Pretend We Are Lovely

by Noley Reid

  “The discount is for tomorrow,” he says, “not tonight.”

  “Understood.”

  There isn’t much here. Bags of candy corn, themed art packets of orange and black pipe cleaners and construction paper, candy bucket jack-o’-lanterns that, upon closer inspection, must be seconds; their printed faces don’t match their embossed faces but are a few inches left or right of center.

  I dig through the crap I cannot imagine anyone will ever buy to find what I want and pay for it.

  “Thank you,” I tell the manager when he spins the lock for me to get out.

  Vivvy

  There is a knock at the door. We scrabble upstairs and through the kitchen, gripping and propelling off countertops and dining room chairs, the dogs excited and following us, until we open the front door and stand there falling onto each other and tipping out of our high heels.

  “Trick or treat!” It is a Smurf and a littler He-Man.

  I can see their grown-up standing in the darkness under the trees at the bottom of our driveway. I turn on the porch light but it only helps me see right here on the steps.

  The kids’ eyes grow wide looking at us. Still they hold out their candy buckets.

  “I like your costume,” says Enid to the Smurf, who maybe smiles or maybe doesn’t; I can’t see anything through the fake mouth hole.

  “Just a minute,” I tell the kids and shut the door.

  “What are you doing?” Enid asks.

  I clip-clop to the kitchen and she follows. So do the dogs. I go to the pantry and Enid to the refrigerator. We stumble back to the door, me hoisting up the neck of my dress so it isn’t down to my elbow or off both shoulders at once. Now I drop a sleeve of saltines into each bucket and Enid gives each kid a wilted carrot. We watch them run back down our driveway, the slimy green tops dangling over the edges of their candy buckets.

  I shut the door and we laugh so hard Enid gets that look. If I push it, like I usually do, she will become an actively erupting pee volcano.

  There is another knock at the door.

  “Trick or treat!” call a Strawberry Shortcake, E.T., Chewbacca, ghost in a sheet with tiny flowers on it, and Snoopy.

  “One minute, please,” says Enid. She shuts the door and we run hobbling to the kitchen. This time we shake seven raisins and a leaf of lettuce into their buckets and bags.

  “Are those clothespins?” one of them says but we can’t tell whose mouth moved behind their masks and we ignore the question.

  When we shut the door, though, Enid looks at herself in the dining room wall mirrors. “Is it still smooth?” she asks me and I tell her yes.

  Next is Porky Pig and Daffy Duck with another E.T., Spider-Man, and G.I. Joe. Enid and I bring armfuls of food to the front door. We pass out a knife’s scrape of peanut butter, a slice of bread, a handful of white sugar, and when those are gone, we get even more desperate with cans of chicken broth and kidney beans, whole boxes of noodles and mashed potato flakes. And when the shelves are bare, we open the freezer and carry Styrofoam trays of ground beef, flank steak, and chicken parts and drop those into their pillowcases and buckets.

  Now there is nothing left. Enid and I sit on the bottom steps of the upstairs staircase, waiting for the next trick-or-treaters to knock so we can tell them they are too late.

  “I know what!” says Enid. She clacks back into the kitchen. I hear her drag the pantry stool across the linoleum. She is in the cupboards, sliding plate stacks and wineglasses aside.

  The dogs know the next trick-or-treaters are coming before I do. Floey lies upright, her tail sweeping the floor. She woofs once. The new dog stands at the door, wagging. I pull him back to the stairs to keep from tripping on him.

  The trick-or-treaters knock. I open the door and the kids call out “Trick or treat!” like all the others but these two are different in every way. A little witch and something with green face paint, they aren’t in store-bought costumes or masks, but in real clothes and makeup.

  “What are you?” I ask the green one.

  “A goblin.”

  “You’re the Hulk,” says the witch.

  The noise of Enid’s shoes startles them when they see it’s only a girl. I pull up the sleeve of my dress.

  “What are you?” says the witch.

  I look at Enid, stuffed into Mom’s tennis dress, the silver shoes, and blood soaking through her gauze bandage.

  “A Francie,” I say. “We both are.”

