The Bird House A Novel - By Kelly Simmons Page 0,3

started writing because two interesting things have happened. I find them ironic as well, although in the fifties, “ironic” was a term we Bryn Mawr English majors could stay up all night debating the nuances of, the way my daughter-in-law goes on and on about cacao percentages in chocolate, or how much artificial sweetener or sodium is in every box on my pantry shelf. (If you’ve ever wondered what a housewife “does all day,” well, these days I’d say they scrutinize nutritional content.)

One: I have begun to grow close to a child who is a girl, when I thought I never could again. Two: I have taken to bathing after more than thirty-five years of showering. A seventy-year-old dog, back to ancient tricks.

The girl is my granddaughter, Ellie. Tom’s daughter, although to be fair, there is much of her mother about her. Organized and something of a perfectionist, just like my daughter-in-law, Tinsley, who graduated first in her class and runs a gift business out of her attic and still manages to keep her house spotless and exercise every day. Tinsley has always seemed so much happier and more organized at home than I ever was with my children. Always baking cookies and blowing bubbles and painting faces with these crayons that wash right off. But then, she has only one: Ellie.

Everything I found difficult about Ellie at three years of age (a stage I have always disliked) has fallen off her now at eight, revealing a pink new self. I guess, given my lack of involvement, and the fact that her father works so hard, that this is mainly her mother’s doing. She has raised her well. Even her name suits her. She is not an Ellen or an Eleanor. Tinsley could have named her something snappier, and last-name-ish, more like her own name. I know they toyed with naming her after Tom’s sister, but didn’t, to my eternal relief. Tinsley’s aunt suggested Ellie be named Lucretia, after her grandmother, then called Lulu. Lucretia, a name for a corpse. Lulu, a name for a dog. This old Philadelphia business of naming everyone after someone else, then giving them a fresh, sporty nickname—ridiculous!

Tom and Tinsley might have added to Ellie, chosen Shelley or Nellie, embellished a bit, but they knew, perhaps, that she would end up pared down, straightforward and true. Tom was guileless as a child, trusting and open, easily hurt. Not Ellie.

She speaks her mind without whining. She looks you in the eye, she shakes hands. Not a firecracker, as some amusing children are, but an arrow.

I confess to a soupçon of relief that she isn’t a gentle soul like Tom. Those openhearted qualities are so much more delectable in boys than girls. Even as a toddler, Tom was always doing sweet things. I remember he charmed Betsy and the other mothers in the neighborhood when he helped me plant flowers, and dutifully watered them every morning. I have a picture somewhere of him—one of the first decent ones I ever took with Theo’s camera—struggling to carry a brass watering can that was nearly as large as he was. A darling photograph, but only because he was a boy. Let’s face it: a softhearted girl eventually becomes a cliché. But Ellie? Ellie isn’t like that.

That’s what started drawing me to her after years at arm’s length. I confess to it all, these past years—to half cuddling and faux cooing; to giving envelopes when there should have been gifts. I did only the minimum. At Harriton Tennis Club the post-round-robin lunches throbbed with the ladies’ swollen conceits of whose grandchild won what, played what, sang what. Oh, the tales of toe shoes and tumbling, of minuets, coxswains, and dressage! I sat through them mutely, with nothing to offer. I’d seen her at her birth, her christening, all the major holidays. But I didn’t know, then, if she preferred dogs or cats. I didn’t know her favorite color was purple. I didn’t know if she could sing or whistle or turn a cartwheel. In the last six months, I’ve seen her perform all three. Betsy, my neighbor and doubles partner, says it took me a while to warm up to my only grandchild, but that’s clearly not the case. In the past year, it was Ellie who shape-shifted. She came closer to me, not the other way round.

For my birthday a few months ago she baked me a cake herself. When I asked what was in it, she said it