Bird of Passage

Long Synopsis

A forlorn, dimly lit, neglected room in a house on an island in Maine. Winter 2010.

Enter Marilyn, a well-dressed real estate agent and her not so well-dressed client, Ginny. Alarmed by the unlocked door and run-down condition of the house, Marilyn apologizes and suggests they check out another house nearby. But Ginny is intrigued — this house is remote, full of books, on an island, and there’s a wood stove. Here, she will have the solitude she craves in order to write about what just happened in Wales. While Marilyn fills out the lease, Ginny notices a survey of the property on the wall. Marilyn is intrigued; she had no idea the property extended around the point. She wants to make a copy for her file. When Ginny sees someone walking in the field, she presumes she has neighbors. Marilyn looks out, sees no one and replies, “Nobody goes down there, Ginny. This is the backside.”

Enter Rose, the former cleaning lady of the deceased owner, who wants to be sure the squatter who keeps showing up isn’t the reason the lights are on. Ginny offers to be the caretaker in exchange for a reduction in rent.  Marilyn says they’ve hired a caretaker who, Rose chimes in, is not caretaking.

After Marilyn exits, Rose explains she worked for Larry, the previous owner, for thirteen years and continues to check on the house every Friday after visiting her elderly father.  She helps Ginny light the wood stove, pours a vodka and curls up on the sofa for a chat while Ginny unpacks her laptop and a red binder. Answering Rose’s many questions, Ginny explains she was last living overseas in Wales, has no family, and hopes to write. When Rose won’t leave, Ginny goes up to bed. While Rose feeds the wood stove, washes her glass, sweeps up a few dead mice, Larry enters wearing summer clothes.  He reports to Rosie, who cannot see him, that he’s had a good sail. Curious about the heap of luggage, he inspects Ginny’s belongings on the table. Rose departs, turning off the lights and locking the door which Larry immediately unlocks. He pours himself a vodka and takes Ginny’s red binder to his chair where he sips his vodka, sucks on his pipe and reads in the dark. 

Next morning, Ginny is lighting the wood stove when Rose returns, looking for her misplaced cell phone.  She assumes Ginny has been out and left the door unlocked. Ginny replies she hasn’t been anywhere. Rose spots Larry’s vodka glass on the coffee table and points to her glass, which she washed, on the kitchen counter. They are interrupted by Marilyn who returns the survey and a copy of Ginny’s signed lease. Rose tells Marilyn about the unlocked door and the glass on the table. When Ginny goes outside to check on her rental car, Marilyn and Rose discuss the former tenant (Muriel) who saw dead Larry typing at his desk the year after he died. Marilyn refuses to tell Ginny about Muriel, saying the longer she can rent the house, the better chance she’ll have to sell it.  Rose insists Ginny be told, so Marilyn stumbles through an explanation which Ginny ignores. She just wants to be left alone.

After Marilyn and Rose exit, Ginny discovers her red binder is gone and runs upstairs. Larry enters from the back hall, holding her red binder which he hides. When Ginny returns, she presumes the man in shorts and a summer shirt must be the poor squatter and offers him warm clothes. Larry quietly informs her that he’s not cold — he doesn’t get cold, or hot – just thirsty. When he asks what happened to his survey (which was expensive), Ginny presumes he is her landlord. “No,” he says, “my son is your landlord.”  “No,” says Ginny, “That man died and when you’re dead — ” Larry interrupts. “When you’re dead, what? Tell me.”  Ginny says, “You rot, and you don’t get to stick around. If you’re lucky you get a headstone. My father got his from the Navy. ” Larry, delighted, says he’s a navy man to which Ginny says, “Then you’re entitled to a headstone!”

But it is Larry’s full name that ultimately alarms and convinces her. This man in shorts in the middle of winter is Lawrence S. Hall who wrote the harrowing, prize-winning short story she studied in college — “The Ledge” – which she re-read last night. She found an anthology up in the bedroom and now she has so many questions. But Larry does not want to talk about “The Ledge.”