  At that, I see what Enid has in her arms and I smile so big.

  “Hold out your bags,” I tell them.

  Enid’s arms are too full so I pluck each treat from them and drop it into the witch’s and Hulk’s bags. First go in Mom’s daily notecards of calories counted, recounted, and uncounted. I rain them down into the bags, half to the witch and half to the Hulk. Next her special thin marker for writing up all her lists and counts. I drop this in the bag of the witch. The Hulk gets her encyclopedia of calories and nutrition. And now, Enid hands me the last of it.

  “Are you sure?” I ask.

  “Positive,” she says.

  Who should get this one I don’t know so I start in with, “Eeny, meeny, miny, mo—”

  Enid grabs the food scale from me and drops it, clattering, into the witch’s bag.

  “We don’t want all this junk,” says the witch.

  “Where’s your candy?” says the Hulk.

  “We don’t have a mother,” says Enid.

  “She died,” I say.

  The green face crumples up. The witch sticks out her tongue at us and now they both go running down the porch steps and across our yard but there’s no grown-up waiting there for them.

  Enid slams the front door shut with the wrong hand. “Ow oh-oh-oh-oh-oh!” she squeals and looks at the blood making the bandage wetter and redder. “Stupid dog,” she says.

  She click-clacks to the kitchen. I collapse on the stairs laughing so hard I lean all the way back and shut my eyes. I hear Enid folding up the stool and slipping it against the broom and mop inside the pantry. She shuts all the cupboard doors and tidies up everything else we touched, I guess. She is good at that, at following rules or at least making it look like she has.

  I grab hold of the railing and get my yellow shoes pointed forward and upright on the floor. Before hoisting myself up, though, I check the top of my dress, which is now all the way down to my elbow again on one side so I must have looked like the one-naked-booby lady on the Virginia flag to all the little kids coming by. That makes me laugh hard.

  When I get to the kitchen, Enid isn’t there. I go to the porch and see her just outside.

  “What are you doing?” I say, pushing through the screen door.

  She’s weird. She doesn’t turn around. I wobble through the gravel to her and put a hand on her back. In the darkness, I creep it around her side to find the fatty pinch but she already has it hard between her fingertips.

  The new dog is out but stays farther up our street. We see him sniffing cars and mailboxes every few minutes, lifting his leg to pee on them just like Basey, and then off he goes into the night.

  I link our arms but Enid stumbles so we both fall flat and just sit here at the end of the driveway. The rocks poke our butts. When trick-or-treaters get close, we cover our mouths and make ghost sounds they think are coming out of the trees.

  “Come on, let’s go get candy,” I say. “Let’s stay out forever!”

  We crawl to our feet and me and Enid, arm in arm, walk around in the night as Francies.

  30

  Tate

  When I pull up at home, the porch light is off. The driveway floodlight has lost its tension and points straight down. But inside, it looks like a party is under way with nearly every downstairs light on. Upstairs, too, there is a light on in the back of the house, in our bedroom—too bright because when it blew last night I didn’t first look at the wattage before I changed the bulb. What any of it means, I cannot say.

  “Hello?” I call.

>   Floey greets me at the kitchen door, whining to go out. I set down the bags and look her over, touching the lines of her slack belly and backbone, her ears, and underneath her collar. She seems unscathed from whatever happened with the neighbor dog so I let her out.

  I unpack the bags on the counter. This morning’s breakfast dishes were minimal because the food was minimal but they and their crumbs have not moved from the far counter and the baking bonanza is still wedged into the sink. I clear the breakfast plates and the oily plate the peanut butter balls were on, and I scrape off the crumbs. No other plates are here. I check the fridge to see what they might have picked at for supper and it’s empty. Not even pickles and condiments left. Francie strikes again.

  Floey’s wings are out on the counter for tonight. I push them and their debris out of the way. I set out the two least screwy jack-o’-lantern candy buckets the store had and inside each put one of the full-size peanut M&M’s and Baby Ruth candy bars. Best of all, I lay out the two costumes. They are only first-movie stormtrooper costumes but they’re still something.

