Pretend We Are Lovely

by Noley Reid

  “You should go,” I said. “Another time, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said but first she came to me, placed her head against my chest. She tipped her head back and her eyes were shut. I kissed her then. Her fingers slid up my neck, behind my ear. Her lips were soft, full. My hand found her braid, ran the length of it then came up her front to her full breasts, slipped beneath the red camisole and between them.

  “Go,” I told her. “You have to go.”

  She pulled her shirt down. Pushed a few stray hairs up into her braid and backed out of my office.

  Vivvy

  Agatha is sleeping, snoring with her mouth open wide. Enid wrote a postcard: Please come back. And don’t kill a horse.

  Tomorrow is the last day of camp. I wake Agatha by touching her arm. I just lay a hand on it. I hand up her shoes. We go creeping through the bunks, out the door, around the trail up into the woods. I head for the stables but she turns off, pulls me to the lake. She says there will be boys there. She says Jonathan Berry will be there. Okay, we go.

  “Nobody is here,” I say. “Why is nobody here?”

  She plops down on the bank. “We’ll wait.” There has been no rain the entire two weeks we’ve been here and a long time before that, too, so the ground is pleated in sharp ridges. “They’ll come.”

  “I have a boyfriend,” I tell her.

  “Do not.”

  “Do so.”

  “How come it’s the first you’ve mentioned him?” she asks.

  “You never asked.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Clint.”

  “You’re making it up, Viv.” She slaps her calf. Mosquitos have chewed us alive all two weeks. Every time I see her shoo or slap, I scratch at one of my own.

  “We kiss,” I say.

  “French?”

  “What else is there, Agatha?” I say. There are scrawny willow roots that run aground beneath us. I yank one up, tear it bit by bit from the ground.

  “I had a boyfriend,” says Agatha.

  “What happened?”

  “It was at skating camp last February when I went to Colorado Springs to stay with my other grandparents.”

  “Did you love him?”

  “I don’t know. No.” She removes the rubber band from my hair, pushes her fingers through my braid to unkink it. “Are you in love, Viv?”

  “I might be.” I stretch my nightgown over my knees and hug them to my chest. “Maybe.”

  “You are. You love him.”

  “Probably,” I say. “He definitely loves me.”

  She hugs me around the middle: arms, knees, and all. Squeezes me. The tip of her nose is cold against my neck. Then wet. Then strange. It is her mouth. Kissing at me. I face her, and then it’s like Clint, only this time I am doing it, too.

  She pulls me up and we go back the short way past the stables and I go to the stall of the horse I rode today, Singapore. I cup my hand beneath her velveteen muzzle and feel the whiskers poking through such silkiness, the in-out of her wet breathing, the big nostrils and such big, soft eyes.

  Agatha comes back from checking on Houdini, seeing if he has made it out again despite the seventh lock bolted onto his stall door.

  “He’s gonna be gone any minute,” she says. “Can’t keep him in.”

  I stroke Singapore’s neck and feel my hand linger on her short hairs, slide my fingers over the length of muscle that runs shoulder to jaw. Up and down and I watch her ears swivel back my way.

  “Tell the truth,” says Agatha, standing in the doorway. “You’ve never kissed before, have you?”

  I keep stroking the horse’s neck, that muscle up and down.

  She laughs and walks out of her stall.

  That muscle up and down, up and down, up and down until my fingers come together in a pinch of horsehair and skin and she whinnies and nips the sleeve of my nightgown. I let go and slip back into the bunk beneath Agatha.

  Enid

  Saturday morning, we get up early to drive to horse camp and be there in time for family breakfast.

  “We’ve got a surprise for her, don’t we?” I say to Daddy, taking his hand.

  Ma doesn’t smile. “Quit running; you’ll trip.”

  She’s been a grouse all day. I don’t care. Doesn’t matter because here we are and I’ll be the one to find Vivvy.

  “Vivvy!” I call and run to her, hug her, put my face on hers like we do, but she’s stiff.

  “Enie-Weenie,” she says.

