Pretend We Are Lovely

by Noley Reid

  He’s coming. Down the stairs. Now.

  I snatch the pan, rush through the porch with it. Run barefooted through the screen door and out into the night. The screen taps in its frame—I can’t think of everything at once!

  And now I fling it.

  Fling the freezer pizza stuck to its pan out into the dark.

  I pass the carport trash can, and I can’t stop myself.

  Tate

  My wife stands over the open garbage can. In smeared and sweaty nightshirt. She looks up, then grabs something and shoves it into her mouth. Her lips are wet, wet and smeared. Peanut butter and whatever else. She is gulping, smacking like an animal.

  I can’t take my eyes from her. All I can do is stand at the kitchen door’s window on the sane side of the glass.

  She looks up and sees me.

  Francie

  He is in the kitchen. The light through the porch door’s nine windowpanes glances off the rim of this can, its contents entirely unlit. Yet the light moves, or something moves through it. Passing back and forth, the darkness moving through is him.

  But now, now the light dims. He stands at the door watching.

  I do not know what I taste. Little buttered potatoes. The dogs’ stew cans. Sandwich crusts tinged with the blood of last night’s pork chops. I do not stop. Each arm shovels as fast as I can swallow.

  Faster, faster, until all my mouth knows is: smooth, slick, salty, crisp, putrid, wet.

  The light goes out.

  I replace the lid and go back inside, wipe each foot in the dog towel. I walk in through the darkened kitchen door. I wash my hands deep down in the sink, where Tate has stacked all my plates and bowls. I let the water run hot, hotter.

  I heard a strange noise, I will tell him.

  Or I was cleaning out the fridge and pantry, I can say. I’m just not comfortable with all these foods you’ve brought in the house. Think of the girls for one second, would you?

  I couldn’t sleep, I will say. I went for a walk.

  The wrappers, the boxes are gone and the oven is off, cooling; its motor clicks and whirs.

  I could say, Help me.

  25

  Vivvy

  Halloween morning, I drop down onto Enid’s bunk, my toes as close to her drooly face as I can aim them. Floey doesn’t move but her eyes open and shine into the dark.

  At the bathroom sink, I sip from a paper cup. I set it down on the counter and look at the toilet, gauging if I need to go.

  My throat feels dry again and there is a tickle at the back.

  Dawn has had cherry cough drops with her at school every day for the whole last week. I flick on the light and look at myself in the mirror. I cough and make myself cough again. I take down my toothbrush from the holder and stick it all the way to the back of my mouth, where the tickle is. I scrub hard at it, which makes me gag, so I scrub the insides of my cheeks and as far back as I can force it, which is pretty far, after a minute or so. I set my toothbrush down on the edge of the sink and look in the medicine cabinet and in the cupboard down below for cough drops but there aren’t any. That is totally fine; Dawn and I love to share.

  Francie

  PRESCRIPTIVE: WHAT NEEDS RETRIEVING

  pizza

  pot holder

  pan

  Before true morning, I slip from the house. Tate snores on. The dogs stay with the girls.

  Leaves shush, shush, shush. I touch the trunk of the girls’ tree. Imagine their hair, their dangling ponies in the morning’s chill air above me, their laughter young and dangly, too. Anymore, they stay inside or go in other people’s houses. It’s just as well.

  Enid

  “Don’t ask her,” says Vivvy, the suds of toothpaste pooling in her cheeks. “I’m warning you.” She spits and looks at me in the bathroom mirror. “I mean it.”

  “But it’s Halloween,” I say.

  She sticks out her tongue and tips her throat up to the light. “Does that look red to you?”

  “You don’t have to,” I say, “but I’m not dressing until she gives me it. She promised.”

  “Oh please,” says Vivvy. “You have to get dressed.”

  “Just wait.”

  “For what, Enid? Where do you think she is right now?”

  I point toward Shelly’s room, where the door is shut.

  “You are so stupid!” Vivvy says to me. She snaps the elastic strap of my nightgown. “Look under the door. What do you think—that she’s in there with her needles sewing you a stupid eye patch in the dark?”

