The Feathers

The first feather floated on top of the water in the tub. They were taking a bath together when she noticed it. It was dark brown, almost black, and quite small. Even wet, it felt dry and soft.

She said, "Someone's molting."

"What?"

"A feather." She held it up for him to see. He held it close to his eyes. Without glasses, this was how he examined things. "I wonder where it came from," she said as she dried herself.

"Don't know." He put the feather down on the edge of the sink.

The second feather, also small and dark brown, she found on his side of the bed as she was smoothing the sheets. "Aha!" she thought. The next night, as she lay looking up at the ceiling, she felt a pinprick on her back, reached to scratch and found the third feather.

She showed him the second and third feathers.

"Probably a leak in one of the pillows."

"Aren't those feathers usually white?"

"They can be brown sometimes."

"Maybe."

That morning as she dressed she turned slowly to look at herself in the full-length mirror.

"This is ridiculous," she said aloud.

That evening, as he undressed to change into pajamas, she put on her reading glasses in order to see him more clearly.

"Like what you see?" he smiled and made a muscle.

"Sure. You always look good to me."

"Then why do you look so serious?"

"No reason."

She felt foolish and could not tell him that she wanted to examine him. Without her glasses, he looked fuzzy. His body was quite hairy. The hair was soft and dark brown. Before he put on his pajamas, she went to him, put her arms around his back and ran her hands along his body.

"Feels good," he said and returned the caress. "Want to go to bed with me?" he smiled down at her.

"Sure," she said and kissed him. On the bed, she ran her hands all over him, every inch of him.

"Oh," he sighed, "use your nails. Gently."

She did. Then they made love. She thought about the feathers.

"Tell me what you want. Does this feel good?" he said as he thrust into her in the way that usually made her moan.

"I--yes, it does. Guess I'm just tired."

He went soft and slid out of her. He was hurt, she knew. He turned on his side away from her. She ran her nails in arabesques all over his back.

"I'm sorry."

No answer.

"You know what it is? I keep thinking. I mean, it's possible that they're from a pillow, but they're brown."

"What are you talking about?"

"The feathers. I keep wondering where they're from."

"Oh, the feathers. Jesus, I don't know. What's there to think about? They're probably from one of the pillows."

Within seconds, he was snoring. It annoyed and amazed her, his capacity to be apparently wide awake and lucid one moment and snoring loudly the next. Unless she fell asleep before he did--which usually didn't happen since he seemed to fade before 9PM--she would listen to his snoring for what seemed hours. Once she began to drift off, she would often be awakened by a break in his sounds. Or, even worse, he sometimes seemed to clog up and stop breathing entirely, keeping her in suspense till he gave a strangled snort and resumed a regular rhythm. Tonight, sleep felt far away. She lay staring into the darkness.

"A feathered creature. A brown, feathered thing. With wings, maybe."

Through the window came an immense, dark figure, with wings. He stood at the foot of the bed. His eyes were large and luminous. She began to tremble, but was not afraid. She felt a warmth throughout her body, a wave of heat that seemed to emanate from her core and end in goosebumps. Her heart pounded so hard she felt her pulse in her hands, could feel the blood flowing through her veins. He came closer and then floated over the bed. Enfolding her gently in his huge wings, he picked her up. She was enclosed in total darkness. She was comfortable, even though she did not know whether she was being held feet to ceiling or right side up. She felt the softness of his underfeathers. Her toes touched small, prickly pinfeathers. She opened her eyes as wide as she could in the darkness and saw small bursts of light like static electricity on a dry winter's day. Then she was back on the bed again. He hovered horizontally over her. She wanted to ask him about himself, tell him about herself. She said nothing. His mouth opened and closed. No sound came out. With a slight flutter of his wings, he opened them wide and, as suddenly as he had appeared, he was gone.

"Wait!" she shouted. "Wait!"

The windows were as before. A breeze moved the curtains. A crack was open near the top of the window just as it had been. That's all.

"What? Did you say something?" asked her husband, turning sleepily toward her.

"Yes! I saw an angel! Right here! In this room!"

"A what?"

"An angel!"

"What time is it?" he asked with a grunt.

She sat up and looked at the luminous face of the clock next to her. "Four-thirty."

"Tell me about it in the morning."

He lowered his cup.

"What do you mean, it wasn't a dream? You think it really happened?" He looked at her with a mixture of concern and impatience. "Well, do you?"

"I, uh, yes. I think....Well, I think I.... He was real. And I remember exactly how..."

