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Birdcage Man

Dominic Lim

    My father was going on and on about some birdcage. His fingers waved about wildly like errant swallows. His face was unshaven, his pajamas were rumpled, and his oversized bowler hat was tilted at an inappropriate angle. He spoke so fast that the tiny gulps of breaths he took in-between sentences turned into hiccups. He stopped only when he happened to look down and notice the boots I was wearing. He fixated on the deep cracks etched into the worn, brown leather.
    “Those belong to my son,” my father said.
    I nodded. “Dad, what is this birdcage you keep talking about?”
    “Will you help him?”
    I straightened his hat, which had threatened to fall off when he jolted his head back up to look at me. “Help whom?”
    “The man. The man in the birdcage.”
    I struggled to stay patient, to breathe calmly and focus on my father. “Alright, but this birdcage...where is it? What does it look like?” I held his hand. “I’m sorry, I just need you to help me. Give me a little more information.”
    “Please, you have to let the man in the birdcage out.”
    I surveyed the room and found no hint of anything remotely cage-like. His unmade bed hid against a cold concrete wall; an overhead fluorescent panel illuminated stacks of old magazines, newspapers, and books strewn across the foot of it. The philodendron I had given him for his birthday sat beside his window, nearly dead. Natural light was peeking through the crooked slats of the nursing home’s blinds. The late afternoon sun filtered in as streams of violet and red-orange, suffusing a small corner of the otherwise stale space with a nostalgic glow.
    Perhaps my father was speaking about something from long ago. He often found it hard to distinguish between past and present. I tried to decipher my father’s words. As far as I knew, he had never owned a bird or birdcage. I felt his frail hand tremble.
    “Could you describe this...birdcage man to me?” I spoke in a soothing tone, as much for my benefit as his. I gently stroked the back of his hand.
    “The birdcage man!” My father laughed. His eyes looked past my face at some scene imperceptible to me.
    “Yes, the birdcage man,” I said, my smile straining. “Can you tell me anything about him?”
    “He says: ‘I am what I am, I make no excuses.’”
    It sounded familiar to me. “That’s a song, isn’t it?”
    My father stared. The hat tipped forward on his head, shadowing his eyes.
    I searched my memories of where I might have heard that song before. My father was an avid fan of Broadway musicals. Perhaps this song about a man in a birdcage was among one of the many he would listen to over and over again alone in the den when I was growing up. On weekend evenings I would put my ear to the crack underneath the door. It was always locked, meant to be a space for my father only. When he was there he would play his records for hours. I heard tinny orchestras, stilted dialogue, sultry jazz, and plenty of singing. My father always sang along to the music. His voice wasn’t pretty; it was always slightly off-pitch. It never sounded like him. Or rather, it never sounded like the man I knew to be my father. Fascinated, I’d lie on the floor staring at the ceiling and listen to his reedy, cracked voice singing about chorus lines and musical hills and librarians in love.
    I looked at my father now sitting hunched over on his chair. He traced the rim of his bowler hat with his tiny hands. It was made of grey wool felt, accented with a band of black ribbon and a faded peacock feather. He once told me it reminded him of Liza Minelli, Bob Fosse, and all the dancers and singers and actors who lived their lives on the stage. He wore it because it was his own little way of living life grandly, without apologies, the way he never could when he was younger.
    “Dad, could you put your hat down for a second and try to focus?”
    He clenched it in his fist and rubbed one side over and over like a genie lamp. “So what if I love each feather and each bangle?” he said. “Why not try to see things from a different angle?” He looked at me unblinking and afraid. I remembered seeing him this way once before, the first time I saw that damn hat. After a late football practice one evening I had returned home to see my mother crying in the kitchen. Meatloaf sat cold on the table.
    “Sorry, Mom. I forgot to let you know I’d be late tonight,” I said.
    She pulled her head up. “It’s alright.”
    “What’s wrong?”
    She looked away, towards the direction of the door to the den. Her eyes narrowed. Pinkness sharpened to lines of red. “He’s down there again,” she said, spitting out the word, “there” like a curse.
    I went to the den door and knocked. “Dad. Come on. Mom’s waiting to have dinner with you.”
