“How are you, Vicky?” Lucy asked this, looking over at her sister.
“I’m fine. How are you?”
“Oh God,” Lucy said, and she put her elbows on her knees, covering her face for a moment with her hands. “Vicky, please—”
Vicky said, “ ‘Vicky, please’? ‘Vicky, please’? Lucy, you left here and you have never once come back since Daddy died. And you say to me, ‘Vicky, please’—as though I’m the one who’s done something wrong.”
Pete wiped his finger across the wall again, and again his finger became streaked with dust. He did it twice more before he spread his hands over his knees.
Lucy said, looking upward, “I’ve been very busy.”
“Busy? Who isn’t busy?” Vicky pushed her glasses up her nose. In a moment she added, “Hey, Lucy, is that what’s called a truthful sentence? Didn’t I just see you on the computer giving a talk about truthful sentences? ‘A writer should write only what is true.’ Some crap like that you were saying. And you sit there and say to me, ‘I’ve been very busy.’ Well. I don’t believe you. You didn’t come here because you didn’t want to.”
Pete was surprised to see Lucy’s face relax. She nodded at her sister. “You’re right,” she said.
But Vicky wasn’t done. She leaned forward and said, “You know why I came over here today? To tell you—and I know you give me money, and you never have to give me another cent, I wouldn’t take another cent, but I came over here to see you today to tell you: You make me sick.” She sat back and wagged a finger toward her sister; on her wrist was a watch whose small leather band seemed squished into her flesh. “You do, Lucy. Every time I see you online, every time I see you, you are acting so nice, and it makes me sick.”
Pete looked at the rug. The rug seemed to holler at him, You are such a dope for buying me.
After a long time, Lucy said quietly, “Well, it makes me sick too. What I’d really like to say on whatever you’re watching—and why are you watching me?—what I’d really like to say, sometimes, is just: Fuck you.”
Pete looked up. He said, “Wow. Who do you want to say that to?”
“Oh,” Lucy said, running a hand through her hair, “usually it’s some woman who doesn’t like my work and stands up and says so. Or some reporter who wants to know about my personal life.”
Pete asked, “A person really stands up and says they don’t like your work?”
“Sometimes.”
Pete moved his chair slightly forward. “Then why don’t they just stay home?”
“Well, that’s my point.” Lucy opened her hand, waved it in a small gesture. “Fuck them.”
“Poor Lucy,” said Vicky, and her voice was sarcastic.
“Yeah, poor me,” Lucy said, and sat back.
“Mommy’s favorite,” Vicky said, and Lucy said, “What?”
“I said you were her favorite kid, and boy did that pay off, for you.”
Lucy looked at Pete and then she said, “I was her favorite?” Her surprise surprised Pete. “I was?” she asked, and he shrugged. Lucy said, “I didn’t know she had a favorite.”
“That’s because you didn’t know anything that went on in this house, Lucy. You stayed after school every day, and she let you.” Vicky was looking at her sister; her chin was quivering.
“I knew plenty of what went on in this house.” Lucy’s voice had hardened. “And she didn’t let me, I just did it.”
“She let you, Lucy. Because she thought you were smart. And she thought she was smart.” Vicky tugged hard on the bottom of her blouse; Pete could see a strip of her flesh exposed above her pants, almost bluish.
Pete said, “Hey, Vicky. Lucy saw Abel. Lucy, tell Vicky about seeing Abel.”
But when Lucy said, “I saw Abel,” Vicky only shrugged and said, “I couldn’t stand his sister, Dottie. Mom always made her a new dress.”
“Well, Dottie was poor,” Lucy said.
“Lucy, we were poor.” Vicky leaned forward, as though trying to put her face in front of Lucy’s face.
“I know that,” Lucy said. She suddenly stood and walked to the front window. She gave the blind cord a little tug, and it opened up. Sunlight spilled into the room. She walked to the other window and opened that blind as well. Then Pete saw that the dirt from the floor had been scrubbed into the corners, it was right there to see in this sunlight.
“Do you ever eat?” Vicky asked this to Lucy, and Lucy shook her head before she sat back down on the couch.
“Not much,” Lucy said. “Appetite I do not have.”
“Me either,” Pete said. “I just know when I have to eat because I start to feel funny in the head.” The sudden sunlight—golden in its early autumnness—was too much for Pete, he really wanted to close the blinds. It was like an itch, and he had to work hard not to do it.
