The Decoding of Lana Morris

by Laura McNeal

  Something occurs to Lana, something she’s been waiting to ask. “So tell me, Chester,” she says to Chet, “what Above Average Novelty came in the Above Average Novelty box?”

  Chet’s face immediately and intensely colors.

  “Ha!” Lana says. “It’s something embarrassing. Tell, tell, tell.”

  Chet’s discomfort doesn’t abate. “The truth is, it wasn’t for me.”

  This time Lana actually laughs. “That is the lamest of the lame,” she hoots. “That is the mother of all lameness. It wasn’t for you. Who was it for, then?”

  Chet looks down. His forehead is pink and glazed with sweat.

  “Speak, Chester,” she says, with real fun in her voice, but something happens then to save Chet.

  Behind them, a screen door creaks open and bangs closed. They both turn to look. Across the lawn, Mrs. Stoneman is standing alone on the Winterses’ front porch holding her bag in one hand, waiting.

  34.

  “She’s coming back,” Tilly says. “She’s not leaving.”

  Garth sits hunched on the ottoman in the front room, clutching his Popeye doll, twisting the Popeye head. Garth’s eyes look frantic.

  “Tilly’s right,” Lana says. “Everything’s okay. Everything’s all right.”

  But the truth is, nothing feels okay or all right. She wonders what’s gone wrong with the sketch, what she put in or left out that wasn’t right. She wants to put her arm around Garth or hold his hand, but she knows she can’t. “How about an Otter Pop?” she says, and Tilly says, “Yes!” but it’s as if Garth doesn’t even hear.

  Lana shepherds him into the kitchen, but when she lays a turquoise Otter Pop in front of him, he doesn’t look at it.

  “C’mon, Garth-man,” she says. “It’s turquoise. Your personal fave.”

  He just keeps twisting Popeye’s head around and around, and Tilly, almost done with her red Otter Pop, says, “Can I have Garth’s?”

  A minute or so later, Veronica thump-thump-thumps, and Lana goes up. “Dishes,” Veronica says, and nods at the tray of dirty breakfast dishes. “And this.”

  She presents Lana with a long list of grocery items. “Buy the generic in the biggest sizes, and take the Snicks to help you carry,” she says.

  As Lana carries the tray off, Veronica says, “And go by the drugstore and pick up the prescription Dr. Gooch is calling in for me.”

  Lana stares at her. “And still be back by Thursday?”

  Today is Wednesday.

  Veronica in her iciest tone says, “Very droll.”

  On the way downstairs, Lana detours to her room, lays the breakfast tray on her bed, and slides out the Ladies Drawing Kit. She finds her drawing of the woman on one side of the door about to knock and the boy with his Popeye doll on the other side of the door waiting. It’s skillful and seems complete and yet something is wrong with it. That much Lana knows. Something’s wrong. But what? The faces, maybe. Garth and his mother look apprehensive. They don’t look happy enough.

  Downstairs something crashes. From the next room, Veronica yells, “What was that?” and from the bottom of the stairs, Tilly yells, “Lana!”

  Quickly Lana grabs the pencil and, without waiting for the calm feeling to come over her, she sketches smiles onto the faces of Garth and his mother, but she knows at once it won’t work. She has the feeling you can’t change anxious faces to happy ones. Even with the smiles drawn in, they don’t look that happy.

  “Lana!” Tilly bawls again, and this time Lana answers.

  “Coming,” she yells.

  35.

  A half hour later, after cleaning up the pieces of a pudding bowl (broken by the Snicks while eating the pancake batter out of it with their fingers), Lana, Carlito, Tilly, Alfred, and Garth set out in single file for the market, a long twenty-minute walk. Taking the Snicks someplace on foot, Whit once told Lana, is like herding a pack of cats.

  The main store in Two Rivers is Rodeo Meats. It always makes Lana think she’s buying the rejects from the Dawes County Rodeo—roping calves whose legs got broken, broncs too old to buck, Brahma bulls too easy to ride. The aisles are narrow and short. It’s not like shopping at one of the big supermarkets in Lincoln or Rapid City, where the inside light is brighter than the sun and you can fit three shopping carts side by side and there are thousands of things to choose from. At first Rodeo Meats seemed dumpy and puny to Lana, but now she thinks it’s almost perfect. The Snicks only like the most basic foods is one reason, and another is that the Snicks tend to drift off and the one thing you can’t do in a place as small as Rodeo Meats is lose a person.

