At four AM, five thousand words into a twenty-thousand-word edit, nigh-graphless and chart-benighted, her data askew, all because of one little slip anyone could have made, Ellen made the decision.
She didn’t realize it at the time. That’s how you get regrets.
In the moment it was very simple. She got up and stretched and groaned and sighed and walked out the door and down the hall and outside and under the dying moon and the light-polluted satellites that were the closest things to stars she sprinkled some popcorn on the ground that were not quite grains and she nearly got the words from the old book at the back of her grandmother’s book right.
“I ask for help, I ask for help. Give me help and I will give you back. I promise this in threat of great terror.”
Then she went indoors failed to edit another ten thousand words and woke up half an hour late for her thesis defense.
“You pass,” said the examination chair, as Ellen rushed into the room sweating and panting and wearing half of two different jackets with no wallet.
“Huh?” she replied.
“You pass,” repeated the examination chair, and Ellen saw that she wasn’t the only one sweating. Her arm was twitching on top of her desk; there were slight cooing noises echoing around the room. She shuddered and feathers spilled out her sleeves. “You pass, you pass, you pass. Are you happy? Are you happy? Can you go now? Can you go now?”
“Err, well, I-”
“I’m NOT TALKING TO YOU,” said the examination chair loudly. “YOU PASS! Go! Be passed! Farewell! Good luck! Goodbye!”
Their arm rustled. A lump moved. The examination chair’s face was paler than a bleached bone from an owl pellet. Everyone else in the room was trying not to breathe too hard. The window was open and there was loose millet on the floor.
“Goodbye,” said Ellen, eventually. And she left the room and shut the door and tried not to think too much about the shrieking and flapping noises, because she had to go home and start making birdboxes. Eleven big birdboxes, one for each year she’d spent at school.
It took a while. But when her arms grew tired or her fingers cramped or her elbow twinged, Ellen just had to look up and through the glass and see a sparrow in a bush and remember the look on her examination chair’s face and just like that, she was motivated again, and everything was fine.
She had her degree, after all.
***
Just before dinner, after the last real estate agent had stopped taking her calls, after her fifth argument with Morgan about how was she going to afford the house if she blew all their savings on her idiot friend’s tech start-up, Ellen made a different decision, or the same one twice.
Because it wasn’t fair. Because Jim had told her it was a sure thing! Because of one itty-bitty eensy-weensy little slip that anyone could have made.
So she ate fast and told Morgan she didn’t want dessert and went out down the street to the little parklette that all her bird boxes hung in where nobody ever tried to take them down, and she spread fresh scratch grain on the ground and she tried something like the words again.
“I ask for help, I ask for help. Give me help and I will grant yours back. I promise this with threat of great terror.”
Then Ellen went indoors, stole leftover desserts from the fridge, told Morgan she had a headache, and passed out.
She woke up to her phone ringing.
“Wurh,” she enunciated to it.
“The property’s down to a hundred k. Take it or leave it.”
“Whud?”
“I said A HUNDRED-K! Every crow goose and pigeon in town moved in overnight and they ALL HAD THE RUNS. It’s guano from wall to wall block to block with this place at the heart of it, and nobody wants to buy a toilet, two-bedroom or not. Take the damned millstone from around my neck and spend the rest of your life rinsing it down for all I give a shit, just pay me and stop talking.”
“Yhus,” said Ellen. And hung up.
Morgan made an inquisitive noise next to her.
“We got a house, babe,” said Ellen. “Gonna go do something first.”
And she placed an order online for ten giant birdfeeders, one for each hundred thousand dollars she’d saved on the house, and a few years of mixed seeds and suet and grain, and a lot of industrial strength guano removal. And when the totals made her wince she thought of the devastation surrounding the place and she relaxed and paid and everything was going to be fine.
She had the house, after all.
***
After Ellen talked to the lawyer, she made a decision and knew it.
Because Morgan was going to end up with the kids.
Because Morgan was going to end up with the house.
Because everyone was going to take Morgan’s side.
Because word was going to get out and she still didn’t have tenure yet.
