The Mockingbird

It wasn’t a lipstick smudge or any lingering feminine aroma that alerted Marcy to her husband’s infidelity. It wasn’t a folded napkin bearing a phone number, but rather a folded hand towel. When she got home that day, she went through the usual ballet of dropping her keys and bag onto the ancient and unused radiator, shedding and draping the many layers of the day’s fabrics, opening and closing doors, and finally, shuffling into the bathroom to retrieve the worn and dowdy but comfortable post-work ensemble. And there, staring and unblinking like a rodent caught in the beam of a flashlight, sat the familiar lilac coloured towel in an all too unfamiliar and pristine position on the edge of the tub.

Dan had never used, much less folded, a dainty hand towel in the entire ten years Marcy had known him, preferring to dry his freshly shaven face with the bottom section of his ratty green robe. How the towel moved from hanging undignified and crooked on a hook above the rubbish bin to its now more regal and prominent perch on the tub could only have been done by a delicate hand.

Marcy sat on the toilet and pondered the towel and it, in turn, seemed to stare back more brazenly. What bothered Marcy the most wasn’t that a woman, whom she pictured as bird like with tiny bones in her hands, had lain, screeching or cooing under both her linen and husband. No, what made her suddenly grab the towel, rip it half, and hurl the uneven pieces onto the floor was that the guest was clearly making a statement about Marcy’s housekeeping.

Marcy picked up the now inanimate pieces of cloth and put them in the bin. Then in a frenzy she scarcely remembered later, she organized every object on every surface of the flat. The decorative bottles of soap from London were spaced evenly apart with labels facing outward and in order by colour: pink, yellow, green, blue, and violet. She painstakingly folded the stubborn bed sheets, and the spices in the kitchen were arranged alphabetically. Books were stood up on shelves by size and each picture was dusted and straightened. She stood for a moment admiring her work and thinking to herself that the flat shimmered like a photo.

She then went to the fruit bowls in the kitchen. She put an apple in the banana bowl and an orange in the garlic dish. The lone small plate was stuck in the middle of the set of dinner plates. Paprika was moved next to the allspice and the box of tea was switched with flour. The print of Matisse’s Still Life with Geraniums was tilted so that the geraniums seemed to be whispering a secret to their potted cousin on the floor. In the bathroom, the lavender and jasmine soaps were made to look as though they had turned their backs on visitors and the bath towels had new partners.

Dan came home at 6:00 as usual that evening. Not only did he not notice the calculated disarray of the flat, but he didn’t seem to notice any tension resulting from Marcy’s busy afternoon. It was Meatless Monday, so Marcy had prepared a vegetarian chili and cornbread, which was one of the rotations and one she knew wasn’t a favourite. As they sipped lemon water—alcohol was banned alongside meat on this day—and watched the news, they murmured about their days in that distracted way only couples can.

Marcy said casually, “I dropped a bottle of foundation in the sink this morning and it shattered everywhere. I ruined the hand towel cleaning it up. What a disaster for a Monday morning!”

“Bad luck. Good thing it wasn’t the floor, eh?” Dan replied and went back to watching the weekend sports results.

The next day when Marcy came home, she didn’t stop to take off her coat or shoes but went straight to inspect the kitchen. Everything was in the same place in all the rooms. She sat heavily on the sofa, took a brief, but deep breath and considered the possibility that she had finally lost her mind. Dan came home at his usual time and they celebrated the passing of Meatless Monday with tacos and beer. As Marcy wandered the flat while brushing her teeth, as was her habit, she noticed the detritus of Dan’s day sitting cosily next to her own on the radiator: keys, wallet, phone, coins. She paused and debated the ramifications of a quick rummage and decided in the end that Tweety would show herself, if she did in fact exist.

Marcy didn’t have to wait long. On Thursday, her longest day of the week, she didn’t bother with a thorough search of the flat and just dropped her bags and clothes on the bed and went to the bathroom. The first thing she saw were the prim and pretty bottles lined up, touching one another and all the labels facing outward. She ran out of the room into the kitchen. The paprika was back snug next to peppercorns and the rogue orange was reunited with its pithy brothers.

Marcy sat again on the sofa, coat and shoes still on, her bags in a heap beside her. She first considered that Dan had tidied, maybe in a fit of boredom as he waited for his lunchtime cheese toasties to cook. But she knew that if alone, cleaning or tidying would be the last thing that would come to his mind. She then wondered what Dan was doing while his avian mistress flitted about. She also wondered why she felt suddenly elated.

When she finally did confront him, calmly over bowls of steaming curry, he showed relief more than anything. They marvelled together that it was the direction they were going all along. During the rather sterile conversation about what was to be done, he paused to ask, “How did you know?”

She smiled. “Oh, a little birdie told me.”