The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters Read Free Page A

unoriginal as White Shoulders, and remember some other’s throat, some other’s wrist. They’d notice her looking vaguely wrecked—her lipstick smeared a little or an earring gone or a button gone from herblouse—and these men would love her for a sadness they hadn’t caused.
    Lily walked slowly down the stairs having put on a pair of white pumps too long in the toe and too high in the heel. Her dress was unzipped again, and she turned her back to Jordan without a hello. “Do me up, hon,” she said, and Jordan obliged, moving in close behind her, putting his lips to the skin of her shoulder as he zipped her dress. He noticed an insect on her neck, and he blew it away before kissing her there. The insect landed on the back of Mabel’s hand. It was a strange black ant with wine-colored wings that looked like ornate paper-cuttings. Mabel suspected these odd bugs, these winged ants and white bees she’d been noticing lately, were a result of the new genetically altered crops farmers were resorting to.
    Lily winked at Mabel as Jordan kissed her, and she stretched her neck for more of Jordan’s affection. “I’m sorry we fought, Mabel,” Lily said, nearly whispering. “You’re welcome to hate me for the rest of the night, just don’t hate me forever.” Mabel often daydreamed of hating Lily forever. She wished she could sustain her anger the way Lily did, the way Lily might spend days not speaking because of some slight, shut up in her room with old
Vogues
and a handkerchief wrapped around her hot head as if she were convalescing. Lily had convinced herself that her pain was original, unique, unlike the pain endured by anyone anywhere in the history of time. Over the years, Mabel had tried to teach her otherwise by collecting short articles depicting worse tragedies from theback pages of the newspaper. She’d leave these clippings on Lily’s pillow, stories like the one about the girl who pushed her twin down an old well or the one about a woman who slowly poisoned her sister by stirring iron filings into her nightly cup of chamomile.
    Lily unrolled the short sleeve of Jordan’s shirt to get at the pack there. “This is candy,” Lily said.
    “Yeah,” he said, “I’m trying to quit smoking. But look here,” and he took one of the bubble gum cigarettes from the pack and held it to his lips. He blew into it and a dusting of fine, powdery sugar made a cloud. “Just like smoke,” he said.
    “Where’s the car?” Lily said, waving her hand in the air, refusing the bubble gum. Jordan took Lily’s wrist, then Mabel’s, and led them out to the front porch. Beneath the lamp that lit the gravel drive sat the two-door Packard faded away to a pale gray. Rust spots like gunshot riddled the side of it. A dishtowel hung in place of the glass of one of the side windows.
    “One of those ninety-nine-dollar paint jobs and she’ll be the prettiest girl on the block,” Jordan said. Mabel imagined riding in the back of the car to the river on a muggy afternoon, wearing a swimsuit with a beach towel wrapped around her waist. Jordan would be in a pair of cutoff jeans and a tropical shirt all unbuttoned, Lily beside him painting her toenails with her foot up and pressed against the dashboard. They’d listen to the old records her father had taped—Joe Jackson and Elvis Costello and The Clash.
    Jordan took a box from the backseat of the car. “Thiswoman in town had meant to open up a Starkweather museum. She put a new engine in the car and everything, so people could go for joy rides in it. But she ran out of money.” He took from the box the other artifacts he’d bought from the woman: a doll Caril Ann had made from twisting up a Kleenex, and a sign Caril had put up on the door of her house where she and Charlie holed up for six days after he killed her family. The sign read: STAY AWAY EVERY BODY IS SICK WITH THE FLU .
    “I’m not buying any of this from you,” Mabel said. “It’s borderline perverted. Not to