by Noley Reid
Dear Enid Enie-Weenie,
Did you know you can kill a horse just by poking its hoof in the wrong place?
Becky, Corrine, and Tina asked about you. They say “hi.” We put baby powder on their pillowcases and they had dandruff BAD the next morning.
The kitchen ladies tried to pawn off slop as grits again this week. Mom would have thrown it back in their faces. I “dropped” mine on the floor by the corner trash and when they came out they called all of us spoiled brats.
Anyhow.
Has Clint come by? I don’t think I mentioned to him that I was going away to camp, so it would make sense if he came around looking for me—anyhow, I just wondered.
Love,
Vivvy
Enid
I’m sitting on the front steps when she pulls up in the Datsun. My bike leans against my feet so I prop it and rock it back and forth because the kickstand snapped off once when I leaned too hard getting on. It’s nine in the morning and I don’t know where she’s been. I rode the entire way from downtown and I can see it in Ma’s face that she just can’t believe it. I’m sticky-wet and stinky and she’ll tell me I need a good bath, that I smell like Floey.
I follow her in.
“Don’t talk to me right now, please,” she says, crystal calm.
I start to say “okay” but wonder if that counts as talking.
She walks to the back of the house, to the kitchen. I follow but keep my distance, lean a shoulder against the doorway and watch as she starts pulling things from the fridge: jellies and dinner rolls, a plate of pieces of fried chicken, some cheese, the cold butter bin. Floey begins circling. Ma sets two buttered-and-jellied rolls on a plate, a few slices of colby, and two big crunchy drumsticks.
“Here,” she says and holds out the plate to me.
I don’t want to take it. I want to cry. “Thank you.”
Cold fried chicken smells of salt and paprika and crispy, oiled flour. The rolls are just right: spread to their little corners, every bit of them covered in butter so soft it’s smeared right into the jelly, one big marbled goo binding the lids to their bottoms. And colby’s my favorite, has a little bit of tang to it.
I sit down with my plate and Ma’s gone. I stare out the eating room window, at the feeder, the squirrels scampering up and down its post, falling off the domed lid again and again.
She’s moving around upstairs. Her room, I think at first. Putting away the wash or something, but then it’s shifted to the front of the house, the front corner. His room. Maybe our costumes. She’s only finished Floey’s wings and cape, not my pirate pants or Vivvy’s leg spots or tail. But there’s no churning of the sewing machine, no clip-snip of the pinking shears. Instead, it’s just her footsteps: step, step, step, hold; step, step, step, hold. Back and forth. Once Vivvy said I loved brownies more than Sheldon.
I eat my squishy rolls, pull the crunchy knobs off the chicken, feel cold slabs of cheese begin to melt on my tongue.
Francie
I think of tornado skies. If I’m driving, I imagine the car being swept aside, the passenger door scraping until it catches and then rips against the highway railing. If I’m washing dishes, I think of the plates flying about my head, cracking into my skull—knocking me out. I think of the girls and want them to be carried off into another county, maybe as far as Pulaski, and cradled in a treetop.
I think of him and wonder what it would be like to lose a baby to the wind instead.
Tate
Three weeks into the July class, all is quiet. Vivvy is still at camp. And Enid called earlier to brag that she's sleeping over at the funny young neighbor couple’s house on the other side of us. They have a hammer dulcimer and the man lets her pull his full red beard. They want kids, he once said to me—just out of the blue while dragging a sheet of dirty leaves to the curb: “We want kids.” And then back he went to his rake and the pile of leaves.
Francie calls me tonight. “I could use a drink,” she says. I picture her mouth, her sweet bow lips.
We meet at Ruth’s, the only bar in town that is not a college hangout. It’s veloured and smells of rotten apples. She is Francie to the hilt: black V-neck sweater tight enough to show that small circle of concavity above her sternum, black skirt and strappy black sandals that twist and fasten around the ankle. She is perched on a stool at the bar and has started without me.
