The Blue Heron

Fiction: a short story

Photo by Jeremy Hynes, on Unsplash

Three things happened at the animal shelter that day. One was we adopted a diabetic cat so old that he could’ve died on the way home. Much to my dismay, he didn’t. He walked with a limp, was blind in one eye, grossly overweight, and if not hissing, he wheezed. Oh, and he was black. It was because I wanted the friendly kitten with white fur and orange stripes that my daughter called me a racist. That was the second thing that happened. Very casually and without indignation, she could’ve been talking about Christmas or lipstick, no inflection, utterly impassive, “Don’t be a racist, dad,” and she giggled. For a moment, I thought I’d imagined it. I said I wanted her to have a cat she could play with for a really long time—one capable of using the stairs. “I don’t care if he can’t play. I want to help him. He’s oppressed.”

Now, neither of these things has much to do with the other, much less the story. I needed a starting point, and the animal shelter seemed sufficient, especially since that was where I discovered Lilly controlled me, not the other way around as I had thought for so long. That discovery led to the third thing that happened inside the animal shelter: I realized—a bit late, I should add—that I had no idea how to raise a child alone. 

While I drove us home and reflected on everything I thought I knew about myself, Oppress chewed through the cardboard carrier in the backseat and shrieked for an exorcist, a growling high pitch that seemed to turn every traffic light red. Right, he was first named Oppress, rhymed with “princess” when Lilly said she was changing it to Luisa. Then, at dinner, I asked her if Luisa would be joining us for a movie, and without taking her eyes off the Ketchup spirals she was swooping around one chicken nugget, she said, “His name’s Ron.”

Over fruit juice and toast, though I already knew the answer, I asked where she’d learned about racism and oppression. “At school, Miss Emery is teaching us about . . . well, it’s hard to explain. Middle school’s really hard.” She peeled the crust off her toast, a diagonally cut slice, and set the mangled strip of bread far away from her plate. She stared at it and appeared concerned for her safety. Unsure who to trust, she glared at me, looked back at the bread for an instant, thought about it, and said, “Do you think mom would’ve liked Oppress?”

I held a spoonful of Cheerios mid-flight, looked away from the scratches on my hand, and noticed the dust on top of the KitchenAid mixer. “Of course, what’s not to like?” 

The mixer was my gift to Olivia for a Christmas she didn’t live long enough to celebrate. It stayed in its box and sat wrapped in shiny paper under my bed for six months until Lilly found it one morning when searching for her toothbrush. She ran into the kitchen, breathless, dying to know if the gift was for her. I explained. 

With my permission, she brought the gift downstairs and unwrapped it. The excitement of opening a present seemed to distract her from remembering whose gift it was. Of course, she wanted to use the mixer. So I set the heavy hunk of metal on the counter, away from the coffee maker, and stuck the plug in an outlet. That was three months ago. I still hadn’t tasted Lilly’s “famous” chocolate chip cookies. 

Olivia hated doctors. By the time her physician found the lumps, the cancer was regional. Lilly and I had three solid years with Olivia following the diagnosis and several excruciating months. Had I been allowed near Olivia’s breasts after she birthed Lilly, I think I would’ve found the imposters earlier and spared her life. That was the story I told myself. But she wouldn’t let me touch her. I’m not resentful or bitter, but we all have a moment we long to return to and change, a nightly wish we torture ourselves with while counting regrets instead of sheep.

Lilly cleared her plate and cup from the table but not the bread crusts. Ten minutes later, we were in the car and stuck behind a school bus. I stared at the Subaru’s fuel gauge and mentally crossed my fingers. I looked at Lilly in the rearview. “Oh,” she said, “I forgot to tell you. I want to dress as Taylor Swift for Halloween.” Worried about running out of gas and losing my job for being late, I could only muster a half-hearted “Sounds good.” 

The therapist I recently quit seeing said I was too passive and that Lilly would walk all over me if I weren’t more strict and inquisitive. “Queries,” he said, “are the bedrock of parenting.” “When did parent become a verb?” “Well before you learned to deflect discussions that unsettle you.” Bastard. Though his insight was not a revelation—nothing he ever said was—I agreed that I habitually evaded difficult conversations and left without plans to change my behavior.

I had enough to worry about. I hadn’t sold a car in over two months. The mortgage would default if I missed another payment. Coming home from the dealership each day, I feared the lights in the house wouldn’t turn on. The Subaru was missing a windshield wiper and needed new tires, brakes, and an oil change. For a while, I’d worked Saturday nights behind the bar at Moody’s, but then somebody told the babysitter what New Hampshire’s minimum wage was, and she quit. Not that it mattered. Between the bar’s business declining, paying the babysitter, and the price of gasoline, I was losing money working there.

