Free Born Weird by Andrew Kaufman Page B

There were seven.
    Each aired an American drama. He recognized these shows from his youth. The dubbing was horrible. Thenovelty of watching familiar TV in a foreign language wore off, quickly. He began to change the channel each time a scene ended. He pretended that everything he saw was part of the same TV show. He couldn’t make much sense of it, but then again he could say the same thing about his life.
    “I need you to help me dig up my husband,” Abba said.
    There was a lamp on Angie’s bedside table. She turned it on. The light woke her up a bit more. She had been in a deep sleep, her first in twenty-four hours. Maybe more. The time shifts made it hard to tell. Squinting, she saw that her sister was perched on the side of her bed. Angie rubbed her eyes. When she took her hands away from her face, Abba was still there.
    “How did you even get in here?” Angie asked.
    “Nobody locks anything around here. It’s weird. But Angie, I’m pleading with you. Will you do it?”
    “Ask me again?”
    “Will you help me dig up my husband?”
    “I thought I hadn’t heard you right.”
    “I really need your help.”
    “Are you drunk?”
    “I’m desperate,” Abba said. She looked down at her hands. “My husband told me that you were dead. That all of you were dead.”
    “You weren’t lying about that?”
    “He showed me newspaper articles.”
    “What did we die of?”
    “Why would you ask that?”
    “Why wouldn’t I?”
    “The furnace in the house on Palmerston leaked carbon monoxide and killed you all while you slept.”
    “Not a bad way to go. What about the Shark?”
    “She suffered a massive stroke at your funeral and died days later.”
    “All this was in the paper?”
    “He showed me an entire issue of the
Globe and Mail
. It made the front page.”
    “I guess that could be faked …”
    “I even got a call from Mr. Winters. He expressed his condolences.”
    “Who?”
    “The dispatcher. From Grace Taxi.”
    “Why him?”
    “I guess he could be bought. You can see why I’m a little
fucked up
right now.”
    “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you swear.”
    “Angie! Are you getting this?”
    “I am. I’m just trying to take it in slowly.”
    “That’s why you didn’t get invited to the wedding. Why I never called or wrote or visited.”
    “You didn’t Google us or anything? I mean, Richard is pretty well known. He’s some kind of famous photographer, although they all look like snapshots to me.”
    “That’s the thing,” Abba said. She took both of Angie’s hands. “I did. Constantly. Daily.”
    “He blocked Weird? Can you do that? I mean, is that even possible?”
    “I no longer know what he is capable of.”
    “So you think …”
    “Yes, I do. If I don’t see it with my own eyes I’ll never be sure. I’ll always hope. I’ll be stuck in hope forever.”
    “Do you still hope that Dad’s alive?” Angie asked.
    “I don’t know for sure that he isn’t,” Abba said. “Neither do you!”
    “Abba, even the insurance company agreed that the fall from the cliff would have been fatal.”
    “But they never found him. No body, no proof!” Abba said. Angie said nothing.
    During weaker moments all the Weird children had taken comfort in the idea that their father had somehow survived. But in Abba it had been different. Hope for the others had been a place of last resort. Abba’s hope was something she lived inside of. Subtly, they had encouraged her. It had seemed very important that someone kept this hope alive. It made sense to Angie, in a Weird way, that Abba would now be doing it for her dead husband.
    “It’s just … this is asking a lot, Abba.”
    “I know it is. That’s why I’m asking you.”
    “If I agree to do it … at least to get Richard to do it … you know I’m going to ask you to come with us to see the Shark.”
    “I figured that would be the trade-off.”
    “You’re the only one who isn’t afraid of Kent.”
    “He isn’t as scary as