We Were Birds

"So sorry to hear about your loss."

Those were the words that Fern Whitelaw heard most often the day of Quinn Sutherland's funeral. She stood, a solitary figure in a black knee-length dress and a wide-brimmed black hat, holding her black clutch in her white, termbling hands. She stood over the coffin which held no body, only memories of who Quinn Sutherland had been. His body was at her father's house, in a small copper urn on the kitchen table where once upon a time, her father had read the morning paper and had his morning advil and black coffee. Now he lay in bed, groaning at the Engish nursemaid who took care of him (Bless her sorry soul).

Loss. What a strange word. Fern could remember all the times she'd lost something. Her house keys, she'd lost those often. Her books - she'd lost those at school mostly. And then when they'd gone off together, she'd lost her way a few times, well, they'd lost their way a few times. Oh, there was the one time when they were going to California and they ended up in Las Vegas...

But losing a person was altogether different. Because the fact was that she hadn't lost him.

The fact was that she'd eventually found all of those other things. Her house keys ended up being on the floor of Quinn's ancient Ford truck where she'd dropped them on her way out of his car after they'd driven along the beach and listened to Bob Dylan on his static-filled radio. Her books always ended up being in the very back of her locker or at the desk of the teacher of her last class that day; someplace usual and not at all obscure. And they'd found their way back to California, but that was of course after they'd lost fifty dollars on a slot machine (before they'd been run out of the casino for not being 21).

She would never find Quinn again, though. That wasn't loss. Quinn wasn't lost, because lost always implied coming back, lost always implied being found again. Quinn had gone off now, on his own, to have his last great adventure, as he'd always said, and she had been left. Left to stand at his grave with cold, hard eyes that wouldn't cry.

The people at his funeral were all folks she'd never thought she'd see again. Her father, dear god, he was ancient now, but still alive. Unfair, that's what it was. Why did he have to be alive when Quinn was...not? He could slip away easily into death, but Quinn had left with a laugh and a dance and a terrible Edith Piaf impression. And with an imprint on Fern's heart that would never go away.

"We all know how much he meant to you."

No you didn't. Those words kept ringing in Fern's mind, over and over again they played like a broken record that Quinn bought from the dime store down the street and had played when he couldn't sleep at night.

They didn't know, not at all. They didn't understand Quinn's smile, something she'd disected over and over again. There were eleven different smiles and twenty-four different adjectives for them. They didn't know that when he cried he always, always covered his face - like he was ashamed. They didn't know how he had whispered her name in the still darkness, sometimes when they were happy and sometimes when they were sad. They didn't know how he had shook his hips to terrible disco music and how he had dreamed of a life much bigger than himself. They didn't know he'd been addicted to gum ever since the day Fern had made him quit smoking.

They didn't know the history of his scars, and they didn't know how his kisses tasted at different periods of the day (because they all tasted differently). They didn't understand.

Fern stood in the clear, grey day far longer than anyone else. Quinn's father had been dead for a long time but Fern seemed to miss him too. Just because he'd loved Quinn as much as Fern had, only in a different way entirely.

She made herself not cry, she squeezed her eyes so tight to force the tears away. Once she opened them and they were watery but she closed them again, blinked rapidly, closed and then finally opened them again to a clear sky. The fresh brown dirt laid carelessly over the new grave. Quinn's body wasn't there but the hurt wasn't any less.

Kneeling over his grave, she hugged her knees to her chest, and wrapped her arms around her legs. "I know what you'd say if you were here," she whispered. "You'd say what you always used to say. This too shall pass, right?" Her head fell to her knees and she picked it up with a sort of weariness that exceeded her years. "Sorry Quinn. I just don't think this ever will pass."

The wind answered her, blowing around her, blowing her fair hair around her face and chilling the back of her neck. Some of the fresh dirt on the grave was blown away and the myriad of flowers on the graves fluttered in the breeze. The air was sweet with the scent of roses, lilacs and lupins. Well, if that was his answer, it was a pretty terrible one. Fern looked to the overcast sky. It would rain soon and she should get back to the house.

Standing up, she looked at the grave. And then, putting her shaking hands to her neck, she pulled off the tiny pearl necklace that Quinn had given her once when they had money for a change, and dropped it in the dirt. If he were here, Quinn would give her a faux-glare, pick up the necklace and say in that barnacle drawl of his, "Darlin', you can't go around dropping that sort of thing. It's special. It has a meaning. Besides, it cost me a fortune," he'd say. Sorry, Fern thought. Sorry, I just don't want it anymore.

