The-Hummingbird-s-Cage(66)

This time, I not only lacked the nerve, but the material as well.

That night I sat in the rocking chair in my room and opened the notebook Olin had given me—I’d been using it as a journal, after many failed attempts at poetry. Apparently Yeats no longer had the power of inspiration over me. Or I was no longer a likely vessel.

I came to the notebook that night with fresh purpose and not a little desperation, but with the same result: after a good hour, the page was still empty. There was nothing for it. Words weren’t failing me—I was failing them.

I slapped the notebook closed, capped my pen and returned it to the nightstand, the blank page just another white flag of surrender. Tomorrow I would withdraw from the reading. The decision came as a relief.

And a vague sting of disappointment.

Over the years I’d grown keenly aware of risk, and adept at avoiding it. The risk here, it occurred to me, wasn’t in standing before a roomful of strangers to read my own work. It wasn’t even the struggle to find my own voice.

It was finding out if I had anything worth listening to in the first place.

And the only one who could determine that was me.

I looked down at the notebook in my lap. I opened the cover and leafed through the pages—the journaling I’d been doing nearly every day since I’d received it. The pages already filled with words.

My words.


*

By the night of the reading, I had two poems in hand. If I wasn’t ready, I was at least resolved.

Jessie enlisted a girl from town to sit with Laurel; then Olin washed and waxed the old Ford pickup he stored in the barn and drove Jessie and me to town. He opened the pub’s heavy oak door and I hesitated in the doorway until Jessie did just as Terri would have, and urged me inside.

The Parting Glass was a series of small cozy rooms strung together, and it was just as I imagined an old pub should be—coal fires and pipe smoke, beamed ceilings, odd recesses and crooked corners.

“There you are!”

It was Jean near the entrance, checking names off a clipboard. “Your table’s in the second room, through the archway,” she said. “Name’s on the placard. Simon’s already there.”

Then she broke into a broad, dimpled smile. She had tiny round teeth, barely bigger than seed pearls.

“Who else is reading?” I asked.

“Only seven tonight. Don’t look so worried—people at these things are ready to like everything they hear. You’re”—she consulted the clipboard—“sixth up.”

Through the archway, the second room was much larger than the first. One side was lined with booths, and on the side opposite was a small stage and podium. In between were tables, nearly all of them occupied. Bree and Reuben called out from one of them.

“How wonderful,” said Bree. “You’re a poet.”

“That remains to be seen,” I said.

“Jean says you’re good.”

How would Jean know any such thing? I hadn’t written these poems until a few days ago, and she’d never read them.

Jessie tapped my arm. “Honey, we’re off to say hello to Liz and Molly. Meet you at the table.”

The sisters Liz and Molly were there, with Liz’s husband, Faro, from the general store and a second man I’d never seen before. He was lively and middle-aged, dressed in a brown suit with a windowpane pattern and wide lapels. He had an infectious laugh—head thrown back, Adam’s apple bobbing. From the way Molly was smiling at him, eyes glistening, she was clearly smitten.

So this was George, from Bristol.

Simon was sitting at a corner booth. In front of him was a tall beer, and at his side was a young woman, unreasonably pretty, her blond hair pinned back on either side to fall in a soft wave to her shoulders. She was leaning toward him, her pink lips moving. Then they were both smiling, as if at some shared joke.

“That’s your table,” said Bree, watching me.

I hadn’t thought much about Simon attending the reading tonight. Still, when Jean had mentioned him, it hadn’t been a surprise. Part of me had expected him to be here, as a gesture of support.

I just hadn’t expected him to bring a date.

I’d never thought of Simon with a woman. Certainly Jessie and Olin had never mentioned him seeing anyone. Not even casually. Maybe this was someone new in Morro. Newer than me. Or maybe she’d had her eye on him for a while now and was finally making progress.

Had she been up to his cabin yet? Gone for rides in his pickup? Cooked him dinner? Shared pastry under the stars? Had he invited her to the pub because I’d turned him down?