Mary Jane Read online

  “Bodies!” Izzy said, and waved a coloring book in front of me. The Human Body was printed on the front.

  “That looks cool.” I gathered crayons from around the table and grouped them according to color.

  “Let’s do the penis.” Izzy opened the book and started flipping through the pages. My face burned and I felt a little shaky.

  “What color are you going to do the penis?” Dr. Cone asked, and I almost gasped. I’d never heard an adult say penis. I’d barely heard people my age say penis. The Kellogg twins were the two top students in our class, and they never said words like penis.

  “GREEN!” Izzy stopped at a page that showed a penis and scrotum. The whole thing looked droopy and boneless; the scrotum reminded me of half-rotted guavas that had started to wrinkle as they shrunk. Words were printed on the side and lines directed each word to what it was naming. This penis was larger and far more detailed than the one I’d barely glanced at on the anatomy drawing we’d been handed in sex ed class last year. In fact, upon receiving that handout, most girls took a pen and rapidly scratched over the penis so they wouldn’t have to look at it. I was too afraid of the teacher to graffiti my paper. Sally Beaton, who sat beside me and was afraid of no one, saw my pristine page and reached from her desk to mine to scribble out the penis. Izzy picked up a green crayon and started frantically coloring the penis green. I wasn’t sure if I should color with her or not. If it hadn’t been a penis, I would have. But it was a penis, and Dr. Cone was right there. Would he want a girl who colored a penis taking care of his daughter? Then again, his own daughter was coloring a penis! And I had to assume he or Mrs. Cone had bought her the book.

  “Help me!” Izzy handed me a red crayon. I nervously started coloring the tip.

  Dr. Cone glanced over. “Jesus, looks like it’s pissing blood.”

  I froze. I felt like my heart had stopped. But before I could say anything, or put the red crayon down, Dr. Cone wandered out of the kitchen.

  Izzy and I finished the penis. I was relieved when she turned the page and we colored a uterus and fallopian tubes. Orange and yellow and pink.

  That day, neither Dr. nor Mrs. Cone appeared to go to work. And they didn’t get dressed till around noon. In my own house, both of my parents were showered and dressed by six thirty. My father walked out the door Monday through Friday at seven a.m. Dad was a lawyer. He wore a tie every day, and only removed that tie at the table after we’d thanked the Lord for our food and prayed for President Ford and his wife. A framed color picture of smiling President Ford hung on the wall just behind my father’s head. Ford’s gaze in the picture was aimed directly at me. His eyes were a feathery suede blue. His teeth looked like short little corn nibs. An American flag undulated behind his head. Sometimes, when I thought father or when people talked about their dads, I envisioned President Ford.

  My mother’s work was mostly in the home. I’d never seen anyone busier than Mom. She made the beds every day, vacuumed every other day, swept every day, grocery shopped every Friday, made breakfast and dinner every day, and mopped the kitchen floor each night. She also taught Sunday school at the Roland Park Presbyterian Church. And she was really good at it. Sometimes the kids colored pictures of Jesus while Mom read them Bible verses. Sometimes she played Bible bingo with them. But the best part of Sunday school was when Mom played the guitar. Her voice was thick and husky, like her throat had been carved from a hollowed-out log.

  Mom said Jesus didn’t care that she didn’t have a pretty voice, but he did prefer it when I sang along. Harmony came naturally to me and it made my mother proud when I harmonized. So every Sunday, with an audience of eight to fifteen little kids (depending on who showed up), Mom strapped on her guitar and we stood together at the front of the church basement classroom and belted out songs about Jesus. The kids were supposed to sing along, but only half of them did. Some just played with their shoes, or nudged and whispered to their friends, or lay on their backs and stared at the water-stained ceiling. When they really started to lose attention, we sang “Rise and Shine,” because all kids love that song.

  There was a thirty-minute break between Sunday school and church services. During that time, Mom went home to drop off her guitar and fetch Dad, while I ran off to practice with either the youth choir (during the school year) or the summer choir (during the summer). I preferred the summer choir, as it was made up mostly of adults and only a few teenagers—the majority of whom rarely showed up. I didn’t feel self-conscious with the adults as I did the youth choir. Singing with my peers, I never let my voice go too loud, as I didn’t want to be teased for my vibrato, or for slipping into a harmony when my ear told me that it would be right to do so.

