On the Shores of Darkness, There is Light

by Cordelia Strube

  It has always consoled him that Harriet never had to endure surgery, that her body was never violated, that she never had physiotherapists twisting her limbs till they hurt. Sometimes he’d watch her perfect body—free of scars and pain—with envy, but it always comforted him that she was whole. Now he knows she was butchered. He has never felt hatred for his mother, but now it gurgles inside him and he fears it has always been there like some kind of sleeping sea monster.

  Irwin drinks the wine left in Sydney’s glass even though it tastes bitter. He runs his tongue along the rim greased by her lips.

  “Let my universes collide,” he chants quietly because Forbes told him chanting increases focus. Chanting and breathing. In and out, in and out. Imagine how your universe might have turned out differently. Irwin chants and breathes but his newly woken hatred for his mother snags his attention. How can he hate her. She is all he has. Heike will grow up and away from him and he will only have Lynne, smoking and drinking and angry all the time. He can’t hate her. The wine loosens particles around him and suddenly he sees Harry sitting on the counter, swinging her legs, banging her heels into the cabinets to annoy Gennedy. Irwin tries to speak to her but she vanishes.

  Sydney returns and sits across from him, putting her hand on his knee. Her breasts sway under the robe, so close he could touch them.

  “Have you been drinking, junior? That’s not cool, my friend. Time for beddy-byes.” She takes his hand and helps him to a standing position. She smells of Herbal Essences shampoo. Sometimes he washes his hair with it to smell like her. She puts her arm around his waist and guides him to his room. Her curves and folds press against him and his erection struggles inside his jeans. She leads him to the bed, sits him down and takes off his shoes. He wants to press his face into her cleavage. “Feet up,” she says. He bends his knees to hide his crotch as he lifts his feet onto the bed. She pulls the comforter over him. “It’s going to be all right, junior.”

  He stayed in his room this morning until his mother and Sydney left for work. He presses the elevator button. Mrs. Butts’ cane taps towards him. “Irwin, dear, would you do something for me? It’ll only take a minute.” Nothing only takes a minute with Mrs. Butts, but he helps her because she talks about Harriet; what a delightful girl she was, how she would do anything for Mrs. Butts.

  “I don’t know what I did,” she says, as he follows her into her apartment. “I must have strained something because I can’t lift the litter box and it’s garbage day tomorrow. Would you be a dear and empty it for me and pour in some fresh. I ordered the large bag because it’s cheaper, but I had no idea it would be so heavy. They should have told me it was so heavy when I ordered it. I’m a regular customer. They should know better, they know I’m not well.”

  Irwin empties the litter box. Lukey winds around Mrs. Butts’ legs.

  “You’re a bad cat, yes you are, a bad cat. Badsy, badsy. What have you been doing to Lindy, you devil? She’s not herself. Shoo! Now, Irwin, don’t spill it like last time. You have to be more careful. Don’t rush. Your sister never spilled a thing. She was always very careful.”

  The bag is full and bulky and he spills some kitty litter on the kitchen floor. “Now look what you’ve done,” Mrs. Butts scolds. “Didn’t I warn you to be careful? What a mess. You’ll have to sweep that up. I can’t bend down because of my back.”

  Irwin takes the dustpan and broom from the closet and sweeps the floor.

  Mrs. Butts points to a few granules with her cane. “Look, you missed a spot. You’re always rushing, rushing. You have to take more time like your sister did. That girl was a delight. She’d do anything for me.”

  When Irwin can see no more kitty litter on the floor, he puts the dustpan and broom back in the closet and starts for the door.

  “Now just a minute, Irwin, would you do me a favour and take a look at this drawer for me? I don’t know what happened to it but it falls down when I push it in. Can you kneel down and have a look under the counter? I can’t because of my back.”

  When he does favours for Mrs. Butts, he feels closer to Harry. He imagines her handling the same dustpan and broom, and the same kitty litter box. He pictures her standing where he is standing. But he can’t imagine her fixing a drawer. “I don’t know anything about drawers.”

  “Just kneel down and have a look. Try pushing it in and see what happens.”

  He pushes the drawer in and it falls down.

