She phones her father, knowing his cell is probably turned off. He works in IT and clients constantly call him, disrupting his concentration. He used to work for the same bank as her mother but he quit “that corporate vulture.” Now he has no health insurance and many different clients who take months to pay him. He constantly tells Lynne he’s waiting for a cheque.
Uma answers the home phone because she never goes out but sits with her laptop on beds, couches, stairs and her yoga mat, working on her thesis. Sitting at desks hurts her back but all other surfaces seem to be fine for thesis writing.
“Is my dad there?”
“He’s biking.”
“Do you know when he’ll be back?”
“I have no idea. Is everything all right, Harriet? Has something happened to Irwin? Lynne told us he’s back in the hospital.”
“It’s not Irwin. I’m at the Scarborough Town Centre. I was hoping my dad could pick me up.”
“We already told Lynne we’re mid-cycle. It’s not a good time for a visit.”
“I realize that. The thing is, I came here with Gran and I lost her and now I don’t have enough money to get back.”
“What do you mean you ‘lost’ her?”
“She was looking at perfumes and then she was gone.”
“She left you alone at the Scarborough Town Centre?”
“Not on purpose.”
Uma doesn’t speak but Harriet knows she disapproves of Lynne and Gran. She has heard her refer to them as white trash. “Where did Dad go biking?”
“Stouffville. He’ll be gone for hours. I really don’t need this right now. Did you call Gennedy?”
“He’s not answering.” This is a lie. She would rather die than call him.
“What about your mother?”
“She’s busy with Irwin. Did my dad take the car?”
“Why would he take the car if he’s on his bike? What are you angling for, Harriet?’
“I was wondering if you could pick us up.”
“You know he doesn’t like me driving the Rover.”
The Range Rover was built in England and has a manual transmission. Trent doesn’t like Uma driving it because she burns the clutch. He has pampered and protected the Rover for years, although one of Irwin’s puke stains could not be removed from the leather upholstery.
“You can drive it though, can’t you?” Harriet asks. “It’s getting late and I don’t have any money.” She pictures Uma clenching her jaw, considering Trent’s reaction when he finds out she left his daughter in a mall, and checking a website on her laptop for more information. Uma never makes decisions without first checking her laptop.
“Where are you exactly in the centre?”
Harriet knows she’s searching Google Maps. “I’ll wait outside the theatre.”
“Wait inside the lobby.”
“I can’t wait inside. The security guard thinks I’m loitering.”
“Is he there? Let me talk to him.”
Uma believes in conflict resolution. For this reason Harriet never reveals any of the unresolvable conflicts in her life. “I’m in the mall, at a pay phone. I’ll wait for you inside the doors to the food court.”
“Not inside the doors, Harriet. It’s not safe. Sit in the food court near the door. I’ll find you.”
“What about Gran?”
“What about her?”
“We have to find her.”
“Let’s worry about you for now. Don’t go anywhere or talk to anybody. Wait for me. I don’t know how long I’ll be. It depends on traffic.”
“Okay. Thank you.” There is no way Harriet is leaving the mall without Gran. She might have upped and died like Mr. Kotaridis. Harriet doesn’t mention this to Uma because she suspects she wouldn’t mind if Mads upped and died.
It makes no sense that they want a baby. Babies consume every hour of every day. Uma would have to abandon her laptop, and Trent his new bike. Uma has explained to Harriet that eggs on ovaries after thirty-five start to rot. At thirty-nine, Uma’s eggs are seriously rotting. This didn’t seem to concern her until she went on a yoga retreat and met a blind Buddhist mother of six who convinced her that giving birth would open new channels and help her live in the eternal present. Harriet knows all this because Uma explains things in detail that she thinks Harriet needs to understand. “What you need to understand,” she has said on several occasions, “is I’m not trying to be your mother. More like your sister. Or just a friend.” Harriet would prefer she not try to be any of those.
When Harriet asked Trent why he wanted another baby, he said, “Uma feels she needs a radical change in her life.”
