The Bird House: A Novel

By Kelly Simmons

From the critically acclaimed author of Standing Still comes a psychologically charged novel about the power and failure of family.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Washington Square Press
• Release date: Feb 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781439164051

Kelly Simmons

Kelly Simmons is a former journalist and advertising creative director specializing in marketing to women. She's the author of the critically acclaimed STANDING STILL and THE BIRD HOUSE.

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The Bird House: A Novel, by Kelly Simmons.

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Every family has its secrets. But when you are

suddenly the matriarch, tending the dark fires

of memory, and your own mind is fading, who

do you dare to share them with? Your journal

or your eight-year-old granddaughter?

Interweaving diaries penned forty years apart, Kelly Simmons’s captivating second novel, The Bird House, blends the fierce voice of Ann Biddle, a woman struggling to bond with her only grandchild, Ellie, while railing against the ravages of early dementia, with her point of view as a young wife and mother. We witness the secrets of Ann’s family through every lens—from the clarity of the rearview mirror and through the haze of Alzheimer’s. And we see her as a young housewife in 1960s suburbia, grappling with breast cancer, her mother’s death, a disappointing marriage, a passionate affair, and a tragedy that leaves her stunned until, four decades later, her whip-smart granddaughter unwittingly sheds a burst of light on the family’s shadowy history.

A subtly tense, darkly psychological tug-of-war between the present and the past, The Bird House is a moving treatise on family, love, and memories—both lost and found.

Also by Kelly Simmons

Standing Still

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2011 by Kelly Simmons

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

This Washington Square Press edition February 2011

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Simmons, Kelly.

    The bird house: a novel / Kelly Simmons.

       p. cm.

    1. Family secrets—Fiction. 2. Dementia—Patients—Fiction. 3. Girls—Fiction.

4. Grandparent and child—Fiction. 5. Domestic fiction. 6. Psychological fiction.

I. Title.

   PS3619.I5598B57 2010

   813’.6—dc22

                                                          2010029298

ISBN 978-1-4391-6093-0

ISBN 978-1-4391-6405-1 (ebook)

For my grandmothers,

who knew when to keep a secret

October 22, 2010

Beneath the surface of any problem, if you scrabble a bit, you’ll find a secret.

It may take a while—decades perhaps—not for your excavation, mind you, but for your desire to appear; for that childlike curiosity to float up again. Indeed, you may need an actual child to summon it, as I did.

But this is what drives us—the historians, the trash pickers, the gossips, the shrinks. And yes, the readers of books. We’re all rooting around, teasing out other people’s hidden reasons.

Haven’t we all profited from another’s heartache? Anything antique or inherited comes to you out of pain. And it comes to you, doesn’t it? Why, even the comforting of a sniveling acquaintance carries a sweet center: after they sob on your shoulder, they will tell you why.

Please don’t say I’m drawn to others’ secrets because I have several in my own deep past. That’s a bit tidy, don’t you think? In fact, I’ll come clean with a confession right now. Perhaps that will make you feel better about my motives.

Forty years ago, my young daughter died because of something I did. Notice I stop short of saying I killed her, even though I clearly did. No one knows this. Do you think my daughter-in-law would ever let me near my granddaughter if she knew?

I didn’t bury this pivotal event, or suffocate it in a cloud of good works, as so many venerable Main Line ladies would, yet much of it, the details especially, have sloughed away. By necessity, by neglect, by a need for the widow to soldier on. And yes, by the failure of my own memory. Call it what you will: senior moments, old age, dementia. It’s inevitable, that’s what it is. You go right ahead and complete all the crosswords your children press on you; but know they can keep you only so sharp.

Sometimes my memory of that awful day wanders away completely, and when it returns, it jolts me, like falling in dreams. I can’t summon my actions in crystal detail anymore; I see the house, that room, through a haze, in pieces. I can see the maple tree outside the window, and beyond it, the old field on one side and the park with the verdigris Revolutionary War statue on the other. But I’ve forgotten, for instance, what time it was; whether the light sparkled when it hit the water, or cast shadows across it, making it look more gray and deeper than it actually was. I draw a blank on whether the baby cried in the distance, or where Peter was hiding—in the cellar; in the field; or in the small, dark shed. Parts of it are gone, perhaps forever. I miss the details, the small intricacies of many things now, even this. All the more reason to continue to write things down in my diary. All the more reason for me to take my pictures, to hang on to scrapbooks and photo albums in steamer trunks. All the more reason to collect evidence.