  We were always home before noon on Sunday. After lunch, Mom either did prep work for the meals she would serve during the week, or worked in the garden. Our lawn looked like a green shag rug. In front of the house were blooming azaleas, all trimmed to the exact same height and width. In the backyard were more blooming trees, and flower beds that curved around rocks and outlined the property like a plush purple-and-pink moat. Gardeners came once a week, but no one could keep it as neat as my mother. Weeds that dared to poke their pointy green heads out from the soil were immediately snatched from life by my mother’s gloved hand.

  Every spring, a team of men showed up to wash our house’s white clapboard, repair the loose black shutters, and touch up the paint where necessary. It was only after this touch-up that my mother planted the window boxes that hung below each window on the front of the house. When I was around Izzy Cone’s age, my mother hired an artist to paint a picture of our house. That painting now hung above the sofa in the living room. Sometimes when I helped pull weeds or water the flower boxes or plant new annuals in the beds, Mom would say, “We’re obliged to live up to the painting, Mary Jane. We can’t let that painting be fiction!”

  The Cones seemed uninterested in how their house or yard looked. The only thing that appeared to concern them was turning the third floor into a guest suite, which they were discussing every time they passed me and Izzy—in the TV room, in the kitchen at lunch, and on the front porch, where Izzy and I played with her Erector Set.

  At five, when it was time for me to go, Izzy and I wandered around the house, looking for her parents.

  “Mom! Dad!” Izzy yelled.

  I was growing accustomed to the yelling but couldn’t bring myself to do it. I quietly sang out, “Mrs. Cone? Dr. Cone?”

  On the second floor, the doors except for Izzy’s were open.

  “Why is your door the only one that’s ever shut?” I asked her.

  “To keep the witch out,” Izzy said. “Mom! Dad!”

  “What witch?”

  “The one that haunts the house. If I shut my door, she doesn’t go in when I’m not there.” Izzy walked straight into her parents’ bedroom. I stood in the hallway and waited.

  Izzy came out a minute later. “They’re not in there. I’m hungry.”

  We went downstairs, through the living and dining rooms, and back through the swinging door into the kitchen. In my own house, the kitchen belonged to my mother and it was up to her if it was “open” or “closed.” Most days, it closed at two p.m., as she didn’t want anyone to lose their appetite before supper. Though sometimes it closed right after lunch.

  I wondered if Mrs. Cone planned to make dinner that night. There was nothing in the Cones’ oven, nothing defrosting in the sink, nothing in a saucepan on the stove. There was no indication that plans had been made to feed the family.

  I had a feeling that Dr. and Mrs. Cone wouldn’t be angry if I made dinner for Izzy. “Lemme call my house,” I said. I looked around the kitchen for the phone. I’d seen one somewhere earlier but couldn’t remember where. “Where’s the phone?”

  Izzy found the cable plugged into the wall below the counter and followed it with her hands as high as she could reach. “It’s here somewhere!”

  I pushed aside the bathrobe that was on the counter,
and found the phone.

  “Can I dial?” Izzy climbed up onto the orange wooden stool and balanced on her knees. She removed the handset from its cradle and rested it on the counter.

  “Four.” I watched as Izzy carefully examined the holes in the number dial, found the four, and inserted her chubby little finger. There was a line of black dirt under her nail and I made a note to myself that I’d give her a bath after dinner, if I ended up staying that long.

  “Four!” Izzy rotated the dial until it hit the silver comma-looking thing, then released her finger as the dial clicked around back to the start. We went on like this for six numbers. On the seventh number, I glanced away and looked back, only to see Izzy had inserted her finger into the 9 instead of the 8. When the dial finished its slow click-click-click, I picked up the handset, placed it back in its spot to disconnect the call, then took it out again so we could start once more.

  When we finally got the numbers dialed, I put the phone to my ear. Izzy leaned in and I tilted the receiver toward her.

  “Dillard residence,” my mother said.

  “Hey, Mom, I need to stay and feed Izzy dinner.”

  “Oh?” Mom’s voice screeched up.

