by Brock Rhodes
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A while later, a little girl, well dressed and proper, waits alone at a dinner table. She takes a break from pretending Mr. Spoon is marrying Ms. Fork in the chapel of Father Butterknife to make conversation. “Daddy, why isn’t Misses Apple making dinner tonight?”
The husband and father hustles around the kitchen with an apron that covers the bones of his business suit. “Misses Apple won’t be coming around here anymore, honey.”
“Oh… Why doesn’t Mommy make dinner?”
“Do you really want your Mommy making dinner, sweetie?”
“No, I guess not.”
“I didn’t think so. Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing. I’ve had to make dinner before.”
“Oh…”
The Dad chases the melancholy in his little girl. “Your Aunt Shania’s coming into town. Aren’t you happy you get to see your Aunt Shania? You use to love to see her.”
The little girl speaks a truth that only the innocent get away with, “Aunt Shania’s different now. I just don’t like it.”
The devoted husband and father is pleased with his daughter’s observation. “Good girl.”
“Bill!” shouts the voice of a hefty woman.
Bill tries to not visibly cringe. “Yes, my love,” and under his breath, “my vast, vast ocean of love–drowning ocean of love.”
Impatiently, she steps on the reply. “Bill, is dinner ready? I need to eat. I’m just wastin’ away. I’m hungry.” Aided by a walker and very stretchy pants, the woman he loves scoots to the table. Mariah, so obese that strangers leave the room to nicely laugh at her or privately vomit on their shoes, makes a rare appearance outside of her bedroom. Rattling like a narcoleptic pig with a broken nose, her loud breathing is lazy and stressed.
“I thought we’d wait for Shania to arrive… honey.”
“I need something now. I have no energy. I’m just blah. I’m so weak and tired. I need something before I drop dead.”
“Okay, honey.”
Mariah stumbles from her walker like she’s taking her first steps and pops her fat ass into a chair like a basketball forced into a Kleenex box. Chubbily, she grins at her daughter, “How’s my little girl?”
The innocent little girl tries to be good and smiles at her layers of mother, though she’d rather be safely underneath the table.
In unhealthy discomfort, invisible by myopia, Mariah cheeses wisdom. “You know something. When you look down at yourself, it looks different than looking into the mirror. I don’t know why. It must be the angles. Angles don’t show you what other people see. You shouldn’t look down at yourself. It’s not right.”
The doorbell rings when Bill returns with plate of veggies. “I’ll get it.”
The little girl watches her mother snort her food, trash compactor sloppy from thick fingers and delirious aim. She wonders if the phrase you are what you eat means her mother’s bloodstream is now gravy with jelly for snot.
“God, I’m so starved. Look at me. I think I have a worm or something. I just eat and eat and…”
“Shania. How are you doing? Ready to eat? You look great,” schmoozes the Dad as he greets the guest in the other room.
“You’re too nice,” Shania’s faint voice replies, barely audible. As soon as Mariah hears her rival, she towels her mouth. She could use more towels.
Bill wheels Shania’s skin wrapped skeleton, too weak to walk, into the dining room. She’s bowed over like a golf club of disappointment. Her mouth rests open. Her eyelids are so thin that she’s able to see just as well with them shut. Shania looks like an uncooperative patient at a rural nursing home. Those visiting are careful not to sneeze on her because it might infect her like a gunshot.
Bill drives Shania to the opposing end of the table. Being the proud hostess, Mariah greets with fake banter, “Hello, Shania. Don’t you look lovely today.”
“I’m a cow,” Shania mutters weakly.
“What?”
Mariah tells her little sister that she’s being silly. “We both are, right?”
Shania’s suspicions are confirmed, “Yes, we are.”
“I just exercise too much, that’s all. I don’t have a tape worm or anything.” Mariah gives her daughter a look that keeps her mouth shut.
“What the fuck is wrong with you two? You’re so fucking fat that we’ve had the doorways widened, and you’re so skinny its surprising that medical schools don’t pay you to be a living skeleton. You’re a fucking science experiment.”
Bill escapes from a daydream to return to earth before anyone notices he’s missing. “Are you ready to eat, Shania?”
“Just give me some water. I’m really thirsty.”
Bill pesters her like anyone serving family. “Surely you want some food. You need to eat.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
The butt-in that she is, Mariah suggests, “Eat something. You need to eat something or you’re gonna end up looking like me.”
Shania’s ribs vibrate with unhealthy laughter. Then there’s a silence in the room as the sisters focus on each other while the good-natured Bill and his innocent daughter examine these odd women in shifts.
To protect his girl from the ugly scene, Bill leads his little girl on an escape for hygiene. “Look at your hands. Let’s go wash ‘em.”
The sisters study each other as both use up their energy staying on their chairs.
Suddenly, Mariah feels a rumble and scrambles. “Excuse me for a moment,” her head reddens as she strains to her feet. The waterbed gasps for air, but none is supplied. She flops like a mattress, dead.
Waning, Shania closes her eyes. She calls Bill, but it’s too faint. In an effort to see what’s the matter with Mariah, Shania rises only to fall. She doesn’t have the strength to catch herself and her head breaks like an egg arriving purposely on the lip of a skillet. Her jaw twitches as if she’s going to say something, but her battery runs out.
