3.

McKenna and Toby, five-year-old fraternal twins, stood with aching arms held above their heads. Each was battling bravely to keep Misty’s assigned leg aloft. Misty lay undrugged and pale on the queen-sized bed, bearing down. Thick vines of sweat-heavy hair gave her head the appearance of an unpruned plant. Murray slid ice chips between her lips, toweled her brow, looked bored and distracted even during her contractions.

The midwife Sheenie, a freckle-ridden redhead with a stout body and man-hands, gave encouragement. “That’s a good girl,” she said. “You’re doing it, honey. We’re gonna get that baby out of there.” She repeated her mantra every ten minutes, every two minutes, every ten seconds. The contractions rose again and again. Misty bucked on the mattress. Sheenie monitored the baby’s heart rate when she could, but mostly she bustled—never rushed, never harried—from one end of the bedroom to the other, her hips and buttocks bumping McKenna and Toby’s shoulders as she brought warm compresses and Styrofoam cups of ice. She rubbed lavender oil onto Misty’s naked belly. Every half-hour, Sheenie reached three fingers inside to “move things around.” Misty screamed like a raw brake.

McKenna, gripping her mother’s calf, couldn’t stifle her own yelp. Her weakness embarrassed her. She looked down at her socked feet.

Blood vessels branched over Misty’s cheeks. Then branches formed atop the original branches. Eventually, she was the color of an eggplant.

When McKenna and Toby could take no more, as their arms began to burn, tremble, and collapse, as they began to fear that their mother’s face was literally going to explode . . . just then, a swirl of matted yellow hair appeared between Misty’s legs. Then a whole head. A squished face. A gush of blood and water that rusted the twins’ tube socks.

Like magic, Audrey was a reality—the baby sister the twins had envisioned for so long.

There she was, a slick, glistening body, a crying mouth, tiny legs bicycling.

Legs with no feet attached.

The midwife hurried the footless infant onto Misty’s bare chest. Murray cooed, smooched the bloody cheek. He allowed his index finger, which to the newborn was the size of a baseball bat, to be grabbed. McKenna and Toby stepped around Sheenie as she scissored the cord. They leaned, straining to see inside. Perhaps the feet were still on the way.

No such luck.

“You’ll need to help out around here,” Murray told the twins, days later. “You’re old enough to pitch in. No more free lunch.”

This news caused McKenna so much anxiety that she messed her pants. Toby smelled it. He glared.

Their father didn’t seem to notice. He kept talking, flapping like a bird as he tried halfheartedly to take flight from the front cement steps and over the Bader’s dilapidated two-story across the street. Murray had strapped on the latest prototype of his Man Wings—this particular untested pair built from wax paper, tin foil, and eight hundred melted-together plastic Sporks.

“McKenna, you’re in charge of baths. Three a week. Don’t get soap in her eyes, and pay special mind to the stumps. Be gentle but firm, dig into those crevices like you mean it, and don’t let her drown.” He paused long enough to ignite a Kool 100 and kick his flip-flops onto the lawn, for less ballast. He resumed flapping, the white cigarette hanging from his lips. He was doing a dry run, a “flap check,” trying to get a feel for the wings and how they responded to his body before the Actual Launch Date. (The Actual Launch Date never came. FYI.)

McKenna and Toby stood on the grass near the steps. Toby, like a Wimbledon ball-boy, sprinted to retrieve the discarded flip-flops. McKenna watched her father, anticipating with each swoosh of the wings that he might actually rise off the stoop, take to the sky, and never return.

Murray continued with his instructions: “And space them out, okay? Or else it won’t count. Like for example Monday, Wednesday, Friday. That’s not a rigid schedule, understand? Just a ‘for instance.’ Nobody’s trying to lock you into anything. No contract except the one you draw up in your own head. I trust you. Pick different days! Have fun with it! You’re a smart girl. You’ll figure it out.”

McKenna hated her sister’s stumps, the little knobs of skin where the feet were supposed to be. Like drawstring purses cinched tight. The mere mention of them upset McKenna’s stomach.

Later that night, she tried to get Toby to switch jobs.

McKenna’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and she could see in the adjoining bed that Toby was also awake, studying the ceiling, perhaps imagining, as McKenna was, two-week-old Audrey walking acrobatically on her hands, ascending a flight of stairs, entering Heaven for all eternity.

McKenna tried to make her whisper sound casual, conversa-tional—any way but desperate: “Baths are so easy. And you love the water.”

“I love swimming,” Toby answered. “Not water. No way I’m washing Stumpy.”

“You want to change her diapers? That’s nasty!”

“They can’t smell as bad as you.”

It was a low blow. McKenna had no response. She felt her face blushing. Despite being triple-wrapped in Bounty and sprayed with Misty’s patchouli oil, the soiled underwear McKenna had stashed behind her dresser (until smuggling it to the toilet before bedtime) had filled the room with rank. Her neck itched with perspiration. She tried to sleep. Toby snored for hours.