In the Company of Crows
Jean Ryan
Susan rinsed a plate
and looked out the window. In the darkness of the backyard, uplights
illuminated the sprawling trunks of the oak trees. The branches above could not
be seen, but Susan knew they were filled with crows, each bird holding its
chill place throughout the night. On
winter days at dusk they came here to roost, circling and swooping and cawing
until, one by one, they were all absorbed. Hard as you stared into the
treetops, you could not find them.
No one could say for
certain why they gathered this way. Some believed in the wagon train
theory—safety in numbers. More than anything else, crows feared owls. Maybe
they all made bets that the crow on the next branch would be the unlucky one.
It was true they were noisy and numerous, but Susan liked crows. She enjoyed their strutting authority. In the fall they dropped walnuts on the street for the cars to run over, a show that always gratified her. Often she would step in and assist them, would gather the nuts herself and crack them under her heel. You could not take a wide-angle view of nature, she learned; there was too much to be done, too much cause for despair. She could not save the rain forests, but she could give the crows a helping heel.
Philip brought the empty wine glasses into the kitchen. “Delicious dinner,” he remarked. “You outdid yourself. I liked that lemon tart they brought, too. Did Miranda make it?”
Susan tucked a plate into the cupboard. “She did. It amazes me, all the things she still manages to do.” Miranda had multiple sclerosis; soon the cane she used would be replaced by a walker. “Did you see her hands tremble at dinner?”
Philip nodded. “Even her speech is affected now.” He walked back into the dining room and gathered the napkins. Pausing at the cupboard, Susan admired his impeccable posture, a legacy perhaps of his Arabic heritage. His bearing, his reserve, his intelligence, even his accent, conferred power. She could not imagine her husband using a cane, could not see him in any other way than capable.
“I wonder if a support group might help Ben, if he’d consider that.” Philip was a psychiatrist. “I could give him some names.”
Susan, who knew that Ben would not seek such help, kept silent. She and Ben had spent many hours talking about Miranda’s plight, from the day of her diagnosis six years ago to just last week, when he had cried in her arms.
Sometimes it seemed she was getting to know him all over again, like tonight at the table when she was listening to one of his restaurant stories. Instead of studying his mouth, or his hands, or his forearms, she found herself looking at him whole, as she would any other entertaining guest. Lovers for nine years, they had turned, painlessly, into friends—or so it seemed; the territory was still fairly new. How this happened she had no idea. It was as if some force, knowing they could not manage it themselves, had stepped in and set them right. Because they could not live without each other, they had been allowed this benign arrangement, could appear in society like everyone else and behave like the proper guests they were. Best of all, no one had been hurt. There was no other way to look at it: They had won.
~ ~ ~
Susan had met Ben in her store, Big Dog Bakery. He and his border collie had walked across the threshold, then stopped short, obviously unprepared for the bountiful assortment, all the outrageous replicas of human food: oatmeal donuts, cheesy éclairs, carob-filled cookies, mini garlic pizzas. “Can I help you?” Susan asked. Ben approached her. His close-cropped hair was white, though he didn’t look much over 40, and his skin was ruddy. His eyes, a nearly transparent blue, made her think of a jungle cat. A small scar hooked down one cheek. “This is dog food?” he asked.
She nodded. “But you can eat it, too—if your dog doesn’t mind.” He smiled at her. They held each other’s gaze for a second, maybe two, appraising one another with pleasant surprise, and later Susan wondered if this was the point at which she hurtled into love, if attraction could be that swift and compulsory. Not that she was trying to excuse herself—there had been time enough in nine years to make corrections.
Could you even call it an affair? Wasn’t there a more apt term for such a durable liaison? Naturally they had tried to extricate themselves, had retreated and returned more times than she could count. Eventually they gave up and, in tacit agreement, made room for their obstinate romance until it finally slipped away on its own. Now they were exonerated. Legitimized. It did not feel like luck. It felt like forgiveness.
