To the Birdhouse by Cathleen Schine

Author:Cathleen Schine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Alice watched the cat sitting on the windowsill, silhouetted against the lurid green of the city sky. He was facing out between two wedding presents: a bowl and a ceramic pot.

Carefully, Black Coat pushed the bowl onto the floor. It landed unharmed on the rug. He had gnawed his stuffed mouse to oblivion and then returned to his old habits. Peter had told Alice that morning that her pet was the Louie Scifo of cats, and she was still annoyed. “Nice kitty,” she said.

Black Coat purred luxuriously from the windowsill.

“Look at that cat,” she heard someone say on the street below.

Her father had called a little while ago to say that his plane had landed safely. He would take a cab and be there in an hour.

Alice had seen him once in the year since her wedding—on Passover. She could imagine him getting out of the cab, both feet poised above the sidewalk as if he were considering the merits of actually putting them down on such a surface or somehow just holding them up for the duration of his stay. He hated New York, so why was he here, anyway? It wasn’t Yom Kippur. Normally, only the Jewish holidays could bring Dad home to sit in the front pew of their smooth, Swedish-modern temple in Connecticut, flanked by his new wife and her towheaded son.

For years he had been bringing his devoutly Presbyterian but devoted wife to participate in the Brodys’ celebration of various religious holidays. Alice found her enthusiasm suspect and unnatural: holiday dinners at Grandpa Brody’s were noisy, interminable, the prayers and rituals considered an inescapable and mildly irritating delay before the food could be served. Then the thirty-five relatives would sit at a long table (which was actually several bridge tables pushed together and covered by white linen cloths) and call for an aunt who had once been a kindergarten teacher to play “The Hokey Pokey” on the piano. On New Year’s, energetic infants dripped honey; during the Seder, they hurled soggy sacramental parsley. Alice’s grandfather would doze peacefully at the head of the table. “No, no,” her father would cry. “We’re still on page 12.”

“Your religious rituals are so deeply oriented toward the Jewish family roots,” Patricia told Alice on one occasion. “Aren’t they?”

Yeah, you home-wrecker, Alice thought. That’s right. But she smiled and said nothing.

“Roots…” Patricia continued thoughtfully. “I know! Let’s attempt a trace of the Brody roots. What an exciting project for a young person!”

* * *

The bell rang and Alice prepared herself for the elaborately phrased pleasantries her stepmother favored.

“Have you enjoyed your recently completed summer holiday?” Patricia would ask.

“Oh, yes,” Alice would respond.

“It’s a pity you’ve not been able to get away this year on some sort of excursion. Well, we’ll keep our fingers crossed for a letup in your busy schedules, and then off to a lovely vacation spot to take advantage of the leisure activity of your choice.”

Alice, furious at her stepmother’s geniality and interpreting it as concealed hostility, would say, “Oh, yes,” again.

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