by Lily White
“Dad had a job hauling between Vermont and St. Louis. It’s an eighteen hour drive and they take deliveries at the warehouse at six in the morning. It’s eleven fifteen now, so given his mandatory off the road breaks, he should be in Ohio.”
She did this all the time, pretended that she knew where her dad was at any given minute.
The few times I’d gone to her house, I watched her stare at road maps her dad had left behind, her finger following this interstate or that, her mind calculating the exact time it would take to travel between one state and another. Ens would gather the kids around her, point to places where their daddy had been.
It was like she was on those trips in her head.
Only I knew the truth that she had no idea where her father was or where he was going. And every year, his visits home were less frequent than the year before.
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
Grey eyes snapped back to me with a storm rolling behind them.
“It’s been a while, but he’s busy. He works a lot to support us. It’s not like my mom will lift a finger. So make the damn pizza and shut up.”
Between us, the only noise was the crinkle of the box I opened, the tearing of plastic and the clattering of pans when I grabbed a thin metal tray. An oven door opening. The beeping of buttons as I set the temperature and time. Ensley’s silence was as loud as if she’d been screaming.
I knew she’d gone to that place inside her, a deep belly darkness where she stuffed things away she didn’t want to acknowledge. Her pain became a poison rolling and solidifying into a living thing that snapped at her organs and wrapped over her bones. It would possess her one day, that toxin, and the girl I had grown to love would be gone.
Refusing to let it happen, I walked over to the counter, pulled her down to her feet and stood over her. With our height difference, the top of her head only came up to my shoulders and I would often make a joke of resting my elbow on her like she was a piece of furniture.
“The pizza will be done in twenty-five minutes. What do you want to do until then?”
Normally we would watch television or just shoot the shit about nothing important, but I needed something drastic to drag her back from that deep belly abyss where all her secrets churned in a damp cave of disappointment, every painful moment falling down from the rock with a steady dripdripdrip that drove her crazy.
Craning her neck to look up at me, she exhaled on parted lips, her eyes blinking slowly as if she was always bone tired and exhausted.
It was the first moment I ever lost my mind to her, the first where I forgot that what she needed more than anything was a friend, the first where what I felt for her took over and led to my first mistake.
With my hands on the counter on either side of her, I stepped in so close our bodies were touching, and I leaned down without breaking eye contact to brush my lips over hers.
Ens didn’t react. She just kept staring, so I took that as an invitation to try again.
Reaching up with one hand, I palmed her cheek to tilt her head more, my lips pressing against hers before my tongue swept out to taste her.
But the kiss was broken when her fist slammed against my stomach, my body curling over itself as a painful oomph burst from my throat.
“What the fuck was that?” she yelled, anger rolling off her like heat off cement.
Backing away, I glanced up at her with tears leaking from my eyes. Tiny or not, the girl could punch.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my lungs struggling to catch a breath, “I wasn’t thinking-“
“No, the hell you weren’t. The fuck, Noah?”
Ensley stood in place for a moment, unsure what to do or where to go, but she made up her mind within seconds, and was marching toward my room.
“Where are you going?” I called after her, still holding my stomach as I followed.
“Home,” she said, lifting the window so fast, it slammed against the frame.
“Ens, I’m sorry-“
She shook her head, eyes pinning mine for only a second before she climbed out the window and slammed it closed.
Stepping up, I watched as she ran around the end of my chain link fence to creep across the strip of land between our houses, my eyes refusing to let her go until she lifted her window to crawl inside.
Ensley turned to look at me one more time before closing the window to her room and I fell back across my bed, stared at the ceiling, and wondered how I could be so stupid.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Ensley
November 11, 1995
I was livid.
Shocked, maybe.
Definitely confused.
What had Noah been thinking? Why would he do that?
Staring out at him before shutting my window, I fought not to cry as he stared back. For the first time in four years, we’d be lonely. For the first time, we wouldn’t cling to each other all night.
My lips still buzzed with the feel of Noah, and I reached up to wipe it away. I didn’t know why I was so mad at him for kissing me, maybe because I thought he was different.
I wasn’t blind to the way guys looked at me in school, wasn’t so deaf that I didn’t know what they said. But Noah wasn’t like the rest of them, he was the only person I could call a friend.
Had he ruined this?
Ruined us?
Would I go over there for him to try again and get mad when I didn’t want him?
I hoped not. It would only shatter me apart if I lost the only person I could trust.
Maybe Noah was just being stupid. Maybe he had a moment where he wasn’t thinking straight. Maybe he cared enough that he wouldn’t risk losing everything over whatever it was he wanted to do with me.
Maybe-
“Ensley.”
I spun around at the quiet voice, my mother staring back at me from the open door. Instant panic was enough to freeze me in place, every muscle locking over my frame. Air rushed out of my lungs, and I struggled to breathe again.
She just looked at me and shook her head, blond hair spilling down her shoulders to brush over her white silk robe. For as mean as my mother was, she really was quite beautiful.
