Sanaam walked slowly up the cobbled street. He’d wanted to be home so badly that Bill had stayed up with him the past five nights, watching him to make sure he didn’t take off in a lifeboat. But he didn’t feel right running, or rolling up in a taxi, or causing any kind of fuss that looked like a celebration.
All that time, and he still didn’t know how to act or what to say.
He got off the boat and spent an hour in a downtown drugstore, staring at the condolence cards. He’d finally decided that was a sick custom and that, on the whole, cannibals had a better one. Endo or ecto, take your pick. Either way, your dead person was recycled back into the community and you didn’t have to spend all that money on cosmetics, embalming fluid and a fancy box.
Barnaby had taken care of all that for them, apparently. There were no diverting practical matters to manage at all, only the emotional consequences.
Well, maybe one practical matter.
He’d always sort of assumed that his own final inconveniences would be delegated to the fish, after his body was thrown over the side of the boat.
He paused with a wince. He would prefer that to the embalming fluid and fancy box, even now.
He shook his head, scolding himself, and continued to walk. There wasn’t a law. You could die on land and have a sea burial. And even if you couldn’t, it didn’t matter what the people you left behind wanted to do with the body you left behind. Let them paint it up like a clown and throw darts at it if that made them feel better! The important stuff came before that. In the brief, uncertain time before that.
She was waiting for him on the porch steps.
He had to stop at the gate to move the plywood board aside. She stood up and came to the bottom of the stairs, but she stopped there with a wobble. She didn’t feel right running either.
He didn’t bother to put the gate back. He walked to her and knelt in the snow-muddy yard, to put both hands on her shoulders and get a good look at her. He couldn’t help a faint, relieved smile. “Mag-Pirate.”
She didn’t smile. “Dad…” She flung both arms around him and hid her face against his coat. She sniffed and then sobbed.
He gathered her up. “It’s okay, Maggie. I’m home. I’m home…”
Home to stay. But he didn’t quite dare say it yet.
◈◈◈
He sat on the porch steps with her for a long time, talking about big questions he couldn’t answer and big problems he couldn’t solve. The best he could do was assure her it certainly wasn’t her fault the cat-cleaning spell had disintegrated Barnaby. But she already knew that, she just didn’t like that it happened. He agreed, it was messed up and unfair. As was life, death, the universe, and everything. And they were stuck with it.
She apologized for crying. He told her never to apologize for that.
When she was done, he helped her clean up as best he could. They went inside together.
The front room was empty, but there were cooking noises in the kitchen — footsteps, clattering and snatches of “Good Day Sunshine.”
Erik paused in the doorway, leaned out and offered a tiny wave.
“Hey, Erik,” Sanaam said. “What’s for dinner?”
“Not a casserole!” Mordecai’s voice snapped.
Erik looked back with a wince, then an exhausted sigh. He shrugged helplessly. “It’s weird and it sucks. Not dinner, just…” He gestured to everything.
“Want to talk about it?” Sanaam offered. “I could go for a soda…”
Erik shook his head. “I did that a bunch and we’ve still got all this ginger ale. I dunno. It broke and no one could fix it. He yelled at me and scared me on purpose — I knew why he did it and he knew I knew — and he wouldn’t even let Hyacinth fix it. He didn’t want to be here anymore and he made us let him go; he knew how to do that. He knew lots of stuff and I’m really worried why he didn’t want to be here anymore, but when I try to know things about it, it’s just white.”
He sighed again, even more tired and helpless than the first, “And everyone says cut that out, but I don’t think there’s anything there for me to see anyway, so it’s not like it’s dangerous, it’s just annoying. Hester Carthage and Iron John think Violet doesn’t want me to know, and if that’s how it is, I won’t find out even if I try to call a god, so it’s pointless. And I can’t help, but it’s not just because I’m too little or they think I can’t handle it, no one can help, so I’m cleaning the green beans.”
He wandered out of the doorway, and Mordecai addressed him at an indiscernible volume that sounded like comfort. “I know,” Erik replied.
Sanaam and Maggie exchanged a glance.
“Where’s your mother?”
“Upstairs, but do you mind if I hang out in the kitchen for a while?”
“Uh-uh.” He kissed the top of her head. “You be wherever you want to be. You know where to find me.”
She nodded.