“Maybe she needs to be alone,” Harriet suggested, “away from you, I mean, to discover her true potential.” Mr. Chubak reads horoscopes and they’re always advising people to discover their true potential.
“I need you to be nicer to her, Hal. She needs a friend right now. Her thesis is taking a lot out of her.”
Uma’s thesis is very demanding. Harriet isn’t clear what it’s about but knows it has something to do with Women’s Studies because that’s what Uma hopes to teach after she finishes it.
There are no empty tables near the door of the food court. Harriet stands by the trash bins.
“Harriet Baggs, fancy meeting you here.” Mrs. Elrind pushes her patchy red face in Harriet’s line of vision. “Are you alone?”
“I’m waiting for someone.”
“Your mother?”
The last time Mrs. Elrind saw Lynne was at a meeting arranged by Mrs. Elrind to discuss Harriet’s behavioural issues. Lynne avoids Harriet’s parent/teacher interviews unless a teacher requests a meeting. The teachers advise her that Harriet doesn’t work well in groups and that her behaviour needs improvement. Lynne responds, “Tell me something I don’t already know.”
Mrs. Elrind did more than complain about Harriet’s behaviour. She called her belligerent and suggested she had Oppositional Defiant Disorder because Harriet refused to follow instructions. Mrs. Elrind referred to an incident in which she had instructed the class to work with three geometrical shapes and Harriet insisted on working with six. “Your daughter is deliberately disobeying me.”
“So what do you want me to do about it?” Lynne demanded. “You explain to me how to make my kid do your stupid-ass projects.”
Mrs. Elrind, according to Lynne, became miffy, commenting that “clearly, the acorn did not fall far from the tree.” She recommended a psychological workup for Harriet.
“Go fuck yourself,” Lynne said.
Harriet had expected Lynne to be angry when she returned from the meeting, but her mother just told her what was said, delighting Harriet, who imagined Mrs. Elrind’s red face getting even patchier and her shrill voice becoming even shriller. “So there you go, Mizz Harriet,” her mother said. “It’s your life. Your choice. I can’t fix it for you.”
And now, in the food court, Mrs. Elrind is faking concern for Harriet. “Why don’t you join us while you’re waiting? You shouldn’t be unaccompanied in a place like this.” She puts her doughy arm around Harriet’s shoulders and guides her to a table already occupied by a man whose face is so puffy, Harriet can barely see his eyes.
“This is Mr. Elrind.” Mrs. Elrind pushes her into a seat. “Harriet is the student I told you about. The abstract artist.”
“Is that right?” Mr. Elrind says. “I hear you’ve been giving my wife the runaround.”
“Now, Earl,” Mrs. Elrind cautions.
“I was the same at your age. Only learned what the rules were after I’d broken them.” Scaly skin covers Mr. Elrind’s hands, and his fingernails are yellow. Combined with the puffy slits for eyes, he resembles a reptile. Harriet decides to paint him later.
Mrs. Elrind crosses her doughy arms the way she does before asking the class a challenging question. “Now why would your mother leave you alone in the food court?”
Harriet knows she’s snooping around for a reason to contact Children’s Aid. Mrs. Elrind notified them about Tiffany Bussey’s mother slapping her and calling her a slut in training. Tiffany had a psychological workup, and Children’s Aid took her away from her mother to live with her aunt in Mississauga.
“My mother didn’t leave me alone. She’s at the hospital. My brother’s sick again.”
Mrs. Elrind must be aware of Irwin’s condition because all the teachers were asked to watch for seizures and, to the best of their ability, ensure that he doesn’t eat all his snacks at once like the other kindergartners. He needs to eat small amounts regularly or food becomes blocked by scar tissue in his bowel left behind by repeated surgeries. Lynne numbers his snack containers with felt marker, and draws little clocks on them—even though he can’t tell time—to indicate when he should eat them.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Harriet. Who’s here with you?”
“My grandmother.”
“And she left you alone in the food court?”
“I’m waiting for my father’s girlfriend to pick us up.”
