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.
AFTER FLYING FROM ONE SIDE of North America to the other—an eleven-hour journey that included a stopover in Ottawa—the Weird siblings stood in front of a baggage carousel that was completely motionless. They’d all flown first class. Richard had paid. Angie had been impressed with the legroom, the entertainment system and the amount of Scotch her sisters had consumed. Neither Abba nor Lucy could support their own weight. As they waited for their bags, Lucy leaned on Richard, and Abba braced herself against Angie.
“Christ, it’s 2:30 in the morning,” Richard said. “I’m gonna see if the car rental place is still open.”
“I’ll come with you,” Kent answered.
Before Angie could protest Richard leaned Lucy against her shoulder. She watched her brothers walk away. Lucy put her arm around Angie’s neck and tipped forwards.
“Hello, sister,” Lucy said.
“Hello,” Angie said.
“Not you. The other one. Hello—other sister.”
A long pause followed. Lucy and Angie were convinced that Abba wasn’t going to answer. Then she did. “Hello,” Abba said. She leaned forwards so she could look at Lucy. Both of Angie’s sisters were now literally hanging off of her.
“You know something about me, don’t you?” Abba asked.
“Luce, ignore her.”
“Maybe I do.”
“Lucy. Seriously. This is not the time or the place for this.”
“It’s about me and it’s not good and it’s very important, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“Why would you do this now?”
“It’s very heavy you know, this thing that I know,” Lucy continued. She leaned farther forwards. So did Abba. Angie took a step forwards so they wouldn’t fall. “This thing that I know that you don’t know that you’re afraid of, is killing me. Having to hold it. It is not good.”
“Then tell me.”
“Look,” Angie said. The yellow light on top of the machinery began to flash. The carousel started to spin.
“You are not …” Lucy said. She slipped, grabbed the back of Angie’s neck and somewhat straightened herself. Black rectangular suitcases began circulating in front of them.
“Look! Lucy! Isn’t that yours? What about that one?”
“You are not the queen of Upliffta!” Lucy said. She reached across Angie. She touched Abba, gently, on her cheek. “You are not the queen of anything.”
“Then who is the queen?”
“Upliffta has no queen. It has been a republic since its inception. What year? I don’t know. Long time ago.”
“What about the castle? What about my husband?”
“Let’s get into this at the hotel? Best to wait. Don’t you agree?”
“From all reports a very beautiful man who loved you very much and wanted the world to see you as the princess he saw you as. As the queen he knew you to be! Very rich and very powerful. But no king,” Lucy said. Straightening herself, Lucy stood without her sister’s assistance. She raised her arms high over her head.
“Upliffta has no king!” Lucy shouted.
A small number of people turned and looked. Lucy kept her hands in the air. More bags tumbled onto the conveyor belt. More people pushed forwards to retrieve them. Space became limited. Lucy, her arms still raised, looked at Abba. But Abba silently watched the floor.
“That makes what the Shark said make sense,” Abba said.
“Tell me! What did she tell you?” Lucy asked.
“You tell first!”
“She said to me, ‘Being lost is the only way to get found.’ ”
“That’s very poetic.”
“I thought so. It’s definitely helping. Now you tell me.”
“She said, ‘Your hope has trapped you—now you are free.’ ”
“You were trapped in hope,” Lucy whispered.
“It gives me so much permission.”
“It does. Permission granted! Wait. Permission to do what?”
“It’s no longer up to me to keep hope alive.”
“No longer needed!”
“I knew it was fake. But I hoped it wasn’t. My hope stopped me seeing the truth.”
“You are free to see truth!”
“It will not be my fault if our father cannot be forgiven!”
“No it won’t be!”
“Upliffta has no king!” Abba shouted. She raised her arms over her head.
“Upliffta has no king!” Lucy repeated. She shook her fists at the end of her still raised arms. The people around them didn’t look up. They pushed closer to the luggage carousel. Lucy and Abba turned and they lowered their arms and used them to hold each other.
“It won’t even be my fault if they’ve lost our luggage,” Abba said, which of course they had.
THEY WERE SURPRISED THAT IT TOOK them four and a half hours to drive from Halifax to Sydney: when they got there they were surprised by how much they hated it. A mothballed steel plant sat beside a used car lot. Tall buildings were rare. The houses needed paint. The people on the streets were missing both their teeth and their hope. The Weird siblings stared out the windows of their rented car, wondering how their father could have chosen this over them.
“It’s like they don’t have any zoning laws,” Lucy said.
“It’s not eve
n a pretty ocean view,” Abba said.
“Luce? Which way?” Richard asked.
Lucy stared at him blankly.
“Sorry, force of habit,” Richard said, and then he stopped at a convenience store and asked for directions.
Sixteen minutes after crossing the city limits they parked in front of 98 Sampson Avenue. Angie looked at the house. Her heart fell. She’d wanted it to be a mansion facing the ocean, on a rocky cliff. What she saw was a split-level detached with a two-car garage.
“Maybe we should have called ahead?” Richard asked. He took the keys out of the ignition.
“Hello? Yes? Hey! It’s us!” Abba said. “Your abandoned children? You remember us. We were just passing through …”
“Wanted to know if we could swing by?”
“For coffee and cake!”
“And explanations!”
“Perhaps even a little redemption?”
“If you have any,” Kent said. He started to laugh. It had been a very long time since any of them had heard him do this. Lucy was the first to get infected. Quite quickly it became a bit manic. Their laughter would wind down. Then one of them would start again. The rest would follow. Angie feared that she might pee. Then she saw that the front door of 98 Sampson Avenue was starting to open.
“Oh shit,” she said. She pointed. All laughter ceased.
He had thick silver hair. The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes were deep. He looked wise and also a little sad. He was everything they’d hoped their father would be, but he clearly wasn’t Besnard. They decided to get out of the car, anyway.
“Hello?” Richard asked.
“Hello,” he said. “Can I help you?”
“Of course. I mean, I hope so,” Richard said. He looked at the ground. He looked back at the man who wasn’t his father. “My name is Richard. Weird? We’re looking for someone. We’re looking for …”
“… Besnard Weird,” Abba offered. She hadn’t interrupted Richard because he’d stopped talking, perhaps forever.
“Are you family?”
“We are.”
“He said he had family. Back east. Are you from Trinidad?”
“We’re from Toronto,” Abba said.
“They both start with T and have three syllables,” Angie said.
Using only her eyebrows Abba told Angie to shut up. Then she turned back to the silver-haired man. “Do you know where he is now?” Abba asked.
“I’m afraid that you’re too late.”
“Too late for what?”
“I’m so sorry, but you’ve missed him.”
“Do you know where he’s gone?”
“I’m afraid that Besnard’s passed. Well, I guess, almost two years now.”
They were not prepared for this. They froze. The man who lived at 98 Sampson Avenue froze too. Several moments passed and no one moved or spoke. Then the Weirds spoke at once.
“From what?”
“Did he ever talk about us?”
“What was he like?”
“Did he have other kids?”
“Was he happy?”
“I’m sorry,” he said when their onslaught ended. “My son bought the house in an estate sale. I didn’t really know him.”
“It’s okay,” Angie said. “We didn’t really either.”
They watched him walk to his Toyota. They watched him get into the car and pull out of his driveway. Twenty minutes later they watched him drive back into it. The man got out. He did not address them. He began backing towards his home.
“Maybe,” Lucy called after him, “you could give us directions to the cemetery?”
ON AUGUST 16, 2002, NINETY-ONE days after their father’s funeral, the five Weird children were all home when the doorbell rang. Richard answered it. Lucy, Abba, Angie and Kent came with him. A courier stood at their door. None of them spoke to him. They had developed an aversion to couriers. Hand-delivered packages inevitably contained some form of lawyer-drafted notice that their house was another step closer to being seized by the municipal government of Toronto. But there were several things that made the envelope in this man’s hand different. It was white, not brown. It was thin, not thick. And most striking was that the address was handwritten in a loose elaborate scrawl they recognized as their father’s.
“Are any of you Weird?” the courier asked.
“I suspect you are as well,” Richard said.
“Who hired you?” Lucy asked.
“Pardon me?”
“Who is sending us this envelope? Who’s paying you?”
“Hengelo and Associates,” the courier said, reading from his clipboard. “It’s a law firm.”
“That we know,” Richard said, “only too well.”
Hengelo and Associates had handled all of Grace Taxi’s legal concerns. They had also administered Besnard’s will. Richard nodded. He stepped forwards and he signed for it. The courier walked back to his truck and drove away. Richard balanced the envelope on the tips of his fingers. Then, cocking his wrist like he was throwing a Frisbee, he chucked it into the bushes beside the porch.
