Mary Jane

by Jessica Anya Blau

  “But what will you wear tomorrow?”

  “I need to throw a load of wash in the laundry anyway.”

  “Because of the vomit?”

  “Yes.”

  “Add just a couple of tablespoons of bleach to help sanitize everything.”

  “Okay.”

  “It won’t bleach your clothes if you use less than a quarter cup.”

  “Okay.” I heard muffled yelling and covered the mouthpiece with my hand, shut my eyes, and prayed again. God must have heard, because my mother didn’t seem to.

  “How was the chicken?”

  “They loved it. They said it was the best meal they’d ever had.” Finally I could speak the truth.

  “Very good, dear. I’m glad you succeeded with that.”

  “Mom, I’ve got to go. I have to take care of Izzy.”

  “I understand. I’ll see you tomorrow at the end of the day.”

  “Okay. Good night, Mom.”

  “Good night. And remember, just two tablespoons of bleach. And look closely at the labels on their clothes before you put anything in the dryer.”

  “I will.”

  “And you know to clean the lint filter before each dryer load, right?”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “Okay, Mary Jane. Good night.” My mother hung up before I could respond.

  I pushed the quilt down and breathed in the cool, clean air. Then I rolled out of the bed and returned the phone to the nightstand.

  I paused in the hallway. The voices were calmer now. Sheba and Jimmy weren’t yelling. And even Dr. Cone’s voice sounded less grumbly. I wanted to make sure that Dr. and Mrs. Cone were okay with me spending the night. And maybe I could borrow a nightgown from Mrs. Cone. I had laundered two of them earlier in the day.

  Mrs. Cone’s voice floated for a second before Sheba started up again. I moved to the top of the stairs and slowly made my way down. My legs were watery and my heart felt like a Slinky flipping down an endless staircase inside my chest.

  As I approached the living room, the four of them looked up at me. Sheba was on the couch. Her wig was off and her face was streaked with black mascara. Dr. Cone was sitting in the leather chair. He looked calm but still had that half-angry scowl. Jimmy sat on the floor, his head resting on the coffee table. And Mrs. Cone was beside Sheba on the couch. Her wig was still on. Surrounding them, on the floor, the table, the couch, everywhere I could see, were all the books from the shelves. Izzy and I had been discussing alphabetizing the bookshelves but hadn’t started yet. I had a moment of thinking that maybe this disshelving would make that task easier.

  “Uh, Izzy wants me to stay with her tonight. She’s scared.”

  “Excellent idea,” Dr. Cone said.

  “May I borrow a nightgown?”

  “Absolutely!” Mrs. Cone started to stand up, but Sheba took her hand and pulled her back down to the couch.

  “Mary Jane,” Sheba said very seriously. “Go in my and Jimmy’s room, go in the closet, and find the prettiest nightgown you see. Whatever one you like, you can have. But you have to choose the prettiest one. Do you understand? It’s very important that you take the best nightgown there. Can you do that?”

  “I think so.” I wanted to ask which one was the best, but I knew I was inserting myself, interrupting, and if I didn’t leave the room soon, an emotional explosion might happen right before me.

  “Good. Only the best one.”

  “Okay. Good night.” I turned to walk away.

  “Good night, Mary Jane,” Sheba said.

  “Good night, Mary Jane,” Mrs. Cone said.

  “Good night, Mary Jane,” Dr. Cone said.

  And then Jimmy shouted, “Mary Jane, you are a saint and I fucked up! I’m a stupid fucking shit—”

  Before he could say more, Sheba was outyelling him. I rushed up the stairs, my heart thumping, and hurried into Izzy’s room.

  Izzy sat up. “Did your mom say yes?” Her eyes were like night-lights, catching the glow from the streetlamp outside her window.

  “Yes. I’m going to grab a nightgown and brush my teeth.”

  “You can use my toothbrush.”

  “I’ll just use my finger.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll be right back and then I’ll get in bed with you and we’ll shut the door and we can sing a song if you want. Or we can read Madeline. Or we can just go to sleep.”

  “And the witch won’t come in. The ratio is two to one.”

  “Right, the witch won’t come in. The ratio is too big for the witch to get in.”