“Your father’s girlfriend ?” Mrs. Elrind looks at Mr. Elrind picking his teeth with his yellow fingernail.
“My parents are divorced. He’s allowed to have a girlfriend.”
“You’re right there, pardner,” Mr. Elrind says.
“Earl, stay out of this.” Mrs. Elrind offers Harriet her New York Fries. Harriet loves New York Fries but doesn’t want anything touched by Mrs. Elrind.
“Astonishing how many of my pupils’ parents are divorced,” Mrs. Elrind says to no one in particular. Mr. Elrind takes several of her fries even though he still has a slice of pizza on his plate. Mrs. Elrind nibbles a fry. “Well, I think it’s high time we called your mother. What’s her cell number?”
“I don’t know. She just changed it.”
Mrs. Elrind looks at her the way she did when Harriet lost the school field trip forms her mother was supposed to sign. She didn’t really lose them. Pinning Lynne down to sign forms when Irwin’s in the hospital is nearly impossible. For the trip to the ROM, Harriet forged her signature and stole the ten bucks from Gennedy’s track pants while he was in the shower.
“How old are you, sailor?” Mr. Elrind asks.
“Eleven, captain.”
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“I’m going to work in a bank.”
“A financier, eh? Move over, Mr. Trump.”
“If you hope to work in a bank,” Mrs. Elrind says, “you would do well to memorize your multiplication tables.” Her thumb is working speedily on her cell. Harriet fears she’s looking up the Children’s Aid Society.
“My father’s girlfriend should be here any minute.”
“Well, why don’t we call your father? Do you know his number? Or did he change his number too?”
“He’s biking to Stouffville.”
“He’s what?”
“He bikes a lot, long distances.”
“Holy mac,” Mr. Elrind says. “Stouffville? That’s got to be fifty kilometres from here.”
Mrs. Elrind clasps her hands under her bosom. “Harriet, let me make sure I understand you correctly. Your mother is in hospital with your ailing brother, and your father is bicycling to Stouffville.”
“That’s correct.” Harriet glances at the glass doors for signs of Uma.
Mrs. Elrind holds up her hands as though she’s under arrest. “Is it just me or is this an utterly appalling situation?”
And then Uma bustles through the doors. Harriet hurtles towards her and throws her arms around her. “Take it easy, Hal,” Uma says. Normally Harriet resents her using her nickname but now she feels only surges of affection for Uma, who is always home. “Who were you talking to?”
Mrs. Elrind steams towards them. “Do you have any idea how long this child has been unaccompanied?”
Uma, a head taller than Mrs. Elrind, looks down at her. “Is that any concern of yours?”
“As her teacher, it most definitely is. She needs a stable home environment, obviously. I have half a mind to report this incident to the authorities.”
In the parking lot, Uma grips Harriet’s hand so hard it hurts.
“We have to find Gran.”
“Your grandmother is perfectly capable of looking after herself. She’s probably in a doughnut joint flirting with the gents.”
“What if she isn’t? What if she had another heart attack?”
“Then she’ll be rushed to the hospital and your mother will be notified. This is a public place. People notice when old ladies have cardiac arrests.” She opens the passenger door. “Please get in, Harriet. This isn’t good for my hormone levels.”
Harriet climbs in but doesn’t fasten her seat belt. “Couldn’t I just ask at the information desk?”
“Do you even know where the information desk is in this consumer ghetto?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re lying.” Uma starts the Range Rover. “Let me explain something to you. Trent and I are at a critical stage in this cycle.”
“Is that why he’s biking to Stouffville?”
“If you’re going to be adversarial, I’m not talking to you. I don’t need this.” She starts to back out of the parking spot but stalls the Rover. “Fucking stick.” Stick, Harriet knows, means the manual transmission.
“Please, Uma? I could just run in and ask. It’ll take two seconds.” Her father always says “it’ll take two seconds,” which means at least twenty minutes.
