by Darrin Doyle
“I’m too skinny,” he said one evening. “A bean pole.”
Briefed in cotton tighty-whities, he flexed, shirtless, in front of the bathroom mirror. McKenna brushed her teeth at the sink. Thin but noticeable striations bulged like buried cables along Toby’s rib-cage, back, and neck. He was two years away from being a teenager, but he had the body of an adult.
“Feel my thigh,” he said. He turned from the mirror and propped his left foot on the lidded toilet.
McKenna spat noisily (although if Toby had been listening carefully, he would’ve noticed that nothing came out of McKenna’s mouth) in part to make Toby think she was expelling her toothpaste, but also to show her displeasure. Every other night it was “Grab this,” “Mea sure that,” “Check out how hard this is.” McKenna was reaching some sort of resolution on the matter of her brother’s demands, although it wasn’t formulated yet in her mind. The overarching sentiment, though, was this: Toby frightened her.
Talking around the toothpaste, McKenna answered, “I’m sure it’s fine.” McKenna turned on the water, the hiss. She watched the foamy spittle that Toby had left in the sink being lifted and carried, swirling, down the drain.
What did the toothpaste feel, McKenna wondered, when it was so violently disturbed? What did it feel like to be devoured by the drain? Did it thrill in that moment of surprise? Or did it shudder at the horror of the unknown, the awaiting darkness?
She swallowed her toothpaste. Then she burped it back up, burning her throat.
“See if you can get your fingers around it,” Toby said. He squeezed his thigh. “I can, and that sucks. But you got normal little hands. Mine are huge. Come on.”
“No, thanks,” McKenna said.
“No, thanks !” Toby peeped like a songbird. “God, you’re so gay.”
“Takes one to know one.” McKenna pressed the newly regurgitated Aim under her tongue. She could smell the bile on her breath. The taste, though, was pure mint.
Toby stepped off the toilet. From behind, he wrapped his forearm around McKenna’s neck. He forced her to the floor.
“What does that even mean ?” Toby growled. He lay on top of her, squeezing the air out of her. “Why are you such an ass?”
McKenna’s cheek was flattened against the cold tiles.
“There’s-a-cook-,” she rasped. She could see, in the slight gap between the wooden cupboard and the floor, half of a Chips Ahoy. Why was it there? From when? She suspected Audrey. McKenna knew—it was their secret—that Audrey often stashed uneaten food around the house.
Toby released McKenna’s neck. He lowered his head until his face was inches from hers, his breath heating her eyes. “You’re talking about a goddamn cookie?”
“Half,” McKenna said. “Under there.”
Toby drew the cookie out, rolled off McKenna’s back, and stood. He wiped the Chips Ahoy on his underwear before popping the whole thing into his mouth. He reached down and helped McKenna to her feet.
“Ah wu jush ki’in,” he said.
The wedge garbled his words, but McKenna knew what he was saying; she’d heard it before. She nodded, rubbed her throat.
Toby swallowed. “Friends, Kenny?” He was waiting for eye contact. “You know I just mess with you because I can.”
McKenna lifted her gaze. Looking Toby in the eyes always felt like a worse defeat than the physical domination itself. He attempted a tender expression, which manifested as strain, as something like constipation.
“It’s fine,” McKenna said. “What ever.”
Toby punched her shoulder. “See? We’re friends. My sista.”
McKenna studied the boy in front of her. What had once been a reflection of her own face and body was now a fun house mirror. Unwashed, scraggly hair that hung over his ears. Fists like massive walnuts at his sides. A bloated face. A body twice as heavy as her own. His chest thrust out like a baboon’s, showing the beginnings of hair.
The coming years would see this monster distort, bulge, and ripple in ways McKenna couldn’t have even imagined at that moment in the bathroom, at age eleven, standing under a yellow bulb in the increasingly grimy Mapes home on that early August day weeks before starting the sixth grade, weeks before Audrey began first grade at the public school, months before Misty’s first real break from reality, and years before McKenna learned the name of the disease that had made her swallow and regurgitate the toothpaste before, during, and after her brother had choked her on the floor.
