Rattling Jane was looking for her sister.
Vi
June 17, 1978
IRIS WAS PERCHED on the back of the banana seat on Vi’s bike, her arms wrapped tightly around Vi’s waist.
Vi called her bike The Phantom. It was a red Schwinn Sting-Ray, one-speed, with chopper-style handlebars and a long white banana seat.
Eric followed on his Huffy BMX bike that he’d named The Hornet.
Gran didn’t let them ride into town very often, which was okay because there wasn’t much to do there. They didn’t go to the public school. Gran said they were better off learning at home because the school in town was abysmal and “no place for exceptional children” like they were. She’d sent Vi there for one day back in kindergarten, not long after she’d taken them in, and the teacher had yelled at Vi for already being able to read and write and for asking to be allowed to read on her own. Vi didn’t remember any of it, but Gran got outraged all over again each time she told the story. She’d never even tried to send Eric when he was old enough, she just taught him at home the way she’d been teaching Vi. Gran took a hands-off approach, mostly letting them explore their interests and work independently. “You, my lovelies, are clever enough to know what you need to learn and how best to go about learning it,” Gran said. They read a great deal, wrote reports and essays, did experiments, and filled out pages in math workbooks. Each night Gran went over their work, making corrections and suggestions, and helping to plan out the next day’s studies. Gran told Vi that she was reading and writing at a college level already. Vi planned to go to college when she turned eighteen: premed, then medical school, just like her dad and Gran. And Gran had promised her she’d be well ahead of the other students by then.
* * *
THEY WERE ALLOWED to ride to the library whenever they liked, as long as they promised not to do anything else, not to talk to anyone but the librarians. Sometimes they’d sneak over to the general store after the library to buy candy or soda with their allowance.
Gran took them into town sometimes too, driving down the hill in her old Volvo, to go to Fitzgerald’s Supermarket, Ted’s Hardware, or The End of the Leash pet shop. Sometimes they’d see other kids, and Vi wished she could talk to them, ride bikes with them—wished she could have normal friends like kids on TV did—but Gran forbade it. She said the townie kids weren’t worth the trouble.
Gran took them to Barre or all the way up to Burlington when they needed something that they couldn’t buy in Fayeville. They went to Sears to buy clothes, to Woolworth’s, and even to bookstores, where Vi would buy horror novels and Eric picked out books about animals.
And sometimes, as a special treat, Gran would bring them all the way to the Howard Johnson’s in Barre. It was a forty-minute ride, but when they got there and saw the orange roof with the blue cupola, they’d jump out of the car, practically run to the door. They’d sit at the counter on spinning silver stools with turquoise vinyl tops, and Gran would let them order whatever they wanted. Plates of fried clams, cheeseburgers, french fries, and ice cream. Oh, the ice cream! Twenty-eight flavors to choose from, and Vi wanted to try them all: maple walnut, pineapple, fudge ripple. Eric always got the same thing: chocolate in a cone.
Gran was predictable as a clock: She ordered coffee and a grilled cheese （which Vi didn’t understand—she could make the same exact thing at home!） and maple walnut ice cream in a dish. “I know,” Gran would say when she caught Vi giving her a not again look. “I’m a boring old lady.”
Vi and Eric would shake their heads, laugh, tell her she was anything but boring.
“One day, my lovelies,” Gran promised, “I’m going to surprise you. I’ll order something completely different. A BLT and a banana split. Or maybe I’ll be a real devil and ask them to make me something that’s not even on the menu.”
* * *
AND THEN THERE were the Saturday night drive-ins. Gran had taken them a few times in her old Volvo, but she found horror movies ridiculous. “Completely implausible,” she’d complain as a man turned into a fly or a werewolf, as a vampire showed his fangs and sank them into a beautiful woman’s neck.