming. “There’s a bird in the house,” I squeaked. My vocal cords rattled and buzzed from disuse.

Usually, writing a song is like archaeology – you probe, you scrape, you blow away the dust until it appears whole. But this one was coming through as if by radio transmission. It almost seemed like someone else was writing it. “Open up a window, open up a door, I don’t think that I can keep it in my mind anymore.”

“Hey!” Tom was banging on the door. “Are you going to stay in there all night?”

I wasn’t. “Take me home,” I said.

I piled my stuff into his rusty old GTO. We argued all the way back to my studio. I told him I was going to stop drinking, and he scoffed. “We’re alcoholics,” he said. “That’s what we do. We drink.” I knew he was right, but I had to get away from Tom. He had just handed me my death sentence. Maybe my song could save me.

I climbed three flights of stairs to my windowless studio as if in a trance. Inside was concrete evidence of the mess my life had become. A single skylight illuminated surfaces covered in bottles. Clothes, books and trash were strewn everywhere. All I could do was fall on the filthy carpet and pray.

“I can’t do this myself,” I whispered. “You have to do it for me, or I’ll die. Help me.” Who the hell was I talking to? I didn’t believe in God. I prayed anyway. 

Have you ever felt like you weren’t alone when you damn well knew you were? Spooky. But this wasn’t. All at once, a big space opened up in my chest where the tombstone used to be; it was full of light. I looked up, and the whole room was lit from within by a presence of total perfection - the walls, the furniture, the dust that floated down from the skylight. The ashtray, even. 

And somehow I knew I was going to be okay. Which was crazy, because absolutely nothing had changed. I was an alcoholic loser: broke, scruffy, slick with sweat, snot and tears. But I felt loved. Truly loved. By what or who, it didn’t matter. It was enough just to close my eyes without seeing the word ‘DOOM’ behind my lids.

I fell asleep right there on the carpet. When I awoke, I was alone again, but was amazed to discover that I had no desire to drink. I got up and started putting stuff away, wiping away the dust and dirt, gathering cans and bottles. Dozens and dozens of them. The whole time, my song played in my head, and I thought of the strange, beautiful assurance I’d felt the night before. Where did it come from? What was it? I didn’t know, but it didn’t matter as long as I could stay sober. 

Over the next two weeks, I didn’t drink. I went for walks. I wrote in my journal. I played my birdsong for courage. But money was running out. Friday night, I got restless. Welfare Wednesday was days away. I knew I could make some change playing the street, but I couldn’t do it without liquid courage. I had just enough to buy a mickey of vodka. That would get me through the night, and then I’d have enough money for groceries. 

And more booze.

I paced. I paced some more. My place was clean. There was nothing to do. I didn’t feel like playing my song. As for the presence that had come to me when I prayed, well, I must have imagined it. It meant nothing. I remembered Tom’s words. “We’re alcoholics. We drink.” It was true. I grabbed my purse and opened my studio door.

And the phone rang. It was Tom.

“I have tequila,” he said. “You must be ready for a drink by now.”

I was. If I went to Tom’s, I wouldn’t have to busk. We could drink and roll around on the couch. Of course, then I would be right back where I started; marry Tom, or commit suicide. But fuck it. It was a war I wasn’t going to win. I opened my mouth to say yes, staring dully at the carpet in front of me.

That was when I saw the sparrow.

Somehow, it must have gotten in from the street, strolling in through my door and across my carpet like it owned the place. For a moment, I thought I was hallucinating.

“There’s a bird in my house,” I said to Tom, and hung up.

The first thing I thought of was the skylight. There was no way to open it from the inside, and I pictured the bird banging around up there injuring itself. I had to find a way to get it back outside safely.

But I wasn’t even sure it could fly. It skittered underneath a table full of recording equipment that belonged to my neighbour; I’d never gotten around to using it. I went over to investigate, and the bird flew across the room to land on the shoulder of my lucky jacket, the one I’d worn when I won a song-writing contest. There was nothing wrong with its wings.

I approached slowly, singing my song softly. The sparrow didn’t seem afraid; it looked right at me, cocking its little head and ruffling its wings. It allowed me to pick the jacket up by the hanger and carry it to my door as it clung. When I got there, it flew off the hanger and flapped around the room, finally landing on the floor in front of the recording equipment again. It didn’t want to leave. What was wrong with it?

If I didn’t get this bird back outside, it was going to die. I got a broom and prodded it gently; the bird hopped away. Another nudge, and it fluttered a few more inches. Slowly, gently, I herded the little bird across the room, through the door and down the hall to the top of the stairs. Three flights below, there was an open door to the street. But the bird just sat there, looking up at me. I gave it one last poke with my finger.

Exploding into flight, the sparrow careened through the stairwell and landed at the foot of the stairs. Giving its feathers a shake, the bird tilted its head towards the street and then back up to me as it considered.  A couple of feet away, freedom awaited, a slow summer afternoon of blue skies and warm breezes. 

And then it began to hop back up the stairs. 

One. Step. At a time.

I knew then that my drinking days were over.

As the bird reached the first landing, a door opened – my neighbour, Rick. “Hey, you’re home,” he said. “Wanna do some recording tonight?” Startled, the bird flew into an aerial pirouette that took it up, down, and out into the sunshine. I was both glad and sorry to see it go, knowing it had brought me the greatest gift a person can receive: hope.

I never heard from Tom again. Two years later, I was living on the other side of town, looking out my window and counting my blessings. I was waiting for the courier to drop off a shipment of my first CD. A demo of the title track, “Bird in the House,” had won a grant that enabled me to make the recordings. The producer, who later became my husband, phoned to say he was going to be late for our celebratory dinner. 

“Can you wait until I get there before opening the boxes?” he asked. “I’m sorry,  a last-minute recording job came up. It’s with this weird heavy metal dude who looks like he’s wearing a wig. And he keeps beating his chest like a gorilla.”

Tom.

Leslie Alexander grew up on a sheep farm and couldn't wait to hit the road, make a bunch of mistakes and write about them. She wound up singing on a street corner for spare change and does not consider this a mistake. Her recent work has been published in Queens Quarterly Literary Review and Existere Magazine. Other words and music can be found at www.lesliealexander.com