On the Shores of Darkness, There is Light

by Cordelia Strube

  “Hilarious.” Forbes chews beef jerky. Heike begins meticulously chalking a hopscotch grid. Irwin sees Buck pulling up in his SUV with his two kids, presumably to pick up Dee. She hates going out with them because they make fat jokes behind her back. Alyssa not only performs in dance recitals but is on a gymnastics team. According to Dee, Alyssa is an eating disorder waiting to happen. Dylan is five and into monster trucks. Buck drove him to Hamilton to watch a monster truck show. They stayed at the Sheraton and swam in the pool. Dee says Buck never drove her anywhere but Canada’s Wonderland.

  Since Harriet fell, Buck hasn’t been very friendly with Irwin, or Lynne, and never let Irwin sit on his lap and steer his truck again. Years ago, if Irwin saw Buck’s cab in the parking lot, he’d linger, hoping Buck would invite him up. But he never did. He’d give him a thumbs-up through the closed window.

  Heike claps her hands. “Okay, team. Hop to it.”

  “I’m not feeling very well,” Irwin mutters.

  “It’s because you’re off meds.”

  “Who says he’s off meds?” Forbes knows Irwin has been trying to keep it a secret.

  “I can tell,” Heike says. “I’ve been keeping notes. He’s never thirsty and his eyeballs don’t itch and he’s drippy all the time.”

  “I am not drippy all the time. Just today.”

  “So why are you drippy today, big brother?”

  “Do we always need a reason to be drippy?” Forbes asks. “I feel drippy for no particular reason on no particular day. Okay,” he levers himself off the chair, “I’m ready.” He’s good at hopscotch if his leg isn’t acting up. Irwin offers his shoulder to lean on as Forbes hops over to the game.

  Buck’s skinny-assed children refuse to get out of the SUV. “Come on, guys,” Buck pleads, “we’re all family here.”

  Irwin stays close to Forbes in case he loses his balance. Heike hands Forbes her lucky pebble to throw. It lands on four. He hops awkwardly, with his bad leg dragging behind him.

  “Way to go, Forbesy,” Heike cheers. “You are one cool customer.” Forbes turns around, leaning on Irwin, and starts to hop back. From his heavy breathing, Irwin can tell he’s exhausted. Heike bounces on the souls of her feet. “You’re killing it, dude!”

  “Get the chair,” Irwin tells her.

  Dee comes out of the building and starts arguing with Buck.

  “Heike, get the chair.”

  “I’ve got this,” Forbes says. “No worries. I’m all right.”

  “No you’re not.” Irwin steadies him. Heike spins the chair around and Irwin eases Forbes into it. He slumps and drops his head into his chest the way he does when he doesn’t think he can endure being an incomplete paraplegic anymore.

  Heike pats his shoulder. “You did great.”

  “I forgot to pick up the lucky pebble.”

  “Who cares, you got exercise. And you balanced. That was super duper awesome!”

  “Let him rest, Heike,” Irwin says.

  “I hate resting.” Forbes stares at his legs. “I rot when I rest.”

  Dee is getting loud. In the SUV behind Buck, Alyssa and Dylan make pig faces at her. “You think you can just show up whenever you feel like it and I’ll jump?” Darcy demands.

  “Dee, honey, I just want us to be one happy family.”

  “We can’t be one happy family, you dick. Wake up. Your fucking kids hate me and I fucking hate them.” She sticks her tongue out at the kids. When Buck turns to look at them, Alyssa and Derek stop making faces.

  “They’re your blood, Dee.”

  “I don’t give a fuck about blood. The best thing about having no family is I don’t have to hang out with sacks of shit just because we’re related.” She holds out her hand. “I need cash. I’m out of beauty supplies.”

  Buck reaches into his pocket, pulls out some bills and hands them to her. “Please, Dee, just come out with us for a bite. We’ll go wherever you want. How ’bout the DQ?”

  “Not in this lifetime.”

  Heike skips up to Buck and pokes him. “Don’t you get it? She wants to be with just you, silly. Not them.”

  “Heike,” Irwin cautions.