  •

  In the laundry room, I scan the bulb boxes on the shelves over the washer and dryer. They are no longer neatly arranged and labeled—V&E’s Room, Hllwy, Upstairs, Kitchen Sink—as they always have been. I guess on a seventy-five watt for the bedroom and grab that. I go stand among the laundry piles and picture Holly here with Enid on the couch.

  I flip off all the lights and sit beneath the basement steps. I dial the shop. Diane, the manager, will be long gone by now. I count out our seven rings just as Holly is doing on the other end.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s me,” I say quietly.

  “Is she okay?” We both whisper now.

  “She’s doing great,” I say.

  “I’ve been worried,” she says. The sound of Holly whisking stops. “We are friends, after all. Aren’t we?”

  “Of course.”

  “Did it start bleeding again?”

  “No,” I say. “She and Vivvy are trick-or-treating right now.”

  “What did she go as?”

  “What are you making right now?”

  “Chocolate-peanut. Hey,” she says, “what did she go as?”

  “I don’t know. I just missed them heading out.”

  “Shit. I’m sorry,” says Holly. “I told you you needed to get home.”

  “I stopped back at campus for my things, then went to Peoples Drug for costumes. I just missed them.”

  “But you saw her hand,” says Holly. “You checked how it’s doing, right?”

  “I—no.”

  “Oh my god. Dr. Sobel, why did you even call here?”

  “I wasn’t in time to see her, but I will. And it’s good, right? That she felt good enough to go out with Vivvy for candy.”

  “Yes, but you need to look at it. That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “I will. She’ll be home any minute,” I say, wishing I’d waited to call. “I’ll check her hand first thing the minute she gets home. And if it is bad, if there’s anything that seems slightly worrisome, I will take her to the hospital in Christiansburg.”

  I am quiet now and hear the slight tapping Holly gives the raised doughnuts. I’ve watched her enough to know she is flipping them over in the oil. Soon after, she’ll run the dowel through all of their holes to remove them before they get too dark. In what seems a single motion, she will let each doughnut slide from the dowel onto its spot on the drying rack, where they drain.

  “‘Dr. Sobel,’ huh?”

  “We have to start proper salutations sometime.”

  “Right,” I say. My eyes are still shut. What I see is Holly kneading, frying, glazing.

  •

  I take the bulb up with me and double-check that the kitchen door onto the porch is unlocked so the girls can get in. For a bit, I sit in the darkness of the screened porch with a beer and the leashes and flashlight.

  I look into the night of the backyard, look into the dull gleam of slugs’ trails through the gravel and across the pathway stones. I shine the light into the length of the backyard, at least as far as it will travel—maybe halfway. I scan the sides, the center, beneath the trees, and within all the shrubs. In the girls’ tree, I come to two red dots like a digital clock. They move, slightly, slowly, sleepily. As soon as what it is registers, I move the light off the possum. I see nothing else alive, though surely there are plenty of squirrels and nesting birds in our yard.

  I take the seventy-five watt bulb and beer upstairs to the bedroom but only set the bulb on Francie’s desk. I flick on the desk lamp, though it isn’t needed. She’s not in the bedroom, of course. That is plain to see.

  I move to the window, look at my car in the driveway. At the end of the hall, Shell’s door hangs from its broken jamb.

  She is truly gone.

  Enid

  “This way, this way,” says Vivvy, pulling at me. She has her arm through mine, which mostly helps us both stay upright in the shoes. Plus I already have a bandage on one knee so just one gets skinned when we fall. Vivvy’s knees are both dripping but she doesn’t care.

  “Let’s go this way,” she says. “I want to see what Jamie’s wearing. And Cindy. I want to see what everyone is wearing. And that girl Monica.”

  “You just want everyone to see what you’re wearing.” I flick up the back of her skirt. “Or not wearing.”

  “Oh please,” says Vivvy, rolling her eyes, but she hoists one of the sleeves back up onto her shoulder.

  “I thought you were going with Dawn tonight.”

  “So?” says Vivvy. “Come on.”

