Patricia Geary - Strange Toys

This is the land of Lavender and Roses. We are dressed in apple-green satin gowns and our hair is braided with diamonds and pearls. Our hair is six feet long and it floats in back of us. Now, something is coming toward us, bigger and bigger. They are bigger than horses, bigger than dinosaurs. They are huge black dogs, with eyes bigger than Ferris wheels!

“‘The Tinder Box’!” June would cry, always quick to spot when I strayed into something I had read.

If June was Guide, we heard:

We are riding into the Land of Babies. Pink and white iced animal cookies are raining down. The rivers are Hawaiian Punch and the lakes are Nestle’s chocolate milk. Everyone has a swimming pool filled with M&M’s.

The swimming pools filled with M&M’s was her signature piece, while I got carried away with clothes and hair. After all, we were little, and we were ordinary.

And, then, nobody could guide like Deane:

We are magicians! Our heads are ravens, our wings are purple, studded with nails. When we fly overhead, sleeping women feel the breath of frost on their cheeks. Children dream of the seven tongues of fire. We fear only the Master Wizard. Now he is on us. His arms are giant radishes with revolving razor blades. Each blade can cut a piece of paper into two thinner pieces of paper. We feel the heat on our cheeks. Without the magic formula, we will be torn to ribbons!

“Say it! Say it!” June and I would shriek.

“What’s it worth to you?” she’d ask.

We’d be slaves, we’d do her chores, whatever. With Deane, I swear you really saw what she saw. You didn’t want to, not all the way, but you did. And it wasn’t like the floating visions of princesses I conjured, soap bubbles you could still see the world through—what Deane spun out was solid, it was there ; if only I dared, my hand would feel the keen pain of the razor.

We were grateful that she saved us from the demons she had created.

Funny. I remembered her apparitions with a sense of deep loss. Hardly conscious of what I was doing, I opened my suitcase back up, lifted out the cigar box, and removed the red leather book.

I closed my eyes and opened the book at random.

There was a pen-and-ink drawing, very detailed, of me and Tommy out in Deane’s room.

For a minute, I thought I was going to be sick.

“Fatso,” June yelled. “Stan’s home! Bring your suitcase out pronto!”

My eyes were stuck together with grainy sleep, but I knew I wasn’t in my own bed: the sheets were smooth and stiff-ironed, not made of the same cloth as real sheets. And then, too, I could hear the heavy, even breathing emanating from June in the next bed.

A thrill shot up from my stomach to my heart.

Disneyland!

That motel smell: air-conditioning, tiny soaps wrapped in paper, matchbooks and clean ashtrays, ice buckets, desks that were used only for storage: embossed stationery, postcards of patrons enjoying the pool or the dining room, plastic bags for wet swimsuits, shoeshine kits, and the Bible, always the Bible, patiently waiting with its unturned pages.

Quietly, I climbed out of bed and walked across the carpet, feeling guilty for being barefoot since Linwood insisted on shoes for motel carpets, breeding grounds for unidentified diseases, and slid open the desk drawer. There, cuddled in the raw wood corner, was a spanking new Bible.

I let the Bible fall open. Eyes closed, I stabbed a random passage.

What exactly were “bowels” anyway? The Bible was always bringing them up.

Potsherd? Now what? This was too confusing. I scanned farther down the page.

I felt all creepy. This didn’t sound like the Bible at all, what with the wax and the bones.

I needed something soothing, something spiritual.

Wax and bones. My arms goose-pimpled. As if it were floating before my eyes, I saw the pen-and-ink drawing of Deane’s room.

I slapped the Bible shut and slipped back into bed.

What did it all mean? Did I want to understand, or did I want it to go away ?

I had to pee. If I could get past all this queasiness, would the world make sense again?

If I wanted it to go away , why had I brought the book with me? It beckoned from my suitcase.

June pulled her head out from under the covers. She rubbed her eyes and reached for her glasses. “Disneyland!” she said.

“Pet, here’s your coupon book.” Stan handed it over, his mouth set in hard lines, contrasting with the smiles of the other amusement seekers. We were all standing inside the gates, right in front of Main Street. Bright flowers and topiary hedges reinforced the atmosphere of fun, fun, fun.

Even though it was October and Wednesday, the place was jam-packed with tourists, especially Japanese, the children with their neat patent leather hair and white anklets making me feel untidy in my brown pedal pushers and green sweater set. I’d wanted to wear my sailor dress, but Linwood convinced me I’d get it dirty. She was dressed in blue silk capris and spanking white tennis shoes. She never got dirty. June was doing her bit with the gray coat, buttoned up to the chin, and it wasn’t even cold. She looked like a nanny.

“Only three D coupons!” June rifled through her booklet. “What a gyp!”

Stan cleared his throat and opened his mouth.

Linwood intercepted him with a look. Even through the opaque movie-star lenses, you could feel her gaze, heat waves rippling up from the furnace.

“We’ll buy more when you run out,” Stan said.

“You can have mine,” I said. “I only want to go on the A rides anyway.” Why was I feeling guilty? The A rides were pretty stupid, things you walked through and baby rides, with the exception of the train. Maybe I’d just ride around and around all day.

They all stared at me as if I were ill.

“I think the pancakes made me a little sick,” I lied.

Linwood placed her cool palm on my forehead. “Pet, you and June can go on the D rides together. We’ll buy more coupons after lunch. June, I don’t want you girls to separate.”

“But she won’t go on the Bobsleds!” June wailed.

“What about the submarine?” I asked.

June snorted. “It doesn’t really go under water!”

But who cared? It was so pretty, with the mermaids and the anemones. The squid was pretty scary, actually.

“We’ll meet in front of the Castle at twelve sharp,” Stan ordered. “After lunch, we’ll make sure you each get to go on the rides you want.”

Linwood nodded.

Stan sighed. Really, he had the worst of it, because now he would have to drag around from shop to shop with Linwood, particularly all the exotic stuff over in Adventureland, and he might have preferred even the rides to that. Sometimes she made him go on the Jungle Boat Cruise, which was the only ride she liked. It reminded her of her teenage trip with her mother, a cruise to Panama. I’d seen this wonderful picture of them once, dressed in long thin skirts, each of them wearing a huge round hat tilted steeply to the side: Linwood, as slender and elegant as a young horse, and Nana, her breast the smooth round shape of a robin’s. Eddie Cantor, a singer, had fallen in love with Linwood during the voyage, but she turned him down.

Stan had been to Panama too. When he got thrown out of Stanford for holding poker games in his room all day instead of going to class, he’d joined the Merchant Marines. He hated the Jungle Boat Cruise.