"How what?" he asked more loudly, putting his hand on her forearm and squeezing as if to remind her of his right to her thoughts as well as to reassure her of his total acceptance of them, no matter how bizarre. "How what?" he said again, squeezing a little harder.

"I remember how he felt!" she blurted out. "Well I do!" He patted her on the arm and finished the now cold coffee, looking at her darkly over the rim of the cup. "Well, I've got to go to work. You take it easy today,

you hear?" He gave her a peck on the lips and quickly left the house.

For the next few days, they hardly spoke. He was watching her all the time. She realized that he thought she was acting crazy and so tried to act as normal and in as routine a fashion as possible. When a car ran up on their lawn and knocked over two azalea bushes, she didn't tell him about it. The event seemed so out of the ordinary and like a creation of a deranged mind that she could find no words with which to tell him. Since he came home well after dark on weeknights, she had time to think about a way to present it to him.

Early Saturday morning, a policeman came to the door to look at the lawn and get the details of the accident.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he yelled, after the policeman left. "You made me look like a space case, not knowing a car ran up on my own lawn. What the hell is the matter with you?"

"I just--" she hiccupped, "I just couldn't think of how to tell you. I know you think I'm going off the deep end, and then this car ran up on the lawn and...and I thought you'd think somehow it was my fault!"

She sobbed and buried her head in his brown sweater.

"Okay, okay," he said and forced her away in order to look at her face. Gray mascara tears ran down her cheeks. "Here. Stop crying," he said and dabbed at her face with a tissue. "Maybe you ought to take a couple of weeks off, honey. You've been trying to do too much as usual."

"I have?"

"Yes. Now I want you to come and sit down next to me so we can talk seriously. This whole thing has gone too far."

Gently, he pulled her down next to him on the livingroom couch. She doubled over suddenly and put her head down between her knees.

"What's wrong? Are you sick?"

"No. Look." she whispered.

"Where?" he leaned over.

"Here. On the rug."

"What?"

"There," she said, pointing to the brown carpeting.

He looked and saw nothing at first. Then he looked more closely.

"What, this?" he asked. With forefinger and thumb he held up a small, brown feather.

"It's another one. See? It's just like the others, isn't it? I mean, it would have to be from the same place, right?

They're all the same, these feathers. So they've got to be from the same place, right?" She was triumphant.

"A pillow is leaking. That's all it is."

"No, no! I've checked. I did find a pillow that's leaking, but it's got only white feathers. I emptied out the whole thing in the basement. And there were no brown feathers at all!"

"Look, love," he said with forced calm, "let's not get silly about this. You just haven't found the pillow with the brown feathers. Okay?"

Over the next few days, eight more feathers appeared, in the dryer clinging to a sock, in her coat pocket, in the pots and pans cabinet, in her make-up drawer, two nestled together on the front hall rug, and the seventh was on the floor under the coffee table. He found the eighth, one morning while brushing his hair forward over his balding forehead. He watched the feather float with a seesaw motion onto the bathmat. In mid-stroke, he stopped. As he bent to pick up the feather, his glasses fell off. One lens rested directly above it, magnifying a spot of light brown along its spine. He kneeled on the mat and saw that there were actually many minor variations in its coloration. Near the light brown spot was a taupe line and another symmetrically placed on the other side of the longitudinal division. To the right and left of this bony backbone, was an area of brown so deep it looked almost black. At its base was a puff of rich brown fluff the color of bitter chocolate. He touched the down with a fingertip. It was so delicate he could not feel it. He took the feather and brushed it against his cheek, then against his eye. As he was running it along his lower lip a knock came at the door. Startled, he bumped the back of his head hard against the underside of the sink.

"David? What was that noise? Are you okay?"

"Yes, I'm fine."

"John just called to say not to pick him up. He's not going to work today. Okay?"

"Yes, yes. Okay. Thanks. I'll be out in a minute."

Where had it come from? Maybe there was a bird in the house. Or--he drew a blank at this point. Maybe it wasn't pillows. He believed that she had examined all of them. He remembered the first feather in the bathtub. She had joked about it, implying that it came from one of them. That wasn't possible, of course. This last feather had been brushed out of--- He put the glasses on and looked in the mirror, at his thinning, dark brown hair. Then he peered closer and parted his hair with his fingers, first in one place and then another, then frantically ran his hands back and forth through it, ruffling every inch of hair. He thought as he looked at his disheveled image that he somewhat resembled a baby duck. This is silly, he thought, as he again brushed his hair forward over his high forehead. His crotch itched. He scratched absently and, as he pulled his hand past the belt, another feather floated to the floor. Oh, God! What the hell is this! He tore his clothes off and shook them out violently.