The rest of the evening went as usual, or at least what had become usual. Richard made three boxes of Kraft Dinner and they ate it. They turned on the television and watched it without changing the channel or paying any attention to it. Just before midnight Abba and Lucy carried blankets outside. It was their turn to sleep in the Maserati.
They’d left their father’s car in the driveway, right where the tow truck had dropped it. The car had become an extension of the house, an extra room with a specific function, like the laundry room or the kitchen: the Maserati was where they went to grieve.
At least once a day each of them walked to the car and sat in the passenger seat. Some of them cried. Some of them shouted. They held long one-sided conversations with their father. They punched the dashboard. All of them would have slept in it every night, but there was only room for two, so they had to take turns.
Lucy and Abba closed the front door and went out to the car. All Angie could think about was the letter. She looked at the television. She looked at Richard. Richard looked at his hands. When he stood, Angie and Kent followed him outside. They searched the bushes. They couldn’t find it. “I’ve got it,” Lucy said. Her hand stuck out of the driver’s side window. It held the thin white envelope.
Neither Lucy nor Abba complained as Angie, Richard and Kent squeezed inside and sat on top of them. They stayed like this for several moments before Angie pulled the envelope from Lucy’s hand. Five minutes later Kent took it from her. He opened it. There was a single piece of paper inside, which Kent unfolded and read out loud.
“Dearest wife and children,” Kent said. “There’s always a discount box. The, in second. The word: attic. With of eternal, the wisdom coach, love house, Dad.”
“Damn it, Kent! Let me do it.”
“I did it right! That’s what it says.”
“Are you sure?”
“You think I can’t read?”
Richard took the letter from Kent’s hands. The paper trambled slightly as he read it. Then he crumpled it into a ball.
“No, wait, don’t!” Abba said.
“It’s gibberish. It’s nonsense. It makes as much sense as his fucking death did.”
“Kent’s right.”
“I think it’s one of his stupid codes. Give it here,” Abba said. Richard threw the balled-up letter. It hit Abba in the forehead. Using Lucy’s arm, she smoothed it flat.
“There,” Abba said. She passed the letter to Richard and pointed to every other word.
“Always … discount … the … second … word,” Richard read out loud.
“It is a code,” Lucy said.
“Just not a very good one,” Richard said.
“It’s almost insulting,” Abba said.
“Explain it right now or I swear, I fucking swear …”
“Relax, Kentucky. Just be calm. Read every second word but start with the second one,” Richard said and he p
assed the paper back to Kent.
“Always … discount … the … second … word … With … eternal … wisdom … Dad.”
“Now do it again starting with the first word.”
“There’s a box in the attic of the coach house.”
“I vote that we do not go find this box,” Lucy said. “That it would honour his memory more not to go find it.”
“How do you people come up with this fucking shit?”
“I didn’t see it either,” Angie said.
None of them moved. Then, all at once, they scrambled out of the car and ran inside the coach house. Standing in the spot where the Maserati would normally have been parked, they looked up at the small rectangular hatch in the ceiling.
“I didn’t even know the coach house had an attic,” Kent said.
“Are you still a virgin?” Lucy asked.
“Be nice to Kent.”
“Are you?”
“Are you?”
“Enough,” Abba said. Richard pulled a Zippo lighter from the front pocket of his jeans. He handed it to Angie.
“Why do I have to do it?”
“Because it’s your role in the family,” Richard said. The rest of them nodded. Angie put her hands on her hips. Then she took the Zippo and started up the ladder made of two-by-fours nailed to the wall. She pushed up the hatch. She poked her head into the attic. She flicked the Zippo.
“What do you see?’ Richard asked.
“Camping equipment …”
“What else?”
“Christmas decorations …”
“And?
“Wait,” Angie called. Her feet climbed up to the highest two-by-four. “This one’s marked First National Bank of Rainytown.”
“But Rainytown’s in the house,” Kent said. “And we never made a bank.”
“Are you sure?”
“Definitely.”
“Bring that one down,” Richard said.
Angie grabbed it near the top and tugged it towards her, but the box was much heavier than she’d expected it to be. It tipped over. Bundles of hundred-dollar bills spilled out of it. Money fell through the hatch and onto the floor of the coach house.
“Holy shit.”
“Holy fucking shit.”
“Jesus.”