~ ~ ~
Crows play—many people didn’t know this. Susan had seen them to engage in all sorts of recreation. Aerial loops, rolls and dives; sometimes they hung upside down from branches, played tug of war with twigs. Susan had seen a crow amuse himself with a discarded pack of cigarettes, dropping the object from a high branch and catching it before it hit the ground. Once she had started her own game with the birds, tossed a Ping-Pong ball near the trees and waited to see what would happen. Sure enough, one of crows flew down to inspect the ball, then snatched it up and carried it to the top of a tree. A moment later he let it fall, then swooped down and retrieved it. Seven times he did this.
Philip did not play with the crows. He was bothered by their noise and only wished they’d roost in some other Piedmont backyard. As if knowing this, the crows scolded him when he was raking leaves or trimming the laurel hedge; if he ventured close to the oak trees they grew even more boisterous. Susan could walk anywhere she pleased and the crows simply watched her.
One of oddest things they did—Susan had seen this only twice—was sprawl on the ground. On both occasions, the night had been especially cold and the morning sunny. She had been making toast the first time she saw them: twenty at least, all motionless, most of them twisted oddly, their wings pressed to the earth. Fear clamped her chest and she hurried outside. Not until she got quite close did they rise, all at once, and fly into the trees. They must have been warming themselves, Susan figured, and the second time it happened she did not disturb them.
~ ~ ~
In a world of staggering need, Susan acknowledged the frivolity of a bakery for dogs, but she adored her shop, with its wholesome odors and pure intentions. All the baked goods were natural, made fresh daily, and, despite their sinful appearance, most were low-calorie. But people came to her store for more than the treats and toys. They came for respite, for reassurance, and Susan delighted in spending her days among them, these people who could not do enough for their pets. Every purchase was a surge of devotion—surely the world had need of that. And then there were the lost and found notices she posted, the adoption photos, the ASPCA donation box next to the register—all these things mattered.
Philip had financed the shop, and while he knew his wife was no fool, the money she’d made, in just four years, surprised him. They had even begun to talk about opening another store in San Francisco. Ben, who also owned a successful business in Oakland’s Rockridge district, a “fast food” pasta shop, was all for the idea. Once, flushed with wine, he and Susan had excitedly discussed the possibility of a partnership, and then fell silent, seeing how wanton this notion was.
Something they had not discussed—not seriously, and not for many years—was divorce. Miranda and Philip were fixtures, bearing walls, a fact that became more clear as time went on. In the beginning, there were moments when Ben would make some passing reference to Miranda, and Susan would harden with jealousy. Later this jealousy went away, replaced by wan affection, eventually pity: Susan had embezzled from this woman, steadily and with cunning; she could not hate her too. Only with deference and vestiges of shame did Susan and Ben speak of their spouses now. In fact, Susan wished Miranda could hear some of the tender things Ben said about her.
Susan had seen some pictures of Miranda “in her day,” when her red hair was long and her clients were many, when she could still mount the steps of their fine homes. An interior designer, Miranda had done a flawless job with her own home, and walking through it that first time with Ben, Susan had studied the unlikely wall colors, the mix of exotic furnishings, envying this flair she would never possess.
They were not alike in any noticeable way. Miranda was short and slight and impeccably groomed. She wore scarves and gorgeous boots. She was quiet but not irritatingly so. (Ben said she could get “snappy,” though Susan had never witnessed this.) Her features were finely drawn, giving her an inquisitive look. She reminded Susan of a small red fox. Miranda was 50 and wore it well, especially given her illness.
Blonde and big-boned, Susan did not know what sort of animal she might be likened to—a Guernsey cow maybe. She was also five foot ten, difficult proportions for a teenage girl, though she was fine with them now. Ben once called her “majestic,” a term that made her laugh, but pleased her too. It helped that she was attractive. To be ample and ugly—she could not conceive the effort that would take.
