Back to the pieces of the broken bird: it fell off a shelf and somehow got from the shelf to the dirt pile. In his hands, no less. Sitting there, holding it, staring at it, it captures his attention completely. He has no reason to let it go. He can’t will himself to set down the pieces. He’s been walking with the pieces in his hands for miles and miles. Maybe even hundreds. Even when he stops to rest, he doesn’t set them down. Both of his hands have been clenched around the broken pieces for days. He even holds them without letting go when he sleeps. His arms swing at this side as he walks, and the little blue (grey?) porcelain pieces glint in the sun as they are swung back and forth. He hasn’t changed his clothes. When he stops to eat he carefully moves the pieces to one hand and eats the stolen apple he has picked with the other. He throws the apple core away, carefully wipes his hand on the grass, and then transfers the pieces back to the hand where they belong. He walks on.<\/p>\n
It’s the least he can do, to honour her.<\/p>\n
He hit her, and she fell. He was stricken by the sound of it, of her hitting the floor, the yelp that came out of her and the sound of porcelain smash and the skull crack.<\/p>\n
Why would he hit her? She’s a pretty girl with long wavy blonde hair, she’s an artist, she’s understanding, smart, independent. So is he, or at least, he thought he was. She speaks to him softly, lovingly. She cares about the world, and does right by it.<\/p>\n
And so does he. He has been every bit as quiet, caring and soft-hearted as her. They are the blue-eyed couple in sandals. He only shaves when she asks him to which isn’t very often, because she likes him a bit scruffy.<\/p>\n
He has a record collection that he treasures, she has a bird collection that she obsesses over. The birds were all lined up on the shelf, porcelain, stuffed, fabric, papier mache, feathers, wood-carved.<\/p>\n
(He broke her favorite one, her first one, which was worse, much worse than just hitting her.)<\/p>\n
And so he broke a little piece of his soul off. The edges crumbled like stale bread. Piece, particles, partitions, puzzle pieces, picket fences.<\/p>\n
The plaid sandaled couple. The sandy-haired, blue eyed couple. They each know a little bit of French.<\/p>\n
If only everything in here weren’t quite so breakable.<\/p>\n
What did she say that made the quietness turn off? Shut off? “I want to see other people”? “This isn’t working”? But it has to work, he thinks. It is the only thought that flashes through his mind. It has to work because they have a house with a little garden that they planted together. And it’s on a good street in a good neighborhood in a good state. It has to work, because they’re happy.<\/p>\n
“I’m just not happy,” she says.<\/p>\n
His mind shuts off. There is a loud siren sound screaming through his ear drums. Through the wail, he thinks he hears “I’ve been seeing someone else. I’m moving out.”<\/p>\n
He lashes out. For the rest of his life (which isn’t really much longer), he will always wonder whether she actually said it. He asks the bird what she said, and he doesn’t know either. He thinks, now, that she probably didn’t, and it makes him sick to his stomach, every day, gives him diarrhea that just nervously runs out of him. He never recovers, never trusts his ears again.<\/p>\n
He doesn’t trust them, mostly because he hears bird singing, chirping, twittering all the time, even when he’s inside the truck stop bathroom, even in the middle of the night, when there are no birds, only owls. (She only had one owl in the collection.)<\/p>\n
He won’t cover his ears with his hands, because he’ll never let go of the broken blue pieces.<\/p>\n
What else could he do but walk? They looked so good, in white t-shirts and khaki pants, standing there together in the photographs she insisted on getting done. Her sandy hair shone in the sun. They looked like they belonged on that beach.<\/p>\n
Where are the sandy-haired sandaled perfect children that were supposed to come?<\/p>\n
No one was looking for him, not the police, not her family. He was so quiet and gentle that they all assumed someone had broken in, robbed her, killed her. (He stole a few things as he fled, so no one would come looking. It was his last rational thought.)<\/p>\n
He was so quiet and sweet. They all assumed he was at his cabin, fishing, which he did once a month around this time. There was no phone, and no one knew exactly where it was. They waited for him to come back, waited to give him the bad news.<\/p>\n
He would never hurt her. It was impossible to all of them. They couldn’t imagine it. It would never happen.<\/p>\n
And what do I think? Why was I going for a drive? What was I looking for in the mounds of dirt? I don’t think we got lost. Could we really have meant to end up here?<\/p>\n
How do you talk to someone who’s so tortured? What would he say when someone spoke? Would he reply at all?<\/p>\n
“Are you alright?” I asked out the car window.<\/p>\n
“Hmmm?”<\/p>\n
I’ve never seen someone so distracted. It was like watching someone jump off a cliff and forget why they did it in mid-air. Eyes with all the moisture sucked out. Eyes, dry, red and pink, sore-looking, ruined. Dustcaked.<\/p>\n
We were supposed to be going for a drive, but we didn’t really get very far. She was completely distracted; I was nervous to be sitting in the passenger’s seat. We were fighting.<\/p>\n
“Where are we going?”<\/p>\n
She grunted a reply back. I couldn’t make it out. I tried to look out the window with a bored expression, but I couldn’t conjure up anything other than terror.<\/p>\n
I have no idea where we went. I’ve definitely forgotten where we were supposed to be going (can you blame me?). The memories don’t sit right, they don’t sit anywhere at all.<\/p>\n
I remember telling her to slow down.<\/p>\n
“Shut up!” she snapped back.<\/p>\n
My hands were numb from clutching at things. Everything went by in a blur. We’d been in the car for less than fifteen minutes when she finally pulled over into a construction site. There were huge mounds of clay and dirt everywhere. Someone was getting ready to build something huge.<\/p>\n
She pulled over and turned the car off, and we both saw it. He set down the broken pieces, lined them up in front of him, kissed them, prostrate. He sat back up on his knees and took something out of his back pocket.<\/p>\n
I opened the car door and ran, but I didn’t make it in time.<\/p>\n
It was quieter than I thought it’d be.<\/p>\n
I took the blood-spattered porcelain pieces home with me, even though she said I should leave them for the police. But I needed them; I needed them to figure out where we supposed to be going, if it wasn’t here.<\/p>\n
It was all I could imagine. <\/p>\n
![\"alixmaclean\"](\"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/alixmaclean-225x300.jpg\" "\\"alixmaclean\\"")
<\/DIV><\/p>\n![\"alixmaclean\"](\"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/alixmaclean-150x150.jpg\" "\\"alixmaclean\\"")
He has been every bit as quiet, caring and soft-hearted as her. They are the blue-eyed couple in sandals. He only shaves when she asks him to which isn’t very often, because she likes him a bit scruffy. He has a record collection that he treasures, she has a bird collection that she obsesses over. The birds were all lined up on the shelf, porcelain, stuffed, fabric, papier mache, feathers, wood-carved. (He broke her favorite one, her first one, which was worse, much worse than just hitting her.)<\/p>\n