THE PARROT

 

 

The sounds of morning: a delicate crisscross of bird songs; two tractors, with comforting mechanical resonance in the baritone range; and a remote-control monster truck, perhaps inspired by the tractors, a piercing irritation, racing up and down the street. She’s learned in her study of speech that everything has a voice and that it’s good for the training of one’s ear to pay attention especially to sounds that annoy.

Her favorite sound of dawn over the last month, and one that she controls, is the custom teakettle, Vince’s pride and joy, which whistles the opening phrase of “Tea for Two” in a stiff, yet fetching, brass call to morning.

When she and Vince initially courted—if you can call it courting when you fuck the first night—he showed off the teakettle, and offered a seminar on the song. She’d always thought “Tea for Two,” was a ditty from a prehistoric time like the thirties. It actually came from a Broadway show of the twenties, “No, No, Nanette.”

Vince, the king of playlists, commanded his Bose system to play a number of versions of the tune, each of which he dubbed seminal. At the time she wondered how so many renditions could be seminal—wasn’t seminal a singular attribute? Only one example of the group was seminal, the way she saw it, but soon, she realized, that Vince favored absolute modifiers like ultimate, supreme, and definitive because they signified authority.

In any case, she paid close attention to his commentary, because the man, in the first blush of knowing him, did seem rather supreme. He began with the seminal Art Tatum recording of 1939, a dazzling complex of piano voicings with enough piano notes flying every which way to fill a hundred tea cups. Then came Tommy Dorsey’s cha-cha version, which struck her as perfectly camp, followed by Thelonious Monk’s off-beat side, spiked with tension-building dissonance, which Vince suggested grew out of Art Tatum’s example, though was seminal in its own right. Finally, Vince played the recording he clearly loved the most, a singer with the unlikely name of Blossom Dearie. Her voice was even more improbable: thin and girlish, almost seeming like a whispering parody. The song, on which the singer also played piano, was recorded at an uncommonly slow tempo.

Vince directed her to listen closely to the lyrics, the second time through. She had to admit that Ms. Dearie had precise diction and that the lyrics were lovely. Vince said, “Isn’t her tenderness unequivocal?” She didn’t know that one could equivocate tenderness, but she was cheered that Vince seemed to value tenderness. That’s what she wanted, after all, a man who was tender like Marco.

Pina soon learned the song, practicing it every morning in the shower, and one night, at Vince’s house in San Francisco, she sat on his lap and sang it to him, albeit at a more rapid tempo.

          Picture me upon your knee
          Just tea for two
          And two for tea
          Just me for you
          And you for me alone

          Nobody near us to see us or hear us
          No friends or relations
          On weekend vacations
          We won’t have it known
          That we own a telephone, dear.

So goes the first chorus. Pina’s voice is much deeper than Blossom Dearie’s, closer to a contralto range. Although she’s not as musical as Dearie, she can at least carry a tune. For a couple of years after Marco died she went weekly to a karaoke bar with a couple of girlfriends who claimed that she’d be holding out on them.

Vince was very moved by her a cappella version. Tears welled in his eyes. Yes, he was tender. That was the night he invited her to move in with him.

The sounds that affected her yesterday: the curdling, high-pitched yelp of the cocker spaniel, and Charlie’s voice message, the one a horror, the other an enticement. She listened to his message a half dozen times. It sounds like he savors her name, and he pronounced it just once. That’s all she needs. And the sweet pauses around his modest proposal—effective, if not especially artful.

 

But she’s not ready to call him back. After a moment of inspiration she decides to drive through the city to the ocean. She packs a lunch: a tuna and deviled egg sandwich, the same spread her mother used to make for picnics, and a baggie of dried mango slices. That and a thermos of black coffee will fortify her when she gets to the beach.

The traffic down 101 is very light and she’s shocked to see so few cars on the Golden Gate Bridge. Even under a high overcast, the city, on her left, gleams, and the channel that opens to the ocean, already hints at immensity. Years ago she’d read an article about suicides from the bridge, which mentioned that the vast majority of leapers jump from the east side, facing the city, the supposition being that few people can face the abyss of the open waters. Pina’s not sure which side she’d choose.

She exits right after the toll and drives the winding road through the Presidio, which traces the line of the bay. After a wide turn the superrich neighborhood of Sea Cliff comes into view, appearing like a white Mediterranean city, even without the sun beaming on it.

Past the beaches on the Golden Gate: Baker and China, both closed to cars, she drives up through the muni golf course—Vince’s fave, which he calls a “poor man’s Pebble Beach.” No golfers today. Vince pointed out that the golf course was built on the site of an old Chinese cemetery and that a monument from those days still exists in a clump of cypress near the first green. “That’s where my approach shot ends up half the time. Some would call it the Chinese curse.”

“But not you?” she asked.

“Heck no, I’m not a racist.”

She wasn’t sure. She’d heard him curse Chinese drivers and refer to the race as “inscrutable.”

When she asked what happened to the Chinese graves, Vince shrugged.

She drives to the top of the hill past the Legion of Honor, a repository of much mediocre French salon painting, and a cast of Rodin’s “The Thinker,” cogitating out front for the world to see.

