Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau

I learned two things that first week that Sheba and Jimmy stayed in the Cone house. The first was that addicts ate a lot of sugar to replace the drugs and alcohol they’d been taking. The second was that being married to an addict seemed harder than being an addict.

Most mornings I arrived to find Sheba and Izzy waiting for me in the kitchen. Sheba didn’t like to cook and both she and Izzy thought I made the best breakfasts. I started making a daily trip to Eddie’s with Izzy, where we’d stock up on ingredients for a good breakfast the next day: eggs, flour, sugar, baking soda, bacon, real maple syrup, butter, and loads of fresh fruit and berries. Also, I’d pick up more sugary treats, particularly Screaming Yellow Zonkers, which Jimmy had declared essential to his recovery.

Sheba talked a lot when there were adults in the room. She gossiped about other celebrities, and once complained at length about a particular director who wanted her to take off her top for a horseback riding scene in which “there was no logical reason this character would ride without a top on!” More frequently, she talked about how hard it had been living with Jimmy the past year. There was the Oscars party where he “nodded off” at the table and his head fell on his plate; the intimate dinner party at a famous producer’s house where he disappeared into the bathroom for two hours and then stumbled out and fell asleep on the couch, his head falling into the lap of the sixteen-year-old daughter of the producer; and numerous flights on airplanes—private and public—where he vomited all over the bathroom, peed in his pants, and/or had to be carried off once they’d landed. I wondered how she had stayed with him through all that. And then my sex-addict brain wondered if it had to do with attraction and if she was a sex addict like me, and just couldn’t pull herself away from his body. Jimmy was muscly and lean. And he had a smell to him that made me want to stick my face into his chest. It was almost an animal smell, but sweeter, softer.

Sometimes Sheba relayed stories of addicted Jimmy right in front of Jimmy. When that happened, Jimmy just shrugged, apologized, and more than once looked at Dr. Cone and said, “I need you, Doc.”

When it was just me, Izzy, and Sheba, Sheba became quiet and curious and asked questions about us. It was like Izzy and I were foreigners from another country. Sheba had been a celebrity since she was five years old, so, really, we were foreign to her, people from the country of non-stars.

The Monday of Sheba and Jimmy’s second week, Sheba sat with Izzy at the banquette, coloring. I was at the stove making “birds in a nest” as my mother had taught me. Once I had flipped the pancakes, I would cut out a center hole (with a drinking glass, as the Cones didn’t have the circular cookie cutter my mother and I used at home), into which I cracked open and fried an egg. The key to making it work was putting lots of butter in the pan and cooking at a super-high heat so that the egg would cook before the pancake burned. Also, I covered the bird in a nest with salt. When you added butter and syrup, it was the perfect salty-to-sweet ratio.

“Who colored this bloody penis?” Sheba asked.

My face burned. Izzy leaned over the coloring book, looked at the penis, and said, “Mary Jane.”

“Do you hate penises?” Sheba asked me.

“Uh . . .” I felt breathless. “Well, no. I don’t think so. I’ve never seen one.”

“I’ve seen lots.” Izzy focused on coloring the parrots from the naturecoloring book.

“You have?” I slid the three birds in a nest onto three different plates. The syrup and butter were already on the table, as were three place settings and batik napkins I’d found when Izzy and I had cleaned out and organized the pantry.

“Yeah, I see my dad’s penis ALL THE TIME!” Izzy kept coloring. I knew enough about the Cones now to know that Izzy likely saw Dr. Cone’s penis as he walked out of the shower or downstairs to the laundry room to find clean clothes. No one in this house closed doors, except Izzy, who needed to keep the witch out of her bedroom. I had almost seen Dr. Cone’s penis once as he walked past his open bedroom door toward his bathroom when I was in the hall. I turned my head quickly, but I could barely speak for the next half hour, as I was fairly certain Dr. Cone had seen me, and I worried he thought I had deliberately been looking toward their room because I was, maybe, a sex addict.

