The Impossible Resurrection of Grief

that he wouldn’t argue for a motherhood I did not want, but the truth was part of me wondered if he had expected to be left all along. A man who could leave himself, leave home and family and country, the ecology of his birth … would it really surprise him that other people could leave as well? Maybe, a few years from now, he’d look back on me, on our lives together, with the same distracted fondness he felt for the rock wren. The same mild regret, only sporadically remembered. I wondered if we were both too disconnected in our own ways, or if regret was coloring my own perception, making the lines of shattering softer than they were. If marriage was attachment, then the loosening of bonds, for one who avoided attachment, could only be secret relief.
I couldn’t tell anymore.
Fortunately for me, George’s invitation came with a plus-one. I would have crashed the party regardless. Recent events had hardened me to social niceties. My impending divorce, the Sea Witch’s brutal death … these were bad enough without the echoes of those padded footfalls in the hallway of my memory, or the constant checking of my fingers for tooth marks that were always faint and had long since faded. I’d woken the night before the exhibit opening with bite marks from my own teeth in those same fingers, the taste of blood in my mouth. Etiquette was nothing in comparison.
“What is it these things do, anyway?” I hissed at George, as we politely circled the floor of Otago Museum in Dunedin, where the birds were to be presented. “Do they just, you know, hop about and stuff?” I pictured the animatronics displays in shop windows at Christmastime, the dead movements of mechanism, stiff and juddery. Something to be kept behind glass, a display piece of failed conservation not much different to the other exhibits around us, where the extinct birds of New Zealand were posed into rigidity. Dead eyes stared out of their glass display cases as if those cases were coffins.
George held a program in his hand and had clearly studied it. “These are the friendly ones. From what I understand Darren’s done two sorts.” He caught my querying look. “The wrens that have been programmed with realistic behavior, the ones that mimic actual rock wrens, they’re the ones that’ll be let loose in the mountains. These are museum pieces. They’re more curious. More friendly. Designed for human interaction, and part of the exhibit is monitoring the exchange between birds and visitors to see if opinions of the wren change after interaction.”
“Is that the — what was it — the ‘socio-cultural ecological underpinnings’? Why doesn’t he just say he’s Disneyfied the thing to make it more attractive to humans?”
“He’s got a grant to justify,” said George. That was something I could understand. Artists, like scientists, always had to beg for money.
“It seems a bit late for all that, is what I’m saying.” The mountains were empty of anything but rats, so getting people to love the little rock wren enough to mourn it seemed like an invitation to Grief if ever there was one. “Don’t go getting attached,” I said, and elbowed him gently in the side as the speeches were read, and the little robots released. My warning fell on deaf ears, because although George didn’t react as loudly as the children in attendance, I’d seen fascination on his face before, the quick warming rise of wonder, and I knew what infatuation looked like on him. I’d seen it often enough in the early years of our relationship: the same tender cast to his glance, the devoted interest that took in all details. I’d been devoted too. There wasn’t the smallest subtlety in that expression that I had ever missed, and nothing about it that I would fail to miss in future. Seeing him so quietly delighted by something that wasn’t me was surprisingly painful — it would never have hurt like this when our marriage was strong.
In all fairness, they were attractive little things. Green feathers shading into yellow and cream underneath. Their most appealing feature, as George had commented, were the slanted eyebrows that gave them permanent expressions of disgusted rage which contrasted amusingly with their flirty, fluttery movements. The bodies were round, almost tailless and with stout, widespread little legs that underlined the determined umbrage of their faces. Nothing could ever tear me away from jellies, but it was clear robotics had evolved past where my own disinterest had placed it, because these small, hopping simulacra were indistinguishable from life. If I hadn’t known they were mechanism, I would never have been able to tell. Compared to the recordings of live rock wrens showing on the exhibition screens, there was no difference. The robot wrens scampered and fluttered and flew, only short flights close to the ground but flight nonetheless. They cocked their heads and flicked their wings and piped thin, high-pitched notes. The only difference from the real thing showed when someone knelt in front of them and held out a hand, palm up. The rock wren would jump into it, briefly, before bobbing back into the air and then coming back down to earth to continue their examination of the ground.
They were heavier than the real thing, but they were sweet and charming. It was hard to look at them and remember they were nothing but mirrors of the dead.
“I suppose they wind up like clockwork,” I said, as George brought a bird over in his cupped hands for inspection. I reached out to stroke it — something the real bird would never have allowed — and the feathers were so soft, felt so real.
“Solar batteries,” he said, almost absent in his answer. “So pretty,” he said, and his voice was awe and wistfulness. “Such a pretty birdie.”
I could picture him holding small animals up for a child’s inspection. He’d always been good with young things, more of a nurturer than I ever