◈◈◈
She had hardly shut the bedroom door when he said, “I’m going to quit my job.”
She planted her hands on her hips with a smirk. “Well, it’s nice to see you, too, Captain. I detect a prospective aspect. May I assume this topic is still up for discussion and does not yet necessitate damage control?”
“I didn’t hang out at the office filling out all the damn papers, if that’s what you mean. I wanted to be home. I have almost two weeks before I’m supposed to go out again, I’ll quit later, but I’m going to do it. That is not damage. Me not being here, that’s damage.”
“And what is it you think you ought to have been here to do?”
“I think I should’ve been here to hold my daughter while she cried!” he said. “Don’t you?”
“Not really. She was not lacking for shoulders to cry on, and you will have plenty of opportunity to perform this function as well, if you have not already.”
“I want to be here when she needs me!”
“Here specifically? Will you be having your meals brought to you like Room 101?”
“You are being wilfully obtuse and I will not put up with it, Brigadier General D’Iver!” he cried. “This is not cute or funny and there is no excuse for teasing me!”
“You are behaving foolishly, Captain Sadiq,” she replied. “I held out some hope you would notice this yourself. Nevertheless, if you require an argument, I can provide one.”
“A logical argument, you mean?” He turned away. He would much rather accuse the desk lamp: “You don’t want me here!”
“I would say, rather,” said the woman who refused to play along with the comfortable fiction that she was an inanimate object addressing him from anywhere near the desk, “that I do not want you to make yourself miserable trying to complete an impossible task. Your daughter’s grief is transient, a matter of months — certainly not years. What service will you provide her afterwards, while you are working some sensible job in San Rosille?”
“What service?” He sputtered. “What… What… It’s called being a father! It’s called being around to watch her grow up!”
“I’m afraid it is called ‘giving up an occupation you love so that you can sit around, bored and depressed, and slowly coming to resent the people you love,’” she replied. “It’s also called setting a terrible example. Do you want her to grow up and chase her dreams, or would you prefer she behave as a shut-in so you can stare at her all day and be near her whenever she ‘needs’ you? Well, I suppose you’ll save money on film. If you turn your daughter into a diorama under glass, you won’t need the camera at all.”
“Excuse me,” he scolded the wastebasket, “plenty of men are capable of working a normal job and being home every night to tuck their families into bed! They raise lovely, well-adjusted, happy children, who go on to have perfectly wonderful lives!”
“Indeed. I do not care for any of them. I married you.”
“I’ve wasted half my life!” he shrieked at her. And he clapped both hands over his mouth, because that was certainly loud enough for Maggie to hear.
“Please,” said the General. “Continue. I have applied a silence spell to the inside walls and floor. Never doubt my competence. You are free to have hysterics if you must, just do not stamp your feet so hard that you fall through the kitchen ceiling. Are you able to explain your bizarre conclusion?”
He sat on the bed and dropped his head into his hands. “Math. I may not be as brilliant as you, but I can do math. My grandfather died at eighty-two. I am forty-one. So.” He nodded to her.
“I shall be forty on the twenty-third,” she replied. “My mother died at fifty-four and I never knew my grandmother. Or my father, come to think of it. Mr. Graham has departed this mortal coil at seventy-seven, apparently on purpose. How does one extrapolate a death date from these random numbers? Neither of us has Mr. Graham’s ability. I can’t even begin to address how one dismisses over four decades of living — during which one saved lives in a war, travelled the world, married a brilliant woman and produced a brilliant daughter — as a waste.”
“I could’ve been here, with you and her. I could’ve gotten a normal job after the war, and if we absolutely had to, we could’ve taken your pension and…”
“Ah, yes, the pension,” she said. “I have donated that money to Mr. Zusman and the school. I suppose you deserve some credit for making that feasible. Our family will be helping to educate, house and protect the neighbourhood children for the foreseeable future, thanks, in part, to your lack of a normal job.”
He looked up at her. “What?”
“Oh, dear. Magnificent has failed to give you your usual update?” She shook her head. “I suppose the circumstances are unusual. Where do I begin?”
“The school, please,” he said.
“Very well, but you’re going to have it all out of chronological order in that case.”
She omitted Mr. Zusman’s former, illegal occupation as a matter of respect. She said only that it was hazardous, there had been an injury, and the simplest way to prevent further injury was to employ him as a teacher again. Her disused pension and some mild larceny, including a fake ID and a convenient abandoned building, was enough for that.
