“Auntie Rosa! Auntie Rosa!” Iris jumped up and down to jiggle free the words stuck in her throat. “Flying Fantasy is our horse! We won! We won!” Auntie Rosa’s jaw dropped, and she made the sign of the cross.
“Well, I’ll be a son of a gun! Let me see, honey!” her father said, smiling and shaking his head, as he took the crumbled betting slip from Iris’s sweaty hand. “Jeepers Cripes! You did win!” he exclaimed after examining the slip. They all started laughing and clapping their hands.
“How much did we win, Dad?!” Iris asked.
“Let’s see, the odds were twenty-five to one, and you bet two dollars…” he began.
“And so?!”
“And so, young lady, that means you and Auntie Rosa have won FIFTY DOLLARS! And that’s plus the original two you bet!”
Auntie Rosa shrieked, Iris squealed, Uncle Alfred guffawed, her mother and father congratulated the lucky pair, everyone hugged everyone else. Everyone except for Grandma Whitacre, who watched from her seat, chuckling softly with amusement, her watery blue eyes glistening below her penciled brows, and Lily, who sat next to her, staring dejectedly at her own betting slip.
“I didn’t win anything, did I Grandma?” Lily asked. The commentator had not even mentioned her horse, Clueless, which had lagged far behind the others throughout the race.
“No, li’l Lily. Not this time. Y’all picked a loser.” Grandma Whitacre replied. She squeezed her granddaughter’s shoulder, then hooked a finger under her chin to tilt her head up. “It’s like that with lots of things in life,” she said, looking into Lily’s eyes. “Y’all just have to keep right on betting, even if things don’t always turn out right the first time ‘round.”
“That’s OK,” replied Lily. “I don’t think I like the races anyway.”
“C’mon everyone!” Iris cried. “Let’s go celebrate!” Seeing the crestfallen look on Lily’s face, Iris sat down next to her and took her hand in hers.
“We won, Lily!” she said. “Can you believe how lucky we are?”
“You won, Iris,” Lily replied. “You and Auntie Rosa and your Flying Fantasy.”
“But I’ll share with you,” she said, not knowing exactly why should she feel so guilty about her good fortune, but realizing that she did.
“It’s not the same thing,” Lily said.
“I can’t help it if I won and you didn’t, Lily,” Iris said. It wasn’t fair for Lily to ruin the festive mood by being a sourpuss. “You should be happy one of us won, and that I want to share.”
“Taking something someone gives you is not the same as winning it yourself.”
“Well, suit yourself. But Auntie Rosa and I are treating everyone to hot fudge sundaes at Howard Johnson’s. I’m sure the ice cream will taste just as good, no matter who pays for it.”
With her split of twenty-five dollars already burning a hole in her pocket, (she vowed to return to her bank the original dollar used for the bet), Iris thought of all the ways in which her winnings might change her life. She would buy her very own copy of “Leavin’ on a Jet Plane” which she and Lily would spend hours listening to on the record player in the sunroom, imagining all the places they would fly to, and no one could kick them out, at least not until Grandma Whitacre left. And if Iris’s mother got her way, and the whole family went on a real vacation to a real lake where Iris could finally swim to her heart’s content, she would celebrate by buying everyone cold, frothy root beers, and hot dogs piled high with pickle relish at one of those roadside stands. And when autumn rolled around, she just might turn up at ballet class with a brand new pair of pink slippers on her feet.
This summer was starting to shape up fine indeed.
16. Lily
Now that Iris was taking dance lessons at The Limelight Dance boutique, she would pack her things into the blue valise every Friday, and get on the city bus, disappearing until the next day. Although Lily wondered why she wasn’t going along, she never asked about it. You got what you got; asking for extra stuff only made you feel worse if the answer was “no.” And it usually was.
Lily would occupy herself in Iris’ absence by singing along to the songs on Henry’s Beatles albums, practicing playing jacks, and by wandering the vast yard on Chestnut Crest, often spending hours on the swing set, or making up stories like they had on TV in the afternoons and acting out all the parts herself, using the slab of concrete they referred to as “the patio” for a stage.
