“And today? With the Halloween costume? Sometimes I think I have no maternal instinct at all. Jesus.” Mom glances toward the kitchen. The wine calls to her the way the costume called to me. “You and I are family but we aren’t even on the same page, sometimes. How can that be? Maybe if I didn’t . . . You’re the most interesting person I know, Lily. I could learn from you.”
Page? Interesting? Learn? “I’m not a book.”
Mom sits up. Her body stiffens when she says, “Of course you’re not.”
* * *
The next night, Dad comes home from the airport in a taxi, with new roller skates for Lauren, origami papers for me, and a big bottle of perfume for Mom. He tells us over dinner that “the newlywed couple is selling their house. Did you notice? How much are they asking?” He suddenly stares at Mom. “Jesus, Kit, you look beat.”
“Thanks,” she says, pinching her cheeks for color. “I am. We’ve been busy.” She tells him about our special lunch that afternoon. How she put out a lace tablecloth, and filled the brandy snifters with red Kool-Aid and frozen fruit. And made deviled ham sandwiches with the crusts cut off, and served us big slices of grasshopper pie with real Oreo cookie crust. “There’s plenty of pie left in the fridge.
“Good.” Dad smiles at Lauren and me. “Good. Sometimes I think our little house on Aiken Street is the only place in the world that makes sense. An oasis, an island. Asher Island.”
“Like Gilligan’s,” Lauren smiles.
“I get to be Ginger!” Mom says. She’s happy again. “What a figure!”
Dad whistles.
I’ll never get off Asher Island. Dr. Madsen, a.k.a. Dr. Giraffe, says to be patient—that I’ll be winning swim competitions again in no time, but I know better.
I don’t even miss it.
* * *
I wait until everyone falls asleep and enter my parents’ room. I smell their fear when they realize something or someone dangerous is standing in the shadows.
Mom is naked and I see her big tanned boobs when she sits up.
Dad’s brave, and when he jumps out of bed his protective blood makes a big whooshing sound, like the walk-in heart at the science museum.
He’s scared but ready to defend Mom. I pounce on them both. Lauren’s blood already smears my face; her body is in shreds in the hall. Her guts all over the fancy grass wallpaper and Mom’s new shag carpeting.
I wake with a start. My room is dark and quiet.
Dad’s home. Mom cut up my old Halloween costume and threw it in the trash. “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” she said.
I touch my crucifix and feel a small patch of dog fur growing underneath it. Jesus died for our sins. What did Mrs. Wiggins die for?
I pull out the scrapbook from under my bed and make a new list.
The Things I’ve Killed:
1. Lots of flies and mosquitoes.
2. Peace Lake.
3. Mrs. Wiggins.
Chapter 6
Jesus’s Secretary
The open window at the end of Judy’s bed is covered with a rice-paper shade. It looks out on a small Oriental courtyard, with the miniature bridge we used to walk our Barbies across before they had a tea party under the bamboo.
We’re both too old for dolls now, but I sometimes think about Barbie, my Barbie, who lives on a tropical island but drives her speedboat to the mainland where she plays piano in a jazz bar.
The magnolia tree in Judy’s courtyard is in full bloom today and shades the front door. Her mom planted it for her the day she was born but Judy hates it. She hates her room too, with its mile of rosy wallpaper between her bed and the small churchy window near her ceiling. Judy hates lots of stuff these days.
I hear them yelling at each other as I stand outside their house. Judy’s voice is loudest. I don’t want to go in but I have to: Lauren’s with Jamie, Dad’s out of town, and Mom’s taking a class at Portland State.
I knock quietly. When the yelling stops, I knock louder and Mrs. Marks finally opens the door.
“There you are,” she smiles. “Come in,” she says, while holding out a plate of homemade sugar cookies. The house smells warm and sweet, and even though she made cookies, her apron is spotless. My mom can’t even walk through the kitchen without getting something on her. I step inside and take a cookie.
“Go ahead, sweetheart,” Mrs. Marks nods to Judy’s door down the hall. “She’s waiting for you.”
Every room in the Markses’ house is modern, colorful, and neat. Especially Rusty’s room, which is weird because in person Judy’s brother is a real slob. He even buttons his shirts wrong. When I walk into Judy’s room, she hands me a bottle of smelly fingernail polish and directs me to sit on the edge of her bed, take off my shoes and socks, and stick cotton balls between my toes. Her hair is in rollers but her bangs are trimmed, straight and shiny.
“I’ve never painted my toes,” I say.
“It’s easy. Just don’t use much.” Three toes later she asks, “Who do you think is the cutest: Adam, Little Joe, or Hoss?”
Judy always asks me that question. It’s our way of saying hi. Sometimes when we’re watching Bonanza the Cartwrights burst through the burning map of the Ponderosa Ranch, stop their horses right in front of us, and smile into the camera wondering the same thing.
“You always ask me that question. Cutest? Adam is, I guess.”
“You guess?”
I look at her guiltily with the little pink brush poised over my big toe. “He’s handsome,” I say, “but he’s a snob.” Even though Judy thinks Adam is “moody and self-centered,” she still likes him best. She likes me best when I agree with her, but sometimes I just can’t. “I don’t like Little Joe either. Dad says he’s ‘slick’ like the guys who sell cars downtown.”
“No he’s not,” Judy grumps. “If Adam died, I’d marry Little Joe.”
Not me. I love Hoss. I want him to love me too. We’ll build a little ranch in the middle of the pines, have a baby, and live happily ever after. Some Sundays we take the bouncy buckboard to the Ponderosa Ranch, and eat lunch in the kitchen with Hop Sing. Outside, after lunch, I rest my head on Hoss’s chest, and he wraps his big arms around me and tells me my hair smells like warm biscuits with butter. Later, we sit in the living room with the stone fireplace. “There’s my big boy,” Grandpa Ben says when we pass him Hoss Junior. Adam stands off to the side, one foot on the hearth, thinking of something moody or self-centered to say.
Hail clicks and clatters against Judy’s window. It never hails on the Ponderosa.
“Hoss,” I smile. “Hoss is my favorite Cartwright.”
Judy sighs. Then, with tears in her eyes, says, “I don’t get you sometimes. Why do you always have to be different? Why can’t you like what I like?”
She looks at me funny, and for a minute I think she’s going to say something important, maybe even share a secret (like why she’s so mean these days), but then her mom walks into the room. Mrs. Marks carries a basket of folded laundry and sets it on Judy’s bed. On top of the clothes is a tray holding two small glasses of milk and more sugar cookies; underneath are neatly folded pedal pushers and a pink two-piece swimsuit.
“Your new Seventeen