Pretend We Are Lovely

by Noley Reid

  She does not try to stop me. Enid’s face is like Sheldon’s but rounder. Her hair is straight and she has a cowlick over her left eyebrow along with a tiny scratch where she said the forsythia bush snagged her. She is not crying now. Not yet. And maybe she won’t.

  “Go ahead,” she says.

  “Who cares,” I say. I throw the book at her and the scissors fall out across her feet. “Cow.”

  Enid picks up the scissors and stands. The shirt is stretched and gapes out from her body. “You can do anything—anything!—so easy,” she says. “Nothing ever stops you. You have it so, so easy!”

  I pummel her back to the floor, pound her stomach and pull her hair. Then I have the scissors in my hand and Enid holds perfectly still.

  Enid

  “What happened to your ear?” Clint asks, pointing at the bloody split separating my ear from my face.

  “Dog bite.”

  “Very funny,” he says, laughing. “What do you want?”

  I shake my head because I don’t know.

  “You can come in,” he says and walks back upstairs.

  Clint’s ugly. We always said so, Vivvy and me. Ma thinks his curly hair’s cute.

  “Well are you coming?”

  I go upstairs. Basey heel-nips me and I sort of trip on the last step. Put a hand out to catch myself, land it right on Clint’s sneaker. My whole weight. Crouching there on all fours, I look up, ready for it.

  “You like that new kid, Ismael?” That’s all he says.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “What kind of name is that?”

  “Yeah, what kind of name?”

  Clint tosses me a Rubik’s Cube. “I can’t undo it,” he says.

  I screw around the sides, make it worse, lots worse; he did have one side completely yellow.

  “Want to see something?”

  He tugs me down beside him. Pulls at the waistband of his blue jeans. “See that?”

  There’s a pink line along his side, from belly to hip. I touch it.

  He lets go the elastic of his underpants and it snaps at my finger. “Nobody said you could touch it.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Just kidding,” he says. “But now I get to touch something.”

  Really fast, he sticks his hand where Floey’s nose tries to go and I clamp my knees together. I can’t help it; I wasn’t ready and it tickles. He pushes at me, digs his fist down in there.

  It feels a little good once he stops twisting so hard.

  Clint moves on top of me now. My back’s against the hardwood floor, my head on the end of his bedspread that’s too long. Out his window is a shagbark hickory I know because Daddy showed me it every day he’d walk us to the bus stop before we were too big for that.

  “Get up,” Clint says.

  “Okay.” I pull my jeans back up my left leg, lean back to my elbows and lift my bum to get them on and button the waist—I used to have to be flat, elsewise they wouldn’t button.

  “I said get up!”

  I put my left foot in its Top-Sider.

  “Go on!”

  I run down the stairs and out and Basey chases me through the pines.

  •

  I go to find my bag of chips in the basement but Ma is there, a stack of catalogues on her lap and little mailing boxes at her feet. Labels from Spiegel and Talbots and Penney’s.

  “Try them on,” I say. “We’ll play fashion plates.”

  “Nothing worked, sugar. I’m regrouping.” She studies the description for a dress with a collar and belt.

  “I like this one, Ma.” It’s blue and pink flowers on a wrap skirt. She likes wrap skirts because she can cinch them tight—so, I don’t know, maybe now she won’t like it?

  “Mm-hmm.” She turns the page.

  “We could get matching ones. What size am I?”

  She tips her head to one shoulder, looks at me. I suck in my middle. “Maybe women’s ten now? Oh honey, I don’t like the look of that ear,” she says, touching her own earlobe.

  I try to cover it with my hand but my fingers tug it once more.

  “Don’t, Enid,” she says. “Quit messing with it. Come here.” She takes my hand away to investigate. “I’ll put more ointment on there when we go up. But you can’t touch it, Enid. Your ear will get infected and fall off. And no more climbing trees in hoop earrings. Jesus,” she says. “Jesus.”

  “What size are you?” I ask, touching the pages on her lap. “Do we match?”