“It’s strange,” said Vicky, and her voice was no longer belligerent. “It’s odd, isn’t it? That you two would be so skinny and I’d be the one who eats all the time. I don’t remember you guys having to eat out of the toilet, but maybe you did. Who knows.” Vicky took a deep breath that caused her cheeks to pop out, and then she sighed hugely.
Pete thought to himself: Don’t do it. And what he meant was, Don’t get up and close the blinds.
After a moment Lucy said, “What did you say?”
Vicky said, “Oh, one time when we had meat.” Vicky scratched hard at her neck. “It was liver. God, did I hate the taste of that. Mommy thought we should be having—I don’t know—red blood cells or something, and she’d gotten a slab of liver from someone, and it was so awful, I put the pieces in my mouth and went and spit in the toilet, and the stupid, stupid toilet didn’t flush, and they found the pieces swimming in it and—”
“Stop,” Lucy said, raising her hand, palm outward. “We get it.”
Vicky seemed irritated by this. “Well, Lucy, you and Petie had to eat from the garbage whenever you threw food away, I can remember right there”—and she pointed with her finger, thrusting it twice, to the area where the kitchen was—“you’d have to kneel, and pick out whatever food you’d thrown away, and eat it right from the garbage, and you’d be crying— Okay, okay. Look, I’m just saying I can understand why you guys wouldn’t want to eat. I just don’t understand why I do.”
Lucy reached and rubbed her sister’s knee. But to Pete the gesture seemed obligatory, as though Vicky was a kid and had said something embarrassing that the grown-up, Lucy, was going to pretend didn’t happen.
“How’s your job?” Lucy asked Vicky.
“My job is a job. It stinks.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” Lucy said.
Pete glanced at the wall where the streaks of dust had come off; it was a mess of smudges.
“Another true sentence, I’m sure.” Vicky hoisted herself up to more of a sitting position. “But you know, a funny thing happened there just the other day. This old lady named Anna-Marie, she’s been in a wheelchair since I started there years ago, and she has never said a word in all those years, people say, Oh, Anna-Marie can’t talk anymore, and she just wheels around in her chair banging into people. And the other day I was standing at the nurses’ station and all of a sudden I feel my hand being held. And I look down and there’s Anna-Marie in her wheelchair, and she says to me with a big smile, ‘Hi, Vicky.’ ”
Hearing this made Pete feel happy. He felt the happiness move through him like a warm liquid.
Lucy said, “Vicky, that’s a wonderful story.”
“It was sweet,” Vicky acknowledged. “And sweet things never happen there, I can tell you.”
Pete suddenly remembered something. “Vicky,” he said, “tell Lucy about Lila. How she’s going to go to college.”
“Oh.” Vicky scratched at her neck again; a red streak appeared across it. Then she looked carefully at her fingers. “Yeah. My baby girl is probably going to college next year.” She looked up at Lucy. “Her grades are good and her guidance counselor says she can get her into col
lege with expenses paid. Just like you did, Lucy.”
“Are you serious?” Lucy sat forward. “Vicky, that’s so exciting.”
“I guess so,” Vicky said. She pushed on her bottom lip with her fingers, biting it.
“But it is,” Lucy said.
Vicky took her hand away from her mouth, rubbed it on her pants. “Sure. And then she’ll just go away like you did.”
Pete saw Lucy’s face change, as though she’d been slapped. Then Lucy said, “No, she won’t.”
“Why won’t she?” Vicky tried to rearrange herself on the couch. When Lucy didn’t answer, Vicky said, in a slightly mincing voice, “Because she has a different mother, Vicky. That’s why she won’t. Thank you, Lucy.”
Lucy closed her eyes briefly.
“You know who her guidance counselor is?” Vicky looked back around at Pete. “Patty Nicely. She was the youngest of the Pretty Nicely Girls, remember them?”
Lucy said, “That’s who’s helping get her to college?”
“Yup. ‘Fatty Patty,’ the kids call her. Or they used to, she’s lost some weight,” Vicky said.
“They call Patty Nicely ‘Fatty Patty’?” Lucy frowned at Vicky.
“Oh yeah, sure. You know, they’re kids.” Vicky waited and then she said, “They call me ‘Icky Vicky’ at work.”
“No, they don’t,” Lucy said.
“Yes, they do.”
Pete said, “You never told me that, Vicky. Well, they’re old and they’ve gone dopey-dope in their heads.”
