The Girls

by Lori Lansens

  I can close my eyes and still smell the mingling of musk and skunk and mildew, an odor so pungent I felt it invade my pores. We’d forgotten to switch on the light at the top of the stairs, and halfway down it was too late. I made my way slowly, clutching the banister, relieved to reach the bottom. (Stairs are a challenge for Ruby and me—especially the narrow ones. We need to edge down sideways, plus, our situation prevents me from looking down at my feet, so navigating stairs in the dark can be frightening.)

  It took a moment for our eyes to focus in the dim light from a small window over the furnace. There was a paint-spattered laundry basket full of dirty clothes on the floor near an old wringer washer. Beside the washer was a broken dryer, and on top of the dryer was a large plastic pitcher filled with amber fluid, which I mistook at first for gasoline. I lifted the pitcher and sniffed. Urine.

  Beyond the washer and dryer was a room that we could see had been framed and drywalled, but not taped or painted. The room had a door, and the door had two locks. Secrets in. People out. Right now, the door was unlocked and open a crack. Ruby sneezed from the dust. I stopped, pinching her hard. We heard the sound of the screen door upstairs and the purr of the car starting up in the driveway. Then we heard the sound of the wrench on the pipes under the kitchen sink, and we knew Aunt Lovey had gone to get groceries while Uncle Stash continued with his plumbing.

  We approached Frankie’s room and, pushing the door wide open, stood blinking in the light from two high filthy windows. In the corner, on the damp cement floor, a blue bedspread snaked across a badly stained mattress. Next to the mattress was a stack of pornographic magazines, which kept company with a second plastic pitcher full of pee and a mountain of cigarette butts on a yolk-smeared bread plate. Across from the bed was a high-end vintage turntable, and two enormous speakers and several dozen vinyl albums in milk crates: Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, the Stones, David Bowie, the Clash. Ruby turned up her nose at the music, but I thought the albums were things of beauty. I sifted through them—Ziggy Stardust, and London Calling, and early Elvis Costello. I wondered if it was true that no compact disc could match the sound produced by that silver needle in the vinyl groove.

  On one of the speakers there was a half-smoked marijuana joint beside a half-drunk bottle of Southern Comfort. This fabled room of Frankie Foyle’s was really just a stinky boy’s room. And it was really time to go.

  There was another sound upstairs—a door opening. Then voices dripping through the floorboards.

  I froze. Ruby began to buck as if I were her hesitant horse. (Something she does that I hate.) I pinched her.

  “Boy,” Uncle Stash said, and we knew he was talking to Frankie.

  “Where’s my mother?” Frankie Foyle demanded.

  Uncle Stash did not like Frankie’s tone. “I don’t know where is your mother, boy.” We didn’t hear any more words, just something that sounded like growling. Frankie had saved his life, but Uncle Stash didn’t tolerate disrespect. Or maybe there was another dimension to their hostility that I didn’t yet imagine.

  The screen door banged open and screeched closed. We knew it was Uncle Stash who’d left. I didn’t have to see Ruby’s face. She was scared shitless. I moved toward the door. Ruby pressed against it slowly and gently. The door to the basement opened. We could barely breathe as Frankie’s boots started clomping down the stairs. We knew we couldn’t hold the door shut. So we stood in the middle of the room. And waited.

  In a moment the door was thrown open. And he was there, in the fading Saturday afternoon light, Frankie Foyle, shirtless, in green gym shorts. It occurred to me that his waist was so tapered it almost seemed girlish, and his hips so slender they were hardly hips at all. His gluteus muscles, hard and round, like half of a weight, like half of a wheel. There were dark curly hairs encircling his nipples, and a thatch of it beneath his belly button. Frankie Foyle was beautiful.

  What a silhouette Ruby and I must have been, there against the glare from those high windows. Frankie reared back with a quick intake of breath and some words that sounded like “What-the-fuck?” He looked from my face to my sister’s, his mouth hanging open, exposing his fine white teeth.

  Ruby smiled at him and offered, “Hi,” at the exact moment I raised my hand. (We feel like a freakin’ sideshow. I can’t stand it when we do that. Worse, I irrationally blame Ruby, who irrationally blames me.) It occurred to me that we were trespassing. What if he called the cops?

  “We weren’t gonna steal anything,” I offered.