~ ~ ~
Susan had read that crows mate for life, that only if a crow perishes will its partner seek a replacement. In the springtime she watched their courtships: the female holding close to the ground, the male circling her, his wings wide and drooping, his head bowing, his cry an insistent rattle. The crows all looked the same to her, large and glossy—who knew how they chose each other, what standards they used, and if the rejected suitors felt disappointment.
Watching from the patio, Susan often saw these pairs grooming one another. She didn’t know who was doing the cleaning, the male or the female, but one bird approached submissively, head feathers raised, and the other did the cleaning, mainly the neck and face, those hard-to-reach places. With their formidable beaks, it’s a wonder the crows didn’t hurt each another. Maybe they did—birds could make mistakes. She had once seen a hawk miscalculate. Aiming perhaps for a mouse, it met the front end of a semi. A witness to this abrupt, bizarre death, Susan had to pull over and collect herself. There was a wrongness to it, a creature this magnificent felled by blunder. It shook your faith, made you afraid for everyone.
~ ~ ~
Not once had Ben spoken of his sex life with Miranda, and Susan had been equally discrete about her relations with Philip. This area was inviolate, a layer of betrayal to which they would not descend, and maybe it was this small tether to decency that had salvaged them in the end.
Susan did not miss the physical relationship she’d had with Ben, which struck her as odd. There were times--there were years—when all she wanted to do was be with him or think about him, when she spent blissful hours evoking their most recent tryst, replaying each scene in thrilling detail.
She had not known this overriding passion with Philip—not that Ben had special talents or that Philip lacked ardor. They were different, that was all, and they struck different chords in her. One evening she and Philip were watching television and an ad for Viagra came on. Idly curious, Susan asked him what he thought of it. “Ridiculous,” he said, and she had smiled at him, involuntarily, out of sheer admiration. From what she had read and heard, this view was not common. Soon after, when she posed the same question to Ben, his answer was likewise brief but quite different. “Why not?” he said with a broad grin. Ben was 57. At this point perhaps he had more than a passing interest in the remedy. She had no way of knowing—they had not been intimate in many months. In any case, she was glad that Philip eschewed the drug. Things were fine the way they were, thank you very much.
Viagra. Talk about false advertising. Women had been faking orgasms, with unarguable success, since time began. Now, with blue diamond-shaped pills, men could perform their own magic tricks, and they were going batshit crazy. Unlike women, they were not much concerned with secrecy: Cozy TV ads for Viagra aired during the dinner hour. Men slayed her. In the same way that they happily accepted big fake breasts, they prided themselves on their own bogus erections. Women would not allow themselves to be scammed that way. A woman with silicone breasts never forgot what she was working with.
~ ~ ~
After courtship, the crows built their nests in the oak trees, big comfy baskets high up and close to the trunk; it took them a week or two. Each spring Susan watched the process from the patio. Both partners took part, soaring off and coming back with twigs, moss, bits of cloth, and afterward the females enjoyed a nice vacation. Before, during and after egg-laying, they sat on these comfy nests while their steadfast mates took care of them, returning again and again with all sorts of treats—crows seemed to eat anything, Susan had noted, from limp French fries to squirming insects.
A few times Susan had seen a lone bird cruise to the nest as soon as the spouse took off. She had researched this and learned that sometimes an unmated crow will take advantage of the sedentary female when her spouse is out looking for food. Presumably less robust than a chosen male, the unmated crow confers no genetic advantages, and so these couplings are considered pointless aberrations. What the female thinks of them is her own business.
~ ~ ~
Susan wiped the counter clean and shut off the lights in the kitchen. She paused in the room and looked once more at the oak trees.
She thought about Ben and Miranda, wondered what sort of rituals attended their bedtime: if Ben helped her undress, if they still made love, what they were like alone together. She was glad for them, she honestly was. And then she had another thought, there in the dark, a thought that widened her eyes. She was still in love with him. She had not lost interest—her body had.
All this time she’d been preening, congratulating herself on achieving the impossible. That she and Ben were behaving like friends, this was no achievement, no proof they’d been forgiven. A light blanket of amity had been pulled over them to ease the chill. That was all. They had not turned good. They had turned old.
