Difficult People

by Catriona Wright

“Duh.”

  Taken by surprise, George took several steps toward Laurel, and answered loudly, “Doesn’t that bother you?”

  “What bothers me is that you let me get away with it.”

  George rounded the desk. “It’s not my job to fix your life. I’m not your father.”

  “Ever heard of deodorant?” She fanned her nostrils. “You’re not my boyfriend either, you know. I never asked you for any of this.” Opening both arms wide, she raised her chin and glanced brusquely around the room.

  He faltered back, nearly tripping. The dimensions of the museum seemed to shift, becoming larger then smaller. What was she talking about? What was he to her? Roommate. Bank. She was ungrateful, that’s all. She didn’t love him enough. Or: did he love her too much?

  When his eyes began to refocus, he noticed Sharon and Andy huddled in the centre of the room. A shiny purple rectangle lay on the floor between them, as though it were a shared organ with twin white cords leading to twin white earphones that were plugged into twin brains. George envied them. Lovers, that’s what they were, protecting each other from nature’s malice.

  The air conditioner burbled. A thin tickertape of smoke floated between the grills. George took a deep breath and walked forward to investigate, glad to have something concrete to do. He felt a tug on his arm as Laurel yanked him backwards.

  He fell to the floor. “Laurel, you can’t keep—”

  Orange and yellow sparks. A black-purple smear. The acrid tang of burnt plastic. All the heat of the day condensed into one moment as the air conditioner exploded.

  =

  The museum, untouched by the tornado, lost most of one wall in the air conditioner blast, but that was nothing compared to the natural disaster damage to the town. The casino had been reduced to a heap of still-blinking lights and overturned card tables; red and blue chips had soared as far as a mile away. Half of George’s house was gone. Couches, smashed computers, books and broken glass clogged the streets. Young men and women stalked through the debris pointing their enormous lenses at eyeless teddy bears and dead goldfish. Power cords hung like snakes from branches.

  Although George had not managed to save his eyelashes—they’d burned off in the blast—he’d managed to save the majority of his calculators and had hopes to start a new museum soon. His sister claimed to want to help. Neither of them ever mentioned the fight again; they never liked to relive such unpleasantness. She felt itchy these days, she told him. No slots to keep the hands occupied. Not even a working computer to gamble online. He said he understood.

  He’d been lucky, he told everyone. Lucky, yes, but not entirely. He’d lost some of his most beloved calculators and worst of all, he’d never been able to find the Wiz-A-Tron. It wasn’t in the box, and it wasn’t in the charred mess left at the museum.

  “What do you think happened to it?” he asked Laurel one morning as they drove slowly through the wreckage, scouting bigger locations for the new museum.

  “Maybe it was stolen.”

  “By who?”

  “That couple obviously. That chick had a shifty look about her. She probably slipped it into her pocket.”

  “She didn’t seem the stealing type.” George said.

  “Are you kidding me? And that boyfriend of hers—what a clown.”

  “I thought he was just your type,” George teased.

  Laurel smacked him playfully. “I’ve got to admit that girl had taste. She loved my jackpot shirt, didn’t she? Wanted me to be in a magazine! It must’ve been her. Not that I’m blame-gaming. Who could resist? It’s pretty much the world’s best calculator.”

  George glanced over at his little sister, and although he would later doubt himself, would wonder if he was projecting or thinking wishfully, at that moment he swore he saw a plastic orange angle poking out of his sister’s purse. A wizard’s eyes, serenely shut.

  Uncle Harris

  Gavin only forgot one of his lines—the one about how people in Iceland consider him a delicacy—but a smiling teacher whisper-yelled it to him from the wings. Bill stole the show as the flamingo standing on one leg for twenty minutes and sneaking triumphant glances at his friend Henry, the vulture, whose curved foam beak kept falling off. I hooted and stomped as they bowed and bowed and bowed. Afterward we ate brownies and lemon squares in the gym, and I informed inquisitive parents and teachers that our mom had gone to the washroom and would be out any minute now.