She is smiling. God damn, if that isn’t rich.
“I never touch the bottle of Tomatin you left in the basement with the others.” She sips Kahlúa and I can smell it on her, am suddenly aware that I have not seen her drink for years. “Where did that come from again?”
“Came with the house.”
“Oh right.”
“Your sweet tooth is back,” I say.
She cuts her eyes at me.
“My class is going all right. There might be one or two in there who can actually get Kant.” I motion to the bartender for a draft.
“That’s good,” she says. “Real good.” She touches a finger to the outer corner of her eye. Just a thin finger with her usual short, clean fingernail—nothing particularly alluring about it and, in fact, a bit peculiar because she does not seem to be doing anything with the eye. Just sort of parking her finger there. “Your dog is pregnant.”
“How?”
She rests her elbows on the bar now and cradles her chin on the tops of her hands. “When a boy loves a girl . . .”
“Story of your life.”
“Hmm,” she says.
I smile and sip my beer.
Pieces of hair hang down along her temple and I wonder, given the peachy pink of her cheeks, how long she has been here. Maybe she called from the pay phone in the back.
“So what happened?” I ask.
“When? Oh, this? Well, I don’t know. Sometimes I just . . .” She stops here and takes the last centimeter of Kahlúa in her mouth. Then she does something strange: she touches me. My arm. She is facing me and props herself up a bit by taking hold of my wrist.
I forgot the electricity. It’s been eons.
She lets go. “I’m making too much of this,” she says. “It’s nothing. I only wanted to get out of the house.”
“Is it Enid?”
“No,” she says. “Yes and no, but no.”
“There is so much order in that little head of hers.”
“Compunction,” says Francie, correcting me. She replaces her hand, lets it slide down to my knee.
I take a sip. “She’s a good girl,” I say. “Sometimes I look at the two of them, though, and say to myself, ‘There’s a whole lot more going on in one than the other.’”
Francie sits up straight on her stool, teeters a second, then gains a stiffness to her spine. “Did you actually just call Vivvy shallow ?”
I want my arm to reach out to her in the same careless falling way of her hand onto mine. She remains rigid so I feel more like I’m trying to shake her hand. I tell her, “Vivvy is better able to cope. Enid needs extra care. You know that.”
“You love her more.”
“Maybe I understand her more.”
“You baby her!” says Francie, her eyes narrowed. “Admit that you do.” But she turns away, looking for another drink, perhaps, or someone else to talk to.
She has the right idea, I suppose.
“Well,” I say.
Francie spins back around, one hand holding the edge of the bar tight but her eyes sharply sober. “You indulge her. Same as you indulge yourself. You give her everything she wants. You feed her—doesn’t matter with what—you’re constantly feeding her.”
“She’s hungry,” I say.
“I don’t mean always with food, though there’s certainly more than her share of that.”
“I’m not talking about food either,” I say.
“She’s never met a french fry she didn’t need with every bit of her heart,” says Francie. “You and she both.”
“I mean love,” I say.
“Oh please!�
� She waves her arm through the space between us. “I walked here,” she says. “Take me home.”
I drape my sports coat over her shoulders because even in July Francie gets a chill. She takes my arm. She steps fast then slow. I put her in the car and get her in the front door. The neighbors’ lights are out next door where our daughter sleeps. I slip Francie out of her shoes and into the sheets.
“Slide up here by me,” she whispers. “Baby.” Her eyes are shut. She is in and out of sleep. She rolls onto her back and opens her eyes.
“Darling,” she says. Her hands run down her thighs, start hiking up her skirt. She lifts her hips off the mattress to roll down her panties.
I kiss her syrupy mouth. There is not one thing I would rather do, but I move back from the bed, out of reach.
“Pleeease,” she moans, lifting up her sweater. “Please.”
“I love you, Francie.”
“Don’t need that.”
“I love you, so I’m going.” I move to the door.
The whole house is pitch black and I stand in its darkness.
“I thought maybe we could try . . .”
