Unlikely Animals

On the night of “The Inaugural Heroes Against Heroin Spaghetti Dinner,” organized by Percy Eakin, Emma sees a photograph of Crystal on the memorial table alongside the other local overdose victims. She angrily confronts Percy Eakin, then immediately feels guilty, remembering that he has recently lost his daughter.

Auggie gets up to give his speech, and Emma learns that her brother had attempted suicide, jumping off a bridge, but changed his mind and swam to safety. Her father drove him to the rehabilitation facility and slept outside for five days in his truck while his son detoxed. Everyone looks for Clive in the audience, but he is nowhere to be seen.

Percy Eaklin releases the football club’s symbol, a rooster called Ulysses. Ulysses sees the boy who dresses up as a rooster to act as a mascot for the team and flies into his face. Rasputin the fox, who Auggie has smuggled to the dinner in his backpack, leaps out and kills the rooster, spraying blood all over the place. Auggie is mortified, but his audience is appreciative.

Clive has picked the pockets of several audience members in order to procure a credit card with which to engage the psychic. Emma sees that he is sitting on a box marked “Crystal Nash Trailer” and finds that it is full of her friend’s clothes. They immediately alert the police inspector, but the trailer park owner, Graham Leeches, claims that the clothes were left in the trailer, and he is simply donating them to the shelter.

Auggie is worried that Clive should not be left alone and suggests that Emma take him into school as a teaching assistant.

Emma brings Clive in for his first day as her assistant. The janitor arrives with the television so that the class can watch the Wish trial.

At home, Emma tells Auggie she feels vengeful toward dealers such as Sid Wish. Auggie makes fun of her but then thanks her sincerely for helping him have a “second chance” as a director. Emma is moved, but the siblings’ heart-to-heart is interrupted when Clive calls out that there is a chipmunk in the cabin.

Emma and Clive arrive to find the pupils solemn, as it would have been Isabella Eaklin’s birthday. Isabella leaves Clive to tell them about Harold while she goes to order cupcakes. Looking for craft materials to make cards for Isabella, Emma finds a bucket marked “balloons.” She finds that the balloons are filled with heroin.

Emma calls the principal and lets the children watch Harvey, one of her father’s favorite films, in which the lead character, an alcoholic played by James Stewart, is accompanied everywhere by a seven-foot-tall imaginary rabbit. The children tell the principal that she is showing him the film to explain what is wrong with Clive. She speculates that it is a film about the enormous and inescapable pain of grief, then wonders if Harvey might simply be a real invisible rabbit.

The police discover large quantities of heroin stashed around the school. When Emma finally manages to get through to Auggie, he tells her he has got a new day job, working in a timber yard where he had been buying woods of the set of Titanic!: The Musical. The children are frightened that they have been somehow exposed to the drug, and Emma does her best to reassure them. When they continue to refer to her healing powers, she confesses that she thinks the bird was eaten by mice. The children conclude that if she is not a healer, she is at least a “protector” (242), and they still love her.

Leanne Hatfield approaches Emma, apologizes for her words about Crystal, and tells her about Isabella’s final days and how she was never allowed to see her. Leanne gives Emma a frog to symbolize her grief. Another pupil, Olivia, proposes naming the frog Terry, and Emma reflects that she now has a name for her complex emotions.

In the car, Clive expresses his admiration for Emma’s high responsibility role with her pupils. She challenges him about his affair and he says that, more than a distraction from Auggie’s drug problem, it was a distraction from his awareness that he was dying. He tells Emma he is proud of her—words that the Maple Street cemetery residents know are even more important than “I love you” when uttered by parents. Emma thinks about how much she will miss her father.

Clive is popular with the children and school and at the musical rehearsals, although Leanne and Auggie have to remind him not to talk to the ghost of Harold on stage. Seeing her father’s close relationship with her charges and worried about the effect his sickness and passing might have on them, Emma finds herself praying that he will last out the school year.

Clive and Emma find a man sitting in a white van outside the cabin, and Clive informs Emma that this is the private investigator he hired some months ago. The private investigator, who Clive has clearly been pestering despite his credit cards being blocked and the investigator’s repeated attempts to close the case, has come to share the information about Crystal in his possession before he blocks Clive’s number. He shows them a series of photos of people going into Crystal’s trailer. He takes these as evidence that Crystal was working as a prostitute, but Emma realizes that her friend had gone back into the healing business. As he prepares to leave, the private investigator commiserates with Clive for his wife’s departure, leading Clive to finally become aware of what has happened.

Clive falls into depression and refuses to get out of bed for two days. He finally gets up when he concludes that the best way to convince his wife to come back is to show her what a good father he is being. He is determined to support Auggie with Titanic!: The Musical.

Ingrid receives a text from her husband inviting her to the musical and suggesting that Gary Wheeler is “not a very good doctor” because he is “still dying” (257). She accepts the invitation. She also writes to Emma that the damage to their home has been repaired and they can move back.