In the kitchen he sees the open wine bottle and his mother’s half empty glass on the counter. He swallows the wine quickly, hoping it will loosen particles again, enabling him to see Harriet, maybe even interact with her.
His mother said vino is the only thing that relaxes her. All day long she’s wound up, she said. There’s a tightness in her chest 24/7, a coiled spring. This is how Irwin feels. He pours more wine into the glass because he can’t remember what relaxing feels like. He pinches his nose as he swallows to reduce the vinegar taste. His face heats up and time slows down. The digital clock on the stove blinks minutes at him. Clocks are doom. He covers it with a pot holder. In a movie about men surviving a plane crash only to be eaten by wolves, one man said to another—who’d been mauled by a wolf—that death would be warm and slide over him. Irwin feels something warm slide over him, but he doesn’t think it’s death, although he wouldn’t mind if it is. He feels rubbery, like someone could hit him and it wouldn’t hurt. And tomorrow seems very far away and unimportant. Nothing’s important except feeling rubbery and drinking more vino. He focuses on entering his AU. “Let the universes collide,” he chants.
“What are you doing?” Sydney stands over him with violet eyes. Her lipstick, redder than her dress, is smudged, and silver teardrops dangle from her ears. “This isn’t good, junior.”
“I’m fine.” She smells flowery.
“I can see that.” She corks the bottle. “Who said you could drink my wine?”
“My mother opened it. I just had some.”
“More than some. Christ. Does she know you’re drinking?”
“She went to bed. She probably took one of my anxiety pills. How was your date with the computer geek?”
“Oh, just another one of those enough-about-me-tell-me-what-you-think-about-me conversations.”
Irwin doesn’t know what this means. All he wants is to look at her. Her tight skirt is very short and her thighs round. Lynne calls her a chub.
She throws her clutch purse on the table. “I’m so done with dating. It’s, like, I really need to know that your eighteen-year-old cat who brought you so much happiness died, and you’re really broken up about it and still paying the vet bills.” She sits on a chair and puts her feet up on the other one. “As soon as they have a pet,” she snaps her fingers, “it’s game over. You know you’ll always come second.”
“But the computer geek’s cat is dead.”
“Even worse. He’ll be talking about all the cute things Puss ’n Boots did for, like, forever.”
“Did he really call it Puss ’n Boots?”
“Puss for short.” Sydney uncorks the bottle and drinks from it.
“Did he have anything downstairs?” Irwin marvels that he has the nerve to ask this question.
“We didn’t get that far. Savvy girls don’t hook up on the first date, junior.”
“When do you?” His penis lies flaccid in his jeans, liberating him. He can think or say anything and his penis won’t betray him.
“Later. Guys like a chase.” She kicks off her stilettos and he imagines sucking on her toes. “I don’t get the status thing.” She tips her head back and he watches a pulsing artery in her neck.
“What status thing?”
“Like, it’s all about what he makes and what he owns. Like, when he’s not talking about his dead cat, he’s talking about his Merc or his condo reno or something. It’s, like, didn’t people just talk before?”
Irwin doesn’t know.
“Like, I can’t believe the first question people asked in the old days was ‘So what do you do?’”
“You mean, like, before 9/11? Things were way nicer then. You could keep your clothes on at the airport.” It’s so wonderful conversing easily with Sydney. He has no fear of sounding stupid. “People trusted people back then. Everybody’s a suspect these days.”
Sydney pulls off her hair tie, allowing her sandy hair to tumble around her shoulders. Irwin can smell Herbal Essences shampoo. She stretches the hair tie between her fingers and flicks it across the kitchen. “I should have been born in the forties like Marilyn. I would have killed in those swishy dresses.” She drinks from the bottle again and he imagines kissing her neck. “So, junior, I hope you didn’t tell your mother what I told you.”
“What?”
“About your sister.”
“No.” This is the first lie he has ever spoken. He can’t believe how easily it spins off his tongue.
“Good, because she’d probably boot me out.”