  Sheba and Jimmy’s room was tidy and organized. Dr. and Mrs. Cone hadn’t managed to empty it, but they had managed to stack all their stuff in boxes pushed against one wall. The bed was made with a bright pink batik bedspread. There were mismatched nightstands on either side. One held the books I’d seen Jimmy reading in the banquette in the morning: Play It as It Lays and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The other had hand cream and face cream. On the ceiling, over the bed, hung another pink batik bedspread. I wondered if Mrs. Cone had done that, or if Sheba had.

  I took a few steps into the bathroom and looked around. There was a giant claw-foot tub and a separate walk-in shower. The tile was Tiddlywinks-size pink and black circles, like what I imagined might be in a diner in the 1950s. On the pink marble vanity a framed mirror lay flat, like a tray. Two perfume bottles and many face creams sat on the mirror tray. I picked up Chanel No. 5. I’d heard of it, but had never seen an actual bottle. I sprayed it on my wrists and sniffed. It didn’t smell like Sheba. The other bottle was cut glass with a stopper in it. I lifted the stopper and sniffed. That sort of smelled like Sheba, but not quite. I dipped the stopper and dabbed each of my wrists where I had sprayed the Chanel No. 5. I lifted my wrist to my nose. Now I smelled like Sheba. I sniffed again. Breathing in Sheba’s scent made the world momentarily fall away.

  I left my Sheba-scented bubble and hurried to the walk-in closet. The bar on one side of the closet held Jimmy’s clothes. The bar on the other held Sheba’s. Her clothes were arranged by type: dresses, tops, jumpsuits, nightgowns, and robes. Within each group they were arranged by color, lightest to darkest, left to right. I ran my hand along everything, feeling the variegated textures—satin, silk, leather, cotton.

  When I got to the nightgowns and robes, I pulled them out one by one. Some were so sexy—with see-through lace bra tops and thigh-high slits—that I was embarrassed looking at them. My sex addiction roared, tingling through my body, and I hushed it down sternly.

  Even the not-as-sexy nightgowns were beautiful. I worried I’d disappoint Sheba and pick the wrong one. And then my hand stopped on a white nightgown with lace straps and lace on the hem. The cotton was so soft, it felt like thick water running between my fingertips. I took off my shorts, T-shirt, and bra right there in the closet, and slipped the nightgown over my head. The breast panels were baggy on me, but other than that it fit me well. The cotton was so smooth against my skin, I wanted to roll around on the ground just to feel it more.

  I folded my clothes and carried them out of Sheba and Jimmy’s room and then down the stairs to the second floor. The shouting had stopped, and the conversational voices of the four grown-ups floated up like sound clouds. Also, the smell of marijuana wafted up. I wondered if Dr. and Mrs. Cone were smoking too. Or was it just Sheba and Jimmy?

  I walked into Izzy’s room and shut the door behind me. It took a second for my eyes to adjust and see that Izzy was still awake, her glowing eyes flashing on me.

  “Everyone’s calm,” I said. “They worked it all out.”

  “Okay. Can we sleep now?”

  “Yeah.” I climbed into bed. Izzy’s sheets were clean and stiff. We had washed and starch-ironed them only two days ago.

  “I love you, Mary Jane.” Izzy scooted in closer to me and pushed her head between my breast and my armpit. She breathed deeply and slowly, as if she were releasing something from far inside her body.

  “I love you too,�
� I whispered.

  7

  When I woke in the morning, I was surprised that I had slept so solidly and easily. At school we went on camping trips every year and I always came home exhausted and ready to sleep for a week straight. And when I slept at the twins’ house, we stayed up late and then got up early. But in Izzy Cone’s bed I slept better than I did in my own house.

  Izzy was still pressed up against me, her mouth gaping open like a fish’s. Her thick eyelashes looked wet and shiny and her red curls were plastered behind her head. I slipped out of the bed slowly, carefully, and dressed in my OP shorts, bra, T-shirt, and flip-flops.

  I put the nightgown to my face and sniffed. It smelled like Sheba’s perfume combination and not like anything I recognized as myself. With the nightgown in my hands, I left the room. The door to the third floor was closed. Dr. and Mrs. Cone’s door was ajar and I could hear ocean-sounding snores coming from it. I went down the stairs slowly, sticking to the wall edge, where there was less creaking.

