Born Weird

by Andrew Kaufman

  “Know any good bars?” Lucy asked.

  “Yes,” the guard said. His English had no trace of an accent. “I know several.”

  Forty-three minutes later Lucy realized that she knew neither the name of the bar—the washroom of which she was in—nor the name of the man underneath her. She ran her fingers through the golden tassels attached to his shoulders.

  “Fifteen,” he said. “Fourteen.”

  “What’s it like …” Lucy asked. She bit his ear with tender and then considerable force.

  “Twelve … eleven.”

  “… to fuck the queen’s sister?”

  “Sure. Yes. Okay.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “Nine. I do. Of course. It’s just that … eight.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Seven.”

  “What?” Lucy repeated. She stopped. The stiffness in her limbs indicated that she wouldn’t continue until he did.

  “Well. Yes. Husband was a very rich … yes … a very rich man.”

  “Yes … and?”

  “Very powerful.”

  “Keep counting.”

  “Six. Five. Owned everything. Four. The country. Rich enough to be king. Three. But. No king.”

  “What about the castle? The guards? The uniforms?”

  “Two. Upliffta has no king.”

  “It’s all pretend?”

  “Yes!” the man screamed, although Lucy did not know if this was in response to her question or her body.

  Richard lay in bed on top of the covers. He turned on the television. He surfed through the channels. There were seven.

  Each aired an American drama. He recognized these shows from his youth. The dubbing was horrible. The novelty of watching familiar TV in a foreign language wore off, quickly. He began to change the channel each time a scene ended. He pretended that everything he saw was part of the same TV show. He couldn’t make much sense of it, but then again he could say the same thing about his life.

  “I need you to help me dig up my husband,” Abba said.

  There was a lamp on Angie’s bedside table. She turned it on. The light woke her up a bit more. She had been in a deep sleep, her first in twenty-four hours. Maybe more. The time shifts made it hard to tell. Squinting, she saw that her sister was perched on the side of her bed. Angie rubbed her eyes. When she took her hands away from her face, Abba was still there.

  “How did you even get in here?” Angie asked.

  “Nobody locks anything around here. It’s weird. But Angie, I’m pleading with you. Will you do it?”

  “Ask me again?”

  “Will you help me dig up my husband?”

  “I thought I hadn’t heard you right.”

  “I really need your help.”

  “Are you drunk?”

  “I’m desperate,” Abba said. She looked down at her hands. “My husband told me that you were dead. That all of you were dead.”

  “You weren’t lying about that?”

  “He showed me newspaper articles.”

  “What did we die of?”

  “Why would you ask that?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “The furnace in the house on Palmerston leaked carbon monoxide and killed you all while you slept.”

  “Not a bad way to go. What about the Shark?”

  “She suffered a massive stroke at your funeral and died days later.”

  “All this was in the paper?”

  “He showed me an entire issue of the Globe and Mail. It made the front page.”

  “I guess that could be faked …”

  “I even got a call from Mr. Winters. He expressed his condolences.”

  “Who?”

  “The dispatcher. From Grace Taxi.”

  “Why him?”

  “I guess he could be bought. You can see why I’m a little fucked up right now.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you swear.”

  “Angie! Are you getting this?”

  “I am. I’m just trying to take it in slowly.”

  “That’s why you didn’t get invited to the wedding. Why I never called or wrote or visited.”

  “You didn’t Google us or anything? I mean, Richard is pretty well known. He’s some kind of famous photographer, although they all look like snapshots to me.”

  “That’s the thing,” Abba said. She took both of Angie’s hands. “I did. Constantly. Daily.”

  “He blocked Weird? Can you do that? I mean, is that even possible?”

  “I no longer know what he is capable of.”

  “So you think …”

  “Yes, I do. If I don’t see it with my own eyes I’ll never be sure. I’ll always hope. I’ll be stuck in hope forever.”

  “Do you still hope that Dad’s alive?” Angie asked.