Sheba laughed. “I never saw my dad’s penis, but I used to see my brothers’ penises all the time. Boys are ridiculous. Every single one of them thinks that every person in the world wants to see his penis.”

Of course I knew her brothers from their TV show. Sheba’s brothers were wholesomely clean-looking with giant white teeth and hair that was so thick, you could lose a thimble in there. How odd to think of them with their penises out.

I carried the three plates, waitress style, to the banquette and slid in next to Izzy.

“Does Jimmy want every person in the world to see his penis?” Izzy asked. She leaned closer to the parrot picture. Her face was three inches from it as she pressed hard with a purple crayon.

“Jimmy doesn’t even have time to think about that, because as soon as he walks into a room, women—” Sheba looked down at Izzy. She must have realized she was talking to a five-year-old kid, because she sat up straight and pulled her mouth tight.

I wondered what women did when Jimmy walked into a room. Did they ask to see his penis?

I stood and went to the fridge. Changing the placement of my body might change the subject. I opened the door and looked inside for inspiration. “Anyone want orange juice?” Izzy and I had been buying freshly squeezed juice at Eddie’s. The charge of pulpy taste had shocked me when I’d first tried it, and now I couldn’t imagine drinking anything else.

“Me.” Sheba raised her hand.

“Me.” Izzy raised her hand too. They both still stared at the coloring books.

“I guess since you don’t have brothers,” Sheba said as I handed her a glass of juice, “you never had to deal with boys the way I did.”

“No.” I scooted in next to Sheba on the banquette. “But I’d always thought it would be fun to have siblings.” In my fantasy, my brothers and sisters and I would sing together, like Sheba had with her brothers on TV.

“Me and Mary Jane are snuglets,” Izzy said.

“Singlets.”

“That the word for it?” Sheba dug into the bird in a nest.

“Well, it’s what the mother of my best friends, they’re twins, calls me.”

“Her best friends are at sleepaway camp.” Izzy liked hearing about the Kellogg twins and what the three of us did when we hung out (they played piano, I sang; we had chess tournaments with the three of us and their mother; we walked around on stilts; we sewed halter tops, which my mother wouldn’t allow me to wear; and we rode our bikes to the Roland Park library, or Eddie’s, and mostly just looked at things).

“Do your parents dote on you?” Sheba asked. “Since you’re the only one around.”

“Hmm. No.” Was what my mother did called doting? “My dad doesn’t seem to notice me; he rarely talks to me. And my mother likes me to help her with things. You know, cooking and stuff.” In my mind, my family was like all the other families in the neighborhood, except the Cones, of course.

“So your dad ignores you? That’s awful! How could anyone ignore you, Mary Jane? You have so much charm.” Sheba kept coloring, as if she hadn’t said anything unusual. But everything she’d just said felt startling and unusual. It had never occured to me that there was something awful about my father ignoring me. I’d thought that was just how fathers were. And the idea that I had charm was equally startling. Other than my teachers praising my work, I’d received very few compliments in my life.

“Uh . . .” I couldn’t find words to respond. Fireworks were exploding in my brain.

“Do you like going to church?” Sheba asked, relieving me from further thought on my possible charm and my possibly awful father.

“I love church,” I said. “I sing with my mom when she teaches nursery school, and I sing in the choir.”

“Oh, I’m going to come hear you sing,” Sheba said. “I love church singing. I used to sing in church.”

“I know.” One of the reasons I had been allowed to watch Sheba’s variety show was that she and her brothers always closed with a church song. They told the audience the song came from their hometown church in Oklahoma. I always wondered when they were ever in Oklahoma. As far as I knew, the family lived in Los Angeles.

“I could put on a wig,” Sheba said. “I brought about seven of them.”

“I want to wear a wig and go to church,” Izzy said.

The conversation stopped when Mrs. Cone came into the kitchen wearing what looked like genie pants and a red lace bra. “Mary Jane, do you know where my pink blouse is?” she asked.

