Patricia Geary - Strange Toys

In fact, no one had really noticed me since then. Stan and Linwood were wrapped up in Deane, and June had begun her new project: reading the brand-new World Book Encyclopedia from beginning to end. We hadn’t played poodles since the police. How many volumes would they let her take?

I pulled my suitcase from beneath my bed. Ugh, dust devils. Then I opened my closet, tidy as always, and removed my best dress, a flowered lavender organdy. No, wrong season. Instead, I selected my navy sailor dress and saddle oxfords, even though my shiny Mary Janes called out. From my chest of drawers I pulled out pedal pushers, T-shirts, sweaters, and lots of socks and underwear. Everything folded neatly in the suitcase with enough extra room. I lifted up the stack of underwear and slid the cigar box underneath. I would wear my red coat.

Books were tough. The Wind in the Willows or Peter Pan? The new Nancy Drew I’d been hoarding? Strictly one-shot, but if we never returned, would I never get to read it?

Dolls were easier. I took Roberta, with her shiny cap of curls, in her brown calico travel dress. Also, I folded up her black lace blouse and the beautiful red skirt, with the huge pockets, that stuck out like a flower. And her black plastic shoes, in case she needed to dress up. And Pole, the original polar bear, naturally. Who could sleep without Pole?

Firmly back to books: Alice in Wonderland , my best fairy tale book, the one with “Bluecrest” and “Green Snake,” and the white Bible I won last summer for memorizing the most Scripture. Verily, verily, I say unto you, he who entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he that entereth—

“Hey, Fatso! What’s wrong with you?” June walked right in without knocking. If I did that to her, she charged me a dime. “That’s the third time I yelled at you.”

I shrugged and closed the suitcase.

“What about the poodles?”

“What about them?” I sat down on the suitcase. It made the bed as tall and hard as it should have been.

“Where are you going to put them?” Her round face was shiny with indignation.

“Nowhere, I guess.” The wrong answer.

“Leave the poodles!” Her face shifted in outrage. “What’s wrong with you?”

No good answer to that one either. “All you’ve been doing is reading World Book .”

“So I could learn more stuff. For them! How to make adobe, for instance, so they can have sturdier outside houses.”

She was a much better person than me. I climbed off the suitcase and opened it back up. “I guess Pole’s out.”

But he’d slept in my bed ever since I’d gotten him, two years ago. The poodles were no good for sleeping with. Their little bodies were hard, stuffed with straw, eyes and noses made of glass. Plus, they were only five inches high whereas Pole was the size of a small pillow.

“Now I’ve got room for Pierre and Cherie,” I said. “They’re old and they deserve to travel. You know, like when Aunt Ginny took Nana to Hawaii before she died.”

June looked at me as though she were about to charge me for existing. “Break them up? You want to break them up? What if I didn’t take Celeste? You think Pierre wants to travel without his wife?”

“So take Celeste.”

“Look.” June paced to the window and turned around. “We’re taking them all. If we line them up in the back window, they’ll fit. In your suitcase, you’re taking the photo album and the costume box.” She marched back to the bed and picked Roberta up by her hair. “You don’t need to take that crappy doll.”

Tears stung. “She’s not crappy! She’s—”

“Fat!” June was triumphant. Inadvertently, I’d given her her favorite opening. “Your doll’s fat, just like you. Petty’s a fatty! Petty’s a fatty!”

It was so unfair; Roberta wasn’t fat. For that matter, I wore regular clothes but June had to wear Chub-Ettes.

Yet, when she shouted at me, I believed her, my resistance gone. I was fat and guilty.

Linwood chose that moment to knock and walk in. If she’d heard anything, you couldn’t tell from the remote set of her face. “We’re going to Disneyland,” she announced.

June and I exchanged looks of disbelief. We only went once a year, at the beginning of summer.

“When?” June asked.

“Tonight.”

It would be dark before we got there. Would we see the lights? Usually we left at six in the morning, so we’d be there right when it opened. Stan loved to travel at dawn and watch the sun rise. And, since it was only once a year, Linwood was a good sport, though no one was allowed to speak to her until her third cup of coffee. Used to be, you could tell you were close because of the Tomorrowland rocket, stretching up thin and elegant from the orange groves. Then they built the Matterhorn, so much more thrilling than Baldy or Saddleback topped with actual snow.

“And we’ll stay tomorrow?”

“We’ll stay for as long as you like.” Linwood was speaking, but she wasn’t there.

The three of us drifted out of my room and down the hall.

“A week?” June wasn’t called Wedge-in-the-Door for nothing.

“Whatever you girls want.”

“Can we stay at the Disneyland Hotel?” Shame on me for jumping in, but I couldn’t help it. The Disneyland Hotel was like Oz. The monorail came right to your door. You could ride to Sleeping Beauty’s Castle whenever you wanted. Snow White, Mr. Toad, and my personal favorite: Alice in Wonderland. As many times as I prepared myself for the bright colors, they were always richer, more intense, more alive. Those magic caterpillars conducted you through what was better than dreams; the new place you visited, by contrast, rendered this world pale, maybe pointless. Why play with sticks and stuffed dogs in the grove, when you could be traveling through other realms?

“No,” Linwood said. “We’re staying across the street.”

“That’s okay.” I tried not to look disappointed.

“Listen,” said June, furtively pressing my arm on what she called Pet’s Perpetual Bruise. She always socked me on the same spot so she could exert minimal effort for maximal effect, at covert moments like this one.

I winced.

“We have to take the poodles.”

“That’s right,” I chimed in feebly, moving out of arm range.

“You can each take two.” Linwood regarded June. “In place of Pet’s doll and your puzzle.”

“We have to take them all.”

“There’s no room.”

“They can ride in the back window.”

“That’s too dangerous. And besides, all thirty-seven won’t fit.”

“What if they did fit?”

She’ll make a great lawyer , I thought, as I tried to sidle back to my room. If the poodles were going in the window, there was hope for Pole.

“June, I am not in the mood to argue with you.”

“Then just say we can take them.”

I heard Linwood’s sigh all the way down the hall.

Once back in my room, I explained the situation to Roberta. I dressed her in the black lace and red skirt and replaced her in her favorite spot. She would comfort the others for me. Then I packed Pole, the photo album, and the costume box in the suitcase. Miraculously, they all fit. There was no doubt in my mind that June would win; the truth was that nobody cared enough, whatever the issue, to wear her down. When you gave in to her, her will of steel cables, you had this sweet sense of saving your own soul, because you knew you would never be damned by stubbornness, as she was.

I lay down in the saggy center of my bed, perhaps for the last time. I thought about Disneyland, about how it took away all the sinister parts of the stories. In the book Peter Pan , the ending made me kind of nauseated. Wendy was this huge, embarrassed woman, trying to hide her size and age, and Peter turned out to be pathetic, unable to appreciate Wendy’s desire to lead a normal life. I only read the ending once, and after that I always skipped it. Likewise, in the book Alice in Wonderland , the caterpillar is not a nice guy. He’s cruel and sinister, and he has no sympathy for Alice. In the Disney version, he is charmingly suave, a worm version of David Niven. In fact, the books were much more like the games we used to play, four or five years ago, when we were all smaller. Deane was okay then, she hadn’t started smoking yet. We used to create our own magic kingdoms. Our game of Pretend was more complicated and vivid than my illustrations of “Bluecrest” or “Green Snake.” In the best game of all, we rode our tricycles in a ritualized formation at the far, looped end of the driveway. One person steered, one person pedaled, and the third person guided the voyage. The Guide stood on the back of the tricycle and described the world we were passing through. Things took shape before my eyes as I explained them to my sisters: