“What did you say! Mercy! In labour? Are you serious? This is a joke, right?” Lish was already parking the van in front of Half-a-Life.
I thought to myself, wait, not another set-up. Poor Lish. I thought I was the only one lying to her. Maybe Teresa had really got into all that secrecy and plotting and didn’t want it to end. But how would she see the end of this one? She’s not some kind of Steven Spielberg even if she wants to be a flagger on film sets. You can’t just fake a new baby. At least not in Half-a-Life, where everyone has more than enough experience with real ones. This was getting ridiculous. Mercy hadn’t even looked pregnant. But then again she was always wearing those big longsleeved men’s shirts. And Mercy? Pregnant? When had she ever had the opportunity to get pregnant? She was always so organized, every second of her day planned and what was this about sterile? Her place was always sterile. But Teresa, who was huffing and puffing, trying to jog alongside the van as we pulled in, wasn’t finished. “And Luce, your dad’s here too and whatsisname, that guy you had at your place when Podborczintski showed up. They’re both in Mercy’s apartment trying to help. I think they’re doing the bathroom.”
“What? My dad? Hart? Teresa, are you sure, what are they doing here? Geez, Teresa, are you positive you know what you’re talking about? Geeeez, Teresa.”
I gave her a really nasty look like she had gone too far and could we all please just be normal and truthful again. I couldn’t remember the last time I had given anybody such a nasty look. And I began to feel bad ’cause it was Teresa, after all, who had been my trusty accomplice in the Gotcha affair. I felt I was to blame, giving her a taste of subterfuge, and now she couldn’t get enough. But she didn’t seem to notice. She just started hauling all the girls and Dill out of the van and rushing us all up the stairs to Mercy’s apartment.
“My dad? Hart? Why are they here, Teresa?” I yelled at her in the stairwell.
“I don’t know. Your dad’s basement got flooded. The toilet backed up or something and there’s shit all over and he had nowhere else to go. He thought he could use your place while you was gone and Hart was here to see Sing Dylan.”
“Sing Dylan? Why Sing Dylan?”
“’Cause. Something about him defending him in court. Sing Dylan finally managed to reroute all the water over to Serenity Place. And now they’re flooding like crazy over there, at least they were a couple of days ago before the rain stopped, and they threatened to take Sing Dylan to court and ’cause he’s an illegal immigrant and everything he’d be sent home pronto and so I found whatsisname’s calling card at your place when I was checking it for leaks and called him and he said he’d defend Sing Dylan for free ’cause he really needed experience anyway ha ha in all areas, eh Luce?? But now he’s busy with your dad helping Mercy, and Sing Dylan is back at the wall. He tried to help for a while but he got too nervous so he went back to his wall. He was just doing that rerouting for Sarah. For her honour, you know. It was revenge. But as far as I’m concerned it wasn’t nearly enough. I mean what’s a kid compared to a flooded basement? Anyway, I think that’s like a cultural thing for him. Or whatever. Because of what the bitches in Serenity Place said about her and Emmanuel and him being taken away and everything. Hurry up!”
Okay. All that stuff about Sing Dylan flooding Serenity Place made sense, sort of. But my dad at Half-a-Life? Assisting in a homebirth? He hadn’t even seen Dill, let alone changed his diaper or kissed his cheek. I don’t know if he had ever held a baby or not. I guess he had held me, but he certainly hadn’t seen me being born back then, and he never really exhibited any interest in babies or children. I don’t recall him ever even saying the word pregnant. The odd time he had to refer to some pregnant woman, he said “expecting.” And now he was ready to get his hands covered in afterbirth?
All eight of us flew into Mercy’s apartment. The girls were terribly excited about Mercy’s new baby, or the prospect of Mercy’s new baby. Dill was looking alert, too, Teresa was all business, Lish was mildly amused and puzzled by it all, and I, stupidly, began to cry. If this much could happen, find a beginning and an end, and lead to more and more events transpiring, over a short period of three days, then how much had happened over the three years since my mother had died? And how would I be able to remember her when so much was happening? I was afraid to blink for a second or shift my thoughts to Mercy’s baby or Dill or my dad or Sing Dylan for fear I’d lose her. So much was happening. And not only that, but things were happening without me making them happen. What wasn’t happening was my mom wasn’t catching a flight home to Winnipeg from somewhere in South America and John Dillinger wasn’t alive and well living under some pseudonym in Des Moines or anywhere else. Gotcha, dead or alive, was never going to show up and neither was Dill’s father, the way Podborczintski kept hoping he would. I hoped Lish’s crying trick would make me look great, too, ’cause now there was no turning back. If Siskel and Ebert had been reviewing this scene they would have said my crying looked fake and exaggerated, because I was heaving and my face was all distorted and really I was a mess. But when you see people, you know, bawling their heads off, looking scary and awful, believe me it’s real. They feel bad, it’s not an act. I couldn’t bear to lose her all over again, the woman I had created in my mind. Speeding down the highway with her elbow resting on the door and her hand tapping on the roof of the car. At that moment, all I wanted was to have my mother back.
The thing is, at that moment, there were about twelve people all rushing around Mercy’s apartment trying to make it sterile and my breakdown went entirely unnoticed. Which was good because it probably wouldn’t have been too good for the baby’s karma and energy and all that to have some unstable kid crying for her dead mom in the same room at the moment it was being born. I was standing frozen in the kitchen of Mercy’s apartment dealing with the rest of my life while everyone else had poured in looking to play a role in the story of Mercy’s baby’s birth.
I decided to wash my face, that old cure for everything that ails you. Wash your face. All you gotta do is just wash your face. Splash splash. At the end of the hall I could see Mercy kneeling on her hands and knees groaning, “Is it ready, is it ready? Just fucking tell me, is the fucking thing ready or what ooohhhhh-haaaahhhhhhhhh ooh okay okay okay okay hang on baby!” She started yelling, “OOOOOOOOOHHH WOULD SOMEBODY PLEASE TELL ME IS THE FUCKING THING CLEAN OR IS THAT ASKING TOO MUAMAAAAAAHHHHHHH!”
I had Dill on my hip and I quickly headed for the bathroom. I could see Angela and Lish and Teresa already rubbing Mercy’s back and smoothing her hair and murmuring encouraging things, and like I said, the last thing Mercy needed right then was me, the grim reaper. I opened the bathroom door and then I remembered what Teresa had told us on the stairs. My dad and Hart were cleaning the bathroom. Sure enough, there they were. We all looked at one another, and then I laughed and I laughed. Then I sat down on the toilet and I laughed some more. My dad and Hart were kneeling at the tub and scrubbing it with some kind of organic cleanser. The sink already gleamed and I could see my reflection in the tiles on the bathroom floor. My dad and Hart had sanitary napkins taped onto their knees — to cushion them or to keep them dry or to keep the common bacteria on their pants from getting onto the floor, who knows? They only stopped for a second to turn around and look at me.