On the Shores of Darkness, There is Light Read online

  a Novel

  CORDELIA STRUBE

  For Carson

  To Homer

  By John Keats

  Standing aloof in giant ignorance,

  Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades,

  As one who sits ashore and longs perchance

  To visit dolphin-coral in deep seas.

  So thou wast blind;—but then the veil was rent,

  For Jove uncurtain’d Heaven to let thee live,

  And Neptune made for thee a spumy tent,

  And Pan made sing for thee his forest-hive;

  Aye on the shores of darkness there is light,

  And precipices show untrodden green,

  There is a budding morrow in midnight,

  There is a triple sight in blindness keen;

  Such seeing hadst thou, as it once befel

  To Dian, Queen of Earth, and Heaven, and Hell.

  Contents

  BEFORE

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  AFTER

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  About the Author

  BEFORE

  One

  “There’s a baby stuck in a car.” Harriet waves anxiously at the crowd of parents watching T-ball. They don’t notice. She runs back to the SUV, across grass turned to straw. It hasn’t rained in six weeks. Smog chokes the city.

  The baby, mottled pink, purplish around the eyes and mouth, is strapped to the car seat. Wailing, she jerks her chubby arms and legs, her cries muted by the latest technology in road noise reduction. She looks like the baby Harriet pictured when her mother told her she was pregnant: a cute baby with a normal head and curly blonde locks. Harriet presses her nose against the window, causing the cute baby to stare at her as though she is the one who trapped her. “Don’t blame me,” Harriet says.

  Just this morning, her mother blamed her for losing the plastic pitcher for bagged milk. “Why can’t you put things back in their place?” When it turned out Harriet’s little brother used the pitcher to shower his plastic animals, her mother didn’t apologize to Harriet. Or scold Irwin. There’s no doubt in Harriet’s mind she’d be better off without her little brother. She should have snuffed him when she had the chance, after they took him out of the incubator and handed him to her, all red and wrinkled, with his stretched head and veins pulsing weakly under his see-through skin.

  “Say hi to your brother,” her mother said. She no longer looked like her mother because she’d stopped eating and sleeping when Irwin was cut out of her. The furry-lipped nurse who’d helped Harriet put on the sterile gloves said, “Your brother is a miracle baby.” Harriet didn’t see why.

  The cute baby trapped in the car seat has stopped wiggling and isn’t pink and purple anymore, just pale. Harriet tries the doors again before scrambling back to the crowd of parents. She pushes her way to the front of the pack, where her mother and her mother’s boyfriend, Gennedy, coach Irwin as he swings wildly at the ball balanced on the T.

  “Keep your eye on the ball, champ,” Gennedy says, bending over, revealing his butt crack above his track pants. He claims he was a jock in high school and consequently unable to kick the track pants habit. He has a shred of Kleenex stuck to his chin from a shaving cut. Harriet considered telling him about it this morning but decided to see how long it would take to drop off.

  Harriet’s mother, in short shorts because, according to Gennedy, she’s got great legs, fans her face with her hand and says, “Try again, peanut, you can do it.” The other parents pretend they don’t mind Irwin getting extra turns because he’s developmentally challenged. They order their unchallenged kids to be nice to him, and Irwin thinks people are nice because everybody acts nice around him. But they never invite him for playdates, so he is in Harriet’s face 24/7. Harry, check on your brother. Harry, help your brother with his buttons. Harry, be a sweetheart and wipe your brother’s nose.

  She squeezed toothpaste into his slippers this morning, but he went barefoot.

  “Good swing, champ,” Gennedy calls.

