A Gentle Rain Read Free Page B

along with me. But all the rest-those rich, powerful and mostly conservative people-stared up at me sternly. I could hear their collective thoughts.
    My did Zara bring that bird?
    "Boink," Mr. Darcy said, loud enough for the mike to pick up. The memorial congregation stared at Mr. Darcy and waited for me to take command of his irreverence. Connecticut is not comfortable with large, unpredictable macaws. I covered the microphone. "Control yourself," I whispered to Mr. Darcy. He cackled.
    My pre-recorded harp solo filled the large sanctuary. 0 Coracfio da Terra. Portuguese for Heart of the Earth. Photographs of Mother and Dad began to appear on two large screens that flanked me. They were tall and elegant. In one picture, I stood between them, a stocky little redhead in hiking shorts and organically tie-dyed native t-shirts, all freckles and squinty grins.
    When the memorial slide show faded to black, Mr. Darcy uttered another rakish cackle. "Ho, Ho, Ho," he said loudly. Macaws are among the smartest of the large, Amazonian birds. He'd picked up a rich variety of lingo from the preserve's staff and visitors. I shushed him. He made a burping sound.
    "Welcome, friends and f-family," I began again, my voice quivering harder. "I'd like to start by quoting one my mother's favorite sentiments, from Jane Austen: `They are much to be pitied who have not been given a taste for nature early in life.'
    "Mother's life was d-defined by her love for nature-nature of so many kinds, not just the obvious magnificence of our green Earth, b but human nature, intellectual nature, and the nature of love between a man and a woman. She adored my father, and he adored her, and I'm happy to say the two of them adored me, their only child. For which I feel blessed."
    Mr. Darcy snuggled his head against my upswept red hair, as if trying to comfort me. I cleared my throat. "One of my Dad's favorite quotes came from our distant cousin, Theodore Roosevelt. `To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the ddays of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and d-developed."'
    The crowd remained grimly patient. "Or, as Dad would have me tell you," I went on, "`Sentiment without action is the r-ruin of the soul.' A quote from the famed environmentalist, Edward Abbey."
    More patient silence. Leaders of industry don't smile at nature-loving lectures. Uncle William looked sympathetic yet impatient. Enough, he mouthed. He patted his heart. Affection, yes. Tolerance, no.
    But I couldn't stop. "Perhaps nothing represents my parents' love for the rainforest better than the way they lived their 1-lives," I rattled on, my voice breaking. "This one s-story illustrates that beautifully. The story of my birth. There they were, my mother and dad, a wealthy and esteemed couple ..."
    I couldn't do it. I couldn't share that personal story with people who might only roll their eyes at the melodrama or tsk-tsk at Mother and Dad's recklessness.
    Mr. Darcy took my devastated silence as some sort of signal. He leaned down from my shoulder. He cocked his neon-blue head at the mike, nibbled it with his large, frightening beak, then sang a lyric from one of Mother and Dad's favorite comic songs, a little Monty Python ditty.
    "I'm a lumberjack, and I'm okay," he warbled in an eerie approximation of a British drag-queen accent. "I put on women's clothing, and hang around in bars."
    Everyone but Uncle William gasped. Uncle William hid his smile behind a hand.
    I bent my head to Mr. Darcy's. Then I laughed until tears streamed down my freckled cheeks. Then I sobbed.
    Then I said firmly into the microphone, "Mother and Dad are dead, you understand? Dead. I helped pick up the pieces of their bodies. I was honored to be there for that duty, no matter how much the memory haunts me."
    "But what will the world do without them? What will