Happiness Is a Chemical in the Brain: Stories by Lucia Perillo

transgressions petty? So that what remained was everything about the fair that did not change: the cotton candy like cheap pink wigs and the smell of frying onions, the boys with giant stuffed animals on their shoulders that they’d won for their beloveds, though the conquest had cost them a hundred bucks.
    “Hey,” Stella says, “you know why accountants always want to meet girls they can bring home to their mothers?”
    “Why?”
    Stella stops digging to look up at Ginny. “Guess.”
    “I give up.”
    “You always give up.”
    “Just tell me.”
    Stella wipes the earstick on the dash before popping the sunglasses back on her face. “Maybe I don’t feel like it anymore,” she says sulkily as they idle in the car, waiting for the traffic to clear from the parking lot.
    “Here’s the difference between you and me,” Stella says at last. “You’d be embarrassed if you were me, but I’m not. Even when I was a kid, I knew exactly what I was doing. When I’m ninety years old and peeing in a bedpan, that night with Leroy’ll be how you remember me and don’t tell me it won’t. When it comes to you, I’ll be fourteen forever. And how much would other people give for that, unh? To be fourteen forever? If I could bottle that, I’d make a mint.”
    Ginny doesn’t answer because she’s still thinking about her sister’s shoes, ebbing in the Sound, bright red. Meanwhile, Stella takes the flask from her expensive leather Coach bag and drains the last swig, the flask being another thing that hasn’t changed, though she keeps better booze inside it these days.
    “Anyway,” Stella continues, wiping her lips with the back of her hand, “that’s why you always come back here with me, though I’m bound to drive you nuts. There’s always a chance that I’ll be able to come up with something that’ll top having my tits licked by the Salmon Boy. I don’t think so, but you never know. Maybe someday that old Indian will reappear and you’ll catch me balling him. Or the blind lady!” she quacked.
    Then there’s quiet in the car for a while. “So what’s the answer?” Ginny says.
    “Answer to what?”
    “The girls and the accountants and their mothers.” But Ginny can tell that Stella is already bored by the accountants.
    “Hunh,” she grunts. “The answer is: because they still live with them. But see, it’s not funny anymore. That’s what happens when you give up. All the funny goes away.”
    By now the traffic has filed out of the parking lot, and when Ginny pulls out, the fair lights in the side-view mirror blur into one smear. They’re headed north along the shore road, though this is not the direction home. Ginny’s just glad to be driving with no husbands, with her sister in the front seat.
    “So where are your husbands tonight, Stell?” she asks, and when Stella says, “Who?” in a rednecky voice, Ginny can’t help but laugh.
    “They’re history, Gin. I swear sometimes I can’t even remember their names.” Then Stella sticks her head out the window and shouts Leroy! to the night.
    “Isn’t it strange?” she says when she pulls in her head. “That someone you love can dry up and blow away like an old leaf? Whereas ten minutes with the Salmon Boy is something that I never will forget.”
    They’ve come out of the trees, and here the house lights shine on the bay’s far shore, marking the contours of the hills. The far shore is also where the mill sat, lit up like a steamer the girls once claimed someday would carry them away. When they were girls, in the pulp mill days, the air smelled so sour that a whiff of it would bring tears to your face. But it’s been years since the pulp mill burned, and now the air tastes clear and sweet.

HOUSE OF GRASS
    Before Yvonne Beauchemin made her final exit, she had a vast spread catered for us her neighbors by the best (and as it happens the only) French restaurant in town. First let me get the end of the story out of the way, for I am no