  “Now why’s it doing that? Can you see anything?” Mrs. Butts stands over him, smelling of sour milk and cough drops. “It frightens Lindy every time it does that. I think that’s why she’s stopped eating. Pull it out.”

  “What?”

  “The drawer. Pull it out and tell me what’s going on inside.”

  Lukey rubs against Irwin, breathing cat food breath on him. “I’m allergic to cats.”

  “It’ll just take a minute.”

  Irwin pulls out the drawer and it crashes to the floor.

  “Now look what you’ve done. Why are you so clumsy? Your sister never dropped a thing.”

  He pictures Harriet in Ziploc bags again. “I don’t know anything about drawers.”

  “Well, why didn’t you say so? Now you’ve broken it. I’ll have to get that nasty wog up here to fix it. Why didn’t you tell me you didn’t know anything about drawers? What’s the matter with you?”

  Irwin’s having trouble breathing. He’s not sure if it’s because of the cats or Mrs. Butts or because he’s off meds, but he feels about to faint. “I’m so sorry but I’ve got to go.”

  “And leave me with this mess? I can’t clean this up. I’m not well. I bruised a rib last week. The doctor says I’m not to lift a thing. I requested an X-ray.”

  He uses the fire stairs exit to escape. Sitting on the top step he breathes—in and out, in and out—and focuses, trying to break through the membrane to where Harriet is whole.

  He never saw her body dead, only her ashes in an urn his mother keeps on her bedside table. What was left to burn after they cut her up? Maybe it’s not even Harriet in the urn. The seniors talk about how you never know whose ashes you’re getting. Irwin smells cigarette smoke and hears Mr. Pungartnik’s transistor radio. Ever since his wife died, he has sat for hours in the stairwell, chain smoking. He lives on the ground floor and could smoke out front, but he’s afraid of Mrs. Rumph and her ferret. With Mrs. Pungartnik no longer around to dye and cut his hair, it hangs in greasy white strands to his shoulders. It doesn’t seem fair to Irwin that all these old people are still alive while Harriet is stitched inside strangers’ bodies. She always said mean and cheap people live forever and he didn’t believe her.

  He stumbles down to Darcy’s because he agreed to be a model for a facial. Dee attends the Elite School of Beauty and needs heads to practice on. She uses Irwin because walk-in clients at the school tend to avoid her and go with the skinny-assed fuck tarts.

  “First I’m going to steam your pores,” she tells him. “It’ll totally relax you. You’re going to love it. ”

  She always tells Irwin he’s going to love things she’s about to do to him, but he never does. When she plucked his eyebrows his skin burned for a week. But Dee was Harriet’s friend and sometimes she tells him things he didn’t know about her, like how she scared the shit out of some ho bag at the DQ.

  Darcy places a warm, moist towel over his face. Immediately he can’t breathe and tries to pull it off but she grabs his wrists. “Cool it, it’s not blocking your nostrils. Just breathe normally. We’ve got to open your pores.”

  Last week Dee’s boyfriend called the police and said she sexually assaulted him in his hatchback. The case is under investigation. This makes Irwin more wary of her than usual. With the towel over his face he can’t see what she’s doing. He hears her moving around, and she frequently bumps against him. She is five-three and 173 pounds, which makes it difficult to avoid bodily con
tact when she’s doing beauty work on him. He’s never heard of a man being sexually assaulted by a woman and can’t imagine how it would work. Her boyfriend, Wyck, is tall and skinny with pimples. Dee refers to him as “the stick insect” and says he was a virgin when they met and should be grateful she popped his cherry. She told the police she didn’t do anything Wyck didn’t want her to do. She told Irwin that the stick insect is scared to try anything different. “Like, he hasn’t even heard of the Kama Sutra.” Irwin hadn’t either, but Googled it later. The positions looked uncomfortable, and he could see why Wyck didn’t want to try them.

  With the towel still over his face, he hears Dee opening the fridge. “Want a Diet Sprite?”

  “Please.”