Ah, and the building was convenient because there were already children living in it, due to it being a haunted house. No, of course not a literal haunted house. Calliope and her family had decided to convert the building on Mischief Night as sort of a prank.
Calliope’s family — her brother Euterpe and sister Terpsichore — had been visiting because Mordecai and Mr. Rose had gone to visit them first. Because Calliope’s father had failed to pay his electric bill and sent them a singing telegram about it.
While they were away, Euterpe got himself committed for Lucy’s birthday, so when they came back, Terpsichore came with them to investigate the possible human rights abuses, and Mr. Rose was at the theatre getting painted up to look like a zombie, so…
Look, she had warned him it was all going to be out of order if she started with the school. Did he want it from the beginning instead? No, of course it still wouldn’t make any sense. Since when did anything that happened while he was gone make sense?
“Since when does anything that happens while you’re here make sense?” she added, exasperated.
“But you’re so sure I’d be bored and miserable?” he said.
“You always hear the compressed version. I assure you, dealing with these things as they happen is quite tedious.”
“And are you setting a bad example by raising our daughter and dealing with them instead of chasing your dreams?”
“I didn’t quit,” she replied. “Furthermore, my dreams have always included raising a daughter and I hate boats.”
He sat forward to stare at her. It wasn’t that he never suspected, he just never expected her to tread so close to admitting it: “Your dreams didn’t include me raising our daughter with you?”
“Quite frankly,” she said, with an utter lack of comprehension that this might be upsetting, “I assumed circumstances beyond my control would break us apart and she would have one or the other of us in her life but never both. I’m rather amazed to still be alive with you tolerating my presence on a regular basis.” As if it were a compliment!
He stood. “I can’t talk about this with you. I’m sorry. I love you very much, but I can’t. I know what you think and I understand each individual word you speak, but your point of view is so skewed it’s like trying to explain baseball to an alien from a two-dimensional universe. I can’t do it.”
“What are you going to do, Captain? Ignore me and quit anyway?”
“No. Gods!” He held up both hands, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted her to stop talking or to get out of the street before she got them both hit by a bus. His expression was midway between aggravation and agony. “There are other people in this house who maybe have some idea what a sphere is. I guess I’ll talk to some of them, if they’ll have me, and I’ll work my way back to you. All right?”
She shooed a hand at him. “If you must.”
◈◈◈
Mordecai was alone in the kitchen, examining a bag of yellow rice with a skeptical expression.
Sanaam caught himself before he dumped all his problems into the lap of a man who surely had plenty of problems of his own: “Hi. How’s it going?”
Mordecai sighed. “Well, I’m in the middle of dinner and I know it can’t take much more than a half hour to finish, yet I made sandwiches for the children and told them to go play outside. I’m so distracted I can’t even remember to compensate for how distracted I am. So now I’m wondering if there’s a point in this unfamiliar meal where I can stall, or if I should just keep going and let them eat peanut butter with pie-ella.”
Sanaam approached cautiously, read the snipped newspaper recipe on the table, and confirmed the nature of the unfamiliar meal. Someone had added a note in a pencilled scrawl, Wouldn’t this be nice for a change? I have every confidence in your ability! Yum! and signed it with a smiley face.
Sanaam wasn’t sure about Mordecai’s ability, but he already had doubts about the recipe. It had chorizo in it, an addition as contentious as beans in chile con carne, and the writer glibly asserted it was sometimes called arroz con cosas, or “rice with things.” He shook his head with a sigh. No, no, you poor, provincial soul. Whoever fact-checked this for you was insulting you about the chorizo.
“I’d just throw the rice in and turn down the heat,” he said. “Good pie… pie… Oh, gods, I can’t humour you with a straight face. I don’t want to be insulting, but it’s paella, okay? It’s supposed to get a crust of roasted rice on the bottom, you can let it go for a long time as long as you don’t let it burn.”
Mordecai nodded helplessly. He began to stir in the rice. “I should’ve asked you in the first place, I don’t eat a lot of tapas…”
“Paella is not tapas, it’s more of a… a…” He’d been about to say “casserole” and he stopped himself with both hands over his mouth. “A stew. With rice.”
