To Love an Owl

She looks like a walking marshmallow, or perhaps a movie starlet.

The coat smells like wealth. She couldn’t tell you what wealth smells like, only that this is it. An ephemeral thing; when she tries to catch the words, they flicker away. But her body knows, like it knows the smell of snow.

Both linger in the air here.

They found the coat in a boutique. She held Jeff’s arm as they stepped into the shop with price tags higher than the downpayment on her car. She held it like she was his lover; she held it like a child.

It was the kind of place that existed in a different world from her. Gilded arches, crystal counters. A woman in a crisp pantsuit measuring her waist, asking if she preferred duck or goose down.

Jeff decided for her, in the end, because her mind frosted over when she looked at the girl in the mirror. He picked something white, with white fur trim. It was immaculate, and stark against her red hair. Pure. She knows the red is a kink for him; she wonders if the white is, too.

She stepped in an outsider and walked out an outsider, only now with a coat that let her pretend she wasn’t.

Now, trekking through the snow, she pictures herself in this coat standing over the pig sty behind her house, compacted horse poop underfoot. The smell of farm - that one is not ephemeral. It is earth and straw and shit, sweat and dust and barn.

Jeff does not know she is a farm girl from North Carolina. She doubts he would care if he did, because to him she only needs to be one thing, and that is willing.

His desperation reeks; his loneliness repulses. And yet here she is with him, so what does that make her?

She met him at a club in Amsterdam. She was there with a girl she met at a club in London. He was drunk, his shirt unbuttoned, his hair stringing beads of sweat; the utter Americanness of him radiated before she even heard his voice. He bought them drinks, the London girl gave them the Irish goodbye, and Hadley has been with him ever since.

This is her life now; a series of associations, synchronicities. Following one person to one place, meeting another person, following them to another place. They are usually not people she would have chosen in the real world.

This is not the real world. Whatever she has been doing for the last six months, it is fundamentally unreal.

He’s older than her by at least a decade, and probably more, but she won’t ask. He hasn’t asked her. She’s wondered if he’s married; she’s wondered if it would bother her if he was. Maybe divorced, maybe a father, even; she can imagine him bringing home presents from the wild places he goes, and his children will play with the presents, and they will never know the wildness behind. He’s polished; probably a businessman who goes on these extended work trips and parties on the company dime. She’s learned to recognize these men, because they are the ones who will give her the most, and require the least. She won’t have to hold their hair back in bathrooms or pay for their metro tickets.

There is an element of honesty within this game of withholding. This is a transaction, mutually understood.

*

Hadley is roasting. The reception lodge exudes warmth; a two-story fireplace, candles everywhere, mahogany floors. It feels too welcoming - a trap. The witch’s cottage, luring children to the boiling pot.

She is entirely too hot in this coat. This stupid coat. She wants to go back outside, into the snow, into the cold that burns too, but differently. This swelters; the cold scalds.

Soon enough. The receptionist smiles as she hands Jeff the igloo keys, and Hadley sees every one of her teeth.

Hadley can say with certainty that she never thought she would spend her twenty-third birthday in an igloo village in the wilderness of Finland. She can say with certainty that she never thought a lot of things.

She never thought her mother would be diagnosed with cancer. She never thought life would become a quantifiable amount of time, something for which she would be given an unexpected deadline. It seemed too fluid, too intangible; a thing that would end eventually, but never now.

Her mother’s life had been squeezed into a box - or rather, her mother had always been in a box, only now they knew the dimensions. Forever from this moment, Hadley will feel her own box, and wonder just how big it is.

*

Jeff raises his eyebrows at her, suggestive, as he pushes open the door of their igloo.

It is tiny, but the opulence glistens. The facets of the glass stretching above them reminds her of a diamond. Stainless silver furnishings, a spotless white comforter that echoes her coat.

So this is how the upper half lives. They build luxury igloo resorts so they can monetize one of nature’s wonders. Aurora borealis.

She’s always thought it such a beautiful phrase; she’s always vaguely wanted to see it for herself. But it seemed like a fantasy to her. Southern girls and Northern Lights existed in different realities, just like pig stys and designer coats.

She thinks of the people to whom the Northern Lights really belong: the fishermen, the hunters, who went to sleep in actual igloos, weary from a hard day, bone-cold. Their life, earned by back-breaking work - not someone’s vacation.

Jeff pulls her to the bed, and she lets him. He yanks the coat off of her and throws it to the ground. He is careless, rough, assured. He is a man who gets what he wants.

