Lucky

The sound of cries from the cottage next door drift across the lawn to where Helen is sitting on her deck painting a picture and it takes her a moment to recognize what they are. A woman having an orgasm. The young tenant’s girlfriend, she thinks. It is a Sunday in June and the only other sound Helen hears is the twittering of the barn swallows who, miraculously—or so it seems to Helen—have returned from Peru or from somewhere in South America to the very same nest they built last year which is right over the door leading from the house to Helen’s deck and are now noisily occupied feeding their young. The tenant, a carpenter, is named Craig and he is tall and has curly red hair and Helen knows little about him except that, so far—he has been renting the cottage since March only—he has been a good tenant. He has paid his rent on time and has not yet given Helen cause for complaint by playing loud music or by blocking her parking spot with his white truck. Quite the contrary, she has found Craig helpful: he offered to take down the storm windows and when, in May, Helen went away to Tuscany for a week, Craig picked up her mail and kept an eye on things. Now, in spite of herself, Helen cannot help but wonder how Craig is making the woman come—with his hand? with his tongue?

Helen starts to collect her easel and her paints in order to move indoors but then she remembers the barn swallows. She does not want to disturb them by opening and shutting the door while they are feeding their young. Five baby chicks were hatched two weeks ago and Helen has been watching their progress almost obsessively—a part of her wishes she had had the foresight to install the video camera she had read about on the Internet that was fitted with infrared lighting so she could watch the nesting activity—but she has made every effort not to upset the birds by her presence. She has kept her cat inside the house and away from them, and, except for placing a few sheets of newspaper under the nest, she has also refrained from cleaning up the birds’ mess. Already Helen can tell by the way the chicks lift their heads and open wide their bright yellow beaks and how much more aggressively demanding they are for their food, that soon they will be ready to fledge. Picking up her brush, Helen sits down again in front of her easel. She had been copying a picture postcard she bought in Tuscany of a painting by Ghirlandaio before she was interrupted. Mostly, she knows that she is afraid to step down onto the lawn and circle her house to go to the front door in case, in addition to hearing the woman’s cries, she will catch a glimpse through an open cottage window of naked, young bodies coupling.