“I wouldn’t let her do that.” His boldness staggers him.
“You’re adorable.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“You let her rule your life, junior. It’s like she’s inside your head. For real. That happened to a friend of mine. He had this domineering mother, only she didn’t act domineering, she was really coy about it, told him what a special boy he was and all that. But any time he made a decision on his own, she’d find some way to make him regret it. Especially if it had to do with girls. She didn’t want competition, so any time he brought a girl home his mother would undermine her, make snitty comments like, ‘She doesn’t always talk like that, does she?’ or ‘She doesn’t always wear her hair like that, does she?’ He went through girl after girl, thinking one of them would please the old witch. Never happened. You know what he did?”
“What?”
“Tried to hang himself. The branch broke.”
Irwin hadn’t thought of this option—a strong tree limb. He’ll look for one in the park. “My mother isn’t an old witch,” he says. For no reason he can understand, he feels protective of Lynne, and he’s not sure he hates her anymore. She seems so inconsequential and defenceless.
“I know, junior. But at some point you’re going to have to bust out. Trust me on this.”
“My mother doesn’t trust anybody.”
“With good reason. Okay, time for beddy-byes. We won’t tell her about the booze fest, okay?”
“Okay.” He wants to press his face into her cleavage but feels himself shrinking back into Irwin. It’s as though he was the Hulk and now he’s Bruce Banner, his human weakling counterpart.
She helps him to his feet, puts her arm around his waist and guides him to his room. As her flesh rubs against him, he feels his penis tingling. She sits him on the bed and takes off his shoes. He pulls his knees into his groin and slides under the comforter.
“Sweet dreams, junior.” She switches off the light. He rolls onto his side feeling the tension creeping back into him, the spring coiling tighter. He doesn’t want to be Bruce Banner. Particles stick to him. He kicks off the comforter and shakes his arms and legs. He turns the light back on and stares at the beak and claw painting, trying to figure out if it’s a bird, a monster, or part human. The creature looks angry and confused, as though it’s not supposed to be there and wants to be somewhere else. This is how Irwin feels. Blood drips from the creature’s chest and right talon, and Irwin doesn’t know if it’s the creature’s blood or someone else’s, if the creature has caused harm or is harmed, if it’s a predator or prey. Irwin steps closer to the painting and stares into its eye.
Twenty-four
“It’s a declaration of war,” Darcy says. She promised the pedi wouldn’t tickle but it does. Irwin tries not to squirm. Dee’s steamed because the police came by to question her about the stick insect again. “Wyck just wants revenge for not being able to satisfy me. It’s a typical limp dick hissy fit. I told the cops I can’t believe taxpayer dollars are being spent on this fuckwad’s whinging.”
“Did you really say fuckwad to the cops?”
“What am I, stupid? Anyway, I think one of them is into me.” Dee often thinks men are into her. “I’ll bet you money he’s got some skinny-assed wife who cut him off years ago. He’s hungry for it. P.C. Babb. The boy wants it.”
“What did he say when you talked about wasting taxpayers’ dollars?”
“He said they have to investigate every complaint. Anyway, I’m going over to the fuckwad’s to kick his mangy butt.”
“That might get you into more trouble. He could get a restraining order like Mindy. Or charge you with verbal assault.”
“I’d like to see him try. I bet he’s a twinkie. He’s always dissing fags, a sure sign he is one. Okay, I have to push back your cuticles. It might hurt a little. Then I have to scrape away the dead stuff.”
It all hurts. But Kwan is playing something that sounds like a bubbling stream, and Irwin coasts merrily along. He didn’t want to get out of bed this morning because his head hurt and the dark clouds were closing in, pressing down on his chest. He waited for Lynne and Sydney to leave for work. In his half sleep, he focused and chanted and broke through the membrane but didn’t see Harriet. He saw the freckled, curly red-haired organ recipient in nerd glasses that Forbes showed him. Irwin asked her what it was like to breathe with somebody else’s lungs, if she felt weird about having to make her body sick to stop it rejecting the stranger’s lungs. She was doing stride jumps and looked healthier than in her photo. “I don’t have somebody else’s lungs,” she said. That’s when Irwin understood he was interacting in his AU. He was so excited he got up and ate four pieces of toast and jam.
