Harrison Squared Read online

“National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She got a grant from them to track squids, especially this one species, the colossal squid.”

  “That sounds scary.” Marjorie popped a donut into her mouth.

  “They just look scary,” I said, with false bravado. They kinda freaked me out. Not as bad as the fish boy did, though. I hadn’t told the cops about him; how could I? By the way, a were-trout came to my house last night and stole my favorite book. They’d lock me away. “There’s very little evidence that they come this far north, but that’s what she was trying to prove.”

  “Yeah, well…” Marjorie bit into a donut, then turned the mouth of the package in my direction. I took one. She said, “There’s all kinds of stuff down there we haven’t seen yet, right?”

  Chief Bode came into the room. He went to the phone on the table, punched a button, then handed it to me. He wore a pained expression. “It’s for you.”

  I took the phone. “Hello?”

  “Harry! What the hell happened? What do they mean her boat’s lost?”

  “Grandpa?”

  “What in God’s name are you doing in Massachusetts?”

  “It’s complicated. We came here to do research, and—”

  “I told you never to go back. Why would you go back?”

  My grandfather was yelling into the phone. Maybe he couldn’t hear me. Or maybe he’d forgotten that when you asked a question it was traditional to wait for an answer. He was old. Not Regular Grandparent old—Historical Monument old. The last time we’d seen him, three years ago at what Mom and I later started calling the Infamous Last Christmas, he’d been cranky and irritable. The visit had ended in shouting, and we hadn’t been back since.

  “Is there not enough tragedy in this family?” he said.

  “Grandpa, please. Could you settle down? I need your help.”

  That finally got him to pause. After a moment he said, “Is it the boy?”

  “What boy?”

  “Your son, of course! Tell me nothing’s happened to him.”

  Oh no. I let the phone drop to my side. My grandfather was still asking questions at high volume. Finally I lifted the receiver and said, “He’s fine, Grandpa. Everyone’s fine. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

  Chief Bode took the phone from me with a questioning expression.

  “He thinks he’s talking to his dead son,” I said.

  “How old is he?” the chief asked.

  “He’s in his nineties.” My dad, if he was alive now, would be in his fifties. Everybody on my dad’s side of the family puts off babies as long as possible, creating generation gaps as big as the Grand Canyon. The Grandparent Canyon.

  “Is there someone else we could call?” Marjorie asked.

  I sighed. “Just one.”

  * * *

  I was standing at the front window of the rental house when the taxi pulled up. The rear door of the car flew open, and a tall blond woman dressed in red and black marched toward the house, her legs scissoring. The taxi driver stood up, calling after her, but she wasn’t listening.

  She burst into the house without knocking. Marjorie jumped up from the couch. Aunt Sel looked sharply at her, then saw me.

  Mom once said that Selena wasn’t a woman but an ad in a women’s magazine: glossy, two-dimensional, and smelling like a perfume insert. Even when I was a kid I knew that she was beautiful in a way that threw people off balance. Her clothing was always perfect, and even now, after a day of traveling, she looked like she’d taken time in the taxi to iron her skirt.

  She grabbed me by the shoulders and looked fiercely into my eyes. “Harrison.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. So I said, “Aunt Sel.”

  She tightened her grip on me as if deciding whether or not to hug me. Aunt Sel had never hugged me in my life. She was an air-kisser.

  “Thanks for coming,” I said. “And so fast.”

  When Chief Bode called her, I’d assumed she’d have to fly from Los Angeles, but it turned out that she’d been living in New York for two months.

  “The city was becoming unbearable,” Aunt Sel said. “I needed a … getaway.” She turned to Marjorie and said, “You’re the child abuse person I spoke to on the phone?”

  Marjorie raised an eyebrow. “DCF. You’ll be staying here with Harrison?”

  Aunt Sel looked around at the house for the first time. Her eyes narrowed. Finally she said, “Of course.”