This morning, for instance, I completely forgot that I’d been to the lawyer. My newest secret, and I only remembered when I opened my freezer and saw what I’d hidden there. Imagine!

It will all come out in time, the tidbits I’ve learned and swung round to my advantage. But I did not set out to do any of it, and neither did Ellie. It’s important you believe me. The natural order of things merely took over. The drive to dig pulled us like the tides.

All we did, after all, was pay attention. You should try it sometime. Watch a woman’s face as she fingers her antique locket. Hear the jangle of charm bracelets covering up an ancestor’s cries. Feel the ring handed down from grandmother to mother to daughter, how the gold is worn down at the back by everything they’d done while wearing it—all the games they’d played, all the people they’d touched, all the things they’d held and broken.

It’s all there, in every jewelry box and trunk, every photo album and yellowed postcard, every attic and basement. Just look, and you’ll see what I mean. You don’t have to travel to a lost city to find the artifacts of a mysterious society. Just go ask your grandmother.

July 1, 2010

THREE MONTHS EARLIER

Earlier this week, I positioned navy and red cushions on the porch chairs, tucked blue pansies into planters, and hung an enormous flag. It flaps so loudly on breezy nights I think a man in a canvas raincoat has entered the room. It was one of those days when I missed Theo dearly. After all, it takes one to hold the ladder and one to climb it.

I don’t normally approve of such obvious seasonal decor, but Ellie was coming over and I wanted her parents—my son, Tom, and his wife, Tinsley—to know that I was quite aware, fully cognizant, of the upcoming holiday.

Of course I can’t remember every single thing; who can? Maybe that’s why I took up photography so late in life, started lugging Theo’s Nikon camera around. So I could document things, remember them, the way he used to. The stages of the buildings he designed were as fleeting as memory, after all; once the plaster covered the fragile wooden bones you never saw them again. Even when they were finished, completed, they changed by the season. Everything changes, even the way we look at it. I remember Theo used to lay out the progression of construction photos across his big desk, and explain each step to me, and what had gone right and what had gone wrong. In the beginning, before we had children, I sat on the corner of that desk with my chin on his shoulder and listened as he explained the engineering dilemmas and described the imported materials. He taught me about divided light and molding, about soffits and cupolas, giving names to things I’d seen but never truly known.

On the weekends, after we made the rounds of the tag sales, Theo and I would sneak into Realtors’ open houses, pretending to be in the market, and Theo would whisper in my ear the flaws and strengths of each floor plan. The den was too dark, the bedrooms too small. The kitchen should be reoriented to face south. These were our jigsaw puzzles; this was our cinema. When the children arrived, it was as if there was no room for our home life in his work life. I heard their voices, not his. And he heard his clients, no one else. That’s what I remember, and of course Theo isn’t here to refute me. There’s a certain glory in that, I tell you. Widowhood means I’ll always have the last damn word.

I invited Ellie over for more than just the Fourth of July. I forgot some of what the lawyer told me to do—but no matter. I believe I managed to collect what he needed. I do remember him saying it should be simple, and he was right—it was easy to execute, childlike, almost, except for one part.

Ellie arrived to spend the night and I didn’t even have to ask if she was thirsty. Aren’t all eight-year-old girls thirsty? I simply set out a glass of Coca-Cola next to the tray of sparklers and that little blond head bobbed straight for it, moth to flame. Why, I could have poisoned her, easily, with that amber glass.

When she finished drinking I brought out the fireworks jigsaw puzzle, then made a big show of needing to do the dishes, so Ellie didn’t think twice about me ferrying away her tumbler while wearing rubber gloves. I sealed it in a plastic bag and put it the freezer, just as George Marquardt Esquire told me to. Well, he told me to put something in the freezer.

The whole business reminded me briefly of a game I used to play with my father. Whenever he returned from one of what my mother called his adventures—a safari, a trek of some kind, a bird-watching expedition—he’d bring me back a present and hide it somewhere symbolic in the house, while providing only the barest of clues. This was no small undertaking, searching for these treasures, as we had ten bedrooms, eight baths, and, as I recall, many similar rooms with different names: den, office, library, sitting room. They had minor differences among them—the library had books and the den had taxidermy—but only the bedrooms seemed wholly differentiated, as each was a different pale color. Salmon, gold, mint. I console myself with the lack of memory by reminding myself that ten is quite a few of anything for anyone to recall. At any rate, I do distinctly remember my father hiding an Inuit doll in our freezer, of all places. (It was wildly unfair, the freezer being totally out of reach for a young girl, yet completely appropriate as a stand-in for tundra.) As I closed my own freezer door I heard the solid, reassuring hum that signaled its frosty seal, and I wondered about that doll. I’d thrown out most of my father’s gifts, and given some to my mother to sell at auction. But I couldn’t picture the doll. Pity; perhaps Ellie would have liked it.