Uma burns the clutch some more. “Absolutely not. Listen to me. What you need to understand is I have two follicles maturing. If I am stressed, it raises the cortisol levels in my blood, which could jeopardize ovulation. If those follicles don’t release the eggs in the next twenty-four hours, they will have to give me an injection of another hormone to prevent the eggs from becoming post-mature. All of this costs money none of us want to waste. So please, spare me a sob story about your grandmother who abandoned you in this retail urban disaster.”
“She didn’t abandon me.”
“Then what do you call it, Harriet? You’re a child. She is supposed to be responsible for you.”
“She forgot.”
“Oh. That makes it okay then.” A car honks as Uma stalls the Rover again. “Fucking stick.” She restarts the engine and cruises towards an exit only to find it blocked by several cars and a school bus.
“There’s Gran!” Harriet shrieks, pulling at the car door.
“Don’t get out while the car’s moving.”
“It’s Gran, by the bus.”
Forced to stop due to the lineup of cars, Uma stalls the Rover. Harriet charges over to Gran. “Gran! What happened?”
“Oh there you are. Me and Jedi have been looking all over for you. Poor old Jedi backed into a school bus.”
“Is he hurt?”
“No, but the cops aren’t too happy about it. They’re talking about taking his licence away. He says the bus blocked him. But some no-goodnik witnesses say the bus was moving when he hit it.”
Uma strides towards them, shaking out her hands the way she does after she’s been working on her laptop. “Hello, Madeleine.”
“Who’re you?”
“She’s my dad’s girlfriend.”
“You gotta be kidding,” Mads says.
“You met her at Irwin’s birthday party,” Harriet reminds her. “She’s come to pick us up. I thought you were lost.”
“I’m never lost. Where’d you go?”
“Madeleine,” Uma interjects, “it would appear that you were leaving without Harriet.”
“We’re not going anywhere now.”
“Harriet, let’s go.”
“I want to stay with Gran.”
“Out of the question. You’ll talk it over with your father when he gets home.”
“But you said you don’t want me staying with you because of your eggs.”
“I’ve got eggs,” Mads says.
“I want you safe, Harriet. You are not safe with an old man who backs into school buses and an old woman who deserts you in the Scarborough Town Centre.”
“I didn’t desert her.”
“If you say so. Let’s go, Hal.”
Harriet waits for Gran to insist she stay with her, but Mads has her eye on an old duffer behind the wheel of an antique Jaguar. He rolls down his window and asks what’s going on. Mads adjusts her turquoise cap, sidles over to him in her high-heels, and leans in the window kicking her leg back the way she does when she wants eligibles to notice her legs.
“Harriet,” Uma warns, “the Rover’s still running. All we need is for it to get stolen.”
Uma cooks rigatoni primavera. Her laptop sits on the kitchen table. “Is it all right if I use your computer?” Harriet asks.
“Go ahead.” One of the good things about Uma is that she lets Harriet use her Mac. Trent gets hysterical if Harriet touches his because client information is on it and Irwin corrupted thirty-six files. “But I’m not Irwin,” Harriet argued.
“We’re all dependant on this tool, Hal. It’s not a toy.”
Harriet eats the noodles and vegetables with gusto. She enjoys Uma’s cooking because she uses fresh ingredients from the farmers’ market, although Harriet doesn’t like fennel, leeks or the weird greens Uma puts in her salads. Trent does: that’s how they met—they were both searching for arugula and radicchio when Irwin had the seizure.
Uma holds the pepper grinder over Harriet’s plate.
“No thank you.”
“Are you worried about your brother?”
“Not really.”
“He’ll pull through.” Uma offers Harriet a wedge of Parmesan and a cheese grater, another good thing about Uma. At home they eat tasteless Parmesan from a can. “What do you need the Mac for?”
“Photos of reptiles. I want to paint one. I like this one.” She turns the screen towards Uma.
“The Tarentola gigas,” Uma reads. “Wonderful.” She often says “wonderful” but never as though she means it.
Harriet points at the reptile. “See his hands and feet. Four digits on each.”
Uma grates Parmesan over her rigatoni. “Harriet, there’s something you need to understand.”