  “I don’t quite know anymore.” She leans back against the cushion, which she doesn’t like to do because of how it’s stinky like boy socks and rain. “Every other week I’m something new.” She shuts the catalogue.

  I reopen it to the wrap skirt. “But you could do this one,” I say. “Please and thank yous forever. We could match. Look, it comes in a ten.”

  She takes the booklet from me. “Big girls don’t get new clothes.”

  I turn to Ma and look at her. Really look at her. She is round and soft at her edges now, she is big. I don’t know how it happened but I remember Ma before and Ma now. Where was the in-between?

  Tate

  Vivvy lies on her bunk looking at a glossy magazine.

  “Where is your mother?” I ask her.

  The new dog lifts his head from Enid’s bed, looks at me, then lies back down.

  “Laundry.”

  “What is she doing down there?”

  She shrugs, her lips turning up in a tiny sneer.

  “What are you reading there?”

  “Nothing!” She shuts the magazine on her forearm. “She’s down in the basement with Enid, Dad.”

  I head downstairs, smile to see the warm light coming in through the front door transom. It shines in boxes on the Persian rug at the bottom of the stairs. Francie said we shouldn’t keep it there because it would fade—it already is striped in bands of paler silk—but that’s a natural aspect of aging, is it not?

  Floey is curled in her bed in the far corner of the kitchen. She peeks her nose out of her tail to see which one I am. I step into the pantry, rummage in her box, toss her a Milk-Bone, and grab a pretzel for me. She sidles her head over to the treat on the cushion. She grabs it with her tongue and chews lazily, unimpressed with what I have to offer. I suck the gooey crumbs from my fingers, wipe them, swallow really well, run my lips over my front teeth to be sure there’s no trace, and clear my throat.

  “Francie?” I call out, going down the basement steps.

  Francie

  We lie in bed. Tate and I both on top of the covers. He pinches the open pages of a Faulkner novel he rereads from time to time, holding the book up above his chest in the little bit of space allowed by propping his elbows.

  “I’m going to just be now,” I announce. “I need to just be. I’m going to just be.”

  “I think that’s a good idea,” he says, keeping his eyes to the page he’s on.

  “I can just let my body sort itself out, what it needs and doesn’t.”

  “Right,” he says. “You’ll be just fine.”

  He will not look at me but I feel his eyes all the same these days. When he squeezes around me in the bathroom. When habit makes him tally up my empty dinner plate. And now when lying next to me, there is no denying his despair and revulsion.

  “No matter what?” I say on the very verge. I breathe deeply, keep it in, keep it together.

  “No matter.”

  And now he does look at me. Tate’s eyes are lovely-blue. Soft and rich. He kisses my hair, the side of my head—kisses for little girls.

  “I don’t feel well,” I say.

  “You’re upset,” he says. “Why don’t you sleep? Mornings are easier.”

  “I’ll eat but only healthy. I’ll take Enid to Jazzercise at the Y.”

  “Don’t get too ahead of yourself. Put it out of your mind. Let it be. Let yourself be, like you said.” His right hand still holds the Faulkner poised to return to.

  “You have it so easy,” I say
.

  “Don’t do this.”

  “You do. Look at you. All your life. And you married me. And I was gorgeous.”

  He shuts his eyes. The book hand rests on top of the sheets.

  I stare at him. I sigh.

  He opens his book, but looks back at me. “Vivvy had one of your Elles today.”

  “Maybe she’ll share it with Enid.”

  “Do you even hear yourself?” he says. “Do you know who you were two fucking minutes ago?”

  22

  Tate

  In late October, I bring home a fan for Francie’s side of the bed with a pizza from Angelo’s for lunch. Francie claps three times fast like a baby and has me set up the fan right out of the box this instant.

  I am tangling with the pieces and wordless instructions when she slips out of our room. “Be right back,” she calls.

  I am on the floor, feeding the power cord through the neck of the fan. I snap the head onto the rod and tighten two safety rings on either side, meant to keep the head from loosening all the way and flying off to kill someone. And I screw on the last section of the pole, with the tripod on it.

