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As much as Cobelvig can suck a dick, her nursing tips have been very effective.
It’s about 6 p.m., mid-winter. Devon’s cabin windows give full view of the gloomy outdoors: too dark, too early. Other than Eleanor, Mark is her only company; Ricken won’t be back for another hour or so. Taking a page out of his book, she tries to focus on the positive. With Eleanor quietly latched at her breast, she’s glad that nursing has become…not as bad. Even if that means she owes a perverse debt to her “lactation consultant”.
Devon’s eyes are practically closed. Eleanor, the little beaut, somehow knows exactly when to start crying to maximize Devon’s stress and minimize her quality of sleep. My little economist, she thinks darkly. Her algorithms should be studied and used for evil.
Now that she’s breastfeeding, things are quiet.
Then she hears glass shatter.
“Mark, what the fuck?” she yells from her seat. “I just got a new set!” She’d clean up — no way in hell is she trusting Mark to clean her floor, what with the sty he calls a house — but Eleanor’s got a long way to go, and Mark is an asshole who should at least try.
What the fuck is he doing? She doesn’t hear sweeping. “Mark!” she hollers again. If he hasn’t talked back to her, he clearly hasn’t heard her.
A second passes, then two. The kitchen is silent.
Devon’s stomach drops.
She stands up, gingerly raising Eleanor along with her. She takes slow, gentle steps towards the kitchen. “Mark?” she calls. He still doesn’t answer. She marches toward the kitchen.
The air is thick with silence. Mark’s hand is shaking, as is his breath. He slowly looks up from the floor. She meets his wild, scared eyes.
“Come,” she beckons. “Don’t step on the glass; I’ll deal with it later.”
For a few seconds, his eyes flicker around the room; slowly, he collects himself and makes his way to the end of the kitchen.
He takes a moment before he begins to speak. “I’m —”
“I know, Mark,” she interrupts with a whisper. “Come with me.” They make their way to the private room she just left. She sits on the couch, frees one hand from Eleanor, and indicates that he sit next to her. He lowers himself slowly and soundlessly.
“Can I hold your hand?” she asks him. He obliges. She grips his hand until it’s nearly white, and tells herself it’s only his hand that’s shaking.
She closes her eyes and tries to slow her breathing. Mark breathes with her. The thought comes unbidden: he’s just a child. She tries to banish the thought, but she remembers the night she met him, his wide-eyed curiosity, his straight back, tensed shoulders, his “They’re hurting us down there.” The thought becomes a mantra. He’s just a child. Just a child. Just a child. She feels wetness on her cheeks.
He’s just a child. So be strong for him.
With a shaky inhale, she finally makes eye contact with him. “I’m sorry to take him away from you,” he says. “I don’t know how I got here this time. I didn’t plan this, I promise.”
“You have nothing to apologize for, Mark,” she says. Even with the knowledge that his escape was a fluke, she’s been half-expecting a reunion since that fateful evening.
“We’re trying to find her,” he begins. “Miss Casey. His — my — my outie’s wife.”
She nods, trying not to let the tears come back. Mark clams up and looks away; clearly he doesn’t want to disappoint her with news of a fruitless search.
“At the top of that shelf,” she points across the room, “there’s a record in a red sleeve. Could you grab that for me?” she asks. “I’d ask Eleanor to do it, but she’s busy.” He rises with a polite chuckle. When he’s against the shelf, she notices how this Mark stands taller than the brother she knows. “I’ve never operated one of these myself,” he says as he walks toward the record player. “Mr. Milchick always does it for us.”
The needle hits the vinyl. The sound of smooth cello fills the room. She hasn’t shaken the dust off of this jacket in years. But with Eleanor on the one hand, and Mark on the other…she’s been feeling so much lately, in a way that only a string section can express. She thinks Mark might be feeling similarly.
She gives him a wan smile. “Do you like this song?” He sways his head slowly to the rhythm. “Yeah,” he whispers. “I like it a lot.” She rubs his hand with her thumb.
After sitting with the music for a few moments, she braves a question. “So,” she says, “who’s Mr. Milchick?”
His expression grows blank. “He’s my manager,” is his terse response.
They’re hurting us down there. She pivots: “last time, you mentioned you had friends at work…can you tell me about them?”
He nods. “Where should I start?”
He tells her about Dylan, his quick wit, his hunger for incentives, his kid on the outside. He tells her about Irving, a loyal, sensitive soul whose love was torn from him. He even tells her about Miss Huang, a literal child serving as his new supervisor.
“And then there’s Helly,” he sighs.
There’s a moment of silence. The face he makes…it looks a lot like love. She isn’t sure what to make of that. But, in the moment, she feels happy for him.
His eyelids flutter. “Thank you, Mark,” she whispers, giving his hand one last squeeze.
Even on Eleanor’s quiet nights, Devon’s sleep is light. So when, at 2 am on a Monday morning, Devon’s phone buzzes, she is quick to react. Ricken, the kind of sleeper who drowns out distractions with his own snores, is none the wiser. Seeing the name of the caller, she tiptoes out of her bedroom and answers the phone.
“Devon,” Mark’s breathy voice is far from his usual nighttime grogginess. “We’ve been made, we’ve been fucking made and I don’t —”
“Do you want to come over?”
A pause. “I don’t…know how to drive.”
Oh. That would be a problem.
She tells him she’ll call him back in two minutes; she’s out of the house and in her car by a minute forty. “You still there?”
“Irving was fired,” he blurts. “Mr. Milchick — Seth — fired him, because he —”
“Hold on. You’re gonna have to explain this to me slowly.”