  “What did I miss? Was it good? Are the horses all here? Any babies? Did they give you real grits? Cheddar and butter and hot milk?”

  She sits on her duffel and I plop on down beside her, mess with the new woven floss bracelets going up and down her left wrist.

  “Who gave you these?” I ask.

  “Nobody.”

  “Can I have one?” I say. “Can I have this one?” I separate out the best one: green and pink and khaki tan. The one Ma will like the best.

  “No,” she says and pulls her arm to the side so I can’t reach them anymore.

  “Can I have any?”

  “No.”

  “Will you make one for me?”

  She’s looking off to the left at her wrist, then at the empty cars.

  “Will you show me how to make one?”

  “Don’t touch it, Enid,” she says.

  “Ma let Daddy come,” I tell her.

  She looks at me. “She did?”

  I nod and we go off to find them and get some grits.

  •

  On the way home, Daddy points Ma into a place off the highway that we don’t know, Carolina’s Kitchen.

  “Will there be french fries?” I ask him.

  “Hush,” he says.

  “It’s like your show in here,” says Ma. “Like Mel’s Diner, isn’t it, girls?”

  “It’s called Alice,” says Vivvy.

  “Don’t knee-sit, Enid,” Ma says and goes back to looking cross with her menu.

  She’s not watching so I don’t climb down.

  “Enid,” says Daddy, and so now I sit flat.

  Ma breathes in deep once, then lets out all her air.

  Daddy gets a pitcher of beer, fried chicken with gravy and mashed potatoes. Vivvy chooses a mushroom-and-cheddar omelet. I have trouble choosing from the cheeseburger and fries, the chicken-fried steak, and the spaghetti and meatballs, so the lady taking the order says she’ll come back to me. Then I’m ready: chicken-fried steak, but Ma’s got questions: “What cereals do you have?”

  “Oatmeal. The oatmeal’s real good. Creamy.”

  “No,” says Ma.

  “We have granola, too.”

  “If I order an egg-white omelet with onions and green peppers and a snip of tomato, would that be grilled in something?”

  “In a pan, you mean? No, it’s done on the grill back there.”

  “Fat, I mean. Would it be cooked in butter or lard or oil?”

  The lady scratches her face right by her ear. “Yes?”

  “The water will be fine,” says Ma and the lady leaves without remembering to take my order.

  The four of us sit here silent. Looking at the car. Ma smooths the pleats in her pants. Daddy pats each pocket for his keys. His face is turned under, long bangs hanging over his eyes. Vivvy yawns and flexes her neck back and forth to each shoulder. Ma starts flexing, too, and before I know it Daddy yawns his big open mouth without excusing himself. He jingles the keys, then slips them back into his front shirt pocket.

  “Baby,” says the lady, who’s come back for me, “you decide yet?”

  “Egg-white omelet, onions, mushrooms, tomato,” I say.

  She glances at Ma, then writes it down and is gone to the kitchen window.

  Beneath the table, Vivvy pushes her knuckled fist into my thigh.

  7

  Tate

  I stop by the house midmorning and Francie and I sit on the porch with coffee, the newspaper, and the dog flopped at our feet. The girls are o
utside, running. Enid chases after Vivvy the best she can, their new sandals slapping the mulch chips beneath the pines. Vivvy stops short and twists Enid’s braid until she collapses in the sapped, dry needles.

  “Enid’s got a sticky butt,” says Vivvy, singing it at her sister who still, somehow, smiles. “Enie-Weenie’s a big fat sticky butt.”

  Francie looks up at me. “Well she is,” she says.

  Francie

  When Tate leaves, I wash our cups and set them on the drainer, and I stand in the center of the kitchen, surveying. My count card and calculator are neatly stacked on the scale. I touch them, square up the corners a bit more, this-way, that-way. On the wall above is the calendar, which Enid could have turned to August today if she had remembered today is the first. So I lift the new page and retack them all to the wall.

  It’s nearly lunchtime but I prolong the feeling of air slowly leaving a balloon, prolong my hunger. I put away the rest of the morning’s clean dishes, tidy the glasses in the cupboard, and go back to the calendar. I lift the new page and tack it to the wall. I check the clock again. I do 30 squats at the counter. I look at the clock again.

