Kissy Kissy Arnold

A short story in which Delia lives with the daily reminder of her loving husband and the imperfect life they built.

Delia reached for the little orange bottle, struggling to unscrew the plastic top as it rattled gently. She forgot to take her blood pressure medicine again.

“Dang these bottles,” she said to herself.

She heard a small metallic thud on the end table next to her. The tiny one-bedroom apartment with its pink floral curtains and splintery floorboards felt even smaller with the cage in it, but she long ago accepted the end table would not hold a lamp, but would be dedicated to that particular ornithological creature that seemed to live forever.

The bird gripped the sides of the cage, exposing the flashes of pinkish red on its underside, bobbing its head up and down.

“Kissy kissy Arnold,” the bird said. “Kissy Kissy.”

She shot a glance at the parrot, the gray plumage suggesting age, though Delia knew bird feathers didn’t go gray with age like her own hair, no longer boasting its sleek brown curls after seventy five years. Her thick silver braid hung to one side of her plump, olive face as she pressed the bottle cap to release the tiny pills she routinely forgot to take. Her wrinkled fingers, perpetually moisturized and softened by years of working with butter, gripped in vain.

“Kissy kissy Arnold,” the parrot repeated.

The bird bobbed its head aggressively, seeking attention that her husband always gave it. He bought it decades ago, after the war, from a guy on the street selling a brood of three baby parrots. He thought it would help him cope with the trauma returning from the frontlines. His shoebox of a studio apartment in the West Village couldn’t handle a dog and he hated cats—something they had discussed and agreed upon during their first date—so the parrot made sense, as much as any animal did.

Her husband didn’t realize how long the things lived.

As the world returned to some semblance of normal, so did their lives, and the wedding was eventually held in June of ‘47. They were a longtime match that their families insisted upon, and Delia remembered her husband as an attractive young teen, thick dark hair, who returned from the war with a mustache, sullen eyes, and a jawline she could use to slice prosciutto. When he moved out of Manhattan to Park Slope after getting married to Delia, into a one-bedroom apartment meant to be a starter home purchased by her parents, he brought the bird, always doting on it, cooking with it perched on his shoulder, reading at night while keeping one finger stroking its beak. She loved his devotion to it.

Delia spent most of her days at her parents' bakery decorating little Italian cookies and pastries, bringing back a box of broken bits and discarded sweets that they would pick at after dinner, discussing their days. She would go early and return by dinnertime where, unlike most of her friends’ husbands, her own would be stirring a pot of sauce or boiling water for the pasta. He said he didn’t expect her to cook after a day of work, and he learned how to do the basics from his mother. His pasta was always perfectly al dente.

Besides, these were her favorite moments together, when the little escapes from each other saw them reunited, the time apart helping her grow fonder of him, desiring him more and more.

But her husband, who stayed home most of the day, going for walks to the bookstore occasionally, was dealing with a lot. He didn’t need to work, mostly because of the pension he received. He had been in France and Belgium, and not for vacation. Rare was the moment he’d conjure up these memories, instead asking her about her day, what she bought at the department store, if she wanted to go to the beach that weekend, and if she wanted him to cook his lasagna for dinner next week. They both came from good Italian families. They both knew a thing or two about tradition, and making red sauce the right way.

“Kissy kissy Arnold. Love you. Love you,” the parrot squawked.

The bird was all she had left of him. Well, that and the apartment, which ended up being the apartment and not a starter situation after all.

The tiny bedroom and tiny living room boasted a tiny kitchen, all painted in shades of green and pink that would one day be labeled retro. There would have been no room for a child, let alone a crib. For years she imagined him there alone, waiting for her to come home, but she never asked him if he was lonely. It never seemed the case. Each day she came home to find him, smiling, waiting for her, book in hand, parrot close by, the smell of garlic and roasted peppers never surprising her.

It wasn’t how most girls lived, but Delia got used to it. Enough years passed that it even made her happy.

That didn’t matter to her family, though.

“When are you going to give me some grandchildren?” her father used to ask in the bakery. Bing Crosby crooned something on the radio in the background while he dusted the counter with flour.

Delia hated this question, not fully interested herself in having any. But she knew it was tradition. It was what was done. She turned out the pans of colored cake for the rainbow cookies to layer them with jam. The process was cathartic, methodical.

“You know he’s not well all the time, father,” Delia would say.

“A lot of men back from the war started families, principessa,” he said. Even into her thirties he called her that. His little princess.

“I know, but it’s not the right time,” she said.

“Time isn’t something that waits to be right,” he said.

She dipped her finger into the chocolate and tasted it, sufficiently bitter, and she knew her father spoke the truth, but that it didn’t matter.

