She’s thinking about Sam-I-Am, buried in a matchbox under her mother’s roses, deep so the cats can’t dig him up. She doesn’t really have to read the words anymore, spends more time looking at the pictures.

The screen door slams shut (thwack), the way it does when she just lets it go, lets the spring snap it back. Her mother gets up, goes to the stove and takes the chicken out of the oven, is still standing there, peeling back the aluminum foil, when her father comes in. Her mother looks at him and frowns, wipes at a wisp of hair that’s slipped loose from her ponytail and is sweatplastered to her forehead.

He stinks like work and whiskey (she wrinkles her nose), is still wearing his carpenter’s apron, pockets with three-penny nails and roofing tacks and little canvas loops for screwdrivers and hammers. “Quikrete” stamped across the front in pale red. He goes to the sink and washes his hands, scrubs them and scrubs and scrubs with the sliver of Ivory soap, stares out the window, up at the sky.

“Is it looking stormy, Carl?” her mother asks, setting the chicken on the table, and she goes to the refrigerator for the watermelon pickles. “On the radio, they were calling for thunderstorms again.”

And her father doesn’t look away from the window above the sink, lathers with the soap again, rinses his hands and dries them on a dish towel.

“Maybe it’ll cool things off some,” her mother says and sits down, starts spooning butter beans onto Lila’s plate.

Her father stands at the sink a long time, after she and her mother have begun to eat. Lila puts Green Eggs and Ham on the floor beneath her chair because he doesn’t allow books at the table. And he’s still watching the sky.

“Come and eat, Carl, before everything gets cold.”

He looks away from the window and slowly lays the towel across the edge of the sink. His eyes are bright and far away and look kind of scared. Lila stabs a butter bean and watches him while she chews it.

Her father takes big helpings of everything, moves slow, doesn’t say anything or look at anyone. Takes two pieces of chicken at once, a drumstick and a breast, and doesn’t eat a bite. There’s no wind or thunder and it’s still sunny outside, and she wonders what her father was looking at in the sky.

He takes a pack of Chesterfields from his apron, lights one and stares at the food, untouched, on his plate. Her mother doesn’t look angry anymore, worried, though, and a little scared, maybe. She wipes fried-chicken grease from her hands.

“Carl, is something wrong? Did something happen at work?”

He turns and stares at her, but his eyes are still not really there. And now Lila is scared, too.

“Carl?”

“I’m all finished, Momma,” Lila says, although she’s still very hungry.

Her mother looks at her plate.

“No you’re not, Lila. You hardly ate a thing.”

“But I’m full,” and she pushes her chair (scrunk) away from the table.

“You sit still,” and her mother is questioning her father again. He won’t answer, smokes his cigarette, taps ashes into his hand.

“Momma, please, I really-”

“I said sit still, Lila.” Her mother sounds very frightened now.

“Leave the girl alone, Trisha,” and her father’s voice is smooth, sleepy, whistles out of him the way air leaks out of a balloon. She imagines her father getting smaller and smaller, drawing in, until there’s nothing left but an empty, wrinkled skin balloon draped over the back of the kitchen chair. “She said she was full.”

She gets out of her seat and retrieves Dr. Seuss.

“Did someone get hurt on the job, today, Carl? Is that what happened? Oh god, was it Jess?”

Lila stands beside the table. Mr. Mouser is meowling and clawing at the screen to come in, and she thinks that if it is going to storm, she should let him inside. But she wants to hear. People get hurt a lot on her father’s jobs; sometimes they even get killed.

Mr. Mouser is climbing the screen door. If she turns around, he’ll be hanging there like a big furry bug.

“For pity’s sake, Carl, say something. Tell me what’s the matter.”

And her father rubs his sunburned sandpaper cheeks with both hands, hides his face behind thick fingers, uneven yellowed nails. And she realizes that he’s crying, even though he’s smiling when his hands fall, plop, on his lap. Shiny tears and a gray-black streak of cigarette ash.

“Lila, go outside and play.” Her mother grabs a napkin and is wiping her father’s face, and her father is smiling even more, showing all his tobacco-stained teeth in a huge Cheshire-cat grin.

“What’s wrong, Momma?”

“Right now, Lila.”

And she’s turning around, hugging the tattered book, and there’s Mr. Mouser, claws and marmalade belly and dappled paw pads, clinging to the screen door, and it seems very, very bright outside.

“Bad cat,” she scolds, and now her father is sobbing. And he’s laughing, also, and in her stomach something starts to wind itself up tight, like a rubber band. She thinks that maybe she’ll barf up the butter beans. The screen swings open when she pushes it, but Mr. Mouser is still hanging on, looking at her through the tiny wire squares.

“I can see angels,” her father says.

She steps into the late afternoon heat. Closes the door carefully, pulls the cat loose one foot at a time.

“Bad Mouser. Bad, bad cat.”

Lila sits down on the back steps, Dr. Seuss open to page one on her knees and strokes Mr. Mouser until he forgets about wanting inside and begins to purr in his loud, ragged tomcat voice.

Spyder swallowed the last bite of her second sandwich and opened her eyes. There was no globe on the kitchen light and the naked bulb jabbed needles at her. Somewhere, there was a globe, full of spare change, mostly nickels and pennies, left in a corner after the first time she blew the light, years and years ago. The globe was old, maybe as old as the house, frosted glass etched with a ring of grape leaves.

And it should be here to stop the light from hurting my eyes. It should be here to…

Spyder slammed her fist down hard on the table, hard enough to hurt and snip at the voice in her head. The empty Buffalo Rock bottle jumped, fell to the floor. Rolled away into a dark place.

Get up, Spydie. Get up and do something easy, something normal.

/but she smells red, nasty cloying crimson, and gags, thinks that she’s going to puke but/

She stood up too fast and knocked the chair over.

“No.”

/and her voice smells like sour little crab apples and millipedes/

“I’m not going down tonight, I won’t fucking go down tonight.”

Spyder gathered up the supper stuff, the plate with the leftover chunk of Spam, the mayonnaise jar (screwed the lid down so tight it’d be a bitch to open next time), the dirty knife. She dropped the knife in the sink, put the Spam and mayo in the fridge. More careful than careful, paying perfect attention to each necessary step. Twist-tied the bread closed, set it on the countertop.

She fished the the ginger ale bottle out from under the table, ignored the dry scritching beneath the floorboards.

/ignores the red smell/

Spyder put the bottle in the trash, counting her footsteps. Got the noisy carton of crickets off the top of the relic Frigidaire and the styrofoam cup of mealy worms from inside. Carried them back to the sink and set the crickets down.

/but she’s slipping now, for sure, and Dr. Lynxweiler is telling her to relax, ride it out, don’t let it freak you out this once, Spyder, don’t let it take you down/

There was something in an alley, Spyder, he’d said, and On my way home.

Spyder pulled the plastic top off the worms, stirred the sawdust inside with her finger to be sure they were still alive.

/she’s in Alice time, and crimson smells like the sound of starling wings/

She found a dead worm and washed it down the drain. The others seemed healthy enough, just sluggish from the cold.