  Today, as usual, Carlito touches things as they go along: bags of pasta, boxes of cookies, cans of soup. Alfred makes polite comments. “That’s cute,” he says of a little plastic bag of jacks. Garth carries Popeye and walks with his head down and his feet pointed outward in a kind of a shuffle. Tilly says, “I’m smart, Lana. I’m helpful. I can shop. Yes.”

  Lana’s given Alfred the list because he’s the only one who can read. “F-f-f-frankfurters,” he says.

  When Lana makes a list, she organizes it according to their route through the store, but Veronica’s list has them going every which way. She’s reading over Alfred’s shoulder, looking for something canned, when Tilly grabs three big cans of generic chicken noodle soup. “Soup!” Tilly says, and, amazingly, Lana finds it on the list.

  “Thumbs-up, Tilly,” Lana says, trying to herd them to the back of the store, to the meat counter. Ground beef’s on the list, and she tries to turn Carlito and the cart at the same time. The only way to keep Carlito with you in a store is to keep one of his hands on the handle of the shopping cart, as if he’s helping you drive. Finally they reach the glass case of red meat.

  “Hi,” Lana says to the butcher behind the counter, a man with huge eyebrows who is checking out each of the Snicks like he’s never seen them before. “Are you new?” Lana asks.

  “As opposed to old?” the man says, but there’s no fun in his voice. He’s staring at Carlito, whose mouth hangs open, and at Garth, who is moaning quietly. The butcher keeps staring at them, something you might expect from a five-year-old, not a fifty-something. Besides the bushy eyebrows, the man also has stray hairs sprouting from his nose and ears.

  “Five pounds of hamburger,” Lana says, and this at least pries the man’s eyes from Carlito and Garth. He’s staring now at Lana. “Say again?”

  She repeats her order, and when the butcher begins to grab the ground meat from the browning part of the loaf, she points to the fresher stuff and says, “From the front if you wouldn’t mind too much.”

  The butcher glares at Lana, but he takes it from the front. Lana knows that this hairy-eared butcher thinks old browning beef is just about right for the Snicks, and she also knows that if Whit were here, he’d introduce each of the Snicks to the butcher, maybe tell him what each of the Snicks is good at, turn it all into a festive little event that leaves everybody feeling just a little better about themselves, even the hairy-eared butcher, who, at the moment, is sullenly taping the hamburger into brown paper. Lana glances at her list and asks Tilly if she can go get the ketchup.

  “You bet!” Tilly says, “I can shop, Lana, yes,” and sets off for the wrong side of the store.

  “Other way, Tilly,” Lana says, running after her and gently turning her toward the condiments.

  Alfred is standing still, holding his grimy old tote bag. “I n-n-need to go to the bathroom, Lana,” he says.

  “Okay,” Lana says. But Tilly hasn’t come back yet. “Tilly?” she calls, loud but not too loud.

  To her relief, Tilly comes back grinning and holding the ketchup. It’s the fourteen-ouncer, the tiniest bottle the store sells. They need the forty-eight-ounce Western Family at least, and the sixty-four would be better.

  “Excellent, Tilly!” she says. “Go see if they have a bigger one, too, okay? I’m going to take the guys to the bathroom.”

  Alfred doesn’t really need help, but Lana
stays nearby because it’s an employee bathroom and way back in the stockroom, where the others could get into trouble.

  One minute, two minutes, three minutes pass.

  The stockroom is cool, at least. Garth has stopped moaning, but he keeps his eyes down and twists the head of his Popeye around and around. Carlito runs his hand over each stack of plastic-wrapped boxes, then moves to a row of watermelons, which he touches as if baptizing a baby.

  “You okay in there, Alfred?” Lana asks.

  “Yes,” Alfred calls back. “I’m w-w-wiping myself.”

  Just a little too much information, Lana thinks.

  By the time she’s made sure Alfred has washed his hands and Carlito has blessed all the watermelons, Lana’s begun to worry about Tilly, and, sure enough, when they come back out of the stockroom, she’s not in the ketchup aisle. She’s in the cereal aisle, sitting on a produce crate, eating Cap’n Crunch from a box she’s opened. “Where were you guys?” she says.