Unlike me, she was classic in the way she looked, big eyes with delicate features, everything so pale that she could be an angel or a child’s porcelain doll. Only the years she’d lived were obvious in the light bruising beneath her eyes and a few lines near her lips, makeup caking over both areas where she attempted to hide them.
Still, she was gorgeous.
And terrifying.
“Mom?” I looked between the window and her again, my mind spinning to come up with an excuse as to why I was standing here.
She laughed quietly and leaned a shoulder against the doorframe.
“Save it, Ensley. Whatever lie you’re getting ready to say. I know you’ve been sneaking over to that boy’s house every night. I’m not an idiot.”
“Mom, I-“
“I don’t care,” she said, waving a hand out like she was brushing the entire thing away. “I already warned you about him. It’s all I can do. If you want to sneak around and do whatever, that’s on you. Not me.”
“We’re not doing anything,” I promised, my lips buzzing again with a kiss I hadn’t wanted.
Mom smiled, tilted her head to the left as if silently questioning me. But she wasn’t yelling. I guess there’s a first time for everything.
“Come with me. We’ll talk somewhere else so we don’t wake your sisters.”
I took a step, then stopped.
“Is Alan still here?”
“Adam,” she corrected me. “And no, he left a little while ago.” Another wave of her hand. “Come along. We’ll talk.”
I couldn’t think of a time my mother had wanted to talk to me. Especially not this late at night, but never during the day either.
She was a fragile woman, not in body but in psyche, a complicated maze you had to run and hope you weren’t cornered. All my life, I’d run up
against walls that she’d constantly tossed up, and I wondered what direction she was running me now.
But I couldn’t tell her no.
To defy Tammy Bennett was to defy God. At least in her screwed up opinion.
I crept through the room, careful not to wake my sisters, hung a left and followed mom down the hall leading to the rest of the house.
Her white robe fluttered out around her legs, bare feet silent on the carpet, long blond hair flowing down her back like a skein of expensive silk. She really was quite beautiful in a lethal way, like white Hemlock flowers dotting a field of verdant green, fragility dipped in poison.
I’d watched a documentary on Hemlock once, added it to my list of useful knowledge. When ingested, it would take thirty minutes to a few hours for the effects to be felt: paralysis, respiratory failure, convulsions, eventually leading to death. Every part of the plant was poisonous and grew throughout Florida. I found some a year or so before, growing wild in the forest behind us. But I didn’t touch it. Just made a note of where it was. Much like Mom. Don’t touch, but always know where to avoid her.
Leading me into the kitchen, mom motioned to the table.
“Sit down, Ens. I’ll pour us both a soda.”
The chair legs scraped against the dirty linoleum, my body heavy like a sack of stones when I dropped into the seat. Mom grabbed a two-liter from the fridge and two glasses from the cupboards while I glanced around the kitchen not knowing what to say.
She filled the silence for me, ice clinking against the glasses before she poured.
“I met your father when I was a little older than sixteen. So, only two years older than you are now. We were both young. He had just moved into town from out of state, and all the girls fell head over heels for him.”
Glancing over her shoulder, she asked, “Do you know how old your dad and I are, Ensley? How young we still are even though we now have a teenage daughter?”
I shook my head realizing I’d never really thought to ask. I knew they weren’t that old. Neither of them had grey hair like other parents in the neighborhood, so I did know they were younger than most. Dad always looked more haggard, but I assumed that came with his life on the road.
Mom smiled, glossed lips peeling apart over straight, white teeth, a model’s smile. I wondered how she ended up here.
Turning back to the drinks, she capped the two-liter, tossed it in the fridge, then walked to the table with glasses in hand to set one in front of me. Settling down on the opposite side, she stared at the fizz bubbling up from the bottom of her glass, her fingers spinning that glass slowly around with a soft, constant scritch.
“I’m thirty-six. Your dad is thirty-seven.”
Laughing softly, she clinked a fingernail against her glass and looked up at me.
“I know that probably sounds ancient to you. You’re still just a baby. But really it’s not.”
Mom jutted her chin toward my glass.
“Drink up, Ens. You don’t want the ice to melt and ruin the soda.”
The rim of the glass was cold against my lips, the sweet, syrupy flavor splashing against my tongue as I took two large swallows, my mother’s eyes watching me from across the table. She drank from her glass as well, swallowing before speaking again.
“Anyway, my point in telling you is that I’d hate to see you ending up in the same place as me. I had plans to go to college, did you know that?”
No. I hadn’t. In fact, when I tried to gather together all the information I knew about Mom, there wasn’t much there beyond how much I hated her. Not now, though. Not like this. But then she’d never been the type to talk to me. It made her vulnerable somehow, more human.
“Yeah, well, I actually did go for two years and was halfway to my degree when I got pregnant with you. Back then wasn’t like today. It was harder for women. Our parents were still stuck in the old ways of thinking that a woman knocked up was no longer on a path to a career.”
She rolled her eyes. “My father practically ran us down that aisle and helped your dad start his trucking company. Everything I ever wanted was supposed to come from a man.”
Lifting her hand, she indicated the house around us.
“This is everything, I guess.”