  I leave the yellow light of the bathroom and go to Shelly’s door.

  “Face facts,” says Vivvy. She’s followed me and gives a small push from behind but I can catch myself. “They weren’t ready last night, they’re not ready this morning, and they won’t be ready tonight.”

  There is no strip of yellow beneath the door.

  I wonder if dead is something or nothing, if he knows he is dead and if it hurts. I put my hand on the door. My hair moves along the surface of the wood. My breathing grows faster.

  I suck in all of my breath in one large bubble and hold it inside my mouth, leaning into his door, the doorframe holding on to me.

  “Space case!” Vivvy slams me hard against the door now, all points and hard angles jabbing me, and I do hit the door hard this time. “She’s not in there, you know. Get over it. It’s what grown-ups do. They lie.”

  I still don’t breathe. The tingling comes to my lips first. My eyes are shut.

  “Oh my god, retard,” says Vivvy.

  I open my eyes and Vivvy is in a dress I’ve never even seen before. “Are you going to Dawn’s after school?”

  “Of course I am,” she says.

  “But you’ll be back for later, right?”

  “I’m her best friend—what do you think?”

  “You have to. We always go together. Please,” I beg.

  She rolls on her Kissing Slicks and smacks her lips together, twisting the lid back on. She is finished and goes downstairs. I pick up the hairbrush and yank it through my hair, which is going every whichaway. Ma likes a good, deep part so I run the comb under the faucet and use my fingertips to try to find where my hair can separate.

  I unscrew the cap of her Kissing Slick. It’s strawberry and smells just like the hard candies that come in little white tins from the Roanoke mall. I hold it to my nose and shut my eyes. It’s like pie, like candy, like strawberry jam. Just barely, I stick out my tongue and touch it to the roller ball. It is greasy, gummy, and sweet all in one.

  Tate

  I set a hand to Shell’s door. “Francie?” I say. “Are you in there?”

  No answer. I head down to the kitchen.

  “Where have you been?” says Vivvy without looking up. She is bent down in front of the toaster oven, her head propped up on the counter to watch her toast crisp.

  The dogs are stretched out at the edge of the landing steps. Floey beats her tail against the linoleum. She gets herself up to a sit. The new dog’s tail swishes the floor at me.

  Across the kitchen, on the big peninsula counter, sits a stacked plate of no-bake peanut butter cookie balls. The sink overflows with every mixing bowl and spoon we had left after I cleaned up last night.

  “What is all this?” I say, setting my satchel by the kitchen door.

  Vivvy crosses her arms.

  “Where is your ma?” I say.

  “Not here,” says Enid.

  “Are you sick?” I ask her.

  She shakes her head.

  “Why aren’t you dressed for school?”

  She does not answer.

  “I told her to,” Vivvy says.

  “Have you both eaten? Did she leave you breakfast or lunches?” I say. “Have you eaten, Enid?” I hold her forearm a moment.

  Vivvy pulls at the hem of my nightshirt. “Is that what you’re wearing to teach today?”

  “Sorry, I slept past the alarm, I guess.” I look at my watch. “You have twelve minutes. Vivvy, you’re
good with just that toast? Enid, what can you have?”

  “Not hungry,” mopes Enid.

  “Go get dressed,” I tell her. “Quickly.”

  She pouts but goes.

  I tell Vivvy to throw in a slice of toast for her sister. I check the fridge, take out the milk, which feels light, and get down two glasses for them. “Who wants cereal?” I ask.

  I grab the box but it’s empty. I put it under my arm and get the kitchen trash sack, too, and take them to the outside can. I don’t look in it, just drop these in and replace the lid.

  And there she is.

  Around the back of the porch, I see her from behind, standing against the screened wall.

  “Francie,” I call.

  She is squeezed between the porch and the holly bushes there. I go to her but cannot reach her. Not without her also reaching out to me, which she does not do.

  She stays behind the bushes, sidewinding along the back perimeter of the house. She is huffing and puffing, sweat dripping at her temples, brushed across her upper lip, the folds of her elbows, and sides of her neck where stray clumps of hair have stuck in fancy cursive s’s and l’s.