Susan looked at the trees and thought again of the crows crouched along the limbs. They slept standing up, she’d read, their heads resting on a shoulder, their eyes closed. Harm could come from anywhere.
She wanted to see them. She couldn’t wait for morning.
It was true they were noisy and numerous, but Susan liked crows. She enjoyed their strutting authority. In the fall they dropped walnuts on the street for the cars to run over, a show that always gratified her. Often she would step in and assist them, would gather the nuts herself and crack them under her heel. You could not take a wide-angle view of nature, she learned; there was too much to be done, too much cause for despair. She could not save the rain forests, but she could give the crows a helping heel.
Philip brought the empty wine glasses into the kitchen. “Delicious dinner,” he remarked. “You outdid yourself. I liked that lemon tart they brought, too. Did Miranda make it?”
Susan tucked a plate into the cupboard. “She did. It amazes me, all the things she still manages to do.” Miranda had multiple sclerosis; soon the cane she used would be replaced by a walker. “Did you see her hands tremble at dinner?”
Philip nodded. “Even her speech is affected now.” He walked back into the dining room and gathered the napkins. Pausing at the cupboard, Susan admired his impeccable posture, a legacy perhaps of his Arabic heritage. His bearing, his reserve, his intelligence, even his accent, conferred power. She could not imagine her husband using a cane, could not see him in any other way than capable.
“I wonder if a support group might help Ben, if he’d consider that.” Philip was a psychiatrist. “I could give him some names.”
Susan, who knew that Ben would not seek such help, kept silent. She and Ben had spent many hours talking about Miranda’s plight, from the day of her diagnosis six years ago to just last week, when he had cried in her arms.
Sometimes it seemed she was getting to know him all over again, like tonight at the table when she was listening to one of his restaurant stories. Instead of studying his mouth, or his hands, or his forearms, she found herself looking at him whole, as she would any other entertaining guest. Lovers for nine years, they had turned, painlessly, into friends—or so it seemed; the territory was still fairly new. How this happened she had no idea. It was as if some force, knowing they could not manage it themselves, had stepped in and set them right. Because they could not live without each other, they had been allowed this benign arrangement, could appear in society like everyone else and behave like the proper guests they were. Best of all, no one had been hurt. There was no other way to look at it: They had won.
~ ~ ~
Susan had met Ben in her store, Big Dog Bakery. He and his border collie had walked across the threshold, then stopped short, obviously unprepared for the bountiful assortment, all the outrageous replicas of human food: oatmeal donuts, cheesy éclairs, carob-filled cookies, mini garlic pizzas. “Can I help you?” Susan asked. Ben approached her. His close-cropped hair was white, though he didn’t look much over 40, and his skin was ruddy. His eyes, a nearly transparent blue, made her think of a jungle cat. A small scar hooked down one cheek. “This is dog food?” he asked.
She nodded. “But you can eat it, too—if your dog doesn’t mind.” He smiled at her. They held each other’s gaze for a second, maybe two, appraising one another with pleasant surprise, and later Susan wondered if this was the point at which she hurtled into love, if attraction could be that swift and compulsory. Not that she was trying to excuse herself—there had been time enough in nine years to make corrections.
Could you even call it an affair? Wasn’t there a more apt term for such a durable liaison? Naturally they had tried to extricate themselves, had retreated and returned more times than she could count. Eventually they gave up and, in tacit agreement, made room for their obstinate romance until it finally slipped away on its own. Now they were exonerated. Legitimized. It did not feel like luck. It felt like forgiveness.
~ ~ ~
Crows play—many people didn’t know this. Susan had seen them to engage in all sorts of recreation. Aerial loops, rolls and dives; sometimes they hung upside down from branches, played tug of war with twigs. Susan had seen a crow amuse himself with a discarded pack of cigarettes, dropping the object from a high branch and catching it before it hit the ground. Once she had started her own game with the birds, tossed a Ping-Pong ball near the trees and waited to see what would happen. Sure enough, one of crows flew down to inspect the ball, then snatched it up and carried it to the top of a tree. A moment later he let it fall, then swooped down and retrieved it. Seven times he did this.