  The Korean prodigy is playing piano next door again. Everybody in the building is excited about Kwan because he wins competitions and is only six years old. His mother attaches extensions to the piano pedals so Kwan can reach them. Sometimes the extensions slip in concerts and she has to crawl in her black dress under the piano to reattach them. Darcy and Nina can’t stand listening to piano 24/7 and want Kwan and his mother evicted. Mr. Hoogstra, in the apartment on the other side, thinks Kwan’s terrific. “That little tiger is going to put our building on the map,” he says. “Just like Glenn Gould. There’s a plaque outside Glenn’s childhood home. We’ll get a plaque just like it out front for Kwan. Terrific!” He and some other seniors organized a tasty treat sale to raise money for Kwan’s piano lessons. Mr. Hoogstra appointed Irwin captain of the baking team. This was a great honour, except that Irwin didn’t know how to bake. He tried baking cupcakes and cookies, but the cupcakes came out flat and the cookies melted together. Lynne said chocolate chips and butter don’t come cheap and she isn’t made of money. Irwin resigned as captain of the baking team. Mr. Hoogstra put him in charge of corn roasting on the barbecue. He only burned himself three times. They raised $286 for Kwan’s lessons.

  Dee puts a can of Sprite in Irwin’s hand. “I’m going to murder that kid.”

  “Can I take the towel off yet?”

  Dee whips it off and tosses it aside. “Okay, Charlie Brown, I’m going to squeeze your blackheads. It’s going to hurt a little.”

  “Why do you have to squeeze my blackheads?”

  “That’s what facials are for, Irwin, deep cleaning. Suck it up, buttercup.”

  She yanks two Kleenexes from a box and, holding one in each hand, bears down on him, pinching his skin between the tissues. “Yuk, do you ever wash your face? It’s a sewer up here.”

  “You’re hurting me.”

  “No pain, no gain.”

  Irwin, accustomed to pain, has learned to endure it by thinking of something else, like Kwan. “Don’t his fingers ever get tired?”

  “You should hear Mommie Dearest screaming at him if he stops. Pretty soon you’ll be baking cookies to pay for his therapy.”

  Irwin has been to therapy. His therapist wore ropey beads and nodded frequently. She told him to imagine his mother sitting in the chair across from him. “What do you want to say to her?” Simone asked. “Say what you can’t say to her in real life.” Irwin didn’t see the point in saying to the chair what he couldn’t say to his mother, but he liked Simone. She offered him gluten-free chocolate brownies. So he talked to the chair about Harriet, which seemed to please Simone because she kept nodding, fingering her ropey beads. During another session she showed him a broken chair and asked him how he thought the broken chair felt. When he said the broken chair probably felt sad, Simone nodded and said, “It’s okay to feel sad.” He saw her once a week for several months until Lynne, who was working two jobs to pay for it, said, “You’re not getting any better.” Irwin wasn’t sure what she meant by this. He had stopped pulling out his hair and scratching his arms. And he stood up to Lynne when she wrongly accused him of making mistakes. “Did Simone put you up to this?” she’d demand. “Did she tell you to stand up to me? Is that what I’m paying her to do, make my son insolent? She’s not even a real therapist, for god’s sake, doesn’t have a Ph.D. or anything.”

  “Then why did you send me to her?”

  “Because of Theo. Theo’s nuts about her.”

  “I like her too.”

  “You’re not supposed to like your therapist.”

  Simone phoned Lynne repeatedly to arrange a private meeting, but Lynne was too busy working two jobs. When they finally met, Lynne came home and sat on the couch without taking her coat off. She stared morosely at the aquarium Irwin had forgotten to clean even though it was on the to-do list. Gennedy bought him two goldfish after Harriet died because Irwin was allergic to anything with dander. After Lynne’s meeting with Simone, Irwin waited for his mother to ask if he’d cleaned the aquarium. When she didn’t say anything, he sat on the couch beside her. They both stared at the aquarium. Betty and Bob—these were the only names he could think of when he was six—hardly moved and Irwin worried they were dying because he’d forgotten to clean the tank. Finally his mother said, “I want you to get better, but I don’t want to be blamed.”

  “I don’t blame you for anything.”