“Thank you for checking my culinary hubris. I should know better than to take Barnaby’s advice, but I thought I owed it to him. Is there anything I can do for you?” The red man glanced over his shoulder with a hopeful smile. “Are you offering me normalcy? Do you need some advice?”
“I want to quit my job,” Sanaam said.
Mordecai opened his mouth, and the reluctant sailor held up a hand. “Wait. Wait. And I don’t want you to do that thing you do. That thing where you rephrase everything I say and let me sort myself out like I’m yelling my troubles into an echoey canyon. I want your real opinion. I miss my family and I want to be here for them when bad things happen, but my wife thinks I’ll just make myself miserable. What do you think?”
“Do you know what your wife has done with her pension?” Mordecai replied. “Do I have to explain that whole mess to you for context?”
“No, she told me a few minutes ago. Um, and a lot of other stuff I couldn’t make sense of, but I’ll deal with that later. She’s bought Seth a school and she’s paying him to teach in it, essentially?”
“Yes. So, congratulations on your extended family. You are now supporting the children of Strawberryfield with your paycheque — and I am positive your wife will not take her pension away from them if you should happen to lose that paycheque. Your safety net is gone — or, rather, it is full of other people.
“I am nearly a generation removed from you. Despite my recent introduction to Calliope’s father and my new knowledge that a man can, indeed, stay home and raise a family, I still don’t really believe it. I’m not you, that’s why I do the echo-canyon thing. If I were you, I would be too terrified of shirking what I think is my true responsibility to my family to quit a well-paying job that I’m good at.
“I also note that you’ve lucked your way into a career that will allow you to retire while still relatively young. Again, if I were you, I would be very careful not to get eaten by a whale for the next decade or so, then take my pension and play with my grandchildren. As for your daughter…” He shook his head. “They grow up fast, and she’s well on her way. Barring catastrophe, she’s going to need you less, not more.”
“It’s the catastrophes I’m worried about,” Sanaam said acidly. “And whales don’t eat people.”
“You know what I mean, like when I’m trying to say paella. As for the other bit…” He had finished stirring in the rice and he sat down at the table. “You can’t stop them by being here. You have to take them as they come. I’m not saying there isn’t anything that would make me quit sailing and stay home, but an old man dying is definitely not it.”
Sanaam had his face in his hands.
Mordecai smirked. “Me shoving you to be sensible and responsible isn’t anywhere near as satisfying as me letting you sort yourself out, is it?”
“No, but it’s what I asked for,” Sanaam said, muffled. He took down his hands and sat back. “Where’s Hyacinth?”
Mordecai winced. “She’s either cleaning the attic or crying in her room. I suspect the latter… And I’m sure she’d be happy to tackle your problem instead, but she won’t be as nice as me. She’s been… touchy.”
◈◈◈
Before he even got done saying hi, she snapped, “I don’t need your pity!” Maybe a little beyond touchy. So he coughed up the problem right away — she liked problems.
Indeed, she sat down on her unmade bed and drew up her legs with a grin. “Well, do you like sailing?” she said. “Is it worth the aggravation for you?”
“I don’t like it more than my family,” he said. “But it pays the bills.” Mordecai had unsettled him in that respect.
“What bills?” said Hyacinth. “You live in an abandoned building and I won’t charge you anything you can’t afford. There’s even free food!”
He winced. “I think my daughter would like to go to school at some point…”
“You don’t know about the pink school?” Hyacinth snorted and giggled madly. “Ahh, it’s a bit of a sore point with your wife, so I’m not surprised. Surprise!” She cackled. “That really great school in Ansalem that you’ve been eyeing for Maggie is owned by Calliope’s family. There is a lot of drama involved, somebody seems to have coated the whole thing in pink stucco just to be a pain in the ass, but Calliope’s parents are living on campus and they’ve invited her to stay with them.
“If your daughter qualifies for a scholarship, and there’s no way she won’t, she’ll have a free ride with the weirdest damn family I’ve ever met — and I’ve lived with David and Barnaby and you people. You are a lucky man, Sanaam.” She smiled. “Screw sailing. Stay here with the people you love and do whatever dumb job you feel like — just so’s you have enough money to go to the movies and get wasted. Carpe the goddamn diem.”
He narrowed his eyes. This was so gleefully irresponsible he suspected reverse psychology. “You’re serious?”
