Good game, said Marigold.
…
After the hummingbirds, our afternoon is mostly normal. Charles watches highlights from that day’s Vanilla basketball game, then performs a quick three miles on the garage treadmill. At 5 P.M. I serve flat, innocuous chicken. The only difference is that our postdinner lovemaking, urgent and impersonal, is conducted on the floor of the dining room instead of in our bed. This is Charles’s fuck-you to the hummingbirds. When it is over, he naps on the couch while I clean the kitchen.
Normally I like to do the dishes and watch the backyard fill with late-afternoon light. I take my time and run the towel over each plate again and again. Tonight my head is filled with ghosts. I decide it will be a night I drive to Vanilla’s campus and chain-smoke while I listen to all the old songs. This is why I like my old car. It still has a tape deck and the lighter gets hot in seconds. A plate slips from my hand into the soapy water. I pick it up only to lose it again.
Charles’s snoring drifts in from the other room. What if it was the snoring of a man I was crazy about? I soap the bowls, wash them clean, then soap them again, just to stay at the window. The yard grows dark.
I secure a sheet of aluminum foil over the leftover chicken, and when I straighten up there is something in the yard. I lose my grip on the platter; it hits the ground and comes apart. The breasts of chicken launch, then land dully under the dishwasher and cabinets. Gravy splashes onto my calves. The clattering awakens Charles, who stumbles in. He looks through the glass patio doors and halts.
Don’t go out there, I say. Something in my voice roots him.
We stand at the doors and look out over the yard.
Hundreds of deer gaze back at us. Deer and deer and deer and deer and deer. Their blue chests heave in the dark. Their trembling cotton throats. Each pair of eyes is trained on us. Charles turns off the kitchen light. Now we too are in darkness. The deer blink, shift footing, work their small jaws around.
Charles stammers. I thought the Dorothyville Association took care of all the deer.
That is totally what he would say, I think.
He looks from the deer to me and back again.
They’re staring at you.
I know they are but I say they’re not.
He moves away from me. The attentions of the deer do not waver. He pulls me into the kitchen, out of sight, and returns to the doors. Yes, he says, you.
He wants to know what is going on and I say nothing. He doesn’t believe I haven’t heard from them. If I were him, I wouldn’t either. I say, Check the phone bill, and he sighs because he already has.
I pull the drapes across the windows and flip the kitchen light back on.
Strange things happen to animals in the summer, I say.
Charles looks doubtful and worried. I’m calling the association in the morning, he says.
Good thinking, I say. Your nerves are shot; go to sleep.
My nerves are shot, he admits. He delivers a dry peck to my forehead. Good night, my wife.
It’s what he calls me when he has recently had an orgasm. The closest thing to a nickname for me is my station in his life.
He goes upstairs to bed. I hear his footsteps above me on the second floor. I return to the window and pull back the shades. The deer are gone. I stand there shaking with what feels like cold.
…
The following week’s Wafer had an explosive lead story: Twin Bastions brutally bushwhacked by brazen birds!
My roommate’s first story, several pages in, was a profile of a fortunate-looking Vanilla girl. Only child of Robert and Jessica, Katie Freeman’s kidneys had been ravaged by disease. She needed new ones asap. In the accompanying picture, she sat waiting to die in her Vanilla bedroom, decorated with Barbie everything.
Corrina read over my shoulder. I’m not going to start with how fucked up the Barbie thing is, she said. She snatched the paper and lifted its front page high above her head. Look at our heroes! She pointed to the picture of Chris and Dan, screaming at the medics on the field, a lone turkey feather hanging in midair over Dan’s shoulder.
We were in my dorm room. Ian entered with ice cream. No. Ian entered, upset that he hadn’t started his ethics homework but wanting ice cream. Marigold said, what’s the project? Or Corrina said it. We were already eating ice cream. Or pizza. Or pixie sticks. Marigold said, I miss my sister so much; we used to sleep under the bed like cats. Several streets away, Katie Freeman’s kidneys enacted dramatic exit monologs — whether it is nobler to burn out than it is to rust. Ian said the project was Build Something. None of us had ice cream. I was in the shirt I always wore. I put on one of Ian’s winter coats and wrapped a scarf around my neck. I said, You’re on your own, fellas, I’m going to church! Corrina said, I can’t believe you still do that, and I said, Don’t knock it till you try it, and Corrina said, Maybe I’ll try it. She put on one of Marigold’s winter coats and one of Ian’s knit hats.
On the walk to Saint Vanilla Cathedral, as we had been doing all week, we reenacted the ruckus on the field. We took turns being Chris or Dan or the turkeys.
Saint Vanilla Cathedral held the collective hush of a sports arena. We sat in a middle pew. The organ blew. Bells rang. Mass ensued.
Who are those guys? Corrina pointed to the altar.
Altar boys.
Corrina looked around and said in a tone I was beginning to recognize, Where are the altar girls?
After communion, Father Frank asked the congregation to keep Chris and Dan and Katie Freeman in its prayers. Then in fits and starts the young congregation vacated the pews and emptied into the gray Vanilla afternoon.
Corrina approached Father Frank. I have a question, she said. Father Frank looked pleased. His real name was Francis but he used Frank in the hope it would make him more approachable to girls like this girl and questions like the one this girl was about to pose.
Ask away, he said.
Why are there no altar girls?
Father Frank chucked Corrina on the shoulder. Corrina’s shoulder, bony and normally encased in some equation of yarn, was unaccustomed to being chucked. She stood unblinking and waited for an answer.
Look. His smile waned. You’re not the first girl to ask.
He turned to a family of parishioners, who upon achieving his attention held out a round-faced baby.
Maybe if he had attempted a semivaliant answer what happened wouldn’t have happened. Maybe if he hadn’t treated her like a five-year-old asking for a bedtime story. Maybe is what my mind says when I, in the half-light of Charles’s snoring, can’t sleep.
We walked to Ian’s room, where a structure of spoons, bike wheels, and assorted pieces of trash had grown. The project was Build Something. What Ian had decided to build was a Rube Goldberg machine — a structure that uses an unnecessary number of steps to accomplish a simple task, like flipping an egg or pressing a key on a piano.
However, Marigold said, this machine will only accomplish keeping itself going. The last step will trigger the first.
We spent the rest of that afternoon building.
We ordered sandwiches. Ian’s roommate came in with his dour-looking girlfriend, rolled his eyes, rooted through a stack of CDS, plucked out the one he wanted, and left. Ian said, I feel we’re not using the egg carton as creatively as we can. Corrina said, My mom is a civil rights lawyer. She was always off fighting other people’s battles. Let’s listen to Document, Ian said, or Marigold said it or I said it. A pair of pliers on the windowsill disappeared, then reappeared in Marigold’s hand across the room. He used them to secure each paper clip on the paper-clip ski lift. Through the window, a sparrow longed for Ian. We forgot we ordered sandwiches until they arrived. We made the delivery guy stand in the doorway as we dug around for money. Marigold knew him from class. They exchanged vague heys. What’s that? the delivery guy said, pointing to the machine. I said, In English class I learned the word for what my parents are. Updike-ian, I said. We ate from the bags of potato chips that were free with the sandwiches. Shoo, Ian said to the sparrow. The sun, faced with no options, went down. We admired our finished machine. It clicked and chugged in front of us. A set of keys dropped onto a scale that tipped, hitting the egg timer that triggered the paper-clip ski lift that triggered the…