  What Harriet knows about adults is that they say one thing while thinking something completely different. For this reason she doesn’t believe a word any of them says. She won’t have to deal with them anymore when she gets to Algonquin Park. She has $248 in her bank account but, because she’s only eleven, her daily withdrawal limit is $20. Emptying her account requires thirteen withdrawals, and she’s worried the ladies at the bank might rat on her because Harriet’s mother worked there before Irwin was born. She’d often pick Harriet up from daycare and take her to the bank to finish up paperwork. As the doors were closed to the public at six, Harriet was allowed to sit at a big desk and draw with an assortment of pens. After Irwin was born, Lynne quit working at the bank and lived at the hospital. She came home on weekends to do laundry. Trent, Harriet’s father, sat in the dark absently plucking at his eyebrows, until he started going to farmers’ markets and met Uma.

  Harriet tugs on her mother’s arm.

  “Bunny, please don’t do that, you’re not a two-year-old.”

  “There’s a baby stuck in a car.”

  When Harriet’s parents divorced, her mother went back to work at the bank until her breakdown. Harriet loves the bank and plans to work in one when she grows up. She craves the quiet, and the soft sound of bills being counted, the clicking and sliding of metal drawers, the tapping of keyboards, the dependability of safety deposit boxes, the finality of stamp pads. Everybody’s polite at the bank and nobody shouts or swears. She tugs on her mother’s arm again. “Somebody’s forgotten their baby.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true. The baby’s probably just napping.”

  “It’s not.”

  Irwin bats the ball and it bounces feebly to the side. Gennedy applauds. “Way to go, champ! That was awesome!” Other parents jerk into phoney smiles while Irwin chortles, bobbling his big head.

  Harriet sewed some rags together to make a voodoo doll of Gennedy that she sticks pins into daily. Last Christmas she asked her mother why he moved into the Shangrila with them. “You wouldn’t understand,” her mother said, but Harriet kept pestering her for an explanation until Lynne slumped on a kitchen chair, fiddled with a busted angel decoration and said, “Because when he says he won’t leave me, he means it.” Harriet understood then that she was doomed to cohabit with Gennedy, the shouter and swearer, who calls her uncooperative, and who can’t even cook a decent tuna casserole. When her mother’s at the hospital, Harriet lives on Lucky Charms.

  “The baby isn’t sleeping,” Harriet repeats, more loudly this time even though her mother hates it when she’s loud.

  “Harry, it’s none of your business. I’m sure the parents are here somewhere and keeping an eye on the car.”

  “They’re not.”

  “What’s the problem here?” Gennedy wipes sweat off his nose. The Kleenex is still stuck to his chin.

  “No problem.”
Lynne swigs on a water bottle.

  “There is a problem,” Harriet says. “There’s a baby stuck in a car.”

  Irwin stumbles towards them. Gennedy grabs him and swings him up in the air. “How ’bout some burgers, big guy?”

  “Wowee, wowee, burgers with cheeeezze!” Irwin squeals, causing other parents to stare and jerk into phoney smiles again.

  “There’s a baby stuck in a car!” Harriet shouts.

  “Harriet.” Her mother grips her arm but Harriet jerks it away and shouts even louder, “There’s a baby stuck in a car! Right over there.” She pushes through the crowd and points at the SUV.

  “Fuck my life,” a rumpled man in a Blue Jays cap cries before charging to the SUV. He gropes frantically in his pockets for his remote, repeating, “Jesus fucking Christ” and “Fucking hell.” His T-ball player son chases after him, hooting and flapping his arms. Finally the man unlocks the car. “Tessy,” he croons in a baby voice as he ducks in and frees the listless infant.

  Darcy, on her tummy on the couch, finishes painting her nails black. She spreads her fingers to admire her handiwork. “Swag.”

  Harriet sits in the armchair Darcy’s mother keeps covered in plastic to protect it from cat hair. “Did you shoplift that polish?”

  “Damn straight. No way I’m paying eight bucks for this shit.” Darcy flashes her fingers at Harriet. “Like it? Black is dope, dude.” She sucks the straw on a can of Diet Sprite. “I’m going on a date later. I am single and ready to mingle like a Pringle.”