"David? You've been in there for hours. Are you feeling alright?"

"Yes, yes, I'm fine! Just doing the crossword puzzle. I'll be out in a minute."

"You'll be late for work. It's ten minutes to nine."

"Okay, okay."

He called from work at 4PM. "Let's go out for dinner tonight." When he called, she was vacuuming. She found this activity newly satisfying and tried very hard to do it no more than once a day. More would seem compulsive. She had never appreciated the light on this machine so much. It illuminated a good six inches in front of its path clearly so that if anything unusual appeared, she could stop the vacuum cleaner in time. She was, of course, looking for more feathers.

He arrived home with a dozen yellow daffodils and a warm embrace. After coffee and dessert at the Greek restaurant, he said in an almost off-hand manner, "I found a couple of feathers this morning."

"Really?"

"Would I say so if it weren't true? Well, I did. In the bathroom."

"Yeah?" said she, looking at him sideways.

"Just like the others. Brown. Actually, if you look at them carefully, they're all shades of brown, from a kind of beige to an almost brown-black."

"Yeah?" she said, thinking that his mistrust of her had made her profoundly doubt her own senses. "How big were they?" she said, waiting for a sign that he was not merely indulging what he considered total madness.

"They were just like the others. And, you know, they have the most delicate puffy down at the ends..."

"You really did find some, didn't you!"

"Yes, of course. I wouldn't say I had if I hadn't."

With tears in her eyes, she got up and embraced him. The people at the next table stopped eating and stared.

"Let's go home," she said.

She smiled all the way home. She couldn't stop smiling, nor could she stop touching him. She held his hand, touched his hair, snuggled up to him. He returned her hand squeezes, stroked the back of her neck. But he found himself aware of recurrent and familiar feelings of reluctance. The feathers, in their increasing numbers, demanded more than mere recognition. They were proof of some event. He felt forced into a kind of collusion with her. She was not so much triumphant as grateful to him. This, too, upset him, the ease with which she apparently accepted their presence. Something was being demanded of him. He often felt she wanted more than he could give.

They made love. She moaned when he thrust into her and told him how much she loved him. It had been a while since they had taken the time to make love like this and, in spite of his feeling of not quite giving himself over to it, it was wonderful. After, he held her and drifted, thinking about the feathers that had dropped to the floor in the morning, this morning.

His thoughts felt as thin as the air he was breathing. A cool wind blew against his eyes. He looked down and saw the high mountains, blacker than the night sky. The moon was almost on a level with him, hidden by the edge of a silver cloud. He saw an occasional light from a house and then, below him, there was the town, its streets lit by the dusty yellow glow of rows of street lamps. Without any search, he found the house again and flew through the second-story window. She lay asleep, the skirt of her soft blue nightgown up around her waist. Her skin looked so white against the dark triangle of her pubic hair. He stood at the foot of the bed, and as he stared at her nakedness, her eyes opened. He moved into the air above her and so looked into her face. She smiled at him. He was filled with an intense yearning even her presence could not satisfy it. Yet he had come to see her. She raised her arms up to him, her face suffused with pleasure. He was overwhelmed. And again, he picked her up gently.

She seemed so small, yet her spirit filled him completely. His heart ached. She lay still in his arms, but with a stillness that was alive and responsive. He wanted to tell her how he loved her, but again could not speak. He knew by the way she rested in his arms that she wanted him, would accept any action of his. He was aroused. Her attitude of stillness stirred him far more than if she had pressed her loins against him. He would enter her. But against his desire, he laid her down softly on the bed. He would return another time, he knew. As he turned toward the window, he felt her pluck at his tailfeathers. A small, sharp pain stung him as he left the way he had come. He saw the town again below him, then the dark mountains, blacker than the sky. And, as the cool wind blew against his eyes, he felt the wash of salty tears. He fell, then, abruptly from the height of the now moonless sky.

With a start of fear, he bounced on the bed and sat up straining his eyes against the darkness. He turned and, there to his right, she lay, uncovered, her nightgown up around her waist. He carefully drew the quilt over her and lay down again to sleep, a deep and peaceful sleep.

The morning light found them wound around each other, legs entangled, arms entwined. He opened his eyes, she hers. In one motion, he rolled her onto her back and entered her. She sighed, he smiled. She moaned, he murmured, "I love you so very much." She held him tightly, fitting herself to him, and he penetrated her even more deeply. "I love you, too." She smiled up into his face. They kissed. Neither had yet noticed the long, dark brown feather that lay pressed between them.