  The two women exchanged contact info, and Marjorie said she’d be checking in tomorrow. Before she left, however, she walked over to me and said quietly, “You going to be all right?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Thanks for the food, Marjorie.”

  She handed me a business card. “You can call me any time, doll. Day or night.” She walked out as the taxi driver came in, and they did an awkward dance in the narrow doorway. The driver carried two suitcases, one under each arm. He was a wiry man, bald but for a shadow of stubble covering his skull, with a jaw like a steam shovel. He seemed frazzled. The nearest airport, they’d told me, was an hour and a half away. Not too long a drive, but Aunt Sel could make it seem longer.

  “Put them…” Aunt Sel surveyed the stacks of cardboard boxes, the cheap couch, the kitchen with the cracked linoleum. “It doesn’t matter.”

  The driver set them down where he stood. “Cash or credit?” he asked.

  “Who carries cash?” Aunt Sel asked.

  * * *

  Aunt Selena was unmarried, with no children of her own. Like I said, people on Dad’s side put off spawning as long as possible, and I figured she’d probably never swim upstream. When I was little I saw her at a few holidays, up until the Infamous Last Christmas. That morning, while Mom had fought with Grandpa, Aunt Sel had asked me to bring her a glass of wine—it was nine in the morning—and when I’d delivered it she’d handed me a ten dollar bill and said, “I dislike children, but I do appreciate decent service.”

  I was amazed that she’d shown up here. Yes, she was my closest living, nondemented relative. But Mom had disliked Aunt Sel, and I was pretty sure the feeling was mutual.

  “Tell me what happened,” Aunt Sel said. “I talked to the police before I got on the plane, but they were almost purposefully vague.”

  “It’s all vague,” I said. I told her about Mom heading out on the fishing boat that morning. At some point the boat “took on water” and disappeared.

  “What happened?” she asked. “How did it sink?”

  “They couldn’t tell me.”

  “That answer is completely unsatisfactory.”

  “I know. She went out, and then … didn’t come back. I just sat here. I fell asleep on the couch.” I was surprised at how angry I sounded.

  She squinted at me a long moment, as if peering at me through smoke. “You’re not going to do that survivor’s guilt thing, are you? Blaming yourself for the accident, all that?”

  “She was late,” I said. “I could have called the police.”

  “When was she due back?”

  “She didn’t say. I went off to school, and I thought—”

  “So she wasn’t actually late. Yet you were going to magically sense that something was wrong.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Harrison. It just doesn’t add up.”

  I stared at her. Wasn’t she supposed to be comforting me? That’s what family was supposed to do, right? My mother was missing at sea, for crying out loud.

  Aunt Sel said, “So what do you think happened—they hit a rock or something?”

  “That’s the part that doesn’t make any sense. They were in deep water. If there was an island or a reef or something, the guy who took her out would have known about it. He’s a local. That’s what the detectives should be investigating, but nobody seems to be asking those questions.”

  Aunt Sel frowned. “So she was looking for that mythical fish thing. She’s been obsessed with it ever since your father died.”

  “What do you mean, mythical?”

  Her ey
es widened in surprise. “Nothing,” she said. Her voice softened. “Stupid word.”

  I turned away from her, trying to figure out what was happening with my body. Hey, look at the heart rate. You sure got riled up, didn’t you?

  “We’ll know soon enough what happened,” Aunt Sel said. “Your mother will be able to tell us the whole story.”

  “How long are you staying?” I asked her.

  “Until she comes back, of course.” She looked around. “Your mother didn’t leave any cabernet in this house, did she?”

  I knew she was coddling me. Pretending that everything was going to be all right. Lying to children, I understood, was an adult’s first job.

  6

  Because he didn’t know what else to do, he brought it to Mother. Mother always knew what to do.

  It was awkward going, though. The package was wrapped in layer after layer of canvas and secured with ropes, and was so big that it overhung the sides of the wheelbarrow. He needed both hands to push, so his right hand had to grip both the wheelbarrow handle and the wire handle of the electric lantern. The stone floor was uneven and deeply furrowed in spots; the wheelbarrow rumbled and bounced and took sudden lurches. The lantern swung about at knee level, throwing light at mad angles against the tunnel walls.

