by Noley Reid
Her hand goes suddenly quiet, but she still does not look at me. “Maybe you already have.”
“Francie, I have not the slightest idea what to say to them.”
She picks up again, the business with her hand.
“Hey,” I say, touching her, trying to keep hold of that hand, those searching fingers. “Hey, stop a minute. Talk to me. Come out of this.”
She shakes me off.
•
In the morning, we load her in the car, I guess. Into the back, sandwiched by the girls.
Francie’s face is orange from twelve days of sun. A band of dark freckles has surfaced across her nose. Her lips are white like a mountain climber’s, layers of skin sloughing off. Her hair is greasy black and knotted at the base of her neck. Her fingernails are transparent and when she stumbled getting into the car, and put her hand out to catch herself on my arm, two nails soft as sticks of gum folded against my skin rather than scratching me.
It occurs to me that she is dying.
Raymond said she didn’t eat. Only water from the tap.
“She’s your daughter,” I said. “Aren’t you scared?”
“I’ve had Francie longer than anyone. I know her. She came here, to me.”
“This hardly has anything to do with you. She’s in the yard, Ray. She’s lying on our son’s grave.”
He stood up from the table, pushed in his chair, and walked out, saying, “Seems to me it matters a whole lot less what she’s running to than who she’s running from.”
Francie
He drives. They swish their legs and hum. I finger-count my ribs, onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineteneleventwelve. Each side.
Tate
I leave the girls with explicit instructions to retrieve the dog and pup from the childless neighbors, then stay in the house with their mother so I can go to the apartment to pick up more clothes and books. “I’ll be fast,” I tell them. Francie is sleeping or resting.
Not two minutes in my place and I’m like a robber, indiscriminately fisting balled sweat socks into a bigger duffel bag. I grab shorts and T-shirts, and a few fancies from the closet. I stuff the duffel, sling it over my shoulder. Into the backseat of the car, I load all of my blankets. I start the engine and shift into reverse but think of one more thing I can’t leave without, so I shut it off and head back inside, feeling sweat in the folds of my eyelids. From a drawer of letters, I take one of Francie’s yellow hair combs and slip it inside my pocket.
13
Tate
I walk Francie from bed to the toilet. I answer for her, say “no” when Vivvy asks can she please read Watership Down to Francie and say “yes” when Enid wants to cook her eggs.
Francie’s cheeks fill with distaste for the idea. Enid brings a plate of scrambled eggs and juice, then disappears somewhere. With the new dog maybe.
Vivvy peeks around the door.
“Check on your sister,” I say and shoo her from our bedroom.
Vivvy comes back, says, “Enid’s quiet.”
“Okay,” I say. “Go read something happy to her, goose. Will you do that for me?”
She backs out of the room, watching her mother and the plate of eggs I have pushed onto her lap, the single yellow bit on a fork that she refuses to take in her hand.
“Francie,” I say, “you have to do this. You simply have to and that’s all there is to it.”
I sit back. The fork is already loaded up with two little knobs of egg because I was feeling optimistic after the first bite. I hold it back from her, then set it down on the plate. I wipe at her face with the napkin Enid rolled the fork inside, clean her cheeks and chin like breast milk off a baby. “I’ll call the place in Roanoke tomorrow morning.”
“I want to be good,” she says. “I know this isn’t it.”
“I’m going to call in the morning.”
She is so dehydrated that her eyes are laced red and her breaths are heavy and fast, they click at the back of her throat just like those of a dog who has panted too long. She pinches her eyes shut but there are no tears and no sound. Her body is shutting down.
I tug her up for the bathroom and push her toothbrush around in her mouth. I let her sit on the toilet for this because too long standing she begins to weave. Next I gather up the material of her flannel gown—winter weight because she’s so cold even with all of my blankets, the thermals pulled from the linen closet, and the girls’ extra sheet sets draped over the bed, too. Long pink cracks score her knees for how tight and dry the skin pulls, the same as her elbows. So I hoist the gown up around her hips and I look away.