“This isn’t the way.”
She wraps her arm around her side, grabs hold of herself and lets one finger lie in the gully between each rib. “It’s like he’s caught in my throat,” she says. “I’m trying to swallow but I can’t get him down. I can’t.”
“Oh, Francie.” My eyes are wet, my face is. I’m afraid to spook this wild horse, but I sit at the edge of the bed and stroke her hair. “Maybe you don’t need to,” I say.
“You know nothing about me, Tate. Not one thing. Don’t start thinking you’re on to me.” She reaches for the sheets, pulls them up around her hips. “I’ve gone seven and a half years with this—” She stops and runs her fingers back over her bones, taking an inventory.
I leave, go downstairs. I slam the front door. I start the Plymouth then turn it off and sit a minute. I am sweaty, stuck to the seat, the backs of my knees dripping.
I go back in. Floey sits waiting just inside the door. I stroke her head then run a hand along her side. Her belly is hot, swollen. Her eyes are all pupil. Somewhere in that dog brain she knows what will happen soon and accepts the inevitability of it so much better than we ever will.
I stand still now at the foot of the stairs and listen until I can make out Francie’s breathing. I go up and Floey follows. We sleep on the landing just outside the doorway to be sure.
6
Enid
Daddy’s here. Ma’s here. Vivvy’s with the horses. I come in and they’re having breakfast together. Sitting there, looking at their bowls—one full and one empty—and then each other. Daddy’s left arm is long across the table in her direction. Ma’s arms are folded like wings. They’re both very still. Even Floey’s sacked out on the floor and just sweeps her head upwards to see me standing here, dumb.
Francie
Fat girl. I’m a fat girl today. I count up last night’s drinks. I lose track after the third. First it was champagne—just 24 calories in an ounce (she poured me more than an ounce, but I only sipped). Then Tate showed and it was Kahlúa because champagne would have been all wrong. I sipped slower. Then Mother’s voice came through, talking to Daddy years ago: “Just have a night sometimes. When you want it, just have it. Quit fussing and give in, Raymond. Get up and dance!” I believe her, sometimes, and then I am weak.
So I sipped and drank and nodded for another. Another.
Today: nothing. No calories in, just out. Lots and lots of out.
Enid
I go to the forsythia because Vivvy’s not here to claim it. From lying on my back, the way the whips shoot out from the center looks like they’re stuck in somebody’s vase and won’t last but a week. Ma says Vivvy’s always killing things so I think of this as another one of Vivvy’s jelly jars stuffed with pigweed and blueberry blooms—the ones that make Ma’s eyes roll because she’d rather sprinkle the wild berries over her yogurt than have Vivvy walk around the house sniffing the tiny flowers for a single afternoon. Sometimes Vivvy sleeps with fireflies nearby her pillow and I can hear their bitsy feet go climbing the glass walls. She says, “Don’t be stupid, Enid. That’s your head making it up. They’re too little to hear—besides, they’re all sleeping.”
Clint is here. His red sneakers near my hand. He peers into the bush at me. He brushes the whips away from his face, crawls in, and I sit up.
“Where is she?”
“Camp.”
“Still?”
“Still.”
“I thought she’d be back by now.”
“No.”
“You got chocolate on your cheek.”
I grab at my face, cover it. “I don’t have chocolate on me. I do not.”
“There,” he says, “ha,” and swats at my chin.
“Stop it,” I say, but my skin is already so hot.
“You’re in fifth, right?”
“Yeah, will be.”
“I’m gonna kiss you.”
“Are not.”
But he does, where his finger smeared the chocolate chip meltings.
Vivvy
Camp is nearly through: three more days and two nights. I want to stay. We trade horses every day. Sometimes we double up because the school ponies are too tired for morning ride. All the other girls have labels sewn into their clothes: their names in curly letters and a ballerina or smiley in blue ink so we can keep track of what is ours. Mom forgot so I hide my green T-shirt, the yellow shorts with a flower on each back pocket. I hide them deep in the ends of my duffel, with the hoof pick and a peach ribbon from Agatha’s hair.