  Lana checks her watch. She’s now been in Rodeo Meats for thirty-five minutes and they’ve only gotten half their list. “Okay,” she says. “Listen up. If you all follow me in a single line until I finish, and if you don’t fight or stop, and if we’re done in ten minutes, I’ll buy powdered doughnuts for the walk home.”

  The Snicks are quiet for a moment, then Tilly says, “Lots of ifs,” and Garth says, “ ’Awk-lit,” which Lana knows means he wants chocolate doughnuts instead of powdered.

  “We’re wasting time,” Lana says, and begins arranging the Snicks one after another, each holding the shirttail in front, except for Garth, who will only touch the front of the cart that Lana pushes, so that before long they’re moving through Rodeo Meats like a slow-motion conga line, Lana tossing in items whenever she finds them. It takes them fifteen minutes to finish, but Lana buys doughnuts anyway, the variety pack, and leads the conga line to the checkout stand.

  When they stop, Carlito breaks formation, walks up to Lana, and reaches out to bless her shoulder. Lana pats his hand and smiles at the checker, a big woman named Francine who’s always been friendly to Lana.

  “Just shoot me,” Lana says.

  The checker laughs. “Honey, you won’t know real misery till you try marriage on for size.”

  Alfred’s picked up a National Enquirer next to the candy display and in his thick voice reads the headline: DWARF PARENTS BEAR GIANT BABY. He pronounces dwarf as “dorf” and baby as “babby.” When he starts to read the next headline, Lana gently takes it from his hand and puts it back in the rack.

  “How’s Veronica doing?” Francine the checker asks.

  “She’s good,” Lana says.

  “She cried today,” Tilly says. “She’s had a personal tragedy. She’s handicapped now. That’s why she’s sad.”

  Francine wears a green apron with a tag on it that says Hi! I’m Francine, and it goes through Lana’s mind that name tags might be a good idea for the Snicks to wear when Mrs. Stoneman comes back, so she can start putting names with faces.

  Francine rings up the hamburger and says, “I didn’t know Veronica was that bad.”

  “She’s getting better,” Lana says hurriedly. “She’s under a doctor’s care, taking it easy”

  Francine looks up from the register. “Dr. Gooch, right?”

  “I’m not real sure,” Lana says. “I haven’t personally seen him.” The one thing Lana knows about small towns is you don’t pass out any information you don’t have to.

  “And she lost her driver’s license, I heard,” Francine says.

  Lana forces a laugh and says Francine knows more about it than she does.

  As Francine rings things up, Lana considers pocketing some of the change, enough to redeem her two-dollar bill from Miss Hekkity’s, but what would be the use? Veronica will check the receipt and count the change down to the penny.

  The doors open behind Lana, and Francine flicks a glance that way before she starts with the bagging. She’s halfway through when Carlito goes behind the checkout stand to bless her shoulder. She seems used to it and lets him reach out and touch. “Okay, doll,” she says. “Thanks for the blessing.”

  A sound behind them, a snickering sound, and when Lana glances back, she sees Trina and Spink leaning against the magazine stand, staring at Lana and the others, grinning with the kind of malicious keenness they might direct at a circus sideshow.

  Lana turns quickly back around. It feels suddenly hot here toward the front of the store. Her legs are sticking together.

  Francine turns to Alfred while Lana is counting money from her wallet. “And how are you, young fella? Did you get everything on your list?”

  Lana can feel the eyes of Trina and Spink swarming all over them, as clammy as the heat.

  “Yeah,” Alfred says, thickly but without stuttering.

  “No Baby Ruth bar today? Aren’t you the king of the Baby Ruths?”

  “I d-d-don’t like ’em anymore,” Alfred says. “They make my poop not come out.” He gestures behind him to demonstrate, as if she might not otherwise know what he’s talking about, and at once they are pelted with the hard derisive laughter of Trina and Spink.

  Francine shoots a glance toward the magazines and then turns to Alfred in a nice unruffled way. “Then don’t you buy them, sugar.”

  “I w-w-won’t,” Alfred says, “I’d rather p-poop,” and this sends Spink and Trina into another dimension of hard, raucous laughter, their bodies rocking, beating their thighs, gasping for air.

  Lana, face reddening, hands over the money and waits for the change, but Francine is looking tensely away from her. She’s staring at Trina.

