by Noley Reid
I listen for if the toast sloshes in water or if it’s fine and just sitting there unharmed.
“How about a sleepover at the apartment tonight?” Daddy stands in the big doorway between the kitchen and the eating room. He’s dressed for teaching in a plaid short-sleeve collar shirt and tan pants.
“Whatever,” says Vivvy.
I nod and smile enough for both of us but he scratches the side of his head, fluffing the curls over his ear. He goes home.
Vivvy heads upstairs. I take Daddy’s toast and go stand in the eating room behind the wall. Floey watches me from under the table. I finish it and lay the plate back down in the sink. I open the bread box and touch the sacks of the English muffins, the sandwich bread, and the oatmeal bread. No one is coming. I could have more.
I go upstairs, step slow and quiet in front of Shelly’s door and lean my ear against it.
“Whatever she’s doing,” calls Vivvy from our room, “it is not sewing costumes.”
I leave his doorway. Floey’s tags jingle up the stairs and we both get in my bunk. Vivvy is in hers reading.
By late afternoon, none of us has moved—except maybe Daddy because we can’t see him. I hear Vivvy turn her pages every few minutes. I whisper things to Floey and rub her ears.
A car door shuts. Floey rolls up to her elbows. Through the space between the wall and bed above me, I see Vivvy cup her hand around her eyes against the window.
“Mom’s ready,” says Vivvy.
We don’t move, though.
She honks the Datsun’s horn. Toot-toot, toot-toot.
•
At Daddy’s apartment, he is in the kitchen washing up. Tonight was flank steak and baked potatoes, green beans too, so Vivvy won’t tell Ma about the coconut cake. He made it all. Before she even dropped us off—up-down, up-down, lurching over the parking lot speed bumps—and the cake was fluffed up, like someone’s fat kitty. There’s half left and all I can do is think of it for breakfast—please, please, please!
“Which color do you want?” Vivvy asks me.
She’s got three bottles of nail polish she leaves over here at Daddy’s and we’ve been through them a million times—mixing up colors in tiny bowls. There’s Field of Poppies, Babydoll Pink, and Orange Dreamsicle.
“Which one are you?” I ask, picking out the lint between my pinkie and fourth toes, getting ready.
Vivvy makes a face, but I’ve seen her do the very same so I don’t quit. She plops down beside me on our turned-out hide-a-bed. “I’m Poppies,” she says. “Let me guess. You want to be a Creamsicle?”
“Babydoll,” I tell her.
She rolls her eyes.
We sit with our toes in each other’s laps and start slicking on the paint. Mine are always smooth and end up looking like magical pixie toes; Vivvy’s are like Vienna sausages dunked in raspberry jelly.
“You girls ready for me?” Daddy tickles our knees, so up we fold like a drawbridge and he slides his bare feet right in between us at the head of our bed. His feet are nearly square for being so wide. His toes are thick, their big knuckle-waists curly and blond. The skin across his feet alternates peach and full-out orange in tanned sandal stripes.
“Which color?” she asks him.
“Orange Dreamsicle,” I say.
He nods. He smiles big.
Vivvy starts brushing orange on his right foot. I paint on the orange.
The door knocker taps against his door and it spooks us. We’ve never heard it at Daddy’s, except for when we’re the ones tapping it. We all get up, hear the hide-a-bed moaning, creaking as Daddy rolls over on his side to the edge. We walk tilted back on our heels to keep the polish from gumming up the rug, or the rug from gumming up our polish.
He checks the peephole, unflexes his toes. He stands with his hand to the shut door, his back to us. “Vivvy, you two go finish. I’ll be in soon,” he says.
She takes my hand and I’m to go, I understand. But I hear the door and turn back just as someone is poking in her head. And I’ve seen her before. It’s Holly.
They talk on the front step, with the door shut.
Vivvy pulls out the Narnia book we’re on, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the one where Edmund and Lucy venture to the edge of the world, but first to the land where dreams come true. She reads but she keeps looking up to the window behind us—though the blinds are shut and she doesn’t dare poke a finger in between to give her a view—and out into the hall where we can see only the slimmest bit of framing to the front door.
