Treasure Island!!!

I must confess that at this point, it wasn’t the bird’s sufferings that distressed me, but the idea that his spirit might come back, twisted and bitter and bobbing like Shirley Temple. I ate the remaining macaroni and slid into a nervous twitchy sleep.
    In the morning, my mother came into my room, without knocking, and opened the shade. When she was convinced I was alert, she sat on the side of the bed and took her hands in mine.
    “I have some bad news.”
    “I’m lying down.”
    At first I feared I would have to make a spectacle of myself—cry out in disbelief, wrench my hair, do
something
to simulate shock and grief—but my mother didn’t seem in the least mistrustful, and received my (admittedly flat) “Are you sure? Are you kidding?” without suspicions. Perhaps she herself was too broken up by Richard’s death to register the peculiarities of my reaction. Together we went into the bathroom to view the body, and I made some feeble excuses as to why he hadn’t slept in my room the night before. (He’d seemed fussy and I thought he was hot, so I’d moved him.) My mother admired his plumage, murmuring in a reverent tone about the greens and the yellows and the white rings around his eyes, and I acknowledged that it had been hard to take in his full beauty when he was so alive and mobile. Still standing in the bathroom we discussed the formalities of burial, which I thought best to defer, in case I wanted to go back to the pet store and demand a refund. Does a Yellow-naped Amazon come with a money-back guarantee? my mother asked.
    “Don’t know,” I said, but it was hard not to feel the allure of eight hundred dollars in cold hard parrot-green cash. More to the point, I was dying to take a shower—“and I’d like to be in here alone,” I said—so I asked my mother to bag the body and put it in the freezer. Would she refuse me? My pulse accelerated, but in no time at all, she lifted Richard’s body out of the cage and sealed it in a Ziploc ten-gallon double-zipper Big Bag.
    “We have to tell Adrianna,” my mother said as she closed the freezer.
    “We do?”
    “Before she goes to school.” She washed her hands, dried them on a twisted dishtowel. “It would be wrong to let her go off not knowing
.
Before you shower, I’ll make you some breakfast. What would you like?”
    “Nothing, really.”
    “Grief is a wound that needs attention in order to heal. We can have pancakes.”
    Nobody rises to the occasion like my mother. She brought out the mixing bowls, the spatula, and the fry pan. Her pancakes became a bit of solemn pageantry, the stately measuring broken up only occasionally by anxious glances at me. I know she expected tears. She gave me a short hug after she cracked the eggs. “I’m fine,” I said, pushing her off. When Adrianna’s step was heard in the hallway, she threw down her wooden spoon and ran off to intercept her.
    “Adrianna, look at me, sweetie. Never mind the other thing for a moment. I have news.”
    “Is something wrong?” Adrianna tipped her head as she fastened an earring.
    “Yes.”
    “Is it Dad?”
    “It’s Richard. He’s dead.”
    “No, he’s not,” Adrianna said evenly. “I just heard him.”
    “Impossible,” my mother said, startled.
    “You didn’t,” I told her.
    “Of course, I did. I always hear him when I’m getting dressed.”
    “But not today. What did he say?” I asked sharply.
    “He squawked. He did his beak-grinding thing—”
    “I don’t believe in ghosts.”
Avaunt! and quit my sight! let the earth hide thee!
“Obviously she heard something else. Right, Mom? He’s been dead all morning.”
    My mother solemnly opened the freezer.
    “Oh no,” Adrianna said. “Dickie Bird!”
    “Sit down and have some pancakes,” my mother said, resuming her position at the stove. It was clear to me now, my mother possessed the pragmatism of a true adventurer.
     

CHAPTER 21

     
    W e didn’t have pets as kids. Nobody from prom died in a prom car accident. I didn’t go to camp, so nobody from camp drowned in a lake. My mother’s parents died before I was born, and my father’s parents are still rotting away like apples in some nursing home in Nebraska. I only met them once and can barely remember it. So I was surprised at how complicated it felt to lose somebody. I felt relieved, of course—my room was my own again—but I also felt regret. A touch of disgust. Rage. Confusion. And sweet grief, which I’d never known. Yes, under