For years, she ate nothing but ice cream. Bowls of it. Tubs. Her mother said words like "eating disorder" and "how will you live?" but the daughter just waved it away.

"The trick is," the daughter said, "to make the ice cream look like other things. Ice cream burgers, scrambled ice cream eggs..." For Thanksgiving she fashioned a turkey out of butter pecan. The other guests ooh-ed and ahh-ed, but the mother was still not convinced. How will she survive in the world when I'm gone?

Things only got worse when the daughter started dating a much older man. Ninety, if he was a day. The daughter was of age, by this time, but still the mother was worried. What about children? But the daughter, again, waved it away, saying that there were other things more important. His love of ice cream, for example. His toothlessness left him little choice, and so, he was easy to feed.

One Sunday, a few months after the daughter had sneaked off to marry, the mother went to visit. The fireplace mantle was filled with ice cream scoops and syrup jars, the ways other people's were filled with family photographs. The husband sat in his armchair, quiet, the mother thought, so as to let the two women catch up.

The daughter made an ice cream roast. A lump of rocky road in a black speckled pan. The mother was eager to please her daughter, and so she had seconds, even thirds.

By dessert, the mother motioned to the husband. "I noticed," she said, "that he's been in his armchair the entire time. And he didn't eat anything at all. Tell me..." The mother leaned in. "Is everything okay?"

"Mother," the daughter said, "my husband was a very old man. He died soon after the wedding. Every day, I make a new husband out of ice cream. And every night I eat him for dessert. This makes me very happy," she said.

The mother watched as the daughter cut a slab of her husband's jacket and put it on a plate. The daughter did look happy. The mother took a deep, deep breath. A sigh really. She looked at her own long fingers, white as vanilla, and for the first time, she knew that her daughter would be all right.

Francine Witte has two new books out: DRESSED ALL WRONG FOR THIS, a full-length collection of flash fiction, and THE THEORY OF FLESH, a book of poems. She lives in New York City.

Read her postcard.

Detail of art on main page from THRILLING COMICS #68 (1948).





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