  “G’wan, git out of here,” she says. Which, if anything, seems to heighten the amusement of Trina and Spink. They stand grinning back at Francine. “I mean it now,” Francine says. “I’ll call Griff Terwilliger over here and I mean right now!”

  Griff Terwilliger, Lana knows, is the local sheriff and not an especially terrifying figure.

  Still, Trina and Spink stumble out the door laughing, and Lana watches them disappear. By taking four bags herself and giving one to each of the Snicks, she’s able to move all the groceries out the glass doors. The drugstore’s a half block off, and Lana wants to re-form the conga line, but she sees that Trina and Spink have joined up with K.C. and another kid she’s never seen before, and they’re leaning against the post office, in the shade, across the street, waiting.

  36.

  Fly away home, Lana thinks.

  Like the ladybug rhyme about the house on fire. But she has to get Veronica’s prescription.

  “Okay, behind me, single file, no stopping,” she says, and begins to lead the line of Snicks through the glaring sun toward Helton’s Drugs. She can feel the eyes of Trina’s group on them, but Lana looks straight ahead, like a horse with blinders.

  “Hey, is that Foster?” It’s K.C.’s voice, loud, pretending to talk to the others.

  “I do believe,” Spink says, “it’s Foster and her spaz cadets.” Then slowly, loudly, with perfect enunciation: “The wisdom of the mothers who have abandoned these humatoids cannot be overstated.”

  Lana hopes the Snicks can’t understand what Spink is saying, but she can feel them slowing behind her, and she turns to take Carlito’s arm and press him forward. “Straight line,” she says. “No stopping.”

  Across the street, Spink gives the boy she’s never seen before a friendly shove, which for a moment moves the boy out into the sun. He’s short-legged and rumpish, with a big upper body and flowing blond hair. He reminds Lana of a Shetland pony.

  “Make way for ducklings!” K.C. yells, and then revises: “Make way for ugly ducklings!”

  It’s Tilly who stops first, and then the rest have stopped, too. Tilly stares with theatrical petulance across the street and Alfred without emotion says, “Th-th-they’re mean,” and hugs his grocery bag to his chest.

  “C’mon, c’mon,” Lana says, and the line again begins fitfully to move.

  Spink s
ays, “Spaz cadets on parade!” and K.C. lets fly with a wolf whistle.

  Tilly stops, plants her white sneakers, and points her finger at Trina and the group. She’s wearing multi-pocketed pink clam diggers and a pink floral blouse, something somebody’s great-aunt would wear on a bus trip. “You can’t call us spazzes,” she says. “No, you can’t. I learned that in school. You go home and sit in your room. You go right now.”

  Which is of course exactly the kind of entertainment K.C.’s group has come to see, and their laughter and hoots are loud and flinty. Trina is leaning against the brick wall. She puts one hand nonchalantly in the pocket of her tight denim skirt, and when the laughter dies, she says, “I won’t be going to my room just yet, spazter child, but when I do, I won’t be heading back to a home chockful of spazter kids who are just as weird as your spazter self.”

  “Come on, Tilly,” Lana says. “Don’t talk to them.”

  Lana leads the Snicks forward and pulls open the pharmacy door, props it against her shoe, and herds them into the air-conditioned drugstore, grateful for the little tinkling bell, the sudden coolness, the smell of soaps and antiseptics and mint chewing gum. She’s just told the clerk that she’s there to pick up Veronica Winters’s prescription when one of the Snicks says something Lana can’t understand. She turns. “What?”

  “ ’Ito gone,” Garth says, and he gestures toward the street.

  Through the tinted glass, Lana sees Carlito crossing the street toward Trina’s group. There aren’t many cars in Two Rivers, but she’s scared for him just the same. Lana rushes to the door, but Carlito is already across the street, like a boy doing an impression of Dr. Frankenstein’s monster. He moves openmouthed toward Trina, arm outstretched.

  Lana knows what he’s going to do. He’s going to bless Trina.

  “Carlito!” Lana shouts from the pharmacy sidewalk, wondering whether to run forward or stay with the other three. The outside air is sticky hot and smells of cinnamon gum and her own sweat. Carlito reaches out to Trina. He’s going for her shoulder, Lana knows, but Trina flinches back and his hand grazes her breast.