“Did you understand Harry’s art?” he asks.
Darcy makes a face. “Fuck no.”
“Maybe we don’t need to understand it.”
“Fuck no. It’s like you look at it and go, this is messed up. But in a good way.”
“Did she have a boyfriend?”
“She wasn’t into guys. Just her art. And making money off the oldsters. She would have made a great banker.”
This morning the oldsters were in the lobby talking about the young nicely dressed couple currently robbing the seniors in the neighbourhood. The couple pretends to know the seniors then threatens to shoot them in the guts if they don’t cooperate and give them their money and jewellery. They even force them to withdraw cash from ATMs.
“They wouldn’t get far trying to get me to use one of those dang things,” Mr. Shotlander said.
Mr. Quigley was icing his titanium knee with a bag of frozen peas. “Don’t wear jewellery or fancy watches.”
“Dress down.” Mr. Chubak sipped from a juice box. “No designer togs.”
“So you have to look like a bum to be safe,” Mr. Shotlander said. “What a world.”
Mr. Hoogstra scratched under his captain’s hat. “I hear they make cameras so powerful now they can take pictures of your credit cards through your wallet.”
“With telephoto lenses they can see your password,” Mr. Quigley added.
Mr. Shotlander held up his hands in a helpless gesture. “What in blazes happened to going to the bank and talking to a pretty bank teller? Signing for your cash. A signature doesn’t mean a dang thing anymore. They can rob you four ways to Sunday.”
What nobody talked about was that Mr. Shotlander’s son has a mass in his lung. The doctors don’t know what it is yet. Danny is seeing an internal medicine specialist and having CT scans and other tests. Mrs. Shotlander died of lung cancer. Irwin knows this because Mrs. Chipchase told him and asked him to be gentle with Mr. Shotlander. “He’s a very proud man,” she said. “He won’t show grief. But there’s nothing worse than outliving your child.”
Dee uses clippers on Irwin’s toenails. “What about you, Charlie Brown, when are you going to get yourself a girlfriend?”
“No girls even look at me.”
“That is a problem. I cannot lie. But you make up for it in niceness. Niceness is hard to come by these days.”
“Niceness doesn’t get girls.”
“Not on the first round. But after they’ve been burned by a few bad boys, they’ll be ready for you, Chuck. You just got to hang in there.”
The seniors were also distressed about the murder that happened two blocks over in a basement apartment. Mr. Shotlander held up his hands in a helpless gesture again. “A twenty-year-old stabbing a seventy-year-old. How do you like that?”
“They say alcohol was involved,” Mr. Hoogstra said.
All Irwin could think about was the dead man’s organs, and if he was on a donor list, and if the organs were stabbed. Heike heard about the murder on the news and phoned Irwin because she wants to process the crime scene after camp to apprehend the suspect. “We’re not doing that,” Irwin said.
Dee wedges pieces of foam between Irwin’s toes. “I need to practice French nails. So no way do you move.”
“Why isn’t your father nice to my mother anymore?”
“What do you mean?”
“When I was little they were friends and went jogging together.”
“That’s a long time ago, Chuck.”
“I think it was because of me.”
“Say what?”
“I think Buck didn’t want me around, I mean, because I’m so freaky looking. I think he was embarrassed.”
Dee carefully glues acrylic extensions onto Irwin’s toenails. It tickles but he manages to hold still. “He let me sit in his truck once,” he says. “Even let me steer. But after that he wouldn’t even open his window to say hi.”
“Why do you have to take things personally all the time? Like, maybe there were other reasons you don’t know about.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, Chuckie, you are such a baby. Part of me thinks it’s cute and the other part thinks you’d better wise up or you’re going to get eaten alive.”