A week before Halloween, Lilly shrugged off her backpack, dropped it in the middle of the entryway, and followed me into the kitchen. She bounced on her toes, her arms limp and jiggling. She said she had the perfect costume idea and assured me nobody could change her mind. And then: “Do you think I’m too old to be Jasmine? Doesn’t matter. That’s who I want to be for Halloween.” She twirled her body for a few spins, stopped, and tossed her hands up like a gymnast. “Jasmine.”

“I think it’s a great costume. Plus, you might still fit in the costume from third grade. Remember how mommy had to roll the pant legs up and pin them, and you were upset because they didn’t balloon out like Jasmine’s do?”

“Yeah, I remember, but . . .” her voice had softened. She dropped her chin. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m too old to be Jasmine. Besides, everybody already makes fun of me for being short. They say I should still be in fourth grade.”

An hour later, though I knew it would make her angry if she caught me, I stood outside her bedroom door, hidden, and listened to her speak in different tones for various dolls. I’d intended to sit on her bed and talk with her. She’d been doing well lately, emotionally speaking, and it seemed her depression had subsided. Nevertheless, Dr. Malckott would continue seeing her twice a month because “assumptions could be costly,” as was his hourly rate, but how could I say no to him? For months, I couldn’t get her to smile without injuring myself. But now she smiled often and naturally, was typically in a good mood, and didn’t hide in her room the second she got home from school.

In the morning, she inspected a blueberry, puckered her face, and set it in the discard pile she’d made between two grapefruit wedges on my plate. “Mirabel,” she said, holding a blueberry above her head for better lighting.

“Huh?”

“That’s who I want to be for Halloween, Mirabel. You know, from Encanto.”

“Right. I knew that.”

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»

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“Where’s the cat? I know he’s alive because the couch is torn up, and he eats three cans a day. Also, his box needs changing.” I knelt before Lilly’s bed and tossed the comforter out of the way. “Hey, you still like sandboxes, right? Ooh, I found your missing socks and . . . what is . . . is that a rotten apple back there? That explains the smell.”

“Can I get a dog?”

“Is your stomach feeling better?”

“Much. Can I get a dog?”

“What are you doing? Is this that Roboblox thingy? You should be reading.”

“I’ll read every book in the house if I can get a dog.”

“What about the cat? You said you wanted a cat?”

“I changed my mind.”

“Well, we can’t trade him in.”

“Why not?”

“For one, we don’t know where he is.”

“But Harry needs someone to play with when I’m not here. He’s lonely.”

“You don’t know that. He’s probably hiding because he wants to be alone.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I have an idea. After you wipe the cream cheese off your nose, let’s go to the park.”

“But I have a belly ache.”

“Whose fault is that? You know better than to eat an entire bagel. Come on, I’ve been saving your crusts all week to feed the ducks.”

“Do you think we’ll see the heron fly?”

“I doubt it. Remember when I thought it was a lawn ornament?”

We’d visited the Lowell Street park nearly every Sunday since Lilly was a baby. Olivia, in yoga pants and neon-bright sneakers, her hair in a messy bun, would push the stroller on the promenade encircling the pond. I would walk five paces behind them, wondering why I didn’t stay home. My role then was mostly to bring in groceries, change light bulbs, and kill spiders. Something happened once Lilly had entered the picture. Everything changed. I became an extra in my own life. I let it happen.

Olivia's last few weeks alive were the only Sundays Lilly and I hadn’t gone to the park. I tried to get Lilly outside, but instead of summer air and swingsets, if not at the hospital, Lilly was in her room beside a ream of construction paper, making get-well cards. 

The blue heron had been there all along. It kept our eyes busy and gave us something to discuss when all we wanted was to flood the silent spaces with nostalgia. Even today, I could see the strain on Lilly’s face, the strain of fighting the urge to start a sentence with “mommy.”

“Can I pet the heron?”

“That’s a terrible idea.”

“Why?”

“No idea. That bird is almost as big as you, though.”

“It’s pretty.”

“Indeed it is.”

“How’s your hangnail?”

“It might need stitches. Here, you hold the bread.”

“I don’t want to hold it.”

“Then how will you feed the ducks?”

“You’ll break pieces off and hand them to me.”

“Uh uh.”

“Now how will you feed the ducks?”

“You’ll break pieces off and hand them to me.”

“Where are they? I don’t see them.”