  “I don’t know for sure that he isn’t,” Abba said. “Neither do you!”

  “Abba, even the insurance company agreed that the fall from the cliff would have been fatal.”

  “But they never found him. No body, no proof!” Abba said. Angie said nothing.

  During weaker moments all the Weird children had taken comfort in the idea that their father had somehow survived. But in Abba it had been different. Hope for the others had been a place of last resort. Abba’s hope was something she lived inside of. Subtly, they had encouraged her. It had seemed very important that someone kept this hope alive. It made sense to Angie, in a Weird way, that Abba would now be doing it for her dead husband.

  “It’s just … this is asking a lot, Abba.”

  “I know it is. That’s why I’m asking you.”

  “If I agree to do it … at least to get Richard to do it … you know I’m going to ask you to come with us to see the Shark.”

  “I figured that would be the trade-off.”

  “You’re the only one who isn’t afraid of Kent.”

  “He isn’t as scary as you guys make him out.”

  “Ah, Abba. Still. I’m not sure if I can.”

  “Knowing what you know, about me, about us, can you really say no?” Abba asked.

  Angie looked down at her sister’s slender pink toes. She sat up in the bed. She decided not to do it. Then the baby kicked and she knew that she had to.

  ON THE MORNING OF MAY 17, 2002, five months and three weeks after the disappearance of their father had been reported, the five Weird siblings sat around their infrequently used dining room table, staring at their plates. Angie poked her eggs with a knife. The yolks broke and oozed onto her undercooked bacon. She pushed her plate away.

  “If she’s gonna pretend this is a hotel,” Richard said as he took his napkin from his lap, folded it carefully and set it on the table, “she could at least hire a cook.”

  “Fuck you,” Kent said. He had done the cooking. He stood and went to the window.

  “What’s that?” Lucy asked.

  “Where’s it coming from?” Abba asked.

  “Come take a fucking look at this,” Kent said, as a mechanical beeping filled the room.

  They rushed to the window and they did not like what they saw: a police tow truck was backing their father’s Maserati into their driveway.

  For five months and two weeks the car had been kept as evidence. This was the first time any of them had seen it. The back end looked untouched. The front was severely crumpled. Just above the steering wheel there was a basketball-sized hole in the windshield. Angie tried to figure out how it got there. Then she remembered that her father never wore his seat belt and she tried not to look at it. The tow truck stopped. The driver got out. He pulled a lever. They held their breaths as the front tires lowered. When the wheels touched the asphalt, they all breathed out. The tow truck’s passenger door opened and Detective Jennifer McKay climbed out.

  No one was ever able to figure out why Detective McKay had taken such a personal interest in the death of Besnard Weird. Somewhat exceeding her authority, she’d used the fact that Besnard’s body had never been rec
overed to keep the case open even after the insurance company was convinced it had been an accident. The Weird siblings watched her from the bay window as she walked up to the front door of their house. Detective McKay rang the bell. None of them moved. She rang it again. She saw them watching from the bay window and she kept the button depressed. They waited just a little bit longer and then, slowly, they walked to the front door.

  Using her fingers Lucy began counting to ten. The buzzer continued to ring. When Lucy’s last finger was extended, Richard opened the door, quickly.

  “Detective Decay,” he sang, “how wonderful to see you!”

  “We’re releasing the Maserati,” Detective McKay said.

  “Funny how that’s happening today,” Richard said.

  “These things happen,” Detective McKay continued. “We’re so sorry to interrupt your special day.”

  What made this day special was their father’s funeral. The five-month-and-three-week delay had been caused by numerous factors: the nervous breakdown of their mother, the disorder of their finances, a continuing police investigation and Abba’s urgings to wait just a little longer, in the hope that their father’s body would be found. But Richard demanded that the service happen before May 23. He could live with having waited almost half a year. But he couldn’t stand the idea of having waited over half a year. And even Abba agreed.