Later that night, we watched the fireworks from the deck off my bedroom. They were far enough away that we could appreciate their expanse, but close enough that they were terribly loud, and Ellie snuggled into the curve of my shoulder during several startling booms. Afterward I taught her how to light and hold a sparkler, and she promptly went through the whole box, her blond curls bouncing as she wrote her name and mine in the sky. When I close my eyes I can still see them there, the loops of her e’s and the bumps of my n’s burning an electric trail.

Theo and I had done that with sparklers, too, on one of our earliest dates. He took me for a walk in the evening near the library, around the art museum circle. We sat on the towering steps in the dark and when he reached into his book bag and pulled out the sparklers I was struck by the romance of it, by his organization and forward thinking. Not by his thriftiness, or the student-y simplicity of the date. Funny the things you remember and the things you forget. He always had sparklers for Tom, too, and now I had them for Ellie.

It had grown late, and a mere ten minutes after the last sparkler fizzled down to a glowing silver nub, Ellie fell asleep clutching her worn stuffed bear and breathing heavily, mouth open, in the guest room. I call it the guest room, but it used to have another name, another purpose. Another child once slept in it, in another life, in another bed. I didn’t remove anything; only Theo, of course, would have thought to change the furniture. He was the one who spent a whole weekend putting away her toys and books and clothes, keeping only a few cherished photographs around. One day I walked in and her maple canopy bed was gone; a wrought-iron headboard as delicate as filigree jewelry stood in its place. It was impossible to imagine my daughter against that frilly backdrop, and I suppose that’s why he chose it. Its pattern circled round and round; you could lose yourself trying to find your way out of its curves and whorls.

I stood over Ellie a long time, making certain she was fast asleep before I stepped forward and snipped a locket of her golden hair. It was only when I stood above her with my sharpest scissors that I realized the import of what I was doing. The scene below me—the cottony pillow interrupted by the swirl of flaxen hair; the graceful indents below her ears; her neck, as tiny as an animal’s, pulsing with her soft breath—was something only a mother or a criminal would be privileged to see. Or someone, like me, who was both.

February 11, 2010

SIX MONTHS EARLIER

Yes, I’ve taken up my journal again after many years away. Let’s see how long I can sustain it. I gave it up twice before; once, when my father left, and then a second time after all that business with Peter and my daughter. It’s as if I knew there were some things I wouldn’t need to write down to render them indelible. I remember, for instance, that both of these men cried the exact same way, their tears so heavy they made an audible splash. My father’s rained on the letter he held out to me. Peter’s plunked on the wax paper of the cheeseburger he’d brought from that greasy spoon we used to go to. Parting gifts. After everything else fades, we seem to remember what people give us last, don’t we?

It hardly seems fair, since we get the best of everyone at the beginning. My father, in particular, seemed to float through the rooms of my youth, carried in on a cloud, all smiles and ease. My mother’s cheeks always flushed in welcome; it was like witnessing roses at the precise moment they unfurled. But when my father left us, her cheeks went pale, and stayed pale. She never looked healthy again. When I stare in my own mirror, I’m always happy to see a sprinkle of brown sunspots, a constellation of blue veins, or a redrimmed eye. At least there is color. Where there is color, there is life.

I’ve 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

Reviews for The Bird House

[carolee888 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Even though Kelly Simmons wrote The Bird House so that story can switch back and forth between 2010 and 1967, this book was easy to keep the time periods separate. There are clues in the chapters on 1967 that answer the questions the Ann Biddle had in 2010. This book is full of symbolism and straight forward clear writing. I love the author's style and know that story would succeed if Ann was not the sole narrator.Ann Biddle has a family secret and as soon as I read that I knew that I wanted to find out the truth. My family on both sides have secrets. I have mild cognitive impairment so I have memory problems too. So I immediately connected with this story. Ann Biddle's memory is failing and she worries about a death in the past because she cannot remember the important parts of truth connected to the death. The author not only keeps you reading even when you really don't have the time but she has developed fascinating characters in her story. Ann spends time with her granddaughter Ellie who is 8 years old, smart, full of life and perceptive. It seems that all her other relationships were gone, her husband died in the past, her mother and father are long gone. So she and Ellie explore family stories. Ann is selective about what she tells Ellie but sometimes things happen to jolt Ann's memory back. They care about each other. Ann reminds me of my grandmother when she was slipping dementia.I highly recommend reading this book.