“Let’s play cards,” she says and tosses the book over the side of our bed.
“Spit,” I say, because it’s the only thing I’ve half a chance of winning.
She starts divvying out the deck. We make our five piles, our hands, we start and already I’m beating her. But something’s off. I look at her smudged toenails.
I touch her big toe, her legs folded in front of her, Indian style. “Sorry I’m no good at it,” I say. “You’re mad.”
“Unh-uh,” she says, shaking her head. She looks down at her toes. “Well yeah, but no.”
We go on and I win this round, too. Vivvy keeps looking up.
“You’re not even playing,” I whine.
“I don’t want to play,” she says and flops down on her back, one knee crossed over the other one so she can pick the extra nail polish off her skin.
I gather the cards, shuffle a bunch, then lay them out before me for solitaire.
“I know that girl,” says Vivvy. “I’ve seen her.”
“At Carol Lee’s,” I tell her. “Holly.” I move the cards fast.
“Now who’s not really playing?”
I start to gather up the cards but I smear them all around on the blanket.
Vivvy’s quiet again, lying on her back, studying the bits of rolled-up polish she’s pressing between her fingertips.
“Daddy lied to her,” I say. “He bought doughnuts and he said they were for all of us even though you were at camp.”
Vivvy pats my head and leaves her hand there, weighing down my bangs. “You’re such a baby, Enid.”
I kick her once, hard, in the side, and she grabs my foot and twists my ankle.
“Uncle!”
I curl up on my side, don’t mean to face the view into the hallway but there’s no other way to keep my back to her. I watch that edge of the front door.
If Vivvy wants to go to sleep, she can get up and turn out the lights herself. I’ll wait for him.
Tate
“You can’t come here.” I shut the apartment door behind us.
“I wanted to see you.” Her fingers touch the buttons of my shirt.
“You’re making this even more difficult.”
“For you,” she says.
“For me, yes.”
She lets go of my shirtfront, takes up her braid instead, playing with the end tuft.
“I don’t know what I can say to you,” I tell her. “I don’t intend to be mean, but my life is already spoken for. I owe a lot of people a lot of things. And not one of those people is you.”
“But we’ve got something; you see that, I know you do. There’s a way I get you that she doesn’t. I mean, you’re here and she’s, well, not here. And there’s a way you get me—I’ve never been so . . . known.”
I grip her by the shoulders. “What do you want me to do here? Do you want me to have to say things that will make it ugly? You don’t know a thing about me. I don’t care to know a thing about you. As far as I am concerned there’s nothing to know. You’re nineteen, right?”
“You shouldn’t tell a person she doesn’t love you. And you shouldn’t say there’s nothing in her to love. I didn’t think you were like that, Dr. Sobel. I still don’t.” She sizes me up, toe to head, then, “I think something’s happened and you’re keeping it from me. You’re trying to protect me is what it is.”
She grabs me above the elbow and reaches up to kiss my cheek. “It’s okay, Tate. I understand.”
She walks off. She is
capable of a great number of moods. I watch her get in her car, the taillights dimly red behind her.
The girls are asleep and I stand in their doorway trying to get my breathing back under control. Vivvy lies flat on her back. Enid is curled in a ball, facing me. I kiss her first and she shifts, gripping her knees tightly. But I feel so clumsy here with them, almost drunk against gravity, so I leave the room without saying good night to Vivvy.
I find myself in the kitchen. Standing there like I have come for a specific chore but cannot recall what it is. I open the fridge. Shut it. The freezer. I take out a Breyers half gallon of Neapolitan. Peel back the thin plastic sheet sucked into a couple of quick gullies made in the last few nights, squirt in Hershey’s syrup, grab the peanuts and shake them in. There won’t be enough left in the jar for another serving so I dump in the rest, too, almost obscuring the ice cream entirely. Drop Cool Whip on top. Three cherries dripping, cutting gruesome paths through the white fluff.
