Molting of the Owl

I

Slouched in the car under the second heaviest snow of the year, we’re bound for Ashwood − a place to which I’ve made divinely sober and ceremonious vows with myself to never return. Tonight in the hands of winter the trees are twisted and curled like weaves in a basket − and I know mother nature is somewhere out there stoically braiding them together in the dark − languid as a tired tramp. 

The desires of the heart can be impermanent, and my wife and I are no less a vessel for the swift passions of the human experience than anyone else. It’s only been fifteen minutes along the fleeting asphalt as she abruptly makes her claim: 

“Turn around. He won’t acknowledge me. He never has.”

    “How can you be so sure?”

I don’t disagree, but I don’t know what else to say. I rarely do. My father was present during childhood − distant, but present. I can’t relate, but I can believe her − and that is, I hope, in some way good enough − but it never feels like it is. 

Her father left when she was thirteen. He was busy − or tired, maybe − or bored, or maybe just poor, and she hadn’t seen him again until she was of legal drinking age. Her stepbrother was the only one in her family to inform her several years ago that her father was in the hospital with pneumonia, and when she decided to call and check on him, he vainly asked her why she hadn’t been there yet to visit him. They haven’t spoken since − save for a few misdials. 

“Let’s just leave after an hour. I’ll tell him I have to work early.”

   “What about your stepbrother? I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you.”

“He doesn’t understand how it feels. He always had him around.”

The bright wash of headlights from oncoming traffic develops brief snapshots of her body every few minutes. I collect each view in my periphery where it’s less obvious that I’m noticing her unwinding features. Her left eye is the first to fall out of place − now hung beneath a drooping lid of skin and lashes. 

II

His home looks cold − a double wide trailer on the edge of town along the kind of road you only find after you’ve passed it two or three times. It’s not cold in here tonight, though − in fact it’s perfectly warm. It’s well decorated and the living room has a virtuous glow to it − the way it glows when you’re a kid and it’s a Sunday night and you can hear plates being moved around in the sink while you’re dozing off to sleep on the couch. Somehow this makes it all worse; it’s unbearably insulting − I wish for her sake it would have been cold, but instead it’s been comfortable all these years. He mumbles like a drunk but he’s clean. His walls aren’t bare but neatly checkered with framed photos of her stepfamily. He has a dog named Maureen.

“You must be the husband. Glad to finally meet you.”

He shakes my hand and it feels frail and insecure, as if knowingly caught in a past absence — aware of its own shadow. I look over to my wife and see her stilted smile − now it’s her left cheek. It begins to sag toward her chin as if hanging by a sinew. Only the right side of her mouth is in proper form. I pretend not to notice the tiny window of exposed jaw. 

We hang about the living room in fumbled conversation—any morsel of interesting talk held up only by her stepbrother. There’s Styrofoam plates in our laps with meatloaf and applesauce teetering the edges. I feel something sticky on the inside of my wrist and notice some of the sauce has toppled onto it. Before I can wipe it off the dog makes haste and licks it up. My wife drops her fork at the same time and I watch as a small piece of her chin falls off and smacks against the floor.  

             “It’s okay— Maureen will clean it up.” 

                 “Are you sure? I can get a rag if you have one.” 

              I move slightly forward in my chair to motion the offer before he insists otherwise. 

              “Just let the dog eat it.”

              We sit in bored air for another ten minutes or so before my wife gets up to use the bathroom. I watch as her father chews his food like a piece of machinery designed for one specific purpose and the pistons are huffing and puffing all in his mouth. It makes me nauseous so I decide to go and pretend to wash my hands in the kitchen. I hear a slight moan from the hallway as I pass by and see my wife through the crack of the bathroom door— leaned over the sink with the water running and her elbows on the counter. She looks like a beautifully distressed statue of a Catholic saint — scuffed and punctured in the ivory. I feel devoted. I slowly make my way to the door and lightly knock, avoiding any eye contact. She is holy, after all. 

             “Is everything okay?” I ask.

                 “It feels like my face is falling off.”

             “Maybe you’re just overwhelmed.”

Right away the skin on her forehead loses its grip and slides forward over her eyes.

                 “No − I need to go home.”

            I decide to grab her purse for her and have it ready while I wait for her to come out of the bathroom. Her father is chewing away and watching nature documentaries on the television. It’s a large flat screen that’s mounted on the center wall taking up most of the surface area. The quality of the picture is immaculate. The narrator has a calm and educated voice that speaks with wisdom and vivid serenity: 

               “Once every year the molting of the owl will take place for nearly three months, shedding only a few of her primary feathers at a time − so as not to impose on her performance during flight. The wing feathers will generally molt from the inside out.”

            My wife enters the room from the hallway and thanks her father for the food and says goodbye to him and her stepbrother. I can see she has cleaned up for the most part. Only a small twitch of the muscle beneath her left eye makes any appearance now. We both put our shoes on and make our courtesy round of second goodbyes — letting in a gust of snow and wind while exiting the front door. The pathway from the porch to the car isn’t shoveled and I let her wrap her hands around my forearm to stay balanced. I can feel the frozen ground beneath my feet and it feels hard as the heart of a Pharisee. It’s like that here − this is Ashwood country.

III

           The drive home is mainly quiet— my wife staring out the window lost in her burden while I switch between talk radio and late-night classical music. Chopin in the faraway Ohio night feels serene but mortal; what can we dream of for the sake of dreaming? What can we long for and forget? I want to tell my wife I’m proud of her. I want to tell her not to be so hard on herself, but she interrupts my intentions with strange questions about the local decor. 

           It’s been over a month since the holiday, and still — in little patches throughout the woods — in tiny spectacles of angelic orbs tickling the dark— you can see Christmas lights hanging in parallel to the gutters and window frames of the neighborhood houses. 

           “Why don’t we ever decorate for the holidays?” She asks. 

              “Because we’d have to accept putting things up just to take them back down.” 

         She closes her eyes for a moment then reclines in the passenger’s seat, and I wonder to myself how God feels about such a matter — if he’s ever tired of always putting things up and taking them down. The night settles in my vision of the road ahead of me, unraveling like a scroll — reel after reel — as I drive the rest of the way, radio off.