  Frankie Foyle closed his mouth. His black eyes were red-rimmed and heavy. He moved past us into the room. I could smell his armpits. Burned pizza. I wondered if he was drunk or stoned or both.

  “Our uncle was fixing the pipes,” Ruby chirped. “We just came for the ride.”

  “In my bedroom?”

  “What?”

  “He was fixing the pipes in my bedroom?”

  Ruby mistook his lack of menace for friendliness. “No,” she laughed falsely. “In the kitchen, noodlehead.”

  “If I was you I wouldn’t call anybody anything head,” Frankie said.

  Ruby laughed hard, but I could feel tears in her chest.

  I pinched her.

  “Ouch!” Ruby cried and twisted a mole on my neck.

  “Don’t,” I warned quietly.

  Frankie gestured at the albums, which he could see had been moved. “Did you touch my music?”

  “Well, I didn’t touch them,” my sister sang.

  Frankie Foyle was looking straight at Ruby. “So why are you in my bedroom?”

  Ruby’s throat seized. And where seconds ago I’d been thinking, My sister’s too stupid to live, I was now the mother bear and Ruby my threatened cub.

  “Uncle Stash said to go down and look for leaks. We didn’t know your bedroom was down here,” I shot.

  “Everyone knows my bedroom is down here.” Frankie glared at me from behind his bangs.

  “Well, we’re not exactly everyone, in case you hadn’t noticed, and we didn’t know what everyone knew.”

  He seemed to have trouble processing what I said, then gave up altogether. He did not ask us to leave.

  “Uncle Stash would probably help you finish it,” I offered, gesturing at the bare walls. “Help you mud it and paint.”

  He grinned. “What are you, a contractor now?”

  “I watched Uncle Stash do the drywall when he renovated the kitchen for Aunt Lovey.”

  “Don’t tell him I got a room down here, all right?”

  “I won’t.”

  “He might make me tear it down.”

  “I won’t,” I repeated. “Anyway, he’s just the landlord, not the cops.”

  Ruby laughed nervously. “Yeah, he’s not the cops.”

  I pinched Ruby hard, again.

  “Ouch!” Ruby twisted the mole on my neck, again.

  “Don’t,” I warned quietly.

  “You guys are freaking me out,” Frankie said. He settled on the floor beside his stereo and began to sift through his albums. None of us spoke, which was fine with me, but Ruby couldn’t bear the silence.

  “Does your mom ever come down here?” Ruby asked, though she already knew the answer. Ruby and I had overheard Aunt Lovey and Nonna wondering about Mrs. Foyle’s new boyfriend from the Tim Hortons.

  Frankie shrugged. “She’s busy.”

  I shifted, feeling his loneliness. He didn’t want us to go.

  “My uncle might not come back for a while,” I said.

  “Your uncle can kiss my ass,” he said.

  Ruby grew quiet, but I laughed nervously. Then, to make my betrayal of Uncle Stash complete, I joked, “Uncle Stash might have benefited from a larger gene pool.”

  Neither Ruby nor Frankie understood the joke, but I felt bad anyway.

  “You can hang out or whatever,” Frankie said.

  “Here?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay in the basement, trapped by the layers of urine and cigarettes and another worse smell I wasn’t
sure of. “Did something die down here?”

  Frankie roared with laughter.

  I felt emboldened. “Seriously. It stinks really bad.”

  He stopped laughing. “I know,” he said. “My weed is so fuckin’ skunky.” He opened a gym bag on the floor nearby and showed us several large plastic bags with dry bundles of olive-green pot.

  “Wow. You gonna smoke all that?” Ruby breathed.

  “Smoke some. Sell some.”

  I felt thrilled by the illicit gym bag and Frankie’s nearness. “Can we sit on the bed?”

  “Whatever.”

  Ruby and I settled down on the mattress, leaning against some pillows near the wall. I was grateful to rest my back. Frankie grabbed for the half-smoked marijuana joint we’d seen before and lit the end with a match. The smell of the skunk weed filled the room. He offered the joint to Ruby and me. We declined simultaneously, waving our hands in the exact same way, feeling once again like the worst kind of circus act. “We should go,” I said, suddenly afraid of the smoke, afraid it would get into my clothes, my hair, infiltrate my mind. Aunt Lovey said drugs make you wild.