Because of one itty-bitty eensy-weensy little slip that anyone could have made and that wasn’t any sort of big deal ever because come on of COURSE professors did this sort of thing, half the stupid books the English department went on about were about professors doing this sort of thing, because this sort of thing were undergraduates and well who cares? What’s the big deal? Why pick on her for it?
With all that in her head, it was easier to do it than ever. She didn’t have to ignore what her body was doing, she didn’t have to stop paying attention, she could dig the book out of storage and flip to the page she remembered, she could shake her head ruefully at how fuzzy her memory had gotten, and she could take the book and a bag of uncooked hot dogs out to the back porch and slit the bag open like a gutted hen and chant:
“I ask for help, I ask for help. Give me help and I will give it back. I promise this under threat of great terror.”
And then she went indoors and had a cup of coffee while she filled out a few online delivery orders and a lot of grades followed by an early, contented night. When she got the phone call at lunch the next day she’d had plenty of time to tell herself how to be concerned.
“Seagulls? Really? And they carried them away out the window? Oh my god. How awful! I know we had our differences, but not like this….oh no, oh no, sob. Sob. Sniff. I’ll move on and heal. I guess I’d better call the lawyers, wheeeeeeeee talk to you soon bye thanks.”
Click.
“Yes!”
The packages were already on time even. Fourteen marble bird baths of massive scale and elegance, one for each year of her and Morgan’s marriage, squatting at her doorstep like giant expensive toads. But joy made Ellen’s arms strong and her heart light, and so the hours it took to get them into the backyard felt like minutes, and the hours it took to get them situated felt like hours, and the hours it took to get them assembled felt like days and by the time the basin slid off the biggest one and landed on her foot and broke her toe she felt like she’d been looking at these stupid fucking things for YEARS so she hopped and screamed and just did one itty-bitty eensy-weensy little tiny little tiny nothingburger of a kick at the nearest tree.
One of her birdhouses slid out of it like a yolk from a cracked egg.
Ellen looked at the rubble.
A yolk from a cracked egg slid out of it.
“For fuck’s sake,” she sighed. “Stupid bullshit. Goddamned nothing going wrong. Just one kick, Jesus. Piss on it all.”
She had two armfuls of towels and a hammer when her phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Is this Ellen Moody?”
“Doctor Ellen Moody.”
“Not necessarily? You’re being investigated for academic misconduct. It seems your thesis defense may have been rigged; every member of the examination team has come forward alleging that they were held at pigeonpoint during your presentation. Also if you come on campus you’ll be removed by security.”
Ellen gave this careful forethought while her thumb hung up without asking the rest of her. She stared at the blank screen and tried to form a thought that wasn’t screaming.
An email popped up. Blessed distraction.
Hello!
Exciting news! Your home is being repossessed!
Ellen’s thumb conspired with the rest of her hand to wing her phone into the nearest wall and jump backwards, landing on her broken toe. Her scream was drowned out in the doorbell, her paranoia was washed away by her pain and anger. It could be the police, it could be the university’s president, it could be God with a laser gun, whoever was there was going to PAY for existing near her.
She opened the door.
It was Morgan.
They were wrapped in a long cloak of ragged cloth and white-and-grey gull feathers, their cheeks and brows dark-marked with a paste of guano and volcanic sand to keep the sun from their eyes. In one hand they bore a staff of spiralling driftwood, hardened by wind and wave; in the other they cradled a hand now missing its two shortest fingers. Standing next to them was a three-meter phorusrhacid.
Its beak was half a meter long, dagger-tipped, and axe-thin. Its eyes were big but seemed small in its face. Its feathers were grassland grey-and-tan.
Both of them were looking at her.
“They told me the rules,” said Morgan, and their smile was the warm little thing that had made Ellen look twice. “Three times. You know the threat.”
Ellen’s body made the decision without her realizing to open her mouth and say something.
“It’s not fair,” probably. “Hold on a second,” could be. “Help!” maybe. She could’ve thought of a lot of things.
But she didn’t realize the decision she was making by moving. Only one slip, but that’s how you get regrets.
Just for a little moment though.