[rascalstar · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A textured, intelligent book about a grandmother on the edge of Alzheimer's relaying family history and secrets to a granddaughter on their special days and hours together. While the child, Ellie, works on a project with Grandma Ann, memories surface via trunks in the attic, tying the generations together in unexpected ways. Thought-provoking. There is much between the lines subtly urging readers to consider various aspects of life and relationships, relatives, and aging and much more. The author has created a spunky grandma, a smart and curious youngster, and parents of the child who worry too much about her and are beginning to see reasons to worry about Grandma Ann.

Plenty of gentle, touching humor and much more. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Loved the characters and that they are. Unpretentious. A really lovely read.

[cjservis · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Fantastic read! This book grabbed me from page one and didn't let go! I just kept wanting more. Kelly Simmons is a terrific writer and storyteller.

[nightprose · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is the story of a mother haunted by a secret she has long kept hidden. Now as she grows old, she finds she must come to terms with an act she committed as a young mother…the secret she kept will come out.As Grandma Ann Biddle assists her 8 year old granddaughter Ellie with a school project, she finds herself questioning her memory of the past. She finds herself wondering what is actually a memory, and what is her impression of the event. Ann is no longer sure what really happened, or the way things really happened. She isn’t sure if her recollections are things she created to protect herself from the truth, and the pain of the past. She knows she must face the facts before it is too late.Ann’s daughter-in-law Tinsley is Ellie’s mother. She feels the need to protect her own daughter from Ann. Unsure of Ann’s health and tenuous grip on reality, Tinsley feels responsible for monitoring the bond, as well as past secrets and their effect on the family’s future. Time will tell. Secrets always come out, one way or another. Family shares your history. These three generations of women will come together because of heartbreak, but ultimately for healing. Indeed there is strength in numbers, and in love.

[kikoa_8 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I liked Bird House, however it touched a cord..I am in my 60's and am having memory problems as well as health. Maybe it was just too real, which says something for how well Bird House is written. Until now, I would have not believed that all families had secrets, but they are coming home in my family too. We sit with a room full of secrets and I so identified with Annie. I loved Standing Still, and Bird House comes in second.

[capecurry · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Interesting characters & setting. At times the story seem to veer from family drama to a mild horror story but settled back into family drama with a life lesson.

[reading_crystal · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is one of those books I'm not even sure where to begin. Just when you think you have gotten to the crux of the situation in this one, the author pulls another surprise out of her bag of tricks. I read this in one sitting, it reads quickly, easily and elegantly. The writing is great, the plotting is amazing and the characters are intriguing. What more can you ask for in a book?The Bird House, at it's core is about family secrets. We get to see these secrets through the eyes of Ann who is a grandmother now and trying to connect with her granddaughter, Ellie through a school project at first and then just trying to keep the connection going. Ann has been through a lot as we read her journal in the present and back in the 60s as well. The journal entries shed light on Ann's life as she is struggling with the family secrets and with the dementia that is starting to creep into her life.And it seems like the family secrets are destined to keep on as Ann learns things about her daughter-in-law and her son as well, through Ellie and through everyday life. The insights are what make this book. The reader gets a glimpse of everything on the surface, how life looks to others and to ourselves at the time we are living it. Then the insight of reading the journal 40 years later comes into play or seeing the life through the eyes of child, really gets to the heart of what is going on. I loved the insight. I loved how it made all the lives that are intertwined in this book three-dimensional and something you could see from several sides. The lives come to life on the pages of the book. You feel for each character. Even when something seems totally wrong, you can see something in it that makes you understand why the character did what they did.The characters in this book came to life for me, especially Ann and Ellie, who the book focuses on. Ann's journal entries really help you see the whole person even as she is starting to forget things as she is getting older. Ellie is a great foil to the aging Ann, not just in the age difference, but in the fact that while Ann is struggling to understand, Ellie just takes things as she sees them and doesn't look any further than that. And sometimes that is what we need to do as Ann learns, just take things at face value. I felt close to both of these characters and felt the connection that I like to have when I read books.Ms. Simmons has a true gift for writing this type of novel. I look forward to going back and reading Standing Still now as well. The Bird House to me was amazing, and what I loved even more is it is written on an easy to understand level. No lofty language or things you really have to study to understand. No, The Bird House is written as real life and that is what makes the book a wonderful book, to me.

