I made a birthday cake for Charlie today, a horribly misshapen pineapple upside down. It looked like it was going to explode at the sides and collapse. After buying two packs of mini birthday candles I decided to tempt fate and puncture the surface fifty-nine times. Charlie closed his eyes before blowing out the candles. I knew what his wish was and didn’t mind that I wasn’t included in it. Cutting the cake required surgical precision. Charlie asked for a small slice and I had the same. At that rate of consumption, the damn cake will last two weeks. It wasn’t bad, certainly better than it looked and, in the gloom that followed our attempt at festivity, I imagined stuffing the remainder of the cake in hearty hunks down the toilet.

Charlie had assumed the faraway look in his eyes that I’d first noticed after he turned Sally out of the house. It was as if a spell had been cast over him and I saw little chance of breaking him out of it, not that I really tried.

Earlier, before dinner, I asked Charlie to bring Roscoe to the table with us—that way, I thought, he’d have his group of three. Charlie obliged, leaving the parrot in his cage beside the table on a rolling tea tray. It seemed that Roscoe sensed the oddity of the situation. He spoke sparingly, but practically everything he said unnerved me.

I’d done a couple of fat, highly peppered filets on the stovetop with a flambé of cognac, along with au gratin potatoes and out of season asparagus from Mexico. Roscoe ate sparingly from a small bowl of seeds, nuts, and dried rosebuds that Charlie saved for him. After demolishing a bud, Roscoe addressed me directly. “A rose by any other name, Pina, would smell as sweet.”

I watched Charlie, as the parrot spoke. I still suspected ventriloquism but Charlie’s lips didn’t move a hair. “Have you been reading Shakespeare?” I asked the bird, after I regained my composure.

“I wish I could read,” Roscoe said, wistfully, or so I imagined. “Charlie reads to me and plays recordings.”

“You aren’t eating, Roscoe,” Charlie said. “Is something the matter?”

The parrot looked thoughtful and then he said, “I’m sated, Charlie.”

Roscoe’s speech was seriously freaking me out. It wasn’t just what he said, but how perfectly he’d mastered the tenses, and knew the appropriate thing to say at any given time.

“Did you teach him all this, Charlie?” I whispered.

Charlie shook his head. “I did at first, but now he’s on his own.”

“It’s not possible,” I said, full-voiced. “This isn’t real.”

“I’m afraid it is, Pina.”

Roscoe made a couple of peck-peck sounds and nibbled on a dried rose petal. Then with his head perfectly still, his eyes roved from me to Charlie. “I’m sorry to interrupt your party, Charlie. If I could I would take my leave.”

“Say goodnight to Pina, Roscoe.”

The parrot nodded his head. “Bonne nuit, Pina.”

Charlie lifted the cage and walked the bird to his spot in the second bedroom. I cleared the dishes and brought out small plates for the homely cake. When Charlie returned to the table I went out to the kitchen, lit all the candles on the cake, and brought it to Charlie, forced out a boisterous version of “Happy Birthday.” We sat and looked at the cake a moment, with its wide swath of burning candles. It reminded me of images I’d seen on TV of the new fires burning in Napa and Sonoma counties. That’s when Charlie closed his eyes, made a wish, and blew out the candles.

I could tell that he didn’t want to talk about Roscoe anymore, and the implications of having a genius parrot that could speak and reason as well as a bright human. Instead, Charlie told a story of a birthday party he had more than fifty years ago.

“I was seven-years-old that day. My mother prepared a box lunch, in an actual box with a folding lid, for six of my friends and me. Each kids’ name was written in huge block letters on the lid of the box.”

“How do you remember all that?” I asked.

“It was a memorable day. I was very proud of the boxes my mother made up. Each had an egg salad sandwich on white bread, a tiny box of raisins, a small bag of potato chips, a huge chocolate chip cookie, a napkin that said: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, and an assortment of party favors. I have a photo of that party which has helped me keep the memory fresh.”

“How often do you look at the photo, Charlie?”

“Every ten years or so, but here’s the thing: of my six friends, five were boys. The girl, Rosalie, lived across the street and went to the Catholic school, St. Bart’s, while the five boys went with me to Maxwell Cubbins Elementary. Rosalie was actually my best friend, but I didn’t want the boys to know that. She had five older brothers and was one hell of a tomboy, much more daring than me. Rosalie taught me a lot of things that a boy should know how to do, things she learned from her brothers, like how to whistle and tie a slipknot. She’s the one who showed me how to make a reliable slingshot. She carried a pocketknife with a buffalo on it and we took turns carving our initials on trees and fences.”

“Did you carve your initials inside a heart?” I asked.

“No, no, it wasn’t like that.”

“Don’t worry, Charlie, I’m not jealous.” That got us both chuckling. I had no idea where this shaggy dog story of Charlie’s was heading, but it was clearly taking us far from Roscoe.

