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

were isolated! I thought you didn’tknow a soul in Baltimore! How can you do this?! After all everyone’s done! Richard canceling all his other patients for thesummer! Mary Jane making fucking dinner every night! Fucking chicken à l’orange, you ungrateful fuck!”

I looked at my lap and replayed Sheba’s words in my head. This was more yelling than even Dr. and Mrs. Cone had ever done.And Sheba had used the term chicken à l’orange, when all night long we’d been calling it orange chicken, as was written on my mother’s recipe card. Also, she called Jimmya fuck. I couldn’t imagine ever calling another human, or even a dog, a fuck. I didn’t even know the word could be used that way. Yet it seemed effective. Jimmy appeared to be shrinking into his skin.He was too small for his casing, like a Ping-Pong ball in a bowling ball bag.

“Are you in trouble?” Izzy asked Jimmy.

Jimmy smiled at Izzy. It was a sad smile. “Yeah. I’m in trouble.”

Everyone was silent. Sheba dropped her head into her hands. Her back bumped up and down and I wasn’t sure if she was breathing heavily or silently crying. Mrs. Cone pulled her plate back toward herself and finished the half slice she had abandoned only a few minutes ago. Dr. Cone had that scowl again. And Izzy stared at me with giant circular eyes.

“Let’s clear,” I said.

Izzy clambered out of her chair and helped me clear the table as the adults sat in silence. Jimmy stared at Sheba like hewas waiting for her to look up at him, but her head remained in her hands.

Izzy and I moved most of the dishes into the kitchen and stacked them on the counter. Then I picked her up and headed upstairs.That was when the shouting started. Sheba mostly, with Jimmy shouting back in short barking sentences of two or three words.Izzy pushed her head into my neck and clung to me like I might drop her.

“You okay?” I asked.

“I’m worried about Jimmy.”

“Jimmy will be okay.”

“But Sheba’s so mad.”

“Yeah, but your dad’s taking care of him. He’ll be okay again.”

“Was he doing his addict?”

“Yes. He was doing his addict.”

The shouting continued as I put Izzy in her pajamas. Dr. Cone’s voice appeared like parenthetical words inserted between Sheba’sand Jimmy’s bursts of yelling. He wasn’t shouting, but his voice carried up in a steady, stern grumbling. Mrs. Cone was eitherremaining silent or had left the dining room. After Izzy peed, when she was brushing her teeth, we heard the sound of somethingcrashing: the thick clunking sound of ceramic breaking, rather than the tinkling shrill of glass.

Izzy held her toothbrush with her teeth. Foam dripped down her chin and into the sink. We stared at each other in the mirror, waiting for the next sound. There was absolute silence for ten seconds, and then Sheba began yelling again.

“Finish up. Let’s go to bed.” I stroked Izzy’s hair while she spit and rinsed, and then I picked her up and carried her toher room. Just as we were in the hallway, another sequence of crashes began. This time it did sound like glass. Or a seriesof glasses being thrown against a wall. My stomach clenched and I felt my heart beating in my throat. The crashing went on.And on. And on.

I carried Izzy into her room and kicked the door shut behind me. The yelling was more muted now, but we could still hear it,punctuated every now and then with another crash.

“Will you stay with me tonight?” Izzy asked.

I put Izzy in bed and got under the covers with her. I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t spend the night. My mother expectedme home.

“Please. I don’t want to be alone here. What if the witch comes?” Izzy blinked rapidly. She’d rarely cried since I’d startedtaking care of her, but the couple of times she had—when she fell on the sidewalk once, and when we couldn’t find her favoritestuffed animal—she’d blinked like this before bursting into tears.

“The witch won’t come.” I leaned over the edge of the bed and picked up Madeline.

“But the witch will know that the grown-ups are angry and that the grown-ups aren’t watching out for me, so she’ll come and—”

“I’ll stay.” Her panic fed my panic. I may have needed Izzy then just as much as she needed me. “Let me go call my mom. I’llshut the door behind me so the witch doesn’t come in while I’m on the phone.”

“Hurry back.” Izzy blinked and tears painted her cheeks. But she didn’t cry. She didn’t make a noise.

When I opened the door, I heard a chuk-chuk-chuk sound of things being thrown but not breaking. The adults had moved to the living room; their voices were louder and closer.

“Stupid fucking fuck!” Sheba screamed. I rushed into Dr. and Mrs. Cone’s room and closed the door behind me, dulling the yellingsounds.

The bed was unmade and the Cones’ clothes were heaped on the quilted blue love seat at the end of it and on the armchair inthe corner. The nightstands on either side of the bed were covered with books, drinking glasses, a small jade Buddha, andmagazines. There was a red telephone sitting next to the Buddha and an issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry on what I assumed was Dr. Cone’s nightstand. I picked up the receiver and waited for more screaming. It seemed safer if Icalled in the silence right after a session. Jimmy was hollering now, so I dialed all the numbers but the last. Sheba pickedup where Jimmy had left off. And then I could hear Dr. Cone’s voice chopping through.

I stretched the phone cord and crawled down to the ground. The sound only seemed louder there; it was coming up straight through the floor. I stood again, and then looked at the Cones’ bed. Dr. and Mrs. Cone kissed often, on the lips, and sometimes I could see their tongues. And they touched each other in ways that made my brain think of sex even