“Sure! What’ve you got to lose?”
“Well, um…” He began counting on his fingers, as if this were a real list and not something he was thinking about for the first time. “The planet, the whole rest of the planet. Uh, more specifically, the rest of my family is on Saint Matt’s and Miss Tina’s, I won’t be able to visit them as much. For free. Um. Bill. All my friends on the boat, from the war… Geez, Jacinda retired to South Hestia, I guess I won’t see her anymore, I don’t know anyone else down there and it’s expensive…
“Oh, all the food! Well, not all of it, but we seem to think chorizo goes in paella around here and a lot of it’s weird like that… Uh, learning things in general? I like food and animals — sometimes that’s the same thing! — but, ah, basically everything. I’m trying to think of something I don’t… No, I do some astronomy too. I guess I don’t… Cook for myself? Much? I’m having a really hard time thinking of something I do here that I can’t do more with a magic boat…”
She leaned forward and swatted the back of his head. “Be with your family, you twit! You just said it! Do you love any of that stuff more than them? Paella? For gods’ sakes! Is there any of that you wouldn’t give up to spend a nice day with Maggie at Papillon Island?”
“No, but…”
“Then burn that trash to the ground and go have fun!”
“It just occurs to me that she’ll eventually get bored of it.”
“What?” She scoffed. “Bored of fun? Bored of you? Take her to the Natural History Museum. Or the zoo. She’s going to Ansalem in a few years…”
And then I’ll only have my wife, who hates everything, to entertain in this crummy city, Sanaam thought.
“…what does she need with a whole planet? Did she even ask for one? The planet doesn’t love her. Give her a dad.” Hyacinth nodded firmly. “You won’t be around forever. Stay here and be her dad, for as long as you can.”
◈◈◈
He thought that wasn’t so much advice from Hyacinth as advice from Hyacinth’s grief, but Hyacinth wasn’t available right now. Also, he wasn’t sure she’d say anything different.
It didn’t matter. He didn’t want to fight. He thanked her and left, hoping to find somewhere quiet to think.
Instead, he found Milo in the front room with a lovely bunch of mixed flowers — which he proceeded to drop all over the floor in his panic.
“Ahh!” Sanaam said. He yelped and covered his mouth. “Oooh, sorry. Sorry-sorry-sorry. Can I help you? Milo? Is that okay?”
Milo glanced up the stairs, looked away again, and nodded.
“Thank you,” Sanaam said, tiptoeing nearer. “Sorry. Again. Sorry.”
Milo was already on his hands and knees, gathering the flowers. He paused for a moment, gestured oddly, covered his mouth with a closed hand, then dropped both hands to the floor with a frown. He shook his head, embarrassed.
“No, it’s all right. Are these for Calliope?”
Milo nodded.
“Okay. I don’t think we can put them back the way they were, but let me grab a vase or something with water and we’ll try to make them look nice. Yeah?”
Milo nodded.
The flowers ended up in a jelly-glass. They looked all right, in Sanaam’s opinion. Milo held up a hand, asking him to please wait outside of Calliope’s door. Sanaam did so, rocking absently on his heavy black shoes — heel to toe, hands behind his back, like a kid waiting outside the principal’s office.
He thought he might’ve heard crying. He would’ve preferred to give Calliope her privacy, but Milo did ask him to stay. Soon what might’ve been crying became evident talking, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying.
Not that he was trying.
He bet she liked the flowers.
While he was picturing them being cute, the door popped open and Calliope peeked out. “Hi, Sam.”
“Oh, hi.” He smiled awkwardly. “Milo asked me to stay here.”
“I know. He told me.” She smiled, too, no less awkwardly. “I’m sorry I didn’t say hi. Before, I mean. I heard you come in. I didn’t want to bug you, I guess.”
“I’m not bugged, but I understand,” he said. “It’s hard right now.”
She nodded and scrubbed her sleeve across her face, but she didn’t lose the smile. “Yeah. Milo says thanks for helping with the flowers, and I say that too. Also, if you’re not too busy, he wants me to explain how he’s learning sign language.”
It was lucky Milo had taken the flowers, because Sanaam would’ve dropped them all over again. “What?”
