My Great Uncle Adolphus had a pet duck named Patrick. Patrick was insecure, needy, foul-tempered, and brilliant. Not just brilliant for a duck either, my Great Uncle would say. Patrick possesses a keen mind. He has a deep curiosity about everything under the sun and a bracing skepticism! Patrick would hiss at us whenever we went to visit. He would laugh nastily when we mispronounced words or displayed lazy, unoriginal thinking. When we left there was always duck poop in our shoes. The price of genius, Great Uncle Adolphus would say, smiling proudly.
After my Great Uncle Adolphus’s death Patrick came to live with us. We were not Great Uncle Adolphus’s closest relatives and I have never been sure why he selected us to look after Patrick. I was six, maybe seven. Patrick was delivered in a gold cage big enough for a medium-sized elephant. It was just Mother and I at home so it must have been a week day. I was eating cottage cheese when the delivery men knocked at the door. I preferred cottage cheese served in a shiny blue aluminum bowl and it was best with a sprig of parsley on top. Patrick sat in his cage with his bill tucked tightly to one side of his breast, completely still. Mother and I watched him closely. He was breathing heavily, a deep, shaky inward breath then a long, whistling exhale that stopped and started partway through. It was the saddest noise I had ever heard. “He is an unpleasant creature,” said Mother. “But he is ours. He’ll have your room now. You will sleep on the couch from now on.”
Patrick never recovered from the heartbreak of Great Uncle Adolphus’s death. We tried to cheer him up. We remembered how he had loved to mock us because of our lack of intellectual rigor. So we put on shows in front of his cage acting as stupid as we could. I would recite the multiplication tables but make serious, ridiculous errors. I would sing the alphabet song but get the letters mixed up and give up in a show of frustration. I would list the countries and capitals but I would say crazy things like the capital of Tanzania is Baltimore and the capitol of Iceland is Madrid. Father and Mother would discuss philosophy but instead of saying Aristotle and Heidegger they would say Donald and Goofy. Nothing worked. Patrick remained unmoved.
Then one day the sound of Patrick’s labored breathing stopped. We made arrangements for Patrick’s body to be laid to rest beside Great Uncle Adolphus’s. I got my room back and I felt joyful about that, which in turn made me feel guilty. I told Father that I hadn’t loved Patrick, not really. Neither did I, said Father. But your Great Uncle Adolphus did.
Years later I found out that Great Uncle Adolphus died of heartbreak. Patrick had started seeing a dull mallard named Mathilda, and Adolphus found out about the affair in an embarrassing manner. It was a tragedy for all concerned. Or, since I don’t know what became of Mathilda, I can’t say it was a tragedy for her. Perhaps it was merely a minor embarrassment in Mathilda’s world.
It’s funny how memory works. Years after Patrick’s death I still think about the price of genius. And I still find myself checking my shoes before I thrust my feet in, on the lookout for the foul stench of that brilliant duck.
Mark Hoadley‘s recent work has appeared in Word Riot and KYSO Flash. He is co-editor of the online poetry journal The Maynard. Mark lives in Vancouver, BC where he writes memoir, poetry and fabulist fictions, sometimes all at once.