“Oh, Izzy and I ironed it.” I scooted out from the banquette and went to the TV room, where I had left the ironed clothes in two neat piles.

“We ironed everything!” Izzy shouted. Ironing had been one of our Friday activities. Izzy was as happy doing housework as anything else, so it seemed like I was taking care of two needs, or maybe three, at once: keeping Izzy occupied and stimulated, teaching Izzy how to take care of a home and family, and organizing the Cone household.

When I returned with the blouse, Sheba was talking to Mrs. Cone about a woman she called “that bitch.”

“. . . giving a known addict junk!” Sheba said.

“Terrible.” Mrs. Cone was in my seat, eating the rest of my bird in a nest. Her eyes were fixed on Sheba.

“And he just can’t say no. He pleases any woman in his sphere as if each one is his mother. Who he was absolutely never able to please.”

“I can see that.” Mrs. Cone finished my breakfast.

I handed her the blouse and then went to the stove and said, “Does anyone want another bird in a nest?”

“Oh, sweetheart, Mary Jane, I ate yours!” Mrs. Cone was so nice about it, I couldn’t be mad. “Do you mind making more? Another for you and one for me.”

“And me,” Sheba said.

“I just want the nest.” Izzy was frantically coloring a picture of sunflowers.

I was proud of my ability to cook for everyone. At home, I never prepared food unsupervised. I hadn’t realized how much I could do on my own until I came here and did it. The past few days I’d been thinking that maybe I should cook dinner one night for the Cones so they wouldn’t have to eat takeout or whatever I’d picked up for them at the deli counter at Eddie’s. But I feared that the offer would be ridiculous: a fourteen-year-old girl preparing a family meal. Still, breakfast had seemed a success, so I took a chance and said, “Should I cook you dinner tonight so you don’t have to eat already prepared food?”

“Oh, Mary Jane, I would love it if you made dinner,” Sheba answered, as if the decision were all hers.

“That’d be fabulous!” Mrs. Cone slipped on the blouse and began buttoning it from the bottom up, the opposite of how my mother had taught me (Start at the top to preserve your modesty and then work your way down).

“And you’ll stay and eat dinner with me, right, Mary Jane? ’Cause I miss you at dinner.”

“Of course she’ll eat with us.” Mrs. Cone fastened the last button. “Do you mind preparing dinner?”

“No, I’d like it. I mean, I think Izzy and I need to clean out the refrigerator first, but if we do that, I’ll know exactly what you have and then I can plan.”

“Maybe you could cook all summer,” Sheba said. “I really think Jimmy needs fresh vegetables, and a meat that hasn’t been fried on a grill or in a wok.”

“Are you still a vegetarian?” I asked Mrs. Cone. We’d added Slim Jims to our daily Eddie’s run. Jimmy loved them and said he liked to alternate a sugary treat with a Slim Jim. Mrs. Cone, upon hearing that, had ripped open a Slim Jim and then a Chunky bar so she could alternate bites. I wasn’t sure if a Slim Jim counted as meat or not. It didn’t look like meat any more than Screaming Yellow Zonkers looked like corn.

“You’re a vegetarian?” Sheba said. “No. Stop. Now is not the time to be a vegetarian.”

“Okay! I’m easy!” Mrs. Cone laughed.

Jimmy walked in the room wearing only boxer shorts. “Hey.” He ran his fingers through his shaggy hair. There was a tattoo of Woody Woodpecker on the inside of his thigh. I tried not to stare at it, as it was so close to his penis.

Sheba stood, went to him, and hugged and kissed him like he’d been gone a month. “Hey, baby, you good? Mary Jane can make you some eggs in a blanket—”

“Birds in a nest!” Izzy shouted.

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Jimmy said. “Are there any Zonkers left?”

I rushed to the pantry and got a new box of Screaming Yellow Zonkers. Jimmy sat where Sheba had been. I handed him the Zonkers. Sheba scooted in beside him, so Izzy scooted down too. I went back to the stove, flipped the pancakes, and cut out the center of three. Jimmy stared at me as I cracked eggs into the holes. I nervously smiled at him and tried not to look at the fuzz all over his chest or the tablecloth-patterned tattoo running down one arm.