“Well, basically just that. He’s learning sign language now. He’s not going to be able to talk to you by himself, he’s sorry about that. I can start teaching you, or you could pick up a book on Marselline Sign Language for the basics, but we’re kinda making it up as we go along. We started with MSL, because he wanted to be able to talk to my friend Helen, but he needs it to be a little different because it’s hard for him to make big gestures and smile. He can say a whole lot already, but if you want to talk to him I gotta hang out and translate.”
Sanaam stared, absorbing the possibility of live, complex Milopinions. He’d known Milo nearly five years and the man was still like a black box!
Admittedly, a black box with anxiety and multiple personalities, but there had to be so much more going on in there.
He opened his mouth and nothing at all came out. All his questions about Milo’s inner life sort of crashed into each other. He laughed weakly, apologized and tried again: “Milo, should I quit my job?” He sighed and turned away. “Gods, I’m being a bad friend. I’m sorry. I’m distracted. I guess I’m asking everyone in the house.”
Milo tapped Calliope’s shoulder and signed at her.
She waited until he was through, instead of going word by word. “Milo says, ‘Do you like your job?’”
“I love it,” Sanaam admitted. “But it’s keeping me away from my family, whom I also love, and I hate that part.” He hung his head. “I thought it was obvious I should quit, but my wife thinks it’s just as obvious I shouldn’t. And Mordecai thinks I should provide for my family, and he’s right, and Hyacinth thinks nothing is as important as the people I love, and she’s also right. I don’t know what to do.”
Milo made a swift, urgent series of signs, which made Sanaam briefly hopeful for a simple solution.
Calliope snickered. “Milo says it’s super complicated and he might have to say it a bunch of times or go write it down or draw it. Apparently, I might mess it up.”
He frowned at Calliope and signed some more, but she waved him off without translating what he’d said, “Okay, okay. I know I’m the best, but I also know I’m not perfect. Wanna try anyway?”
He nodded.
“Cool. Hey, Sam? You might wanna sit down, I dunno how long this is gonna take.”
Milo slumped, looking exasperated in Calliope’s direction, but with a small, affectionate smile.
She grinned at him and spoke while signing, “If you don’t want honest, you have the wrong girlfriend-slash-translator, babe.”
He nodded, then signed her a panicked thumbs up, followed by a flurry of gestures — undoubtedly clarifying that he did want honest, and he had the right girlfriend-slash-translator.
Sanaam sat in one of the nice chairs and watched the tandem performance, bemused but patient.
“Okay,” Calliope said. “Milo says he knows this is super hard and important, and he doesn’t want to upset me, but this is kinda like how he screwed up asking me to marry him. Aw.” She signed back at him. “I’m not still mad about that. You know?”
Milo nodded and went on.
“Right. So he says he was really dumb — aw, babe — and he guessed what I wanted without understanding. He thought being a good, um… Partner? Helper? Husband? Yeah, all those things. He thought it would mean giving up all the stuff that made him happy, because it was weird stuff.”
She broke off and signed at him, “No it’s not.”
She smiled at Sanaam. “Okay, he knows. But the point is, if you strip all those parts out of a thing — gears out of a machine, but it’s a metaphor — you make it broken and wrong. No, wait… Maybe not wrong, but way different. He thought he’d make a way different machine that was better, but he made a wrong one by accident and I didn’t like it. Oh, I get it.”
She continued while signing, a live translation for Milo and Sam, who were both learning, “Sam,” she fingerspelled it, “if you have the plans for a new you, you gotta check them and make sure it’s an improvement and the people you love will still like it. Would you like Glorie to have a husband and Maggie to have a dad who does sailing stuff, or would they rather have the guy who gave all that up to stay home?”
She frowned at Milo. “That’s kinda mean to answer a question with another question, babe.”
Milo sighed and dropped his face into his hands.
Calliope snickered. “Sorry, I didn’t have to say it like that.” She tried again, “Milo says you can’t separate the things that make you happy from the things that make your family happy. If you’re going to make a big change like that, make sure it’s an improvement, and you don’t break anything that can’t be fixed.”
She leaned closer and added, “He thinks a family is like a bunch of machines you wire up so they all work together — well, a bunch of clocks, but I… Oh! I have to show you this cuckoo clock we made about how we love each other. I didn’t sell it at the art show so we could work on it forever. It’s a metaphor! Milo likes it, so relationships are clocks.” She signed both words slowly, to make it clear. “And metaphor is unicorn. Kinda got a rhyming slang thing goin’ on here, except not really…”
She put a hand up to stop herself, and stopped signing too. “Um, but we can do all that later, when you’re less distracted.”