“Seriously, though,” Toby said, as they left the bathroom. “Feel my thigh.”
22.
Grandma Pencil had hands like a farmer’s. That’s what Murray said, and his tone made it clear that he wasn’t fond of farmers or their hands. But to McKenna, as a child, Grandma’s hands were beautiful.
The backs of them were soft, speckled with brown circles that McKenna called “polka dots.” Her fingers were thick like the roots of a plant yanked from the soil. Her palms and fingerpads were so calloused that they clicked on the table, a sound that drove Murray crazy.
There was no explanation for why the backs of Grandma’s hands were like fresh cookies and the fronts were like stale ones. She certainly hadn’t done any hard labor—not in a long time, if ever. Her husband, while he was alive, “discouraged” her from having a job (Misty’s word). Grandma’s life after the march had been a long series of formal education, childrearing, mental breakdowns, and meddling.
McKenna didn’t know any of these things at the time. She liked Grandma’s hands because they were warm like Misty’s. The hands communicated to her. Her own mother and father barely touched her. Grandma Pencil routinely placed a palm on McK-enna’s head, stroked McKenna’s cheek, and held McKenna’s hands when they danced.
Grandma Pencil was a vibrant woman, if slightly off-balance. She was tall—same height as Murray—and lean. Her face looked like a monkey’s, with a wide mouth and big, expressive eyes. She wasn’t pretty, not like her youngest granddaughter. Wrinkles had carved a frown into her cheeks. Her ungainly arms never could find a comfortable resting position, so they were constantly crossing and uncrossing over her chest. Her thumbs fidgeted with her back pockets. Her fingers tugged at her dry, copper-colored hair.
She was nothing like the grandmothers of McKenna and Toby’s schoolmates. Theirs were withered Q-tips—bespectacled, white-haired, storybook grannies with walkers and palsied hands. They teetered into the classroom and stared at the cupboards wearing queer, faraway smiles.
Saint Monica’s hosted a “Bring Your Grandparents to School Day” when McKenna and Toby were in fourth grade. The nuns, a feisty bunch themselves, took to Grandma Pencil immediately. She behaved more like a thirty-year-old man than a senior citizen: she sat with her legs apart, elbows propped on her thighs; she chewed gum with intensity; she wore Wranglers. Like the other grandparents, Grandma Pencil wore faraway looks, but rather than making you depressed, hers made you want to crack them open and climb inside. That gaze—her eyes (blue and crystalline like Audrey’s) twinkled in such a way that you knew she was thinking of something profound, or else recalling some moment so black and mysterious that you wanted to see everything she was seeing, even if it might kill you.
She was also a liar. Her eyes and mouth, without a doubt, lied. She never awarded a single silver train for finishing two hot dogs. She’d never been on a death march. Death marches were for POWs, not for the children and wives of private citizens. Probably her mind and soul lied, too. To herself.
She’d lived in a jungle, all right, which is where she absorbed all the compelling chimpanzee and bat details that she would later use to give nightmares to her gullible grandchildren. The truth was she was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1935. When she was four years old, her father took a job as a maintenance superintendent for a mining operation in the Philippines. The family relocated and lived happily for two years. Then the Japanese invaded. She and her mother and sisters were placed in a civilian internment camp in Los Baños. Her father was captured as a
POW and sent to do forced labor. His family never received communications from him, never knew if he would die on any given day. So okay, her life was no picnic.
I’ve probably given you the impression that Grandma Pencil was some kind of ogre. If not, I’ve failed.
However, the truth is she wasn’t an ogre—not as a child, anyway, and not while McKenna and Toby were in elementary school. Sure, she lied about the death march, but who doesn’t lie now and then?
Visualize a face staring straight ahead, wearing a blank look. Expressionless.
Now position a light directly below the chin, shining upward: that face will appear ghastly, frightening.
Now reposition the light so it shines down from the top of the forehead: the person looks sad.
Same face—the only change is how the face is shown.
That’s what Grandma did. She moved the light when she thought it might do some good.
She truly cared about the twins. Her heart was very nearly in the right place; it just happened to be in her stomach.