  “Will you be able to attend?” Richard asked, loudly.

  “Sorry, I’ve got prior commitments,” Detective McKay said. She extended a clipboard and a pen. “We’re releasing the car. Perhaps your mother could sign for it?”

  “As you well know, our mother is incapacitated by the demands of modern living,” Richard said. He signed his name. He handed Detective McKay the clipboard and put the pen in his pocket.

  “My condolences,” she said as she tucked the clipboard under her arm. She turned to leave. Then she stopped. From the inside pocket of her jacket, she pulled a thick envelope. It was clearly marked as being from the City of Toronto and the very size of it projected a sense of legality and doom. Detective McKay held it out to Richard. She was smiling. “How could I have almost forgotten this?”

  “Moonlighting as a mailwoman?” Richard asked as he snapped the envelope from her hand.

  “Sorry. While I was waiting I thought I might as well pick up your mail for you. I suspect it isn’t a refund,” Detective McKay said. She closed the door herself and Richard opened the envelope, which contained a thick set of pink papers.

  “What is it?”

  “Hold on …”

  “What does it say?”

  “According to this …” Richard said. In the silence that followed they heard the tow truck pull out of the driveway. “We have ninety days to come up with a hundred and twenty thousand dollars of back taxes or the house becomes the property of the city of Toronto.”

  This was not the first time that the Weird children had cause to suspect the state of their father’s finances. For one thing, Besnard paid for everything in cash—movies, restaurants, gas, it all came from a thick roll of bills he always carried in his front right pocket. If Nicola needed money for groceries, or they needed money for anything, he simply took out this billfold and started peeling off currency.

  It was possible that the Grace Taxi Service was a much more lucrative concern than they imagined. The Weirds did live awfully well for a family whose sole income came from a small business with a large overhead. They certainly lived much better than their grandparents, who had been supported by the very same enterprise.

  And then—close to the end of Besnard’s life—men who did not seem to be his normal business associates began appearing at their door, late at night. After ten and sometimes later, a rough knock would echo through the house on Palmerston Boulevard. Besnard would rush to answer it. The children only caught glimpses of these men, if they saw them at all. They were never invited inside the house. Besnard would step outside and then lead them to the coach house. There they would talk, sometimes for a few minutes and sometimes for an hour.

  No matter how long he was gone, when Besnard came back inside he always did the same thing. He’d walk into the living room and commandeer the television. Even if his children were in the middle of a program they’d deemed profoundly important, he would turn on the VCR, a technology that, even in 2001, seemed outdated. Besnard would put in a tape and watch pre-recorded episodes of Sunny Day Motel. This was a half-hour situation comedy originally broadcast in the early seventies, starring Danny Day as a hapless motel owner. Each tape held three episodes. He’d be on his third or fourth when the rest of his family went up to bed.

  These were the only times their father ever watched TV. Six hours after the visit from Detective McKay the Weird children stood behind a hearse at the back of St. James Cemetery. The hearse was parked at the top of a small hill. At the bottom of the slope was the black rectangular shape of their father’s open grave. The sun was bright and the sky was blue, and Richard and Kent had begun to bicker.

  “Kent, listen to me,” Richard said. “You cannot be at the back. It’s not safe. I need to be at the back.”

  “Not this time, Ricky. You are not pulling that shit on me this time.”

  “Damn it, Kent! Listen to me!”

  “It’s not like it’s super heavy! The girls could carry it on their own!”

  “Kent! This is important,” Richard said, loudly. The twelve people sitting amongst the forty chairs at the bottom of the hill tried not to look. Except for Grandmother Weird, whose menacing glare was a physical manifestation of the Tone.

  “This is really important,” Richard whispered.

  “I don’t care!”

  “Enough,” Angie said. She stepped between them. “Here’s the deal. Kent, you’re the youngest. You had the shortest amount of time with him, so you get to go at the back and be the last to hold him.”