Fern turned away from the grave, got in her father's enormous hearse and drove off to her house on the cliffs.

It was an imposing sight, like it always had been. When she'd arrived there, three days earlier, with Quinn's cremated ashes in tow, she'd been afraid to come back. And when she'd knocked on the door the first time, the nursemaid had answered and had taken her to her father's bedroom. He'd taken one look at Fern and one look at the Urn and had said in his gravely, steely voice, "Well, that's it, isn't it." It hadn't been a question. And Fern had hugged onto the urn and had nodded like a child who had been caught doing something naughty.

Quinn had said he'd wanted to be buried in their hometown. Fern had gone white when he'd told her, but he said that he wanted to be buried next to his father and his father's father. "It's the least you can do," Quinn had joked, "I drove you all over the country. All you have to do is drive back home."

What an ambiguous word that was. Home. A little like the word loss.

The house was silent when Fern entered, much different than the way it had been when she'd left, escaped, all those years ago. From upstairs, Fern heard a cough. Her father was awake, probably watching the TV. The urn was still safely on the kitchen table.

The only noise in the entire house was the sound of her black heeled shoes on the wooden floorboards. They clacked and creaked along as they made their way through the house, to the back. And then, she was out the back door. And then she was opening the caged door. And then she was in the old aviary. It was large, but her father had been an ornithologist, so that was expected. Now, however, it stood empty and cold, the dead trees shriveled with old age.

Taking a deep breath, Fern looked around the place that used to bring her so much comfort. The birds were gone, but she could still remember them. How they'd looked at her with innocent eyes and soft expressions that always knew exactly what she was thinking. How they'd flown continuously in the large cage. How they'd sung to one another, telling each other secret things. When she was younger, she'd wanted to know their language so bad.

A small, long-forgotten sentence flit through Fern's head. "Ah, I understand why your father protects you so much then," Quinn had said once. For the life of her, Fern could not remember why he'd said it. That thought caused a stab of pain to go through her. She didn't want to forget anything, but it seemed as if everything was slipping away quickly. Taking a deep breath, Fern forced herself to remember exactly how Quinn's face had looked when he'd been deep in concentration.

His olive skin, chin and cheeks always covered by a thin layer of scratchy hair. His mussed, sometimes curly hair that stood up when not washed for a few days. His dark eyebrows, pulled into their center, they framed those large brown eyes and the longest eyelashes she'd ever seen. He'd been beautiful, well, wasn't that why all the girls had loved him? Or maybe it had been his carefree and easy personality that had made him the teachers' favorites - even the ones who said he was a no-good rabble rouser.

Sitting in the abandoned aviary, Fern forced herself to capture that memory and store it away for days and nights much darker than today. For days and nights when she thought there would be no end to the pain. They would come, she knew it.

"Miss Whitelaw?" came the voice of the nursemaid. Fern stood up and looked at the older woman who wore a traditional suit of all white. Fern let herself out of the aviary and met with the woman. They made a strange pair, Fern all in black, the nursemaid all in white. "I've laundered your sheets. What time should I start dinner?" she inquired.

Taking a deep breath, Fern took one last look at the aviary. This really had been where it had all started, hadn't it? Now it was a part of a person that she was no longer. It belonged to a person with a much lighter heart. "You may ask my father. I don't think I'll be staying for dinner. I think I'm going to go now."

"Well, the Professor is sleeping now. Would you like me to wake him so you can say goodbye?" she asked.

Fern smiled. "Don't worry. I already said goodbye." This wasn't true, but in a way it was. Fern knew her father would not be surprised when he discovered that she had left. The nursemaid smiled and turned way from the younger woman, who looked down at her feet. A ripple of terrible grief went through this and all at once she felt more helpless than she ever had. But then she lifted her chin and thrust back her shoulders in the way that Quinn called her 'fighting stance' and started off back to the house. The older nurse had already disappeared back upstairs to her father. Fern took Quinn's ashes off the table and tucked the urn under her arm in a protective way.

She left the house as silently as she'd come. She got into Quinn's Chevy - he'd traded the Ford for it ages ago, back when they still lived in the city - started it up and drove quietly away from the large house. She would not miss it. It was lost to her, the same way Quinn was.

But maybe in a way they weren't lost at all.