And this makes sense. The internment camp instilled in Grandma Pencil a deep, debilitating terror of hunger, which lead to a profound understanding of the way our souls and sanities are bound to our appetites. For Grandma Pencil, love, trust, and security were all attached to food. Food represented the potential to fill, in some way, the gaping emptiness of the self.
She was stern and grumpy with Murray, but that attitude wasn’t her fault, no more than a cornered raccoon can be faulted for swiping at your eyes. With the twins and with baby Audrey, Grandma was a load of fun. She picked up the considerable slack left by Misty’s malaise and Murray’s self-centered belief that he could hammer, solder, sand, and jerry-rig a happy life.
Grandma laughed with a whistly “Hoo hoo hoo hoo.” The “hoos” were so clearly enunciated that they sounded phony. Her laugh annoyed Misty and Murray. McKenna and Toby loved it. The twins did everything they could to hear that laugh. Toby did pratfalls off the couch. McKenna did impressions (the mailman yelling at Snoodles to “Keep away, Mister Pesky!”; Bob Hope saying, “This is what I get for fifty dollars?”). McKenna sang the “A-B-C Song” using all “oo” sounds: “Oo boo soo doo oo oof joo, ooch oo joo koo ool oom oon oo poo, coo oor oos, too oo voo, doo-booyoo oox, woo oond zoo. Noo oo noo moo oo boo soos. Nooxt toom woont yoo soong wooth moo?” The twins danced with Snoodles, lifting him by the front paws and jiggling him until great ropes of drool swung from his mouth. They tickled Audrey. They tackled Audrey. They tackled each other. Grandma laughed. Grandma played records. She showed the twins the cha-cha and the fox trot. She helped them build a fort out of couch cushions. When the air was unbreathable from the stench of burning paper or formaldehyde, Grandma took the kids into the backyard, where McKenna and Toby kicked the basketball, and Audrey crawled in diapers across the grass.
That’s where Grandma first saw Audrey eat something that wasn’t a food item. Audrey was eighteen months old.
“No, no, no,” Grandma said, sticking her finger into Audrey’s mouth to dislodge as much soil as she could. “I ate dirt, and no granddaughter of mine will do that again. Not while I breathe.”
“She likes it,” Toby said. He ran up to see the action. “She’s crazy. I’ve seen her eat dirt before. Is she crazy?”
“Never call a girl crazy,” Grandma told him. Her tone was sharp.
Later that night, the twins lay in their beds.
“Don’t ever call a girl crazy,” Toby said for the tenth time, his voice mocking. “Never, never, never. Stupid Grandma.”
“She’s not stupid. She’s just old.”
“Dad thinks she’s stupid.”
“But Audrey isn’t crazy. She’s a baby. All babies are crazy.”
This is how it went.
Grandma told Murray and Misty about the dirt-eating. Misty took Audrey to the pediatrician. McKenna and Toby tagged along.
“It’s not uncommon,” Doctor Burger said.
He had checked Audrey—had seen that she was able to make eye contact and that her pupils dilated properly; had poked the otoscope into her ears; had pressed his fingers into her belly and found her organs to be well-situated and unswollen; had found that she could clap and could hold two objects at once; had checked her stumps for proper circulation (this was before the Dr Pepper cans). When the exam was finished, Doctor Burger pronounced his double-negative judgment: “It’s not uncommon.”
He probably would have left it at that and scuttled his bulky, white-coated body out the door—obliqueness and terseness were his trademarks—if Misty hadn’t still looked so worried. Or was it sad? Spaced-out from the pills? Take your pick.
Her expression touched Doctor Burger; it made him uncomfortable. Standing in the center of the examination room, he lifted his glasses, massaged the bridge of his nose, and squinted. Then he took off his glasses, folded them, and pinched them between his fingers at his side. As if hearing a voice no one else could hear, he nodded. Then he sat on his stool and cleared his throat. He put the glasses back onto his face. He sucked in a profound breath in preparation for giving Misty more information.
Doctor Burger hated giving more information. Or else he liked to give the impression that he hated giving more information.