  “What are you doing, exactly?”

  “I thought I lost my—” She stops for a moment, then never continues.

  “What did you lose?”

  She isn’t bent over searching the ground, just shuffling her tennis shoes side-together, side-together, how she must in the minimal space she has. “Nothing,” she says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It turns out I didn’t lose it after all.”

  “But you’re still looking?”

  “No, I’m done,” she says and begins to push her way out of the bushes in between two of the hollies.

  “Careful,” I say, offering her a hand so she does not lose her balance, “those hurt.” The holly leaves snag her sweatpants and drag white lines across her arms.

  I reach for a spot high on her arm, away from her hands—somewhere safe I might touch her and not recoil.

  She looks up at me dumbly. “Everything hurts,” she says and speeds off, back toward the porch door.

  “Wait a minute,” I say.

  She turns around.

  “I just—I want to say, we’ll get through this. We can get through anything.”

  “Yes,” she says, smiling quickly. “Of course we will.” But now Francie is gone, back into the house.

  “We already have,” I say.

  There are broken branches here where she stood and passed. Snapped but hanging in place. I step on them and pull to free them. I pick them up, still taking pains to avoid the thorns, and when I stand again, through the eating room window I see Francie holding both girls to her, her hands at Vivvy’s back and Enid’s hair.

  I drop the branches, go back inside, but only the girls remain. “Did she go upstairs?” I ask.

  Vivvy rolls her eyes. Enid’s lower lip quivers.

  “What happened?” I say. “Are you okay?”

  “Ask Mom if you want to know so bad,” says Vivvy. She drinks the last of her milk and sets the glass down by the toaster oven.

  I take it to the sink but now I go back to Vivvy, pull her aside into the eating room. “What happened to your sister?”

  “Really, Dad?” says Vivvy. “It’s Halloween! And Mom said we’ll both look so pretty no matter what we wear tonight.”

  Enid erupts in sobs. Vivvy sighs and runs upstairs.

  “Well that’s, that’s very nice,” I say. “What’s wrong with that?” I look at the oven clock. “Only a few minutes before the bus stop,” I call after Vivvy.

  Enid stands sniffling in front of her dry toast. She has picked off the crust but not eaten. I hand her a wad of Kleenex and slip her an extra couple of dollars for a treat at lunch.

  “I love you, bug. Want to take some of Ma’s cookies for lunch?”

  Enid shakes her head no. She snorts and wipes at her nose. The tears keep falling but she is quiet now.

  “Not even one?” I say, holding a greasy little ball up to her.

  “I will if you want me to.” Her eyes grow trembly again.

  “Oh honey, no, I don’t want to force them on you.” I stroke Enid’s hair and hold her to my belly. “Your ma is trying her best,” I tell her.

  Enid tightens her arms around my stomach as far as they will reach.

  “Maybe she will be done with the costume for tonight.”

  “She won’t,” says Enid.

  “We can hope.”

  Enid folds the two dollar bills and presses them into her rubber coin pouch. “She promised.”

  “I know, love. She should not have done that.”

  “She’s a liar.”

  I wipe the pads of my thumbs along the swollen undersides of her eyes. “But hey, look at your R2-D2 shirt; that’s sort of like a costume, isn’t it?”

  She looks at the shirt she has chosen but cannot muster the hope that it might be costume enough, at least at school.

  I go to the bottom of the staircase. “Vivvy, time to leave.” I listen. “Francie?” I call.

  “One . . . second. Okay, I’m coming.” Vivvy is chipper now, coming down the steps with a quick rhythm and smile. In her hand, she has a note folded to one-eighth the size of the piece of paper it’s written on. She has something larger, rounder in her other hand but holds it in such a way as to intend privacy. I don’t ask. She has traded her usual ponytail for a headband.

  “You look very pretty today, Vivvy.”

  “Oh my god, broken record,” she says. She looks down at her green dress, then up at me. “Besides, in this thing? Couldn’t you have bought the real alligator one, the Izod?”

