Rosie stood by the tunnel waiting for him, but it was no longer a tunnel; it was an arched entryway that crossed a moat of sparkling blue water.
“Sir,” a young man said.
Doug looked in the direction of the voice and saw a scarecrow with black button eyes, only he wore black jeans and the yellow polo shirt with the black train on it, the shirt the employees wore. His straw body shimmered like gold.
“You really shouldn’t be in here, sir,” the scarecrow said. And for just a moment, his real face came into view — a face with acne scars and patchy facial hair, a textured face of shadows and hues and imperfections.
Rosie protested, but Doug didn’t want to make a scene, so they headed for the car. But it wasn’t his car, not exactly. His Ford Explorer was now solid blue, tires and all, and it bulged like an inflated beach toy. All the cars were like that. The tall pines around the restaurant had been replaced by giant, two-dimensional Christmas trees, like something Rosie might make at daycare with butcher paper. All the buildings lining the street were made of blocks, some plastic with notches on the top, some wood with numbers and letters on the side. Inside the passing cars, Doug saw not people but giant stuffed animals and life-size dolls.
Unlocking the car, he saw that his keys were no longer metal, but red and rubbery like a child’s eraser. He lifted Rosie into the backseat, and instead of her car seat, found a purple octopus. She climbed into it, and he lowered the tentacled arms over her.
“Go ‘ome, Da-ee?” Rosie said.
“Yes, dear,” he said, and it was as if someone else was speaking. Home. Yes, home. Get his bearings. But even as he thought this, the world shimmered. Some of the cars changed to real cars. Driving home, paper trees turned to real trees, and blue sky became gray. Rosie sang happily, oblivious, but Doug gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white. A small green brontosaurus, walking upright and pulling a red wagon, changed to a homeless man in army fatigues pushing a rusted shopping cart.
By the time he reached his house, the world was back to normal and he saw the house as it was — a one-story ranch with flaking gray paint, piles of rotting leaves in the driveway, a lawn going to seed. After pulling into the cluttered garage, he retrieved Rosie and carried her into the house. He passed through the galley kitchen, which stank of rotten milk, the sink full of dishes. When he rounded the corner into the family room, he saw Autumn sitting in the rocking chair inches from the television. Some talk show was on, but she stared blankly ahead, her eyes glassy. The shades were drawn, and the room flickered along with the television.
“Mommy!” Rosie cried.
“Oh,” Doug said, putting Rosie down. “I didn’t know you’d be home.”
Rosie ran to her side, gripping the armrest, but Autumn didn’t look at her. Her hair, more gray than brown these days, drooped over her wan face. She still wore her blue hospital scrubs, and he saw a tiny spot of blood on her sleeve. She had been a phlebotomist for nearly ten years, and it was the first time he could remember seeing blood on her clothes. Usually, she was quick to wash it off, as she said even a little stain could alarm the patients.
“I was tired,” Autumn said.
“Are you sick?”
She didn’t answer.
“Did something happen at work?” he pressed.
“Doug, please,” she said quietly.
Rosie jumped up and down. “Da-ee and Wosie go side, Mommy!” she cried. “Side!”
Closing her eyes, Autumn leaned her head back against the rocking chair. For a moment, she looked like her mother looked the last time Doug saw her, back in the nursing home when she was in the full clutches of Alzheimer’s, her face stretched and pale. “Can you just leave me alone for a while, please?” she said, her voice dying to a whisper.
Doug was going to tell her about the amazing thing that just happened to him, but the impulse dissolved in his anger. Lately she’d been having more and more of these moody phases, and he was sick of it. It was one thing to ignore him, but another to ignore Rosie. “What’s happened to you, anyway?”
But when she answered, it wasn’t with words. Her eyes remained closed, but tears streaked down her face. Rosie looked alarmed, and started to reach for her mother, but Doug didn’t want her to see Autumn like this. He guided Rosie to her bedroom and shut the door just as Autumn began sobbing. The wood was thick, but he could still hear her. He turned on Rosie’s CD player, a song about counting animals.
He looked at Rosie. She stood in front of her toddler bed, clasping her hands and biting down on her lower lip. The rest of the house may have been a mess, but Rosie’s room was perfect, the bed neatly made, all the books and toys on their shelves, all the tops of the dressers clean. Doug kept it that way.
“Mommy sad, Da-ee?” Rosie said. “Mommy ha’ tears?”
Doug swallowed away the lump in his throat. “Yes, dear. Mommy’s a little sad right now.”
“Mommy ha’ ow-ee?”
“No, not exactly.”
“Why Mommy sad, Da-ee?”
He kneeled in front of her and tried to smile, though his face felt like dried wax. “Sometimes,” he began, and had to start over when his throat constricted. “Sometimes people are just sad, honey. Sometimes... there is no reason why. But Mommy will get better. I promise. We just need to give her time.”
She looked unconvinced, but he managed to distract her with a toy fire engine, and soon she was laughing again.
The strange thing that happened didn’t happen the next day, or the next, and he was too afraid to go back to the pizza place. But on the weekend, when he was pushing Rosie on a tire swing at the park, it happened again. The swing changed to a red crop-duster with a bright yellow propeller. Rosie swooped around in a circle, her head bent low in the cockpit and her ponytail flapping behind her. The jungle gym turned into a blue rocket ship with yellow fins. Two kids in white spacesuits looked out from the hatch.
This time, Doug wasn’t scared. In fact, he realized he had been secretly hoping it would happen again. The grit and grime of reality returned on the walk home, but he was left with a pleasant feeling, like the buzz from a good brandy. He took the following Wednesday off and took Rosie to the zoo, and while they were there, the concrete walkways faded and they found themselves in a lush jungle, surrounded by animals, but not animals that could bite or claw. These animals were big, fluffy, and friendly, like the animals from her picture books.
Doug decided he liked Rosie’s world. He started taking off early in the day to do things with her — the mall, where every shop was a toy shop with toys that talked back, the riverfront carousel, where there were horses with manes like silk and hides like satin, and the beach, where dolphins dressed in tuxedos emerged from the surf to tell them stories of the undersea world. The more he did, the longer this wonderful new reality lasted. He saw all of Rosie’s friends brought to life — Marmar, Slow Joe, Big Cat, Little Cat, and thousands of others he didn’t know by name. He was burning through his vacation days, and he wanted more.
Three weeks after that first experience at Locomotion Pizza, Doug was crunching numbers on a spreadsheet when his boss, Gabe, stopped by his cubicle.
“You wanted to see me, old buddy?” he said.
Doug saved the file and swiveled in his chair to face him. Gabe had both hands on the edge of the cubicle and was peering around it, as if he had been passing and remembered Doug’s e-mail at the last moment. They had been friends for years, playing racquetball before their knees gave out, playing board games with their wives before their children devoured their evenings, until now they rarely saw each other outside the office. Autumn used to say — back when she and Doug used to do things like talk — that Gabe looked like a repressed hippie. He wore a white shirt and dark slacks, but his personality still showed in his ponytail, his thick moustache, and his trippy rainbow tie. His glasses had a slight red tint.