“It’s another word for testicles,” I whispered back. “You know, like in your coloring book?”
“YOU CANNOT FUCKING POLICE ME LIKE THIS! YOU HAVE TO GIVE ME SPACE TO BREATHE YOU GODDAMMED—” Jimmy stopped and shook his head. I quickly assessed the throwable breakables in the room. There wasn’t much. He’d have to open a cupboard.
“Breathe in, breathe out,” Dr. Cone said. “Sheba, you too. Just breathe in and out. Let’s have a quick meditation moment.”
Dr. Cone, Jimmy, and Sheba turned so they were standing in a circle facing each other. Mrs. Cone joined them. Sheba still had on her old lady face and Jimmy’s chest continued to heave.
“I breathe in, I breathe out,” Dr. Cone said in a low, smooth voice, like he was the DJ in a nighttime love song radio show. He repeated the words over and over again as the group breathed in and out. I wondered if this breathing was any different from regular breathing.
“Will Sheba really cut off Jimmy’s balls?” Izzy looked at me with huge eyes.
“No.” I pulled her off the table and onto my lap. She pushed her head into my neck and I rubbed her back. “She would never do that. She just said that to let him know how angry she was.”
Izzy started breathing in and out along with Dr. Cone’s instructions, and soon I felt her body melt into me like a warm stick of butter.
“Okay, let’s keep this peace.” Dr. Cone put his hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. “I’m going to walk Jimmy to the beach and send him off. Sheba, you’ll be fine and Jimmy will be fine.”
“Yeah. Whatever. That’s good.” Sheba stared at Jimmy like she was daring him on something. “I’ll sleep in the sun and wait for you.”
“Good. Good.” Dr. Cone put a hand on Sheba’s shoulder too. He was like a yoke between oxen.
Sheba nodded and then reached up to her head, ripped off the blond wig, and threw it so it landed on the dining room table. Mrs. Cone took off her wig too. She looked toward the table, and then pulled the wig against her chest and held it like she was holding a cat.
Dr. Cone drove Izzy and me to the grocery store. Izzy held all the recipe cards tight in her hand.
When we got to the store, I grabbed a cart and Izzy jumped on the end. “Do we need to find the ratio?” she asked.
“The ratio?” Dr. Cone asked.
“When we go to Eddie’s, we count the employees and the customers to find the ratio.” I shrugged, embarrassed. It sounded weird and silly when I said it aloud.
“Yesterday it was eighteen to twenty-nine,” Izzy said.
Dr. Cone rubbed Izzy’s curls. “That’s marvelous!”
“I think this store is too big for us to count.” I looked up and down the aisles. It was huge, like a warehouse.
“I agree.” Dr. Cone turned toward the produce section. I had memorized most of the ingredients on the cards and started putting things in the cart.
“The ratio of the witch is three to one,” Izzy said.
“Three what to one what?” Dr. Cone asked.
“Me, Mary Jane, and Sheba are three. And the witch is only one.”
“Well, I’ll join your team.”
“Then we’ll be”—Izzy pointed at me, her father, herself, and then an imaginary Sheba standing beside us—“four! To one. Right?”
“Yup,” I said. “There isn’t a witch in the world who could hurt a kid in the middle of a four-to-one ratio.”
“Agreed,” Dr. Cone said. I was relieved that he didn’t seem to think the ratio game was weird or silly. And I felt strangely happy that he had been so quick to join our team. Izzy talked about the witch so frequently, I had forgotten that I didn’t believe in her.
Before we left the produce section, I shuffled through the cards to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. “Wait! Artichokes!”
“Fancy.” Dr. Cone loped over to the artichoke display. I pushed the cart behind him.
“Do you like artichokes?” I asked. I worried that fancy wasn’t good. The Cones seemed anti-fancy, with Izzy standing on the dining room table, peeing on the beach, and coloring penises in her anatomy coloring book.
“I love them. We just never eat them. Restaurants don’t serve them.” Dr. Cone put his hand on my head and rubbed, the way everyone did to Izzy. It felt so nice, I didn’t move for a second, just to sense the vibrations of that touch.
When we returned to the beach house, Jimmy and Sheba were snuggled up together on the living room couch watching Green Acres. It had never occurred to me that people who were on TV might watch it too.