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 to her room. Just as we were in the hallway, another sequence of crashes began. This time it did sound like glass. Or a series of 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 expected me 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 started taking care of her, but the couple of times she had—when she fell on the sidewalk once, and when we couldn’t find her favorite stuffed 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’ll shut 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 yelling sounds.
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 in the corner. The nightstands on either side of the bed were covered with books, drinking glasses, a small jade Buddha, and magazines. 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 I called in the silence right after a session. Jimmy was hollering now, so I dialed all the numbers but the last. Sheba picked up 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 when it was only Dr. Cone’s fingertips on Mrs. Cone’s lower back. I didn’t want to get in their bed. I didn’t want my body to touch their sheets. I couldn’t stop myself imagining them having sex on and beneath those sheets. Still, I had to muffle the noise somehow. If my mother heard anything suspicious, she would get in the car and drag me home.
I picked up the body of the phone and held it against my belly. Then, as if I were about to go underwater, I took a deep breath and got in the Cones’ bed, under the quilted orange bedspread. I pulled the bedspread over my head. It smelled loamy and warm, like a wet towel that had been left in a closed-up car. There was quiet for a second, and then faint grumbling from Dr. Cone. I dialed the last number and said a prayer, Please, God, may no one yell while I’m on the phone.
My mother answered on the first ring.
“Mom,” I whispered.
“Is everything okay?” I imagined my mother standing up straight in the kitchen, the white floor mopped so clean you could see your reflection in the tile, the avocado-colored appliances gleaming from a spray-down with Windex.
I made myself speak in a regular voice. “Mrs. Cone is really sick and Dr. Cone asked if I could stay the night. Izzy seems scared and upset.” Lie four. The most complex and complete of the bunch.
“Is she vomiting?”