“What about coffee?” Jimmy asked.

“Yep, right here.” I’d found the coffee maker when Izzy and I cleaned out the pantry, and had been making a fresh pot every morning. The first day I did it, I didn’t know if anyone drank coffee, but since the pot was mostly empty by noon, it seemed like a task worth doing. I poured a cup for Jimmy and brought it to the table.

“You are a living doll, you know that?” Jimmy stared at me so intensely that I couldn’t speak for a second. It felt like his eyes shot out electricity.

“Mary Jane Doll.” Izzy sighed, coloring away.

“Does anyone else want coffee?” I wrenched my eyes from Jimmy. Was I a sex addict? Is that why I kept looking at his nearly naked body?

Dr. Cone walked into the room. “Are you the one who’s been making the coffee?”

“I stopped drinking coffee when I stopped eating meat,” Mrs. Cone said.

“Enough.” Sheba pointed at Mrs. Cone. “From now on, you drink coffee and eat meat. Got it? No alcohol and drugs, but lots of coffee and meat.”

“And sugar,” Jimmy said.

“Okay!” Mrs. Cone laughed again. “I’ll eat meat and drink coffee!”

“HURRAH!” Izzy lifted two crayons in the air.

After Dr. Cone and Jimmy had gone to the office and Mrs. Cone and Sheba went upstairs, Izzy and I started in on the refrigerator.

“I’ll say good or bad,” I said. “If it’s bad, you put it in the Hefty bag. If it’s good, stick it on the table.”

We both looked over at the table. It was stacked high with coloring books, crayons, dishes, coffee cups. Izzy read my face and went to the table, where she started stacking coloring books. I followed.

“Fast motion!” I wanted this cleanup done quickly so I could get to the fridge, figure out what to make for dinner, and get to Eddie’s and buy what was necessary.

Izzy laughed as she fast-motion shoved crayons into the box. I moved the dishes straight into the dishwasher, which I had emptied earlier in the morning. There were books on the table too: Freud’s dream analysis and The Diary of Anaïs Nin—five editions, each with a different-colored cover. I stacked the books in my arms and took them into the living room, where the built-in bookshelves were full. I had been collecting books from all over the house and stacking them in front of the shelves the past few weeks, with the eventual plan for me and Izzy to organize and alphabetize them. I figured the alphabetizing would help Izzy be ready for kindergarten in the fall.

Once the table was clear, I returned to the fridge. Izzy stood by, holding a Hefty bag open with two hands.

The first thing I pulled out was a foil-wrapped, thick, semi-gelatinous brown blob. “Bad.” I dropped it in the bag.

Izzy looked in the bag. “Bad.”

Next I pulled out a saucer that had a shimmery slab of what might have originally been a meat but was now covered with a mossy green fuzz. “Bad.”

“Bad,” Izzy repeated.

I jumped to the vegetable bin, as it was a smaller space and would sooner give me a sense of accomplishment. There were several loose onions, half the skin gone, with divots of black and crumbs and dirt embedded in the exposed flesh.

“Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad.”

“Badbadbadbadbad,” Izzy said.

With my thumb and forefinger I removed three different bags of half-deteriorated mushy lettuce. “Bad. Bad. Bad.”

“Baaaaad,” Izzy brayed.

The oranges were as soft as Silly Putty. The apples had wrinkled skin. And there was a bagged, flowering, multidimensional green entity that could not be identified.

When nothing remained in the bin, I returned to the shelves. I pulled out an oily glass jar that appeared to have detached gray toes floating in murky brownish water.

“What is that?” Izzy asked.

“If we don’t know what it is, it’s bad.” I handed the jar to Izzy so she could examine it further.

“It looks like thumbs.”

“Ah! I thought it looked like big toes. But I think you’re right.”

“Do you think the witch put the thumbs here?”

“No.”

