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Marnie is going to be different than her mother. Already, she isn’t a cheerleader anymore. Her mother let her quit sophomore year, but some of the cheers still resurface in her dreams when she eats strange things before sleeping: My name is Marnie, check! It ain’t no lie, check! I’ll be a cheerleader, check! Til the day I die, check, check! That was her least favorite one.

Evil’s parents are always saying, What’s happened to you, Evelina Marmalade? Get your stars aligned, for godssakes!

They met when they were grad students at Brandeis. They were married on Martha’s Vineyard, without shoes, Mad Martha’s ice cream for wedding cake. They made Evil read road signs before kindergarten, times tables when she turned four. They wore Weejuns. They were disappointed.

I’m so glad, Evil said, when the small envelopes started coming in the mail. I’m still glad, she said, when the last one came. Institutions expunge, she said. Discharge me, Captain Coram!

Evil is a vegetarian. She is going to convince Kate to take her to the desert.

My incarceration is over, Evil said that Day of the Last Small Envelope, but Marnie didn’t believe her. Marnie heard her weeping that night in the eaves, when she thought Marnie was asleep. Marnie stared out through slits at the bottoms of her almost-closed eyes, beyond Evil at the wallpaper, a vertical row of misaligned hydrangeas.

It was unlike Evil to hide things. She wasn’t capable of that, customarily. She was the unfastened one, the rolling spaciousness of her emotions candid and available. But the next morning she sat tranquilly in the breakfast nook when Marnie came downstairs. She looked up at Marnie from a supermarket line copy of Doctor Zhivago, smiled and said, Here’re the funnies, my little froglet. A hot cup of yerba matte sat optimistically before her, the steam fogging up her eyeglasses. The dog sat under the table, licking her toes.

* * *

The basement won’t be so scary, after all. There are two kinds of fear: the pleasant and the inequitable. The first kind is the frolicking and merry kind, the goosepimply kind, and the second calls for someone to step in and mitigate. Marnie wonders what will happen next year, two freeways away, and who will be in the second bed.

Next summer, Marnie will live in Alphabet City. Her cat will have a flat face, fur for cheeks. She will know about Dadaism and Postmodernism and American Transcendentalism, how it all began with a German man named Kant. Her father will be dead, floating facedown on the Charles River, with stones in his pockets.

Evil will be in the Catskills, unreachable by telephone, not with Kate but with another boy named Animal, who carries sensimilla in an orange prescription cylinder. She will send Marnie a postcard with a mountain on it. It will say, I miss you, my little froglet, Smoke Signal me soon.

In the morning, they will have their butter and Nutella. They will spread it with a dull knife on their toasted raisin bread, on their cheeks and their noses. Their stomachs will be full of willies and monarchs and swallowtails, and they will hold hands. They will lie messily on the rug, and Marnie will close her agate-colored eyes and pull Evil against her. She will think of a moment years ago when Evil spilled lemonade onto the counter from a potbellied pitcher, when Marnie took a deep breath and said, When you have a full pitcher, you have to pour slow. My treasure, You have to pour slow.

Lindsay Sproul bio TK.

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