  Frankie Foyle smiled. “You don’t have to go. Shit, I bet you two don’t do shit. You’re not babies anymore.”

  “We do lots of shit,” I said. “It’s just, Aunt Lovey and Uncle Stash don’t know where we are and I’m worried they’ll worry.” I was just being responsible. Wasn’t I?

  Frankie Foyle smiled again. “Come on, you can hang out for twenty minutes.”

  Ruby gushed, “Yeah, Rose, we can hang out for twenty minutes.”

  Ruby was right. We could hang out. I relaxed, and when Frankie passed me the bottle of Southern Comfort, I took it and drank a little, surprised how sweet the liquor tasted. I’d only ever had sips of Uncle Stash’s cold Pilsners before. I liked the hard stuff better. Frankie offered the bottle to Ruby, but she would not, could not, drink the alcohol. She didn’t want to vomit on the mattress where the object of our obsession laid his head.

  “It’s so, like, weird . . .” Frankie spoke through the smoke in his lungs. I noticed that he was making more eye contact with Ruby than me and felt jealous.

  “It’s so weird . . .” Frankie said again, holding the smoke in his lungs. “I’ve known you guys for so long that you don’t really seem all that weird. And that’s weird.” He thought for a moment, then busted up with laughter. Finally he caught his breath. “Or maybe I’m just really fuckin’ high.”

  “We’re not weird,” I whispered.

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “That’s what he’s saying, Rose.”

  “We’re not weird. We just have a weird condition.”

  “I know.”

  “He knows, Rose! That’s what he’s saying.”

  Frankie took a long swig from the bottle, then, like a big dog we’d had all our lives, he bounded from the floor to the bed. Ruby and I squealed as the mattress caved in and we three sank to the middle. Frankie grabbed a remote unit from the tangle of blue bedspread and aimed it at his stereo. The arm on the turntable lifted and found the groove with a click. Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” I knew all the words. Frankie joined in, singing softly and soulfully. I sipped from the bottle of booze when Frankie passed it again. His knee was touching mine.

  Ruby hated that Frankie Foyle was smiling at me. And that we were sharing the Southern Comfort. And the music. “Where’d you get that?” Ruby asked, gesturing at the leather bracelet tied around Frankie’s wrist.

  Frankie lifted his arm to admire the thing himself. “Goat leather.”

  “From a girl?” Ruby asked.

  Frankie grunted.

  “Is she pretty?” Ruby asked.

  I pinched my sister as hard as I could, thinking she sounded like an idiot, worried that Frankie might send us away, but she didn’t even flinch. Instead she blurted, “Do you think I’m pretty, Frankie?”

  “You’re a mutt,” he said, laughing.

  “Seriously,” Ruby said.

  I hummed beside her.

  Frankie sat up a little, appraising her. “You’re . . . I don’t know . . . I mean, you’d be, you know, you’d be . . . if, you weren’t like that, you’d be all right I guess.”

  I felt Ruby’s blood rush to her cheeks. “Ya think?”

  “Sure.”

  “If I wasn’t like this?”

  “Yeah.”

  “All right enough to kiss?” Ruby asked, shocking me, and herself (not to mention that Frankie Foyle couldn’t have seen that coming). I glimpsed Frankie’s distorted reflection in the smooth plastic lid of the turntable. His mouth was hanging open again.

  “Well?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess.”

  “Kiss me,” Ruby said.

  I had never met this bold sister, this brave Ruby, this sister who desired a kiss so badly she risked the cruelest of rejections.

  “Fuck that.” Frankie laughed.

  “Afraid?” she taunted.

  “Yeah, I’m afraid.”

  “You won’t turn into a frog.”

  “What’ll I turn into?”

  “Kiss me and see.”

  There was a pause in which Ruby must have convinced Frankie with her eyes, or with her lips, or in some other mysterious way that women convince men to do surprising things because, in a moment, I heard a wet sound and knew that Frankie Foyle was kissing my twin sister. I felt sick from the booze, and the smoke, and the envy.

  Frankie pulled away from Ruby’s lips. “Too fuckin’ weird,” he said, swinging his head from side to side.

  “Aren’t I a good kisser?” Ruby was asking frankly.

  “You’re all right. It’s just weird.”

  “Once more. Come on,” Ruby said. “I won’t tell.”