“I think the witch put it here.” Izzy placed the jar in the bag.

“Bad.” An opened chocolate bar that was chalky white.

“Bad.” A brick of cheddar cheese that was green except for the corner farthest from the gaping-open clear wrap.

“Bad.” Carrots (they should have been in the vegetable bin) that were as loose and droopy as overcooked spaghetti noodles.

“Good.” I held up a jar of Grey Poupon and handed it to Izzy.

“HURRAH!” Izzy put down the Hefty bag and ran the mustard to the table.

“Bad.” Empty orange juice carton.

“Bad.” Unopened Knudsen yogurt that had expired three months ago.

“Bad.” A half-eaten taco half wrapped in tinfoil, with white cauliflower-looking mold erupting in spots.

“Good.” I held up a jar of maraschino cherries.

“What is it?”

“Maraschino cherries. They’re really sweet.”

“Can I taste one?”

“Yes.” I opened the jar and pulled one out. “You know, maybe the witch put the cherries in the fridge. Maybe she’s a good witch.”

“Are there good witches?”

“Yes.” I placed the cherry in Izzy’s open mouth. She chewed thoughtfully.

“I like the cherry.”

“It’s definitely a good witch food. Good witches eat lots of maraschino cherries.”

“How do you know?”

“I read about it in a book.”

“Can I have one more?”

“Last one.” I dropped another cherry in her mouth and then stuck the jar on the table.

Back at the fridge, I pulled out three deli containers of wet mush in colors varying in shade from green to brown. The Eddie’s price stickers on top were smeared out by oil and time. “Bad, bad, bad.”

Izzy opened one container and sniffed. She jerked her head back and then sniffed again.

“Close that,” I said. “The stink is filling the kitchen.” It was the smell of fishy garbage in summer, magnified.

Izzy sniffed once more, her eyes crinkled up as if in pain. “Mary Jane! It’s so bad, I CAN’T STOP!”

I understood the urge. The twins and I often dared each other to smell their mother’s limburger cheese, which was usually stocked in their fridge. Still, I took the container from Izzy, snapped the lid shut, and dropped the container in the Hefty bag.

It wasn’t long before the Hefty bag was nearly full and the refrigerator was nearly empty.

I had bought cleaning supplies and gloves earlier in the week. My mother wore gloves to protect her manicure. I didn’t have a manicure, and neither did Izzy, but it seemed like fun to wear gloves anyway. We scrubbed the cleared shelves and drawer until the inside of the refrigerator looked almost brand-new. And then we stood back, the door open, and stared in admiration.

Mrs. Cone and Sheba walked into the kitchen. Sheba was wearing a short blond wig and giant sunglasses. Her body looked both slim and curvy in a tight floral jumpsuit. I’d never seen anyone dressed like that in Baltimore. If she was trying to go out unnoticed, she was failing.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen the refrigerator look like this.” Mrs. Cone stood at the door, smiling. She was wearing the pink blouse and genie pants, and had tied a pink floral scarf around her head so she looked sort of like a dancer.

“You both look so pretty.”

“Ah, thanks.” Mrs. Cone leaned in and kissed the top of my head. No one had ever kissed me like that. Not my mom and not my dad. Sometimes I’d get a little pat on the back, or a squeeze from my mom that might resemble a hug. But a kiss on the head was totally new to me. What were you supposed to do when someone kissed you like that? Just stand there? Say thank you? I blushed, then grabbed Izzy and pulled her in close to me because my hands suddenly needed something to do.

“We’re going to lunch,” Sheba said. “You think anyone will recognize me?”

“I don’t think anyone would ever in a million years expect that you’d be in Baltimore, so they probably won’t recognize you. But I bet they’ll stare at you, just, ’cause . . .” I was too embarrassed to go on.

“We’re going to make dinner!” Izzy said.

“I know.” Mrs. Cone leaned over Izzy and kissed her head three times, before turning up Izzy’s face and kissing her fat cheeks.