Philip did not play with the crows. He was bothered by their noise and only wished they’d roost in some other Piedmont backyard. As if knowing this, the crows scolded him when he was raking leaves or trimming the laurel hedge; if he ventured close to the oak trees they grew even more boisterous. Susan could walk anywhere she pleased and the crows simply watched her.
One of oddest things they did—Susan had seen this only twice—was sprawl on the ground. On both occasions, the night had been especially cold and the morning sunny. She had been making toast the first time she saw them: twenty at least, all motionless, most of them twisted oddly, their wings pressed to the earth. Fear clamped her chest and she hurried outside. Not until she got quite close did they rise, all at once, and fly into the trees. They must have been warming themselves, Susan figured, and the second time it happened she did not disturb them.
~ ~ ~
In a world of staggering need, Susan acknowledged the frivolity of a bakery for dogs, but she adored her shop, with its wholesome odors and pure intentions. All the baked goods were natural, made fresh daily, and, despite their sinful appearance, most were low-calorie. But people came to her store for more than the treats and toys. They came for respite, for reassurance, and Susan delighted in spending her days among them, these people who could not do enough for their pets. Every purchase was a surge of devotion—surely the world had need of that. And then there were the lost and found notices she posted, the adoption photos, the ASPCA donation box next to the register—all these things mattered.
Philip had financed the shop, and while he knew his wife was no fool, the money she’d made, in just four years, surprised him. They had even begun to talk about opening another store in San Francisco. Ben, who also owned a successful business in Oakland’s Rockridge district, a “fast food” pasta shop, was all for the idea. Once, flushed with wine, he and Susan had excitedly discussed the possibility of a partnership, and then fell silent, seeing how wanton this notion was.
Something they had not discussed—not seriously, and not for many years—was divorce. Miranda and Philip were fixtures, bearing walls, a fact that became more clear as time went on. In the beginning, there were moments when Ben would make some passing reference to Miranda, and Susan would harden with jealousy. Later this jealousy went away, replaced by wan affection, eventually pity: Susan had embezzled from this woman, steadily and with cunning; she could not hate her too. Only with deference and vestiges of shame did Susan and Ben speak of their spouses now. In fact, Susan wished Miranda could hear some of the tender things Ben said about her.
Susan had seen some pictures of Miranda “in her day,” when her red hair was long and her clients were many, when she could still mount the steps of their fine homes. An interior designer, Miranda had done a flawless job with her own home, and walking through it that first time with Ben, Susan had studied the unlikely wall colors, the mix of exotic furnishings, envying this flair she would never possess.
They were not alike in any noticeable way. Miranda was short and slight and impeccably groomed. She wore scarves and gorgeous boots. She was quiet but not irritatingly so. (Ben said she could get “snappy,” though Susan had never witnessed this.) Her features were finely drawn, giving her an inquisitive look. She reminded Susan of a small red fox. Miranda was 50 and wore it well, especially given her illness.
Blonde and big-boned, Susan did not know what sort of animal she might be likened to—a Guernsey cow maybe. She was also five foot ten, difficult proportions for a teenage girl, though she was fine with them now. Ben once called her “majestic,” a term that made her laugh, but pleased her too. It helped that she was attractive. To be ample and ugly—she could not conceive the effort that would take.
~ ~ ~
Susan had read that crows mate for life, that only if a crow perishes will its partner seek a replacement. In the springtime she watched their courtships: the female holding close to the ground, the male circling her, his wings wide and drooping, his head bowing, his cry an insistent rattle. The crows all looked the same to her, large and glossy—who knew how they chose each other, what standards they used, and if the rejected suitors felt disappointment.
