Born Weird (20 page)

“Angie!” Richard called, finally.

“Hey! I can’t believe that phone number is still on your arm!”

“That’s where you are!”

“Yup,” Angie said. She sat on Kent’s bed. “I’m right here.”

They let go of each other’s hands. They started taking tiny steps across the floor. Angie stayed on the bed. The doctor arrived before they reached her. Lab-coated and serious he examined each of them. He shone a penlight in their eyes and put his stethoscope to their chests. He spoke of permanent damage to their muscles and brains. They laughed at each of these things.

“But we’re fine!” Lucy said.

“We’re better than fine! We’re great!” Richard said.

“We’re the best we’ve ever been,” Kent said. “Ever!”

“Watch this,” Abba said and she began to twirl. The others started twirling as well.

“I admit,” the doctor said, “you all seem fine.” He put his penlight back in his pocket. He made notes on his clipboard. His right foot was in the hallway when Richard stopped twirling.

“You didn’t tell us how long we were out,” Richard called.

The doctor’s right toe tapped three times and then he turned around. “Over two and a half years,” he said. He flipped through papers on the clipboard. “You were in a coma for … two years, eight months and twenty-seven days, to be exact.”

Richard, Abba, Lucy and Kent looked at the doctor. They looked at each other. They started laughing, all four of them, all at once, laughing, together.

Sixty minutes later all five of the Weird siblings stood at their grandmother’s grave.

“That’s an awful lot of text,” Richard said.

“I can barely read it,” Abba said.

“She didn’t even put her name on it,” Lucy said.

“Or the date!” Kent said.

“What do you think it means?”

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Abba said. “It’s absurd. Like life is.”

“Don’t be stupid! It means that you have to be brave enough to accept that some things in life aren’t random. That they have meaning!”
Angie said. Her siblings registered the presence of
the Tone
. They looked at Angie and then they looked at each other.

“You seem to know a lot about what the Shark was thinking,” Lucy said.

“Yes you do,” Richard said.

“Where is your baby?” Kent asked.

“Finally! And it only took you two hours to ask!”

“But where is it?” Abba asked.

“She. Paulette. She’s at daycare. Paul’s picking her up.”

“I knew you two would work it out!”

“Don’t get your hopes up. It’s not working very well.”

“Angie,” Richard said. “I have to say, you sound bitter.”

“And angry.”

“A little sad.”

“You sound like the Shark.”

“Explain to us how it worked.”

“How what worked?” Angie asked. She took a step backwards.

“The lightning went through us and then …?”

“It went into me.”

“Into, or through?”

“Into,” Angie admitted, “it ended with me.”

“Is that right,” Richard said. Angie took another step back. Her siblings stepped towards her. They exchanged looks. They
pounced. Before she knew it, Angie was flat on her back. Abba held down her feet. Richard held down her right arm and Kent her left. Lucy knelt beside her, her face inches from Angie’s.

“We want our sister back,” Lucy yelled, loudly.

“We need her! We need her back!”

“You had your chance! You decided to go!”

“Get out of her body you paranormal hag!”

“Stop it! Stop it! STOP IT!” Angie yelled. “I swear I am not the Shark!”

“Prove it,” Lucy demanded. None of them loosened their grips.

“Lucy, those condoms you flushed down the toilet always washed back up. Kent, I once helped you bury shitty underwear in the backyard. Richard …”

“Okay, okay, we’ve heard enough,” Richard interrupted.

“Wait. I want to hear what Richard did.”

“Me too.”

“What did Richard do?”

“There’s something more, isn’t there?” Richard asked.

“I’m afraid there is,” Angie admitted.

“Tell us.”

“It’s big.”

“Tell us anyway.”

“Okay,” Angie said. They let go and she stood up. She brushed grass off her coat. When every blade was gone, she brushed for a little while longer. Then she looked up at them. “When the lightning went into me, it said something.”

“That happened to me too,” Richard whispered.

“And me,” Lucy said.

“Me too,” Kent said.

“Yes,” Abba said, nodding her head. “It spoke to me.”

“What did she tell
you
?” Richard asked.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Angie said.

“Then just get it over with!” Kent yelled.

“She knew where Dad went.”

“You mean like where his body is?” Richard asked.

“No.”

“You mean …”

“I do.”

“He’s alive?”

“He faked it?”

“Yes,” Angie said. She looked at her feet and tapped her heels together.

“Where is he?” Abba asked.

“He bought a house in Sydney.”

“Australia?”

“Nova Scotia. On 98 Sampson Avenue.”

“Did you go see him?”

“How is he?”

“What did he say?”

“I haven’t gone yet.”

“What?”

“Why not?”

“It seemed,” Angie said and she took a very deep breath before she continued, “like something we needed to do as a family.”

“I see your point,” Richard said.

“Okay,” Kent said.

“I agree,” Lucy said.

“Is he still there?” Abba asked.

“Well, for obvious reasons the Shark’s memories end a little over two and a half years ago,” Angie said. “But as of that time, yes, I’m afraid that he was.”