No one ever really sat on the patio, partly because it was set back so far from the house, but mostly because of its distinct lack of anything remotely resembling patio furniture, unless you counted a stack of three rubber car tires, a deflated basketball, a badminton racket with no strings, and a red and white tricycle with a rusted silver bell at the handlebars. Their patio didn’t look anything like the patios on TV, which were filled with people sipping brown drinks out of short glasses and nibbling on tiny hot dogs. Lily’s mother never even had one friend over, let alone enough to fill up a whole room. Still, Lily could offer no other name for the pitted and crumbling slab of concrete. It certainly wasn’t a patio, but neither was it anything else.
In the winter, Lily’s father lined the patio with heavy duty plastic sheeting, which he then anchored down with two-by-fours that were laid to frame the perimeter, creating a curb on all four sides. Using the garden hose, he filled the area with water, and announced that they were now the only children on the block to have their very own private ice skating rink. The children all made clumsy attempts at skating on it, mostly because their father’s enthusiastic effort had evoked a sort of grateful pity in them and they couldn’t bear to allow the deed to go unappreciated. The ice that formed there was at least as pitted as the concrete that lay beneath, but Iris, Lily, William, Charles, and Ricci all donned whatever ice skates they could find in random boxes in the chicken coop, got on the ice and stumbled and tumbled until it grew too dark and cold, at which point they would haphazardly toss their skates back into the boxes and race to the house for hot chocolate and buttered toast sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar.
Lily’s father was ever seeking new ways to devise such amenities - not necessarily to compensate for any shortcomings in his ability to purchase the things other families enjoyed, but to prove that just about anything could be fashioned out of two-by-fours, duct tape, elbow grease, and a little old-fashioned ingenuity.
The summer after they had moved in, their father installed a basketball pole and hoop at the far end of the patio, using the sidewall of the chicken coop as a back stop, which prevented errant balls from rolling off into the woods. This addition made them “the only children on the block to have their very own private basketball court.” To hear the children talk about their house - with a patio, ice skating rink, and private basketball court - all wrapped up in an address as stately as 75 Chestnut Crest - it sounded grander than any house could hope to be. Since the children rarely invited friends over, there was little contrary evidence of the run-down, worn-out farmhouse leftover from another era. But no matter how poetically inclined you were, there was simply no elegant way to present the idea of having a chicken coop in your backyard.
The chicken coop looked almost cheery from the street. It was a quaint white building, with a screen door and five windows with red shutters across the front, a proud row of purple irises planted along the foundation, and a red roof that was so low you could pick icicles from the gutter without even jumping. But inside it was dark - stifling hot in summer, freezing in winter.
Even though they called it a chicken coop, the structure was lifeless, save for the occasional Capotosti child who rummaged there for the remnants of a croquet set, a box of Christmas decorations, or for an air pump to inflate a basketball, which – despite her disdain for going inside - was what brought Lily there late one Friday afternoon.
Being in the chicken coop was worse than being in a basement, because at least in a basement you were in the belly of a living place; the sounds and rhythms of life beat
all around you, the plumbing flowed and the furnace hummed. In a basement you could hear people walking up above you, and you knew that all you had to do was head for the stairs and in an instant you would be transported back to safety. But in the chicken coop there was no life, no heartbeat; it was empty despite the junk crammed in from floor to ceiling. There was no back door, no telephone; you were alone, a long run away from the house.
The boxes that filled the chicken coop were stacked in rows, forming an aisle from the doorway to the far right corner, and then a second aisle back up from right to left, like a grocery store for ghosts who came to shop for misplaced memories. Every box was clearly marked in Carlo Capotosti’s hand with a thick black marker, but the contents rarely corresponded with the labels. The only thing Lily could be sure of was that if she wanted to find the air pump, she should look in every box except the one marked, “air pump.”
Inside the box marked “extension cords,” Lily found family photo albums - books of baby pictures of Alexander, John, and Jasmine, a few of Violet, one or two of Louis and Henry, and then one small book whose blank pages were punctuated with photos of Marguerite. The box marked “Christmas decorations,” was filled with moldy text books that were saved and stored merely because they were books, and not because they might be useful in the future.
