The Corvettes spaced along the line are pink. This factory now makes all kinds of electric cars for kids. The cars have two forward speeds and one in reverse controlled by pedals and gearshifts. The detailing of the paint and upholstery matches the vehicle it is modeled on. But I am told it is the novelty of the keys that come with the car, starting it up and shutting it off, that sells the product. Children in elementary school love them. They carry their jingling key rings to class for show-and-tell.
“It is like a real car,” the CEO told me earlier. The Corvettes are just one line called Barbie’s Corvette. It’s a licensing agreement with Mattel. “And it comes in any color you want,” the CEO said, “as long as it is pink.”
I thought it was a bad idea driving one of the Corvettes around the parking lot. The CEO and the PR people had hoped I would take one for a spin. I thought of Dukakis in the tank. I pictured myself wedged in the tiny cockpit, my knees up by my ears, my hands on the steering wheel between my feet. The Secret Service were to act as pylons. Stiff as posts, staring from behind their dark glasses at everything except me. I would scoot around their legs in the car, turning a complete circle around one agent, then slalom back through their dispersed pattern on the parking lot, a test track. I would try to cut the corners as close as possible, trench coats slapping my face.
Instead of driving one of the cars, I admired them during a photo opportunity. One turned slowly on a tabletop turntable, the television lights playing over its pink gloss finish. Barbie stroked the fenders with the fingers of her long hand. This was my first look at the car. The ribbon-cutting ceremony at the end of the assembly line came later. We were to take a tour of the plant and the factory showroom, where salesmen walked among the highly polished demonstration models handing out brochures. When we got there, we picked our way through the cars at our feet, the miniature Mercedes and tiny Jeeps. We stopped to marvel at a replica of a ’57 T-bird coupe.
“Oh,” Barbie said bending over to pet it, “so cute.”
This is what Vice Presidents do. Bury the dead and open factories. This factory had once made tractors for semitrailers, Trans Stars for the local van line company, and green Army two-and-a-halfs. The white star stenciled on the door. The factory is in Fort Wayne, in my home district. It had been a ruin for ten years, ever since Harvester closed the plant in favor of one in Springfield, Missouri.
When I was a kid, my father brought me up here. He was covering a rollout for the paper then. Crammed onto a reviewing stand, we watched the trucks blast around the banked track, stutter over a patch of cobblestones, then plow through a shallow pool splaying a wake of water from beneath each wheel. I got to climb up in the cab as the engine idled and rumbled beneath the seat. With my arms stretched wide I couldn’t hold both sides of the steering wheel.
On the way back to Huntington, my father tried to explain the future to me. The truck I had been in was just an idea, its model year two or three years away. I didn’t get it. I had smelled the diesel fumes, heard the sneeze of the air brakes. “Who know,” my father said, “a lot could happen.”
I let them love me in Fort Wayne. I swung a grant their way. Jawboned the locals for tax relief. Some people are working again. Let them blame that on me.
“I am really Malibu Barbie,” Barbie says to me. “The doll comes with a Frisbee, a tote bag, and a beach umbrella.” That is why she is wearing the swimsuit on this early spring day. The sky is as dirty as the grime on the big windows. Off in the distance, at the other end of the property, is the red brick bell tower. The old company logo, the small i bisecting the capital H to look like a gearshift pattern, still hangs crookedly just beneath the roof. The stink of the drawn copper from the wire works next door begins to coat my tongue.
“You from around here?” I ask her. Her neck is long and thin. Her swimsuit is made out of a miracle fabric in an animal hide print. She is wearing sheer hose that sparkle even in the bad light and hiss like scissor blades cutting construction paper when she walks.
Earlier, we toured the whole factory, even the abandoned parts. The new assembly line took up a fraction of the acres under roof. The toy car company had been started in the owner’s garage. At first he just made go-carts for the neighborhood kids. Then, as business grew, he moved to a Quonset hut in an industrial park. There is plenty of room to expand now.
Barbie’s heels snipped over the steel plate on the floor that had covered the conduits for cables that fed the old machines long removed. On the terrazzo I could see where they had been positioned from the footprints of discolored flooring outlined with filth. Here and there were rusting heaps of metal that could not be salvaged and yellowing scraps of paper that looked like scaling fungus on rotting trees. The factory opened up to three stories, the web of girders supporting the roof lost in the gloom. Dripping water from somewhere matched Barbie’s cadence. We stopped in the middle of the vast hall to rest. There was a little oasis of gunmetal stools and desk chairs on coasters. The Secret Service drifted on, their backs to us, spreading apart to form a perimeter, right on the edge of being seen. No one spoke. What light there was seemed to be drawn to Barbie, who swiveled slowly in the office chair. Her legs, crossed at the ankles, stretched out to keep her pointed feet off the floor. Her head was thrown back, the hard hat adhering to her hair. She closed her eyes as if she were sunbathing. She shimmered, bobbing like a needle in a toy compass slowly nudging north. I could hear the pigeons cooing in the rafters and then suddenly flapping after launching out, gliding into sight to land on the floor across the room.
“You know,” I said to Barbie, “we always live in the age of lead. We stand on the shoulders of giants.” I looked at her to see what impression I had made.
“Oh, I know,” she said. “Look at the toys these days. Nothing is left to the imagination.”
I felt like an accessory in a new play set. Call it Barbie’s Factory. Action figures and clothes sold separately. Any moment the vast roof could crack open, the walls hinging out. I am Midwestern Ken. A seed cap, dungarees, and a farmer’s tan.
Barbie is a head taller than I am. I sat quietly and watched her turn in the chair, propelled by invisible forces. The Secret Service whispered to each other in the shadows.
At the end of the day, we cut the ribbon. I grasp one handle with both my hands. Barbie has the other. I remember again the gigantic wheel of the truck. I am confused, confused again by size. I never fit. I never fit no matter what I do. The scissors are useless at cutting through the ribbon, the fabric folding then slipping between the blades. We end up tearing through it after the threads of the edge have been frayed enough by our frantic efforts. We pull the handles apart, then hurl them back together. The blades slicing closed smack with a kiss.
Barbie leans over and gives me a kiss. Her lips are waxy on my cheek. We pose that way. Barbie’s long neck stretched out as she nuzzles my face. A hand on each of my shoulders for support. I am smiling at the cameras. This is what I am thinking. I’m thinking: It’s a small moment of triumph no matter how you look at it.
The air is permeated with the tang of metal. I hold out in front of me the shiny keys that fit the brand-new pink Barbie Corvette I was given, which the Secret Service will later carry out to my limousine and store in the trunk like a spare to begin our trip back to Washington. And later still, in an intimate ceremony on the Mall, I will donate the car to the Smithsonian. Mattel will send another Barbie, this one dressed in a gold gown that might have been worn at an inaugural. Together, with the pink car roped off in one corner of the museum, we will have staked out our own little piece of history.