He has just drilled in the hole and is sure it is the perfect size. Finally he is going to finish this abandoned project, left behind a growing pile of scrap lumber in the basement. Fifteen years ago he began making this birdhouse. His son, Jeremy, must have been five at the time. This was how they spent their Saturdays together, father and son once Jeremy was bored with watching cartoons and cereal and toy commercials on TV. Yesterday was his son’s twentieth birthday. They were not able to celebrate it together. He has no other children. The birdhouse is for swallows, but not just any swallow. Frank loves birds and now that he has more time he is trying to learn more about them. The swallows have always enchanted him. In the spring and in the summer, while walking across the fields of Trout Lake Park the swallows swoop down on sabre wings, circling him. He can see that they are not black as they often appear at a distance but blue, as with the barn swallows—an enchanting shining and iridescent twilight blue. The smaller ones are green with purple lights, the violet-green swallows. He likes to think that the swallows fly circles round him as a blessing, as a gift from heaven, or a sign. He knows really that it is the tiny insects flushed from the grass by his footsteps and he can sometimes hear their beaks snapping them up. He still feels gratified that he can help sustain them.
It was on such a Saturday morning in May, twenty years ago, while the swallows surrounded him, more than usual, when Frank returned to the house to see Kathy his wife propped against the kitchen counter, her face contorted with pain. “It’s time, Frank,” she said, pressing her free hand against her enormous stomach. She was that night delivered of nine and a half pounds of Jeremy and he knelt weeping by his wife’s hospital bed as she held their newborn son.
They are going to visit their son this afternoon. He is in a medium security facility and this will be their second visit there since he was sentenced two weeks ago. Their son has never been in trouble with the law before. Kathy still breaks down every day and weeps. So does Frank, but he is careful to wait till he’s alone in the basement, as he is now. He has just finished a crying jag. His wife doesn’t know that he cries. Jeremy is his only son.
Frank has taken early retirement from his job. He is in his fifties and his back can no longer survive his trade as a city gardener. His back still hurts in the evenings but it’s become bearable. It was much worse last year when police tracked down his son as a person of interest. Jeremy, still eighteen, was out on the town for the night with his friends. They had been drinking. The next day it was in the news: two young gay men swarmed and beaten by four youths for walking down the sidewalk holding hands. They were holding hands. Gay marriage had already been legal in this country for almost four years. Frank and Kathy had always taken the greatest care to instruct their son to treat all people with respect. They had never specifically meant gays, but surely Jeremy as well as they must have known that they were included by implication.
He sands smooth the edges of the entrance hole. He has decided he is not going to paint it. The chemicals might harm the birds. He has read this somewhere. He lays aside the sandpaper and goes upstairs. Kathy is in front of her laptop at the dining room table. He knows not to bother her. She hates being disturbed when she is in front of the computer, or reading, or on the phone, or watching TV. He will speak only if spoken to. She is doing a search for support groups. Reaching into the fridge he pulls out a pitcher of lemon-aide.
“Should we go somewhere for lunch on the way out?” Kathy asks from the dining room.
“White Spot?”
“Where else do we go?” They never used to eat out. Only in the past year, since organizing their days around court appearances. It has become convenient, and they no longer complain about the cost. Now they have found that they enjoy it. It feels almost as if they are dating again.
“How’s the birdhouse coming?”
“Almost finished. Want some lemon-aide?”
“I’m okay. I’m almost done here.”
He isn’t going to ask her about it. This is something for her to mention if she wants to. It is for her alone. He can’t see himself participating. This self-revealing in front of near-strangers is not for him. He has a couple of buddies still from work. Every month they get together for a couple of beers. They are too courteous to talk about his son, and he never brings him up, but Frank never has to second-guess their support of him. They could be talking about the Canucks or the Whitecaps, or the atrocious Conservative government or the best way to mulch and it is still all the same. The words are simply filler. They are there for each other.
The birdhouse is finished. Tomorrow morning he will mount it up in the maple tree. Upstairs he can hear Kathy getting things ready for the trip. He knows she is preparing their son a care package for his birthday. He is giving him his own wristwatch. Jeremy had mentioned in their last visit that knowing what time it was made his time a little less intolerable. He will be out in eighteen months. They tried for a suspended sentence but the judge was strict. He could have been put in longer, which is he supposes a small blessing. His son on the day of his conviction read aloud a letter of apology to the victims. Then he broke down and wept. Frank had never seen his son cry in many years, not since long before his voice broke. Only Jeremy was caught. The others remain
In the White Spot Kathy is eating a pasta dish with primavera sauce and Frank is putting away a burger. They come here every week now. It somehow helps them remain focused on their son, whom they otherwise speak little of. He has always looked more like his mother, with the same ash coloured hair and pale blue eyes. The same smile. But neither Kathy nor Jeremy are much for smiling. Frank seems to be the only one in the family with a good robust sense of humour. With his buddies from work alone is he really free to let down his guard and laugh. The beer helps.