  Darcy moved into the Shangrila a month ago. She’s twelve and knows how to give blowjobs, suck on bongs and inhale fatties. Harriet has no interest in blowjobs, bongs or fatties, but she feels flattered that an older girl wants to be her friend—although, in her experience, friendships don’t last. Eventually the new friend finds out Harriet has no other friends, can’t text because she doesn’t have a cell, or an iPod, or an allowance, plus a freak for a brother. Darcy’s mother rips ladies’ hair off with wax. She doesn’t shout or swear and lets Darcy eat junk food, go on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, and watch whatever she wants on YouTube. Gennedy only permits Harriet an hour of computer time per day, and he’s constantly looking over her shoulder to make sure she isn’t frittering away her time on useless pop culture. He shouted at her when he caught her watching the Brazilian cab driver singing “Thriller” just like Michael Jackson. Harriet didn’t know anything about Michael Jackson, except that he died a long time ago and looked creepy. But Darcy showed her the “Michael Jackson Best Moonwalk Ever!” video, and Harriet was impressed by his footwork. Gennedy caught her practicing moonwalking while watching the cab driver from Brazil. “How is this improving your mind?” he demanded.

  According to Harriet’s mother, Gennedy is the only criminal lawyer in history that’s broke. If he works at all, it’s doing legal aid, defending drug addicts, thieves and vandals. Lynne could have done better than Gennedy, Harriet thinks. Men have always ogled her mother. Construction workers and loiterers whistle and snicker “Nice ass,” “Come to papa” or “Whatever you need, I’ll give it to you, baby.” When Harriet was little she’d turn on these pervballs and shout, “Stop looking at my mother! Leave my mother alone!” She doesn’t defend her mother from pervballs anymore because she’s figured out her mother likes the attention.

  Darcy flaps her hands to dry the polish. “The Shangrila is a downer, dude. How can you stand living here? It’s, like, seven floors of seniors—a freakin’ old people farm. My mom says the carpets haven’t been replaced since man wiped his dirty feet on the moon. She says they’re moon carpets and she’s going to split her head open tripping over a crater.” She sniffs the polish in the bottle before screwing the lid back on. “Want to go to Shoppers World?”

  “You just said you had a date.”

  “Before that.”

  “Not really.” Monte, the cat, gnaws on the plastic covering the armchair. Harriet nudges him away so he won’t choke.

  “Come on, H, let’s go to the mall. Don’t be such a douchebag.”

  “Do you even know what a douchebag is?”

  “It’s a bag, duh, to put douches in.”

  “Do you know what a douche is?”

  Darcy pulls on Monte’s tail, causing him to dart across the moon carpet. She hates the cat because she has to feed him and clean his litter box.

  “You don’t even know what a douche is,” Harriet says, “so why are you always calling people douchebags?”

  “LOL, so what is it then, Miss Super Brain?”

  “It’s a nozzle women shove up their snatches to clean them out. The douchebag has water in it, and other stuff. When you squeeze the bag, the stuff squirts up.”

  “Cool story.”

  “It’s true. My dad’s girlfriend squirts herbs up her hoo-ha to make her mucous friendlier to my dad’s sperm.”

  “Yuk!” Darcy flaps her hands again. “Oh my god, would you shut up, that is so gross. That is like . . . nobody does that. That’s sick.”

  “I just think you should know what a douchebag is before you call people douchebags.”

  “Okay, fine, thank you, Einstein.”

  Darcy moved into the Shangrila because her parents got divorced. Her mother, Nina, has what Darcy calls mad-nice red hair, the same as Darcy’s. “What’s so mad-nice about it?” Harriet asked.

  “Au naturel, woman. No box job for these dames.”

  Nina is being fucked over by her ex, Buck. “Buck’s fucking me over,” she often says. Harriet has adopted this phrase and consoles herself, when alone, by muttering that . . . fill in the blank . . . is fucking her over. Lynne doesn’t say Trent is fucking her over, although, since he cut back on child support to pay for Uma’s expensive infertility treatments, Lynne has been referring to him as the asshole.