Hadley freezes. Usually she can force her body to relax; she can breathe through the clench of her stomach, she can ignore the voice whispering no.

Instead, she moves away from him, scrambles off the bed.

“Are you okay?” he asks, sitting up on his forearms, and there is annoyance behind the words.

“I’m going to go for a walk,” she says, and picks the coat up off the ground.

They hung their coats back home. Goodwill coats, simple but sturdy. Her mother had a knack for finding well-made things.

She doesn’t want to wear it. She wants to leave it there, its wealth discarded, crumpled in a pile, and go outside in the clothes that belong to her.

But the longer she stays warm, the longer she can stay away from this place.

*

It is late dusk. Twilight.

She should go back. It’s probably an irresponsible thing to wander in a Finnish forest at night, in the snow.

This is a ridiculous thought. Nothing she’s done in the last six months could be considered responsible. Wandering in the snow at night is child’s play; she walked out the front door of her house to get tea from the grocery store and drove to the airport instead. She slept in her bed on the farm one night, and the next bed she slept in was in a hostel in Paris.

Some day, she supposes, she will draw a line and connect the places she’s been. She will lay in a lover’s arms and tell the story of her days in Paris, Budapest, Edinburgh, Amsterdam. An igloo village in Finland. She will make it a happy story, or a funny story, maybe.

Right now, though, it is one long memory. Not even a memory - an impression. Smoke and night and strobe lights. Blurred edges, jarring gaps.

Snow crunches and gives way to something harder. Not the firmness of earth; something more physical than that. Man-made.

She squints through the darkening, steps forward. There are rails next to her on either side.

It is a bridge. The trees stretch upward around it. Throughout the rest of the resort, the trees are sparser. Here, they hold the bridge inside - an advance guard. Underneath, a frozen stream. She can barely make it out, but the bridge is suspended in the air, and a sparkle in the darkness catches her eye. What a thing; she has never seen water frozen like this before.

She steps carefully, running her fingers along the rails. It feels old, but she trusts it anyway. She trusts this bridge to be a place for her to be.

They have a bridge back home, and a stream, in the woods behind the barn. It is also an old bridge, warped in places, rotting. She knew exactly where not to step, the places where the boards would shudder underfoot. Her mother always said she would fix it some day, but there are so many things that need fixing on a farm.

Something Hadley has learned while traveling, something she feels keenly here in a place where the land is flat and white for miles, is the beauty of the wild forest that was her childhood playground. The denseness of the trees, the thick smell of peat, the intensity of green; she has not seen much of that in the places she’s been.

She spent so much time thinking her way out of North Carolina, out of the United States, that it never occurred to her that her homeland was beautiful.

This is beautiful too, but different. With land occupying less space, trees farther apart, there is more room for the sky. The aurora borealis has chosen its venue well, a place where it will be the main event.

Earth or air. Earth and air, and water and fire too. Each a wonder, although perhaps everyone is drawn to one wonder over the others. Hadley never thought hers was earth. The itch to fly away had always been so acute. But maybe the yearning for sky was so that one day she would return to the ground, and want to stay.

This bridge is both, she thinks. Suspended in the air, but of the earth, too. A space between spaces, reaching between. Bridging the gap, and she laughs out loud at the cheesiness. Her mother’s brother, the closest thing she has to a father, is the master of such ridiculously obvious puns. Paul. She hasn’t thought of him in long enough that she can’t remember the last time she did, and sadness shakes her for a moment. He is probably with her mother now, driving her to treatments, reaching over to light her cigarette on the back porch. Hoisting her into bed.

Has sickness rendered her mother frail? Hadley cannot imagine this, cannot imagine a reality in which her mother is weak. Ruth has always been so loud, independent, demanding, tough. She has always known how to take up space.

No, Hadley decides, Paul would not be helping her to bed. Her mother would never allow it.

A cry yanks her back to the bridge. Not a loud cry, but shrill, harsh. It sounds like a bird call. It sounds like pain.

She squints into the darkness. The sound is in front of her, close. It is not coming from above; it exists in the same liminal space as Hadley. She steps forward lightly, eyes on the ground.

She finds it - a tiny bundle in the snow, quivering. Now that she is close, the cry reverberates through her. She can feel this creature’s hurt on her own skin.

Gray feathers shiver. Wide, round eyes blink up at her.

She skitters back into the bars of the bridge. It is an owl.

