Clutch

Stephanie Frazee

Some people (men) thought I’d made a mistake marrying Egg. Don’t you need a real man to make you feel like a real woman? Don’t you need someone to take care of you? Don’t you need a dick every once in a while? Other people (women) understood. Egg just sat there, waiting for when I needed cuddle time or someone to listen to me complain about work. He never left dirty dishes on the counter or trash next to the can. I could make whatever I wanted for dinner or skip dinner entirely. Egg never complained. He was the perfect partner, silently bearing witness to my life. 

     Until the night Egg and I were watching National Treasure: Book of Secrets, cuddled under a blanket like a breakfast burrito, and he made a sound. I was so startled I nearly let him roll to the floor. I held him up to my ear. Pip pip pip. I hit pause and back to rewatch Ed Harris threaten Helen Mirren in her office. I tried to ignore the incessant pipping. I put Egg on the other end of the couch, turned up the volume, pulled the blanket to my chin. I knew what was coming, and it wasn’t just Helen giving in to Ed to save her family. 

     By the next morning, Egg had hatched. I set him up with a heating pad, and an old blanket. At The Bait Boyz, I asked for their fattest worms and got an offer from every guy there. I bought the wax worms and hand-fed him. I wasn’t happy, but I wasn’t heartless. He was helpless with his raw pink skin, patchy down, embryonic wings. I had to call off sick because Egg kept chirping, and I didn’t know what he needed. I tried more worms, more blankets, a nature show. All he wanted was to be held. 

     He grew fast and was soon pecking at the windows. I let him out to explore the yard. At first, he just pecked at the ground, and I hoped he’d start finding his own food and I could stop buying worms; my breasts were tired of being leered at by The Bait Boyz. But Egg started bringing me twigs, feathers, bits of fluff. It was sort of cute: him bringing me little treats. After a pile had built up, he looked at me expectantly, like I was supposed to do something with this refuse. And I realized, he wanted me to build a nest. 

     It wasn’t just the nest. Our sex life was nonexistent (he was all beak and claws now), he wouldn’t shut up during movie nights, and the shit, my God, the bird shit. I lingered in the dairy section, examining the organic brown eggs with omega-3s for far too long. Did I have to lift each one out of the cardboard and weigh it in my hand like an offering, ogle its speckles, caress its curves with my thumb until I felt alive again? Maybe I did. Desperate times, etc. 

     Opinions changed. The men: now this seems right, you’ve got someone to take care of. The women: send his ass packing; open the window, don’t let him back in, you didn’t sign up for this. 

     We’d had a nice life together before the hatching. Rationally, I knew it could never be what it had been, but the heart is never rational. I thought of his sleek curves, the fragile miracle of his shell, the vulnerability of his first feathers. And I held on.  

     I made several attempts to build a nest. No matter what I tried, everything fell apart. He watched with such disappointment. How could I not figure this out? Birdbrain was not a compliment, yet I was dumber than that. I weaved twigs, inserted fluff, padded with feathers, and intertwined strands of my own hair. The result was always the same: collapse. Always, Egg watching, judging. It took me too long to ask myself if he knew so much, why didn’t he help? He could’ve shown me how to do it, woven a few twigs, some grass, and I’d have happily taken it from there. But no, all he did was tell me, with his beady little eyes, how incompetent I was. 

     Still, it was only after he shit in my shoe, eyes locked on mine, leaving no doubt as to his intentions that, in a desperate rage, I opened the door, waited for him to go out, and shut it behind him. He went right to the window. I ignored his pecking as I dumped the detritus that would never be a nest into the trash. I ignored his pecking as I wiped up bird shit, swept feathers, emptied the refrigerator of worms and their castings, vacuumed discarded seed coats. 

     By the time the pecking stopped, I already felt lighter, more like myself. He would be fine. He’d find another bird to love, someone more suitable who could make the nest he wanted. Things had changed, we had grown apart. There was nothing to feel guilty about. I settled in to watch National Treasure: Edge of History Episode 4, blanket all to myself. During Sadusky’s wake, the pecking began again. I closed the curtains, turned up the volume. I could have handled it better, talked things through with him, not slammed the door so hard. But he hadn’t needed to peck my fingers until they bled to show his disapproval of my nest building. Neither of us was perfect. 

     As Officer Ross voiced his suspicions regarding Sadusky’s death, the pecking became louder, more forceful. Then, the crack of a beak breaking through glass. An angry chirp. The sound of a twig hitting the floor. 

     He would never let go. But I had, so easily. It had been perfect once. I hit pause. He couldn’t change his nature. My hands were the problem. That’s what he’d been trying to tell me. I picked up the twig with my teeth and tried again.

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