  I follow her back to the kitchen, where Enid is ready—backpack on, mysteriously filled lunch sack in hand, and red eyes mostly dry. She is chewing something and turns her back to Vivvy. I don’t press it but notice the plate of cookies is missing a few.

  “Have a great day,” I tell them, doling out hugs. I watch them cut through the Thomsons’ yard as far as I can still see.

  Francie

  When I hear his shower water run, I come from Sheldon’s room. In my hands are filled picture frames I boxed up long ago. I stand each one in tidy rows across my dresser. The ones of my brother and my daddy and mother. Of Floey and the cat we had once. And of us, too, as we were before—these I arrange in the first two rows. Tucked in between the last is a little, chipped sand dollar I’ve had since then, too, when we were at the shore and I saw it and picked it up. Tate cleaned it in the surf. It was perfect then.

  26

  Enid

  Most everybody wears a costume in Mrs. Moss’s room today. Laurel White is all fancy-pants in her real ballerina leotard, tutu, and feather crown she wore in the recital last spring, so that doesn’t even count as a costume. And Laurel Davies wears a blue bathrobe over regular pants and shirt. She is Yoda, with a rubbery mask. The eyeholes are set too low in it so she looks more like a zombie with weird green ears.

  I put my face down into my backpack and set one cookie ball into my mouth. I lift my head out and hold up a sharp pencil. I smoosh the cookie and swallow it fast. Or I try. Most of it sticks to the roof of my mouth and once it’s out of there, it globs in the back of my throat. Please don’t call on me!

  Vanessa looks at me. She whispers to Veronica.

  I turn around. I give Veronica a look.

  Vanessa makes a pig nose and shakes her curls at me.

  “What is wrong with you?” says Veronica.

  “What isn’t wrong with her?” says Vanessa.

  Francie

  I drive the Datsun. Sun on my face. This is what I need: all day, all day, inch by inch in mud-packed earth. The grass.

  Vivvy

  Down the hall to assembly, I see Dawn’s matching green dress up ahead. When I reach her I cover her eyes. “Guess who?”

  She goes stiff. “That’s pretty obvious,” she says.

  “Vivvy?” says Dawn’s teacher, Miss Ram
sey, giving me away. She holds a finger to her lips like a librarian. My teacher, Miss Nelson, and Dawn’s teacher are best friends, too, so mostly they understand and let us sit together.

  I take Dawn’s hand to make sure we aren’t separated. “You gave me your cold,” I say and nudge my shoulder against hers. “Give me a Sucret.”

  “I don’t have them,” she says. “I’m fine now.”

  Justine comes up on Dawn’s other side.

  “Well, you put your germs in me.”

  “Oh my god,” says Justine. She laughs and another girl, Danielle, comes up between her and Dawn. Justine whispers in Danielle’s ear and they both laugh.

  “Do you have to say it like that, Vivvy?” says Dawn.

  I tell the other girls, “Do you mind? This is private.”

  “No it’s not,” says Dawn. She looks at Justine. “It’s not,” she insists.

  Dawn’s hand feels like a fish. A dead one or one that is almost dead.

  “Why are you wearing that dress?” asks Danielle.

  “Are you, like, twins?” Justine says. They laugh.

  “No, no we’re not,” Dawn says.

  “I looked for you this morning,” I say. “I waited by our spot.”

  “My mom drove me. I was early.”

  “But you got my note and the thing, right?”

  “What thing?” asks Justine.

  “None of your business,” I tell her, then say quietly just to Dawn, “Did you get it? Do you have it on?”

  Dawn’s hand tries to wriggle free. She pushes my arm away to get her hand free. She slides her tortoiseshell headband off the back of her head and combs it through her hair again. Once she has it in place, she pushes it forward to make the little loop of bangs out in front of the band. It looks just as perfect as it did before she dropped my hand.

  “Why are you being like this, Dawn?”

  “I’m not being like anything.”

  “Too loud, girls,” says Miss Ramsey. “Vivian, go back to your class, please.”

  “But it wasn’t me,” I say.

  It doesn’t matter. Miss Ramsey points me to my class, standing in single file way behind Dawn’s.

  The girls whisper and giggle softly.

  Tate