Free Winter Birds by Jamie Langston Turner Page B

something home for supper. He told me not to cook.”
    “You’ve worked hard today,” I say.
    Again she looks around my apartment. “Well, it needed a good cleaning.” She moves toward the door. “Shall I help you bring your things from the other room?” Her use of “shall I” sounds out of place. Rachel went to high school in Tupelo, Mississippi, then attended a two-year Bible college somewhere in Alabama, during which time she met Patrick at a Billy Graham crusade in Atlanta. In many ways she’s a typical southerner, yet southerners rarely say, “Shall I help you?” They are more likely to say, “Want me to?” or “Can I?”
    I tell her I’ve already returned everything to its place, even though this isn’t entirely true. I still need to move the dresses hanging in the closet. The telephone rings in the kitchen, and she goes to answer it, leaving my door open. She says three words—“hello,” “sure,” and “yes”—and when she hangs up she comes back to my door and tells me she’s going to “run across the street for a little bit.” She closes my door, and I hear her leave through the kitchen door. I assume that “across the street” means Teri’s house rather than the lawyer’s office or the mortuary.
    Gomer Pyle ends and a program called Happy Days comes on. Since I have never been much interested in the Cunningham family or Fonzie, I walk to the back bedroom to get my dresses. The door to Patrick’s study is standing open. Throughout the past five days it has remained closed. In the evenings I could see Patrick’s light shining beneath the bathroom door, but until now I have never looked inside the room.
    And now I regret that I am looking, for I see something that gives me a sudden tightness of breath. I reach out and hold onto the doorjamb until the moment passes. I close my eyes briefly, then open them, taking care not to see what I already saw.
    I proceed to the bedroom, open the closet and remove the dresses, then start back down the hallway to my apartment, glancing into Patrick and Rachel’s bedroom across the hall. Their bed is only a double size, which must feel crowded. Here Patrick holds forth both before and after the lights are out, speaking his mind about all the pressing political and social issues of the day. I imagine Rachel staring up at the ceiling as she listens to the same opinions she must have heard many times already. Several nights during the past week I have heard the drone of his voice across the hall as I prepared for bed. Their bed is covered by a thin red-corded bedspread, such as the kind one would expect to see on children’s bunk beds. I see the control for an electric blanket sitting on the nightstand beside the clock. I wonder if it is a dual control or if in this matter, as in most others I have observed, Rachel defers to her husband’s preferences.
    I move down the hallway, keeping my eyes straight ahead as I pass Patrick’s study. I can’t erase the picture of what I saw, however, and after I return the dresses to my closet, I lie down on my sofa and close my eyes, forcing myself to breathe slowly and steadily. The image floats in the black space of my mind.
    The rolltop desk isn’t as large as Eliot’s was, but I think of the heavy cargo so light a vessel may carry. The top was rolled back on Patrick’s desk. I saw a great many papers scattered around. I saw many small cubbyholes and drawers. I can’t help wondering if he keeps it open all the time, or if he, like Eliot, pulls down the top and locks it when he has things to hide. I wonder if Rachel goes into the study, if she moves Patrick’s things around to dust.
    Tidying Eliot’s desk was verboten in our home. He found me in his study one day shortly after our marriage, straightening books and stacks of papers on a shelf, wielding a feather duster around the desk, which was closed and locked. From the doorway he fixed me with the kind of look a teacher reserves for an insolent student.