  We try to run to catch up with a group of two sets of kids and one dad. The pink Care Bear and brown Care Bear, Raggedy Ann with yarn hair and a real dress, Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy, and a Pac-Man. Without our high heels, we’d be shorter than the Pac-Man and Kermit, but we walk up to the next house’s front door like we know them.

  The bears get to the door first and just stand there. Raggedy Ann rings the doorbell and when the lady opens the door, everyone says, “Trick or treat.” They hold out their candy buckets and pillowcases and the lady drops two Tootsie Rolls in each one. The other kids get off her front steps and go back to the sidewalk. When it’s just us left, the lady says, “Where is your candy?”

  “We don’t have any,” says Vivvy.

  She holds out the Tootsie Rolls. “Well, here you go,” she says.

  “Thank you,” we say and hobble down her walkway. I’m pretty sure there’s a big yellow blister on the top of each of my big toes. The faster we go, the less I think about it, though, so we catch back up to the Pac-Man group.

  “Look, Enid.” Vivvy’s pointing across the street.

  We cross over to join up with Boss Hogg, a scarecrow, Batman, and a vampire. Even though we’re tipping over next to them, we can tell how much bigger they are than us. At the first house, the lady doesn’t even see us standing behind them all and she shuts the door without giving us any candy.

  “What did you get?” asks Vivvy.

  The vampire looks in his bag. “Two Reese’s cups.”

  “Damn,” says Vivvy.

  I look at her face, which is the face she has at school.

  “Here.” Batman hands her one of his and hands me the other.

  “Really?” I say.

  “I can’t eat them.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Thank you.”

  We give him our Tootsie Rolls and tear into our peanut butter cups.

  “Trick or treat!” we all say. This time Vivvy and I stand in the front.

  “Well let me get a good look at you all,” says the old man. “I know who you are, Batman.” He drops a lollipop into every bag or bucket once he figures out their costumes. “And you make a fine scarecrow. Don’t suck my blood, Dracula! This one and you two, I’m going to need some help on.”

  “I’m Boss Hogg,” says the boy. “Dukes of Hazzard?”

  “Heard of it, I’ve heard of it.” He drop
s in the lollipop.

  Now he sets down the bag of them. From his shirt pocket he takes a pair of glasses and slides them up his nose. The lenses are yellowed, the nose pads green with old, dead skin he’s sloughed off. His eyeballs grow behind the glass. He leans down to us, his face closer than our own to each other. First he examines Vivvy. She crosses her arms and holds both of her sleeves up onto her shoulders.

  “Now how am I supposed to figure you out if I can’t see you in your entirety?” he says.

  Vivvy doesn’t say anything. She drops one arm. The sleeve stays up. Her ankle flexes sideways in her shoe. I hold her free hand.

  “I guess you have me stumped,” he says. “What are you?”

  I don’t say Francies and neither does Vivvy.

  Tate

  I stand in the backyard, calling, “Enid, Vivvy, Floey!” as if they are three sisters, and I whistle again for the new dog. I’d call him, but how? I call out “Floey” once more but hear no snapping of branches or running of claws down asphalt. The girls probably lassoed the new dog and took him begging and now Floey’s joined up with them.

  I get in the car.

  I know my way to Raymond’s place well enough. I can bring Francie back. At least the girls will come home and see the costumes and candy.

  I cross Preston and go slowly. So many kids are out still. I turn on a cross street, go down Draper then back up Main, driving in squares like this, up and down the neighborhood, street after street, block after block. Enid and Vivvy have been gone for hours, milking Halloween and its candy carte blanche. But the kids out now are all the middle schoolers, high schoolers, and college kids pranking. The sidewalks crawl with fortune-tellers, monsters, little girls dressed up like their mothers, and spies. No more fluffy bunny suits or Big Birds; these kids draw blood. I round and reround the blocks.

  31

  Enid

  When Vivvy tries to veer me her way, I pull her back just as hard to mine.

  “I want to go home,” she says. “I can’t even walk anymore.”

  And it’s true. She has fallen three times just on this block. But I don’t want to go back. I feel like I never want to go back.