We should assume the best about Doctor Burger. We should assume he was only being codgerly, that deep down he loved every one of his patients. We should assume nice things about dead people. Reserve your scorn for the living, if you please.
“There’s nothing harmful about eating dirt,” he said, “despite what common sense might tell you.” His neck wattle thrummed above his tight collar. McKenna imagined popping it with a safety pin, air whistling through the hole like a leaking balloon. “Like I said, many babies go through this phase. Dirt, sand, soap, paint chips, and so on. Keep an eye on her, make sure she doesn’t choke, don’t let her eat any cleaning products.” He handed Misty a roll of puke-green stickers of round faces drawn to resemble the famous Have a Nice Day Happy Face. Except these faces weren’t happy. They grimaced, Xs for eyes, and stuck out their tongues. “Slap one of these on every poisonous item in the house.”
Doctor Burger made his way to the door. He opened it, broadcasting a pleasant, official smile to Misty. He gave Audrey one last sidelong glance. The door closed.
23.
Audrey grew up separately from her siblings. They attended St. Monica’s while Audrey was sent to North Park.
Everyone knows this already. It’s been documented in fifteen books and a low-budget CBS miniseries. Audrey’s public school education is always mentioned as evidence of her spiritual and moral deficiency. As in, “See! This is what made her eat that city! I’ve found the solution!” The number of ex-schoolmates who’ve been handed obscene wads of cash by fly-by-night media outlets for a personal recollection of the time Audrey ate licorice in the first grade is now approaching triple digits.
What people don’t know, what they haven’t yet speculated on, is why Audrey went to a public school in the first place. It’s one of the basic questions, and it’s not even asked. People are so focused—I almost wrote “ fuckassed,” but that would’ve cost me a Hail Mary—on describing the lurid image of a young woman swallowing a stop sign that they ignore how she might have gotten to that point.
She grew up alone.
While she snuggled with Misty on the queen-sized mattress, the sunlight beams angling through the blinds and warming her bare infant thigh, Audrey was alone. When she lay prone on the living room carpet while Murray’s cold fingers gripped her ankles, testing the softness of her stumps and the sturdiness of her shin-bones, Audrey was alone. When Grandma Pencil stooped to peel crusted snot from Audrey’s upper lip, exclaiming, “Dirty, dirty girl. Who is going to love you with a nose goblin face?” Audrey was alone.
Her siblings were five years older, a gap too wide. They treated her like a roadblock, a toy, a petting zoo goat. Through her elementary years, adept as Audrey was at maneuvering with her crutches and padded s
tump socks, she couldn’t keep up with McKenna and Toby. They sprinted across the yard, bicycled through the streets, played baseball at the park. She couldn’t keep up with her peers, either. Her footlessness excluded her from sports, cheerleading, and Girl Scouts.
When Audrey was in the fourth grade, Misty urged her to try out for concert band. No Mapes had ever played an instrument. Audrey loved the idea but wanted to play the drums. Misty insisted on the flute. She even bought one for Audrey (made of real silver, with open holes—top-of-the-line).
“Where did the money come from?” “Who picked this thing out?” “Why wasn’t I consulted on this decision?” Murray asked these and many other questions, around which Misty’s answers danced.
No matter how expensive it was, though, Audrey refused to assemble it. She wouldn’t put it to her lips. She wouldn’t even look at it.
Horrible fights followed, with Audrey screaming and Misty sitting in front of the TV, knitting a sweater. God love her, the girl wanted to break that flute. Audrey shook with anger. She trashed her room, scattered clothes everywhere, upset lamps, toppled toy-boxes.
McKenna talked to Audrey. Night after night, she tried to calm Audrey with distractions in the form of board games or surreptitious snacks (a pair of washed handkerchiefs, a pile of rubber bands) smuggled to Audrey as she lay crying on her bed. Audrey kept up the rage longer than anyone expected, and Misty kept up the nonchalance with equal fervor.
Murray was incapable of mediating. When Audrey knocked bowls of peanuts and pretzels onto the carpet, he stepped into the living room, frowned, and shook his head in disappointment. “Toby!” he said. “See if your sister wants to take a walk. McK-enna, get the vacuum.”