Treasure Island!!!

without intensity, but with affection. I was both relieved and deeply embarrassed, as if I had stumbled upon the primal scene. Then my mother read the pantoum with my father still beside her. “Anybody want to add anything?” she asked when it was done, looking round.
    Nobody did. Adrianna began to cry, tears dripping sloppily down her face.
    “Did you love him?” my mother said sympathetically.
    “Yes!” Adrianna blubbered.
    There was a long interval during which Adrianna wept quietly, then raucously, then quietly again, reminding me of the ungainly crescendos of the coffeemaker.
    “I miss him,” Adrianna said hoarsely.
    “Of course you do. So do I.”
    “I love him,” Adrianna croaked.
    “Yes, yes,” my mother cooed. “So did I.”
    “Are you guys talking about the parrot or about Mr. Tatum?” I said, upon which my mother’s tender expression disintegrated, and the softness in my father’s face congealed, quite suddenly, like yolk on a plate.
     
    After the funeral my father returned to the house. Things between him and my mother still seemed strained, but he slept in their bed and he came to dinner. After a while Adrianna too began to attend dinners, but didn’t make much social effort. Being dumped by Don had obviously hit her hard. She looked angry and disheveled and moony all at the same time. “What’s the matter?” I said a few times. “What do you
think’s
the matter?” she replied haughtily.
    If she didn’t want to confide in me, that was fine. I had my own wounds to lick. After thinking it over many times, I decided, despite the obvious awkwardness, to talk to Patty Pacholewski about what had happened. I figured that if I could see her apart from Sabrina, I could make her understand that you can’t judge a person by her bird.
    I left the house well after noon so that I would miss the lunch rush, and yet when I sloped into the sandwich shop, there was an unpleasant line in which I had to wait, unsure of whether Patty even knew I was there. When at last I inched up to the counter, she said hello grimly, adding nothing other than what her job required.
    “Was that sandwich for here, or to go?”
    “To go,” I said, a trifle testily. (I had said so beforehand.) With an impersonal thrust she removed my sandwich from the red polypropylene basket and dropped it into a greaseproof bag. Never mind that I had revered her for all of fifth grade, she nudged the bag across the counter as if she didn’t give a shit.
    I bit the inside of my cheek to staunch my tears. I had planned to tell her that Richard had died. I had planned to say, “If the only thing standing between us as roommates is that embarrassing bird, it might interest you to know that the embarrassment is now biodegrading in the yard.” But instead I flushed bright red and fled from the shop.
    At home, my mother was unloading the dishwasher in her introspective way, giving every glass and plate a solemn inspection. I sat down at the breakfast bar, unwrapped my sandwich and made a terrible discovery.
    “Not a single red pepper! It’s a grilled chicken and red pepper sandwich, and look, Mom, there’s nothing but chicken inside.”
    “There’s some peppers in the fridge.”
    “
Roasted
?”
    She made an insufficient clucking noise. Oh, Saturdays, infernal Saturdays, a wilderness of snares! Before I could say anything more, my father came in and began to fling himself noisily about looking for his car keys, and as soon as I saw he meant to enlist me in his petty search, I plumped my sandwich onto a plate and fled to the living room, where Adrianna had decamped on the sofa with a mess of library books. She looked up moodily. I settled myself in the armchair and observed that she was combing through
All About Parrots
.
    “Why’re you reading that?”
    “No reason,” she said. “Just curious.”
    “Mulling over the past’s not healthy. You’re not thinking of getting another parrot, are you?”
    “No, mostly I’m just wondering why he died. He wasn’t all that old, you know.”
    I cast about for something plausible. “But he was . . . very negative. That might have hurt him in the long run.”
    Adrianna sharpened her gaze. “Did you know birds should never be fed avocado, parsley, chocolate, or caffeine?”
    I yawned. “How about a grilled chicken and red pepper sandwich with
no
grilled peppers?”
    “And no peanuts either. Didn’t you used to give him salted peanuts as a treat?”
    She began to read aloud