Sinda Nichols
Idda of Elk Lake by Sinda Nichols
A red parrot lands on the shoulder of a 23 year old summer resort employee. It is 8am. He is still drunk.
“Idda bye-bye,” the bird says. “Idda bye-bye.” The budding alcoholic stares at the bird. It doesn’t move, so he does. Stacking dirty dishes in the large commercial kitchen, Voll picks up another plate. The bird hangs on.
***
Idda was known to most as a mother figure -- she oversaw The Lodge’s kitchen and was the type to generously dole out treats. She would often ‘mistakenly’ order a 5 lb bag of M&Ms along with the dehydrated au gratin potatoes, frozen peas, stewed tomatoes, and other family-style dining staples. Her weary dishwashers then always had something sweet to sneak out of the pantry at the end of the night. She was a good woman.
For many years she had been developing the inclinations of a forager. It began with a husband who left, as it often does. She was pregnant and plump. He had a smaller bump himself: a tumor. Shortly after the birth of her first child, he passed away and she proceeded to raise the daughter on her own supporting them both through her cooking. In her middle-age, Idda was well-established as the best casserole chef this side of Elk Lake and the nicest boss within twenty miles of it. Still, there was something that people did not know about Idda: she did not like to cook! Never once had Idda said, “Oh, and how I love to dice those tomatoes!” because, honestly, she did not. What Idda did like were all the people it took to turn the raw food into hot dinner, the hot dinner into empty plates, and the empty plates into clean plates. That was a lot of people, more people than Idda ever would have met on her own, she was sure. Idda had not met anyone other than cooks, consumers, and cleaners in years. If she thought about it, and she did think about it, she couldn’t remember how to make a friend. She knew about making Gingerbread men, but somehow, friends were not the same. She was also pretty sure that if she ever stopped making food, all of the people she did know would go away. Then she would be alone.
This worry became more acute when Idda’s daughter grew up and moved away. After twenty years of constant companionship, Idda found that there were lonely times in each day that she hadn’t noticed before. There were two new minutes in the morning when her kitchen floor was particularly cold. Her daughter had once used those minutes for making toast and coffee. Now they had nothing else but the chilly ground to define them. There was an entire half hour in the evening that she once called “hectic” because of shuffling homework, sloppy dishes, and a quick dash to one practice or another. Now she could not think of any other word than “quiet” to describe it. These times needed new names. They needed to be filled. Idda started staying late at work, but that was not enough. Being alone in a giant hotel kitchen was no better than being alone at home, so she thought up ways to get folks to come around early and stay late. Idda was slightly ashamed of all of this, so we will not go into the details of her methods. Suffice it to say, there may have been some bribery: brownies, blondies, pie, spare ribs; there may have been some desperate measures: Jell-o molds in the shape of names or favorite numbers, but no one was hurt. Idda was happy to take prisoners, seeing as it was their company she wanted anyway.
The odd consequence of this endeavor was that Idda started forgetting how to cook. She focused so entirely on who was coming and going and how long they were going to stay that when she realized the kitchen was empty, her mind would fall blank. When alone, she could not remember how to make her famous goulash. If the attack was really bad, she would forget how to heat canned soup. This made her work even harder to keep people around in the kitchen, but there were times when Idda was forced to work alone. Had Idda told a doctor, they could have diagnosed these incidents as panic attacks, but she didn’t speak of them. As far as she could tell, her life was just getting a little more unusual, as it tended to do with age.
Eventually, however, her troubles became dangerously unusual. One evening, hopelessly alone in the kitchen, Idda set out to fry forty pounds of frozen, beer-battered cod fish. There were piles of fish on the counter and popping hot oil in the deep-fryer baskets. Hurrying to heat it all before the dinner hour began, she put her hands on the fish and tried to remember what to do with it. “Put it in the basket,” she thought to herself, and as her eyes darted around the room looking for the “basket” a little song started up in her head: “A tisket, a tasket, a red and yellow basket.” By the time the tune had drifted away she had completely forgotten the basket concept and began frantically pawing at the fish, knowing that she had to make them turn crispy and yellow in the next forty-five minutes, but not knowing how. “Shit. Shit. Shit,” she muttered, spinning in a clumsy circle hoping to see some reminder of what to do. “The fryer, yes, that makes sense. Fish. Hot oil. Put the fish in the hot oil,” and with that she scooped up an armful of defrosting fish and, standing above the fryer, dropped it all in. With a mild splash, the fish swam down into the oil. Hoping she’d approximated successful fish frying, Idda stood up on her tip-toes and leaned in to inspect the situation. Her ribs rested on the handles of the forgotten fryer baskets and as she lowered her heels, her weight pulled down the left basket handle creating a teeter-totter counterweighted with hot metal, hot oil, and hot fish. As her heels touched the ground, the basket popped out of the oil and fell against her chest. The bare skin beneath her collar-bone screamed with pain and she reeled away from the counter. It took weeks for her to recover.
In the weeks following the accident, Idda grew rather hungry. Still bandaged and thoroughly frightened, she stayed home from work, applying white burn cream to the blistered skin beneath the gauze, staring warily at her own little kitchen. Not only was she too afraid to cook alone in her house, she was completely unable to. Friends came to call, but they did not stay long or return soon enough: “Idda, you look so tired. I’ll go – you must have had so many visitors today. You need your rest.”