[libsue · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Quick read with good characters. Simmons had me until the end when the story just fell apart, and things wrapped up too quickly. That being said I did enjoy the story-if you can enjoy the story of an older woman with the signs of dementia who has endured major (and I mean MAJOR) events in her life.

[marielamba · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What is true? What is real? What is forgotten and what can never be erased? In a lifetime of good intentions we all have our share of secrets, regrets, and undiscovered passions. And digging through old letters, connecting the importance of a ring with something said long ago, really looking at what is around you, well, it can change your entire view of your world.The Bird House by Kelly Simmons (Washington Square Press) takes the reader on a mesmerizing journey into one woman’s past and beyond in this sparkling and engrossing novel you’ll want to recommend to everyone you know. The characters are real, the situations at once startling yet believable. I found myself glad that I couldn’t sleep last night, because that meant I could get back to this novel and read it through to the end. How many novels are good enough for that? After finishing the last page I had that “I just read something truly amazing” feeling. The lingering of images and emotions. The sadness, as if parting from a very dear friend….Simmons writes of a granddaughter who is brutally honest, and who needs to do a family heritage project with her grandmother. She takes us into the head of Ann, a seventy-something woman of high intelligence and so-so memory, who skips us back and forth through time. Her past is a life full of promise, then terrible loss and guilt. In her present Ann finds her heart being won over by her granddaughter, a child who asks all the wrong questions in just the right way. And Ann finds answers she hadn’t even known she was seeking.The story is at once heart-wrenching and hilarious. Ann has a tart tongue and a sharp eye, making her the ideal narrator casting a witty eye on everything from egocentric architects, Main Line Philadelphia elite, the claustrophobic existence of a new mother, the horrors of those tacky birthday party activity joints, and the temptations of a forbidden lover.The author quickly envelops you with sharp imagery, true tension, mystery, passion and deeply-felt love. Her writing reminds me of Anne Tyler’s: amazingly brilliant, yet so accessible.So read The Bird House, love it, share it. Your friends will be glad you did! Very highly recommended.

[jewelknits · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

First Sentence: Beneath the surface of any problem, if you scrabble a bit, you'll find a secret.The book description makes it sound like the protagonist is a likable person. She isn't. She's bitter; she seems to have resented and maybe even disliked her children when they were small; she was unfaithful to her husband, and she is full of pettiness.In spite of this, this novel is a tightly-woven tale that swings from past to present - a dark family drama that pits Ann, 70 years old, a graduate of Bryn Mawr and a Main Line fixture, against her daughter-in-law Tinsley, an over-protective mother to Ellie, Ann's only grandchild from her remaining son, Tom.As Ellie begins to spend more time with Ann working on a generational family project for school, Tinsley seems to go out of her way to keep them from doing so. Ellie chooses bird houses as the theme, having seen them in old photographs and one currently in Ann's tree branches and Tinsley seems to go out of her way to discredit Ann as an influence on "her" 8-year-old daughter. Through their interplay, and the memories that Ann begins to bring to the surface, we see how Ann's circumstances were greatly reduced as a child when her father left her mother, taking all of her mother's money with him through fraud. We read about generations of faithlessness and it's impact, and we learn about Emma, Ann's daughter, who tragically died when she was young. As the battle of wills heats up between Ann and Tinsley, Tom ends up in the hospital with a heart issue at 39 years old, and memories of Theo, his father, dead of a heart attack while playing tennis, are forcefully brought to the surface.Within this family circle, more secrets are brought out and played on, and in spite of my dislike for Ann, I still experienced a sense of justice in her small victories.Character-driven and rather intense, this author manages to pull the reader into the battle. Which side will you pick?QUOTESForty years ago, my young daughter died because of something I did.What a waste, to be chaste in high school. What silly fools we were. Were we saving ourselves for infidelity, for cheating and lies?I sighed. These were my coworkers - the toddler, the baby. This was my job - the meals, the dishes, the diapers, the tantrums. The world's tiniest, most claustrophobic factory. The hours were unbearable and the conditions were apparently not going to improve.Writing: 5 out of 5 starsPlot: 4 out of 5 starsCharacters: 4 out of 5 starsReading Immersion: 4 out 5 starsBOOK RATING: 4.25 out of 5 stars