“It’s a tiny lizard, but fat. I want to paint a fat one.” She tries to look busy with her noodles to avoid hearing what she needs to understand.
“You know my parents were killed by a transport truck when I was nineteen?”
“Yes.” Trent told her the truck was transporting fuel and that Uma’s parents burned alive, belted into their seats. “That’s why you get to live in this house,” Harriet says, “because it belonged to your parents.” Harriet lost her house in the crash of 2008. When she works in the bank, she will buy her own house that nobody can take away from her.
“Actually, I tried to sell the house, even had some offers, but I couldn’t do it. It’s all I have left of my parents.”
“It’s a nice house.” It has a big front yard with trees and flowering shrubs. If Harriet hears the woodpecker, she scoots under the huge oak and watches the bird hammering away at the bark. She tried to draw him but couldn’t get the neck right.
“It contains a lot of memories,” Uma says. “But no parents. Harriet . . .” She leans over the table and gently closes the laptop. “Did Trent ever tell you I had a brother?”
“No.” Harriet tries to imagine a male Uma.
“My brother drowned trying to save me from drowning. He was fifteen. I was your age. It took him four days to die in the hospital. Do you know what my parents said to me? They said, ‘We told you not to swim to the rock.’ Then they stopped talking to me.”
“Forever?” Harriet would love it if her parents would stop talking to her forever.
“After the funeral they started saying the necessary day-to-day things but, no, it took a year before conversation flowed easily between us.”
It never occurred to Harriet that she could drown Irwin. It would be difficult because Lynne buckles him into life jackets. She pushes some leek slices to the side of her plate and grates more Parmesan on her noodles.
“My parents stopped speaking to me, Harriet. Can you imagine how isolating that would be for a little girl?”
Harriet spears a rigatoni with her fork. “Why weren’t you wearing a life jacket?”
“I was a kid. I wanted to swim to the rock like my big brother.”
“What was his name?”
“Otto.”
“Where was the rock?’
“In a quarry where we swam when we visited my grandparents.” Uma sits very still, looking a bit like a baboon, and Harriet tries to memorize the shapes of the shadows on her face.
“What I’m trying to make you understand, Hal, is I identify with the isolation you feel when your brother is in the hospital. All the love and attention is turned on Irwin and that must be very painful for you. You can’t help but resent that.”
Harriet forks zucchini slices into her mouth, and then a mushroom. She knows if she doesn’t say anything, Uma will go on explaining things.
“What you need to understand is that you have two parents who love you very much, they just don’t always show it because your brother’s condition is all-consuming.”
“My father doesn’t visit my brother.”
“He doesn’t like to visit your brother when your mother is present and, as you know, she is always there. What you have to understand is that we’re all under a great deal of stress right now. Your father is trying to support two households while getting T. Baggs Consultants off the ground. Your mother claims to be unemployable due to her mental health and your brother’s condition, and Gennedy, well, I’m not sure what the problem is there. The point is . . .”
“You could work.”
Uma sits straighter and tucks her baboonish chin into her neck. “I do work, Harriet. I work very hard.”
“I mean for money. You could get a job to help pay for infertility treatment. You could work as a greeter at Walmart. Mr. Bhanmattie got a job as a greeter and he has no retail experience. Then Dad would be able to pay us what he used to.”
“Since when do you know how much your father pays?”
“I don’t. I just know Mum’s always complaining he’s not making his payments. And when he does, it’s not what the court ordered.”
“It’s very difficult to make regular payments when you go freelance.”
“Mum says he shouldn’t have gone freelance. If he’d kept his job, your fertility drugs would be covered by insurance.”
“How wonderful that she keeps you so well informed.” Uma tosses the salad with sharp, convulsive movements. Shreds of weird greens tumble on the table.
“It just seems to me,” Harriet says, “if your thesis stresses you out, and my father’s work stresses him out, maybe you should be doing something else.”
“One day, Harriet, you will grow up to discover that the path of least resistance is not always the most rewarding.”
“What’s rewarding about your path?”
