Family of Origin

by CJ Hauser

  Nolan was eating oranges. He stuck a wedge in his mouth and smiled at Elsa horrifically, lips full of pith. Elsa cracked up. Stupid. Little brother.

  Fireworks screamed up from the mainland, and Nolan jumped in his chair. Spat out the peel. He had always startled easily, and now he was worried about the Paradise Duck. Would the sound of the fireworks spook it away? What if it swam or flew off on some new, untraceable course?

  The five of them sat up in their deck chairs and watched the show above the tree line. The bulb-heads of flame burst in satisfying pops. The air smelled of gunpowder. Jinx woke up to bark at the distant explosions, then went back to sleep.

  When Nolan thought of going back to the mainland, he could not bear the idea of sitting in his office chair and designing promotions about free soft-serve ice cream in miniature collectible baseball helmets. He felt the island protecting him from the acid dread he felt in his stomach when he would turn on his computer and watch his inbox counter populate. It protected him from taking Janine out to romantic trendy restaurants where they laughed and drank too much, even though the whole thing felt like a show they were putting on for an unknowable audience. It protected him from the news, the news, the news, on his computer, on his phone, on TV, on monitors in waiting rooms and in airports and in the backseats of cabs—the intractable seriousness of the news revealing the farce of Nolan’s days. How mild Nolan’s own perceived troubles truly were.

  Yes, the island had stripped Nolan of Janine, and his apartment, his job, his Twitter, his pornography, his brunch friends, his newsfeed, and his culpability for doing nothing about every rotten thing wrong in the world.

  Without these things, Nolan felt something like good.

  Had Ian felt this way? Had he been running away? And were he and Elsa on the list of things that Ian had been running from?

  The fireworks had finished and they’d eaten the last of the fruit. The smell of gunpowder rolled over the breeze.

  Thank you, Nolan said to Gwen, for all of this.

  Gwen was staring intensely out at the water. She was no longer smiling, though she still leaned into Mick. She didn’t reply. Her arm jerked. Mick leaned away, as if realizing himself unwelcome.

  I’m sorry, Mick said. But when Gwen’s arm jerked again, her gaze was unbroken. She hunched forward, then began to convulse.

  Jesus, Mick said. Jesus. They leapt up. No one did anything. Gwen groaned. Elsa fluttered her hands and took tiny steps in place.

  Gwen flopped in the chair.

  She’s epileptic, Elsa said. Isn’t she epileptic?

  She’s having a seizure, Nolan said. He waited for Elsa to take control of the situation, but she looked panicky.

  Jim ran from the deck to the tree line. A stick, he said. We need to put a stick in her mouth.

  No, Nolan said, that’s wrong. But Jim was gone, looking.

  It occurred to Nolan that he was waiting as if he were everyone’s last draft pick to do anything. The New Baby. But who had decided that? Nolan knew what to do, and no one was going to come along and tell him to go ahead and do it.

  Gwen fell from her chair and lay on her back, still convulsing.

  Should we— Elsa said.

  I’ve got it, Nolan said. He knelt down and cleared the chairs away. He slid Gwen’s body away from the deck railing. He grasped her shoulder. She had said to wait with her. He remembered this. Just to wait and to watch her.

  Gwen’s jaw was locked and she clucked, drooling slightly. It seemed to Nolan that she was intensely suffering. He hoped he was wrong. Gwen’s arm shot out and she held it there, a clenched open fist. It was as if she were grasping something invisible in the air.

  Nolan squeezed Gwen’s shoulder. You’re okay, he said. You’re okay. Her body was stiff but racked with small tremors. She blinked furiously and then her eyes locked open, rolling so far back they were milky slits. Nolan squeezed Gwen’s shoulder again and hummed. You’re okay.

  Elsa was biting her fingers and Mick was pacing around the deck. Jim was still searching for a stick.

  We have to do something, Mick said. Something.

  I am doing something, Nolan said. I’m doing this. He kept humming.

  It lasted for almost thirty seconds. It lasted forever. And then Gwen took a deep breath. She gasped, wetly, and tried to get up, as if she were going to run from the deck.

  Hey, Nolan said, hey. He guided her back to the floor, turned her on her side. You’re okay.

  Where? said Gwen.

  You’re at home, Nolan said. She breathed as if she’d run miles, and her eyes rolled, focusing nowhere. Where, she said again. Home, Nolan said. He squeezed her arm. You’re okay, he said. Gwen’s body slowly relaxed and gave up its stiffness.

  * * *

  ——————·

  After fifteen minutes, Gwen assured them she would be fine. She just needed to rest. The brothers fell all over themselves offering her water and aspirin and help.

  Once she was resting in the bed, Gwen asked Nolan to describe what the seizure had looked like, and he told her.

  Thank you, she said. You did good.

  Jim told her he’d tried to find a stick for her to bite on.

  Jesus Christ, Gwen said, squeezing her eyes shut like it hurt terribly. Maybe you should stay, Nolan. We need someone smart around here. She pointed at the brothers. I’d trade both of these boy geniuses for one calm smart person.

  * * *

  ——————·

  As Nolan and Elsa rolled out their sleeping bags on the deck, Elsa said, You did do good.