  The living room floor was covered with scattered books. The air still smelled like a rubber eraser. On the coffee table was half of a broken dinner plate, the edges chalky white and craggy. On the plate were three stubbed-out joint ends. Roaches, Jimmy had told me in the car one night before he swallowed a lit one, just to make me and Sheba laugh.

  I stood for a minute surveying the damage. I could start shelving the books then, or I could wait until Izzy woke up. We’d been talking about it so much that she might be hurt if I started without her. But I was slightly worried that if I didn’t start systemizing the books soon, someone else would jump in and shelve them willy-nilly. Certainly not Dr. and Mrs. Cone; they were blind to chaos and disorder. Sheba, however, had a neat streak in her as strong as mine. No one did anything in the Cone house before breakfast, however, so I knew I had time. Maybe Izzy and I would start shelving when she woke up.

  The dining room looked fine. Even the candlesticks with the white nubs of melted candle in them were exactly where they’d been last night. The record player was on the floor where Izzy and I had set it up. The records were still lined against the wall, now held up by two stone carvings I had found on the washing machine. One was the shape of a woman’s torso and one the shape of a man’s.

  I tried to push open the swinging door to the kitchen, but it was stuck. I walked around the back way: dining room, living room, entrance hall, TV room. When I got to the open doorway to the kitchen, I gasped.

  The kitchen was like a crime scene. Or like the kitchen on The Poseidon Adventure after the boat sinks. The floor was covered with broken dishes: plates, bowls, glasses, even the serving platter I had used for the chicken. On top of the glassware and crockery was food from the pantry: cereal boxes, graham crackers, Screaming Yellow Zonkers, oatmeal, flour, sugar, raisins. Everything. The cupboard doors were open and the shelves were mostly emptied. In some places the debris was heaped two or three feet high.

  I tried to imagine the scene in my head. Sheba had been doing most of the hollering. But would she break all the dishes? And how did Mrs. Cone feel, watching her dishes get destroyed? What was Dr. Cone doing? Was he trying to medicate or calm or stop whoever was doing the breaking?

  My mother entered my head. Not in Roland Park, she often said, as if all the ills of the world were contained in a cloud that just refused to hover over this little nook of northern Baltimore. But there I was, in Roland Park, and a big, heavy shattered-glass storm had landed. I imagined my mother’s face, seeing this scene, her head pulled back, eyes widened, the nearly invisible scratches of her eyebrows lifted almost into her hairline. I remembered the single broken plate in my kitchen at the beginning of the summer and how serious that crime had seemed.

  I looked at the closed kitchen door and envisioned Izzy forcing it open, just a bit, and then squeezing through and stepping into a pile of broken glass. Very carefully, I high-knee-stepped through the debris. I picked up a cookie sheet from the floor and used it to push aside the crackling heap that was blocking the door. Then I swung the door open, and pushed debris against it so it would be held that way.

  I turned and went back to the TV room, and then to the laundry room, where Izzy and I had organized mops and brooms, rain boots, snow boots, raincoats, umbrellas, roller skates, and a bike pump. I pulled on Mrs. Cone’s orange rubber rain boots. They were too big, but I could walk easily enough in them. With a bucket, a mop, a broom, and a dustpan, I returned to the kitchen. Izzy was standing in the doorway on the dining room side, her mouth open in the shape of the letter O.

  “Mary Jane! I woke up and you weren’t there!”

  “I’m right here.”

  “WHAT HAPPENED?!”

  “I don’t know. When the grown-ups wake up, they can tell us what happened.”

  Izzy lifted her arms. I waded over to her, picked her up, and walked her to the kitchen table. There were a few cracked and broken glasses on the bench seats, so I placed her on top of the table, which was miraculously clear.

  “Everything is broken.”

  “I know. I’ll clean up.”

  “What will we eat?”

  “Hmmm.” I went to the refrigerator and checked inside. Untouched. “Milk straight from the carton? And some Laughing Cow cheese. Okay?”

  “Yes!”

  I took out the entire circular container of Laughing Cow and the carton of milk and placed them on the table beside Izzy. “Have you ever had milk from the carton?” The twins drank milk like that in their house. When I tried it once in my own home, I was swiftly whacked on the back of my head by my mother. The milk spilled, of course, and I had to mop the whole kitchen floor as punishment.

