Irene McClintock had a full day ahead of her. She pushed back several strands of hair as pure as silver from her oval shaped face. Then, she smoothed her apron as she stood staring over the two eggs resting atop the bacon in the frying pan. Her husband, Mac, short for James Padraic McClintock, tapped his fingers against the metal top of their kitchen table.
Irene tried not to allow the sound of his tapping fingers to unravel her morning. She reached for the frying spatula and removed the eggs and bacon to a large white dinner plate. She turned to place the plate on the table in front of her husband.
"Smells wonderful me darlin'. As always, my love" Mac said.
Irene poured herself a cup of the strong black coffee and a second cup for Mac. He reached for the toasted whole wheat bread and began buttering it.
"Jam?" Irene asked.
"Oh no. I think I'll pass on that this mornin" Mac said with a grin.
He patted his rotund belly with one hand and fed himself a bit of the buttered toast with the other.
When he finished his breakfast, Irene knew exactly where Mac would be: to the old wooden garage and combination tool shed. He gave her a peck on her cheek as she began to clear the dishes.
"I'm off to business, Renee, my girl" he said.
With that Irene McClintock heard the kitchen door close shut. She absently stood at the kitchen sink staring out the window.
Another bird house, she thought. Every day he builds another birdhouse. Every day since he retired from his job at the old steel factory, he builds bird houses. Oh sure, he sells maybe one or two.
Irene surveyed the backyard that faced the kitchen window. There were bird houses stacked against both sides of the garage. Already she heard the whirring sound of the electric saw. Soon it would be hammering. Aw well, I suppose he has to have something to keep his mind occupied, she thought.
Irene climbed the stairs to their bedroom. They'd lived in the Cape Cod A-frame since 1946 when they married and Mac had finished his military tour of duty. He was ambitious back then. Worked two, sometimes three jobs as a steel fabricator. Not that it ever made them any the wealthier.
The McLintocks were comfortable for all the days of their lives. They put their two children through college and even took short family vacations every summer. Mac loved showing his son, Ryan, how to fish for the best lake trout in the northeast. Irene did her part teaching their daughter, Maureen, all of the things she'd need to know to become a good wife.
It took a while but both children were grown and married. Now, Irene and Mac visited with their four grandchildren. Life was idyllic. Until Mac was forced into retirement about three years earlier when the steel mill shut its doors and moved out of the country. Mac was just only fifty-eight. "Too early for me to retire. I'm still full of ideas and energy," he'd said then.
He tried his hand at a few part-time jobs. But, each day he came home from work frustrated at the "new fangled machines and computers these young kids use," he'd said. More and more, Mac seemed resigned to the fact that his age was against him in the blue collar world. "They want young now. Not old men like me."
Irene tried to soothe his nerves and to make his forced retirement more enjoyable. She planned daily trips to museums, libraries, galleries and sports games. Mac loved baseball. Irene tagged along oblivious to how little she knew about the game and how expert Mac truly was.
Irene had always had a habit of taking day old bread, breaking it into smaller crumbs and putting it into an old coffee can she fashioned into a bird feeder. In a way, she realized now that's how Mac's hobby of building bird houses actually began.
"No one to blame but myself," she laughed aloud to their empty bedroom.
Irene pulled back the duvet and began to strip their bed of its linens. Their children were grown and lived nearby. Irene opened the windows in the bedroom. She always aired the rooms for at least two hours every day. At night, she liked to keep the windows cracked a bit even in the dead of a cold New Hampshire winter.
She looked down from the window as she struggled to open it. She hated that she had aged to the point where her strength gave away her chronological age. She saw Mac working on yet another bird house. This one was a lime green color. He was finishing it from the day before with a high gloss exterior paint, he'd said, "to keep it from rotting". There were two more bird houses sitting like skeletons on the long wooden plank table he had created to do his work.
He always plopped the plywood board atop two horses and worked outside the garage when the weather was cooperative. When it wasn't, he worked inside instead.
Now it was true that Mac's bird houses were a little more ornate than would be expected. Some had a second story with a veranda. Others were shaped like an old farmer's silo or barn. Still others were done up in unusual colors like the purple martin's purple bird house with the handpainted baby's breath on the roof.
Irene watched Mac as he carefully added small wood pieces to one of his masterpieces. This one was a Japanese pagoda. Irene thought about one of his most prized bird houses: an Italian trattoria complete with Italian mosaics in colors of lapis, amethyst, topaz and garnet siding and roof.