  “She needs to feed me dinner!” Izzy shouted. I stood up straight and pulled the handset from Izzy’s ear.

  “Is that Izzy?”

  “Yes,” I said. “She’s a goofball.”

  “Sounds like it. Why do you need to feed her dinner? Where is her mother?”

  I didn’t want to admit that I couldn’t find Dr. or Mrs. Cone. I turned away from Izzy so she wouldn’t hear, and whispered, “Her father is stuck with a patient and her mother is sick in bed.” It was, as far as I could remember, the first time I had lied to my mother.

  “Oh,” my mother said. “Oh no. Okay. Well, maybe I should come down there and help.”

  “No, it’s okay,” I whispered. “Everything Mrs. Cone was going to make is out on the counter. The oven’s already turned on too. I just need to stick the casserole in the oven and then—”

  “Cereal!” Izzy shouted. I turned and saw she had opened a cupboard and pulled out four different boxes of cereal.

  “I’ll call after dinner to let you know what time I’ll be home,” I said.

  “You have Dr. Cone walk you or drive you if it’s after dark,” my mother said.

  “Okay, Mom. Bye!” I hung up quickly before Izzy could shout again.

  “I want cereal for dinner,” Izzy said.

  “Have you ever had cereal for dinner?” I asked cautiously. It seemed as unimaginable as using a banana for a telephone.

  “Yes.”

  “Well . . . let’s look in the fridge and see if there’s something in there that might be a better dinner. Do you usually have a bath before dinner?”

  “Nah, no bath.” Izzy opened the avocado-green fridge before I could get to it. I edged her aside and peered in. The door shelves were crammed with mustards, oils, and grease-stained bottles of things I didn’t recognize. In the body of the fridge, standing out from the crowd of scantily-contained unidentifiable blobs, were two pots covered in tinfoil, a carton of eggs, a hunk of unwrapped cheese balanced on a Chinese take-out carton, and an unbagged head of iceberg lettuce. Everything, even the lettuce, had an odd, oily sheen. A smell created a wall that kept me from getting too close. Maybe the cheese?

  “Where’s the milk?” I asked. Izzy shrugged.

  Item by item, we unloaded the refrigerator, placing things in whatever space we could make on the orange linoleum counter. I finally found the milk in the back. When I pulled it out, the contents sloshed with an unusual weightiness.

  Izzy stood on a stool and took down two bowls.

  “Let me check the milk.” I opened the triangular pour spout of the carton and then jerked my head back from the slap of stink that hit me. It smelled like an animal had died in there.

  “Peeee-ewww!” Izzy screamed, still standing on the stool. I put the milk down on the counter and put my hands on Izzy’s tiny legs, which were covered in a downy blond fuzz. The idea that she’d fall on my watch was more horrifying than the smell of the milk.

  “Izzy?!” Dr. Cone shouted from the entrance hall. My stomach felt as if a string had pulled it shut like a drawstring bag. I lifted Izzy off the stool and placed her on the ground. I wondered if Dr. Cone would fire me for allowing her to climb up there.

  “Here!” Izzy shouted.

  Dr. Cone walked into the kitchen. “What are you two up to?”

  “We were gonna make cereal for dinner,” Izzy announced. “But the milk stinks.”

  “I think it soured.” I pointed at the carton on the counter.

  “Oh yeah, that one’s from last month. I don’t know why no one’s thrown it out.” Dr. Cone laughed and so did I. What would my mother think of milk that had grown chunky and putrid with age? It was unimaginable. Though, now that I was seeing it, it was very imaginable.

  “What about we go to Little Tavern and get some burgers and fries?” Dr. Cone offered.

  “Little Tavern!” Izzy shouted.

  Dr. Cone moved things around the kitchen counter, looking for something. “Where’s your mom?” He patted his pockets—front, back, front again—and then pulled out his keys and held them in the air for a moment as if he’d performed a magic trick.

  “Don’t know.” Izzy shrugged.

  “We haven’t seen her,” I said.

  “Let’s go!” Izzy marched—knees up, like she was in a band—out of the kitchen. Dr. Cone put his hand out for me to step ahead, and I did, following Izzy down the hall and out the front door to the wood-paneled station wagon waiting in front. Dr. Cone didn’t lock the front door behind us. I wondered if Mrs. Cone was somewhere in the house. If she wasn’t, wouldn’t Dr. Cone have locked the door?

