Patricia Geary - Strange Toys

I wondered where I could buy some hair dye. What would they do if my hair was bleached to look like Hannah’s? Shave my head? No one had seen Linwood’s real color in years. I never had. But then I remembered that dyeing her hair had been one of the things that upset Linwood the worst about Deane.

Deane, darn old Deane. Everything revolved around her, even though she wasn’t there. If nothing changed, she’d be like this great big tree hovering over the landscape of our lives. Everything we did or didn’t do would get measured against her shadow.

“And Deane,” said June, as if reading my thoughts. “You’re so wrapped up in her, you’re so worried about Deane. You spend all that money on clothes and records, and she’s no better than a convict!”

No response from the front seat. Apparently, Stan and Linwood were going for Freeze Her Out, the stance they adopted when they hadn’t the inclination or the energy to out-yell her. Casually, they both scanned the landscape, shoulders relaxed, as uninvolved with June’s ranting as with the upholstery of the car or the signs we passed advertising Wonder Bread.

“How much farther to Saint Augustine?” Linwood inquired pleasantly.

“Thirty-five minutes, hon.”

“What about the golf clubs you said I could have on my twelfth birthday?” June insisted. “The archery set? What about how you said I could redecorate my room? A new carpet? Bedspreads?”

I decided to stop listening, watch the ocean and detach myself from my surroundings, exert an invisible control over my natural environment. Lately, I’d been getting these peculiar thoughts about the way in which the world worked, things it seemed I hadn’t made up by myself, and I hadn’t read them. Maybe they came to me in my dreams? Every now and then, one of these tidbits would pop into my head, like: Show your own energy by holding your hand like a goblet in front of you . Things like that.

The ocean looked solid, metallic. I missed the way the sun would not set beneath it, as it did in California, but only reflect a faint rosy glow from the other side of the sky. The beach itself was visible from time to time through clumps of palmetto and sea oats. The sand was white, holy, untouched by human feet, or so you wanted to imagine. But every now and then you saw a woman and two black dogs bounding into the waves like big rubber balls; or a father and his twin daughters, tiny, their chubby knees scarcely able to support them. They held hands, for balance.

Then, for a few minutes, the scrub brush opened up, and there was a vast stretch of sand with nobody on it. You wanted to lie right down and go to sleep in the final bit of sunlight.

But then I blinked and there was somebody on it. How could I have missed her? She was dressed in red and purple robes, and a shiny gold sun, moon, and stars glimmered from the back of her outermost cape. Raven hair, flashing like glass in the last of the light, shot out from her head in a tangled vine. A small dog followed along beside her, its neck decorated with an orange and green ruffle, except that as I watched, I saw it wasn’t a dog—it was a cat, a white Persian cat, her tail as fluffy and upright as sea oats. Lately, I’d seen all kinds of things.

“I… WANT… SNOW!” June was winding down, her voice desperate and sore, and at these moments you had to feel sorry for her, for how much she exhausted herself.

But I had lost my focus. The woman and the cat were gone. Were they ever there? Automatically, I felt for the clumps of poodle toys in the coat draped over my knees, for protection.

“Ha,” said Stan.

The sign for the Holiday Inn had appeared.

“The girls can get a swim before dark,” he pointed out.

“I hear my scotch calling me,” Linwood concurred gaily.

They were always so happy to reach the end of the day. You wondered why we stayed on the road if they were always so anxious to find a comfortable harbor. We didn’t have to get up the next morning and go anywhere, but we would. Then, when the day wound down into twilight, they would sigh with relief, as always, as if they had accomplished something.

I was a child, and I didn’t understand the principle of staying in motion.

“The Fountain of Youth is in Saint Augustine,” Stan said.

Understandably, this attraction didn’t hold much appeal for me and June.

“I better buy a gallon,” said Linwood.

“Hell,” said Stan. “You still don’t look a day over thirty.”

Linwood smiled. “Oh, honestly,” she said.

“I’m being honest.” Stan clicked his ring on the steering wheel, he was so delighted he had pleased her. But—and this was such a regular occurrence you could practically tell time by it—he would go on and on, go overboard, until his exaggeration had succeeded in irritating her again. You’d think after all those years, he’d understand her a little better. “Twenty-five,” he amended.

Linwood gazed out the window. There were scattered houses, the first motels in the town: Sea Breeze, Ocean View, The Vagabond.

“Twenty-two.” There he went.

I would have kicked him under the seat except he would have ignored me, definitely.

“Twenty-two—if you’d let your hair go natural. Wear it long again.”

Linwood sat bolt upright, as if injected with a shot of helium. “Good God!” she said. “What on earth do you think you know about how I should look? Men! They get these sentimental notions about ‘long hair’—probably from some damn Bing Crosby song—and that’s that! No eyes in your head, just these half-baked notions of what you sentimentally think women should—”

“Ripley’s Believe It or Not!” shouted June, recovered from her sulk.

Sure enough. A lurid yellow billboard advised us that the Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum was in Saint Augustine, right smack across from the Fountain of Youth.

I got the cold creeps just thinking about it. June always bought the books, reading outloud the parts about two-headed sheep who lived longer than real sheep, or precise replications of pre-Revolutionary Paris, constructed entirely from swizzle sticks provided by Harrod’s—“Reno or Bust!”—in Nevada. Naturally, the man who had built the model had also consumed the drink that went with each swizzle stick.

“Listen to this!” she’d say, and I’d get queasy even before she read it, from the ugly look of the book and the cheap quality of the paper. It smelled funny.

Actually, her attitude toward Ripley-type feats was totally in accord with her attitude toward the encyclopedias. The sensational. What she loved was that a billion meant dollar bills placed end to end, stretching four and a half times around the earth at the equator.

“We have to go!” June was even more worked up than usual. “Can we go tonight?”

Please no.

“I’m sure it isn’t open at night, June.” Stan’s voice had a steady, even tone. Although she was behaving again, she was still, as they say, at a combustible temperature.

“What if it was?”

“Well, then…”

“Oh boy!”

We passed a billboard that was delighted to inform us the museum would be open until nine every night, in honor of the holiday season.

“You can take them,” Linwood said. Her tone of voice clearly indicated her position on the subject.

“Actually,” I began. But then I stopped; my mouth snapped shut with sudden force, like a Chatty Cathy doll’s.

I had to go.

Destiny, in the form of Sammy, could be knocking one more time. There was always the chance.

“Actually what, Pet?” Linwood turned around. Her lovely face looked concerned.

Had my voice given me away? “Actually, that sounds like a lot of fun.”

Linwood watched me for another moment, then turned back.