When the faint trickle stops, I wipe between her legs, feel only bone above the wadded tissue. What’s in the toilet bowl is clear water.
•
“What are you making tonight?” I asked her.
“Sausage rigatoni, garlic bread, a yummy salad.”
“Sounds divine.”
“There’s tiramisu, too, just in case you don’t get your fill.”
We had just moved together into grad housing in the town of Shippensburg in the summer of ’68. We were still a little nervous and always sweet.
I was in graduate school then at Jaquess and Francie was trying to paint in the mornings and get her master’s in art history in the afternoons, but she could not paint. Not at all well. So she gave it up. This was well after she dropped out of cooking school. The meals were elaborate and became even more so: crown roast, sausage-and-broccoli orecchiette, lamb moussaka, chicken biryani, Korean barbecue. She was a nut planning each supper. She highlighted recipes and stuck scraps of paper at every page she intended to try. Once she’d made the dish, she jotted notes—He loves this; Go light on the sage; Not so much; Yes, yes, yes (me too)—and folded down the corner of its page.
Francie
He’s picked out a skirt and blouse, referring to the two as a dress. He tugs the sash of the wraparound skirt until it’s around me two and two-thirds times and a great lump of extra unsmoothed fabric covers my backside. He slips the blouse over my arms and back, pulls the placket to him to fasten.
It hadn’t occurred to me we were going somewhere.
“If they don’t think you belong in the clinic, one look at this getup and they’ll take you upstairs to the loonies.” He looks up from his place at my feet.
In Boone, there were whole days I spent thinking about a spot behind his right ear where I’d have liked to be kissing him.
I make my mouth work, push through the stiff dryness, feel the cuts reopen all across my lower lip. “It’s okay,” I tell him.
His torso comes forward. He presses his mouth to the sting in my knees, makes it hurt so much more. His hair is soft. His cheeks bristly with not having shaved these couple of days.
“I’ll eat,” I say.
“Yes.”
“Not in Roanoke. Here.”
“You won’t.”
“I will.”
“Baby, I love you. You won’t.”
“Please,” I say. “Please don’t take me away.”
“You are strong, Francie. You are strong but you took it so far. I don’t know if you can undo this yourself now. It’s past that point.”
“It’s no use if someone else runs my food,” I say. “That’s a temporary fix.”
“But if you aren’t doing it yourself—”
“I’m not criticizing. I just need to be in charge of it. I’ll eat.”
I touch his face. He shuts his eyes and I press at the bit of smooth skin between his eyebrows. Outline his eye socket with my thumb. He used to love me rubbing him here.
“Is this a mistake?” he asks me, worry stiff in his voice. “You’ve hit bottom.”
He holds me and I watch the clock, our appointment time at the hospital passing by.
14
Enid
Vivvy rides home with Dawn today. Clint wasn’t in school. I consider walking the footpath but it’s still hot out so I climb into the bus and take my usual seat. I slip lower, brace
my knees on the seat in front, where the little kid section begins. I look out the window, let the sun blaze out in my eyeballs so all I see is white and the green of trees as we go by.
“Hi there, Enid.” A bus boy sits down beside me. He puts his hand on my leg, just above my knee, and squeezes it.
I can’t talk or move. My face goes hot, my teeth feel like they swell too big to fit inside my lips. Now he’s gone. Just like that!
I try to think what joke is starting now? but all I can really think is was that real? and please come back.
Francie
The girls are strange. Vivvy talks to me but won’t look. Enid ignores me but I find her staring, fascinated. They come in from playing out back and are quiet these days.
Vivvy looks out the back window, saying, “The teachers read a new book today after lunch.”
“What was it?” asks Tate. He’s spooning up onto my plate what he swears is plain rice though it glistens yellow.
Too much. Too much.