  She hugged him hard, squashing his nose into her down coat. It smelled of chicken. “I love you so much, my sweet boy. And I’m so, so sorry.” He didn’t know what she was so sorry for but didn’t ask for fear of upsetting her. Now he knows she was sorry for chopping up Harriet, dropping her in Ziploc bags and letting doctors stitch her into any old peasant.

  Dee squeezes more blackheads on his forehead. “Did you hear about the woman who won the forty million?”

  “No.”

  “She’s fat and fifty, been working at some shit job for, like, forever. Now she’s taking her dream honeymoon in Hawaii with her deadbeat husband. If I were her, I’d dump him, get the fat sucked off me plus a face job, and welcome some new boys into the yard.”

  Irwin can’t visualize the number forty million. He has always had trouble adding the right number of zeros. “How do you know her husband is a deadbeat?”

  “Ninety-nine percent of husbands are deadbeats.”

  Darcy is furious with Buck because he married again and has two skinny-assed kids and never takes Dee out unless it’s to his daughter’s dance recitals. He tells Dee he wants them to be one happy family. Dee doesn’t want a family. She wants her dad.

  “What would you do with the forty million?” Irwin asks.

  “Dip outta here.”

  “Where would you go?”

  Dee pushes his head back to squeeze the blackheads on his nose, cramping his neck. “California. I’d drink Tequila Sunrises on the beach and enjoy the surfer boys.” Irwin tries to scratch his nose but Dee slaps his hand away.

  Kwan is playing a piece full of yearning and melancholy.

  “Was Harriet sad?” Irwin asks.

  “What do you mean ‘sad’?”

  “Sad. Was she sad?”

  “Hell’s bells, she was pissed off.”

  “Why?”

  “Because people are sacks of shit.”

  “Not all people.”

  “You go, Charlie Brown, keep the dream alive. I’m going to do a cleanse now. You’ll love it. Close your eyes.” Irwin obeys as she sponges his face. Kwan’s music rolls over and under him. He can’t bring himself to tell Dee that Harriet was cut to pieces. Keeping quiet about it makes it less real.

  “What people did Harry think were sacks of shit?” he asks.

  “Most people.”

  “Me?”

  “Not you.”

  “Who then?”

  “She hated your mother’s boyfriend.”

  “Why? He was really nice.”

  “To you, Chuck, not to H. He hit her for fucksake.”

  “Just once.”

  “Once is enough.”

  Irwin opens his eyes. “Did she hate my mother?”

  “Clo
se your eyes or you’re going to get soap in them.”

  Irwin closes his eyes. “Did she hate my mom?”

  “Nah. But she was mad at her.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh come on, what am I, a shrink? Lots of girls are pissed with their mothers. It goes with the territory.”

  Irwin opens his eyes again. “Do you think she killed herself?”

  “I don’t want to talk about this shit. It’s none of my business.”

  “It is your business. She was your best friend.” He sits up and pushes her hands away. Simone always told him to look directly at people when he wants direct answers. He looks directly at Dee but she averts her eyes, rinsing the sponge. “I won’t be your model anymore,” he threatens, “unless you tell me if you think she killed herself.”

  “What’s it matter, Chuck, it’s over.”

  “It matters to me.”

  Dee grabs some Kleenexes and he’s afraid she’s going to start squeezing his blackheads again but she wipes her eyes.

  “Are you crying?”

  “It’s the soap.” She blows her nose.

  “Do you think she killed herself?”

  The redness in Dee’s eyes makes the irises look a darker blue, almost like the sky in Harriet’s painting of a tree with a scarred body for a trunk.

  “You think she killed herself,” Irwin says.

  “No, I don’t. I think she thought she could fly.”

  Kwan stops playing and his mother shouts at him in Korean. Irwin pictures Harry trying to fly, stretching out her arms and flapping them. He never saw her broken body on the ground. They wouldn’t let him see her. “Maybe she did fly,” he says.

  Twenty-two

  Irwin takes Heike to the pool to stake out the suspect who exposed himself to the little girl. Heike has a hunch he’ll be there because he wasn’t at the 7-Eleven. They hung around the parking lot for over an hour watching for a man between five-foot-six and five-foot-ten with spiky hair and a big nose.