“No!” Idda wanted to say. “I’m not tired, I’m hungry!” But this was not something she could say; she was too used to stealthily nabbing camaraderie to know how to ask for it nicely. Instead, she stayed home alone, running her fingers over the massive gash that cut across her sternum, transfixed by it. She tried to imagine all the ways she could have acquired such a mark. She dreamt of bear attacks, freak putt-putt golf accidents, run-ins with the mafia. There was one idea that Idda really liked: a sword-fight. She allowed herself to wonder, “Maybe somebody really will think that I got into a sword-fight. No. No, that is not very likely,” her daydream ending with a sigh.
It is true that Idda occasionally took to drinking during this period. As of late, she had had a particular taste for rum. She thought perhaps it had something to do with the pain medication --they interacted quite nicely. On the fifth night, when her stomach’s emptiness had begun to completely distract her from her wound, she poured herself a tall glass of rum, took the last of the hard candies from her living room candy-dish, and went outside to sit in the dark on the front stoop.
The cement steps held her soft, exhausted body in a slumped sitting position. Squinting into the darkness, she tried, for the fiftieth time that day, to envision herself standing back in The Lodge kitchen, holding a clipboard authoritatively, directing cooks as they produced different dishes. But her mind’s eye was also tired and it preferred to play games instead. The bread baskets were suddenly full of raw meat, the salad bowls held apple skins and peach pits, nothing made sense and Idda was helpless, her clipboard’s words replaced with pictures of farm animals operating blenders and microwaves.
“Ahhhhhh! I can’t do this anymore!” she wailed and spat out the small red circle of candy left in her mouth. Smashing it under her foot, she listened to the sound of the sugar grinding into cement. “Sounds like cooking,” she thought. “Sounds like that damn kitchen; forcing one thing until it becomes another, like apple pie. I don’t want to make any more apples soft and warm. Apples are just fine hard and cold. Hmph.”
“Hmph,” said a voice from her left shoulder. Idda’s head flew to the left. There, sitting on her shoulder was a bird: a red parrot. “Swashbuckler,” it said.
“Shoo. Go away,” she grumbled at it. “Who the hell’s bird is this?” she asked, looking out into the darkness.
“Swashbuckler,” it squawked again.
“I don’t know any swashbucklers, bird.” Her nostrils flared sarcastically.
For a few moments there was quiet. Idda sat still, trying to think of a way to get the parrot to loosen its death-grip on her shoulder. The bird’s mouth opened again.
“Swashbuckler,” it insisted.
“Jesus,” she thought. “You want to see a swashbuckler? I’ll give you a swashbuckler.”
She stood up, lifted her arm, and backhanded the bird off her shoulder. It fell, almost hitting the ground and then carrying itself into flight. It flapped off into a nearby tree and watched Idda walk into the house.
A half-hour later, she came back outside holding a roll of duct tape, a pair of wool socks, and a letter opener, which she tucked into her belt. She spotted the bird and stared. It glared back at her. She sat down on the stoop. It swooped over and stood beside her.
“There’s a boat, you know. Down at the lake? A sailboat.”
The bird cocked its red head, its eyes glued to hers, wide and dilated. It nudged its sharp beak into her hip. “Swashbuckler” it said. She nodded slowly.
“That’s me.”
“That’s me!” squawked the bird, and it began to waddle down the driveway toward the road. Idda stood up and followed.
Together they walked down the road to the water. The bird flew off to the long,white boat and perched itself on top of the mast. Idda waded out. Turning a crank, she lowered the boat into the water. She ran her hands over the smooth fiberglass and squinted up the illuminated mast to the bulb of dark red feathers. The bird said nothing. She pulled her torso up onto the boat and listened to the water running out of her heavy clothes as her legs hung over the side. The water kept pouring out, making her legs lighter and lighter. Tempted by the intimation of weightlessness, she slipped the button at her waist and let her pleated khaki pants fall off halfway.
They might have come off entirely had she not felt the cold letter opener slide down her thigh. Sure of its importance, she snatched her pants back up before they drifted away into the lake. She swung her legs up onto the boat and without hesitation began to let out the sails as though it were something she had done even once before. The wind caught, the bird descended to her shoulder, and the boat began to sail away.
***
Voll lets the bird sit on his shoulder while he finishes the dish-washing shift. It doesn’t move but to flinch whenever he reaches his right hand over his head. At the end of the shift, slightly more sober, he looks at it questioningly.
“Idda bye-bye” it persists.
Voll smiles as though he understands, though he does not. Ready to leave, he washes his hands and picks up the empty paper-towel roll standing where the towels should have been. In spite of his wet hands, he lifts the tube up to his right eye. Scanning the dining room, feet apart and elbows wide, through the window he spots a woman in the trees looking his way. It was Idda.
Voll waves, unfazed. She waves back with a small motion, her hand down at her side. He walks out toward her and she recedes into the trees.
“Hey Idda,” he calls.
“Hi,” she whispers.
Joining her in the cover of foliage, he asks, “How are you? I thought you were in bed with that burn.”
“I was. Not now though. Voll, you can’t tell anyone that I’ve been here.”
“Okay.”
“I need some supplies.”
“Okay.”
“Beans, bread, apples, sausage – can you fill a box?”
“Uh, sure. Are you okay, Idda?”
“Don’t worry about me, hon. You’ve met my friend?”
“The parrot?”
“Yeah, he looks after me.”