The Bird Market of Paris Read Online Free Page B

therapist, and I’d help her create arts and crafts projects with the Parkinson’s patients, finger painting and cutting out paper flowers, helping their trembling hands use the blunt scissors.
    But that evening I didn’t have the patience to work on the place-mat-size rug, which, when finished, would depict an alert-looking owl perched on a pine bough.
    I put down the latch hook and yarn and sat at the window, staring at cars cruising down our quiet street. I leapt to my feet each time one approached, but each time the car drove by. Around six o’clock, Nona dragged me from the window and asked me to show her the game I had intended to play with my guests. I didn’t want to play yet, in case the girls arrived, but by six thirty, she was sitting on the orange shag carpet with me while Poppy manned the record player, and we passed gifts back and forth to choppy versions of “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough” and “Off the Wall” until one of us found the present underneath the layers of wrapping. Nona pretended to be delighted and surprised at the gift when she won, turning it over in her hands to study it, as if she had never seen it and hadn’t bought it a couple hours before. I held back one present in case the girls showed up.
    Nona pressed candles into the rummy cake and lit them. She and Poppy sang the “Happy Birthday” song off-key as she walked toward me, balancing the tall cake in both hands. How could I blow out the candles without at least my parents there?
    â€œMake a wish, Nicole,” Nona said, smiling, placing the cake on the Formica coffee table in front of me. There were ten candles—nine for my age and one “for good measure.” I tried not to cry as I turned my back on the cake and returned to my station at the window.
    â€œYou must blow out your candles,” Poppy said.
    â€œNot now, please.”
    â€œWhy do you wait like this, Chérie ?” His voice was sympathetic, like he was consoling a sick person.
    â€œIt’s not my birthday until everyone’s here.”
    â€œThe candles are melting on your cake,” Poppy said. “Can we have cake now and then we will all sing to you again when your mommy and daddy come home?”
    A car turned onto our street. I stood on the couch for a better view as it drove out of sight. I glanced over my shoulder—Nona was carrying the flaming cake back to the kitchen, blowing out the candles one by one, smoke trailing her like a car burning oil.
    Poppy sat beside me, the sun a memory beyond our rooftop, high cirrus clouds changing from white to fuchsia and gold.
    â€œIt is time for your dove.” He placed his hand on my shoulder, and I wanted to tell him that staring at the street would bring my parents home sooner, but I didn’t want to jinx it by revealing the secret.
    Poppy wanted us to release my birthday dove into the twilight, but that would signal my birthday ending and another year beginning, and my parents still weren’t there. Nona spoke to her sister on the phone behind me in French, saying “the poor little one,” and tsking with her tongue.
    â€œNot until they come home.”
    â€œ Chérie , if we do not set your dove free while there is still light in the sky, how will she find her way in the darkness?” He sat next to me and smoothed my frizzy hair.
    I thought about that for a minute and followed him to the patio.
    With the warm dove in my hands, I forgot about the window. I felt glorious and somehow holy, rising above the problems of my new nine-year-old world. I watched the dove ascend from my grasp, stutter in the air for a moment, then right itself and dive into the dusk, aiming for the moon.
    We waved swarms of buzzing gnats away from our ears, silent together, until the first stars appeared. Before I could ask Poppy where my birthday dove went after she left my hands, he pointed to a patch of sky and said, “See that