Mockingbird
Emma Day
The librarian’s mother has been dead for two days now. The librarian works as she always has, stacking books and shelving books and standing straight-backed behind her computer desk. She wears dark colors and tall high-heeled shoes that hurt the balls of her feet. Today her shoes are creamy suede with red soles. She looks at them and imagines poisonous mushrooms.
Her mother died a slow creeping death by Alzheimer’s disease. Her house was large and spacious, walls covered in portraits and paintings of foxhunting men on horses. Her mother one day sat down in an antique wingback chair in the foyer and stayed there for three years. She would stare at the slim windows flanking the heavy front door, watching blurred shapes moving through the frosted glass. The librarian moved a small television into the foyer, sitting in the matching chair to watch game shows and history documentaries next to her mother. Her mother never looked at the TV, only at the windows, until the sun went down, at which time she would ask the librarian why she wasn’t married. The librarian would answer that she went on a date yesterday, or that she was married, or that she didn’t know, shuffling the sharp heels of her shoes into the plush carpet. When her mother died, she didn’t cry.
The librarian spots a young man through the shelves. He is handsome in a rural way. She imagines he would smell of woodsmoke and have dirt in the creased callouses of his hands. He stands in the aisle slightly stooped, gingerly turning the pages of a nature identification manual. She sees he is reading from the animal footprint section. The book is small and green, and the man startles the librarian when he snaps it closed, turning on his heel toward the doors. The librarian goes back to memorizing the call numbers of John Grisham novels.
She has almost run out of John Grisham novels when she hears a high whistle. Turning toward the sound she hears another, piercing clear from several aisles down. The librarian’s shoes click on the linoleum as she strides toward the sound. The space behind the natural science section rustles and chirps. She pulls two books from the shelf and finds a mockingbird, stood defiantly gray in the fluorescent lighting, round black eyes nervous in his delicate face. The librarian promises the mockingbird that she means him no harm. He bobs his head and flaps out his wings, displaying their bright white patches. The librarian offers the bird her hand and he clings to it with small sharp claws, pecking and biting at the rings on her fingers. She reminds him that he must be quiet in the library.
The librarian watches the mockingbird hop around the circulation desk, ignoring the corner of sandwich bread she offered him. He delights in pulling the pens from their cup and watching them clatter to the floor. Why are you here, the librarian asks him, what is it you want. The mockingbird says cheer cheer cheer chip-chip-chip-chip. That’s a cardinal call, the librarian says, do you even know what that means. He hops to the edge of the desk and bows toward the librarian, flaring out his wings at her. Tu-a-whee, he says, chit-chit-chit. I’m sorry, the librarian sighs, I can’t be your girlfriend. I’m sorry, I am too large.
She walks out of the library, holding the glass door open for the mockingbird strutting audacious behind her. The librarian stands by her car and sees him bounce away on the concrete sidewalk. He flutters up to perch on a chain-link fence. The librarian watches his tail seesaw and takes a deep shuddering inhale, pulling off her tall shoes for the low-heeled black ones she wears for funerals.