  “Vote,” Lucy said.

  “This is bigger than a vote!” Richard said.

  “Who’s for Angie’s deal?”

  Richard was the only one not to raise a hand. “You don’t understand …”

  “Richard—the vote has been taken,” Lucy said.

  “You guys are gonna be sorry.”

  “Exactly why are we going to be sorry?” Kent asked.

  Richard didn’t have an answer. He took the front handle and pulled the casket towards him. Abba went to the right side. Lucy and Angie took the left. They walked forwards and then the coffin came off the track and out of the hearse and Kent took hold of the back.

  What happened next was the intersection of two unrelated factors. The first was that the caretaker had just watered the lawn, which none of the Weirds had noticed. The second was that Kent’s shoes, which had been their father’s, were extremely worn at the soles. Six steps down the slope, Kent’s slippery shoes met the wet grass and, without warning, he went down. The back of the coffin fell with him. Lucy and Angie were suddenly carrying more weight than they expected. Knocked off balance, they fell too. Abba went next. This left Richard, trying to hold the casket all by himself.

  At first it looked like he might do it. He turned quickly. He put his right shoulder under the corner. He steadied the side with his left hand and slid his right arm as far underneath it as he could. His forearms flexed. His fingers curled. For a split second the casket seemed to hover in the air, defying gravity. Then the far end began to descend, pulling it out of Richard’s hands.

  It twisted as it fell, and struck the ground at a 45-degree angle. The lid sprang open, revealing to everyone present an aqua-blue satin interior and nothing else.

  If just one of the Weirds had been able to see the absurdity in this tragedy, the rest of them would have as well. But none of the Weird siblings were, in this moment, strong enough to be as outrageous as the circumstances they found themselves in. They just stood there. And then they scattered.

  Richard ran as fast as he could. He ran towards the cemetery gates. He kept running after he ran thro
ugh them.

  Abba kicked off her shoes. Barefoot, carrying her footwear by the straps, her naked pink toes curling in the grass, she walked back up the hill towards the hearse.

  Kent beat her to it. He sat in the passenger seat of the hearse.

  Lucy followed Richard towards the cemetery gates, but she did not run. She walked at a leisurely pace. Those close to her heard her humming. No one realized that the song was “Temptation” by New Order.

  Only Angie stayed where she was, forgiving them, instantly. Stepping forwards she closed the lid. Her knees were still bent. She looked at the tiny, mortified crowd. Only her grandmother was looking away. Angie caught the eyes of John Winters, the dispatcher of the Grace Taxi Company. Mr. Winters gathered four of the men sitting around him. They stood and surrounded the casket. They lifted it easily. They carried her father’s empty coffin to her father’s empty grave.

  THE GATE TO THE UPLIFFTIAN Royal Cemetery was unlocked. The graveyard was surrounded on three sides by a black iron fence and on the fourth by the ocean. The fence was not rusty. Despite the damp sea air, no moss grew on any of the headstones. Several of the graves were dated from the 1800s, yet they looked no worse for wear than the stones from the 1900s. Abba was the only one who didn’t notice these things.

  Holding a lantern, Abba led the way. Behind her, Richard carried a shovel. Next came Lucy. In her left hand was a crowbar. Angie came last. She carried only her daughter. At the foot of the grave closest to the water Abba set down the lantern. Her husband’s monument was an enormous black stone. The epitaph read:

  LUTIVEN VIJA

  MAY 24TH, 1945–DECEMBER 8TH, 2007

  The only thing he loves more than Upliffta is her Queen.

  Angie couldn’t help notice that the epitaph was in the present tense. She did not mention this. She looked at Richard. He held out the shovel.

  “Don’t be an ass,” Lucy said.

  “Okay, you’re right,” Richard said. He nodded, turned and raised the shovel to Abba.

  “Don’t be a bigger ass!” Lucy said.

  “Then you do it!”

  “Richard!”