2021 Fiction Winner: "Empty Nest" by Sarah L Troub
Thumbnail photo credit: Robert Thiemann (@rthiemann), obtained and licensed through Unsplash
Empty Nest
There’s an old lady in the park that I see on my morning jogs. She’s always on the same bench, perched with a bag of bird feed clutched in one hand. She has a beak-ish nose and is rather thin-boned. Some think she resembles my mother, but nobody takes my word that she doesn’t. Not Catherine, who will sometimes join me on my runs before she takes Tom to school. Nor Pete, who only comes along to remind me that I have things to do afterwards.
The only person who will humor my musings about Bird Lady is my receptionist, and I think it’s only because she’s afraid to change the subject or interrupt me.
“I saw her again today,” I’ll usually say to her, still panting. She’ll stop typing and offer to get me a glass of water, which I’ll usually accept. Her name is Winifred. I think it’s a very unusual name for someone as young as her. She looks more like an Emma.
Usually Bird Lady doesn’t say or do anything unusual, and that’s where our conversation about her ends. But this week has deviated from the norm. I take the cup from Winifred and gulp it down.
“She was staring at me again,” I tell Winifred. “Looked me right in the face. She was feeding those gloomy pigeons, and she spoke to them.”
“What’d she say, sir?” Winifred asks. She’s doesn’t even look annoyed when I lean on her mahogany desk. The last secretary had a big problem with that. She also hated birds. Her name was Margot, and she was also too young to have that name. I like Winifred much better.
“She was talking about me.” I recount the way her thin lips had spat out the words. Not unlike how my mother used to, when she would get red-faced and spitty with me as a boy. “Mayor Birdy. She was saying this to the pigeons. Something about a nest. Didn’t make much sense, so I stopped listening.”
Winifred makes a strategically interested noise. “Peculiar. Catherine Birdy is in your office.”
“My wife?” I remark. Winifred offers no further explanation. Bending my head just so, I can indeed make out her silhouette in the frosted glass.
Catherine is there, leaning on my desk and tracing a finger over a photograph of our son. She looks over to me when the door shuts. A breeze ruffles her hair.
“Why is the window open?” I ask. The sky is dark this morning, voluminous clouds moving rapidly across the skyline. It casts odd shadows on her face, and I don’t like the idea of inviting that weather inside. But when I move, Catherine intercepts me. The dress she’s wearing is white, very clean. It has an odd texture, one so smooth and fine that it could have been made from dove wings. The more I stare at it, the more I start to recognize it. Yes, I’m certain I’ve seen the very same dress on Bird Lady. “Catherine, let me close the window.”
“You can’t,” she says. “It’s Mother’s Day.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Catherine won’t move out of my way. She’s always been serious, but her face is grave now. Urgent, even. A ringing starts in my ears, louder with every second that window gapes open. She looks very beautiful in that dress, even when she frowns. If I wasn’t Mayor Franklyn Birdy, I would feel embarrassed to wear my workout joggers in her presence. “Out of my way.”
“I’ve met your mother,” she tells me, raising her voice against the torrent of wind that fills the room. Her hair flies wildly around her face. And I remember, it wasn’t the Bird Lady in that dress. I saw a woman talking to Bird Lady, bending down to hold her hand as I ran past. How hadn’t I realized? “You’ve completely forgotten her, haven’t you?”
The ringing in my ears grows more cacophonic until I can barely hear her. Why hasn’t Winifred burst in to see what all the clamor is? Where is Pete with his list of tasks for me to complete? The sky rolls behind Catherine, seething with a storm.
“I have no mother,” I yell over the noise. “I’m self-made!”
Catherine is still clutching the picture of our boy. I’ve always felt a sense of pride that he closely resembled me.
“Everyone’s got a mother!” Catherine shouts over the noise. It’s not a ringing at all, but the cawing of thousands of birds. As I stare out the window I realize that what I thought of as storm clouds are really swarms of wild pigeons trying to fit inside my office. They’ve clustered at the windowsill, hopping over each other trying to worm their way inside. There are so many squeezed together that they better resemble a giant, chaotic mass. As naturally as any other pigeon, the old woman that I often see on my morning jogs is among them. Gray feathers stick out of her hair. She tilts her head at me and stares, like she did just this morning. She looks at me expectantly, but I have nothing to offer that would interest her.
“Frankie,” she says to me. A name I haven’t heard in decades, a name that rips a tear from my eye. She holds her arms out to me.
The birds swoop in, pecking at my face. Catherine disappears in the swarm of birds, but I can hear her—she’s crying, or perhaps laughing. It blends perfectly with the chaos of caws and warbles. The pigeons come under my feet and dig into my suit with their talons, lifting me off the ground. Feathers fly everywhere in the storm. I can’t see my mother anywhere, but the birds surround me, and it almost feels like her embrace. A feather flies into my mouth, and it’s reminiscent of her kiss.
Touchstone Undergraduate Creative Writing Awards are an annual award series open to current undergraduate students at Kansas State University. In each of the following genres: poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction, two submissions are chosen by the editors at Touchstone. Winner in every genre receives a cash prize of $75, and the runner up receives $50.
Sarah L Troub is a sophomore at Kansas State University studying Creative Writing, Fine Arts, and Spanish. She is also highly involved in the leadership of her sorority. Her ideal future would include book writing and illustration, and she enjoys writing stories that include fantastical, humorous, or otherworldly components.