Over the bumpy drive to Mark’s place, she hears the story in broad strokes: the ORTBO (what is it with Lumon and their weird-ass acronyms?), Helly R. being impersonated by her outie Helena Eagan, Mark having sex with Helena, Irving nearly drowning her.
“He fucking warned us,” he splutters. “I know my outie has a wife waiting to be rescued. And if I weren’t thinking with my meat maybe I would’ve actually listened —”
“Hey,” she interjects, “cut it out. You were deceived and used.”
“I kissed her, right before I met you,” he says. “Helly, I mean. Nobody made me do that.”
“You love her, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” he exhales. “I love her. And I don’t know what that means for my outie…for his family, for you.”
No amount of over-worrying could prepare her for this. She responds with a resolve she does not feel: “why would I fault someone for finding love in a lonely place?”
Silence on the other end.
“From what you’ve told me about her, she seems like someone who’ll fight tooth and nail to protect you and your friends,” she continues. “How could you not love someone like that?”
“Thank you, Devon. Your blessing means a lot.”
“Not that you needed it.”
“No,” she can hear his smile on the other end. “No I didn’t.”
She hears his breath decrescendo. At the disconnect tone, she makes a barely legal U-turn. Her fingers rap on the steering wheel the whole way home.
In a routine Devon denies any part in orchestrating, Mark stays at the Hales’ cabin on Ricken’s late nights.
She was forced to approve Ricken’s ambitious book tour schedule; the new mom stuff makes her too tired to argue. Why would she encourage absenteeism from a new father? She’s only letting Mark stay over because he’ll spiral if left home alone. It’s not like she needs his help in particular; unlike him, she has other friends who can keep her company.
She hands Eleanor to a drowsy Mark. “I’m taking a shower,” she tells him. “If she starts crying, she might need to be burped. Don’t drop her or I’ll kill you.”
When she walks to the bathroom, she doesn’t steal a glance at Mark’s supine body, searching for her secret second brother. The one who, faced with unimaginable torture, has the guts to fall in love. She’s not scared for him, and she certainly isn’t scared of him. Of what his reckless, brave love means for Gemma, for Mark, for Ricken and herself. And even if she were — she didn’t arrange this setup, did she?
The long shower fails to fully relax her; once she turns off the water, she hears Eleanor’s cries. She rushes into her pajamas and storms into the living room.
“Mark! You’re holding her way too tight,” she chides, taking Eleanor out of his arms. Mark is sitting up, back straight as an arrow. His eyes are red and his breath is caught in his chest.
“You okay?” she ventures.
He takes a slow breath and blinks away tears. “Tell me about her,” he whispers.
“Eleanor, you mean?”
“The baby, yeah,” he nods slightly.
Eleanor looks suspiciously happy, and with a whiff Devon can tell she needs a diaper change. She brings the baby to the changing station in the corner of the room. “She’s smelly, I’ll give you that,” she begins. “We’re weaning her right now, so her poop is gonna be extra gross for a while.”
She looks back at Mark to gauge his reaction. “Do you need anything, or…”
“No, you’re good,” she says. “I’m not gonna make you wipe baby shit on, like, the tenth minute you’ve ever spent with a baby.” Regardless, he walks with her to the changing table. As Devon disposes of the old diaper, Mark brushes his pinky against the baby’s toes.
“Have you ever…met any other babies?”
In lieu of answering, he asks, “Are all baby toes like this?”, and she’s only partly sure the question is rhetorical.
“She loves Dr. Seuss.” Eleanor restarts her crying; Devon raises her voice accordingly. “But she won’t let us read her anything else.”
“Not even Dr. Ricken?” His cheeky smile brushes at her peripheral vision.
“Not even him,” she confirms. “She’s a lady of exceedingly refined taste.”
Mark hums. “I guess I’m gonna have to see what this Dr. Seuss guy is all about, then.”
She nods to a book on her shelf. “He’ll keep you entertained while I clean up.”
When she comes back from a vigorous hand washing, Mark is reading aloud to a rapt Eleanor. “All tall, we all are tall. All small, we are — are all — all are small.” He looks at Devon. “Fuck me, you didn’t tell me this guy would make me question my literacy.”
Devon laughs. She picks Eleanor up off the table and hands her to Mark. “You want your hands angled like this, see? So you’re gripping at the armpits while supporting her neck.” Slowly but surely, Eleanor is transferred to Mark’s grip. He sits on the couch. He smiles at Eleanor; she beams back.
His face hardens into something stern. “Right after Helly woke up…right after Irving drowned Helena. He was so gentle.” His gaze is firmly on Eleanor. “He could be so uptight at work, but — you only see the gentleness when you’ve seen the fury first. And by God,” his voice cracks, “was he gentle.”
Devon rifles through her shelf until she finds a dark record sleeve with a constellation design.
Mark talks about Irving like he died. The image his story painted in Devon’s head — Irving walking into snowy woods, Seth Milchick yelling orders behind him — looks an awful lot like an execution.
After setting up the record, Devon takes Eleanor from Mark and sits beside him. She angles the baby sideways so her toes brush against his thigh. He tries to grasp one of Eleanor’s hands; she takes the opportunity to try and eat his finger. Curiosity overwhelms his sense of hygiene; when his slobbery finger exits her gaping maw, he lets out a wet laugh.
You taught me the courage of stars before you left
How light carries on endlessly even after death
With shortness of breath you explained the infinite
How rare and beautiful it is to even exist