The coffee shop has a pale blue wall of painted birds. Whenever Ellie steps in for some tea and a hot sandwich, she picks a table beside the wall. Sometimes, she’s at eye level with a nuthatch. Other times, there’s an oriole or cardinal above her head.
What no one seems to know, other than her, is that the wall sometimes isn’t a wall – it’s actual sky. She feels the stir of a breeze from it. The pulse of a faint warm sun. The flight of the birds tickles her cheek, and birdsong patters in her ears.
She never knows, when she visits the coffee shop, whether she’ll find an unresponsive wall or a living sky. When she sits at one of the glossy dark tables, she touches her fingertips to the wall. Before the moment of contact, she doesn’t know if it will feel solid, or if it will ripple at her touch.
When it ripples, she feels it give way, and her fingers sway in the pale trembling light. She hears the birds and the sighing breeze faintly, and she knows it isn’t a wall but a portal inviting her to disappear. She’s afraid to see what will happen if she sticks too much of herself into it. She doesn’t dare advance more than a couple of knuckles per finger.
Ellie doesn’t tell other people about the wall that is sometimes real sky. She only recommends the coffee shop to them, and then she waits to see if they say anything. When they tell her they liked the pumpkin pie, the coffee, or the sandwiches, she peers into their eyes to check if there’s some secret they’re holding back for fear of looking crazy. But everybody seems ordinary enough, not as if they have ever touched a wall and felt it give way.
There is, of course, another reason she recommends the coffee shop to anyone she knows, even to strangers at a supermarket checkout line. Her daughter works there, all day and into the night, each weekend.
Ellie never goes to the coffee shop when she knows her daughter is working. She times her visits for Tuesdays at 4 PM, Wednesdays at 11 AM, and Thursdays at 10 PM. Never when her daughter has a shift.
Because what would they say to each other? Last time they spoke, she and her college dropout daughter, they were hoarse with shouting.
You’re difficult. You’re impossible. You didn’t turn out the way I thought you would. I gave you everything, and now look at you.
If she were to bump into her daughter… Let’s say her daughter switched a shift and came in on a Tuesday, a Wednesday, or a Thursday, maybe to fill in for somebody else. What would they say to each other, if anything at all? Maybe they would ignore each other, and Ellie would instead study the birds and test her fingertips against the wall.
Because one more poorly chosen word might close the door forever.
So she lingers in the coffee shop on the days her daughter isn’t there. She picks a seat beside the wall, which sometimes isn’t a wall but an impossible free space full of faintly warm sky. The birds are wheeling, gliding, stabbing through the air. They sing, they cry, all distant and muted. And when the wall yields to her fingers, she can just barely feel their wings brushing past her.
Kilter Street Chronicles 