  It’s 12:01 PM and so I begin.

  Turkey bologna because I feel like splurging today. 70 calories. Light bread, 90 calories; crusts removed, 72 calories. Yellow mustard, 0 calories. Lots of iceberg lettuce, 3 calories. Onion slice, 6 calories. Omit the tomato slice today, save 9 calories. Three rice crackers, 12 calories. Two tablespoons fat-free lemon yogurt, 45 calories. Carrot sticks and hard-boiled egg white with salt and pepper and dill weed sprinkled, 16 and 17 calories, respectively. Dried apple rings, 47 calories. One prune, 12 calories. Half a peanut butter granola bar, 90 calories.

  The scale falters. It flashes, blinks off, then jumps back on. I must start over. Take apart the sandwich, scrape off the mustard to get a fair reading on the bread slices.

  Everything checks out. The scale’s fine. All is accurate, all is well.

  Total: 390.

  Skinny girl today. Skinny girl.

  Vivvy

  Mom is always doing this sort of thing to us.

  Enid and I are in the basement painting at the double-sided easel and today Mom wants a garden: sunflowers the size of dinner plates, all shades of yellow. I paint mine big and round, tall on its stem, so tall and reaching. More in the background, by the neighboring trees. So much yellow and orange with shiny black centers, all dripping to the grass beneath so that my flowers look planted in their own petals. I step back on my side of the easel, step away and to the side, admiring.

  Down the steps she comes, passing me with a tray of red Kool-Aids and graham crackers—just glasses and plates for two, of course. She sets them down on the rusted-out TV tray we never get to use because dinners watching TV are uncouth.

  “Oh, Enid!” she says and pats her own cheeks like she is too happy to live. “What a smart-looking table you’ve painted.”

  I go around to Enid's side and the painting is hot dogs and frothed pink shakes and buttered eggs. A ham, pineapple-studded, shiny with currant jelly. A tote of biscuits and a bowl of orange beans. “What are those?” I say.

  Enid turns around to me, beaming. “Tater Tots.”

  “Baby,” says Mom, pushing fingers through Enid’s dirty hair, “well we certainly don’t need any of this now, do we?” She turns to replace the glasses and plates and the tray and lifts it all back up to rest against one hip’s bone.

  Enid forgets to wipe at her smock. She grabs a pleat of Mom’s tennis skirt as she starts up the stairs. Now there is a blue fist print on Mom's skirt.

  “Look what you’ve done!” Mom's face is red and flat as my painted sun.

  Enid tries to stuff her hands in the smock pockets.

  Mom looks at her. “Take it, then! Eat it all,” she says and drops the plate of graham crackers to the floor. “We mustn’t pretend you aren’t a pig!”

  Tate

  Today begins the final week of class. All last week, I hurried straight to my car afterward and drove to the house. Today, though, I go back to the apartment, where the telephone rings a handful of times. I have been dodging her, she says, bolting at the end of class and not even keeping office hours. She called and called last week and I never picked up.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’ve been in and out. We must have missed each other.”

  “Have we?”

  “Of course,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

  The line is quiet.

  “No,” I say. “That’s not it. I’m sorry, Holly. I just, it feels—it’s as though you were making my girls disappear.”

  “What?” she says. “I did what?”

  “I haven’t seen them in a week—or I hadn’t. You were here so much, is all. I’m sorry.”

  “I haven’t even seen you for a week.”

  “The week prior, I mean.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me, Tate? If there’s something else you need or want to do, just say so. Is that it?”

  I picture her painted toenails, her thick legs stretched out before her on her bed or folded up beneath her at her window. She is unbraiding her hair for the night.

  “Tate?” she says.

  “You are so young.”

  She says nothing.

  “I know, I’m a broken record. But think of it from my perspective: you’re far closer in age to Vivvy than to me.”

  “Nineteen is a legal adult. I can vote and—”

  “You’re my student.”

  She sighs. “I know.”

  “I want to see you . . .”

  “But?”