“It’s not the patients. It’s the others who work there. I heard this woman say, two days ago she said this, Here comes Icky Vicky.” And Vicky took her glasses off; tears began to roll down her face.
“Oh, honey,” said Lucy. She moved closer to her sister, she rubbed her knee. “Oh, that’s disgusting. You are not icky, Vicky, you’re—”
“I am so icky, Lucy. Just look at me.” Tears kept coming from Vicky’s eyes. They rolled down over her mouth, with its lipstick.
“You know what?” Lucy said. She stopped rubbing Vicky’s knee and started patting it instead. “Cry away. Honey, just cry your eyes out, it’s okay. My God, do you remember how we were never supposed to cry?”
Pete leaned forward; he said, “Lucy’s right. You just go ahead and cry. No one’s going to cut your clothes up this time.”
Vicky looked over at him. “What did you say?” She wiped at her nose with her bare hand. Lucy brought a tissue from her jacket pocket and handed it to Vicky.
Pete said, “I said, No one is going to cut your clothes up. Never again.”
Vicky said, “What are you talking about?”
Pete said, “Don’t you remember how one day you were here crying and Mommy came home and cut up your clothes?”
“She did?” Lucy said.
“She did?” Vicky was patting the tissue over her face; she patted it lightly on her mouth. “Oh, wait. Oh my God, she did. I’d forgotten about that.” Vicky looked at Lucy, then at Pete; her face without its glasses seemed younger, and bloated. “Why would she do that?” Vicky asked this with wonder.
“Wait,” Lucy said. “Mom cut up your clothes?”
“Yeah.” Vicky nodded slowly. “I’d been crying, I can’t remember why. It had to do with something that had happened at school, and I was just crying and crying—you’re right, Lucy, they just hated for us to cry, but they weren’t home, so I was sitting here crying, and, Pete, you were here—and I was crying so hard I didn’t hear her come in. Oh, I do remember this now.” Vicky waved the tissue in her hand; there were reddish spots on it from her lipstick. “And she came through that door and she said, ‘Stop that noise right now, Vicky,’ but you know, I couldn’t—quite. And she said, ‘I said stop that noise right now,’ and then she went and got her shears from the sewing area and she went in our room—and I just remember hearing the hangers moving, and then it was you, Pete”—Vicky touched the tissue to her face again, turning slightly in Pete’s direction—“who figured out what she was doing, and you went and stood by the door of the room, and then I got up and stood behind you and I screamed, Mommy, don’t, oh, don’t, Mommy! And she just kept cutting up my clothes and tossing the pieces on the floor and on the bed. Then she walked out and went upstairs.” Vicky just sat now, staring at the floor. “Oh my God,” Vicky said. “She hated me—so—much.”
“But she sewed,” Lucy said. “Why in the world would she cut up your clothes?”
“Oh, she sewed them back together the next day. On her machine.” Vicky lifted a hand listlessly. “She just stuck the pieces together and sewed them, so I looked like, I don’t know, I looked like even more of a moron.” Vicky said this, gazing in front of her.
After a long moment, Pete said, still leaning forward in his chair, “Look, you guys, I’ve been thinking about her a lot recently, and here’s what I think: I think she just wasn’t made right.”
His siblings said nothing for a long while. Then Lucy said, “Well, maybe. And then she had Daddy to contend with.” Lucy added, “She was gritty, though.”
“What do you mean?” asked Vicky.
“She had grit. She hung in there.”
“What was she supposed to do? She didn’t have anywhere to go.” Vicky looked at the bottom of her blouse, and tried to tug it down again.
“She could have left us. She’d have made money with her sewing. Just for herself. But she didn’t.” Lucy said this, then pressed her lips together.
“You know what I hated the most?” Vicky glanced at Lucy and Pete, and said almost serenely, “The sex sounds. When Daddy wasn’t walking around twanging his wang, they’d be doing it right up there—” She pointed to the ceiling. “And it made me sick to hear it, the bed shaking, and the sounds he made. I never heard any man make the sounds he made during sex.” She blew her nose. “Boy, try having a normal sex life after all that crap for years.”
Pete said, “I never did. Try, I mean.” His face became hot quickly; oh, he was embarrassed. But Vicky smiled back at him, and he added, “I know what you mean, though. My bedroom was right next to theirs, and jeepers—” He shook his head quickly, more like a shiver. “It was like I was in there with them.”
Vicky said, “Wait. You know what? He made all the sounds; there was never a sound from her.”
