The Almanac Branch by Bradford Morrow

heel. I liked Dr. Trudeau, and I worry as I write this that I err on the side of burlesque in the way I report such painful and profoundly embarrassing times. I wished that Faw got along better with her; I thought that because the doctor was a woman she somehow understood how that worked when the hole in the middle of my icicle hair came to be. I wanted to ask her whether she’d ever seen such a thing herself, because she seemed to know about it, but if she hadn’t she figured Faw might get mad, and march off to yet another doctor, which I didn’t want. Trudeau was speaking, and I found myself looking at her eyes, which were now quite amber, and very glowing, and I thought, “Her eyes are in upside down.” I dropped one of my shoulders down, lay my head to one side, bent over, and got a good look at her face from this different perspective. I was right. Her eyes would look much more regular if she were suspended from the ceiling.
    â€œGrace?”
    I nodded from my cocked-head position.
    Trudeau moved close, put her hand on my shoulder. Her grasp was firm, confident, “Grace, can I tell you what I think? I think you’re doing much better. I think we were right when we thought that flare men weren’t able to leave their trees. That’s where they live. And they have to stay where they live. And since he wasn’t able to follow you out to the island, you’ve been doing better. Isn’t that right?”
    Well, that was all fine, but, I wondered, getting back to Dr. Trudeau’s eyes, which were so close now and how for sure they were in upside down, and how they would look right if she were hung from the ceiling, I couldn’t help but wonder, would the wiggly worms up there be able to eat their way through the lashings tied around her feet, and make her fall straight down on her head?
    Berg drifted, like a jellyfish can drift in rough waters, but was pulled in by Faw from time to time. Over the protests of his teachers at school, Faw, having decided it was time that his eldest son learn something about how the world of commerce worked, announced that he was taking the boy with him to an island in the French West Indies. There he had intentions of setting up an extension of a foundation he had established the year before in Cape Hatteras, the Gulf Stream Trust. We none of us understood what such a project was about, nor what this Gulf Stream Trust meant, nor even where Cape Hatteras was, and when he attempted to explain any of it to us it only became more obscure. There was something about a church for drowned sailors; there was something about Columbus’s younger brother Bartholomew; there was something about a woman there who burned a candle every night, all night, for the mariners who had been lost at sea—something about how their souls could find their way across the dark waters to the safety of the church by following the candle that she’d set in the window on the side of a hill. It all sounded very mysterious (churches and Faw, as I have said, never having been attractive to one another).
    No matter what it was, both Desmond and I knew we were supposed to be envious of Berg’s new status. Mother did not throw a tantrum. She was anything but hysterical. She even seemed to be in favor of the idea, a response that surprised each of us in different ways. Speaking for myself, I was confused at first. Here Faw was doing something with Berg that he’d never done with Mother, taking his son to this exotic faraway place—it seemed unfair. Her disaffection quelled quickly what jealousy I might have felt on her behalf, and began to make me think once more about what I’d noticed that first day in her. Of course, I thought. She must want him out of here, and then she could do whatever pleased her. Was she that far gone? I wondered. Looking back, I think that she was. I also think she sensed I was watching her.
    When they returned, Berg more than ever