She had pleaded with him to try to take the bird houses to market.
"Mac, there are simply too many bird houses out by the garage. Why don't you try to sell some of them?" she asked.
"Sell my birdhouses?" he responded with gravest incredulity.
"How many more can you possibly build?" she asked
"Not sure. I've got an idea for one that looks like that old Leeward Mansion up on Mullins Hill, another modeled after the Alamo and still another that's a replica of Lil' Abner's shack," he said.
Irene shook her head. It was hopeless. Why on earth build so many bird houses when their backyard had less than a dozen avian visitors in any given season?
Only the neighborhood children made a fuss over them anyway, she thought. That part was true. Children rode by on their bicycles and always stopped to watch Mac work away on his masterpieces. They delighted at the virtual museum of bird houses the McClintock yard became. It was just a good thing that they lived in such a rural area or their neighbors might take to complaining about the mess.
In his time, Mac was the kind of man any woman would race to capture his attention. A big, burly Irishman, a shock of red hair, his arms were longer and stronger than most and his legs as long and sturdy as two redwoods. Irene reminisced about the first time she'd seen him.
At first, her initial inclination was that he might be just a little too burly. After all, hadn't her father always warned her about getting too friendly with those tough guys? She flounced past Mac every day on her way to her mother's fabric shop, "Milly's Millinery". He always seemed to be so visible and yet so preoccupied with the steel pipes and frames where he worked as a metal fabricator.
Just as Irene thought he was too far out of her middle class upbringing and totally disinterested in her, a beautiful pink rose awaited her at the fabric shop. "Irene, the florist delivered this for you," her mother said.
Irene knew that tone in her mother's voice. "Circumspective curiousity" Irene called it.
"I wonder who it can be from?" her mother queried.
"I'm sure I haven't the vaguest idea," Irene said, adding a tad of haughtiness to her demeanor.
"Well, there's a card in the box, dear. Do open it so you can find out," Mildred Fitzpatrick said.
Irene cast a sour glance at her mother and hastened to open the small white envelope.
"Next to a shamrock, only a rose so sweetly pink will do," the card read.
"Well? Irene? Who is it from? What does the card say?" her mother asked.
"It's handwritten but not signed," Irene answered.
"Perhaps, the florist delivered it in error?" Mildred Fitzpatrick asked.
"No. Mother, the address of the shop is right here on the card. It can't be a mistake," Irene said.
That was more than forty years ago. Mildred and Thomas Fitzpatrick closed the fabric shop a few years after Irene and Mac married. And what a wedding it was. Traditional Irish wedding with all the trimmings that lasted for nearly three days or until the Irish whiskey and home cooked food ran low.
Mac hadn't really changed much. All those years working long hours around heavy steel parts, trying to match each section piece by piece with absolute accuracy had little effect on his enthusiasm for life. Not a day went by when Mac didn't surprise Irene with some tiny little display of affection. He often called her "My Irene" and it was clear he much preferred her company to his old work buddies.
Irene never worried about Mac's admiration even as the furrowed lines in her face deepened and her once long blond hair was now a silvery platinum. Oh she kept her figure. As much for Mac as for her own sense of vanity. Now and again, she'd catch Mac admiring her from above the rim of his newspaper. It was difficult to be annoyed at the petty little things with such a man after forty years.
Irene stood by the window again. She looked down at the three new additions to Mac McClintock's bird house collection: The old Leeward Mansion stood next to a large replica of the Alamo and a tumbledown shack that could have doubled as a miniature for that of Lil Abner.
Something unnerved Irene. It was too quiet out there. She closed the bedroom window and walked down the stairs to find Mac. Had he gone into town? She didn't recall hearing the sound of the pickup's motor. She exited the back door and walked out toward the garage.
She heard no movement about anywhere. She walked around to the opposite side of the garage where she had just planted a string of rose bushes. Mac lay on the ground still and silent.
"Oh my God! Mac? Mac? What happened?" she asked.
Mac didn't respond. In his right hand lay a pretty pink rose. Several birds flew into the bird houses Mac had just completed. Tears fell from Irene's eyes. She held Mac's hand and felt its icy cold. Mac had made a mission of building bird houses to fill his empty hours. But, the last thought he had was a pink rose just like that very first one he'd sent to Irene.
