Connie Willis - Bellwether

I thought Peyton needed a good swat, or at least to have Totally Hair Barbie taken away from her and given back to Brittany, but instead her mother led her to the door of Gina’s bedroom. “You can come out when you’re in control of your feelings,” she said to Peyton, who looked like she was in control to me.

“I can’t believe you’re still using time-outs,” Chelsea’s mother said. “Everybody’s using holding now.”

“Holding?” I asked.

“You hold the child immobile on your lap until the negative behavior stops. It produces a feeling of interceptive safety.”

“Really,” I said, looking toward the bedroom door. I would have hated trying to hold Peyton against her will.

“Holding’s been totally abandoned,” Lindsay’s mother said. “We use EE.”

“EE?” I said.

“Esteem Enhancement,” Lindsay’s mother said. “EE addresses the positive peripheral behavior no matter how negative the primary behavior is.”

“Positive peripheral behavior?” Gina said dubiously.

“When Peyton took the Barbie away from Brittany just now,” Lindsay’s mother said, obviously delighted to explain, “you would have said, ‘My, Peyton, what an assertive grip you have.’ ”

Brittany opened Swim ’n’ Dive Barbie, Stick ’n’ Peel Barbie, Barbie’s City Nights cycle, and an elaborately coiffed and veiled Barbie in a wedding dress. “Romantic Bride Barbie,” Brittany said, transported.

“Can we have cake now?” Lindsay said, and Peyton must have had her little ear to the door because she opened it, looking not particularly contrite, said, “I feel better about myself now,” and climbed up to the table.

“No cake,” Gina said. “Too much cholesterol. Frozen yogurt and Snapple,” and all the little girls came running as if they’d heard the Pied Piper’s flute.

The mothers and I picked up wrapping paper and ribbon, checking carefully for stray Barbie high heels and microscopic accessories. Danielle’s mother smoothed down Romantic Bride Barbie’s net overskirt. “I wonder if Lisa’d like a dress like this,” she said. “She’s trying to talk Eric into getting married sometime this summer.”

“Are you going to be her matron of honor?” Chelsea’s mother asked. “What colors is she going to have?”

“She hasn’t decided. Black and white is really in, but she already did that the last time she got married.”

“Postmodern pink,” I said. “It’s the new color for spring.”

“I look washed out in pink,” Danielle’s mother said. “And she’s still got to talk him into it. He says, why can’t they just live together?”

Lindsay’s mother picked up Romantic Bride Barbie and began fluffing up her bouffant sleeves. “I always said I’d never get married again, after that jerk Matt,” she said. “But I don’t know, lately I’ve been feeling sort of… I don’t know…”

Itch? I thought.

The phone rang, and Gina went into the bedroom to get it, and everybody else adjourned to the kitchen.

There was a shriek from the kitchen, and everybody went in to enhance esteem. I picked up Romantic Bride Barbie and looked at the pink net rosebuds and white satin flounces, marveling. Barbie’s a fad that should have lasted, at the most, for two seasons. Even the Shirley Temple doll had only been a fad for three.

Instead, Barbie’s well into her thirties and more of a fad than ever, even in these days of feminism and non-gender-biased child-rearing. She’d be the perfect thing to study for what causes fads, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. Barbie’s one of those fads whose popularity makes you lose all faith in the human race.

Gina came out of the bedroom. “It’s for you,” she said, looking speculatively at me. “You can take it in the bedroom.”

I put down Romantic Bride Barbie and stood up.

“It’s my birthday!” Brittany shrieked.

“My, Peyton,” Lindsay’s mother said, “what a creative thing to do with your frozen yogurt.”

Gina hurried into the kitchen, and I went into the bedroom.

It was done in violets, with a purple cordless phone. I picked it up.

“Howdy,” Billy Ray said. “Guess where I’m calling from?”

“How did you find out I was here?”

“I called HiTek, and your assistant told me.”

“Flip gave you the number?” I said. “Correctly?”

“I don’t know what her name was. Raspy voice. Coughed a lot.”

Shirl. She must be putting some more of Alicia’s data on my computer.

“Well, so, listen, I’m on my way through the Rockies right now and—hang on. Tunnel coming up. Call you back as soon as I’m through it.” There was a hum, and a click.

I hung up the phone and sat there on Gina’s violet-covered bed, wondering how Billy Ray ever got any ranching done when he was never at the ranch, and pondering the appeal of Barbie.

Part of it must be that she’s been able to incorporate other fads over the years. In the mid-sixties, Barbie had ironed hair and Carnaby Street clothes, in the seventies granny dresses, in the eighties leotards and leg warmers.

Nowadays there are astronaut Barbies and management Barbies, and even a doctor, though it’s hard to imagine Barbie making it through junior high, let alone medical school.

Billy Ray had apparently forgotten all about me, and so had Peyton’s mother. She opened the door, said, “…and I want you to stay in timeout until you’ve decided to relate to your peers,” and ushered in a frozen yogurt-covered Peyton.

Neither of them saw me, especially not Peyton, who flung herself against the door, red-faced and whimpering, and then, when it was apparent that wasn’t going to work, dropped to her hands and knees next to the bed and pulled out a tablet and crayons.

She sat down cross-legged in the middle of the floor, opened the box of crayons, selected a pink one, and began to draw.

“Hi,” I said, and was happy to see her jump a foot. “What are you doing?”

“You’re not supposed to talk in a time-out,” she said righteously.

You’re not supposed to color either, I thought, wishing Billy Ray would remember he was calling me back.

She selected a green crayon and bent over the tablet, drawing earnestly. I moved the phone around to the other side of the bed so I could see the picture.

“What are you drawing?” I asked. “A butterfly?”

She rolled her eyes. “ No-o-o,” she said. “It’s a story.”

“A story?” I said, tilting my head around to see it better. “About what?”

“About Bar bie.” She sighed, a dead ringer for Flip, and chose a bright blue crayon.

Why do only the awful things become fads? I thought. Eye-rolling and Barbie and bread pudding. Why never chocolate cheesecake or thinking for yourself?

I looked more closely at the picture. It looked more like a Mandelbrot diagram than a story. It appeared to be some sort of map, or maybe a diagram, with many lines of tiny lavender stars and pink zigzag symbols intersecting across the paper. Peyton had obviously been working on it during a number of time-outs.

“What’s this?” I said, pointing at a row of purple zigzags.

“See,” she said, bringing the tablet and the crayons up onto my lap, “Barbie went to her Malibu Beach House.” She drew a scalloped blue line above the zigzags. “It’s very far. They had to go in her Jaguar.”

“And that’s this line?” I said, pointing at the blue scallops.

“No-o-o,” she said, irritated at all these interruptions. “That’s to show what she was wearing. See, when she goes to the Malibu Beach House she wears her blue hat. So they all got to the Malibu Beach House,” she said, walking her crayon like a doll across the paper, “and Barbie said, ‘Let’s go swimming,’ and I said, ‘Okay, let’s,’ and…” There was a pause while Peyton found an orange crayon. “And Barbie said, ‘Let’s go!’ and we went swimming.” She began drawing a row of rapid sideways zigzags.