Ginny learns that Larry has been in the house for sixteen years; that he’s stopped asking why; that he enjoys Rosie’s company on Fridays when she comes by to have a vodka and clean up the dead mice; that Rose cannot see him and that he detests locked doors.

Satisfied that he can share the house with this woman, Larry returns Ginny’s red binder and offers to collaborate — nobody to interrupt them except Rosie on Fridays. Ginny describes seeing someone walking in the field which intrigues Larry who says, “This is turning out to be quite a day. I presume you want to write a novel?” Flabbergasted, Ginny says she hasn’t thought about it. “Well,” says Larry, “You’re going to think about it now!”  

The next day when Rose returns, Ginny asks her about Larry and his short story, “The Ledge,” which Rose says is not a story. The drowning Larry wrote about in “The Ledge” happened two miles south of the house. Rose finds The Portland Press Herald newspaper clipping from 1956, which she reads aloud. Ginny is fascinated. The local fisherman was Buster Estes, his son was named Steven and his nephew was Harry.

Larry, a former English Professor at Bowdoin College, holds severe “classes.”  Ginny’s notes detail her eight months’ sojourn in a remote Welsh valley. Her neighbor was an elderly Welsh farmer named Sonny whose farm is called Fos-y-Rhiew and whose sheepdog is named Rover.  When Larry asks why she had tea at Fos-y-Rhiew every day, she finally admits she was lonely but insists that her novel is not about loneliness. “Dear girl,” says Larry, “Everything is about loneliness.” She refuses to explain why she left so suddenly. When Larry comments on her moving twenty-six times, calling her a migratory creature, a bird of passage, Ginny erupts. She has not always moved by choice.  She might be a single woman without family, but she has done the best she can with what she was dealt.

In subsequent work sessions, Ginny describes Sonny’s obsession with her. Larry presses her to explain the deaf and dumb Gypsy, the suspicious neighbors, why she left.  She deflects his queries. He likewise deflects her questions about what provoked him to write “The Ledge” or why he is still thinking about Steven, age thirteen.  One night, having had too much to drink, he describes the tide rip around West Brown Cow, the ledge where they drowned. The tide rip appeared after the drowning; it wasn’t there before.  He eloquently describes how the Navy buries their dead at sea, how Steven never had a proper burial, how writing “The Ledge” was a “Goddamned pathetic sodden ordeal,” and that it took a heavy toll. He drank like a whale, nearly lost his job, lost his wife. “Watch out for imagination, Ginny.  It can take you far, far away. Most people get back. I didn’t . . . entirely. Let’s see who you turn out to be when you’re done with your novel!” To which Ginny replies, “that’s what we’re going to find out, isn’t it?”

Ginny asks if she can work in the Fishouse, Larry’s studio/shack down on the shore where he finished “The Ledge.”  Larry says no; you’re not ready. “Why? You wanna quit?” Drunk, he suggests they meet there on Sunday for cocktails, communion and evening prayers and swaggers out.

On Sunday, Larry waits soberly for Ginny at their appointed hour. She is late.  When she finally tromps in, furious that Larry stood her up, he has no recollection of his drunken invitation to meet at The Fishouse.  He apologizes, coaxing her to sit with her gadget and continue their work. Today’s lesson is: turning point.  Ginny doesn’t think there was a turning point.  Larry says, “there is always a turning point.” Ginny next describes the day she took Sonny to his lawyer and that he revised his will, leaving her Fos-y-Rhiew. Bingo!  Their discussion then becomes more personal – his career, her love life, his writing about the life Steven never had.  This scene ends with Larry and Ginny jointly reciting from James Joyce’s “The Dead” (the last story in Dubliners).  It is clear now that Larry and Ginny are in love — it might not be corporeal (like Larry and Rosie once were) but it is deep and genuine.  Sadly, they cannot touch.  