  I never used to lie about her. Back when it was all starting, I would say, “She’s running,” or, “She’s circuit training.” I was proud of her for losing all that weight after the divorce, for getting up every morning at five a.m. to put on her swishy nylon shorts with the deep slits up the sides. But after a while I could sense these weren’t stellar explanations for why she hadn’t shown up to parent-teacher conferences. Other moms, I noticed, managed to fit both Pilates and potlucks into their schedules.

  When we got home, Mom was lying on the couch, a bag of frozen peas thawing on her pillow-propped ankle. I tried not to look at her toenails: ten black mood rings.

  “Mom, Mom,” Gavin said. “I can carry up to ten fish in my beak.”

  “I eat mostly algae and I can balance on one leg for an hour,” said Bill, demonstrating the flamingo stance.

  “That’s great.” Mom winced.

  I told myself not to express sympathy, that it was all her own fault, but she just looked so frail and pathetic that I relented and asked if she needed anything.

  “No,” she said. “You go relax, honey.”

  On my way out of the room, she said, “Could you give your brothers their baths tonight? I’m just not up to it.”

  Without turning around, I said, “Yes.”

  Locking the door behind me, I sat on my galaxy-printed duvet and opened my laptop. Half an hour until my brothers’ scheduled bathtub warfare. Enough time to scroll through some posts on Toil and Trouble for Beginners. My friend Amy and I were learning everything we could before this coven meet up we’d heard about next month. We already had outfits planned: crushed black velvet skirts, rings on every finger, silver Doc Martens. Amy had even been watching YouTube makeup tutorials on perfecting cat eye swoops of liquid eyeliner to make us look older, at least sixteen.

  I was reading about phases of the moon—Disseminating moon, associated with divorce, emotional turmoil—when I heard the doorbell ringing, a spacy bo-bo-bleep. Probably a Jehovah’s witness or a Girl Guide or something—and also commonly known to exacerbate addictions.

  “Can you get that, Chrissie?” Mom yelled.

  I ignored her, confident that whoever it was would get the message and leave. But the doorbell kept ringing, derailing my concentration and forcing me to reread the same sentence. Disseminating moon, associated with divorce, emotional turmoil…

  “Chrissie!”

  “Can’t Gavin or Bill do it?” I yelled down.

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “Silly, silly,” Bill wriggled his way into my room. “Flamingos can’t answer doors.”

  “People in Iceland consider me a delicacy,” Gavin said, launching himself onto my bed. “Yummy. Puffin pudding. Puffin fingers. Puffin pot pie.”

  “Fine.” I shut the laptop, shooed the boys into the hallway and stomped down the stairs. The ringing seemed to be getting louder, more insistent. I peered through the peephole. Standing there with a scowl on his face and a suitcase by his feet was Uncle Harris, my dad’s brother, a man I hadn’t seen since I was six years old.

  Mom launched into hostess mode, hobbling around to procure tea and crackers. Uncle Harris declined to eat, drink or explain his presence.

  “It’s been a long day.” He blinked to keep his eyes from closing.

  “Did he tell you that she’s stinking rich?” Mom asked, pulling the couch into a bed. “Oil money, diamond money. Something bloody.”

  “Chrissie,” he said, forcing the words out. “What grade are you in
now?”

  “Nine,” I said.

  “Nine,” he said. “Trigonometry?”

  “Not yet.”

  Uncle Harris just nodded, sinking deeper into his seat. He didn’t even attempt to engage Gavin and Bill, which was strange. Normally adults praise or tease small children, if only to impress other adults with their charm and wit. My dad, for one, never met a kid he didn’t subject to a knock-knock joke or a nose heist. The boys clung to my legs, probably frightened of Uncle Harris, who was a gaunter, paler and more serious version of our father.

  I took Gavin and Bill upstairs for their bath. Having shed their bird selves, they splashed and wriggled in the soapy water, occasionally halting their battle to discuss Uncle Harris. Who was he? Was he married? Did he have kids? Why had they never met him? I couldn’t answer. I remembered him visiting once with a thin, perfumed woman and how tense Dad had been for weeks leading up to it, yelling at me to put away my toys, scrubbing and dusting and polishing, filling the air with fumes that made me dizzy.