I get a tiny spoon to make me go slower. This was the kids’ baby spoon. I take the carton to bed. Turn out the light and peek out the bottom of the curtain to see if any of it was real.
I lay the carton on my stomach for the chill, but it’s at a severe disadvantage against my internal furnace: the box goes soft, the contents turn to slurry. I scoop faster. I swallow it all.
Francie
“Cat got your tongues?” The girls are strange this morning. Both of them, and that’s unusual. “You didn’t have fun?”
Vivvy looks over at me; Enid stares straight ahead at the road.
“Did Daddy say something?”
“I’m sleepy, Mom,” says Vivvy and she looks it. Her cheeks dark. Her eyelids heavy. I reach over Enid to stroke Vivvy’s hair.
Enid says, “I’m hungry.”
“What did you do last night?”
“Nothing,” says Vivvy. “Cards and Narnia.”
Enid looks at her. “Spit and Narnia.”
“Did Daddy play with you?”
“Painted our nails, too,” says Enid, moving her feet off the hump in between the footwells, right onto the dashboard for us all to see her pink-nailed glory.
“Gorgeous,” I say.
“Daddy’s are orange,” she says.
Vivvy looks out the window. I make out her left hand grabbing a twist of Enid’s thigh and pinching it slowly.
Vivvy
Right after breakfast today, we go out to the tree. Enid straddles the main branch, I hang by my knees. Upside down to me, she looks less lumpy. I touch her ankle. She pulls it away from me. I hold on to her ankle and she relaxes the leg and lets it dangle again.
Clint’s dad walks the mower back and forth in long lines that stripe the grass, depending on which direction he has walked. Sometimes he stops to move a stick out of the way or, like now, when Basey sniffs at something right in front of him and won’t move out of the way. He picks up the dog and carries him to the tie-out wire they strung across their yard between two trees. He sets down the dog and clips him to it.
Mom walks out the door and Floey comes with her, the dog’s belly swinging side to side. Mom waves, calls out something we can’t hear but is surely “Tennis,” and gets in the car.
I somersault out of the tree.
Enid turns this way. I brush off the backs of my knees and motion to her to come on.
Inside, I get the scale, a stack of note cards, and Mom’s blue marker and calculator. Enid comes in as I’m setting up the pass-through window. “Sit anywhere you like, hon,” I say. I smack my jaw as if chewing gum.
Enid claps her hands together twice. “Alice!” she screams.
“No, hon, name’s Flo.”
She straightens up her posture, tugs her T-shirt down, and takes a seat at the eating table. I tie on Mom’s special hostess apron around my waist. From the pantry, I get a bag clip and twist my hair up on top of my head. I stick Mom’s marker into my hair, slip a handful of her calorie-tallying cards into the apron’s pocket, and go to Enid.
“Have you decided?”
Enid holds her hands out in front of her like she is reading a menu. “Yes, please. I’ll have the tuna melt on rye.”
I pluck the marker from my hair and start writing. “Tuna melt on rye, okay. What would you like to drink?”
“A tuna melt,” says Enid, “but hold the tuna.”
“Hold the tuna?” I ask. “So you want a melt on rye.”
“Yes, that’s right. A melt on rye, with fries and a Coke.”
“All righty.”
I go back to the pass-through window and lean on the counter. “Mel, you’re gonna love this one.” I smack my invisible gum two times. “I’ve got a tuna melt on rye—hold the tuna—with fries.”
Enid runs over to the kitchen side of the window. She lowers her voice to be Mel. “You what?” she says. “What’s a melt on rye? What is that? I’m supposed to know what that is? I’ll tell you what that is, it’s air! The hot air between two pieces of bread. Here,” she says, taking a plate down from the cupboard, “you give her that hot air right here on this plate.” She uses a spatula to pretend to slide hot air on the plate, then shoves the plate across the counter through the pass-through at me.
“What about the fries?” I say.
Enid tries not to giggle.
I lift the plate up above my shoulder like waiters do and give Enid a chance to get back to the table.
“Here you go,” I say. “Tuna melt on rye, hold the tuna.”
“My turn now,” she says, standing up.