Just as all this kissing was taking place, Dr. Cone rushed into the kitchen, his hair a scrambled mess on his head. He left the 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 used a 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 wrapped her 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’s calves. Izzy climbed off her father’s lap and nestled into mine; her weight pushed my back against Dr. Cone’s legs. I looked up and saw that Mrs. Cone had tucked herself under her husband’s arm. Sheba put her hand on my knee, and at that moment every single body in the room connected into a single fleshy, leggy, arm-entwined unit. We stared silently at the TV as an American astronaut 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 home to help her prepare the meatloaf and fried potatoes. Or maybe she’d miss my company at the dinner table. After all, my father rarely 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 transforming into someone different, a girl who would hide things from her parents, the payoff seemed worth it. I’d get to eat dinner every night 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 blooming flower.”

“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 wedges as we fried them in Crisco. And she assembled the Nilla Wafer flowers in the sherbet bowls, which we made ahead of time and then 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 they could always do things like run off and fetch a trash bag. I did things like that for my mother and now Izzy was doing them for 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 go to the kitchen counter.”

“And trash goes here.” Izzy shook the garbage bag.

“Yes. But you can’t hold on to the bag. You have to be willing to run stuff around the house. Clothes can go on the steps to take upstairs later. Shoes, too. Okay?”

“Okay.” Izzy looked at me with an intense little stare. Like she was going to be graded on this task.

I circled the table and gathered books, which I handed off to Izzy in stacks of three or four. Each time she returned from dropping them off, I gave her another pile. When the books were gone, we started in on the trash: empty take-out containers, receipts from the grocery store, candy wrappers, old newspapers, two empty pizza boxes, and lots of junk mail. I found the matching flip-flop to one of the two that had been in the entrance hall, and also Izzy’s orange bathing suit she had been wanting the week before when we went to the pool one afternoon.

Finally all that was left on the table was an unplugged record player, a dozen records, and a large collection of Izzy’s arts and crafts projects. I picked up the records and shuffled through them. Three of them were Running Water records, all of which had a picture of the entire band, Jimmy always in the middle. On one cover, his shirt was open to the top button of his pants. On the other cover, he wasn’t wearing a shirt at all and it looked like he wasn’t wearing pants, either, though the photo ended before you could really know. He stared the viewer in the eye, the way he had stared at me this morning during breakfast. Like he was daring you to look away. Like he was asking a question with his eyes. Like you should know what the question was and be able to answer it with your own eyes. But I didn’t know how to answer any questions with my eyes. I didn’t even know people could stare like that. Until I met Jimmy.

“Should we play a record while we finish cleaning?” I asked.

“Yes.” Izzy put her fist below her chin as if it were a microphone and began singing a song that was vaguely familiar. Maybe I’d heard it on the radio at the twins’ house?

“You pick.” I held up the Running Water records. Izzy pointed to the one with naked Jimmy.

“While I’m setting this up, you pick up all your art projects and divide them into two piles, one pile we can keep in the TV room and one pile can go in storage in the basement.” I wouldn’t dare suggest that some of Izzy’s art projects be thrown away, but that was what I was thinking. It seemed like one or two samples from each category would be fine. Did we really need five ceramic pinch pots, each one looking like the crumpled glazed shell of a spiny tide pool animal?

Izzy climbed onto a ladder-backed dining room chair and reached around for her paintings, drawings, tinfoil and macaroni art, and the pinch pots. I put the record player on the floor and went into the TV room, where I had seen two unplugged speakers, each the size of a cash register. I brought the speakers into the dining room and plugged them into both the wall and the record player. Between the speakers, I stacked the records, like books between bookends. I had seen other records around the house. Maybe tomorrow Izzy and I would do a scavenger hunt for the house’s record collection.

I threaded the record hole onto the silver prong, lowered it, and turned the knob to 331/3. I lifted the needle and blew on it only because I’d seen someone do that once in a movie and then I set the needle down on the outer edge of the record. The music startled me when it started—I hadn’t realized the volume was so high. I didn’t turn it down, but instead backed away from it and took Izzy’s hand as if to steady myself. After the twangy guitar sounds, the song erupted with Jimmy first shouting and then singing in a voice that reminded me of walnuts mixed in maple syrup: both crunchy and sweet. Izzy sang along. She knew all the words.