“Something Farm. Farm on the something Hill . . . I forget.”
“Can we get a goat, Daddy?” says Enid.
“I’d really like more salad,” I say, trying to speak just to him, to not interrupt the entire table. “I bet I can eat a lot of salad.”
He looks up from the plate he’s created for me. He’s not dumb. He holds it out to me. And I take it. What else can I do?
Roll: 90; half serving rice: 80; probable butter: 60, knowing Tate more like 75, let’s say 85 just to be sure. 255.
Enid swings her legs up to knee-sit. I can’t recall exactly why I ever wanted her to stop. Vivvy notices her sister, looks at me, then at my plate.
Asparagus and carrots: 45; chicken: 125; salad: 18.
188.
“Don’t knee-sit,” she whispers and Enid purses her lips while scooting flat in her chair.
I’ve lost track.
Roll: 90; half serving rice: 80; butter: 85. Up to 255. Jesus. Asparagus and carrots: 45 = 300; plus chicken at 125 = 425; salad at 18 = 443. And the garlic and Pam: he goes heavy on garlic, three cloves per: 21 = 464. And spray on the vegetables and the chicken, two squirts each a second long: 14 = 478.
“Francie.” He touches my arm.
478.
“Yes?” I say.
478.
“Vivvy is asking you about Halloween.”
“What?” I say and see I startle him by the way he sits back in his chair.
“Vivvy wants to know about Halloween. About the costumes. Ask her, Vivvy.”
“Never mind,” she says.
I work at my plate, slowly. He watches. Seems each grain of rice goes down separately.
“I’m not an—” I mouth the word to him: anorexic.
“You’re not?”
“I wasn’t. Before.”
“I know.”
“And I’m not in denial about it.”
“You’re far too complex for that.”
“I know you don’t mean that kindly,” I say, “but you should.”
“Eat.”
15
Tate
School begins. Holly takes my feminist philosophy course because it will not be offered again before she graduates. To request an independent study requires cause, which requires an explanation. She has left a ton of messages at the apartment and a sheaf of pink While You Were Outs here in my department mailbox, saying only semi-cryptic things like:
Lacan’s driving me nuts.
Are you okay?
I don’t know when the paper’s due—call me.
Where are you?
Today, in Holly walks and she is gorgeous, so wide through the hips, so cream-cheeked. Her hair, unbraided, hangs in loose waves over her shoulders. “You’re back to keeping office hours, huh?”
“It’s complicated,” I say.
She chews at her lower lip.
“Are we all right then?” I ask. “Do you want to sit down or something? Talk about Lacan?”
“Um, no,” she says, and starts to leave.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her.
She looks back over her shoulder. “But for all the wrong reasons.”
I shut the door behind her. Lock it and pick up the phone.
“Hello?” says Francie after letting it ring four times.
“Were you sleeping?”
“Thinking.”
“What about?”
“Things. What do you need?”
“I just wanted to hear you.”
“You’re checking up on me.”
“No.”
“Tate, don’t treat me like a baby and then lie about it.”
“Did you eat the rest of the sandwich?”
“Not yet.” She is defiant, tapping a pen on the countertop or something.
“Francie.”
“I’m not hungry yet. I’ll eat it,” she says. “Lay off.”
“Are the girls home from school yet?”
“It’s only quarter to three.”
“Right.”
“Anything else?” she says, as if she has appointments all lined up for her day and wants to keep on schedule. “Tate, anything else?”
“I love you.”
“Thank you. G’bye.”
•
At home tonight Francie is calmer. She looks good. Her skin is pink again. Smooth. The cords that pull vertically alongside her mouth are beginning to soften into the start of what may become cheeks. She eats what I give her and listens well enough to the girls to fool us.
“I think I’ll get back to work on the costumes tomorrow,” she says.
Enid’s head swoops around and she smiles big.
“Floey’s wings are wrecked,” says Vivvy. “Enid lets her sleep in them.”