    A record scratched and the music stopped. My father’s light footsteps sounded up the stairwell. When he opened the door, he stared at me like a captured animal. Faint smudges of black eyeliner marred the bottom edges of his eyes. I glanced downstairs and saw a bowler hat on a laminated table next to a record player and a pink feather boa draped over a full-length mirror.
    He looked over his shoulder and shuddered. “I’ll be right there. Tell your mother...I’ll be right there. When I’m done,” he said, then closed the door on me. I heard the clunk of the deadbolt as it slid back into place. I grimaced. I had seen my father, who he truly was, for the first time.
    Then the song came to me.
    “I Am What I Am,” I said now to him. He had put his hat back on and was rocking back on forth on the bed. “From La Cage Aux Folles.” Or, The Birdcage. The story of two gay men who own a drag nightclub together, who are disappointed in their son’s decision to marry a woman from a conservative family. My father had adored the show.
    “Bravo!” he said. He stood up and bowed slowly at the waist, almost tipping over. His bony frame balanced precariously over the tips of his pigeon-toed feet.
    “Dad,” I said, pulling his face up to mine. “You asked me to help a man. Is it you? Are you trying to tell me you’re not happy here, that you want to be let out of the nursing home?”
    I saw a flutter of recognition in his eyes. “Don’t make the same mistakes I made,” he said to me.
    I inhaled sharply. “Please don’t tell me the birdcage man is–”
    “You’ve known her a long time. I know. High school sweethearts. So fitting. Such a pretty girl. Smart and kind. Face like a dream. Like your mother’s. Don’t you see? This is not a dream. You love her, like I loved her. You love her. But not like you should.”
    “Are you talking about Lucy?” My fiancée. She’d stuck by me through my parents’ divorce, my mother’s death, my father’s illness. “Of course I love her. She’s my best friend.”
    “Friends, yes! But not lovers!”
    “What?” I shook my head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “You were never interested in any other girls.”
    “I’ve never needed anyone else!”
    “I see that look in your eyes when men walk by. I know that sorrow, that regret. I know.”
    My face went hot. “No. You’re wrong.”
    “There’s one life, and there’s no return and no deposit. One life, so it’s time to open up your closet.”
    “You’re crazy.”
    My father flailed his arms. “She’ll keep the cage closed tight, boy. One day you’ll grow tired of flapping your wings, straining for the light and the air outside. One day you’ll suffocate in the space she’s made for you.”
    “Dad.”
     “Your life is a sham!”
    “Stop it.”
    “Life’s not worth a damn until you can say ‘I am what I am!’” He grabbed my shoulders and shook me.
    “Jesus,” I said and ripped myself free. His hat fell to the floor and I stepped on it as I pulled away from him. “My relationship with Lucy is none of your business. So what if we don’t... it’s not...we’ve been together a long time. At least Lucy’s always been there for me. But you.” I pointed a finger at him. “All those years you hid away from us. Mom needed you, but you only cared about yourself. I had to take care of her. Just like I’m having to take care of you now.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “You were selfish. I told myself a long time ago I’d never do what you did.”
    “I’m only trying to help you.”
    “I don’t need your help. I don’t live in a birdcage. I’m not like you. I don’t need to be freed from anything.”
    He stood still, sputtering for a few seconds. Then he disappeared. His eyes lost focus and he became quiet. I picked up his hat and went to put it on his head, but he pushed my hand away. “Don’t want it,” he said. He trudged back to the bed and lay down. He pulled his tattered sheet over himself, knocking loose a few books to the floor. “Give it to the birdcage man. He needs it more than I do.”
    He closed his eyes tight. I watched the sharp edges of his face recede. After a while he began to snore. I took that as my cue to leave.
    My father’s hat dangled from my fingers as I walked out of the nursing home. An early evening shower was lightly sprinkling. I held the hat up to shield my head from the rain and noticed a dirty imprint of the bottom of my boot on the top of it. I wiped it off with the back of my sleeve and held the inside of the hat up to my face. The inner liner was warm and smelled of hair tonic – musty pine and spice, sweaty, slightly antiseptic, yet familiar, as if I’d always known its scent. My boots squeaked as I walked in puddles of rain and my socks quickly became damp. The cracks in the leather had torn open somehow, perhaps when I had stepped on the hat. I sighed and put it on. It nestled onto my head. A perfect fit.
    I walked out to my car humming to myself and put any thoughts of the birdcage man far, far away.

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