Jimmy grumbled out, “Thundering shudders from my head to my—oooh baby, yeah—to my head. . . .”

I loved the thumping of the music, like a heartbeat on the surface of my skin. And I loved that raspy-sugar sound of Jimmy’s voice. It was like the way he spoke but more forceful, more alert, like he had woken up from a death nightmare and just realized he was actually alive.

I figured out the melodies pretty quickly, and started humming harmony to every song. I nudged Izzy and we continued singing as we appraised and then put away her art. Next we sorted through the remaining things: Sears and JCPenney catalogs, Chinese food take-out menus, instructions to assemble a shoe shelf I’d never seen, and costume jewelry that I assumed belonged to Mrs. Cone.

Once the table was completely bare, Izzy and I stood facing the turntable as Izzy belted out the last song on the A side of the album. She sang directly into her fisted gloved hand, her tiny hips jerking around. I moved my body a little, following the music, pretending I was someone who danced.

When the song ended, I lifted the needle, flipped the record, and started the B side. The first song was slow and quiet. Izzy wasn’t singing along. “Izzy, below the sink in the kitchen is lemon Pledge. Bring me that with those dusting rags we made.”

“Lemonplige?”

“Lemon Pledge. It’s a yellow spray can. I bought it at Eddie’s last week, remember?”

“Yes. You said we were going to clean wood.”

“Exactly. But first we had to find the wood to clean it. And look.” I stood and pointed to the dusty and dull wooden table. It was big enough to seat ten or twelve.

“Got it.” Izzy ran out of the room and returned seconds later with the Pledge and a stack of cleaning rags I had made from an old ripped Brooks Brothers shirt Dr. Cone had thrown in the trash.

“You’re going to love this.” I handed Izzy one of the rags. “I spray, and then you rub the rag in circles on the spot where I’ve sprayed. The table will shine and it will smell so good, you’ll want to lick it.”

“Can I?”

“What?”

“Lick it. Can I lick the table after I wipe it?”

“No. It’s probably poisonous.”

Izzy’s eyes popped wide. “Do you think the witch wants to poison us?”

“No. I bought the Pledge, not the witch. And I think the witch is good. She put the cherries in the fridge.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” Izzy squinted, then started growl-yelling the chorus of the slow song.

I waited for the chorus to end and then sprayed. Izzy climbed onto a chair, leaned over the table, and wiped. I sprayed a new spot. Izzy lifted her knee high, as if she were crossing a stream rock to rock, and stepped onto the next chair. She wiped. I sprayed; she moved down to another chair and wiped again. In this way, we circled the table, with Izzy singing and me humming the whole way. We were just at the end of the table, or at the beginning—we were where we’d begun—when Jimmy and Dr. Cone walked in.

My hands started shaking. I worried that Jimmy would be angry that we were listening to his record. But he just smiled, and then he took a step toward me, took the Pledge from my grip, placed it on the table, and started dancing with me while singing along with his own record. Izzy clapped and screamed and jumped into her dad’s arms. He, too, sang, Izzy hanging on his chest as they danced. Jimmy held my hands and pulled me toward him, and then away, and then around. At the last line, Jimmy dipped me down and hovered over me. I’d taken lots of ballet and could easily arch so I was like a lowercase letter h one foot on the ground, the other kicked in the air. I could smell the sugary treats and coffee on Jimmy’s breath. I could smell his skin, both sweet and musky, like something warm, maybe melted candle wax with wet autumn leaves. I had a strange urge to bite into him. The words sex addict sex addict sex addict swirled like an eddy of letters in my brain.

