The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters

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Timothy Schaffert. The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters

The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters

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The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters

Mabel watched her sister Lily put on lipstick in front of the mirror of the decades-old nickel gum machine. Sometimes Mabel wondered if she’d been separated at birth from her real sister, for Lily and Mabel shared no resemblance. In a fairy tale, Lily would have been the fair sister of goodness, goldilocked and rosy-faced, and Mabel the nasty one, made up of pointy bones and thin skin and a hank of black hair.

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“One of those ninety-nine-dollar paint jobs and she’ll be the prettiest girl on the block,” Jordan said. Mabel imagined riding in the back of the car to the river on a muggy afternoon, wearing a swimsuit with a beach towel wrapped around her waist. Jordan would be in a pair of cutoff jeans and a tropical shirt all unbuttoned, Lily beside him painting her toenails with her foot up and pressed against the dashboard. They’d listen to the old records her father had taped—Joe Jackson and Elvis Costello and The Clash.

Jordan took a box from the backseat of the car. “This woman in town had meant to open up a Starkweather museum. She put a new engine in the car and everything, so people could go for joy rides in it. But she ran out of money.” He took from the box the other artifacts he’d bought from the woman: a doll Caril Ann had made from twisting up a Kleenex, and a sign Caril had put up on the door of her house where she and Charlie holed up for six days after he killed her family. The sign read: STAY AWAY EVERY BODY IS SICK WITH THE FLU.

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