Pretty Birds by Scott Simon Read Free Book Online

Zaric reminded Irena from the hallway. “No more scenes. I don’t want to give another history lesson to someone who’s so young she thinks Yuri Gagarin was one of the Beatles before Ringo.”
    â€œThat was Pete Best, you clod. You clod,
dear,
” Mrs. Zaric called out from the kitchen.
    â€œYou taught me that,” said Irena. “Who in the hell is Yuri Gagarin?”
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
    IRENA ZIPPED OPEN the shiny black nylon Adidas bag she had gotten when the team went to Zagreb for a tournament. It seemed to yawn. She laid out three American polo shirts (red, blue, and black, each of them HECHO EN HONDURAS —perhaps Pretty Bird had flown over the factory on his way to find their family), two pairs of Esprit jeans (one blue and one black), three pairs of white socks, three panties (two pink, one white), two white cotton bras, and a pair of scuffed brown loafers. Irena lowered each bundle into the bag and pressed down. Then she laid out the clothes she had decided she should wear to walk over to her grandmother’s apartment: her favorite black cotton shell with the lacy neck, a short Esprit denim dress, her gray West German army jacket, and the red-and-black Air Jordan shoes Aunt Senada had sent from Cleveland. She rooted around in the box under her bed for some of her favorite magazines. Grandma didn’t have a television set, and Irena doubted that her parents would let her walk into Old Town.
    Irena had
Q
magazine from June 1991, with Madonna on the cover in a snug white swimsuit, saying, “Everyone thinks I’m a nymphomaniac, but I’d rather read a book.” (Mr. Zaric had brought that one home from the news kiosk, saying to his daughter, “If she can read a book, so can you.”) She chose
The Face
from July ‘91, with Johnny Depp on the cover. Inside, Irena recalled, he insisted that he and Winona did the dishes together, at least once. She found another
Face
from May ‘91 with a sensational shot of Wendy James on the cover: she had strung strands of white beads around her breasts and nipples, turning them into Christmas trees. She selected a
Sky
from August ‘91. Vanessa Paradis was on the cover, but Irena had saved it for the interview with Madonna (“Her Again!” it squealed on the front) and a feature on teenage sex kittens through movie history, including old pictures of Brooke Shields, Jodie Foster, Milla Jovovich, and really old shots of Brigitte Bardot that Irena had been meaning to show to her grandmother. She thumbed through the article briefly before packing the magazine away, and thought she rather resembled the shot of Nastassja Kinski wearing a man’s shirt. It reminded her to pack her Michael Jordan jersey, but to squeeze it below the magazines, into a corner.
    Irena placed a copy of
The Little Prince
on top of the magazines (that, at least, was a book she had read and enjoyed), and a copy of
SportNews
from Zagreb, with Toni Kukoc on the cover, his jazzman’s goatee glistening. Finally, she reached back to her bed table and plucked up a bottle of Honey Almond makeup, a roll of Fire & Ice lipstick, and a small glass bottle of Deeply Purple nail polish. As she pressed down these last, small items, she remembered one more. She rolled back the drawer of her bedside table and picked up a row of three foil-wrapped condoms, which she pressed a little more carefully into the crinkles of the magazine. She had begun to zip the bag closed when she caught sight of the threadbare old brown Pokey Bear who had shared her bed since she was three. She zipped the bag as far as it would go before nipping the red bow on Pokey’s neck. He would be borne like a pasha to her grandmother’s house. Irena used a toe to push her bag into the hallway, under the Degas blue dancer print hanging by the front door.
    â€œDone,” she called out, and Pretty Bird began to trill like an unanswered