I sit down. Enid goes back to the kitchen to compose herself and get her supplies.
“Miss?” I say. “Miss, I’m ready. I would like to order.”
Enid looks at me, eyes big with worry.
I cover my mouth to be Mel’s voice coming from the grill, where he’s flipping burgers or frying eggs. “Hey Dinghy, are you going to take her order or do you need me to dock your pay until you remember how to do your job again?”
“Don’t do ‘Dinghy,’ Vivvy. You know that.”
I give a little shrug, pretend to study the invisible menu in my hands.
“Yes? What’ll it be?” Enid turns over an old tally card in her hand.
“Oh hello!” I say, pressing a flat hand where it goes for Pledge of Allegiance. “You snuck up on me.”
“Sorry.”
“Do you have any specials?”
“Oh my god, Vivvy! Don’t keep asking that every time you’re the diner.”
“She wants to know. She’s very meticulous.”
Enid looks at the pad and doodles something that, at first, looks like cursive writing but is really just nonsense. She keeps going and doesn’t lift the pen from the card until she is done. She smiles to herself.
“You don’t even know what meticulous means, do you?”
“We have Philly steak sandwich. We have french fries or onion rings. We have pie.”
“What kind of pie?”
“Strawberry,” Enid says.
“I cannot have pie.”
“Then why did you ask?”
“Today, I will order a salad, no dressing, does that come with cheese? Oh god no, no cheese. What else is on there?”
“Um,” says Enid, “lettuce, tomatoes, nuts, dressing, and croutons.”
“I don’t want any of that,” I say. “Just the lettuce. In a bowl. A water. And do these shorts make my butt look big?”
“Vivvy! Play right.”
“Vera!” I yell as gruffly as I can.
“I’m Alice, Vivvy! I’m not Vera!” Enid drops her order cards on the table and shakes her head like Floey after being out in the rain. One barrette dangles from her hair.
I reach out fast and grab it.
“Ow!” She holds her ear, pressing against it. “Why did you do that?”
“It was going to fall. Geez, calm down.”
A few cards went on the floor so Enid bends over to get them. On the insides of her thighs, her skin is puffy and pink with red scratch
es from the tree.
“You can be Alice,” I tell her. “Or you know what? You can even be Flo.”
She lays Mom’s calorie counts on the table in front of me as if they are the salad I ordered. “Vivvy,” she says, “kiss my grits.”
9
Tate
She slips in and shuts the door.
Holly is seething. She is actually spitting. “Lay it on me, Dr. Sobel. Tell me I am irrational!”
She picks up a stack of the summer class’s blue books, their covers turned back beneath. She begins to go through them. She shuffles. She drops some. “Here, here we go,” she says and throws down the rest while reading random marginalia back to me. “No justifying argument provided . . . Where are your counterarguments? . . . Multiple tautologies!”
She looks up, those bottle-glass eyes piercing. “No, Dr. Sobel, I don’t think I’m quite swift enough. Please explain to dumb little me how it is that the existence of a girl who is me isn’t proof enough of your cock and your heart wanting the same thing.”
Holly bends to the floor, straightens the exam books she scattered, and stands again. I cannot move from this spot of rug. She gives a slow and pained smile. She opens my office door and turns back. “I’m sorry,” she says, and is gone.
•
I get a call the next day. It’s Francie. I start to say it has only ever been her, but she, too, has a speech.
“I need you to come stay with the girls. Or take them to your place, but it’s really better if they’re in their real home. And there’s the dog, too. School starts in two days and the girls will want their own—”
“Is everything all right? Where are you going?”
“Can you do this? Yes or no.”
“Francie, where are you going?”
I can hear her mouth purse. Her lips push side to side; she’s not so much deciding whether to answer as waiting a beat. “Please just say yes or no.”
“Francine.”
Nothing.
So I say it: “Yes.”
“Anytime this afternoon. They’ll be at Clint’s playing. Or in the yard. They’ll be in the vicinity.”
“Okay,” I say. “How long do you have to go?”
“Long enough.”
“I really think, Francie, I really think we should try again. One family.”