It was that same night she broached the topic after dinner. More out of duty than desire. The discarded ends of the rainbow cookies filled a plate on top of the lace tablecloth her mother had bought for her. The tablecloth grew more tattered each year, but Delia always found time to patch it up, at least when her husband became too sick to do it, anyway. The gray parrot picked at a piece of the red cake that her husband placed on the table, crumbs sticking to its jet black beak. Her husband likewise devoured whole pieces of the chocolate covered concoction.

“These really are the best in Brooklyn,” he said.

“Aw, sweetie, thanks,” she said.

“Maybe in all of New York,” he said.

“Go on,” she got up to get the kettle off the stove, which whistled slowly in the background, and poured it over a bag of peppermint tea in her mug. He didn’t drink anything but water and black coffee with chicory.

“Really, Delia, perfecto.”

She sipped her tea.

“Honey, I was wondering, how are you feeling?” she asked.

“Fairly well. The Dodgers lost again, but who’s surprised there. Baseball can be so tiresome sometimes,” he said.

“I mean, physically, are you OK? Have you seen the doctor?” she probed.

“I’m quite alright, Delia. Why are you asking?” he said as he put down the piece of cookie. The tension between them that suddenly grew seemed to chase the parrot onto his shoulder.

“I just, well, father and I were talking today about grandchildren, and—”

“Delia, I told you before I married you,” he started.

“I know, but—”

“The things I’ve seen, this world, I’m, I’m, I’m not bringing anyone into this,” he stammered.

“That was years ago, and—”

“And, and, and, I don’t even want to risk it. I simply do not see the point of it. Our life is comfortable. We’ll get a dog if you really want, but, I, I, I, I simply do not see the reason in arguing anymore,” he nearly shouted. He stood up. “I believe I’ll take a walk now. Excuse me.” He put the parrot back in the cage and left slowly, not slamming the door, but his footsteps were heavy as they clunked down the stairs and out to wander the grid of brownstones that lined the streets.

And that was that.

Their days spent apart, their nights spent together, and Delia forever accepted their version of things. She nearly ran out of excuses for being childless before her father died, her mother too engrossed with the bakery to worry any further, and eventually time left her alone, not quite isolated, to sit with her decisions.

The bird in the cage looked at her, much as it did now, wanting the attention he wouldn’t fully give Delia. When her husband died all those years ago, sometime just before or after Reagan got elected, if she remembered it right, Delia regretted not having children to raise, even as a single mother. She ran the bakery, of course, but so many things changed along those streets in Brooklyn in past decades. She heard more Spanish than Italian these days, but the bakery continued on, selling mostly the same pastries her father had made, though her cousin’s take on sfogliatella left something to be desired. Delia tugged at the pill bottle once more and finally released the lid, fishing out two tiny red pills and taking them with the glass of orange juice that, by now, was warm, sitting on the counter.

“Kissy kissy Arnold,” the bird said again.

She missed coming home to never find dinner prepared, to never smell his red sauce simmering. She missed their evenings together, his hand on hers, the way they would fall asleep together, warmly. He supported her. She supported him. With everything that happened in the world, she was lucky to have that, even if other things, other experiences, eluded her.

Delia felt tired again, and shuffled to the armchair where he used to sit all those nights, the worn fabric in need of reupholstering. Her feet felt hot in the fleece slippers. The grimy window let in some late summer light as a boombox outside played something heinous on the streets. She thought about going down to the bakery the next day for some rainbow cookies. It had been a while.

“Love you, love you, kissy kissy Arnold,” the bird chirped again and again.

She looked over at the thing, impossible as it was to ignore.

For the rest of her life she’d be saddled with it, though the memories it conjured up, imperfect as they were, seemed worth it. Perhaps. The apartment was just a vessel that housed their lives, but the gray parrot had been nurtured by her husband, had been raised, taught, and loved. Like her. It was something they had in common. It was the last manifestation of what she no longer had, almost as if he were still there somehow. The bird squawked in its cage and, maybe later, she thought, she’d take it out to caress its beak like he used to do.

“Kissy kissy Arnold,” it said again.

Over and over, for years, ever since Delia could remember, it had started to say this. Those were the only words it ever uttered.

She knew parrots didn’t form words, they simply mimicked the humans around her. If they heard something often enough, they’d repeat it.

“Kissy kissy,” it chirped.

“Love you Arnold,” it said again.

She pined for her husband again to nibble cookies at the table together.

The gray parrot squawked. She sat in the chair and looked at the life she had built, and accepted it. All of it.

She slipped off her wedding ring and fiddled with it. On the inside she could still see the words, even with her tired eyes, their names engraved forever, “Nico & Delia.”

“Kissy kissy Arnold,” the parrot said more softly, and she could hear her husband’s voice, saying those very words.