As she shoots down to Geary, past the old fire station and the Seal Rock Inn, a motel she’s always imagined would be the very spot for a sleazy tryst, she wonders if she should try and reach Vince. Maybe she can catch him, from a distance, on a break. Selfish or not, the prospect of seeing Vince would put a damper on her day.

Just like that, the ocean comes into view, with plenty of open parking down along the Cliff House, with the actual Seal Rocks in view. But she continues down to the flats of Ocean Beach. She can see people walking on the beach, and though the rows of parking are closed off, all she has to do is drive a little further and park across the Great Highway near Beach Chalet.

Pina grew up going to the pristine beaches of Marin County: Stinson, Muir, and Point Reyes, and to the state beaches on the Sonoma Coast. Ocean Beach was always maligned as a city beach with few attributes, but she has a fondness for the democracy of it and, even on an overcast day, she finds the straight edge of the horizon line, and all that she imagines lying beyond it, beguiling.

She lays out a blanket, has a good hit of coffee, and rolls up her jeans past the calves. It’s not really cold at all and she has the perfect layers on top. She opens her arms to the ocean as if she was a kite and the wind might lift her up over the sea. She can’t remember when she last felt such exhilaration.

Barefoot, she strolls along the hard wet sand, on the apron of the waves, past masked and unmasked people, with dogs and without, feeling a tug of despair at the thought of the cocker spaniel she maimed yesterday.

At Kelly’s Cove, the north end of the beach, she watches several long-beaked seabirds she doesn’t recognize, neither standard seagulls nor pelicans, swoop down over the wet sand to dig out morsels and dive into the water for larger side dishes.

Back on the blanket, she thinks of her mother as she bites into the tuna-deviled egg sandwich. It’s taken her years to discover her mother’s secret about this comfort food: it requires a ridiculous amount of mayonnaise. A picnic at the ocean was her mother’s favorite ritual, as close as they came to going to church, and clearly more liberating.

On the way back she drives through Golden Gate Park, stopping almost at once at the Dutch Garden, by the old windmill. Not another soul to be seen. The tulips, arranged in a wide circle, are losing their petals, but there is much else in bloom in the glade, bordered by cypress trees.

She spots a perfectly ripe tea rose on the way back to the car, and brazenly breaks off a wedge of the lower branches. That, too, was a favorite activity of her mother’s—capturing wild branches in spring bloom, like mimosa, cherry blossom, and quince. As a child, Pina was horrified by the practice. Her mother kept clippers in the glove compartment, and would have her dad stop the car so she could plunder the wild. It seemed like the behavior of a peasant. Now, all these years later, she’s become her mother.

 

Pina feels triumphant on her return to Sonoma. She finds a vase for the tea rose, which she decides are a saturated hue of blackened fuchsia. The branches bend forward as if wind-blown by an ocean breeze. For a long moment she’s actually delighted with herself and mixes a martini.

“Vince was pleased that you left me the toilet paper,” she says, when Charlie answers. “And so was I.”
“I’m glad I pleased you.” He has a little laugh in his voice.
“We talked about how toilet paper hoarders of this era should have their heads shaved like the colabos in France after the war.”
“That was Vince’s idea?”
“No, it was mine. He thought you were generous.” She lifts her martini and savors the first crystalline sip.
“I wouldn’t go that far. I had the means.”
“Well, you may be able to keep your hair.”
“Thanks. Hey I want you to meet somebody.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Say hello to Pina, Roscoe.”
A clipped, nasal voice says, “Pina, Pina, Pina.”
“What are you doing, Charlie?” she asks, before taking a bracing swill of her cocktail.
“I wanted you to meet my parrot, Roscoe.”
“How do you do?” the strange, alternative voice says.
“I didn’t know you were a ventriloquist, Charlie.”
“No, that’s Roscoe. Aren’t you going to greet him?”
She shakes her head, but says, “Hello Roscoe.”
“Hello, hello.”
“Shall we sing a song together, Roscoe?”
Now she hears two voices, the faux parrot voice and Charlie’s, intone “Row, row, row your boat.” She reminds herself that Charlie’s an animator who specialized in sound projection.
“That’s a nice trick, Charlie,” she says. “What else have you got?”
“Maybe you should come over and meet Roscoe, Pina.”
“Pina, Pina, Pina,” the parrot voice says.
“Yeah, right.” She all but finishes her martini, swirling the thimble full at the bottom of the glass.
“That brings me to my proposal. I thought you could come over to my place for lunch, out on the deck. We’d do it staying absolutely mindful of social distance. I have my friend George over once a week.”
“Is George a parrot as well?”
“No, no, George is quite human. He’s a retired violist from the symphony.  He likes to pass out his business card, which says: ‘George Kostelanetz. Since 1945. Persona non grata.’ But as you can imagine he’s very accomplished. He has perfect pitch and makes the most beautiful wind chimes.
“When he comes, I leave the door open. He doesn’t touch anything, and I have his seat ten feet away from mine out on the deck. So, Pina, you’d have to bring your lunch and a glass for wine.”
Pina wants to shout YES into the phone, but tempers her reaction. “Let me think about it. I’ll get back to you.”
“I’d certainly enjoy having you here. Now say goodbye to Pina, Roscoe.”
“Arrivederci, Pina, Pina, Pina.”