Of course it is an owl. Of course, on this night when she is thinking of her mother, of Paul - on this night where shame creeps in - the universe would send her an owl. And a hurt owl, no less. A hurt owl on an old bridge. On a birthday she has no desire to celebrate.

An owl in a tree, hooting, would be a message. But this owl, and a baby, she is sure of it, is a punch. This owl is the doctor saying, the biopsy confirmed . . .

This owl is a cruelty.

She was six. Playing in the barn, talking to the horses. Lucy and Molly, matching black mares. When she heard the noise, she didn’t understand it. Many sounds on the farm she knew well. Even if she couldn’t identify them, they were the background music of her life.

The horses flicked their ears, so it wasn’t in her head.

She hopped off the horse’s gate and wandered through the hay. Dust stirred around her as she walked. She was probably filthy that day, because she was always filthy. Mud on her boots, straw in her hair, dirt on her cheeks. If that little girl could see Hadley now, in her four-figure coat, she wouldn’t know her.

That little girl. That particular day.

She found the source of the screech in the shade of the barn. The sun was high, so the shade was small. Hadley’s shirt was glued to her back in the thick Southern heat.

It was so little, so soft - the kind of soft you could feel just by looking. Cream white and russet brown. She had seen enough barn owls that she knew what it was, but the sound was wrong, and so was the sun. Owls were of the night, not the noon.

One of its wings hung awkwardly away from its body. It heaved in sharp breaths.

She reached out to touch it. An impulse to comfort, to understand. The softness that she could see was nothing compared to the softness she could feel. It flinched away from her fingers, and swiveled its neck up at her. She pulled back, shocked.

It had the most beautiful face she had ever seen. A perfect heart, the lines drawn in gold. Eyes so round, so dark. It looked like it was wearing makeup - brown eyeshadow fading outward, cat-eye corners.

She ran to get her mother, because that was what she was supposed to do.

Hadley cannot run to get her mother now.

This owl in the snow is different. Gray, with smaller, beadier eyes. It is not as pretty, but it is as small.

Today, she knows better. Knows to stay away, to push as far as she can against the rails of the bridge. She wishes for the power of invisibility, for this owl to look at her and see nothing but what was there before. Hadley is an interloper, and she should go. She should leave this bridge, and leave this owl, and go back to the igloo, go back to Jeff. Jeff will not see the guilt on her face, because it is not something he wishes to see.

She does not. She sits and breathes clouds into the air, sits and watches the owl watching her. It continues to cry.

Her mother once told her she cried all the time when she was a baby. She was colicky, needy. She did not want to be left alone, and if she was, she wailed.

Her mother imparted this knowledge like an accusation.

When she ran to get her mother from the house that day, Ruth was cooking. Eggs and toast, probably. They usually had breakfast for lunch, because her mother didn’t have time to make them food before morning rounds.

She was annoyed to be bothered, but she wiped her hands anyway. From the recycling, she pulled a shoe box, and cut holes in it with the knife she was using to chop peppers.

Hadley trailed behind her to the barn. As they passed the horses, she grabbed a pair of gloves off the hook where they kept shoe picks and saddles. A kitchen rag was tucked in her waistband.

When she approached the baby, she told Hadley to stay back.

“Did you touch it?” she asked, and the tone in her voice made Hadley say no.

Ruth slipped on the gloves and covered the owl’s eyes, reaching for the rag. She wrapped the baby owl in a bundle and gently slipped it into the shoe box. The gentleness was foreign to Hadley.

None of this strange progression - gloves, box, rag - was explained until they were back in the kitchen. Ruth put the box on the counter, made Hadley a plate for lunch, and then walked out to make a phone call.

“Under no circumstances do you touch that box,” she said when she came back. “I’m bringing it to a bird shelter tonight. We’re lucky there’s one nearby.”

Hadley moved potatoes around on her plate.

“Why not?”

It was curiosity, but her mother read it as petulance. Hadley understands this now, but then, as a child, she didn’t. Then, as a child, the anger in her mother’s reaction was baffling.

“Because I said so,” she snapped, smacking her hand down on the table. She took a deep breath and pressed her fingers to her temple, and started again.

“Birds like owls - well, actually, they’re not birds, they’re raptors - they do something when humans touch them. It’s called imprinting. If they see you, if you touch them, they can get confused. They see us, and they think they are like us. They think they are human.”

Hadley didn’t see how this was bad. It was kind of cute, she thought. An owl that acted like a human sounded like a good friend.