  Gavin and Bill concocted their own backstories out of my silence. Uncle Harris was a gazillion-year-old vampire with a ghost for a wife and a gazillion vampire-ghost children, and he’d just gotten out of jail for robbing a candy store and a bank and a diamond store. Or he was a childless, rich businessman whose wife had just died and he had come to give us all his money, enough money to fill a bathtub, a pool, the whole ocean.

  The smell of bacon lifted me from moon-drenched dreams. In the kitchen, Uncle Harris, his waist cinched by a frilly teal apron, was draping strands of spitting meat on paper towels and flipping pancakes. A stern, miserable expression was on his face. I tried not to laugh.

  “Looks great,” I said.

  “Take a seat,” he said. “It’s almost ready.”

  My place at the table had been set: a knife and fork, a glass of orange juice, even a napkin.

  “When I got back from the store,” Uncle Harris said, his back to me. “Marlene’s car was gone.”

  “Yoga,” I said. “Pilates, maybe circuit training. I forget her schedule.”

  “I thought she was injured.” He deposited a stack of pancakes in front of me, bacon heaped on them like a gummy smile. “Does she leave you alone often?”

  “I’m almost fourteen.”

  Gavin and Bill whirled into the room. Uncle Harris tensed, preparing their plates.

  He put their breakfast down in front of them. “Did you sleep well, gentlemen?”

  “I was a space spider from Jupiter,” Gavin said.

  “Me too!” Bill added.

  Uncle Harris nodded gravely as though this were a revelation of some importance. He took a place at the head of the table. “Apologies,” he said, pointing at the syrup. “It’s fake.”

  “Do you have a wife?” Gavin asked.

  “Yes,” Uncle Harris said, flaring a napkin on his lap and picking up his knife and fork, his posture stiff and proper.

  “Where is she?” Bill said.

  “In a big house taking a nice, long rest.”

  “Why?”

  “She’s sad.”

  “Why?”

  “Adult worries,” Uncle Harris said, already exhausted by the interrogation.

  To relieve Uncle Harris of what he clearly felt were his uncle duties, I asked Bill and Gavin to explain their dreams to me, and they rambled on and on between bites. Big, messy, eager bites. The pancakes were light and fluffy, the bacon crisp and the syrup, corn rotting on the stalk.

  In the week after Uncle Harris took over care of the house I realized how bad things had gotten, how bad I’d let them get. The living room carpet transformed from beige to white. Peanut butter sandwich dinners were replaced with roasted chicken, grilled asparagus and brown rice. The bathtub drain, freed from its hair gag, gulped down water again. I was grateful, but also embarrassed. Did he think we were filthy? And what about me? Had I failed? I could see now that washing a few dishes and tying a few shoelaces weren’t enough to be a real adult. But he couldn’t deny I’d done a good job with the boys. He continued to treat Bill and Gavin with intimidated deference as though they were domesticated bears or foreign dignitaries.

  With fewer household duties, I was able to devote myself more seriously to preparing with Amy. We watched The Craft and painted our fingernails black. We lit candles and sandalwood incense and intoned our spells. Nothing too serious yet, though, just spells to help us pass a French test or to guarantee a good hair day. After careful discussion, we’d agreed we shouldn’t anger the spirits by messing with the important spells—the love spells—until we’d learned more.

  “We’re not just doing this as a fad,” Amy said solemnly. “People don’t realize that Wicca is a legitimate religion. It should be treated with respect.”

  “Right,” I said. “Want to look at some more pictures of those crystal amulets on Pinterest?”

  Without telling Amy, I’d started practising some of the more skilled spells. One night I took a wedding picture of my mother and father out of a photo album and drew a pentagram on it, then I rolled it up and put it in a mason jar along with crushed tulip petals and a splash of vanilla extract. I buried it in the back garden and waited for Dad to come home.