Watching from the patio, Susan often saw these pairs grooming one another. She didn’t know who was doing the cleaning, the male or the female, but one bird approached submissively, head feathers raised, and the other did the cleaning, mainly the neck and face, those hard-to-reach places. With their formidable beaks, it’s a wonder the crows didn’t hurt each another. Maybe they did—birds could make mistakes. She had once seen a hawk miscalculate. Aiming perhaps for a mouse, it met the front end of a semi. A witness to this abrupt, bizarre death, Susan had to pull over and collect herself. There was a wrongness to it, a creature this magnificent felled by blunder. It shook your faith, made you afraid for everyone.
~ ~ ~
Not once had Ben spoken of his sex life with Miranda, and Susan had been equally discrete about her relations with Philip. This area was inviolate, a layer of betrayal to which they would not descend, and maybe it was this small tether to decency that had salvaged them in the end.
Susan did not miss the physical relationship she’d had with Ben, which struck her as odd. There were times--there were years—when all she wanted to do was be with him or think about him, when she spent blissful hours evoking their most recent tryst, replaying each scene in thrilling detail.
She had not known this overriding passion with Philip—not that Ben had special talents or that Philip lacked ardor. They were different, that was all, and they struck different chords in her. One evening she and Philip were watching television and an ad for Viagra came on. Idly curious, Susan asked him what he thought of it. “Ridiculous,” he said, and she had smiled at him, involuntarily, out of sheer admiration. From what she had read and heard, this view was not common. Soon after, when she posed the same question to Ben, his answer was likewise brief but quite different. “Why not?” he said with a broad grin. Ben was 57. At this point perhaps he had more than a passing interest in the remedy. She had no way of knowing—they had not been intimate in many months. In any case, she was glad that Philip eschewed the drug. Things were fine the way they were, thank you very much.
Viagra. Talk about false advertising. Women had been faking orgasms, with unarguable success, since time began. Now, with blue diamond-shaped pills, men could perform their own magic tricks, and they were going batshit crazy. Unlike women, they were not much concerned with secrecy: Cozy TV ads for Viagra aired during the dinner hour. Men slayed her. In the same way that they happily accepted big fake breasts, they prided themselves on their own bogus erections. Women would not allow themselves to be scammed that way. A woman with silicone breasts never forgot what she was working with.
~ ~ ~
After courtship, the crows built their nests in the oak trees, big comfy baskets high up and close to the trunk; it took them a week or two. Each spring Susan watched the process from the patio. Both partners took part, soaring off and coming back with twigs, moss, bits of cloth, and afterward the females enjoyed a nice vacation. Before, during and after egg-laying, they sat on these comfy nests while their steadfast mates took care of them, returning again and again with all sorts of treats—crows seemed to eat anything, Susan had noted, from limp French fries to squirming insects.
A few times Susan had seen a lone bird cruise to the nest as soon as the spouse took off. She had researched this and learned that sometimes an unmated crow will take advantage of the sedentary female when her spouse is out looking for food. Presumably less robust than a chosen male, the unmated crow confers no genetic advantages, and so these couplings are considered pointless aberrations. What the female thinks of them is her own business.
~ ~ ~
Susan wiped the counter clean and shut off the lights in the kitchen. She paused in the room and looked once more at the oak trees.
She thought about Ben and Miranda, wondered what sort of rituals attended their bedtime: if Ben helped her undress, if they still made love, what they were like alone together. She was glad for them, she honestly was. And then she had another thought, there in the dark, a thought that widened her eyes. She was still in love with him. She had not lost interest—her body had.
All this time she’d been preening, congratulating herself on achieving the impossible. That she and Ben were behaving like friends, this was no achievement, no proof they’d been forgiven. A light blanket of amity had been pulled over them to ease the chill. That was all. They had not turned good. They had turned old.
Susan looked at the trees and thought again of the crows crouched along the limbs. They slept standing up, she’d read, their heads resting on a shoulder, their eyes closed. Harm could come from anywhere.
She wanted to see them. She couldn’t wait for morning.