“Over there, around the—whatever you call it.”

“You mean the grass?”

“Funny.”

“I’ll be sad when they turn the fountain off.”

“You ever notice the way it sprays up and out, it’s almost shaped like a bundt cake. You know, like the ones grammy used to make with the cream cheese frosting on top.”

“Oh, yeah, but wasn’t it mommy who used to make those?”

“Ow! Something bit me.”

“Where?”

“Below my neck, right where I’m pointing. You see it? It stings.”

“I don’t see anything. Are you sure you aren’t imagining it?”

“You’re hilarious.”

But she wasn’t laughing. We fed the ducks in silence. I asked her if she wanted to go to the playground. She shrugged, turned her face downward, and shook her head. More silence. Then, as we walked around the pond toward the parking lot, she said, “Do you think mommy’s in heaven?”

I didn’t know what to say. I should’ve told her all that stuff about God’s plan and how everything happens for a reason, even cancer and school shootings. Could there be a reason for school shootings?

One time, Lilly heard about a school shooting from Marianne’s fat mouth. Lilly came home crying and asked me if somebody would shoot her at school. Do you know what I said?—I forgot to get the mail and was waiting for an important letter about a job opportunity. “Did you get the job, daddy?” “Noo.” “It’s okay. You’ll find something way better. I know it.” Sweet as they come and empathetic no matter what’s on her mind.

Is mommy in heaven? Best answer: Who knows? Worst answer:

“Look—it’s flying!”

I drove 30 m.p.h on the way home because Lilly would often verify my speed to ensure I was a responsible adult. After the heron incident, I didn’t want to give her another reason to be disappointed in me. To lighten the mood, I asked her, “Would you rather be invisible for a day or have super strength for a week?” And without looking away from the bowling alley and the fire station we were passing on our right, she said, “Strength . . . I already feel invisible.”

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»

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The night before Halloween, she walked into the kitchen and said, “I want blue hair.”

I didn’t turn around. “Movie theater or homestyle?” My head was inside a cabinet below the counter. I was looking for the cat but didn’t tell her that. I figured he was dead somewhere.

“Did you hear me? I want blue hair.”

“No.” I tossed a bag of popcorn into the microwave and set the timer.

“No you didn’t hear me or no to me coloring my hair?”

“Both.”

“But Marianne—”

“Stop.” I turned around. “Marianne is desperate for attention because her parents are too busy throwing cocktail parties to even notice her hair has changed color. You, my lady, get so much attention from me that I annoy you.”

“You can be annoying. What’s a cocktail party? Is it where everybody drinks fruit punch and dyes their hair blue?”

“Yes—that’s why you’re not allowed to go to Marianne’s—blue hair everywhere, from floor to ceiling, coming out of their heads like trolls.”

“Please. It looks so cool.”

“I tell you what, you’ve always wanted blonde highlights like your mother had, let’s have that done, and get your hair cut while we’re at it. You don’t brush your hair often enough to have it touching your bum.”

“He he.”

“Oh, stop. Do we have a deal?”

“Yes, but I’m still going to bug you about blue hair.”

“Of course.”

“And I want to be Hermione for Halloween. I already made a wand. I’ll go get it.”

I watched four YouTube videos to learn how to sew and hem the cuffs of the Jasmine costume. Lilly was still too short for the pants, and the safety pins and the rolled-up cuffs disgraced her sensibilities. But as soon as we reached the end of our driveway, she hung her head and turned around. She was too old for Disney characters, she said. I followed her back inside. 

She came downstairs twenty minutes later and looked nothing like Hermione. She carried herself skeptically, made it to the first walkway, stopped, looked herself over, growled, threw the wand, and stomped back home. In her defense, the outfit did make her look as if she’d just hopped out of a dumpster. 

In the parking lot of a party store ten miles from the house, she said she didn’t want to trick-or-treat anymore. Fine. I was happy she’d made a decision. Back at the house, over a bowl of mint-chocolate-chip tears, she told me between sniffles that she didn’t need a costume and only wanted to get candy. Perfect. Great. Let’s do it. I hope somebody is giving away Baby Ruth bars. What do we carry the candy in? Good question. We hadn’t even brought bags on the last attempts. Olivia would have thought of that. She would’ve had the Halloween situation prepped and planned by Easter. Pillowcases? No. A five-gallon bucket?—it’s orange. Too big. Plastic bags? Eww.

Lilly took a pillowcase covered in unicorns. At the first house, she got freeze-dried apples in a package displaying Mickey Mouse and scrunched her face when walking away from the porch. As we walked to the next house, she noticed she was the only child not wearing a costume and made her discomfort known. I should’ve seen that coming. Olivia would have seen that coming. 