  Two weeks after I cast the spell I went to collect Gavin and Bill after school as usual but was told that they’d already left with my father. I was so happy I nearly cried. Dad was back. He could talk sense to Mom, make her laugh so hard she forgot to be anxious. That woman in Florida was just a blip. The spell had worked!

  As I walked home I wondered if Uncle Harris would be happy or sad about Dad’s return. He’d been with us for almost three weeks, cleaning and cooking, reading his politician biographies in the evening and trying to summon the courage to question my mother.

  “Has a physician advised you to exercise so much?” he’d ask.

  “My naturopath tells me I’m on the path to my best self,” she’d reply.

  Uncle Harris would squint and clench his jaw at these non- answers but never pushed back. He was like some repressed minister from another century. Once when he was on the computer I looked over his shoulder and saw that he’d been googling jokes. The next day he stopped the boys in the hallway.

  “Why was the tomato embarrassed?”

  “He lost a ketchup fight,” Bill said.

  “He didn’t have any friends,” Gavin said. “He was a stinky weirdo.”

  “He saw the salad dressing,” Uncle Harris said, chortling to himself.

  The boys, to my surprise, laughed along with him, clutching their chests, tears in their eyes, trying—I assumed—to make Uncle Harris feel better for being so uncool.

  When I got home I found Dad sitting in the living room, Gavin and Bill cross-legged at his feet. But when I got closer, I saw that it wasn’t Dad at all. It was only Uncle Harris, a looser Uncle Harris with a goofy grin messing up his face. He was holding a thick book and reading from it in a strained, nasal tone then a halting, stuttered one. The boys cackled at his voices. He’d probably learned the whole routine from some YouTube video.

  “Where’s Dad?” I said.

  Uncle Harris stopped. He seemed annoyed by the interruption, but also like he was struggling to suppress this annoyance.

  “In Florida,” Bill said.

  “Very funny,” I said. “The teacher told me he picked you up from school. Is he in the bedroom? The backyard?”

  Uncle Harris shook his head. “Sorry to disappoint, but that was me.”

  “You?”

  “I picked them up. When we were younger, people could barely tell your father and me apart.”

  “Keep reading,” Gavin said.

  I sighed and went to my room to blast music, anything to drown out the sound of Uncle Harris’s performance, or whatever you wanted to call his pathetic attempt to win over his nephews.

 
It was bad enough that the boys betrayed me by pretending to like Uncle Harris’s try-hard rendition of The Hobbit, giggling away like idiots, but Mom soon took to listening, too, sprawled on the couch after a gruelling workout, interjecting with questions, only to be shushed by one of the boys.

  One night after dinner, I cornered her in the kitchen while she was grabbing a coconut water from the sparkling and ruthlessly organized fridge.

  “What exactly is he doing here?”

  “He’s helping out,” she said. “He has a sense of obligation and responsibility. Unlike his brother.”

  “But why does he care about us all of a sudden?”

  “His wife is sick.”

  “So he should be with her.”

  “It’s not that easy,” she said. “You’ll understand when you’re older.”

  “Did you call him?”

  She gulped her drink. “You should really try this stuff. It’s great for your skin.”

  “He’s not going to leave her for you,” I said. “Just so you know.”

  “Don’t be such a little bitch.”

  I was too stunned to respond and I wouldn’t have had a chance to anyway because Uncle Harris appeared in the doorway.

  “Marlene,” he said in a scolding tone, angrier than I’d ever heard him.

  Her neck and face exploded in red blotches and she bowed her head, a chastened child.

  “Chrissie,” he said.

  “It’s Christina,” I replied. “And this is between me and my mother. You can go back to the living room and keep playing house.”

  “That’s your territory. You and your mother and father. I live in the real world.”

  I told myself not to react, vowed to curse him, hex him, send all the demons of the world his way. He didn’t care about us, not really. He wanted to feel superior to his brother, superior to us. He wanted to screw up our lives, turn us all against each other. As though sensing some danger, Gavin and Bill danced into the kitchen.

  “Mom, why was the tomato scared?” Gavin said.

  I turned and left the room. On my way up the stairs, I heard Bill deliver the punchline: “Because he saw the lettuce naked.”