“But she sewed,” Lucy said. “Why in the world would she cut up your clothes?”
“Oh, she sewed them back together the next day. On her machine.” Vicky lifted a hand listlessly. “She just stuck the pieces together and sewed them, so I looked like, I don’t know, I looked like even more of a moron.” Vicky said this, gazing in front of her.
After a long moment, Pete said, still leaning forward in his chair, “Look, you guys, I’ve been thinking about her a lot recently, and here’s what I think: I think she just wasn’t made right.”
His siblings said nothing for a long while. Then Lucy said, “Well, maybe. And then she had Daddy to contend with.” Lucy added, “She was gritty, though.”
“What do you mean?” asked Vicky.
“She had grit. She hung in there.”
“What was she supposed to do? She didn’t have anywhere to go.” Vicky looked at the bottom of her blouse, and tried to tug it down again.
“She could have left us. She’d have made money with her sewing. Just for herself. But she didn’t.” Lucy said this, then pressed her lips together.
“You know what I hated the most?” Vicky glanced at Lucy and Pete, and said almost serenely, “The sex sounds. When Daddy wasn’t walking around twanging his wang, they’d be doing it right up there—” She pointed to the ceiling. “And it made me sick to hear it, the bed shaking, and the sounds he made. I never heard any man make the sounds he made during sex.” She blew her nose. “Boy, try having a normal sex life after all that crap for years.”
Pete said, “I never did. Try, I mean.” His face became hot quickly; oh, he was embarrassed. But Vicky smiled back at him, and he added, “I know what you mean, though. My bedroom was right next to theirs, and jeepers—” He shook his head quickly, more like a shiver. “It was like I was in there with them.”
Vicky said, “Wait. You know what? He made all the sounds; there was never a sound from her.”
Pete had never thought about this before. “Hey, you’re right,” he said. “You’re right. She never did make any sounds.”
“Oh God,” Vicky said, and she sighed. “Oh, the poor—”
“Stop,” Lucy said. “Let’s just stop this. It doesn’t do any good.”
“But it’s true,” said Vicky. “It’s all true, who else are we supposed to talk to about this? Lucy, why don’t you write a story about a mother who cuts up her daughter’s clothes? You want truthful sentences? I mean it. Write about that.”
Lucy was putting her shoes back on. “I don’t want to write that story.” Her voice sounded angry.
Pete said, “And who’d want to read it?”
“I would,” Vicky said.
“I still like to read about the family on the prairie,” Pete said. “Remember that series of books? I have them upstairs.”
“I can’t,” Lucy said. “I can’t.”
“So don’t write it,” Vicky said, with a shrug, “I was just saying— Oh my God, I remember now—”
Lucy stood up. “Stop it,” she said. Her face had two red splotches high on her cheeks. “Stop it,” she repeated. “Just stop it.” She looked at Vicky, then she looked at Pete. She said—and her voice was loud and wobbly—“It was not that bad.” Her voice rose. “No, I mean it.”
Silence hung in the room.
In a few moments, Vicky said calmly, “It was exactly that bad, Lucy.”
Lucy looked at the ceiling, then she began to shake her hands as if she had just washed them and there was no towel. “I can’t stand it,” she said. “Oh God help me. I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it, I can’t—”
And then Pete understood that she could not stand the house, or being in Amgash, that she had become frightened, the way he had been frightened to get his hair cut, only Lucy was so much more frightened than that.
“Okay, Lucy,” he said. He stood up and went to her. “Just relax now.”
“Yes,” Lucy said. “Yes. No. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know—” It seemed she was panting. “You guys,” she said, looking from one to the other, and her eyes were blinking hard. “I don’t know what to do. Help me, oh God—” She kept shaking her hands, harder and harder.
“Lucy,” said Vicky. She hoisted herself up from the couch and walked over to her sister. “Now you just get hold of yourself—”