Alix Ohlin - Babylon and Other Stories

“That was because of the air-conditioning unit,” Gayle said. “Not my fault.”

“A responsible parent would've noticed.”

“I was like eight,” Gayle said. “So anyway, I went into Erica's room and took the doll back. And okay, I took some of her stuff, too. Her My Little Ponies and Strawberry Shortcakes.”

“She took all my toys,” Erica said.

“It's okay, honey,” Hank said, and put his pale hand on her arm. Gayle wondered what was with all these honeys. Judging by Erica's reaction, or lack of one, it was a completely useless endearment.

“And I arranged them in a, uh, tableau, would you call it, Rica?” she said.

“I wouldn't call it anything.” She turned her entire body toward her husband. “It was the most sadistic thing you ever saw in your life. Those poor dolls. Some of them were hanging in little nooses from the bookshelf. And the other ones, Strawberry Shortcake and Raspberry Tart — they were being, you know, molested by the ponies and stuff.”

“Raspberry was a tart,” Gayle said, “and Strawberry wasn't as innocent as she looked, either.”

“You are sick,” Hank said.

“She always has been,” Erica said. “I bet Dino finally figured that out. What happened to Dino, anyway, Gayle? I thought you two were engaged.”

Gayle gazed at her levelly, choosing not to blink, just as she would at accounts who tried to string her along, get free drinks and lunches without ever committing to the deal. “He ordered a child bride from the Philippines instead,” she said, and Hank laughed. “Anyway, so Erica took back all the toys, plus the Cabbage Patch doll and Aerobics Barbie, and set them on fire in the backyard.”

“You did not,” Hank said.

“I was very upset,” Erica said. “You should've seen that tableau.”

“The smell of burning plastic was all down the street. It was intense,” Gayle said. “We had this babysitter who always took naps, and when she woke up the stuff was already melting. She never worked in that neighborhood again, I'll guarantee you. We both got into a lot of trouble, and our parents locked us in our rooms while they tried to figure out what to do with us. I was so mad at Erica for burning my toys. I've never been so mad in my whole life. To this day I don't think I've ever been that mad. Our parents unlocked the doors when we went to sleep that night, and I crept out of bed in my nightie and went into Erica's room and put my teeth on her arm, and I didn't stop until I tasted the blood in my mouth. She screamed like you wouldn't believe.”

“Jesus,” Hank said.

Erica sat rigid in her chair.

The wind blew coolly against Gayle's cheeks, and she realized she was flushed. In her memory she could taste the blood, its unmistakable metallic warmth, this liquid iron at the back of her throat. Over the years she'd tasted her own blood plenty of times — chapped lips, hangnails, paper cuts — but never anyone else's, except Erica's.

“Aerobics Barbie?” Hank said after a while.

“She came with a little radio,” Gayle said.

“You never told me any of this,” he said to Erica.

She reached out her forearm and showed him the scar: a jagged half moon sunk forever into the skin.

“I always thought that was from a shot or something,” he said.

“Nope,” Gayle said. “From me. So anyway, maybe that's where Max gets it from, his Swanger blood.”

The kid had gotten out of the pool and had his pacifier back in his mouth. He had a different toy in his hand now, something in flesh-colored plastic, and he was spinning by the edge of the water to make it fly around his body in circles.

“Will you stop saying that?” Erica said.

“She's only kidding, honey,” Hank said. “Don't take it so seriously, okay?”

“Don't tell me what not to take seriously, honey, ” Erica said, standing up. “I've had about enough of you telling me not to take things so seriously.”

Hank put his drink down on the concrete patio. “I only meant—”

“It's not like the Higginbottoms are God's gift to the world, you know,” Erica snapped. “Every single one of them would rather have a drink than an actual conversation with an actual human being. It's not like they're so perfect.”

“I didn't say they were,” he said. He stood up with his glass in his hand. “I'm going to get another drink. Gayle, do you want another drink?”

“No thanks,” Gayle said, although no one was listening to her.

“Don't walk away from me,” Erica ordered. He did. “Max, stay out here with your Aunt Gayle.”

If the kid heard this, he didn't show it. The glass doors slid open and closed, twice.

Gayle kicked off her sandals and sat down by the side of the pool, sticking her legs in the water. Max was on the other side, sitting on the steps of the pool again, making noises that sounded like gunfire and bombs. He'd taken his shirt off, and his skinny little chest was as white as office paper.

“Hey, Max,” she called, “what are you playing?”

He ignored her, focusing instead on his symphony of explosions. It was a war zone over in the shallow end. His fair hair was plastered to his big head. Gayle's thoughts moved, listless with gin and sunshine, to Dino. The child-bride thing wasn't actually that far from the truth. Although the girl was not technically a child; she was twenty. Old enough to be legal, young enough that she wouldn't give Dino a hard time about marriage and children.

“The perfect woman,” Gayle had said, and Dino had only nodded; he was always honest, which was supposed to be one of his good qualities. “I don't know why you were with me in the first place,” she'd told him, “if that's what you want.”

“No, you're great, Gayle. But — you push too hard. You can't let things, I don't know, unfold.”

“I put my cards on the table. What's wrong with that?”

“Nothing, I guess,” he'd said thoughtfully. “You just sometimes have the wrong cards.”

“Oh, I could kill him,” she said now, to herself but out loud.

This made the kid look up. “Kill the beast!” he said. He was holding up the flesh-colored toy: a figurine of a man with muscular arms, wearing a red shirt. One of the arms was partially extended, the other bent, but whatever he was about to shoot someone with had gone missing. “I'll lock you and your father in the cellar, unless you marry me!” the kid said.

“No offense, Max,” Gayle said, “but I don't really know you that well. Plus we're related and everything.”

The kid's eyes were glazed and unfocused and he kept shaking the figurine at her, its one arm extended; she understood it was the figurine who was supposed to be speaking. “Kill the beast, chase you with wolves, lock you up!”

“The beast?” she said. “Like Beauty and the Beast?” The figurine nodded its whole body wildly in agreement. Leave it to this kid, she thought, to concentrate on all the most violent parts of the fairy tale. In his hands, it wasn't a story about love; it was an action movie, a mob scene, a hostage-taking. “Do you really want to kill the Beast? Isn't he a good character in the end?”

“Not to me!” the figurine said loudly.

“Well,” she said, thinking of Dino, “I guess I know how you feel.”

The kid made a strangled, wordless noise and threw the figurine in the water, where it floated on its back, its muscular arms extended toward the bottom of the pool. Then he threw a plastic ship at it, and the two toys rippled slowly forward, spinning as they floated toward Gayle. For a moment he stared at her, a look of shock and desperation on his face; he hadn't intended this to happen. Then he stepped farther into the pool and started splashing the water in an ineffectual attempt to turn the toys back in his direction. Actually he wasn't splashing the water so much as slapping it, hard, all the while making animal sounds of frustration. Just as he had slipped into a happy mood earlier, he seemed now to have lost, in an instant, all ability to form words.