Pete moved his chair slightly forward. “Then why don’t they just stay home?”
“Well, that’s my point.” Lucy opened her hand, waved it in a small gesture. “Fuck them.”
“Poor Lucy,” said Vicky, and her voice was sarcastic.
“Yeah, poor me,” Lucy said, and sat back.
“Mommy’s favorite,” Vicky said, and Lucy said, “What?”
“I said you were her favorite kid, and boy did that pay off, for you.”
Lucy looked at Pete and then she said, “I was her favorite?” Her surprise surprised Pete. “I was?” she asked, and he shrugged. Lucy said, “I didn’t know she had a favorite.”
“That’s because you didn’t know anything that went on in this house, Lucy. You stayed after school every day, and she let you.” Vicky was looking at her sister; her chin was quivering.
“I knew plenty of what went on in this house.” Lucy’s voice had hardened. “And she didn’t let me, I just did it.”
“She let you, Lucy. Because she thought you were smart. And she thought she was smart.” Vicky tugged hard on the bottom of her blouse; Pete could see a strip of her flesh exposed above her pants, almost bluish.
Pete said, “Hey, Vicky. Lucy saw Abel. Lucy, tell Vicky about seeing Abel.”
But when Lucy said, “I saw Abel,” Vicky only shrugged and said, “I couldn’t stand his sister, Dottie. Mom always made her a new dress.”
“Well, Dottie was poor,” Lucy said.
“Lucy, we were poor.” Vicky leaned forward, as though trying to put her face in front of Lucy’s face.
“I know that,” Lucy said. She suddenly stood and walked to the front window. She gave the blind cord a little tug, and it opened up. Sunlight spilled into the room. She walked to the other window and opened that blind as well. Then Pete saw that the dirt from the floor had been scrubbed into the corners, it was right there to see in this sunlight.
“Do you ever eat?” Vicky asked this to Lucy, and Lucy shook her head before she sat back down on the couch.
“Not much,” Lucy said. “Appetite I do not have.”
“Me either,” Pete said. “I just know when I have to eat because I start to feel funny in the head.” The sudden sunlight—golden in its early autumnness—was too much for Pete, he really wanted to close the blinds. It was like an itch, and he had to work hard not to do it.
“It’s strange,” said Vicky, and her voice was no longer belligerent. “It’s odd, isn’t it? That you two would be so skinny and I’d be the one who eats all the time. I don’t remember you guys having to eat out of the toilet, but maybe you did. Who knows.” Vicky took a deep breath that caused her cheeks to pop out, and then she sighed hugely.
Pete thought to himself: Don’t do it. And what he meant was, Don’t get up and close the blinds.
After a moment Lucy said, “What did you say?”
Vicky said, “Oh, one time when we had meat.” Vicky scratched hard at her neck. “It was liver. God, did I hate the taste of that. Mommy thought we should be having—I don’t know—red blood cells or something, and she’d gotten a slab of liver from someone, and it was so awful, I put the pieces in my mouth and went and spit in the toilet, and the stupid, stupid toilet didn’t flush, and they found the pieces swimming in it and—”
“Stop,” Lucy said, raising her hand, palm outward. “We get it.”
Vicky seemed irritated by this. “Well, Lucy, you and Petie had to eat from the garbage whenever you threw food away, I can remember right there”—and she pointed with her finger, thrusting it twice, to the area where the kitchen was—“you’d have to kneel, and pick out whatever food you’d thrown away, and eat it right from the garbage, and you’d be crying— Okay, okay. Look, I’m just saying I can understand why you guys wouldn’t want to eat. I just don’t understand why I do.”
Lucy reached and rubbed her sister’s knee. But to Pete the gesture seemed obligatory, as though Vicky was a kid and had said something embarrassing that the grown-up, Lucy, was going to pretend didn’t happen.
“How’s your job?” Lucy asked Vicky.
“My job is a job. It stinks.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” Lucy said.
Pete glanced at the wall where the streaks of dust had come off; it was a mess of smudges.
“Another true sentence, I’m sure.” Vicky hoisted herself up to more of a sitting position. “But you know, a funny thing happened there just the other day. This old lady named Anna-Marie, she’s been in a wheelchair since I started there years ago, and she has never said a word in all those years, people say, Oh, Anna-Marie can’t talk anymore, and she just wheels around in her chair banging into people. And the other day I was standing at the nurses’ station and all of a sudden I feel my hand being held. And I look down and there’s Anna-Marie in her wheelchair, and she says to me with a big smile, ‘Hi, Vicky.’？”