  “No buts,” I say. “I want to see you. I just need you to wait.”

  Vivvy

  “Strive to be a better person,” Mom tells Enid.

  My sister just looks at her, not getting it.

  “Don’t knee-sit, Enid,” she says, even though she has moved on and is looking at me and pointing in the yard. “Get the stone, baby. That one, get it for me.”

  “So can I go to the birthday party?” I ask.

  “Don’t knee-sit, Enid.”

  I get her the rock she wants. It is blue like an old car. Flat, heavy blue. Ice-pop blue since Enid mixed the colors. We painted each rock a different color and Mom spread them out in a design for a new front walk like crazy bath tiles winding their way across the lawn. She still has not finished our Halloween costumes, even though she’s had a month, and Floey’s wings are chewed up because Enid tied them onto Floey and then forgot; Floey slept in the grass beneath the crab apple, mushing up her hair and the wings in the pulpy mess below.

  “Enid, knees.”

  “Get off your knees, Enie-Weenie!” I tell her because I just can’t take it one more time. And she does. “Mom?”

  Now she can suck in all the good air and let out all the bad. “Tell me again what it is,” Mom asks. “Clint’s sister’s bowling party. What could be wrong with that?” She fits a pink stone—a tiny one—to the blue one. “Pretty, isn’t it,” she says to herself.

  Enid chips and scrapes green paint from one of the rocks. Mom doesn’t notice and I won’t tell her. “So I can go?”

  “Fine, yes. If we finish this today.”

  “Okay,” I tell her. “Which one next? This one? That pretty red one? How about the purple?” I think of what to wear.

  “Oh, yes!” she says, rubbing her palms together. “This will be a beaut.”

  Enid is back up on her knees.

  “Enid, can’t you see how you spread your thighs doing that,” says Mom, “making them even wider? You’ll train them to flatten out like that forever.”

  Enid squishes over to the side, until she is flat on the ground.

  Mom turns back to the stones and says, “We could make a walkway all the way around the house, for getting to the side faucet and compost.” She sucks in her face, hoisting up another stone. Her cheeks tuck inside her mouth.

  “That would be so pretty,” I say.

  “What do you say, Enid?”
r />   “You’ll never really do it,” she says.

  Mom turns to see her. “What a horrible, wicked-girl thing to say to me.”

  Enid looks up. She does not look scared.

  Mom stands and brushes the imprint of grass from her knees. “You can be such a rotten, ugly child, Enid Elspeth.” She lets the screen door hit softly behind her, which is far worse than when she lets it slam.

  Enid sits up. She chips away more flakes of green. “It’s true,” she says.

  “But why do you have to go and say it?”

  “I hate her.”

  “Now? Finally?”

  “I hate you, too.”

  “You are so stupid,” I say and shove her. She flops right over onto her back and I hold up the purple rock over her head. “Want me to do it?”

  Enid turns her head away, one ear in the grass, and she is looking at the neighbors’ house. I’m not even sitting on her holding down her arms or anything.

  “Raaahh!” I yell and throw the stone aside.

  “I’m not stupid,” she says.

  “Original.”

  “Kiss my grits.”

  “Oh my god.”

  “Why can’t I go?” she whines from the ground.

  I look at her. Her limp pigtail braids and fat cheeks. The stretch of lilac shirt across her fat stomach.

  “You are so gross, why would anyone want you there?”

  “He kissed me.”

  “Shut up.”

  Enid gets to one knee and pushes up to her feet. She looks at me hard. “If I’m so gross,” she says, “why’d he do that?”

  “Who?”

  She will not answer me.

  “Who?” I say.

  Her big cheeks redden. Under her fingernails, rolled green paint swells and festers.

  “In the bush.”

  I shove her hard this time, both hands on her shoulders, and she topples right over. The screen bangs behind me.

  8

  Enid

  At breakfast a few days later, Ma yells, “No more playing house!” She runs upstairs and slams the door to Shelly’s room.

  Daddy stands up with his toast plate, though he isn’t done. “She just needs some peace and quiet to work on your costumes.” He sets the plate into the sink.