Tate
I sit near Francie in the eating room and pretend we are ten-years-ago happy, or maybe fifteen.
We hear Enid coming down the stairs. Then we see her.
“You’re walking funnily,” says Francie. She lays down the style section beside her cereal bowl, which is really just her mother’s old sugar bowl—nothing sentimental there; she loves it for its diminutive capacity alone.
Enid stops before us. She tugs at the edge of her shorts.
“Walk,” says Francie.
Enid just stares at her.
“Walk,” she says again.
Enid looks to me and I’m a coward with a crossword puzzle to figure. She starts moving. Quick scuffle-steps.
“Enid,” says Francie.
She keeps moving.
“Enid! You do this deliberately with shoes and I won’t have it.”
I look up at Francie.
“No,” says Enid. “They’re fine.”
“Show me.” Francie scoots her chair back from the table and takes hold of the foot Enid timidly offers up. She tugs at the bit of leather trying to cross Enid’s plump ankle. “You really jammed that in there, didn’t you? So how many’s that since March? Two pairs, three?” She pushes Enid’s foot away.
“They’re okay,” she says.
“Fine then, wear them. Good. I’m glad they’re so fine.” She takes up her paper again.
Enid comes to sit on my lap and I tuck her beneath my chin. She is a baby. Francie reads the paper, shakes it out at both of us.
“I don’t feel good,” says Enid, tipping up her face to me. I press my hand around her ear, hold her too tight.
“You need air,” says Francie. “I need air.”
Enid’s eyes are doleful; she is working me.
“Not a bad idea,” I tell her, gentle but letting her know.
She slips off my lap, walks to the back door—her near-snapping sandals slap her swollen pink feet the whole way. She touches the doorknob but walks by, on to the front of the house instead. Her slow steps move upstairs.
Francie will not look up. She pulls her leg up onto the seat with her, folds it in half alongside her thigh. She rubs the top of her own foot, the skin there as thinly translucent as her water-and-egg-white crêpes.
“You terrify her,” I say.
Enid
I’m o
utside Clint’s door, making fake fingernails of the boxwood leaves, seeing can I get a whole hand’s worth to stick-put on my fingertips long enough to fan my hand through the air making pretend I’m rich and glamorous with a tiara and rings.
Ma has a ring she’ll give me when she dies. I’ve asked; she’s agreed.
I’m about to leave when out comes Clint.
“Isn’t she back yet?” he says.
I press the leaf curls to my fingertips, replace the ones that just won’t hold with new ones I yank from his bush. Then I’m sorry and set these back into the bush, hoping—though I know it isn’t so—that they’ll somehow live.
“Come on,” he says, and I follow him to the forsythia.
Tate
“I’m her father,” I say, my voice restrained, reasonable. Still, I get up and shut my office door. “I should go with you to pick her up from camp.”
Francie’s nails brush the edges of her telephone, making the call sound like long-distance.
“I’m back in the house, am I not? We are, I mean, we’re . . .”
Again, she is silent.
“Is this about her shoes this morning?” I ask.
“Enid asked me just last night.”
“Asked what?”
“If we’re a ‘family.’”
“Like that?”
“Like that,” she says, the opposite of how I would say it.
“What did you tell her?”
The fingernails stop. There is nothing for a beat, then: “No.”
I hang up the goddamned phone.
•
I think of the first time it happened, run it through my mind again and again to see where I could have been firmer and actually stopped Holly. Other times, I run through it for the more obvious reasons.
This was in early April or end of March. She had followed me back to my office after class, and was picking up the picture of the girls and Shell with Francie at Busch Gardens. I didn’t like it, them face-to-face, like they were meeting.
“You have a boy, too,” she said. “Why haven’t we ever talked about him?”
My cheeks flushed. I touched my hairline and pretended not to blot my brow.