Back at the house, I waited on the couch for Lilly to rummage through her closet. Left to my own devices, I nearly chipped a tooth on an apple unsuitable for an astronaut. I was about to run upstairs and check on her. Then she clobbered down the stairs and informed me she had the cutest dress in her closet, one she thought made her look like a princess. The dress was the color of Elsa’s dress, that cool, ice-castle blue. She’d worn it last year when handing out candy instead of trick-or-treating.

“Let’s go,” I said. “Put it on before the neighborhood closes up shop.”

“But dad, what are you going to wear?”

I thought about squeezing into a pair of Olivia’s yoga pants or something foolish like that. Instead, I reminded Lilly it was getting late. We only had so much time left. “If you want a lot of candy, we need to leave now.”

We were about a mile from our house when the rain hit us like a high-pressure shower. We turned around. The rain slashing the pavement was too loud to hear my sneakers squish and squeak, but I felt their suction every step. She wanted to stop at all the houses she’d missed on the opposite side of the road. I told her she could stop at every other house, a compromise to which she initially agreed. 

“We’re already wet,” she said at the fourth house. “What’s the big deal?” 

“You’ll see.”

After a few blocks, she was shivering. She said her sweatshirt made her colder. “Ditto,” I said. We ran to the house, laughing the whole way. We jumped in puddles, twirled, leaped, and held our arms out like propellers. It was one of those nights, a moment so whimsical you yearn to return to it before it’s even over.

I changed into dry clothes and wondered how I would tell the story three years from now. What were the bullet points: rain, cold, laughter, love, warmth.

Downstairs, I found Lilly at the kitchen table, writing on a legal pad, a photo blanket wrapped around her. The pictures were from a beach trip, just the girls. I had ordered the blanket for Lilly to give to Olivia on Mother's Day the previous year, Olivia’s last.

“What are you doing?”

“Writing my letter to Santa.”

“Already?”

“I want to make sure he gets it in time.”

“Smart.”

Should I tell her? When is somebody too old to believe in a person who, without intricately placed and illegally hidden surveillance equipment, watches over you and your peers every day, even while you’re sleeping, who promises pleasurable experiences if you’ve been nice and threatens you with combustible rocks if you’ve been naughty?

“I’ve been good this year, right dad?”

How long?

“I’ve never known you to be anything but amazing. Besides, what gives somebody the right to judge you?”

“Not even Santa?”

“Not even Santa.”

“What about God?”

“Never heard of him.”

“Dad.”

I looked at the ceiling.

She said, “Do you believe in God?”

“Ehh . . . I . . . well, you know . . .” I studied the room, searching for answers or an escape route. “I think . . . not really. I mean, no, I don’t. But—hear me out—that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. You have to form your own opinions. Learn about it if it interests you. Why are you looking at me like that, like I just ran over a chipmunk? Listen, God exists if you believe He does. You can’t see or touch Him or play UNO with Him. He won’t do your homework. But if you believe in Him, like Santa Claus, then He exists in your mind. So He can only judge you if you want Him to. And if you let Him, I think you might find those judgments actually come from you, from you looking at yourself from a different perspective. Of course, these are only my opinions. Everybody has their own. Does any of this make sense?”

“I think so.”

“Right, well . . .”

“Wait, what did you say about Santa?”

“Look—the cat.”

“I’m serious, dad.”

“No, seriously, he’s under the table, in front of your feet.”

“So what? You’re not getting out of this one. Now be honest with me. Is Santa real or not?”

“I think he . . . well, you see . . . how can I put this? Santa is—not real. Phewah. Well, I feel better. Glad we had that talk. I need to check the mail, important letter I’m waiting on from—”

“There’s no letter! Nobody even uses the mail anymore, dad. Did you think I didn’t know what you were doing every time you avoided me? I know there’s no letter just like I know there’s no Santa. I hate you. Everything is ruined.”

“But . . .”

“Leave me alone forever.”

I folded over, rested my arms on the back of a chair, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath. I knew she was angry and didn’t mean it. Still, it hurt like the truth. To make matters worse, the cat was dead.

The next day, I pawned an acoustic guitar I never learned to play and used the money to pay a hairdresser to dye Lilly’s hair blue. Though it was a school night, we went to the park after leaving the salon. We sat on a bench near the pond, complained about the wind, and told our favorite stories about Olivia. As we were getting up to leave, the blue heron stretched its massive wings, leaped into the air, and flew away. 

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