The line of her mouth twisted with disgust, blue eyes darkening with the resurgence of the past in a mind that never made sense to me.
There were so many times I’d wanted to dissect my mom, just split her apart and run my fingers over the thoughts and memories that channeled through her head. I wanted to explore a person who could be so heartless but could also be so perfect.
When Daddy was home, she was perfect, at least until the fights started, like a switch could flip at any minute deciding which person she would be at any given time. I assumed it must have flipped tonight for her to have this discussion with me.
So, while she talked, I drank my soda, eventually setting it down empty, the ice clinking quietly against the glass.
Mom meandered down a winding road of conversation that gave me a glimpse of who she was, and I was oddly happy to spend time with her, glad that Noah had tried to kiss me and practically chased me back home. I would have missed this moment, would have lost what could be a one time encounter I may never have again.
“Ensley, I know how much you love your father, and at one time in my life I swore that man hung the moon. He was handsome, like I said, all the girls were insane about him, but in the end, he had eyes for me. I bet the same can be said for Noah, right? He’s a good looking boy. Always has been. Do you like him? More than as a friend, I mean?”
Did I?
It was a question I’d asked myself over the years. When we were ten and eleven, I wasn’t interested in any boys, not really. But the years had moved forward, the girls in my school looking for boyfriends and chattering about who’s the cutest and who’s the prettiest and who had kissed who, but it was always a lot of noise to me.
I loved Noah. I knew that. The thought of not having him sent me into a panic attack that clogged my throat and forced my heart into a painful sprint. But I wasn’t sure what that feeling meant. All I knew was that I wanted him around all the time, and that I didn’t want him with someone else. I never wanted to exist in a world without Noah. I knew that.
Was that what liking someone meant?
Unsure, I answered, “I don’t know. He’s my best friend.”
Mom clucked her tongue against her teeth. “That’s how it starts, I’m afraid. Would you like some more soda?”
It took effort to nod my head. I was heavy in a way, my movement slow while the whole room seemed to nod with me. I wrapped my hand around my glass and tried to lift it, but it slipped from my grasp, wet as it was, and tipped onto the table.
Staring at the ice, it didn’t register that I should be afraid, that spilling anything in my mom’s house was met with a smack to the head and screaming. I just stared at the ice that slowly slid across the table, the melted water pooling on the wood.
Mom pushed to her feet and told me not to worry, grabbed some paper towels and made quick work of it. She was placing another full soda in front of me before I knew it, a smile on her face as she sat down. The expression was oddly stretched, cracking her face from ear to ear, but somehow not reaching her eyes.
“Once your dad had the business up and running, he plunked me down into this house with you. Just the two of us, at first, like we were dolls sitting on a shelf waiting for him to return home and show interest again. This place is...”
She laughed, a quick snap of sound that wasn’t funny.
“It’s his dollhouse, I guess. One of those large, gaudy things little girls want for their room. And we lay around with stiff, plastic limbs waiting for him to want us again.”
The walls were breathing, in and out, a slow movement that caught my eye while my mother became the doll she described, hard and plastic, joints that creaked when you tried to move them, painted faces and unblinking eyes staring at nothing.
She stared at me, smiled.
“You’re a doll, you know that? Such a pretty little thing you’ve turned out to be. Even Adam told me how lovely my daughter is. I’m sure Noah has noticed too. He watches you all the time. I’ve seen.”
Her voice was metallic, like a radio station that was slightly out of earshot, a stretchy rattle reverberating around every word or creeping out from a deep canyon.
I blinked my eyes, so tired, so heavy, but forced myself to pay attention, struggled to understand what Mom was saying.
The soda sat in front of me untouched, water sweating from the outside of the glass, sliding down in rainbow prisms of light from the ceiling above.
It grew quiet, and I hadn’t noticed. When I looked up from the glass, my mother watched me intently. I just wanted to lay my head on the table and watch her, but I couldn’t focus my eyes, couldn’t move without the entire room moving with me.
I was underwater, my mother’s voice spoken from above the surface.
“Your father has stopped taking care of the dollhouse. And the dolls hidden within it. I’m not surprised. This was how I knew it would turn out. We just need to make our own way.”
Swallowing, I caught my head wobbling on my shoulders, attempted to straighten up, failed. Palms flat on the table, I traced the edges of my fingers with my eyes like a kid making a drawing of a turkey, traced and traced until I remembered my mother was speaking. Lifting my head took effort, the room spinning like it was.
“You’re getting a job?”
I’d asked the question. I think. My mouth had opened, and the question was in my head, but I wasn’t sure I’d actually said anything. Mom stared straight at me, grinning.
“How are you feeling, Ens? You look tired.”
My mouth opened to answer, but she spoke before I could get the words out.
“Did you know that wig companies pay good money for human hair? I never knew, and to think of all the times I’ve trimmed mine or yours and just threw it away. Money down the drain and all that.”
Her chair legs scraped the floor when she pushed to her feet, a normally innocuous sound that was suddenly so loud I wanted to cover my ears not to hear it. Like my father’s semi horn, a boom that rattled the windows.