  Francie comes up the stairs now, slowly, breathy, precariously balancing two beers, hot pepper flakes, and paper napkins galore on the pizza box. “A picnic,” she says.

  Francie

  I wake in the middle of the night to the smell of melted chocolate.

  The house is quiet. I am walking downstairs. Just this once because once doesn’t mean always. The kitchen is clean but the air is thick yellow with flour and butter and eggs.

  23

  Tate

  I stop at Shell’s door. The dogs don’t. On they go, down to their living room posts, but I linger.

  I knock softly, then look behind me. Vivvy’s head spins away, back to her book. Enid is sitting up and smiles. I motion for her to go back to what she was doing. She only waves. So I press my palms together and pantomime a pillow beneath my cocked head. She shrugs at me and keeps on smiling.

  I mean to knock again but give up midway so the sound is just my hand slipping down the door and holding the knob.

  “What?” says Francie. Her voice is so strangely close.

  “Were you right here?” I say.

  “Where?”

  “Here at the door.”

  “No. Why would I be at the door? That would be dumb. Rickrack’s unspooled everywhere in here.”

  “What?”

  “For edging the shirtsleeves. The pirate’s shirtsleeves.”

  “The costumes.”

  “Enid’s.”

  “Oh.” I press my face into the doorframe. I whisper, “Come say good night.”

  “I’m in the middle, Tate. Why can no one understand how much I’m doing here?”

  “I know you are,” I say. “Can I . . .” I cannot say it. My hand falls to the doorknob and holds on.

  “Can you what?”

  “Walk the dogs with me.” It’s all I can say.

  “No. God no,” she says. “There’s just two days till Halloween. I have to finish.”

  “There’s rickrack spilled everywhere in there?”

  “Pretty much,” she says.

  “It would take just a minute,” I say. “A literal minute to kiss your girls. A short walk?”

  “How will I ever finish?”

  “Okay,” I say.

  I go downstairs.

  •

  It is late. The girls are dreaming. Floey sneaks in next to Enid. I lift the other dog up to Vivvy’s bunk and he curls up at her side. I go to check on her. Slowly, I open the door until the hinges squeak. The hall light falls upon her, head to toe. Francie is in the boy’s bed. Under the bedspread. Between the sheets. Her shoulders bare.

  Her back to the door, she does not move: lift her head, twitch a foot, sigh, or even flinch. It is, maybe, the first time in months I have seen her body at ease. She’s so tired and has finally given up.

  I go down to the basement and touch the telephone dial without lifting the handset.

  Enid

  Floey scratches her neck again and again until I’m awake and hot and can’t fall back asleep. I go downstairs. She comes, too. I look in the refrigerator; Floey pricks her ears and wags. We choose a wrapped-up cheese and we take turns biting it off the half-moon. I climb the shelf in the pantry where she keeps special baking supplies hidden, and I eat from the jars of chocolate chips (just two chips), coconut shreds (one shred), and brown sugar (a licked pinky tip’s worth). I put a tiny pinch of raw oatmeal from the tub onto my tongue. I replace the lid over the chocolate and hold the jar up to the kitchen light, wondering if she’ll know the level is lower now.

  Floey’s toenails click on the floor.

  I tell her, “Chocolate’s not good for dogs,” and find something she can have, a Meaty Bone and two Bonz.

  Tate

  “I’m sewing everything by hand,” says Francie. “That’s why you don’t hear the machine.”

  “Is that right?” I say. “That’s impressive. So they’ll be done after all. Hear that, girls?”

  “Of course they’ll be done. How could you think they wouldn’t be?” She looks at me expectantly, then turns back to the piece of soft sandwich bread she is picking at on her plate.

  “They’ll be so pleased,” I say. “Girls, aren’t you listening?”

  Enid paws through her lunch sack. Vivvy looks at her mother attentively but with no real interest.

  “Girls,” I say, “that’ll be special. That will be really special. Ma is making you such a gift of these costumes. Something you can really look back on for years to come.”

  “And they’ll be ready, right?” says Enid. “To wear to school? To wear on the bus tomorrow morning?”

