Mary Jane by Jessica Blau (debian ebook reader TXT) 📗

mess on his head. He leftthe door open and I watched out the window as Jimmy ambled across the lawn, eating from a box of Screaming Yellow Zonkers.

“The Apollo-Soyuz docking is on TV now!” Dr. Cone went into the family room as Jimmy entered the kitchen.

“We gotta see this, man.” Jimmy talked with his mouth full of Zonkers. “Russia and the US coming together in space. It’s fucking historical shit.” Jimmy walked into the TV room and Sheba, Mrs. Cone, and Izzy followed. I paused at the threshold of the kitchen, looking into the family room.

“What is fuckinghistoricalshit?” Izzy climbed onto her dad’s lap. None of the adults seemed to notice that Izzy had just useda swear word.

Dr. Cone clicked the thick brick-size remote control and turned up the volume. Mrs. Cone dropped onto the couch next to Dr.Cone. Jimmy sat on the other side of Dr. Cone, their shoulders touching. Sheba tucked herself down at Jimmy’s feet and wrappedher arms around his calves. They looked like a litter of pups.

“Mary Jane!” Jimmy called. “Get your butt in here. This is his-to-ry!”

“Here. Mary Jane.” Sheba patted the shag rug beside herself. I walked in and sat down, my back perilously close to Dr. Cone’scalves. Izzy climbed off her father’s lap and nestled into mine; her weight pushed my back against Dr. Cone’s legs. I lookedup and saw that Mrs. Cone had tucked herself under her husband’s arm. Sheba put her hand on my knee, and at that moment everysingle body in the room connected into a single fleshy, leggy, arm-entwined unit. We stared silently at the TV as an Americanastronaut leaned out of his spaceship and shook the hand of a Russian astronaut who was leaning out of his.

“I still don’t understand what is going on,” Izzy said. “Are they on the moon?”

“No, they’re just connecting,” Sheba said. “The spaceships connected and now the people are connecting.”

“Like us,” I whispered in Izzy’s ear, and she nodded and pushed herself deeper into my lap.

No one stayed to listen to the newscasters discuss the moment. Dr. Cone and Jimmy returned to the barn-garage-office; Sheba and Mrs. Cone left to have lunch downtown. Izzy and I returned to the kitchen, where I picked up the phone and called my mother. She answered on the first ring. I knew she was in the kitchen doing prep work for supper before she left for the club.

“Mom, I need to stay at the Cones’ for dinner tonight.”

“But I’m making meatloaf with pan-fried potatoes.”

“They want me to cook. Mrs. Cone can’t—”

“She can’t make dinner?”

“No, not for the rest of the summer. They asked me to make dinner.”

There was silence for a moment. I wasn’t sure if my mother was doubting my lie, or if she regretted that I wouldn’t be hometo help her prepare the meatloaf and fried potatoes. Or maybe she’d miss my company at the dinner table. After all, my fatherrarely spoke.

Finally my mother said, “Can you do that? Can you make dinner on your own?”

“I think I can, Mom.”

“Why can’t Mrs. Cone cook?”

“An illness,” I said. “I’m not sure what.” My second lie to my mother.

“Oh.” My mother gasped. “I hope it’s not cancer. Maybe this is why they hired you in the first place.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” I had never lied to my parents until I’d started working at the Cones’. And though I felt bad that I was transforminginto someone different, a girl who would hide things from her parents, the payoff seemed worth it. I’d get to eat dinner everynight with Sheba and Jimmy. And Izzy! How could I not lie?

“I’ll come down there and help you.”

“No, Mom. They’re not letting anyone in the house.”

“Oh. Oh no. Okay. Now, you call me if you need help. What does she want you to prepare tonight?”

“She didn’t say. She just said meat and a vegetable.”

“Oh, Mary Jane. She must be very ill.”

“How about I just make what you’re making?” I suggested quickly, to distract her.

It worked. “Meatloaf, pan-fried potatoes, and iceberg wedges with tomato slices and ranch dressing.”

“Okay. And dessert?”

“Orange sherbet. Just one scoop with three Nilla Wafers, each broken in half, and then stuck in the center like a bloomingflower.”

“I can do that.”

“Remember to sauté the meatloaf filling before you mix it into the hamburger and bread crumbs. That way it’s more savory.”

“Onion and . . .” I tried to remember exactly what we added to the hamburger for meatloaf.

“Onion, diced celery, garlic powder, salt, and pepper.”

“Okay, I can do that.”

“And fry the potatoes in Crisco, not butter. They’re better in Crisco.”

 

Izzy loved helping with dinner preparation. She sat on the kitchen stool and stirred the meatloaf filling in the frying pan.She whisked the buttermilk ranch dressing and arranged the cut tomatoes over the iceberg wedges. She salted the potato wedgesas we fried them in Crisco. And she assembled the Nilla Wafer flowers in the sherbet bowls, which we made ahead of time andthen kept in the newly roomy freezer.

While the meatloaf was cooking, we went to prepare the dining room. The table was so heaped with things, there was no visible surface. “Let’s do this methodically,” I said.

“What does that mean?” Izzy put a hand on each hip, just like me.

“Let’s be organized in how we put away all this stuff.”

“Should we do ‘bad/good’ again?”

“Yes, that’s a great idea. Get a trash bag.”

Izzy disappeared into the kitchen. I was starting to understand that one of the values of having a kid around was that theycould always do things like run off and fetch a trash bag. I did things like that for my mother and now Izzy was doing themfor me.

Izzy returned with a trash bag and two pairs of gloves.

“I don’t think we need the gloves.”

“Maybe we do?” She put on a pair. They were floppy at the ends, the fingers drooped like melted candlesticks.

“When I hand you books, put them in stacks in front of the bookshelves in the living room. Any dishes or kitchen things goto the kitchen counter.”

“And trash goes here.” Izzy