Uma jerks her head as if a fly has landed on her nose. “I really don’t need this right now.” She starts to clear the dishes even though Harriet hasn’t had any salad, not that she wants any.
Harriet eats an olive. “Trying to have a baby when you’re stressed out all the time doesn’t make any sense. Babies are stressful. My great-grandmother had eight and it killed her.”
Uma, dishrag in hand, begins to tear up. Her tendency to start crying for no good reason irritates Harriet because suddenly everybody has to pay attention to Uma and tell her it’s okay to cry. Not Harriet. “If I was stressed out all the time, no way would I have a baby.”
“You can’t possibly understand. You’re a child.”
“I could understand if you had a good reason.”
Uma wipes her eyes. “It’s impossible to explain.”
“Which means you don’t have a good reason. A good reason wouldn’t be impossible to explain.”
Uma turns on her, her face almost as red as Mrs. Elrind’s. “I want my own family, Harriet. I lost my family. All I have is Trent. You have two parents, two stepparents, three grandparents and a little brother. I have no one.” She leans against the counter as though she needs it to stand.
“My family is nothing but trouble.” This what Mrs. Butts says about Harriet when she buys Minute Maid orange juice with pulp, or beef-flavoured Temptations for her cats instead of chicken.
Uma, red-eyed, stares at her as though eels are coming out of Harriet’s mouth. “I can’t believe you said that. Please go upstairs until your father gets home.”
“Can I take the Mac?”
“No!”
In Uma’s old room, Harriet opens the box of acrylics her father bought her and begins her portrait of Captain Elrind the Tarentola gigas. She prefers the translucency of oils to the flatness of acrylics but her parents think oils are toxic. She closes her eyes, remembering the shapes of the shadows on Mr. Elrind’s scaly hands. Below, Uma slams drawers and cabinets, and Harriet wonders what this is doing to her hormone levels. As she mixes reds, browns and yellows, visualizing the Tarentola gigas’ eight fingers and eight toes, she tries to think of ways to drown Irwin. It would have to look like an accident. But then she could have his room—it has better light than hers—and use it as a studio until she gets to Lost Coin Lake. She called Greyhound and a child’s one-way fare to Mattawa, including tax, is $84.73. This is more than she budgeted for. She’ll need at least $400 for supplies. She plans to arrive the day after Thanksgiving, when Algonquin closes the backwoods cabins for the season, making her break-in easier.
Shadows start to take shape in her mind, and she touches her brush to the plywood.
Uma must have liked violet because everything in her old room is painted violet, except the buttercup yellow walls. A poster of a bare-chested nineties rock star with a mushroom cut and high-waisted pants is on one wall, and two photos of Uma with her parents. Harriet has studied these carefully. Now that she knows Uma drowned her brother, they make more sense. In the photos Uma stands slightly apart from them, almost as though they’re strangers. The parents look surprised, and Harriet would like to know who took the shot, and what they did to surprise the parents. Uma doesn’t look surprised in the photos, just worried—the way she always looks. It’s as though she thinks worrying will bring her brother and parents back to life. Harriet doesn’t understand why Uma doesn’t move on. Mindy in 408 says she has to move on every time her ex beats her up. Harriet has sat with her on the fire stairs and listened while Mindy, sucking hard on cigarettes and holding ice packs over her bruises, insisted she would move on. She never does though, and Boyd comes back and beats her up again.
It’s hard to imagine what Uma and Trent’s baby would look like. Nobody seems concerned that it might have a stretched head like Irwin; they say his condition is congenital, which Harriet looked up and learned means nonhereditary. Still, what kind of baby would grow from a rotting egg and middle-aged sperm?
Just before her breakdown, Lynne did in-home pregnancy tests whenever her period was late. She and Gennedy tried to get pregnant for over a year. Harriet knew this because they discussed it with her and Irwin at the DQ. “Bunny, how would you feel about a little sister or brother?’
“I already have one,” Harriet said.
“Wowee wowee.” Irwin bounced on his stool. “I want a little brother. Boys only!”
