“But try not to think about it. Just pack a bag. Warm clothes, your heavy coat, one doll, one stuffed animal, three books. And your cigar box, of course.”
Of course the cigar box. I left the kitchen, walked down the hall past June’s room, and turned into mine. Were we ever coming back? The familiar pink-and-blue-flowered wallpaper, the old double bed with the saggy center, the shelves with my beloved dolls. The window overlooking the backyard. I sat down plunk on the spiny lip of the bed and picked up the box from my end table. Inside was Deane’s red leather magic book. Which proved, along with that pain every time I went to the bathroom, that I really had been out to her room. Sometimes I wasn’t sure. When I came in that morning, afterward, Stan was up reading the paper, as always, and I walked right by him, invisible. No one could tell I’d been gone.
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.