  The tunnel had been beautiful once. It had been carved hundreds of years before the pilgrims landed, the walls worshipfully inscribed with symbols and elaborate designs that were now obscured by a black fungus that extruded from every groove and crevice. When he was young, Mother would bring him here for reading lessons. He’d scrub clear a section of wall and try to read the inscriptions. Even after years of study he understood only a small portion of the symbols. Mother couldn’t understand his difficulty. She’d scold, and hint, and threaten. She’d punish him for not trying hard enough. But he did try. There was just something about the writing that made his brain recoil.

  The front of the wheelbarrow dropped into a hole, the wheelbarrow jolted to a stop, and the package slid forward and thumped onto the ground.

  It grunted.

  He pulled back on the wheelbarrow. The wheel separated from the frame with an ugly crack; the edge of the wheelbarrow clanked against the floor.

  He swore aloud then. He tried never to swear, but the occasion seemed to warrant it.

  He lifted the lantern to survey the damage. It was clear there was no fixing it, not without a welding kit.

  If only the package wasn’t so heavy. He thought about throwing it over his shoulder like a sack of rice, but that kind of move would make him throw out his back. Finally he squatted, worked his arms beneath it. One, he thought. Two …

  He grunted and lifted with his knees. He lost his balance for a moment, righted himself. And then he was cradling it in his arms. His lower back trembled with the strain.

  The lantern was still on the ground. He swore again.

  He breathed deep, readying himself. Then he started walking, carrying the package like a groom crossing the threshold—except that this threshold was hundreds of yards away, across broken rock, in the dark.

  His back was going to kill him in the morning.

  * * *

  The cave was lit by a dozen lamps, each one in a different style: a brass floor lamp, a cheap wooden table lamp from a Swedish mail order store, a dining room candelabra, an electric menorah, a turquoise lava lamp. Power cords snaked across the floor. A generator rumbled from a side cavern. The air smelled of … Mother.

  She was waiting, as usual, in bed. She lay on a huge stone bench that was twelve feet long and eight wide, filling every inch of it. When he was a boy she had lived aboveground, in a specially constructed barn. When she grew too large and started attracting attention, he had helped her move here. She hadn’t left this network of caves in years.

  “Ooh,” she said. “What have you brought me?” Her voice echoed in the space.

  He walked forward, careful not to trip on the power cords or bump into the stainless steel buckets that had held her recent meals. Where were her handmaids? Why was this mess still here this late in the day? True, the women were volunteers, but there was a time when people took pride in their work.

  He dumped the package beside the bed. “It’s a gift, Mother.”

  “You shouldn’t have,” she said. “You know I’m on a diet.”

  He opened his penknife, knelt slowly to protect his back, and began sawing through one of the ropes.

  “I want to be ready for the big day,” she said. “I’ve got the maids making a new dress.”

  Out of what? he thought, but kept his head down.

  “What’s taking you so long?” she said. “You really ought to do something about that knife. Your brother—”

  “Yes, yes, he has a very big knife.” One of the ropes popped free, and he began unwinding it from one end of the bundle. Mother leaned out over the edge, and her hot breath painted his face.

  He tugged down the canvas. “Voila.”

  “I told you,” she said. “I’m on a diet.”

  “You don’t recognize her? Think about a dozen years ago.”

  She blinked at the package, then said, “That one! The brown one and her husband—they ruined everything!”

  The woman stared up at Mother in wide-eyed horror. Her face was scraped and bloody. Her mouth was sealed with duct tape.

  “What’s she doing back here?” Mother asked.

  He hesitated. “She nearly did it again,” he said.

  “What, ruin us?” Mother asked. “How?”

  “She saw us,” he said. “With the First.”

  “She saw them?!”

  “That’s why we had to grab her.”