“So?” says Enid. She tugs off a nib of cornbread and sets it delicately in her mouth.
“I’ll just start over on those,” says Francie. “Besides which, doesn’t the baby need matching wings now, too?”
“Don’t wear yourself out,” I say.
“What if you don’t get to ours?” says Enid. “You should finish ours first. To be sure.” She lowers her voice, says, “Or let us have store-boughts.”
Vivvy flicks her finger hard against Enid’s elbow.
“Dad!”
“Girls,” I say.
“May I please be excused?” says Enid, already standing with her plate in her hands.
I nod and she escapes into the kitchen with her dish.
“Come here,” I say and she comes back slowly to stand before me. “Right here,” I say to make her squeeze in between Francie and me.
I give this girl a hug around the middle. “These pants seem kind of big,” I say, giving a tug. The waistband is a finger’s width away from her belly. “Are they new?”
“Good girl,” says Francie and now Enid wheels around to Francie, bright as a parade. Her mother’s hand strokes her hair back behind her ears. “Good, good girl.”
“Francie! That’s a horrible thing to say.” I hug Enid tighter to me. “Are you eating enough, sweet?”
She nods to me a slow up, down.
“Dad,” says Vivvy. “She’s ten years old. I can’t stand this anymore!”
“I’m with you, kiddo,” says Francie. “No more glutton gestapo, Tate.”
I give Enid raspberries on both cheeks. I tickle her sides. I send her off upstairs without making her do the washing or drying. Vivvy leaves too, without asking, and Francie and I let that go.
“You’re mad at me,” says Francie, bringing a bread plate, then a cup from the table—just single items, like that.
“I’m speechless.”
“If it weren’t for me, you’d think it’s a good thing, too,” she says.
“Everything those girls do, they filter through you.”
“And you.”
“Right, sure—but when it comes to food and little girls’ bodies, your whole life sends a pretty strong message. I just don’t think we should be doing a single thing that affirm
s it.”
“What about you and food? What about your message: eat, eat, eat!” she squeals.
“I don’t know,” I say. “But I guess that’s better than thinking I am such a worthless piece of shit that I deny myself anything I want. To the point of—”
“Fuck you!” she yells, spinning around, her fists in the air pounding at me. “Fuck you to hell!”
I walk away. I go upstairs and the girls’ door shuts quickly. I start to walk to their room, to tell them something that will make it make sense. That she has been better today. And yesterday was good, too. She is eating. That is clear.
16
Francie
In the mornings, Tate stays in the house, monitoring me, until the last possible moment he can make it to his classroom on time. 11:18. He keeps my car keys on his own key ring now. His pocket bulges with the extra metal. But I’ve a secret set hidden away: the beauty of the homemaker, the key box of extras for house sitters and family come to town, for emergencies. So I could leave again; I could go anywhere.
But when he isn’t watching me, the girls are on strict orders to do so as soon as they’re home. In between wardens, though, there are a few hours to myself.
I go to the kitchen now and retrieve from the fridge the lunch plate he makes for me every day. I spoon some of the yogurt out, scrape at the peanut butter on the bread. He has no idea how caloric peanut butter is. I remove three carrot sticks, and slice up the apple so that I can give half of it away without them knowing. Floey loves me now. If anything does, she’ll give me away, her nose always tucked to my side, the pup trailing fast behind.
I stand in the bathroom in front of the full-length mirror. I listen to the house: utter silence. I start. Feel my muscles coming back. Feel the space between my vertebrae extend, decompress. Three hundred jumping jacks and the tired oak floorboards count with me. I cycle through again. I watch myself. I smile.
I go back upstairs. I try to read. I try the sewing room but can’t make myself turn the doorknob.
Tate
We talked sometimes, after, about whether he was autistic and maybe he was. We did not know. And what if he was on the road to living a life even more impossible than his mother’s?