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

breathe out,” Dr. Cone said in a low, smooth voice, like he was the DJ in a nighttime love song radio show.He repeated the words over and over again as the group breathed in and out. I wondered if this breathing was any differentfrom regular breathing.

“Will Sheba really cut off Jimmy’s balls?” Izzy looked at me with huge eyes.

“No.” I pulled her off the table and onto my lap. She pushed her head into my neck and I rubbed her back. “She would neverdo that. She just said that to let him know how angry she was.”

Izzy started breathing in and out along with Dr. Cone’s instructions, and soon I felt her body melt into me like a warm stickof butter.

“Okay, let’s keep this peace.” Dr. Cone put his hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. “I’m going to walk Jimmy to the beach and send him off. Sheba, you’ll be fine and Jimmy will be fine.”

“Yeah. Whatever. That’s good.” Sheba stared at Jimmy like she was daring him on something. “I’ll sleep in the sun and waitfor you.”

“Good. Good.” Dr. Cone put a hand on Sheba’s shoulder too. He was like a yoke between oxen.

Sheba nodded and then reached up to her head, ripped off the blond wig, and threw it so it landed on the dining room table.Mrs. Cone took off her wig too. She looked toward the table, and then pulled the wig against her chest and held it like shewas holding a cat.

 

Dr. Cone drove Izzy and me to the grocery store. Izzy held all the recipe cards tight in her hand.

When we got to the store, I grabbed a cart and Izzy jumped on the end. “Do we need to find the ratio?” she asked.

“The ratio?” Dr. Cone asked.

“When we go to Eddie’s, we count the employees and the customers to find the ratio.” I shrugged, embarrassed. It sounded weirdand silly when I said it aloud.

“Yesterday it was eighteen to twenty-nine,” Izzy said.

Dr. Cone rubbed Izzy’s curls. “That’s marvelous!”

“I think this store is too big for us to count.” I looked up and down the aisles. It was huge, like a warehouse.

“I agree.” Dr. Cone turned toward the produce section. I had memorized most of the ingredients on the cards and started puttingthings in the cart.

“The ratio of the witch is three to one,” Izzy said.

“Three what to one what?” Dr. Cone asked.

“Me, Mary Jane, and Sheba are three. And the witch is only one.”

“Well, I’ll join your team.”

“Then we’ll be”—Izzy pointed at me, her father, herself, and then an imaginary Sheba standing beside us—“four! To one. Right?”

“Yup,” I said. “There isn’t a witch in the world who could hurt a kid in the middle of a four-to-one ratio.”

“Agreed,” Dr. Cone said. I was relieved that he didn’t seem to think the ratio game was weird or silly. And I felt strangelyhappy that he had been so quick to join our team. Izzy talked about the witch so frequently, I had forgotten that I didn’tbelieve in her.

 

Before we left the produce section, I shuffled through the cards to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. “Wait! Artichokes!”

“Fancy.” Dr. Cone loped over to the artichoke display. I pushed the cart behind him.

“Do you like artichokes?” I asked. I worried that fancy wasn’t good. The Cones seemed anti-fancy, with Izzy standing on thedining room table, peeing on the beach, and coloring penises in her anatomy coloring book.

“I love them. We just never eat them. Restaurants don’t serve them.” Dr. Cone put his hand on my head and rubbed, the wayeveryone did to Izzy. It felt so nice, I didn’t move for a second, just to sense the vibrations of that touch.

When we returned to the beach house, Jimmy and Sheba were snuggled up together on the living room couch watching Green Acres. It had never occurred to me that people who were on TV might watch it too.

“I love this show.” I paused, a brown bag of groceries in my arms. Izzy paused beside me. She was carrying the lightest bag.

“Come watch!” Sheba patted the cushion beside herself.

“I have to put away the groceries,” I said.

“Mary Jane,” Dr. Cone said. “Watch TV. I’ll put everything away.”

I looked at him for a second to see if he was serious. He and Mrs. Cone were paying me. Was it really okay for me to get paidto sit on a couch and watch Green Acres with Sheba and Jimmy? “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Sit. Relax. You work too hard.”

“Sit!” Sheba said.

“Okay!” I went to the kitchen, put down my bag, and then returned to the couch. Sheba patted the cushion again. I sat andtucked my feet under my bottom, mimicking her posture.

“I love Mr. Haney,” Jimmy said.

“Me too.”

Izzy came into the living room and snuggled into me the way Sheba was snuggled into Jimmy. “Why is there a pig in the house?”

“That’s Arnold Ziffel,” Jimmy said. “He’s like their son.”

“Why does that lady talk like that?”

“She’s a Gabor,” I said. “She and her twin sister are very beautiful and they’re from another country. Maybe Hungary.”

“She’s a bitch,” Sheba said. “In real life.”

“You know her?”

“Yeah. Snobby and mean. Huge boobs. Fake nails.”

“But Eddie Albert”—Jimmy pointed to the screen—“damn nice guy. Can drink a fuck of a lot.”

“Do you know everyone on TV?” I asked.

Jimmy and Sheba looked at each other as if they were thinking about it. A commercial for Trix cereal came on. The manic whiterabbit ran around screaming, “Trix are for kids! Trix are for kids!”

“You know,” Sheba said at last, “I’ve been in the business for so long, I do know just about everyone. And Jimmy’s touredfor so many years that he’s met everyone too.”

“Yeah. People want to come backstage, they join the tour, they come to the hotel to party. . . .” Jimmy shrugged.

“No more parties,” Sheba said. A commercial for Control Data Institute, a technical school, came on. We all watched as ifwe were ready to enroll.

 

That first-day fight between Jimmy and Sheba was like a fire hose that cleared away all the