I knew that park. Mom and I almost always stopped there on the way to Seattle.
Cedar trees swaying above. The little creek with soft loam and giant ferns on either side. The bear-proof garbage cans beside the trail. The outhouses. Sitting on the big rocks and eating salami sandwiches and oranges we’d brought with us and looking at the sky to see who would spot the first eagle. That’s what I used to think about that place.
But not after reading that email. When I thought of it, I couldn’t make myself think about the other things. The nicer things. I could only imagine Mom and Raymond having sex in the car, like a couple of desperate teenagers fumbling and humping and getting tangled in seat belts and each other. And then, when they were finished and had put their clothes back on, he’d get out and put the used condom in the trash. The bear-proof trash beside the trail. The one I’d put so many orange peels in.
I hated thinking about it. And I never wanted to. But if you imagine something once, it becomes a part of you. This was what made living hard. The fact that life happened all the time, in ways that I fully did not approve of, and then it just came pushing in and I couldn’t stop it, and that was how I ended up tossing and turning on a bed in the closet at my dad’s house while Mom and Raymond were fast asleep—or worse—in a big bed in his house in some random neighborhood in Chicago.
I could go back to the bus station in the morning. It wasn’t like anyone would stop me. I could go before anyone else was up. I could go now. I could tell Dad and Claire that I was going for a walk. The letter Mom wrote for the border officials—granting me permission for cross-border travel—was dated for the whole time she’d be in Haiti, just in case. I could call Claire and Dad when I got home. And what would Dad do? Come get me? Force me to come back to Vancouver with him? Or would he let me stay with Dan? If I could convince him? And besides, he quit high school and left home when he was my age, and he was playing with the Railway Kings by the time he was nineteen.
My phone buzzed. A text from Mom.
Deep breath. It’s all good. I love you. Xoxo
As if she were reading my mind, all the way from Chicago, where it was the middle of the night and halfway to gone altogether.
That was what I was losing. The person who knew me best. The one person who truly got me. The one who knew how bad it could be for me. The one who helped me leave my room when it all got to be too much and all I wanted to do was lie in bed and stare at the wall. She was the one who’d collected me from the hospital that night when the ambulance came. Oh, Maeve. Sometimes it is just so hard, isn’t it?
I wrapped her scarf across my palm. It was almost like she was holding my hand. But no, actually, it wasn’t. It wasn’t like she was holding my hand at all. It was just her scarf, and me, all alone.
You have no idea, I texted back. I love you so much.
And then I was crying. Big, ugly sobs, my shoulders shaking and my nose dripping with snot.
—
Upstairs, the front door banged open and Dad turned down the music. Claire and the twins were home. I grabbed a tissue and blew my nose. I wiped the tears away.
Steady, Maeve.
I could hear Owen crying, and Corbin hollering, and in the background Claire’s singsong voice and Dad’s low, reassuring tones, and then a jumble of footsteps coming down the stairs. The twins burst into the room and tackled me on the bed.
“You’re here!” Corbin pulled at my arm. “Come on. Dad made baby foxes for Gnomenville. Ten of them. They have magic powers.”
“Half of them are King Percival’s.” Owen handed me one of the gnomes Dad had been carving for years. It fit into the palm of my hand.
“A new one?” Sanded and painted, he had a bushy white beard and angry eyes. His arms were crossed.
“The new king.” Owen beamed.
“He won’t be for long,” Corbin growled. “He made me one too. King Wren is plotting an attack. He’ll win, and then he’ll be the king again.”
“He won’t!”
“He will!”
“He won’t!”
“He will!”
“Truce!” I pulled them off the bed. “Truce. Let’s go eat cookies instead. Then you can commence the peace talks.”
“War talks,” Corbin said.
“Peace talks!”
“War talks.”
“Peace talks!”
“Boys! Enough!”
And just like that, I could breathe again.
And just like that, things were a tiny bit less awful.
And just like that, my mind made room for things like little brothers, and warring gnome kingdoms, and cookies. I gave each of them a kiss on the forehead. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being little and loud and bursting with bright, shiny goodness.
We’re having the babies at home, they told me. It will be a beautiful miracle, Maeve. You will be so glad you were there. I was ten—what did I know?
Me, two midwives, a friend taking pictures, Mrs. Patel in the kitchen stirring a pot of chai, Dad and Claire naked in the water up to their chests in the “birth pool” in the middle of the living room. I huddled on the couch not looking, covering my ears every time Claire screamed. When I did muster the courage to look, I saw Claire’s vagina—blurry but obvious—under the water. Her vagina bulged between her legs, and then a head came out.
That was Corbin, dried off and given to Dad to hold. Claire wanted out of the tub, so the midwives helped her onto the floor, right in front of me. She groaned and rocked back and forth, and then, horror of all horrible things: she shit herself.
“Almost there,” the midwife said.
I made a strangled sound.
“Maeve?” Mrs. Patel came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a tea towel. “Are you okay?”
“One big push, Claire. There’s your baby’s head.” The midwife’s tone suddenly sharpened. “Let’s get this baby out fast. There’s meconium.”
Claire shit herself, and the baby shit himself.
Owen came out, covered in reeking slime. The midwife scrubbed him with a towel. He was blue and limp and tiny.
The room tipped. All I could smell was shit. Everything went blurry, and then black. When I came to, Dad gave me a baby to hold. I’m still not sure who it was. They were both pink and chubby and just fine.
—
Owen was still a lot smaller than Corbin now. After they updated me on the current political situation in Gnomenville over cookies and milk, Owen followed me back to my room, but he stopped at the door.
“What are you doing now?” he said in his raspy old-man voice.
“Not much.” I pulled out my sketchbook and pencils. “Probably drawing. Are you coming in?”
“Mom told us not to barge in like we did when we got home. She says that this is your room, even if it’s hers and Dad’s too, but that it’s yours for now and so we’re not allowed to come in unless we’re invited.”
—