  “Hey Irwin,” Buck says. “Didn’t see you there. How you doin’?”

  “I’m doin’.”

  “You should take her someplace nice,” Heike persists. “Like Canada’s Wonderland.”

  “She’s too old for Canada’s Wonderland.”

  “She is not. She just doesn’t go because you always take them. And they keep making faces at her. They’re mean. I wouldn’t go anywhere with them either.”

  “Glad we got that cleared up.” Buck fiddles with his car keys, staring at Heike. “You look just like your sister.”

  “My sister’s dead.”

  “She was an amazing girl.”

  Irwin grabs Heike’s hand and tries to pull her back to Forbes, but she won’t budge. “Dee, wouldn’t you like to go someplace nice with just your dad?”

  “Heike,” Irwin says, “it’s none of your business.”

  Dee takes her other hand. “Come on, H, let’s go get freezies.”

  “Our dad had two wives,” Heike says, “and three kids and it’s a disaster.” Uma often describes things as disasters. Irwin and Dee pull Heike towards Mr. Hung’s. “A disaster,” she repeats.

  “I’ve got your back,” Dee assures Irwin. “I can handle this. Go make sure Forbes is okay.”

  He is not okay. His good leg is in spasm and, from his contorted face, Irwin can tell his paralyzed leg is burning with phantom pain. Forbes stares at both legs as if they don’t belong to him. “Fucking useless pieces of shit.”

  “You shouldn’t do everything Heike tells you to do.”

  “Nobody tells me to do anything, Irwin. That’s the problem. Nobody expects anything from me. She gets me off my ass, thinks I can do shit not even I think I can do. And doing it makes me feel like I’m not totally useless. I tell you what, when she makes me the first incomplete minister of foreign affairs, I’ll let you fly around in my government jet.” He pulls his water bottle from the backpack slung over the wheelchair and drinks. Mrs. Rumph waves excitedly at Clayton, who drives up in his beat-up Sunfire. He’s a pizza delivery man and brings leftovers to his mother. He ignores Irwin and Forbes as he gets out of the car and slouches over to Mrs. Rumph with a pizza box. “Oh my,” she squeaks.

  When Buck drives off in the SUV, Alyssa flips Irwin the bird.

  Forbes grips his twitching leg. “Wheel me over to the tree, son. I could use some shade.”

  It’s not much of a tree. The city cut down the huge silver maple and replaced it with what Lynne calls a twig. She was home when the forestry men got out their chainsaws. She raced downstairs to stop them but they told her an inspector said the maple was diseased and needed to be cut down. “It doesn’t look sick to me,” Lynne protested. They turned on their chainsaws anyway. Lynne stayed in her room that night. Irwin asked Gennedy why she was so upset about the tree.

  “It was your sister’s tree,” Gennedy said. “When they first moved here she drew it all the time. She lay on the ground under it and drew it. Your mother sat and watched her. She says after the divorce it was the only time Harriet seemed happy.”

  Irwin wheels Forbes across the patchy grass to the twig and tries to lean against it but it bends.

  “Okay,” Forbes says, “do you want to meet any of her organ recipients?”

  “What? No way. That’s creepy.”

  “I don’t see what’s creepy about it. Relations of donors meet up with recipients all the time. Facebook makes it easy.”

  Irwin’s body tightens and he feels like he might explode. “I don’t want to do that.”

  “Okay, son, I get it, take it easy. Nuff said.” He offers Irwin his water bottle.

  “Thanks.” Nobody shares their water
bottle with Irwin except Heike.

  “How’s the withdrawal going?”

  “I still get dizzy and stuff.”

  “Any suicidal thoughts?”

  Irwin hands the bottle back. “Not really.” He can’t admit that suicidal thoughts continually lie in wait, ready to ambush.

  “You come see me if your mind goes that way, any time of the night or day. Understood?” Forbes empties his water bottle over his twitching leg and strokes it as though it’s an animal that needs quieting. “There were these Russian ice dancers back in the nineties who kept winning gold medals. A husband and wife team, poetry on ice. Anyway, one night they’re performing and he lifts her up but doesn’t hold her in the air as long as usual. The commentators can’t figure it out—he hasn’t slipped, doesn’t look injured, but he slows down, stops, and carefully sets her down on the ice. Two seconds later he collapses and dies from a bum ticker. An Olympic athlete. They had a little kid. Imagine that, Daddy goes off to ice dance with Mommy and dies. That’s what I call tragic.”