  Thanks, Nolan said. What he wanted to ask was, Was it how Dad would have done it?

  Elsa said, You get that from Keiko. She was always very calm in a crisis.

  Elsa was thinking about the time she’d left Nolan in the hole. Keiko hadn’t lost a minute to her own panic and fear. She’d just begun looking for Nolan and had not stopped moving until they’d found him.

  I think Ian loved that about her, Elsa said.

  She was right about his mother, Nolan knew. When he and Elsa had been found in bed together, there was yelling and screaming from Ingrid and Ian, but not from his mother. Keiko had just sat there. She cried a bit, but she was very calm. And when Ian and Ingrid had exhausted themselves with their fury, his mother was the one to say: So what are we going to do?

  Elsa squeezed Nolan’s hand very hard before drawing herself deep into her sleeping bag.

  He listened to Elsa, asleep and breathing in gravelly rasps. It would have sounded monstrous to anyone else, but to Nolan, they sounded like the snores of a small, congested child. Nolan lay in his own bag. He was so tired, but he could not fall asleep. He could not stop seeing Gwen grasping her invisible something out of the air.

  Park Rapids

  TWENTY YEARS BACK

  The music was coming from the office. Ingrid never used the desk but felt every house should have one, just in case. Elsa stood outside the door and listened.

  It was the third of the Gymnopédie. The piano notes were plodding but purposeful. They always reminded Elsa of someone walking in the rain. Perhaps someone carrying a newspaper walking home from the house of someone they loved in the rain. Things had not gone well at the house. The person was melancholy.

  It was one of Ian’s visiting weekends and he’d come without Keiko and Nolan. It was Saturday and Ingrid was working a double shift at the hospital, giving them time alone. But Ian had just a little bit of work to do, and so he’d settled into the office. After he was through, they’d go to the mall for some shopping, Ian said.

  Now that she was fifteen, everyone assumed Elsa always wanted to go shopping, but she hated the mall and liked her ratty t-shirts just fine. What she really wanted was for her father to take her to the Lakeside Diner where they served their milkshakes in elegant, tall glasses and for Ian to blow his paper s
traw wrapper at her.

  Elsa went in and lay on the office carpet like a starfish. The rug was a soft bloodred Oriental with ochre patterning. The wood molding smelled like lemon polish. Ian did not look up; when he worked he was a million miles away. The music shifted to a new movement.

  There is a man, Elsa said.

  This was a game they played when Elsa was small. Back when they all still lived together in the farmhouse, before Ian had cut them loose and drifted away. The game was that Elsa would tell Ian what was happening in his music. Satie was her favorite because it sounded like it had the most stories in it.

  Ian looked up from his laptop.

  The man is wearing a gray trench coat, Elsa said. He is walking by a canal. The canal is flowing gently and it smells a bit like trash.

  How do you know about canals? Ian asked.

  Everyone knows about canals, Elsa said. He is bringing flowers to a woman, but they are not very fresh, and he is worried about them.

  Ian closed the computer and inspected his daughter’s upside-down face on the red-and-ochre rug. He did not ask what she knew about the reasons a man brought a woman flowers.

  What is he worried about?

  That the flowers are already half dead and so she won’t like them.

  Would you like them?

  I’m not the woman.

  You’re almost a woman, Ian said.

  I am a woman, Elsa said. Just not this woman.

  Her father rocked back in his chair. I suppose you are a woman, Ian said. Will you forgive me for not noticing?

  Elsa shrugged.

  Ian tocked his way to a new track. How about this one?

  Langgaard began. The Music of the Spheres. Ian watched Elsa carefully as she listened. The music was awesome and frightening. A high-pitched shuddering string section. Rumbling drums.

  Elsa said, It’s something that doesn’t know how big it is yet.

  (Ian was so often gone in those days that even when he was there, Elsa could not help but anticipate the pain of his going again. And so she knew that even on this day, even this far back, she had not been happy. Still, when she would think of Mars, years from this day, filling out her application to be an Origins colonist, Elsa would remember those opening bars of Langgaard. Someday, she was sure, she’d imagine it playing as she looked out on her new, red planet through a thick pressure-proof window and dust tumbled over the surface.)

  Leap’s Island

  When they woke, they found Gwen nestled between the brothers. Nolan and Elsa whispered good-bye and the three grumbled but did not wake.

  Morning at Gwen’s smelled like skunk cabbage and fresh mud. They were sore and scabbed from yesterday’s endeavors, and as they faced the woods again, the children’s packs were heavy. Jinx was not eager to follow after being so poorly shepherded the day before, but they tugged her along.

  Elsa said, I think we should head—

  Please, let me navigate, Nolan said. Elsa gave him the side-eye.

  Nolan insisted. I think I know where we got offtrack.

  Fine, Elsa said.

  Nolan looked up to get his bearings, then set them on a new course.

  Thirty minutes later, they’d found the second site: a geological sinkhole, surrounded by forest, at the heart of the island.

  There were great staircases of limestone rock descending to the water line. The Greys descended almost ten feet, arrived at a flat plateau of rock, and took off their packs, which had pressed sweatily against their backs.

