Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot

“She knows that to pet a bird you don’t smooth his feathers down, you ruffle them.”

The narrator’s former wife picks him up in the pet store and touches his feathers. This line involves wordplay and hints at who he was as a human, suggesting a complex dynamic between the narrator and his former wife—that some part of him enjoyed feeling jealous, getting his feathers ruffled, and becoming worked up over his wife’s real or imagined infidelities.

“She was still in the same goddam rut.”

As the narrator looks at his former wife and her male companion in the pet store, he thinks back to his jealous examination of their bed, when he would look for signs of other men. The word “rut” has two meanings here. A rut can be an undesirable behavioral pattern—a pattern that, for his former wife, supposedly involves seeking out a certain “kind” of man. At the same time, the word connects to the idea of animals being “in rut,” meaning in a period of sexual activity when males often fight over females.

“I felt like a damn fool whenever I actually said anything about this kind of feeling and she looked at me like she could start hating me real easy and so I was working on saying nothing, even if it meant locking myself up.”

The narrator thinks back to when he suspected his wife of cheating and how he would bite his tongue and keep his suspicions to himself. He describes this as “locking myself up”—he locked up his voice as a human, and now he is locked in a cage in her living room.

“I was holding onto a limb like it was her in those times when I could forget the others for a little while.”

The narrator remembers attempting to spy on his wife’s coworker by climbing the tree outside the man’s house, and he compares the way he clung to the branch to the way that he clung to his wife during sex. Although he uses profanity at times during the story, he is circumspect about discussing their sex life, referring to it only indirectly. This particular comparison suggests that the narrator’s jealousy and love are intertwined.

“I flap my wings and I squawk and I fluff up and I slick down and I throw seed and I attack that dangly toy as if it was the guy’s balls, but it does no good. It never did any good in the other life either, the thrashing around I did by myself.”

Man and parrot coexist within the narrator. He attacks his toys to express his rage and jealousy, but to no avail. His “thrashing around” does not soothe his fears, clear out his anger, or communicate his feelings to others. The narrator often reflects on his past life and what he should have done differently. Though now a parrot, he is wiser in this life than the last.

“There was something invisible there between me and that dream of peace.”

This line, like many throughout the story, ties together the literal and the metaphorical. Literally, there is a pane of glass between the parrot and the outside world. Metaphorically, the invisible barrier between the narrator and the peace he desires is self-created, generated out of his own fears and jealousy.

“I talk pretty well, but none of my words are adequate. I can’t make her understand.”

Even when he was a human, he was unable to express himself to his wife in ways that felt satisfying to either one of them. Once he becomes a parrot this problem becomes even greater. He chose his alienation as a human, but as a parrot he has no choice but to be alienated.

“When we held each other, I had no past at all, no present but her body, no future but to lie there and not let her go. I was an egg hatched beneath her crouching body, I entered as a chick into her wet sky of a body, and all that I wished was to sit on her shoulder and fluff my feathers and lay my head against her cheek, my neck exposed to her hand.”

The voice of the man and parrot merge as he thinks back on his intimate encounters with his wife through the eyes of his parrot self. Their love made him feel childlike and vulnerable, like “an egg” and “a chick” with his “neck exposed to her hand.” As depicted here, love leaves him in a weak position rather than in a relationship of equals.

“I am a faithful man, for all my suspicions. Too faithful, maybe. I am ready to give too much and maybe that’s the problem.”

The narrator sees himself as “ready to give too much,” but this assessment doesn’t square with his actions in his past life. He also has faith in his love for his former wife but not in her love for him, which suggests that he is deluding himself in his sense of who he is as a loving person.

“Now, though, she seems too naked. Plucked. I find that a sad thing.”

As a man, the narrator wanted to spy on his wife and catch her with other men. Now, given the chance to see her naked after she has been intimate with another man, he pities her nakedness, which feels like a kind of exposure. Nakedness here represents vulnerability, something he craves but also fears.

“‘Hello,’ I say, meaning, You are still connected to me. I still want only you. ‘Hello,’ I say again. Please listen to this tiny heart that beats fast at all times for you.”

This passage encapsulates the stark contrast between what the narrator hopes to communicate and what he can actually say. He wishes to communicate the depth of his love but can only offer the inadequate word “Hello.”

“Is there no place for me in this world where I can be free of this terrible sense of others?”

For the narrator, other people represent pain, jealousy, anger, and frustration. He feels as though the only way to be free would be to get away from other people entirely. This line foreshadows his presumably fatal flight toward the window for escape.

“I look at the sky the color of the brow of a blue-front Amazon.”

The sky at the end of the story is the color of the bird he desired while in the pet store. This suggests that his desire to escape isn’t purely a desire to get away from others—it may also be linked to his desire for connection.