“Please,” Sanaam said, nodding. He leaned back in the chair and gazed up at the hole in the ceiling. “I tend to think that what makes my family happy should make me happy, or else I’m a horrible person, but that’s backwards, isn’t it?”
Milo made a sign, then winced and frantically waved his hands.
Calliope patted his hands down, shaking her head with a grin. “Okay, okay. Milo says ‘oversimplified,’ but no.” She laughed and waved her hands like he had. “Cancel, cancel, cancel. No, no, oh gods, no. I think because he doesn’t want to sound like he’s saying you’re dumb. But, like, you three are wired together, so it’s backwards and forwards and sideways all at the same time.”
Sanaam raised a finger. “Just, a brief tangent.” He laughed. “I’m sorry. Milo, I have never heard you speak a word before, but you sound exactly as I’d imagine. Thank you for trusting me enough to talk to me, even if it’s hard.”
Milo nodded and signed him two enthusiastic thumbs up.
“Did you ask Maggie what you ought to do yet?” Calliope said. “I know you asked Glorie, but she doesn’t always listen. Maggie’s way better about that, and she’s a person who lives in the house too.” She smiled. “And you probably shouldn’t do things for people without asking. Well, flowers are okay, but not quitting your job and being a whole different person.”
“You’re both right.” He stood. “Have you seen her around…?”
“Milo says she’s on the porch.”
◈◈◈
Maggie and Erik had finished their peanut butter. They were sitting on the top step and gazing out at the muddy yard and the street beyond.
“Like,” Erik said, “my uncle doesn’t want to say we’re not really sad about Barnaby, we’re sad that we might die and people won’t be sad about us. Not because he thinks it’s wrong, he’s totally sure he’s right, but he thinks saying it means he’s a bad person and he’ll make me a bad person.”
“Logically correct and morally wrong,” Maggie said.
“Yeah. But basically everyone is trying to decide how to be sad right. I can see it. So it feels super weird, but that’s normal.” He laughed weakly. “And that’s weird.”
“It’s frustrating. We feel weird about feeling weird when everyone feels weird. It’s stupid and doesn’t make sense.”
“Yeah.”
Belatedly, Sanaam cleared his throat.
Maggie smirked. “Like, he honestly expects us to stop talking when we know he’s there.”
Erik looked over his shoulder with a grin. “No, no, we were smoking cigarettes the whole time. I swear.”
Maggie obligingly blew out a puff of magical purple smoke. She coughed and covered it with a hand. “Bleh, tastes like batteries.”
“Carbonated vinegar and brain glitter?” Erik said.
Both Maggie and Sanaam regarded him. Maggie held up a finger, “For context, Dad, when Erik holds a battery the wrong way, he screws up his brain. Not forever, don’t get nervous, but he totally hates it.” She turned back to Erik. “That’s what it tastes like?”
Erik shrugged and bobbed a vague nod. “Pretty much.”
Maggie snickered and sighed. “Oh, man, I miss normal-weird. Please tell me something’s on fire in there. Or, heck, I’ll even take a relationship problem.”
Sanaam sat down on the step. He slumped and dropped his head, letting his hands dangle between his legs. He looked like a parade balloon deflating. “Well, I have grave doubts about the paella, but that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.
“It’s just occurred to me that you have plenty to deal with already, but it’s not fair to make big decisions about our lives without asking you and… I have just put two and two together and realized I’m not in any shape to make this decision either. Which is probably why your mother was treating me like a fool who needs to come to his senses. I need to think about this and I’d like to know what you think, just for the future.”
Maggie switched places with Erik and scooted nearer. “Okay. What is it?”
“Let me show you something,” Sanaam said. He took the compass out of his back pocket, his magic compass with only one designation: HOME. “I know you’ve seen it spin, Mag-Pirate, but you’ve never seen it not spinning. Did you think Milo built me a broken compass that has no idea where ‘home’ is?”
She shrugged and waggled a hand. “Maybe a weird joke?”
Erik nudged her with a disapproving frown.
“Nope,” Sanaam said. “It only does that around you and your mother. When I’m with you, it says I’m home. It doesn’t do that anywhere else in the whole wide world, I’ve checked.”