  The water was the clear mineral green of a soda bottle. Great planks of stone, like steps, led into its depths. Ten feet in, there was a ledge, the edge of an underwater cliff, off which it seemed you could step into the darkness of the deep water beneath it.

  They gave Jinx a bowl of water in the shade. They stripped to their bathing suits and sat with their feet in the water.

  They watched and waited for the duck.

  With binoculars, Nolan inspected the far side of the shore. He inspected the knot of Elsa’s bikini, very close up. The shore again.

  There were small fish, flat like skipping stones, black darts marking their backs, which came and nipped at their legs and feet. They could see a turtle coming toward them, from a distance, emerging from the depths and into the sun-filtered water. She had blunt-clawed flippers and a long pointed nose that emerged, periscope-like, from the water. She looked at the children, then swam away, the knockable dome of her back breaching the surface just once as she lifted then plunged under a constellation of floating algae blooms.

  Elsa lowered herself silently into the water, slipping beneath until she sat on the stone shelf, her chin just above the water’s surface. The sinkhole’s water was so clear in the shallows that her whole body was visible beneath the surface as she sat cross-legged.

  Elsa dunked and made an underwater face. Opened her eyes and saw Nolan’s underwater feet. Dead men’s feet. Still underwater, she motioned for him to join her. Wavery, his limbs all warped, she could see him shake his head and lift the field glasses again. Elsa swam and grabbed his ankle. Tried to drag him down with her. Nolan kicked her. Not hard, but in the temple.

  Elsa sputtered up. What the fuck, she said.

  Stop, Nolan said. You’re making too much noise and the duck won’t come.

  Come in.

  Lakes are gross.

  You came swimming at Potato Lake once.

  I didn’t swim.

  You ate three sandwiches on the porch with the crusts cut off of them and drank so much orange soda you peed yourself.

  I didn’t pee myself.

  You cried.

  Because I came close to peeing myself and I couldn’t find the bathroom.

  Because it’s at the back of the kitchen.

  I’d seen a NOVA special about water snakes.

  What?

  The night before. I was convinced the lake was full of snakes.

  Ian was so strict about TV. I wasn’t allowed to watch anything.

  Except Discovery, Animal Planet, and NOVA.

  Like there’s nothing horrifying there, right? Like 90210 was going to ruin my life but Shark Week was a-okay.

  Exactly.

  Come in?

  Nolan descended the elegant rocky stairway so he was in ankle deep. Water-walkers, Jesus beetles, skittered by, joyful and defiant.

  Nolan hated swimming in dark water, where you couldn’t see your way. But he pushed off and dove all the same. The temperature dropped as he swam deeper, his lungs growing tighter. He opened his eyes but saw only motes, shadows. There was no bottom to push off of and so he thrust his arms until he surfaced again.

  The children stared at each other, blowing bubbles, eyes just above the surface of the water. Elsa dunked. Nolan followed.

  Floating, Elsa extended her legs down into a deeper gradation of green, her elbows out. She circled her fingers and stuck her pinky out, brought her hand to her mouth and pursed her lips. Underwater tea party.

  Nolan pretended to butter an imaginary scone and eat it. Came up for air. Purposefully gasped. Plunged again. Pretended underwater note writing. Underwater dance party. Underwater fistfight. Underwater baseball. Underwater blowjob. Underwater apology. Underwater meditation. Pretend, pretend, pretend until it was underwater crying, water all around, mock turtle tears. Underwater apology, apology, apology.

  They emerged again, panting.

  The duck’s not coming, Elsa said.

  Maybe he’s moved on.

  * * *

  ——————·

  Once they were dry and had eaten, it was three o’clock.

  Move on or camp here tonight? Elsa asked.

  The post boat would arrive tomorrow afternoon. They had a day left to find the Paradise Duck.

  Camp here, I think.

&nb
sp; Okay.

  We’re really close to Remy St. Gilles’s shack.

  Nolan.

  We could drop in for a minute maybe, just see—

  See if he’s writing the next book and would he let you read it?

  I just want to talk to him.

  You’re such a fanboy.

  You know you want to ask him about Mars.

  He’s a writer, Nolan.

  A writer with a degree in cosmology.

  Everyone I know is insane for those books. I don’t get it.

  They’re amazing. In the first one, the crew is all—

  I didn’t really want—

  Dad loved them too. He read them to me.

  St. Gilles was a total dick before. Do you remember this?

  Maybe he’s seen the duck?

  And Elsa knew this was an excuse. But it was a thing Nolan wanted. And at this point, it felt like the least she could do.

  * * *

  ——————·

  The door opened, and St. Gilles stood there, his glasses on top of his head, looking simultaneously tremendously disappointed and not at all surprised to see them.

  Oh, absolutely not, Remy said.

  We were just wondering if you’d seen a particular duck, Elsa tried to get out. Our father—

  I have nothing to say about your father, Remy said, and he began to shut the door in their faces.

  Actually, Nolan said, we wanted to ask you about Mars.

  What? St. Gilles opened the door again, intrigued in spite of himself.

  Mars, Nolan said. Elsa is going. He pointed at her and Elsa looked as if she wanted to die.