  “May I be excused?” says Vivvy, already lifting her cereal bowl and milk glass.

  Francie looks at Vivvy waiting for release.

  “And you’re sure they’ll be done?” Enid’s eyes shine with the gloss of only nearly holding herself together.

  I touch Francie’s shoulder. “Hon,” I say and nod toward Enid.

  Francie looks at Enid. “Hmm? Oh, yes. Of course they will.”

  She heads upstairs to sew. The girls come back down, backpacks on but unzipped. I set the washcloth on the counter and wipe up with the dish towel. I hand them their lunches, which is apparently the wrong thing to do. They steal sideways glances, swap the bags, and turn around one by one to drop them in each other’s backpack, then zip each shut.

  “Have a good day,” I say, kissing each girl’s forehead.

  They stand in place. Enid’s brow crinkles up. Vivvy hugs her arms around herself.

  I wait, but no one says a thing. “Did I miss something?”

  Enid shuts her eyes and puffs out her cheeks a little.

  “Will we ever go to live with you?” asks Vivvy.

  “No,” I say. “No. That’s not how families are. We are one, single family so we are together again—and forever—so you don’t need to think about that at all anymore.” I blot my forehead with the dish towel.

  “Told you,” says Vivvy smugly to her sister.

  They leave for the bus stop. Vivvy holds out one pinky finger and Enid takes it.

  24

  Francie

  It’s two in the morning. Dark inside here, even darker outside. I go to the kitchen, turn on all the lights.

  We have pita bread. I split one, slide it in to toast.

  We have colby and Triscuits. Preheat. Foil a pan. Single layer. Give each cracker a square slice. Let corners overhang; some will melt crispy-chewy to peel from the foil. Bake.

  We have peanut butter. Perfect: no bowl to clean or hide or admit. Just a spoon. Spoons are easy; spoons are nothing.

  Nails click the linoleum: the new dog comes in, ears up, tail wagging.

  “You’re hungry? Here.” I give a spoon of peanut butter but have to hold it until he finishes, which is long for being peanut butter but fast for being a dog. He bats his lashes
, blinking shut with each lick of the spoon. I stroke his broad forehead. “Good dog,” I tell him. “Good dog.”

  I rescoop the spoon into the jar. Try to show him to pull the blob off of the spoon with his lips. Lick it, then suck on it to get it clean. “Now you,” I say. There are so many things to eat in this room and we’ve only just begun.

  I look at him, say, “What kind of family doesn’t name its dog?”

  He wags and jangles his blank tag but runs off out of the kitchen with the spoon.

  I butter the pita.

  I butter an English muffin.

  I eat and eat and lick and chew.

  Through the oven window, I watch cheese bubble over the edges of the Triscuits.

  There is a freezer pizza.

  I restart the oven, find the instructions, and turn up the heat.

  I step out onto the porch, get the box of Walkers shortbread hidden in my bicycle basket. I go back in.

  The butter is now deep in my stomach, churning, aching. I mitigate and moderate. I eat cheesy Triscuit, shortbread, cheesy Triscuit, shortbread, cheesy Triscuit, shortbread, cheesy Triscuit, shortbread, cheesy Triscuit, shortbread until there are no more shortbread fingers.

  I appraise the packagings. All the world’s empty cellophane, cardboard, and foil across my counters—like the Sunoco’s dumpster out on Prices Fork.

  I didn’t want any of this in me. And I don’t want Tate’s fucking Crisp ’n Tasty pizza either. Where will I even tell him it’s gone? I count by 100s, 150s, 400s. I am an abacus of calorie calculations, sliding beads along the wires. I carry the 7, the 17. The 77,000.

  I fit the pot holder to my hand, take the sizzling pizza from the oven.

  Bare-fingered, I pinch the scalding cheese, suck it and the sauce from my skin. I suck and suck until I realize I am gnawing smooth the indentations of my own finger bone.

  The floor comes alive overhead.

  He begins to rouse, begins to move. The bedsprings creak beneath him, a man as large as Tate.