He smiled at her. “And it’s right. I love being your dad, Maggie. I will never stop being your dad. And I know you love me. But, for a long time now, being your dad has meant going away and coming back. I love sailing, and I hate being away from you. And your mom too. I know you two like having a real home, this home, and I won’t ask you to give that up. So if I decided to stay home with you, I’d have to give up sailing, or else as you grow up, we’re going to say goodbye a lot.”
His voice wanted to waver, so he stopped talking for a moment and looked away. “I can’t have everything.”
Erik tapped him on the shoulder from behind. He turned, blinking.
“Don’t you already have everything?” said the boy with two dead parents and one eye.
“Er.”
“Nah,” Maggie said. She hugged her father, leaning across his lap. “But nobody can have everything, where would you keep it?”
Erik considered that. “I guess you’d have to leave it where it is and visit it.”
“Pretty much.” She drew back to address them. “You know that thing you said about how I need to learn as much as I can so I have options? Even if it sucks?”
“I think you’re paraphrasing, Mag-Pirate, but yes.”
“Sailing is options,” she said with a nod. “It’s Bill, and Zippy, and visits to Grammie and Grandpa, and basically the whole world. I do miss you, and having options means we don’t get to have as much fun together, but I don’t want to need that other stuff and not have it.” She sighed. “Of course, we’re screwing around with not knowing if we’re making a trade for some stuff we’ll never use…”
“Auntie Hyacinth said if you live every day like you might die tomorrow, you’ll be pissed off when there’s no food for breakfast in the morning,” Erik said. “That help?”
Sanaam pointed at him, “I had a feeling she wasn’t quite herself at the moment. Yes. Thank you.” He stood, with a bit of an involuntary groan. Forty-one wasn’t young anymore, even if he had quite a lot of living yet to do. “It’s just something else to consider, there’s more than one way to carpe a diem. Shall we put the options on the back burner and try to help your uncle with dinner?”
“I think we give Erik a head start, ’cos he’s going bonkers looking for something to do.”
Erik frowned, then gave in with a shrug and a snicker.
“…And I think we go upstairs first and see if we can get mom to come with us on the boat this time,” she went on. “I’m not ready to say goodbye again yet, and maybe she’ll do us a favour if you tell her she was right. She likes being right.”
Sanaam paused and crouched down, “Maggie, I’d love to have you, but are you sure about leaving everyone here?”
“Eh, the adults can take care of themselves.” She tapped a finger on the ring of sending, which was masquerading as a wedding ring on her father’s left hand. “If you leave Erik the other half of that, we can talk every night.”
Erik brightened. “Awesome!”
Maggie grinned. “I can wake him up at three o’clock in the morning, yelling about how the dodos are back and they can fly now.”
“One time!” Sanaam cried. “I did that one time! Come on! You like birds too!”
◈◈◈
Sanaam bowed to his wife. “You were right. Maybe not forever, but for right now…”
Maggie nudged him. “Dad, don’t qualify it.”
“You were right,” he said firmly. “I’m pleased to have married someone sensible.”
Maggie bowed likewise. “I’m going to go with him this time. Sir, would you like to come too?”
The General sighed and waved a hand. “I suppose the experience is not without its educational opportunities. It may…” She scowled. “It is not required that I justify spending time with my family. I have enough gilded lilies in my life. If you will have me, I will enjoy spending time with you.”
Sanaam and Maggie stared. They turned to each other and saw identical, gape mouthed expressions of dismay. Maggie cracked first, followed shortly by her father. They covered their mouths.
“This is…”
“It’s not what it looks like, sir!”
“We’re… We’re surprised. This is surprise.”
“In a good way!”
“I’m in a state of shock!” Maggie howled at last, bent double and leaning on the desk.
The General folded her arms with a smirk. “I suppose one’s midlife crisis is dealt with most productively by continuing to learn, to grow, and to be surprising. Yes.”
Sanaam choked. “A midlife crisis?” He considered it. “Should I have asked to buy a car? Did I just burn up my chance for a cool car?”
“Rather.” The General pulled a folded map out of the desk drawer. “Where are we going this time, Captain? I shall plan an itinerary.”
Maggie clasped her hands and sighed, as if sinking into a warm bath. “Ahhh. Normal-weird.”
