Dad and Claire and my six-year-old brothers lived in a three-story U-shaped complex with a landscaped courtyard in the middle. There were some smaller apartments, but mostly there were apartments with two or three floors with very small footprints, so it was like little blocks stacked on top of one another. Each home—however many bedrooms—had a front door that opened out into the courtyard. There were long, snaking cracks running down the length of the building. The whole complex leaned a little to the west, like it might slide all the way downtown in an earthquake. Dad insisted that it did not lean at all, but whenever I visited, I tried not to look at those cracks.
Dan and I had had an earthquake-kit competition back home. Mine included everything on all the lists, plus things like tampons and antibiotics, layered in a big garbage bin on wheels, but Dan trumped me by putting his kit in a giant rolling toolbox with everything meticulously organized and labeled. I’d had to buy him a dozen doughnuts.
Dad and Claire’s earthquake “kit” was a flat of family-size pork and beans, a can opener, and a flat of bottle water.
While Dad fumbled with his keys, I studied the concrete courtyard, thinking I should do a marble test with the boys. We could prove that the building really was leaning. If it was condemned, they’d have to move somewhere safer.
“Maeve?” Mrs. Patel popped out of her place next door and held up a plate of samosas as a greeting. “You’re here!”
“Mrs. Patel!” I gave her a hug.
“The plate. The plate!” She laughed, righting it before the samosas could slip off. She was wearing the same pink cardigan she always wore over her sari. There was a hole at one elbow now, and a dark stain beside the top button. “I hear we have you for six months?” Behind her and up the stairs, a commercial blared on her TV. Gets out all grass stains! Guaranteed!
“Six whole months.” I took the plate.
“What’s that?” Mrs. Patel cupped a hand to her ear.
“Six months!” I took a bite of one. “So good. I’m so hungry.”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full.” She gave my wrist a playful slap. “Wait a minute. I have tamarind sauce.” She disappeared and was back a moment later with a little dish.
“Come over tomorrow.” She gave me a peck on the cheek. “I will deal the cards for rummy.”
“I will. Thank you.”
The last time I’d visited, I’d told Mrs. Patel that she needed a new sweater because she wore it in all the family photos on her wall, and so it seemed like she never aged past when she started wearing it. Mrs. Patel laughed and laughed. I like that very much, she said. Imagine, never getting old! This is my magic sweater, then. My fountain-of-youth sweater. I shall never stop wearing it. Not ever.
When I’d visited in the spring, Claire announced a “family project” the moment I arrived.
“It’ll be so much fun!” She handed out painting smocks. “We’re all going to help turn the closet in the downstairs studio into ‘Maeve’s Space.’?”
Usually they managed to clear just enough of the floor for the blow-up bed each time I came, but in the spring they—meaning Claire—had organized everything so that the room was tidy for the first time ever. Dad did commissioned portraits when he wasn’t working on sets, so his easels and paints now lined one wall. Claire made dolls, so her bins of fabric and doll forms and her sewing machine lined the other.
The walk-in closet was empty, the beat-up walls patched and ready for paint. A double bed took up the space in the middle of the room. The twins were jumping on it, the gray cotton surface dappled with nondescript stains. I tasted bile.
“What’s that face for?” Dad said. Corbin jumped into his arms. Then Owen. “What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s filthy.”
“Claire steam-cleaned it. Both sides.”
Nosebleeds, leaked periods, dried semen, vomit, the ghost of farts past, and everything that comes with all of that. Sex and violence and insomnia. Arguments in the middle of the night. Wet dreams. And the bugs.
Just think of the bedbugs.
Vancouver had an actual bedbug registry. You could look up any address and see if there was (or had ever been) a bedbug infestation there. Entire blocks lit up on the website, including several apartment buildings on streets far too close to Dad’s place. I’d put in Dad’s address once and an alert had popped up. I’d run screaming from the computer and all the way outside, where Claire had found me and explained that it had been isolated, at the other end of the building, and had been dealt with professionally.
Bedbugs are common in East Van, she’d said. As if that made me feel any better.
I knew why bedbugs were common in East Van. Because everyone was sharing their shitty old furniture. Dumped in the alley on moving day. Friendly trades. As seen on Craigslist. You take this couch; I’ll buy that chair; need some new clothes; want this extra duvet? I have to get rid of this mattress, but it’s still perfectly good. No bedbugs. I promise.
“I’ll sleep on the air bed. It’s comfortable. I didn’t even want a new bed.”
“Well, we got you one. And I’m still waiting for some sign of gratitude.”
“I can’t sleep on it, Dad.”
“Maeve.”
“Dad.”
“Maeve! It’s perfectly good.”
And then Claire was beside him, a hand on his arm. “What’s going on?”
“She won’t sleep in the bed. She says it’s dirty.”
“I cleaned it,” Claire said. “Both sides.”
“This one looks like blood.” I pointed.
“Just stains,” Dad said. “That doesn’t mean that it isn’t clean.”
“It’s really comfortable,” Claire said.
“What’s wrong?” Corbin said.
“Maeve doesn’t like the bed,” Dad said.
They started jumping again. “We’ll have it!”
“See?” Claire said. “Great springs. Good bones.”
Claire made the bed and Dad told me the air bed wasn’t available. When it was time to go to sleep and everyone had gone upstairs, I slept on the floor, well away from the dirty mattress. Which was where Dad found me the next morning. With a sigh, he hauled the mattress to the alley and pinned a sign to it: Perfectly good. Her Highness wants something better. No bedbugs. And he drew a picture of a scowling princess, which was supposed to be me, I guess. Crown and all.
“I’m sorry, Dad.”
Next he brought home a bed from work. An iron bed frame and a brand-new mattress that had only been used for seven hours.
“By one of the three bears,” he said. “The big one, I think. He was hardly in it at all.”
By three bears he meant actors from the TV show he was working on. The story line put a modern spin on fairy tales. A girl moves to a town and strange things happen and then she realizes that she’s living in a bizarre parallel world where there are dragons in the supermarket and trolls using the ATM and evil witches who want her dead. It was scarier than it sounds.
“Seven hours?”
“Maybe less,” Dad said. “Listen, Maeve. We don’t have the money to buy you a new one, and props gave this one to me for a really, really good price.”
“How much?”
“Beer.”
“Beer?” I waited for him to say more. To explain. “You went into a liquor store?”
His expression shifted.
“Yes, I went into a liquor store.” He turned to leave the room. “It’s not like there’s an alarm at the front door that keeps out certain people.”
“Maybe there should be,” I said under my breath.