“Eaten alive by who?”
“The real world, amigo. Oh my god you are such a booby.”
“I am not a booby. What reasons didn’t I know about?”
“He screwed your mom, Irwin. They were humping in the truck the night Harry flew off the balcony. My dad said she caught them at it. He says he’s never regretted anything like he regrets that night. Shit, you moved. I told you not to move.” She grabs his foot and holds it steady. “What kind of lame-asses want French nails anyway?”
“I don’t feel very well.”
“You never feel well. Get over it. They were both adults and hot for each other. It happens. And as for the broke criminal lawyer, I’m not even sure if his balls have dropped. Like, what’s with the Crocs? I don’t think I ever saw him in grown-up shoes.”
“I loved him.”
“He was psycho to your sister so he’s off my list.”
Irwin is having trouble processing. Heike says this when something doesn’t make sense. Why would a handsome man like Buck want Lynne? She’s old. Buck’s new wife is way younger and has no spider veins. He saw her once in a micro-mini when she was still pretending to like Dee.
Darcy’s mother comes in and flings herself on the couch. “I am so sick of hairy shoulders,” she says. “I had four apes this morning. Like, why am I being punished? Why?”
“It pays the bills, Mother.”
“Is there anything to eat? Hi, Irwin.”
“Hi, Nina.”
“Sexy toenails.”
“There’s some of that low-fat turkey,” Dee says. “Make sandwiches for all of us. Are you hungry, Charlie?”
“I should go.”
“You’ve got an ingrown toenail here, bra. Harry used to get those.” Dee squeezes his toe. “Does that hurt?”
It all hurts. Kwan is playing something that sounds like a thunderstorm.
“I have to cut the nail back a bit. You’ll get an infection if we don’t clean it up.”
“Harry never said anything about ingrown toenails.”
“Why would she? Nobody listened to her, Irwin. Don’t you get it? Nobody cared.”
“I cared.”
“You were a little kid. You couldn’t help her. She needed hel
p.”
“What kind of help?”
“We all need help,” Nina says, stroking her cat. “And anybody who says they don’t is deluded.”
Irwin sits alone on a park bench in need of help. His toe throbs and disturbing images of Buck fucking his mother curl around his thoughts. The wrong universe spills around him, flooding his ankles and edging up his shins. The wrong universe is not sparkling turquoise like the pool but muddied. Fragments of conversations reach him as people who belong in the wrong universe move around him. Somebody says they have to stain the deck while the weather’s good. Another person says we’re always changing and growing as human beings, even when we’re dead; we’re electricity and you can’t kill electricity.
It never occurred to him that Harry needed help. She was always helping him with buttons, zippers, shoelaces, and buying him Turtles and making chocolate pudding with marshmallows.
Two middle-aged men in plaid shorts sit beside him. “She pawned her wedding ring three times,” the one closest to Irwin says. “I had to get it out of the pawn shop three times. But I couldn’t give her up, with those long legs. Not many guys could walk away from a woman like that.”
How could Irwin not notice Harry’s ingrown toenails? How could he not see her sadness?
“It’s stressful enough being with someone,” the middle-aged man beside Irwin says. “If you can’t trust her yah-yah-yahing, well, you’re fooling yourself. My kids set me straight. Listen to your kids, they’re more receptive, not cloudy, they know what’s up.”
Irwin doesn’t know what’s up. And he doesn’t know what’s down. He used to think his mother was the most beautiful, kind and smart woman in the world. This is why he couldn’t figure out why Gennedy left. Maybe Gennedy found out about Lynne and Buck, although he didn’t leave for almost a year. He and Lynne fought but it was always about Gennedy being the only criminal lawyer in history that’s broke. Sometimes they argued about Irwin, but they never mentioned Harriet. Nobody ever mentioned Harriet. Irwin would say her name out loud to himself just to hear it. “Harriet,” he murmurs. She needed a mother, the mother Irwin stole from her.
On the Shores of Darkness, There is Light Page 33