  “If he died right there on the ice, he couldn’t have got a transplant.”

  “No, but if he could have been saved, and I’d been brain-dead on a vent, I would have wanted to give him my heart.”

  “Harry wasn’t brain-dead.”

  “She was, son, or they wouldn’t have taken her off.”

  “Shut up about it. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Heike skips up with freezies. “Shut up about what?”

  “I get grape,” Forbes says.

  “I know that, Forbesy. I remembered everybody’s favourite flavour.” She distributes the freezies.

  “We should get you home, Heike,” Irwin says.

  “No way, José. I’m going to get Clayton to skip with me.” She pulls her skipping rope out of her backpack and skips over to the pizza-eating Rumphs. Within seconds she has tied one end of the rope to Mrs. Rumph’s lawn chair and handed the other end to Clayton who turns it for her.

  “How does she get the mutant to do that?” Dee asks. “The guy’s a total psychopath.”

  Irwin shrugs. “She can get anyone to do anything.”

  “Which is why she’s going to be prime minister,” Forbes says.

  Half a block from Uma’s house Heike pulls out her binoculars. “Holy smokes. It’s the dorky guy from Starbucks.”

  “Where?”

  “He’s moving the rocks around. Mummy’s not happy with the way the landscaper arranged them. She says it’s a disaster.” Heike continues to look through the binoculars. “The guy’s a total spare. Gotta get rid of him.”

  “You can’t just get rid of people.”

  “Watch me.”

  Irwin picks up the pink scooter. “Come on, we’re late.” Another thing on his not-to-do list is to let Heike boss him around.

  “There you are, honeybun. I was starting to worry. I’ve been calling and calling.”

  “We were on the subway,” Heike lies.

  “You can’t have been on the subway for an hour and a half. Honeybun, you have to start answering your phone. What if it was an emergency?”

  “Who’s this?” Heike says.

  “My friend Donald. He’s been helping me with the garden.”

  “That’s no garden,” Heike says. “That’s a rock pile.”

  Donald adjusts his glasses on his nose made sweaty from all the rock arranging. Uma looks at him and smiles. She so rarely smiles Irwin almost doesn’t recognize her. “My daughter and I have a difference of opinion regarding the landscaping.”

  “I gathered that,” Donald says.

  “Gathered what?” Heike says. “Rocks? What do you think about it, Donald? This is supposed to be a yard to play in. Would you want to play in it?”

  “Good for climbing. It’s fun to climb on rocks.” Donald shrugs slightly when he says fun. Heike stares at him and Irwin knows she’s thinking he’s a total spare.

  “Okay, enough chit-chat.” Uma flaps her hands the way she does after using her laptop. “Let’s have some stir-fry. It’s ready.”

  “I promised Irwin he could stay for dinner.” Heike didn’t promise him anything, and he doesn’t want to stay for dinner. “Please, Mummy? His mum’s doing bookkeeping. He needs a healthy meal.”

  “I’ve got to get home.” Irwin notices Donald trying not to stare at his head.

  “No you don’t,” Heike insists. “There’s nobody there except the boarder and she’ll be getting liquored up anyway. Mummy, do you know what a Kraut is?”

  “Where did you hear that? Where are you taking her, Irwin?”

  “Just around the Shangrila. It’s the seniors. She hears them talking.”

  “Mr. Shotlander always thinks I’m Harriet.” Heike climbs on a rock and jumps off it.

  “Who’s Harriet?” Donald asks, tucking his white shirt—dirtied by grey rocks—into his trousers.

  “Harriet’s my big sister who fell off a balcony and died,” Heike explains.

  “Oh.” Donald takes a step back as though she’s spit at him. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It’s not your fault.”

  “Okay, everyone,” Uma says cheerfully, as though a sister’s death hasn’t been mentioned. “Time to wash your hands.”