  Frankie Foyle gestured my way without actually looking at me. “What about her?”

  I closed my eyes.

  “She won’t either. She won’t,” Ruby promised.

  Bob Dylan sang. Frankie kissed Ruby. I could not see but only hear the sound of their kisses as the needle on the stereo arm popped and snapped with dust. They kissed as the next track played. They kissed and kissed as that song finished and another began. I could hear from within the sound of Ruby swallowing. I thought I could feel Frankie’s tongue.

  I wondered if Uncle Stash or Aunt Lovey had realized their mistake by now. I hoped they hadn’t. I wanted Frankie Foyle to kiss me too and didn’t want to miss my turn.

  But Frankie didn’t kiss me. My turn never came. Frankie kept kissing Ruby. Even when his fingers crept spiderlike onto my shoulder and dropped down inside my blouse to find the nipple of my right breast. And even when his hand slid lower, traversing my flat stomach and thighs. And even when he shifted me, because he wasn’t quite comfortable, and even when he parted my long legs, Frankie kept kissing my sister.

  And even when . . .

  Even then.

  I didn’t protest. Neither did my sister. I believe we were struck by the strangeness of the moment. We’ve never discussed it directly, but the kissing must have been amazing for Ruby to have endured my part in the affair.

  After. Shivering. Ashamed. I asked Frankie for a tissue.

  “Use the bedspread,” he said.

  UNCLE STASH ARRIVED to find Ruby and me standing quietly by the living-room window. No harm done, he thought.

  The following Monday, when Aunt Lovey was at the hospital, we found our seat on the bus. We had practiced how we’d say hello, casually, in different ways at different times. Frankie Foyle barely grunted and would not meet our eyes. We never spoke another word to each other. I hated his regret.

  That’s how it ended.

  And yet, that wasn’t the end.

  It’s Ruby writing.

  At a time when Rose and I should be closer than ever, we’re more distant than we’ve ever been. She’s preoccupied by her writing. She also claims that I’m jealous of her book, and I can’t deny that’s true.

 
; Rose thinks my jealousy is because her book takes her attention away from me, but that’s not it at all. I’m jealous because I’m not a writer. Because I’m not anything. As the days and weeks race past I have this sinking feeling, like when I’ve heard a joke I didn’t get, or spent a night watching a movie I didn’t like, or done something the hard way that could have been done easy. What was the point?

  We’ve danced around the subject of our birthday and we still haven’t technically agreed on what to do, though I’ve convinced her to ditch the idea of getting drunk and at least agree to go out. I can let her decide about where to go because no matter where, I can have forgotten my purse at the library and I can bring her to the staff room and there it is. Surprise.

  Roz is making that spinach dip you put in the hollowed-out bread. Whiffer’s bringing drinks, which likely means a keg of draft beer and no-name cola, which I hate, but I don’t want to insult him. All of this planning and preparation has been done with a series of notes from me to the guests and back, and it’s been frustrating because I don’t always get answers when I need them and I have to make up excuses about why I need to see this person or that person. I have not spoken one single word out loud about this party and it’s killing me. I hope Rose appreciates all this trouble.

  I asked for another thing of Tatranax because I like to change purses and I’ve left the house twice without my syringe.

  I asked Rosie if we should go back to church. I think it’s important that she connect with something on a spiritual level. Rose says that writing about her life is giving it meaning. I wish it was giving her hope.

  I wonder if the fatigue I’m feeling is because of Rose’s aneurysm.

  Maybe I’m just tired because of planning the party.

  I’ll feel better when I get to work tomorrow. I always feel better at work. We’ve got a senior biology class from Leaford Collegiate coming in. They’re learning about cell division, and we’re the next case study. The teacher told me on the phone that the students had really enjoyed meeting a thalidomide man the week before. A thalidomide man. I bet he just loved being called that.

  Last night I dreamed I was at a pig roast, like the one Aunt Poppy had before we left Michigan. In my dream Uncle Stash was turning the huge pig on the spit. He tore a few pieces from the sizzling pig and asked Rose and me if we wanted some crackle. Rose pointed at the spit, and I saw there was a baby turning over the fire, perfect and white, with big sad eyes, but Uncle Stash told us not to look and that it’ll just kill him if we turn vegetarian. How’s that for dream symbolism?