Books were the one commodity of plenty in the Capotosti household. They filled every available slot in every available bookcase and curio stand. Some books were permanent fixtures in the house, such as The Taming of the Shrew, Catcher in the Rye, and other high school reading assignments that were saved in the hopes that another child might be assigned the same reading list. Some books only visited as Lily’s mother opened their home to armfuls of There’s a Wocket in my Pocket, Stuart Little, and The Tale of Peter Rabbit through weekly visits to the Chili library. On winter evenings, Lily’s mother would sit in the center of the sofa with a pile of books at her feet, and the children would all scramble to settle around her. Lily always vied for one of the only two spots directly next to her, not to get a good view of the pictures (she had outgrown the picture books that Ricci so loved), but to experience the rare delight of being tucked in among a blanket of little brothers, snugly nestled under their mother’s embrace, listening to her voice as it transported them to far-off lands where rabbits talked and children went on fantastic adventures.
“Whadya lookin for?”
There was no lighting inside the chicken coop except for the shafts of sunlight that slipped in through the narrow windows across the southern facing wall, and Lily’s eyes had not yet made the adjustment. She could only see a large dark silhouette standing in the doorway.
“Who is it?” said Lily.
“It’s just me, silly.” Lily recognized the voice, and as he moved away from the door, Lily could discern the features of Henry’s face, although the words he used and the sweetness with which he spoke them were foreign.
Henry was the only big brother who never hit Lily or played torture games. In fact, he actually didn’t communicate with anyone. All he ever wanted to do was go off by himself and play the guitar, which was kind of silly since the whole point of playing music was for people to hear it. It was almost as though Henry were a visitor instead of a brother.
Henry’s withdrawn nature unnerved Lily. When someone was mad at you, you expected them to hit you or scream at you and when someone was your friend, they laughed with you and played with you, but if someone never talked, how could you tell what they were thinking? And if you didn’t know what the heck was going on inside their head, how would you know how to behave when they were around? Lily couldn’t even remember the last time Henry had spoken directly to her. Now here he was, standing there smiling at her, softly calling her “silly.”
“Oh - hi, Henry.”
“Are you looking for something?” Henry walked closer, pausing to casually raise the flap of a cardboard box with his fingertips, as though he might be of assistance.
“I’m just looking for the air pump so I can play some basketball.” Lily inched away from Henry, toward the end of the aisle.
“I know where it is,” said Henry.
“You do?”
“Yeah - it’s back there,” he said, pointing to the far corner. “C’mon, I’ll help you find it.”
Henry placed his large hand on Lily’s back, and guided her toward the corner. “So you want to play some basketball, huh?”
Something about the situation repulsed Lily, but something about it felt good, too. The strong hand on her back, the offer of help in a dark and scary place, the softness with which Henry spoke to her were all so different from the competition and chaos of the house, from the taunting and teasing of the kids at school, from the loneliness of long afternoons spent in imagination and solo games of basketball. But Lily suddenly didn’t want to play basketball anymore. She didn’t want to be in this place anymore. Her instinct was to turn and walk back toward the door, but as soon as she slowed down, Henry pressed more firmly on her back, urging her further toward the dark corner.
“It’s just back here,” he said gently, taking her by her upper arm.
“It’s OK, Henry,” Lily said. “I don’t really want to play basketball anymore.” She turned toward the doorway.
“Well, I’m looking for something, too,” said Henry. “My old microphone is back here somewhere, and I sure would like to find it and see if it still works. Maybe you can help me look - would you like to help me test it out? I could play a song on my guitar and you could sing...”
In the instant that Lily hesitated, inspired by the fantasy of singing “With a Little Help from my Friends” into a real microphone while Henry strummed along on his Gibson, Henry reached down and swept her legs out from under her, gently laying her on her back on the cool, grimy, concrete floor. He lowered himself onto her, his full weight bearing down upon her, and began sliding his body against hers, up and down, up and down. Lily felt something hard grinding into her belly. It was thicker than a croquet mallet, but shorter... it was like a stick, or maybe the handle of a hammer. She struggled to breathe. It was difficult to get enough air even to speak under the weight of Henry’s massive form.