  “I can do it if my mom holds it for me. She does it all the time.”

  I knew this already, as I’d seen Mrs. Cone stand at the refrigerator and drink milk from the carton. I’d also watched her dip rolled slices of cheese into the mustard jar with the fridge door still open. I opened the cardboard corner of the carton and held it to Izzy’s lips. She guzzled the milk. A bit dripped down her chin. Finding a napkin seemed too labor-intensive, so I wiped her mouth with my thumb. “Can you open the cheese yourself?”

  “Yes.” Izzy wiggled out a wedge from the box. “You pull the red string.” She made her concentrating face and went to work.

  I waded to the sink cupboard and got out a trash bag and gloves. With my gloved hands, I picked up the food items one by one. If it wasn’t canned or sealed, I threw it away. If it was boxed, I examined it closely for any possible openings where shards of glass could have entered. The idea of Izzy taking a bite of oatmeal and swallowing a nearly invisible sliver of glass made me feel a little panicky. Izzy ate cheese and talked to me while I worked. Every now and then I returned to the table and fed her more milk. She seemed entirely untraumatized by the night before and I thought, If she can handle this, then surely I can too.

  It was easy to scoop up the broken dishes with the dustpan. I dumped them into a trash bag. There were more unbroken dishes on the floor than I would have guessed. Probably the second layer, cushioned by what had already been thrown down.

  I picked up a white coffee cup and turned it around to make sure there were no cracks. “Coffee mugs have the highest survival rate.”

  “What’s a survival rate? Can I have more milk?”

  I put the cup in the sink with the other whole dishes and then went to Izzy and fed her milk. “It means they lived through the crash. Through being thrown.”

  “Are coffee cups alive?”

  I laughed. “No. I’m using lived metaphorically. Or maybe anthropomorphically.” I tried to remember the lessons from English class.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’m pretending the coffee cups were alive when I say they weren’t killed. But really what I’m saying is that of all the thrown dishes, they were the ones that most often landed without breaking.”

  “Why do you think the coffee cups weren’t killed?”

  It was a good question. I w
ent back to the sink and pulled up an unbroken mug. Then I rinsed it to make sure there were no shards of glass in it, and brought it to the table. “Don’t drink out of it until we really wash it. But let’s look at it and see if we can figure it out.”

  Izzy took the cup and turned it in her hand. “Maybe a circle is harder to break?”

  “Yeah, I bet that’s it. You’re so smart!” I leaned in and kissed the mop of Izzy’s curls.

  “But why?” Izzy asked. “Why is a circle harder to break?”

  “Hmmm.” I recalled something from school about an arch being the strongest shape. That was why all those old Roman bridges shaped like arches were still around, even though they were two thousand years old. But I couldn’t remember why. Something about force, all sides pushing into each other and creating tension that binds. “When one of the grown-ups wakes up, let’s have them explain it.”

  “Okay.” Izzy got down to business on another wedge of cheese and I went back to my task.

  At last four Hefty bags were full and lined up in the dining room. The benches around the table were clean, but I kept Izzy on top of the table. I swept the kitchen floor, twice over.

  “Can I go on the floor now?” Izzy asked.

  “Nope. I have to mop. You can sing to me while I mop.”

  “What should I sing?”

  “Your number one absolute favorite song.” I loaded the unbroken dishes into the dishwasher and then placed the mop bucket in the sink and poured in some Mr. Clean. Izzy tapped a beat on her forehead with one finger. She was quietly singing the beginning of many songs, like flipping through a card catalog, trying to find the right title. I turned the faucet to the bucket and filled it with water.

  “Mary Jane! I have my song!”

  I heaved the bucket out of the sink and onto the floor. “Should I count you in?”

  “Yes! Wait. What’s that mean?”

  “You’ll understand when I do it.”

  “Okay. Do it.” Izzy gave me a very serious stare, anticipating the count-in.

  “A one and a two and a three and a—” I pointed at Izzy and she belted out one of Jimmy’s songs from an album that we’d now listened to many, many times. At the parts where Jimmy’s voice turned to tossed gravel, Izzy tried to make her voice gravelly too.