Mary Jane by Jessica Blau (best motivational books .txt) 📕

“Yes. But you can’t hold on to the bag. You have to be willing to run stuff around the house. Clothes can go on the stepsto take upstairs later. Shoes, too. Okay?”

“Okay.” Izzy looked at me with an intense little stare. Like she was going to be graded on this task.

I circled the table and gathered books, which I handed off to Izzy in stacks of three or four. Each time she returned from dropping them off, I gave her another pile. When the books were gone, we started in on the trash: empty take-out containers, receipts from the grocery store, candy wrappers, old newspapers, two empty pizza boxes, and lots of junk mail. I found the matching flip-flop to one of the two that had been in the entrance hall, and also Izzy’s orange bathing suit she had been wanting the week before when we went to the pool one afternoon.

Finally all that was left on the table was an unplugged record player, a dozen records, and a large collection of Izzy’s artsand crafts projects. I picked up the records and shuffled through them. Three of them were Running Water records, all of whichhad a picture of the entire band, Jimmy always in the middle. On one cover, his shirt was open to the top button of his pants.On the other cover, he wasn’t wearing a shirt at all and it looked like he wasn’t wearing pants, either, though the photoended before you could really know. He stared the viewer in the eye, the way he had stared at me this morning during breakfast.Like he was daring you to look away. Like he was asking a question with his eyes. Like you should know what the question wasand be able to answer it with your own eyes. But I didn’t know how to answer any questions with my eyes. I didn’t even knowpeople could stare like that. Until I met Jimmy.

“Should we play a record while we finish cleaning?” I asked.

“Yes.” Izzy put her fist below her chin as if it were a microphone and began singing a song that was vaguely familiar. MaybeI’d heard it on the radio at the twins’ house?

“You pick.” I held up the Running Water records. Izzy pointed to the one with naked Jimmy.

“While I’m setting this up, you pick up all your art projects and divide them into two piles, one pile we can keep in the TV room and one pile can go in storage in the basement.” I wouldn’t dare suggest that some of Izzy’s art projects be thrown away, but that was what I was thinking. It seemed like one or two samples from each category would be fine. Did we really need five ceramic pinch pots, each one looking like the crumpled glazed shell of a spiny tide pool animal?

Izzy climbed onto a ladder-backed dining room chair and reached around for her paintings, drawings, tinfoil and macaroni art,and the pinch pots. I put the record player on the floor and went into the TV room, where I had seen two unplugged speakers,each the size of a cash register. I brought the speakers into the dining room and plugged them into both the wall and therecord player. Between the speakers, I stacked the records, like books between bookends. I had seen other records around thehouse. Maybe tomorrow Izzy and I would do a scavenger hunt for the house’s record collection.

I threaded the record hole onto the silver prong, lowered it, and turned the knob to 331/3. I lifted the needle and blew on it only because I’d seen someone do that once in a movie and then I set the needle downon the outer edge of the record. The music startled me when it started—I hadn’t realized the volume was so high. I didn’tturn it down, but instead backed away from it and took Izzy’s hand as if to steady myself. After the twangy guitar sounds,the song erupted with Jimmy first shouting and then singing in a voice that reminded me of walnuts mixed in maple syrup: bothcrunchy and sweet. Izzy sang along. She knew all the words.

Jimmy grumbled out, “Thundering shudders from my head to my—oooh baby, yeah—to my head. . . .”

I loved the thumping of the music, like a heartbeat on the surface of my skin. And I loved that raspy-sugar sound of Jimmy’s voice. It was like the way he spoke but more forceful, more alert, like he had woken up from a death nightmare and just realized he was actually alive.

I figured out the melodies pretty quickly, and started humming harmony to every song. I nudged Izzy and we continued singingas we appraised and then put away her art. Next we sorted through the remaining things: Sears and JCPenney catalogs, Chinesefood take-out menus, instructions to assemble a shoe shelf I’d never seen, and costume jewelry that I assumed belonged toMrs. Cone.

Once the table was completely bare, Izzy and I stood facing the turntable as Izzy belted out the last song on the A side ofthe album. She sang directly into her fisted gloved hand, her tiny hips jerking around. I moved my body a little, followingthe music, pretending I was someone who danced.

When the song ended, I lifted the needle, flipped the record, and started the B side. The first song was slow and quiet. Izzywasn’t singing along. “Izzy, below the sink in the kitchen is lemon Pledge. Bring me that with those dusting rags we made.”

“Lemonplige?”

“Lemon Pledge. It’s a yellow spray can. I bought it at Eddie’s last week, remember?”

“Yes. You said we were going to clean wood.”

“Exactly. But first we had to find the wood to clean it. And look.” I stood and pointed to the dusty and dull wooden table.It was big enough to seat ten or twelve.

“Got it.” Izzy ran out of the room and returned seconds later with the Pledge and a stack of cleaning rags I had made froman old ripped Brooks Brothers shirt Dr. Cone had thrown in