“Henry,” she managed to whisper. “Henry, what are you doing?”
Henry just grunted and breathed, rocking his body, grinding the hardness against her. The rafters in the ceiling were dripping with cob webs and spider webs, and a small silken clot with a fly tangled inside was suspended from the ceiling, positioned directly over where Lily lay. She watched the fly intently, looking for movement. If the fly was still alive, she would find a way to get it down from there as soon as she could get up. She hoped she could get to it in time. She wondered, was it looking down at her?
Henry continued rocking and grinding and grunting. Lily saw a man do something like this one time at the drive-in movies. All of the children had been piled into the gold Dodge station wagon and taken to the Starlight Drive-In to see Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang. At the Starlight they charged three dollars per carload to get in, and they always played a double feature - one for the children and then one for their parents. Lily rarely even made it through the first film before falling asleep, but the idea of a flying car was something so exciting and fanciful that she’d stayed awake, daydreaming of flying over Sacred Family, all of the children in awe, and all clamoring to become her new best friend.
Iris, Charles, William, and Ricci had all fallen asleep, curled up and splayed about in the back of the station wagon. Lily’s father had cranked the driver’s side window down, and lit a Parliament. Lily loved the smell of a freshly lit cigarette, and she watched as the blue smoke swirled around her father’s head, and then followed the trail of his breath out the window and into the warm summer air. Lily’s mother sat on the passenger’s side of the front seat, her head resting against the window, her auburn waves a pillow; they sat in silence as the second film played. Lily’s eyes grew heavy, but she refused to succumb to sleep. She reluctantly drifted
in and out of consciousness, catching glimpses of the story unfolding on the big screen, the scenes commingling with her dreams.
In the film, a man and woman were camping in the wilderness, and during the night, the man climbed into the woman’s sleeping bag. The woman said, “I have dreamed of this moment ever since we met, but I never dreamed you would love me here, under the stars.”
“I do love you,” said the man. “With all of the brilliance of that full moon.”
The woman smiled, and then the man rocked and breathed just as Henry was doing now. Then, as now, Lily sensed a warm heaviness in her groin, which felt good, but in the way the chocolate covered donut she’d once stolen from The Bungalow tasted good. She enjoyed the sweetness on her tongue but felt nagged by the method of its acquisition. The woman in the film did not seem bothered at all. Iris had recently told Lily that they would become women soon; perhaps this was what she meant. Perhaps being a woman was to be loved like this, and to not really be bothered by it too much.
“Boy,” said Lily to Henry. “I guess you must really love me or something... ”
“Uh-huh,” Henry said between short, quickened breaths. “But it’s our secret.” It was a command rather than a request. “You can’t tell anyone, OK?”
Henry paused for a moment and rested the weight of his body on his left elbow. With his right hand, he unzipped his fly and shimmied his blue jeans and underpants down around his hips. Lily looked down to see a thick strip of black hair leading straight to Henry’s belly button - or as Auntie Rosa would call it, his umbilicus. Shocked and frightened at the sight, she squeezed her eyes shut, and in her mind she heard Paul McCartney singing “Do You Want to Know a Secret?”.
Henry raised Lily’s shirt up, exposing her bare belly. She flinched as he placed his clammy palm against her skin, ran it up along her breast bone, across her smooth chest, and down the length of her left side, coming to rest at the side zipper of her turquoise shorts. He wriggled the zipper down, tooth by tooth, and then fumbled at the waistband, where Lily had secured a safety pin in place of the long lost button, in order to keep the shorts from coming open unexpectedly. Henry gasped, and abandoning the struggle with Lily’s shorts, he returned to his rocking and grinding, squeezing Lily’s breath out of her again until he let out a cry. It was an enormous groan that was longer than the ones Louis let out from the shower when Lily turned on the hot water in the kitchen, only not as angry. It started out quiet and small, grew loud and big, and then got quiet again, as Henry collapsed on top of her.
[Iris and Lily 01.0 - 03.0] The Complete Series Page 26