“When that happens,” her mother continued, “They can’t go back. Once they think they’re human, they can never be an owl again. They can’t survive by themselves. They are completely dependent on people to take care of them. So they stay locked up, in captivity. They can never be free.”

Dependent. Captivity. These words were too big for Hadley, but the way her mother said them made them sound like awful words. Things to be avoided.

They finished their lunch.

*

Later that night, Hadley woke to the sounds of the owl’s cries. She crept out of her room, tiptoed over the floorboards. They creaked, but Hadley’s mother would not wake up. She never woke up in the night, not even if Hadley was having a bad dream and knocked on her door.

Hadley found the box on the counter. The bird’s cries were good, because it meant it was still alive. Ruth had been worried it wouldn’t survive until morning.

She was careful, so careful, as she picked it up and sat down on the floor. She closed one eye and squinted through the holes in the lid. She could see its silhouette in the darkness.

Under no circumstances do you touch that box.

But it was scared, and it was all by itself. Hadley knew what that was like.

She lifted the lid and reached inside. Just one finger, one little finger, stroking the shaking baby. It had twisted out of its rag.

“Shh,” she said. “It’s okay.”

She hummed a lullaby. Hopefully it could go to sleep, and then it wouldn’t hurt.

The lights in the kitchen flashed on. Her mother, a giant in the doorway. Confusion, and then - fury. Pure, towering fury, as she lunged toward Hadley and pushed her away. Hadley fell back onto the tile.

Selfish, stupid, bad.

These words were not too big for Hadley. These words, she knew.

*

Hadley doesn’t know how long she has been sitting here, knees pulled up against her chest. It is full dark now, but she can see clearly. Her eyes have adjusted, and besides, the snow around her glows. Snowlight - maybe brighter than the light of the fullest moon.

It is snowing again.

Small flakes melt on her cheeks and run down like tears. Hadley doesn’t cry anymore - hasn’t in a very long time.

The sky is cloudy. There will be no aurora borealis here tonight. Maybe tomorrow night.

Dependent. Captivity. Selfish.

Free.

The words pound against her brain. Seventeen years, and she can still hear them, hear the resentment in her mother’s voice.

The owl cries, and cries, and cries.

In a perverse way it is comforting.

She knows she should do something, but she doesn’t know what the right something is. She feels that impulse again, that childish impulse, to stroke it and sing it to sleep. To fold it into her arms and keep it safe.

To love it.

But she learned her lesson. She learned that day, from her mother, that to love like that is to bind, to trap, to break beyond repair.

It occurs to her now that maybe she learned the wrong lesson.

The kindest thing to do, probably, would be to kill it. It’s what her mother would do. As soon as the thought pops in her head, though, Hadley knows she won’t. She doesn’t even kill bugs; she catches them and puts them outside.

This leaves one option, and it is what Hadley is already doing.

She can sit here, on this bridge, with this baby owl, and she can listen to its wails. She can bear witness to its pain. Eventually it will be time for her to go, but not right now. Right now, it does not have to be alone.

She looks up at the clouded sky and lets the snow cry for her.

Quietly, she starts to sing.

*

When she returns to the igloo, Jeff’s annoyance is no longer hiding.

“Where have you been?” he demands.

“With an owl,” she says, and he stares at her blankly, like he has no idea what she means. Like he has no idea who she is.

He doesn’t.

At her very core is the knowledge that it is time for her to go - that it has been time to go for a while now. She doesn’t know how she’ll manage it, but she knows she will. She’s made it this far.

She starts to grab for her suitcase. Luckily, she travels light, and this time, she doesn’t even have to bother packing.

He rushes at her, grabs her wrist.

“What are you doing?”

Her body stiffens, and she realizes how long she has been ignoring its pleas; how she’s grown to live with the feeling of being unsafe.

She thinks of the bridge in the snow, and the bridge of her childhood, and she shakes him off.

He doesn’t try to stop her again as she opens the door. Instead, he sputters words at her - dirty words, useless words.

As she pulls up her hood and steps into the night, something stops her. She turns around, and she meets his eyes, and she sees him. She sees the power he tries so hard to hold, sees the lost little boy throwing a temper tantrum underneath.

He goes silent.

“I hope you see the lights,” she says, and she means it. “I hope you find what you came for.”

They are frozen there for a moment, him a silhouette in the igloo’s warm light, her a shadow in the cold night.

“Where are you going?” he asks.

“Home,” she says, and she turns to leave.