  “Grab her?” Mother rose up, and it was like a volcano thrusting up out of the ocean. “Why didn’t you kill her? Why in the world would you bring her here? Especially now, when we’re so close!”

  He told himself not to wither before her anger. He was a grown man, wasn’t he?

  “That’s why I brought her,” he said. “We’re so close. And you know what we’re going to need for the ceremony, so I thought, rather than use one of the Palwicks—”

  “You thought. You thought.”

  “But if we need—”

  “Shh! I’m thinking.”

  What he did not say was that when he had the opportunity to kill the woman, he couldn’t do it. He had never murdered anyone—not with his bare hands. The old lobsterman, Jonsson, had gone into the water and never come up. That was an accident, really. But the woman had been floating there, looking up at him. So he’d let her onto the boat, and now she was Mother’s problem to solve.

  “She’s better than the Palwicks,” Mother said, seemingly talking aloud to herself.

  “Do you think so?” he said, keeping all irony out of his voice. All good ideas had to be her ideas.

  “Of course! Look at that skin tone! She’s so primitive.”

  He glanced down, and cringed. The woman stared up at him with pure hate. He tugged the canvas up over her face again. Skin tone. Really, Mother? He wished her attitudes weren’t so old-fashioned, but what could he expect from a woman her age?

  “We’ll have to get your brother working on her right away,” Mother said. “The vessel has to be completely empty for the big day!” She clapped her hands. “Oh, your brother will so enjoy a new subject. An artist needs inspiration.”

  “Like a dog needs meat,” he said.

  “Better keep the Palwicks on ice, though,” she said. “In case your brother doesn’t finish. And you, you just carry on coordinating with the First. We can’t afford to let anyone interfere again.”

  “No one will, I promise.”

  “Yet you’re still standing there,” she said. “What is it?”

  He thought about telling her about the woman’s son, that he was in town, and attending the school. But if he brought him up, there was no telling what Mother would ask him to do.

  “I was just thinking about the big day,” he said.


  “Aren’t we all, my son.” She held out her gigantic paw to him.

  He kissed her damp skin. “All blessings to you, Toadmother.”

  She withdrew her hand. “Now drag her into the corner until your brother comes for her. Lunch is on the way.”

  7

  The Sun’s rim dips; the stars rush out:

  At one stride comes the dark.

  Here’s what I learned after Mom disappeared: that your body keeps breathing even when your brain shuts down. That you can talk about trivialities while the world burns down around you.

  Aunt Sel slouched into the living room wearing men’s silk pajamas and a sleep mask pushed up onto her head like sunglasses. She yawned and said, “Coffee?” This early, and without makeup, she didn’t look nearly as magazine perfect as last night. Almost mortal, in fact.

  I showed her the coffeemaker and the tin of Folgers. She made a face. “I said coffee.”

  She saw that I wasn’t laughing and shrugged. “Any pot in a storm, I guess.”

  While the coffee brewed she decided that we needed groceries, stat, and began drawing up a list. I had no interest in food, but she made me tell her what cereal I usually ate, what deli meat I liked. Then she tried to make a call on her cell phone. When she couldn’t get a signal, she finally used the old-fashioned dial phone that came with the house. It was a monstrosity, heavy enough to bludgeon orcs.

  “Oh, to dial with an actual dial,” she said. “I feel like I’m in a Jane Austen novel.”

  “Uh, I think Jane Austen died before––”

  “Saleem!” she said into the receiver. “I have urgent business.” I guessed she was talking to the taxi driver from yesterday. I could hear him arguing on the phone—he was not a personal shopping service, etc.—but Aunt Sel got her way. Of course. She read him the list of items, then said, “And anything else you see that might be fun.” He didn’t seem to like this, and Selena finally said, “That’s what I’m saying, Saleem, I don’t know what that would be. Surprise us.”

  Aunt Sel announced she would take a bath while we waited. Not a shower; a bath. She handed me a credit card. “In case he arrives while I’m soaking,” she said.