Pete had never thought about this before. “Hey, you’re right,” he said. “You’re right. She never did make any sounds.”
“Oh God,” Vicky said, and she sighed. “Oh, the poor—”
“Stop,” Lucy said. “Let’s just stop this. It doesn’t do any good.”
“But it’s true,” said Vicky. “It’s all true, who else are we supposed to talk to about this? Lucy, why don’t you write a story about a mother who cuts up her daughter’s clothes? You want truthful sentences? I mean it. Write about that.”
Lucy was putting her shoes back on. “I don’t want to write that story.” Her voice sounded angry.
Pete said, “And who’d want to read it?”
“I would,” Vicky said.
“I still like to read about the family on the prairie,” Pete said. “Remember that series of books? I have them upstairs.”
“I can’t,” Lucy said. “I can’t.”
“So don’t write it,” Vicky said, with a shrug, “I was just saying— Oh my God, I remember now—”
Lucy stood up. “Stop it,” she said. Her face had two red splotches high on her cheeks. “Stop it,” she repeated. “Just stop it.” She looked at Vicky, then she looked at Pete. She said—and her voice was loud and wobbly—“It was not that bad.” Her voice rose. “No, I mean it.”
Silence hung in the room.
In a few moments, Vicky said calmly, “It was exactly that bad, Lucy.”
Lucy looked at the ceiling, then she began to shake her hands as if she had just washed them and there was no towel. “I can’t stand it,” she said. “Oh God help me. I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it, I can’t—”
And then Pete u
nderstood that she could not stand the house, or being in Amgash, that she had become frightened, the way he had been frightened to get his hair cut, only Lucy was so much more frightened than that.
“Okay, Lucy,” he said. He stood up and went to her. “Just relax now.”
“Yes,” Lucy said. “Yes. No. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know—” It seemed she was panting. “You guys,” she said, looking from one to the other, and her eyes were blinking hard. “I don’t know what to do. Help me, oh God—” She kept shaking her hands, harder and harder.
“Lucy,” said Vicky. She hoisted herself up from the couch and walked over to her sister. “Now you just get hold of yourself—”
“I can’t,” Lucy said. “I can’t. I just can’t— Oh, help me.” She sat back down on the couch. “See, it’s just that I don’t know— Oh God—” She looked up at her brother. “Oh dear God please help me.” She stood up again, shaking her hands furiously. “I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do—”
Vicky and Pete glanced at each other.
“I’m having a panic attack,” Lucy said to them. “I haven’t had one in ages, but this is a bad one, oh God, oh dear God. Oh Jesus, oh God— Okay, now listen to me, you guys, listen to me. Pete, can you drive my car, and, Vicky, I’ll drive with you? Can you, please, oh, please can you, I have to—I just have to—”
“Drive you where?” Vicky asked.
“Chicago. The Drake Hotel. I have to get back, I just have to—”
“To Chicago?” Vicky asked. “You want me to drive you to Chicago? That’s like two and a half hours away.”
“Yes, can you do that? Oh God, I am so sorry, I am so sorry, I can’t I can’t I can’t—”
Vicky looked at her wristwatch. She took a deep breath, widened her eyes for a moment. Then she turned and picked up her red pocketbook. “Let’s go to Chicago,” she said to Pete.
“Oh God, thank you, thank you—” Lucy was already opening the door.
Pete mouthed the words to Vicky: I’ve never been there. Vicky mouthed back: I know, but I have. Pointing to her chest.
In spite of the sun, the day was not hot. There was a clarity to the air that spoke of the autumn to come; Pete felt this as he got into Lucy’s white rental car and waited while Vicky turned her car around; Lucy’s car smelled new and was clean. Then he followed his sisters out to the main road. He could not believe he was to drive to Chicago. He sort of thought he might die. He drove along the narrow roads that were at first familiar, then he followed his sister’s car to the highway. As the sun went slowly across the sky, he drove steadily behind his sister; more than an hour passed by. He could see them, Vicky, her shoulders broad, every so often turning to look at Lucy, who, her head lower, sat in the passenger seat. He drove and drove. He drove past oak trees and maple trees, he drove past big barns with American flags painted on their sides, he drove past a sign that said FIREARMS AND MEMORIES; he drove past an enormous place filled with John Deere trucks and machines, he drove past a sign that said ONE DAY DENTURES $144, he drove by an old shopping mall, no longer in use, that had grass growing up through the cement parking lot. On the steering wheel, his palms were sweating. There was a lot more time to go.