Eric followed on his Huffy BMX bike that he’d named The Hornet.
Gran didn’t let them ride into town very often, which was okay because there wasn’t much to do there. They didn’t go to the public school. Gran said they were better off learning at home because the school in town was abysmal and “no place for exceptional children” like they were. She’d sent Vi there for one day back in kindergarten, not long after she’d taken them in, and the teacher had yelled at Vi for already being able to read and write and for asking to be allowed to read on her own. Vi didn’t remember any of it, but Gran got outraged all over again each time she told the story. She’d never even tried to send Eric when he was old enough, she just taught him at home the way she’d been teaching Vi. Gran took a hands-off approach, mostly letting them explore their interests and work independently. “You, my lovelies, are clever enough to know what you need to learn and how best to go about learning it,” Gran said. They read a great deal, wrote reports and essays, did experiments, and filled out pages in math workbooks. Each night Gran went over their work, making corrections and suggestions, and helping to plan out the next day’s studies. Gran told Vi that she was reading and writing at a college level already. Vi planned to go to college when she turned eighteen: premed, then medical school, just like her dad and Gran. And Gran had promised her she’d be well ahead of the other students by then.
* * *
THEY WERE ALLOWED to ride to the library whenever they liked, as long as they promised not to do anything else, not to talk to anyone but the librarians. Sometimes they’d sneak over to the general store after the library to buy candy or soda with their allowance.
Gran took them into town sometimes too, driving down the hill in her old Volvo, to go to Fitzgerald’s Supermarket, Ted’s Hardware, or The End of the Leash pet shop. Sometimes they’d see other kids, and Vi wished she could talk to them, ride bikes with them—wished she could have normal friends like kids on TV did—but Gran forbade it. She said the townie kids weren’t worth the trouble.
Gran took them to Barre or all the way up to Burlington when they needed something that they couldn’t buy in Fayeville. They went to Sears to buy clothes, to Woolworth’s, and even to bookstores, where Vi would buy horror novels and Eric picked out books about animals.
And sometimes, as a special treat, Gran would bring them all the way to the Howard Johnson’s in Barre. It was a forty-minute ride, but when they got there and saw the orange roof with the blue cupola, they’d jump out of the car, practically run to the door. They’d sit at the counter on spinning silver stools with turquoise vinyl tops, and Gran would let them order whatever they wanted. Plates of fried clams, cheeseburgers, french fries, and ice cream. Oh, the ice cream! Twenty-eight flavors to choose from, and Vi wanted to try them all: maple walnut, pineapple, fudge ripple. Eric always got the same thing: chocolate in a cone.
Gran was predictable as a clock: She ordered coffee and a grilled cheese (which Vi didn’t understand—she could make the same exact thing at home!) and maple walnut ice cream in a dish. “I know,” Gran would say when she caught Vi giving her a not again look. “I’m a boring old lady.”
Vi and Eric would shake their heads, laugh, tell her she was anything but boring.
“One day, my lovelies,” Gran promised, “I’m going to surprise you. I’ll order something completely different. A BLT and a banana split. Or maybe I’ll be a real devil and ask them to make me something that’s not even on the menu.”
* * *
AND THEN THERE were the Saturday night drive-ins. Gran had taken them a few times in her old Volvo, but she found horror movies ridiculous. “Completely implausible,” she’d complain as a man turned into a fly or a werewolf, as a vampire showed his fangs and sank them into a beautiful woman’s neck.
So she allowed Vi and Eric to ride their bikes to the movies by themselves. But there were rules: They had to ride the back roads to get there (too dangerous on the main road at night), they weren’t to talk to anyone while they were there (Gran had given them endless warnings about pervy child molesters and drug pushers eager to get young kids hooked), and they had to come straight home after. Gran even gave them ticket money, but Vi and Eric never paid to get in; they’d discovered a loose section of the chain-link fence that ran along the back parking area and sneaked in each week—leaving them with more money for popcorn, Cokes, and candy.
And now there they were, just like each Saturday night of the summer, careening through the darkness, heading for the Hollywood Drive-in.
Only this time was different. This time, they had Iris with them. Gran had been hesitant. She’d instructed Vi to watch Iris carefully, and if there was any sign that she was uncomfortable or overstimulated, they were to come back immediately.
“Have you ever been to a drive-in?” Vi had asked Iris. But Iris didn’t know. Couldn’t remember.
“What about a regular movie theater? You’ve been to one of those, right?”
“No,” Iris said, and shook her head.
Vi couldn’t imagine what it must be like to have no memory of anything; of any part of your past.
She had been “giving reports” to Gran every evening. Gran knew that Iris was talking now—she’d started talking a little more each day, and Gran was very pleased with her progress. And Gran had explained a little about why people sometimes didn’t remember things. It was called amnesia, she told Vi, from the Greek word for forgetfulness. Vi nodded. She’d seen characters with amnesia in TV shows.
“What causes amnesia?” Vi asked.
“Sometimes it’s physical, like a head injury or taking a certain kind of drug. Sometimes, a deep psychological trauma.”
Vi wondered what had caused Iris’s amnesia. If Gran knew, she wasn’t saying.
And now that Iris was talking, Gran wanted to know everything Iris said. Vi told her some of it, but there were still a lot of things she kept secret.
She’d told Gran that Iris didn’t remember anything, not even her own name, but Vi left out the part about how she had promised to help Iris figure it out. She also left out the fact that Iris had been helping them with their monster book, because the Monster Club was top secret. “She can write,” Vi reported. “Her writing is bad, kind of like someone just learning, and she can’t spell at all, but she knows her letters and stuff.”
Someone must have taught her, Vi knew. She imagined a family somewhere, Iris going to school, having friends, even a real sister maybe.
Gran had nodded as she absorbed all this new information, then leaned forward and clasped her hand around Vi’s wrist, fingers feeling her pulse in their familiar way, their own secret handshake. “You’re doing a wonderful job with Iris,” she’d said, giving a gentle squeeze. “And it’s making a difference. I’m proud of you, Violet.”
* * *
THE HOLLYWOOD DRIVE-IN was pretty much the most exciting place in Fayeville—people came from all over to go to the drive-in, and on some weekend nights in the summer, it was totally packed, cars lined up in each row.
The Hollywood had two screens, and every Saturday at sundown, they had two current movies in a row on the main screen, but on screen two they did a Creature Double Feature: two classic horror movies. Vi and Eric had seen them all, of course, both at the theater and whenever they were on TV. Vi scoured the TV Guide each week looking for horror movies, for anything that held even the hint of a monster.