In the Land of Birdfishes Read Online Free PDF Page B

your life like you have another one later. It’s supposed to help you not get all stressed out about making mistakes. Like this is a practice run.”
    “Oh.”
    “It’s pretty dumb. My dad is always sending me stuff like this to read. Really it’s his way of telling me he thinks I’m making mistakes. He sent me this one months ago, and I lied and said I read it when he asked. So I’ve got to finish it before he picks me up in Vancouver. He’s that kind of guy, he’ll test me. Like, before we leave the parking lot.”
    I remembered being her age. I remembered how easily sneers settled on soft, pretty faces. I thought of something to say. “I used to want to write a book,” I said. And it was true, though I hadn’t thought of it in years. At the university where I’d taught composition before we left Halifax, they’d given me a grant to hire readers. I had large-print versions of most of the books I taught from, but I needed the readers to help me mark my students’ papers. It was a laborious process as I dictated punctuation changes and grammatical corrections, but one or two of the readers got good at the work as the years went on. And the university had been kind to me, giving me smaller classes than the other instructors, though it meant those instructors made snide comments about their workloadswhen we crossed paths in the hall. And the department head, who’d known me as a student there, once said to me, “You know, you could dictate your own work to those readers. If you ever wanted to write something of your own. I still remember your essays.” But I would have felt ashamed to ask another person to witness me fail at something so preposterous, and in any case, as I told him, I had a special typewriter and managed just fine on my own.
    “No kidding,” the dark-haired girl said. “Anyway, I’ll turn the light off once the sun’s a little higher, but it’s bad for you to read when it’s dim. You should be careful not to do that.”
    “I don’t see so great,” I said. I lifted my hands up off my lap but then, unsure where to put them, I let them rest back down. She was still looking at me. “I can’t read that small print,” I said. “Too late for me, I guess.” I laughed and then fell silent.
    “That’s shitty. What’s your name?”
    “Aileen.”
    “I’m Rochelle. Nice to meet you.” She smiled again and then started reading. I watched her, and how easy it was for her. Her eyes moved back and forth so quick, like little fish in two tiny bowls.
    “I’m going to be forty in two weeks.” It wasn’t the right thing to say. I knew it. I waited for the sneer of her mean, young face.
    Rochelle closed the book, leaving her index finger between the leaves. “Happy birthday,” she said.
    “Thank you. What I meant was, I don’t see how many mistakes your father could think you’ve made at your age. You’re … you’re just starting.” When he’d left, the door made a certain sound against the wood floor. A scraping sound that I had not been able to stop hearing. It was getting louder.
    “I’ll be twenty-three in February. I’m a Pisces. So you’re a Gemini?”
    “Rochelle.” I whispered it, because I was worried the words might get away from me. “He fell off a roof.”
    “Who?”
    “My husband.”
    “Is he okay?”
    “He left me.”
    “I don’t get it.” Girls that age, they were so heartless. Understood nothing. Felt nothing.
    “It damaged his brain. He just stopped. He just stopped loving me.”
    “No kidding. I never heard of that happening to somebody.” She blinked so slowly, there was a moment you could pause and see her eyes closed, and then open again so wide the full circle of brown was revealed against the white, and it was strange how we got made like that, perfect, our eyes precise circles the way you could never draw them, not if you tried to copy what an eye looked like a hundred times on the page—it would never be symmetrical and perfect like her