  They file into the house. While the others use the washroom, Irwin waits in the living room with the ghosts. He doesn’t sit on the mahogany furniture. He tried that once and felt the Germans’ hostility. After Harriet fell, Mr. Rivera felt ghost hostility. People in the corridor outside his apartment heard him begging the ghosts to leave him alone. “Have mercy,” he would say in English, but often he’d plead in Tagalog. He shrieked as they chased him around the apartment. Finally his sons came and took him away.

  “Irwin?” Uma calls. “Did you wash your hands?”

  “Will do.”

  They sit on stools around the granite island. Donald looks as unenthusiastic about the stir-fry as Irwin.

  “I used kale,” Uma says. “Fresh from the farmers’ market, packed with vitamin A and calcium.”

  The cubes of tofu are hard to swallow, but Irwin eats them to be polite.

  Heike keeps an eye on Donald. “So what’s your dash, Donald?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “She means the dash between your birth date and death date,” Irwin explains. “On your gravestone.”

  “Oh. Interesting. Umm, I’ve never really thought about it.”

  “You should,” Heike says. “Everybody should. Everybody should have a purpose.”

  “What’s yours?” Donald tries to fit a kale leaf into his mouth.

  “I’m going to make sure everybody in the entire world has clean drinking water and composting toilets.”

  “Oh. Very nice.”

  Uma smiles her unrecognizable smile. “Heike’s always been a bit of a humanitarian.”

  Donald shrugs slightly again. “It’s a dirty job but somebody’s gotta do it.”

  Heike sprinkles soy sauce on her stir-fry. “Donald, do you know about flying toilets?”

  “Should I?”

  “People in Africa poop in plastic bags and throw them into the streets.”

  “Heike,” Uma says, “is this suitable dinner conversation?”

  “What’s suitable? Donald doesn’t know about flying toilets. Everybody should know. It’s atrocious.” This is another word Uma uses. “In India they have hanging toilets. That’s where they dig a hole and people have to poop in it.”

  “Donald,” Uma intervenes, “is a financial analyst. He knows all about economies all over the world. You might want him on your team, honeybun, as a consultant.”

  “My dad has a consulting business and it’s a disaster.”

  “Oh. Really?” Donald adjusts his glasses on his nose. “What kind of consulting?”

 
“IT,” Uma says. “He used to work for a bank but then went freelance.”

  “Freelance is tough,” Donald concedes.

  “Not as tough as shitting in a plastic bag.”

  “Okay, Heike, that’s enough.”

  “Enough of what? Real life? Are you a climate change denier, Donald?”

  Donald shrugs. “I don’t know enough about the science to have an opinion one way or the other.”

  “Mr. Shotlander says fence sitters get ’rrhoids.”

  Irwin wishes he could talk boldly like Heike. He’s so tired of being a loser and feeling that lives are something other people have. He’s so tired of chronic pain and anxiety, and not wanting to get up in the morning because he’ll only have more chronic pain and anxiety. He forgot to clean the aquarium again. It was underlined on Lynne’s to-do list.

  “Let me ask you something, Donald,” Heike says. “When you analyze finances, do you ever notice that the billionaires are the climate change deniers? Not the people shitting in bags and holes.”

  Uma puts her fork down. “Am I going to have to give you a time out, Heike?”

  “Well, what do you want to talk about, Mother?” Heike shoves greens into her mouth.

  “Well, why don’t you tell us about your day? What did you do in camp?”

  “We played capture the flag and had a singalong with a total spare. She was holding a monkey puppet and pretending it was singing. It was totally lame.”

  “Then we went swimming,” Irwin says to point out they did more than hang around the Shangrila hearing words like Kraut.

  “And Irwin almost drowned so the booby-liscious lifeguard would rescue him.”

  “Then we had freezies and played Hopscotch.”

  “It was sick,” Heike says. “I love Irwin. He’s the best big brother ever.” She jumps off her stool to kiss him on the cheek and suddenly, fleetingly, he feels he has a life.

  Twenty-three

  Irwin checks to make sure Forbes is all right. He’s lying on his couch smoking a fatty with his laptop balanced on his stomach.