Winter Birds Read Online Free PDF Page A

empty during the weeks I have lived here. On the side of the van I can make out the words CARRIED AWAY in large letters and beneath them the slightly smaller words MOVING AND STORAGE COMPANY .
    The van slowly maneuvers its way backward into the driveway. A man climbs down from the driver’s side and a woman from the passenger’s. I watch the woman, who is dressed like a man, in work boots and overalls. She walks across the front yard with her head raised, as if studying the roofline, the gutters and eaves. Is this her job, I wonder—working for a moving company—or is she the new owner of this house? Perhaps the man is her husband and they are renting the van, which is full of their possessions. Perhaps the man is her husband, and together they own the moving company, including the van, which is full of other people’s possessions. Perhaps he is not her husband but merely a co-worker, and the van is empty. The possibilities and combinations are limitless. Perhaps he is a wizard, she is a sorceress, and the van is full of genies in lanterns. Perhaps, like most other things, it doesn’t matter.
    The man comes to stand beside the woman and lays his hand on her shoulder. He is a big man, built like a football player. She moves closer to him in a way a co-worker wouldn’t. A minivan pulls up at the front curb, and a teenager gets out. She slides open the back door and lifts a small child out of a car seat. The man meets her and takes the child. He points to the house. Maybe he’s saying, “There it is, pumpkin. Our new home!” The teenager walks slowly toward the house, hands jammed in back pockets, head down. Maybe she’s not so excited about the new home.
    Rachel’s car appears now, moving slowly past the mortuary, and I rise from the rocking chair, turn it around, and walk back through the dining room and kitchen, into my apartment. I close my door before I hear her key in the lock.
    It occurs to me that I never see Patrick and Rachel touch, not even a hand on a shoulder. This means nothing, of course. There is no correlation between love and touching, at least the kind of touching done in front of others.
    I sit down in my chair at the window by the bird feeder. I think about the woman across the street dressed as a man. I think of Rachel in her denim jeans and flannel shirts. Perhaps she and Patrick share shirts. Perhaps not. Perhaps his fit her a bit snugly. I turn to the Time magazine spread open on the table beside my chair. I think of all the women in the world who would never think of wearing men’s clothing.
    “DIED. GEORGETTE KLINGER, 88,” I read. The woman pictured above the paragraph is dressed femininely, in something white, imprinted with a large flower across the bodice. A vase of roses stands on the table behind her. She wears a long strand of pearls around her neck and smiles openly toward the camera. She is described as a “fashionable skin-care pioneer of the 1940s,” a woman who experimented with “European facial techniques” and “inspired a revolution in cosmetic skin care.” I wonder if the mortician saw anything to distinguish her skin from that of all the other bodies he handled. I wonder what was hidden in the heart of this woman wearing white.
    I think of how fragile a thing a heart is. Some hearts are broken early, some late, and some, I suppose, never at all. Considering the length of adulthood, my own heart was broken later than many. For this, perhaps, I should count myself fortunate, but I don’t. Fortunate has lost its purest meaning. It is a word often used to describe incomplete victories, bad circumstances that could have been worse.
    Having survived childhood with a heart intact, a woman’s heart may be broken in so many ways. Men and children are common causes. The kinds of abuse a man may inflict are many, all of them involving a choice. Though a man may sometimes hurt a woman unwittingly, the pain is nevertheless a result of some choice made and carried out. He may