“Gennedy loves you guys but he’s always wanted a child of his own. I’d like to give him one.” She made it sound as if she could wrap a child up and hand it to him. “Harriet? How would you feel about that?”
Harriet knew it didn’t matter what she felt, so she shrugged and spooned more of her Blizzard. For months she heard them humping more than usual through her bedroom wall. Gennedy became super friendly and bought Nintendo games that held no interest for Harriet. “Harreee . . .” Irwin would call, “come check this out, this is soooo cooool!” When he traded five Nintendo games for Voytek Bialkowski’s giant pencil, Gennedy shouted at him. Harriet had never heard him shout at Irwin before. “No trading at school, understand? Do you know how much those cost? Jesus fucking Christ, how could you be so stupid? What the fuck do you want a giant pencil for anyway? A giant pencil costs a buck. Who is this Voytek Bialkowski kid? I’m calling his parents.” Gennedy turned on Harriet. “Do you know this Voytek kid?”
“No.” Of course she knew him. He was famous for swindling the kindergartners.
“Why don’t you ever look out for your brother? Jesus fucking Christ. From now on, we’re following a strict no-trading policy, understand?” Irwin, trembling from the Gennedy assault, nodded slowly, looking like E.T. After Boyd beats up Mindy, sometimes she asks Harriet to watch E.T. with her because she watched it as a little kid and it makes her feel safe. The only criminal lawyer in history that’s broke contacted the school regarding the giant pencil swindle and hounded Voytek Bialkowski’s parents until he eventually got the games back. But Irwin didn’t want to play them anymore. A week later he got an infection in his tubing and had to go to the hospital. When he returned home, stick thin with a fresh surgical wound on his abdomen, Lynne stopped going out except to buy cigarettes to smoke on the balcony. Harriet no longer heard them humping through the wall.
Her father has returned and she can hear him and Uma having a heated discussion downstairs. He always starts out taking Harriet’s side but in the end caves to Uma. With Lynne he would storm out and she’d shout after him, “That’s good, just walk away from it. That’s real constructive.” Gran calls Trent “a spineless no-goodnik.” When Irwin was in the incubator with a collapsed lung, Trent found excuses to avoid the hospital. In those days Harriet was keen to visit Irwin because she believed he would turn into a normal baby brother. “When will he come out of the plastic box?” she kept asking, but no one would give her a straight answer. She stood on the footstool beside the incubator and talked to him about what fun they would have when he got better. She even told him about the Americana, convinced that this would give him a reason to live. When he was four months old, he started to breathe on his own. Lynne phoned Trent in tears and he came to the hospital right away. Harriet remembers her parents clinging to each other as though they were in a hurricane. When Irwin stopped breathing again, the doctors asked Lynne and Trent if they wanted Irwin back on the ventilator, or if they should let nature take its course. “Save him!” Lynne wailed. “Save my baby, you fuckers, or I’ll sue your asses.” They didn’t do hand compressions and break Irwin’s ribs because his heart and kidneys were functioning. Still, it seems to Harriet, the situation wasn’t that different from the hydrocephalic baby’s whose parents insisted the medical team keep resuscitating her, forcing her to die a torturous death.
After Lynne screamed at the doctors, nobody in the ward was nice to them. The nurses no longer called Irwin a miracle baby. When he turned six months, they wanted him out of there. Trent bought a car seat and a wedge of foam he cut into a U shape to support Irwin’s ballooning head. The foam was bigger than Irwin. It was becoming undeniable to Harriet that her brother would never turn into a normal baby. In public places, she kept her distance from him and her parents.
At home Irwin watched her. Lynne laid him on a sheep shearling mat on the floor wherever she was because he couldn’t go anywhere. While other babies rolled around and crawled, he just lay there. If Harriet came into the room, she felt Irwin’s eyes fix on her. She tried not to look at him because sometimes he’d smile goofily and she’d start hoping he’d get better, even though experience had taught her that he wouldn’t. He still can’t hold his swollen head up properly. It always lists to one side.
With a fine brush, she paints the suspicious eyes of Captain Elrind the Tarentola gigas.