“The boys at the party wouldn’t talk to Rosalie so I didn’t talk to her either.”

“Typical.”

“And when we started to eat our lunches, all the boys began with our cookies, and made fun of Rosalie for eating her sandwich first. That’s when she choked on a big gob of sandwich. We were gathered around the breakfast room table, and my mother hung back in the kitchen, watching us from a distance. Rosalie sat directly across the table from me and I could see that she was choking. I called for my mother. This was before the Heimlich maneuver was part of the culture. My mother ran over and slapped Rosalie hard on the back a couple of times and she finally coughed up the big chunk of sandwich.”

Charlie gazed at me a little sheepishly before continuing. “Artie Bosco, who sat next to Rosalie, and had pulled his chair as far from hers as possible, as if she had the cooties, said, “Geeze, Rosalie, you got to chew your food.” She stuck out her tongue at Artie and just then he noticed the floor beneath her, and screamed: “Look, look what Rosalie did.” The other boys and I dashed over to witness the puddle she left on the floor. Poor Rosalie lashed out with both her arms and scooted out of the breakfast room and on out the front door.

“Later,” Charlie said, “when I was in bed, I remembered the look in Rosalie’s eyes and, for the first time thought, it must be harder to be a girl.”

I had the feeling that Charlie made up his birthday story from whole cloth. I was impressed with all the details, and yet if there’s anything I’ve learned about Charlie, it’s that he’s a detail man. But what seven-year-old boy has that kind of insight—that life must be harder for a girl? Did Rosalie actually leave a puddle of pee on the floor? Did a girl named Rosalie even live on Charlie’s block? Was the whole idea of the box lunches a fabrication? I didn’t press him on the veracity of his story. Once he told it, more than likely as a diversion from Roscoe, it became part of his past, just as an improbable dream does.

Of the new fires, the Glass Fire is closest to us. It has blazed over the Mayacmas from Napa Valley, where it destroyed numerous wineries and houses, all the way to the east end of Santa Rosa, and across Highway 29 into the retirement community of Oakmont, which evacuated all 4500 of its residents. Charlie and I watched on the news as the oldsters from the Oakmont assisted living facility lined up with their walkers outside at 11PM. Many were in their bathrobes, waiting for the next bus. One old woman in a wheelchair held a teddy bear in her lap. Charlie teared up as we watched because his mother had moved down to Oakmont, to be close to him after his father died, and she spent her last days in Oakmont’s assisted living facility.

“She loved it there,” Charlie said, “particularly in the dining room. She sat with her friends at a big table and the Latino waiters flirted with the old ladies as they recited the choice of entrees and asked if they’d like another scoop of ice cream. My mother said it felt like they were on a cruise. That was before cruise was a dirty word.”

The fires are still a long way from the town of Sonoma but the smoke is bad and getting worse. Charlie and I talk about where we could go and never come up with a solution, even for the short term. It’s gotten smoky out at the coast. Deciding where to live is becoming an existential quandary for many Californians, and it’s extending beyond the state and across the entire west coast. Charlie says, that with climate change, Northern California will eventually become a desert; fires will have less fuel and no longer be so widespread. I don’t think we have the time to wait for that, and I’ve never fancied living in the desert.

Tonight, before we sat down to watch the first presidential debate, I told Charlie about an article I’d read about five African grey parrots in a wildlife park north of London. They egged each other on with vast vocabularies of swear words. Park goers loved it and swore back at the parrots, but the directors of the sanctuary removed the birds from public view because they were concerned for children who might get caught up in the crossfire of obscenities. Charlie got a good laugh out of that. Telling him about the “potty-mouthed parrots,” as the article worded it, was my way of letting him know I now understand how remarkable these birds can be and that I will be more accepting of Roscoe.

Charlie was in a good mood because he’d had a congenial conversation with Sally earlier in the day. She’d called to apologize for her behavior the other night. She told him that she was safe and very much looking forward to moving into her new apartment, the day after tomorrow.

“I have hopes for her,” Charlie said. “I’m glad she’ll be nearby, but not here.”

Neither of us was prepared for the craziness of the so-called debate. Charlie and I have been alternately repelled by the news. First I needed to have a moratorium, then he, now me again. I had to walk away from the TV thirty minutes after the debate started, but Charlie seemed to get a kick out of the debacle. He kept shouting from the couch: “Trump’s killing any chance he had.” “Biden just said, ‘Will you shut up, man?’” “Trump won’t condemn white supremacy.” “Biden called Trump a clown!” I finally went back to the couch and sat beside Charlie for the duration since there was no getting away from it. Instead of watching the television, I watched Charlie. “Trump’s cooked his own goose with this performance. How do you think his ‘suburban housewives’ are enjoying this?”