When that song ended, a faster song came on. Dr. Cone, Jimmy, and Izzy started fast dancing as if it were no big deal. I stood, leaning forward as if I were about to take a step but couldn’t. I’d never danced to rock and roll before. I watched the others, my mouth open with a half-nervous, half-happy grin. Dr. Cone bounced up and down, his head hanging like a bird with a broken neck, like when the Peanuts characters danced. Izzy flung her arms around and jumped as if she were trying to fly. Jimmy swayed his hips a little, forward and back, as if he were dancing inside a phone booth. He never used both the top and bottom halves of his body at the same time. Each movement was isolated, on beat, with the flow of the music. Izzy grabbed my hands and pulled me into the circle of the three of them.

“MARY JANE, YOU HAVE TO DANCE WITH ME!” She shook my arms until I moved on the other side of them. I glanced over at Jimmy and tried to mirror him. He looked straight at me and nodded. When he moved more broadly, I moved more broadly. Izzy still had one of my hands and was as wild at the end of my arm as a scarf blowing off a neck. I followed the pace of Jimmy’s steps and shoulder shakes. I sensed he was directing me with his eyes.

The longer I danced, the more I got used to Jimmy eye-directing me, the less I thought about dancing. And the less I thought about dancing, the more I danced. Eventually it felt right. Like it was something I already knew how to do that was coming back to me.

We kept on dancing as the next song came on. Izzy screamed at the opening chords and then started singing along, louder than the record. Jimmy laughed and then he sang too. Dr. Cone sang during the chorus. I figured out the words pretty quickly and desperately wanted to sing at the chorus too, but I was afraid to sing aloud with a famous professional singer—the person on the record, no less!—within hearing distance. At the final chorus, Izzy put her face real close to mine and was hollering along with the record. Right then, before I lost my courage, I started singing the harmony. Quietly at first, but then I went a little louder, because I knew I had it right. When the chorus picked up, I went louder still, almost as loud as Izzy and Jimmy. Finally I stopped dancing so I could really sing. I shut my eyes, let the words fly, and I heard my voice vibrating along with Jimmy’s like intertwined electrical currents that were creating a stream of sparks.

The song ended and Dr. Cone and Izzy clapped. Jimmy nodded, smiling. He clapped his hands three times slowly and then said, “Well, fuck me, Mary Jane, you got some pipes on you!”

The fuck me part of that sentence caught in my brain like a piece of cotton in a briar patch. I finally said, “I sing at church,” but I don’t think anyone heard, as the next song was playing and Sheba and Mrs. Cone were dancing into the dining room. Sheba was blasting her voice so beautifully that I felt goose bumps from the roots of my hair all the way to my toes. Her voice was pure and solid, and sounded like an instrument I’d never heard played before.

Jimmy snaked his arms around and danced over to Sheba. She did a circle in the streamers of his arms and then they went hip to hip. Sheba jumped into harmony while Jimmy stayed on melody. Izzy was still outsinging everyone volume-wise, and Mrs. Cone was singing along too. Everyone danced together in a big bouncy circle, smiling, moving, swaying, singing, smiling, laughing, singing, dancing. . . . As the song got faster, Sheba started spinning in circles. Izzy threw her arms out to the sides and spun too. Sheba unfastened her wig and threw it up in the air. Dr. Cone caught the wig and placed it on Izzy’s head. Izzy climbed onto a chair, and then onto our freshly polished table. She stood on that table in her dirty bare feet, wearing Sheba’s wig, and she hollered out the song like she was onstage in front of a stadium. Everyone laughed and danced and kept singing, and no one—no one!—told her to get her dirty feet off the table.

In the background, I heard a faint beeping. I ignored it. I couldn’t stop dancing, couldn’t stop singing. Though I tried not to stare, I couldn’t pull my eyes away from Sheba and Jimmy. How could anyone look away from them? How could anyone shut their ears off to them? How could anyone not stare at these shimmering, gyrating people who created a power of sound that ran through my body and filled me up so I was laden with it? Sated with it. Happy.

When the song ended, I could hear the beeping more clearly. It was the kitchen timer. The meatloaf was ready.