The property survey Ginny took off the wall proves to be a fateful prop. Ginny’s ongoing tenancy has debunked the longstanding rumors that the house is haunted. Marilyn drops by while Rose is visiting to inform Ginny that a retired surgeon from Boston is coming to look at the property with the dream of tearing down the house and the Fishouse, so he can build a small house in the field, for his ailing wife who grew up in Maine. A lively discussion follows about summer people and locals and natives and people “from away” and the loathed tourists. Ginny, hoping to stop the sale of the house, tells Marilyn Larry is sitting at his desk right now. That he’s been helping her write her novel. Marilyn asks if he glows in the dark and leaves.  Rose asks, frightened, “you made that up, right?” Ginny says of course.  Rose says nobody buys houses in the winter and leaves abruptly. Ginny is distraught. If only she hadn’t pointed out the property survey to Marilyn. Finally, she has a home and now she has to leave it. Caustic, sarcastic and furious at Larry’s passivity, Ginny exits, slamming the door.

The next day Larry is alone typing when Marilyn arrives, glad Ginny is not home, and calls her office to inform her partner that the surgeon has come in his limo and made a deposit. Rose arrives while Marilyn is writing Ginny a note informing her the surgeon is offering her a thousand dollars to leave in a week.   

The next morning Larry is determined to get Ginny to finish her novel. Reeling from Marilyn’s note, she says she has more important things to think about. “We got as far as we got!” she yells, “Back off!” Larry throws her recent pages in the wood stove. “You hit a dry patch,” he says, “it happens. Sonny wants to marry you and leave you his farm. You say no thanks. Then what?”

Finally, Ginny tells him that Sonny died from salmonella food poisoning which he got from the chicken she cooked him which prompted the neighbors to presume Ginny killed Sonny deliberately so she could inherit his farm.  Her description of finding Sonny in a puddle of vomit and diarrhea, his dog Rover under the table not thumping his tail, prompts Larry to send her down to the Fishouse where strong stories are completed.

A week later, the house looks like it did the day Ginny arrived. Ginny’s bags are packed. Her desk is cleared. Marilyn arrives with the surgeon’s money and the balance of Ginny’s rent and wishes her well. Larry reads aloud the prologue from Ginny’s completed novel and congratulates her. He has brought champagne. They toast. He asks where she’s going next? Ginny says she’s heard from the lawyer in Wales that indeed she inherited Fos-y-Rhiew, but she can’t go there – the gossip will be endless.  “Gossip is just the rude cousin of caring,” he says, encouraging her to accept Sonny’s gift of love.  Then asks about her time in The Fishouse.  She says she got the little stove lit. She says Pooch (the dog in “The Ledge”) was there, as was Sonny’s dog Rover. Larry asks did Steven show up? He didn’t. They agree Stevie is an outdoor boy.  Ginny asks where will Larry go?  He’s packed his typewriter – that must mean he’s leaving. Larry says he’s going sailing with the person Ginny saw walking in the field the day she arrived – Steven, who has come ashore. “Steven will be our navigator,” he says, “I’m teaching him about the stars. And we’re going fly-fishing.  Fly-fishing? Yes, says Larry, calmly. He then describes how, on a family fly-fishing trip, he watched his brother David, age twelve, slip off a rock into a fast-moving New Hampshire river and drown. Larry ties his bandana around Ginny’s neck and leaves. 

Rose comes to say goodbye and to collect a few sentimental things – the Guy Lombardo record she and Larry used to dance to, the needlepoint pillow she made him.  She tells Ginny’s there’s a rental house up the road. Ginny says, no thanks. She’s going back to Wales. They agree to write letters.  Looking out the front window at the field Ginny watches Larry find Steven and Rose sees the cardinal at the bird feeder.   

Bird of Passage celebrates how much can be gained when we embrace the unthinkable. It honors the beauty and power of language, the integrity demanded by creativity, and the haunting persistence of heartbreak.