The visit lasted less than an hour. Their son looked pale and wan. He didn’t say much. He never has been very talkative. Not since shortly after Frank had begun making the birdhouse fifteen years ago. He never said much about school, though his grades were adequate. He talked little about his friends, whom he never invited over. Frank doesn’t even know if his son has ever had a girlfriend. Surely at least one. He’s a good-looking boy. He thanked them dutifully for the gifts, the sweater, the watch, the cookies and the cake. The boy seemed to freeze when his mother kissed him. From Frank he accepted a rather limp handshake. How could this boy have remained so many years locked up inside himself? How could someone so gentle even think of harming another person? He was with his buddies, three young men Frank and Kathy had never met. They had been drinking. They had just been watching an ultimate fighting championship. They had spent the evening watching almost naked, buff and good-looking men beating each other up and locked in prone embraces. He didn’t want to take the thought any further. They were walking down Davie Street, their home turf, holding hands. This would never have been dared when Frank was a young man. He had hardly known that homosexuals even existed. He had never known any. Nor had he ever said anything to his son about them. It was rumoured that a boy he had known vaguely in high school might have been one. He was beaten up a couple of times. He had never actually met the two gay guys—somehow he could not refer to them as a couple, and certainly not as men—whom he had seen day after day in court. They both seemed normal enough. Not bad-looking either, if Frank had any skill at all in judging a man’s looks. The day after the verdict he phoned their lawyer. It was easier to arrange than he had thought. Kathy still knows nothing about this and he does not plan on ever telling her or Jeremy.
He is downstairs again in the basement reviewing his handiwork. The birdhouse is finished and tomorrow morning he is going to put it up in the maple tree. He forgot to tell Jeremy about it. Kathy is upstairs doing another Internet search for a support group. Frank just may change his mind and go with her if she finds anything. He might even reveal to them the visit he had with the two young men last week. They were going to meet in a Starbucks but they invited him to their home instead. It was a nice apartment, a one bedroom near Stanley Park. Pleasantly furnished, clean with a view of the park from the living room. They were casually dressed in blue jeans and T-shirts. There seemed nothing abnormal or unusual about these men who weren’t even thirty yet. Nothing “unmanly.” They had lived together for the last two years and this summer they were going to get married. The coffee they served Frank and their lawyer was delicious, and as he sat, facing them, seated side-by-side on their love seat with the view of the forest of Stanley Park behind them Frank stammered out his apology, his shame over what their son and his friends had done to them, the suffering that had been visited on them and how thoroughly inept and unable he felt at making reparation for his son. They both looked at him, one was Italian or Spanish looking with short dark hair and soft brown eyes. Frank marveled that a guy with such well-muscled forearms couldn’t have taken care of himself. But he remembered it was four against two. His broken jaw was healed now and he now wore a small scar above his left eyebrow. His partner seemed more reserved, slender and blond with intelligent blue eyes. He learned that like his wife, he is a schoolteacher, and the dark-haired one, like Frank, is a gardener.
The plan was for Frank to leave alone. They were very gracious. They smiled and saw him to the door. They each warmly shook his hand. He suddenly wanted to reach out and embrace them both, but held his arms securely pinned to his sides. When he arrived home Kathy was still at work. He went down into the basement and began to search through the scrap lumber. After he had allowed himself time to sit quietly and weep he pulled out the half-finished birdhouse which he had not touched in fifteen years.
The stepladder is secure enough for him to stand on as he fastens the birdhouse with a hammer and nails to a crotch in the tree. The leaves are still fresh and pale green from having just recently unfurled in the new spring. In a vintage old bird book his mother had given him when he was ten years old Frank has just read about the violet-green swallow. They love feathers, lots of soft feathers with which to line their nests. He has gone inside for a glass of lemonade, then hears their familiar song. He noticed their arrival again this spring, towards the end of the first week of April, soaring and swooping high above like tiny bomber jets. In the basement there is a pillow that Kathy has wanted to get rid of. It is old and tattered and leaking chicken feathers. With a knife he carefully cuts open the casing and pulls out a handful of feathers. Outside, like the man in the bird book he holds up the feathers while violet-green swallows are already swooping across the yard to inspect the new house, like first time home buyers. Like a crazy man, or like a figure he has seen in a dream, Frank gently tosses feathers into the air and the little swallows swoop down and catch them and carry them into the birdhouse he has just made for them. Suddenly he is smiling as the morning sun warms his cold grey skin and suddenly he feels youth return to his tired aging body. He tosses up some more feathers. A swallow catches one. Some more, and her mate grabs another. One of them even plucks a feather from his fingers. When he is finished he looks down at the recently bloomed red and yellow tulips he planted two years ago, his wife’s favourites. Next week when they go to see Jeremy their son in prison he is going to tell him all about the birdhouse. And that’s all he is going to tell him. He returns into the house, pours a glass of lemon-aid then reaches for the bottle of rum he keeps under the sink. With his homemade cocktail Frank sits out on the back deck looking at the maple tree as the two violet-green swallows fly back and forth into their new home. Their sweet singing reminds him of the fragility of life and he takes a slow and measured sip from the glass. The melting ice cubes feel very cold against his lips. He returns inside the house and begins to make a sandwich. Kathy is still at church. Next Sunday he might join her.
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