We Are Inevitable by Gayle Forman (read aloud txt) 📕

“It means we’re inevitable.”

“How?”

“Because that song,” I say, my voice breaking. “That was the song.”

“What song?”

And then I tell her the story. Of Mom and Ira meeting by the side of the road. The song that started our family. The inevitability of them. The inevitability of us.

When I finish, Hannah starts laughing. Like hardcore, holding her sides, tears down the face, laughter. “All this time,” she says between hiccups. “You’ve said you don’t like music.” More chortling. “But music is your origin. You literally would not exist without it.” She wipes the tears with the back of her hand and kisses me goodbye before opening the car door and turning to me one last time: “Aaron Stein,” she says. “You’re the most unreliable narrator I’ve ever met.”

A Grief Observed

It’s dusk when I pull into Silver City, but the light is blue, peach, purple. It’s Georgia O’Keeffe light. We don’t have skies like this in the Northwest. Not ever.

After Hannah left me on the side of the road, I grabbed the atlas to figure out where I was and how to get home. Then remembered I couldn’t go home.

And that’s when I saw how close I was to New Mexico. How close I was to the thing I’ve been running from. Turns out, no matter how fast or far you go, the inevitable always catches up with you.

I picked up my phone. And for the first time since she left, I called my mother.

The dogs start barking as soon as I pull into the driveway and get more frenzied as I come up the front walk. My olfactory bulb starts firing the minute Mom opens the door. It’s not just her smell—lavender and sandalwood—but the aroma of chicken soup wafting from the kitchen. Jewish penicillin, what she would feed us whenever we were ailing. I stand in front of this strange house, with these strange dogs, and it’s like I’m there and here, then and now, all places at once.

“Hello, my love,” she says.

“Hi, Mom.”

We just stand there, neither of us knowing what to do. Mom used to be a hugger, but we all used to be things we’re not anymore.

“Do you want to come in?”

I nod.

As soon as I go inside, the dogs switch from fierce guardians to adoring lap animals. Mom introduces me: “This is Terrence,” she says, petting an oddly shaped mutt. “He’s half Siberian husky, half Welsh corgi, and mostly blind, not that he lets that stop him. And this is Mindy,” she says, tickling a poodle under the chin.

Mom, Terrence, and Mindy lead me down a hallway decorated with Southwestern style paintings of buffalo, hawks, coyotes. The chirp of birdsong is everywhere.

“Noisy little shits, aren’t they?” she says. “They’re always like this before bedtime. You want to meet them?” Keeping the dogs at bay, she opens the door to a small bedroom full of large cages and a pull-out couch, the bed made up. “Getting their ya-yas out. Reminds me of how you boys used to be. So riled up, I’d have to sing you to sleep.” She stops, lost in the memory. “Sometimes the birds sing me to sleep.”

I step toward one of the cages; five colorful parakeets flutter about inside. I stick my finger through the bars. They all ignore me save for one, a small yellow bird with orange spots and a baby mohawk, who gently pecks at my finger.

“That’s Ramón.”

“Hi, Ramón,” I say.

“Want me to open the cage? He likes to perch on fingers.”

I nod.

Mom unlatches the little opening, whistling and warbling like she’s become fluent in bird-speak. It wouldn’t surprise me. She always knew how to talk to anyone.

Most of the birds ignore her, happy with their birdseed. Ramón stares right at me, eyes flashing.

“He’s pinning,” Mom tells me.

“Pinning?”

“Dilating and contracting his pupil. It’s a sign of how parakeets are feeling.”

“How’s he feeling?”

“Curious, I suspect.” And then, as if to confirm Mom’s hunch, Ramón flies out of his cage, landing on my shoulder.

“Wow,” Mom says. “I’ve never seen him do that before.”

“What do I do?”

“Nothing. Unless you want me to get him off you.”

I feel Ramón’s tiny claws clamping on to my flesh, like he’s holding on for dear life. “Leave him.”

“He must like your aura,” Mom says.

I roll my eyes.

“Laugh if you want, but the people who live here have a ton of animal behavior books. One I read said that parakeets can see UV light, which allows them to see people’s auras.” Mom pauses and reaches her finger toward Ramón, who gently pecks at her nail. “He must like yours.”

“Then clearly Ramón has terrible taste. Because if I have an aura, it’s puke green.”

“Well, if it is, Ramón likes it, don’t you?” she chirps.

“You’ve become a bird person,” I say.

“I suspect I always was. I did name the store Bluebird Books.”

At the mention of the store my stomach clenches. Ramón flaps his wings in sympathy.

“But I never lived with birds before,” she continues. “I find them endlessly fascinating. We say birdbrain like it’s an insult, but as tiny as their brains are, they are remarkably intelligent animals. They can predict earthquakes. Storms. They go quiet in the moments before a cataclysmic event.”

Mom whistles and holds out her finger. Ramón jumps on, and she returns him to the cage. “It’s funny because the day I found your brother . . .” She trails off, latching the cage and unfolding a white sheet. “I woke up at dawn. Usually the birds are making a racket at that time, but they were eerily quiet.” She shakes the sheet out a few times before gently laying it over the cage. “I went into Sandy’s room, even though he hadn’t been home in days; if he had, I’d have been checking on him. I could never sleep when he was in the house. But he must have come in late, after we went to bed. When the birds