  Darcy starts painting her toenails black. “I wish my dad was here. He’d take us to the DQ.” Harriet likes Buck because he calls her the Lone Ranger and drove them to Canada’s Wonderland in his Mack truck, bought them entrance passes and candy floss. But, according to Nina, Buck’s a pothead and thinks with his dick. This is why she divorced him. Harriet’s not sure why her parents divorced other than her dad freaking over Irwin, and meeting Uma and deciding she had a brilliant mind. He wouldn’t have met Uma if Irwin hadn’t had a seizure at the farmers’ market.

  “I’m going to post these on my wall,” Darcy says, taking photos of her toes with her phone. “Bee tee dubs, you reek. Have you been dumpster diving again?”

  “I found some wood, not warped or anything.” Harriet paints on primed plywood or stiff cardboard because she can’t afford canvas. Tom Thomson sketched on wood. Uma, when she first started dating Trent, took Harriet to a Group of Seven show. The painters’ worn wooden paintboxes and palettes fascinated Harriet. Tom Thomson’s box was small, just a rectangular box. Frederick Varley’s was fancier, with compartments. Even though Tom Thomson died too young to be officially part of the Group of Seven, Harriet thinks of him as her favourite of the group. She was mesmerized by his small, simple box, imagining him hiking through Algonquin with the box stuffed in his backpack, entranced by a piece of sky or water or a tree and sitting down to paint them. She imagined him taking out the box, balancing it on his lap, rubbing his hands together to warm them and resting his wooden sketch board against the box’s lid. She longed to watch him pick and mix his colours and make his first stroke, touching his brush to the board. She felt if she could sit quietly behind him, he wouldn’t mind. He was so handsome, even though he smoked, and she loved it that he never went to art school. “Harriet,” Uma huffed, “we’re here to look at the paintings, not the paintboxes.” Harriet memorized the colours on Tom’s palette, determined to recreate them at home. It seemed as though the lights dimmed when she moved away from the boxes, and the studio paintings held none of the vibrancy of the sketches he made in the wilderness. She couldn’t feel Tom in
the studio paintings the way she felt him in the paintbox, palette and the sketches. She wanted to understand why he died at Canoe Lake, why he let that happen when he could paint like that. She couldn’t imagine letting herself drown if she could paint like that. In her room, she tried mixing the colours but they were lifeless on the board and it occurred to her that maybe Tom Thomson let himself drown because he could no longer paint like that.

  Darcy unwraps a piece of Dubble Bubble and pops it into her mouth. “One of these days you’re going to get the flesh-eating disease from a dumpster and die.”

  With Darcy busy with her nails, Harriet takes the opportunity to search for the capybara video on Darcy’s laptop. Darcy blows a bubble then pops it. “Let me guess. You’re looking at the giant hamster again.”

  “It’s the world’s largest rodent.”

  “Gee wow, who gives a fuck?”

  “They don’t bark. My mother won’t let me have a dog because it barks and my brother’s allergic.”

  “I thought you hated dogs.”

  “Just Mrs. Schidt’s.” Mrs. Schidt is eighty-one, lives down the hall in 709 and pays Harriet $14 a week to walk her skinny white dog with yellow eyes. She’s been paying Harriet $14 a week for three years, and always has to scrabble around in bowls and drawers for toonies and loonies to make the fourteen.

  “I bet giant hamsters shit busloads.” Darcy pops another bubble. “You’d spend all day stooping and scooping ginormous hamster turds.”

  “You can house-train them, and you don’t have to walk them.” Harriet avoids dog people because all they talk about is dogs, and they act snarky when you don’t let their dogs jump on you, lick your hand and sniff your crotch.

  The capybara’s lady owner holds a green Popsicle and the capybara nibbles it. The lady lifts the Popsicle just out of the capybara’s reach. The world’s largest rodent taps the lady’s shoulder gently with its paw to signal it wants some more. Repeatedly the capybara and the lady exchange pats for nibbles on the green Popsicle. This looks like so much fun to Harriet.