Anything Is Possible(41)

“Me either,” Pete said. “I just know when I have to eat because I start to feel funny in the head.” The sudden sunlight—golden in its early autumnness—was too much for Pete, he really wanted to close the blinds. It was like an itch, and he had to work hard not to do it.

“It’s strange,” said Vicky, and her voice was no longer belligerent. “It’s odd, isn’t it? That you two would be so skinny and I’d be the one who eats all the time. I don’t remember you guys having to eat out of the toilet, but maybe you did. Who knows.” Vicky took a deep breath that caused her cheeks to pop out, and then she sighed hugely.

Pete thought to himself: Don’t do it. And what he meant was, Don’t get up and close the blinds.

After a moment Lucy said, “What did you say?”

Vicky said, “Oh, one time when we had meat.” Vicky scratched hard at her neck. “It was liver. God, did I hate the taste of that. Mommy thought we should be having—I don’t know—red blood cells or something, and she’d gotten a slab of liver from someone, and it was so awful, I put the pieces in my mouth and went and spit in the toilet, and the stupid, stupid toilet didn’t flush, and they found the pieces swimming in it and—”

“Stop,” Lucy said, raising her hand, palm outward. “We get it.”

Vicky seemed irritated by this. “Well, Lucy, you and Petie had to eat from the garbage whenever you threw food away, I can remember right there”—and she pointed with her finger, thrusting it twice, to the area where the kitchen was—“you’d have to kneel, and pick out whatever food you’d thrown away, and eat it right from the garbage, and you’d be crying— Okay, okay. Look, I’m just saying I can understand why you guys wouldn’t want to eat. I just don’t understand why I do.”

Lucy reached and rubbed her sister’s knee. But to Pete the gesture seemed obligatory, as though Vicky was a kid and had said something embarrassing that the grown-up, Lucy, was going to pretend didn’t happen.

“How’s your job?” Lucy asked Vicky.

“My job is a job. It stinks.”

“Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” Lucy said.

Pete glanced at the wall where the streaks of dust had come off; it was a mess of smudges.

“Another true sentence, I’m sure.” Vicky hoisted herself up to more of a sitting position. “But you know, a funny thing happened there just the other day. This old lady named Anna-Marie, she’s been in a wheelchair since I started there years ago, and she has never said a word in all those years, people say, Oh, Anna-Marie can’t talk anymore, and she just wheels around in her chair banging into people. And the other day I was standing at the nurses’ station and all of a sudden I feel my hand being held. And I look down and there’s Anna-Marie in her wheelchair, and she says to me with a big smile, ‘Hi, Vicky.’?”

Hearing this made Pete feel happy. He felt the happiness move through him like a warm liquid.

Lucy said, “Vicky, that’s a wonderful story.”

“It was sweet,” Vicky acknowledged. “And sweet things never happen there, I can tell you.”

Pete suddenly remembered something. “Vicky,” he said, “tell Lucy about Lila. How she’s going to go to college.”

“Oh.” Vicky scratched at her neck again; a red streak appeared across it. Then she looked carefully at her fingers. “Yeah. My baby girl is probably going to college next year.” She looked up at Lucy. “Her grades are good and her guidance counselor says she can get her into college with expenses paid. Just like you did, Lucy.”

“Are you serious?” Lucy sat forward. “Vicky, that’s so exciting.”

“I guess so,” Vicky said. She pushed on her bottom lip with her fingers, biting it.

“But it is,” Lucy said.

Vicky took her hand away from her mouth, rubbed it on her pants. “Sure. And then she’ll just go away like you did.”

Pete saw Lucy’s face change, as though she’d been slapped. Then Lucy said, “No, she won’t.”

“Why won’t she?” Vicky tried to rearrange herself on the couch. When Lucy didn’t answer, Vicky said, in a slightly mincing voice, “Because she has a different mother, Vicky. That’s why she won’t. Thank you, Lucy.”

Lucy closed her eyes briefly.

“You know who her guidance counselor is?” Vicky looked back around at Pete. “Patty Nicely. She was the youngest of the Pretty Nicely Girls, remember them?”

Lucy said, “That’s who’s helping get her to college?”

“Yup. ‘Fatty Patty,’ the kids call her. Or they used to, she’s lost some weight,” Vicky said.

“They call Patty Nicely ‘Fatty Patty’?” Lucy frowned at Vicky.

“Oh yeah, sure. You know, they’re kids.” Vicky waited and then she said, “They call me ‘Icky Vicky’ at work.”

“No, they don’t,” Lucy said.

“Yes, they do.”

Pete said, “You never told me that, Vicky. Well, they’re old and they’ve gone dopey-dope in their heads.”

“It’s not the patients. It’s the others who work there. I heard this woman say, two days ago she said this, Here comes Icky Vicky.” And Vicky took her glasses off; tears began to roll down her face.