“Jesus,” Kent said. No one said anything more. They could hear traffic, moving quickly.

“Can we get off her grave?” Angie asked.

They stepped off her grave. They reread the epitaph. Then, in single file, Richard, Lucy, Abba, Angie and Kent walked through the cemetery. Not one of them noticed that they’d arranged themselves in order of birth.

T
HAT NIGHT ALL FIVE OF THE
W
EIRD
siblings slept under one roof, and Paul and Angie slept in the same bed and neither of these things had happened in two years, eight months and twenty-seven days.

Angie and Paul slept on their sides, with most of the mattress between them. Angie couldn’t fall asleep. “They want me to go with them,” she said. Paul didn’t answer for a long time and then he did.

“I know,” he said.

“They’re leaving in the morning.”

“I think you should go.”

“Nice.”

“What?”

“Very supportive.”

“It was supposed to be.”

“You think I can just go?”

“How can you not?”

“Keep your voice down.”

“Why can’t you?”

“You think I’m just going to leave Paulette?”

“Angie,” Paul said. He sat up. He didn’t turn on the light. “It’s not like you’re going forever …”

“No.”

“Are you?”

“It isn’t the plan.”

“You know that Paulette and I will be fine.”

“I do,” Angie said. She rolled onto her back.

“So if that’s not it, what is it?” Paul asked. He reached out his hand, looking for hers. It landed on her breast. He decided to leave it there.

“It’ll change me,” she told him.

“What will?”

“Either way.”

“If you find him or if you don’t?”

“Yes.”

“And you believe that, either way, it will take you away from here? From me? I’m not saying Paulette, but from me?”

“Aren’t you worried about that?”

“Well,” Paul said. He took away his hand. “I guess I’m kinda thinking, what with the way things are between us, it’s worth the risk.”

The next morning Angie woke up alone in the middle of the bed. She went into the bathroom. She washed her face. She scrubbed her forearm. The phone number remained perfectly legible. She tried to figure out what to do and she
still hadn’t made up her mind when she walked to the kitchen and found it crammed with Weirds.

Kent and Richard cooked pancakes. Paul poured coffee. Paulette sat at the kitchen table, between Lucy and Abba, who were teaching her how to shoot Cheerios from her spoon. Angie stood there and then she did something else she hadn’t done in two and a half years—she started to cry.

“It’s … s … o … goo … d to … s … ee y … ou all.”

“Angie!”

“Morning!”

“How did you sleep?”

“Pancakes?”

“They’re surprisingly good.”

“I’ll make you tea.”

“Whatch tis,” Paulette said. She shot a Cheerio at her mother. It hit her chest and then it fell and rolled under the table.

“Pretty good!”

“Aim a little higher next time.”

“Aren’t you g … oing to … m … ake … fun of me … for … c … rying?”

Forks became motionless. Juice glasses hovered mid-air. Pancakes cooled. They looked at each other and then they looked back at Angie. They realized that not only hadn’t they done it, none of them had felt any need to.

During the forty-minute drive to the airport Paul and Angie talked only to Paulette. Her siblings were supposed to be following behind in a taxi, but Angie couldn’t see them. Paul parked in front of the domestic terminal. Angie opened the back door of the Toyota and knelt down beside her daughter, who bounced in her car seat. “Wot are you bringing me?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” Angie asked. She picked off the Cheerio that was stuck to Paulette’s chin.

“Daddy says that’s why you go’n away. To get me a present!”

“Telling you would ruin the surprise.”

“Tell me!”

“Well,” Angie said. She grabbed the toes of Paulette’s sneakers. “How about new shoes!”

“With lights!”

“These ones have lights.”

“I know!” Paulette said. She kicked the back of the passenger seat and the lights in her shoes started to flash.

“I’ll see you in seven days, maybe less,” Angie said. She kissed Paulette’s head. She closed the door, gently. On the sidewalk Paul held out her suitcase.

“You have to do this and you have to do it for real,” he said.

“Bon voyage to you too.”

“I’m really being serious, Angie. I think this is our last chance. I don’t know what it is, but you need to find it.”

“You may not like what I find.”

“I know,” Paul said. He leaned in to kiss her. She turned her head. He didn’t kiss her cheek.

Angie watched them drive away. She could still see the Toyota when the taxi carrying her siblings arrived. It was a perfectly clean and dent-free cab. They’d rejected the first three that came along.

“How was the ride?” Angie asked. The Toyota turned left and was out of sight. She looked at her brother.

“Well,” Richard said. He closed the passenger door. “He took us to the main terminal. So then we had to come over here to the domestic terminal.”

“Interesting,”

“I thought so.”

“Stop it!”

“It means nothing!”

“It means we’re at another
fucking
airport!”

“I feel like we’re living in airports!”

“None of you have been in an airport in almost three years,” Angie told them. She picked up her suitcase. They picked up theirs. They all stepped through the automatic doors and inside the Vancouver International Airport where, without trouble, alarms or altercation, they boarded flight AC208 to Halifax, Nova Scotia.