All the Dancing Birds Read Free Page B

off the ignition and sit wordlessly in the dark before asking my legs to tremble their way out of the car. I start toward the house, but stop, standing gawky and slew-footed in the middle of the drive.
    For a brief moment, the day’s clouds part like a ruffled, purple peek-a-boo skirt. I look up and whistle at a round and yellow moon.
    The moon whistles back.

Chapter Two
    I stand beside my bed, wondering if I should straighten the covers or crawl back in its downy softness. I run my hand over the sheets. I don’t know when it was I decided lace-edged pink sheets would be my signature bedwear. I think it occurred during a shopping trip about a year after my Ivan died so suddenly that it took at least that long to stop expecting him home every night for supper. Even now, I’m still caught up improbably thinking I can hear him singing in the shower, or clanking dishes about in the kitchen, or humming some made-up ditty while spreading strawberry cream cheese over an onion bagel or pouring glasses of wine for dinner. Then I realize he’s been gone ten years. Ten years!
    It’s odd I can’t remember where I kicked off my shoes last night, but I can remember every moment of Ivan as if he were still here, sitting in the bedside chair pulling on his shoes, tucking his shirt down over his narrow belly and talking about some client’s spreadsheet as if it were the most exciting literature ever written. I would be making the bed‌—‌the one that now has pink ruffled sheets, covered by a poplin rose-embellished quilt‌—‌nodding my head as if spreadsheets were the best thing since Poe’s Sonnet to Science .
    In those days, I would throw open the drapes, letting light flood every corner of the room to fall upon Ivan’s papers like a glorious benediction. He would look up‌—‌appreciative. I never understood what he meant by that look, but I certainly understood the nuance of light and shadow. I studied it. I wrote of it, quizzed my students about it and made up rhymes for Bryan and Allison regarding it. We were a family enamored with light.
    I keep the bedroom drapes tightly closed now. The rest of the house can fend for itself against the sun and clouds, but the bedroom has become mine alone and, without Ivan, it has no right to claim any light for itself. It’s now a room of dark and shadow and I want it that way. I think, in fact, the room remembers Ivan as much as I do. It took me months before I could bring myself to vacuum away the outline of his footprints or clean his side of the bathroom vanity, and even longer before I could angrily pack away his clothing for charity, cursing every shirt and pair of pants for no longer wrapping themselves over his body. I hated his ties. The scent of his cologne made me cry until I threw up into the toilet. I recall one day sliding my bare feet into his leather lace-up shoes and walking through every room of the house before finally hugging them to my chest and then sending them off to the Goodwill. Perhaps there was another Ivan out there who needed his mostly beige slacks and ties to become a successful statistician and economist. Perhaps the world needed another settled and sedate financial man who played a guitar and sang and held his wife until the cows came home.
    Two years after Ivan’s death, I began stacking my books and papers on his side of the bed. It was like I was screaming to the Universe that if it had to take my beautiful fair-haired Ivan away, then the only proper person for that side of the bed was a man I called Mr. Literature. Of course, he would be dark and filled with the essence of Stephen King, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, and the very woeful Poe. It seemed only fitting.
    I’ve since placed my books and papers where they belong. My days with Ivan are long past and I’ve grown to that acceptance. But, even now, I still spend several minutes a day recalling my husband’s husky whisper in my ear, the scent of his morning hair, his hands pressed on my