Everybody Loves Raymond

Stella never set out to torture anyone, but that rarely matters in the end.

“Who’s a pretty bird?” she asked, slipping one of her slender fingers through the bars of the cage. The parrot blinked back at her, sizing her up.

“He’s only two years old,” the pet store owner said. “Still a baby for an African Grey. They can live to be sixty years old—sometimes older.”

Although he was giving her the hard sell, it was love at first sight for Stella and the parrot. Paying the man for bird, cage, food, and an assortment of oddities to entertain the bird, Stella hesitated.

“What’s his name?”

The owner shrugged.

Stella leaned in close and whispered, “I think I’ll call you Raymond. Everybody loves Raymond.”

Stella zipped her wallet and balanced cage, food, and the rest in her arms. The bell tinkled as she walked into the summer sunshine with Raymond perched safely on a rung of his new cage. Stella hoofed it the half mile she had walked from her one-bedroom apartment in Queens to the store.

Fresh out of a relationship, Stella was ready to start over. And that began with Raymond. Stella hadn’t planned on coming home with a parrot, but after hanging up the phone with her ex-partner for the last time, she couldn’t spend the night alone. Nor could she spend it in the company of other humans who might further trample over the fragments of her shattered heart. Although she had envisioned bringing home a squirmy puppy, there was an ephemeral something in the eye of the little grey parrot that sung more sweetly to her than any song he could have performed.

As Stella set Raymond on the windowsill in her too-big bedroom, she began fashioning the cage into a playground and spoke in a hushed, calming voice. Using twist ties from the kitchen, Stella affixed a mirror and hanging ladder before moving onto the bamboo perches.

“Who’s a pretty bird?” she soothed Raymond, his feathers fluffed in concern as she sprinkled shavings in the bottom of his new home. After she was satisfied that with the eclectic assortment of toys, she offered Raymond two fingers to climb onto.

“Who’s a pretty bird?” he mimed, bobbing his head as he clambered onto her hand. Stella smiled and stroked his head as his frightened feathers flattened against his back once more.

“I love you Raymond,” Stella said, nuzzling into the down of his wing. He chirped, puffing out his smoky chest. From then on, the two were inseparable.

Over the course of finishing college and graduating to business school, Raymond kept Stella company as she poured over notes and prepped for interviews. He perched on her shoulder, nipping affectionately at her ear when she paced before her first day in a new downtown office. And when Stella finally mustered the courage to bring a girl home for dinner after several successful dates, Raymond welcomed the guest over the salad course.

“I love you Raymond,” Raymond squawked.

Stella’s eyes grew wide as she began to stammer out an apology, but Sam reached across the table and took her hand while searching Stella’s eyes.

“I love you, too, Raymond,” Sam whispered.

It was not long before Stella and Sam were married, Sam moving into the apartment that had always felt too big for Stella by herself. All the while, Raymond kept a watchful eye. First on the movers who trucked in the few boxes that contained Sam’s life before Stella. Next on the two women as they decided to slap fresh paint on the walls and hang fresh pictures. And then the day the phone rang and Stella melted into a puddle of tears in Sam’s arms. Raymond watched the two women holding each other, rocking as though to a silent, forlorn lullaby.

Sam moved Raymond’s playground close to Stella’s favorite spot on the couch so she could take him out easily. Stella offered her fingers, once warm and pink, now cold and feeble. Raymond bobbed his head, whistling, as Stella’s hair began to fall out in clumps before her scalp was shaved smooth. He clucked low in his throat as Stella began to fall into a deep sleep most of the day. He watched when she was suddenly rushed from her spot in the living room by men in uniforms, wheeling her out of the apartment. Raymond fretted for her return, eyes trained on the front door and ears pricked.

For many days there was a rotating door of strangers who intermittently filled Raymond’s food and water dishes. The excrement on the bottom of the colorful playground began to crust to the plastic wiring of the cage. Raymond preened himself with anxiety, waiting for Stella to come home. But she didn’t.

When Sam eventually returned, Raymond was plucking the feathers from his underbelly, one by one. His playground was now just a wire cage full of fallen fluff, the odors of his droppings caked to the panels of mucky toys. Looking up into Sam’s gaunt face, Raymond fluttered to the side of his cage and mimicked his master’s voice.

“I love you, Raymond.”

He did not know what he had done wrong. Sam began to cry, at first stretching her hand toward him before recoiling and running into the bedroom where she sobbed all night. Raymond nervously picked at his remaining feathers until he exposed the raw, pink flesh beneath.

Sam managed to avoid his gaze for a week before Raymond found himself back on the counter of the pet store he had once known. Sam was a statue beside him, refusing the bills the owner tried to push into her hand. The man looked at the mostly-plucked Raymond, his face twisted into a grimace as he moved the bird to a back room out of sight.

Closing the door to return to work, the owner heard the Stella’s voice croak from behind him.

“Who’s a pretty bird?”