  “How many burgers can your mom usually eat?” Dr. Cone asked as Izzy opened the door to the back seat.

  “She’s a veterinarian this week.” Izzy climbed in and pulled the door shut.

  “Is she? I thought she got over that veterinarian phase.” Dr. Cone winked at me and stared up at the open window on the third floor. “BONNIE!” Dr. Cone cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted. I looked up and down the street to see if anyone was witnessing this. “BON-NIE!”

  Mrs. Cone stuck her head out the window. Her hair was blown around her shiny face. “What?”

  “Do you want something from Little Tavern?”

  “WHAT?!”

  “DO YOU WANT SOMETHING FROM LITTLE TAVERN?”

  Mrs. Cone paused as if she really did want something. Then she shook her head. “I’M TRYING NOT TO EAT MEAT!”

  “SHE’S A VETERINARIAN!” Izzy shouted from inside the car.

  “FRIES?!”

  Mrs. Cone nodded and gave a thumbs-up. Then she disappeared into the attic room.

  “You’ll eat Little Tavern, won’t you?” Dr. Cone asked me.

  “Yes.” The truth was, I’d only been there once. My family didn’t often eat in restaurants. We did eat out of the house once a week, but always at our country club. Sometimes, when we had visitors from out of town, we’d take them to a restaurant. But my parents would never eat at the Little Tavern, whose slogan was Buy ’em by the bag! The single occasion I’d been to the Little Tavern was the twins’ birthday, when we went with their parents.

  “Okay then, get in!” Dr. Cone nodded at the front seat of the car. The passenger side was covered with piles of paper and a brown file folder. I stacked them neatly and slid them down the bench seat toward Dr. Cone so I could sit.

  Izzy immediately scooted up and leaned her head over the front seat. She talked the whole way to Little Tavern and I tried to listen, but my brain was stuck on question after question. Had Mrs. Cone been in the attic all day, and was she converting it into a guest room? Why hadn’t she come downstairs to make dinner? How did the Cones eat dinner normally? Who went grocery shopping and why wasn’t there fresh milk in the fridge? Did they not get their milk delivered lik
e everyone else in the neighborhood? We got two cartons of whole milk every week. My mother said one was for baking and cooking and the other was for her and me. My father was never poured milk at dinner and instead had a glass of orange soda. I was allowed orange soda on weekends, and only at lunchtime. My mother said that sugary drinks were less harmful if they were consumed before the dinner hour. In the Cone house there wasn’t even an option of soda. Just clotted milk.

  We drove into Hampden, a little neighborhood of narrow row houses with marble stoops and dogs chained in front yards that were either dirt or cement. Dr. Cone parked the car at Little Tavern, and Izzy and I followed him in.

  Dr. Cone ordered two bagfuls of burgers and four boxes of large fries. “What do you want to drink?” he asked Izzy.

  “Orange soda,” Izzy said.

  “Mary Jane?” Dr. Cone asked.

  “Orange soda,” I repeated, and then I glanced behind me to see if my mother was somehow there.

  Once we had the food, we returned to the station wagon. Izzy ran ahead of me and Dr. Cone. She opened the passenger-side door and climbed into the front seat.

  “We’ll eat in the car,” Dr. Cone said. “It’s more fun that way and we can all fit up front!” He placed the burger bags and his soda on the roof of the car, opened his door, and then pulled out all the papers and the folder and moved them to the back seat. Then he waved his arm at me to slide in.

  We handed the bag of burgers back and forth. The burger was oily and salty, and sweet, too, from the ketchup. It was one of the best things I’d ever eaten.

  “So, we’ve got some big stuff coming up. . . .” Dr. Cone chewed down his burger and swallowed. Izzy had emptied her orange soda and was sucking out the last bits with a bubbling sound.

  “Do you want the rest of mine?” I asked, and she kissed me on the cheek and took it.

  “One of my patients and his wife are going to move into the house this weekend.” Dr. Cone unwrapped another burger and lopped off half in one bite.

  I nodded. I wasn’t sure why he was telling me this and if I was allowed to ask questions.