‘Not as heavy as me. And you’ve been my floor for years now.’
Ray reached over and touched his niece’s hand. ‘Thank you. And hey! You are not allowed to say negative stuff about yourself any more.’
‘Oh shit, I didn’t even notice that I did that! OK, well while I might be heavy, my skin is the skin of a woman at least ten years younger than I am.’ Greta took a bow.
Any further discussion was halted by the arrival of their platters. ‘Wowsers,’ Ray said, looking at his plate, which held two eggs, two strips of crispy bacon, and a stack of pancakes.
Greta realized that if this was healthy eating, American style, she was more than happy. Her omelette was delicious and filling. But she did scoff half of Ray’s pancakes all the same. As he said, there was a law or something in America that you had to eat pancakes. And if there wasn’t one, there should be. They were incredible.
‘Uncle Ray, we need to talk about what you are going to wear tomorrow when we get to Cawker City. I know there’s nothing worse than someone talking to you about your appearance – trust me. But the first time you see the love of your life deserves a killer outfit. And please don’t hate me, but you’ve got to let me do something about your hair, too.’
‘What’s wrong with my hair? On the clothes front, I have that covered already. I’ve got a new shirt and jumper in my case. I bought it before we left.’
‘Let me guess, a navy check shirt and a navy jumper.’
His lack of response was answer enough for Greta. ‘Will you trust me on this? I don’t want to change you. Just make a few tweaks.’
‘I’m not spiking my hair up or anything silly like that.’
‘I was thinking some blond highlights,’ Greta said, then burst out laughing when she saw the horror on her uncle’s face. ‘I’m joking!’
After breakfast, the road trip officially began when they joined the I70, a road they would be spending a lot of time on over the next week. Either side of the interstate was covered in thick snow, so there was little to see in the terrain. They listened to the radio and sang along to some Eighties music. Then both squealed when they spotted a sign on the way into Wamego that said ‘Road to Oz Highway’.
When Ray and Stephen were kids, their family, along with millions of others around the globe, fell in love with all things Oz, when RTE played The Wizard of Oz one Christmas Day. Sharing the same surname as Dorothy, Aunty Em and Uncle Henry tethered them to the movie too, as they joked that they must be related somehow. Ray could remember how that movie made him feel as acutely today as it had done on that snowy afternoon, in front of an open fire in his childhood home. He watched the black and white opening sequence, with mild interest, while he played with his Lego. Then Dorothy was swept into a cyclone, which surprised him. But when she landed into the technicolour world of Munchkinland with a crash, he was hooked. He fell in love with the friendships made on that road trip along the yellow brick road to Oz. He cheered Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion on, through every song and dance, until they all finally reached the Emerald City and got their hearts’ desire.
That Christmas a tradition began for the Gale family that Stephen continued with his own kids too. Once the Gales had finished their last mouthful of turkey, they would all move to the living room to eat their trifle and Christmas pudding. Once, Ciaran had half-heartedly suggested they not watch it, but the pull to Oz was too strong. It was more than a movie to them, it was part of who they were. It was home. It was family. It was hope. It was as reassuring and comforting as a big, soft blanket draped over their knees.
So, seeing that sign, even though they knew it was a touristy gimmick, both Ray and Greta felt a little bit of Oz’s magic was reaching out to them.
‘There’re lots of Oz-themed attractions in Kansas,’ Ray said. ‘But according to my research, there’s no town with more Emerald City panache than this one.’
They drove into what looked like a ghost town. Everything was closed. Ray parked opposite the OZ Museum.
‘It’s not quite what I had in mind,’ Ray admitted.
‘Let’s just watch out for flying monkeys,’ Greta joked.
‘You used to jump into my lap, burying your head under my chin whenever they were unleashed,’ Ray said.
‘They used to freak me out!’
‘Want to know something stupid? When I was a kid, I used to wish a tornado would take me away to the land of Oz,’ Ray admitted.
‘Sometimes I still do. So if that makes you stupid, then there’s two of us,’ Greta replied. ‘Look, over here!’ Greta walked over to an emerald green statue of Toto that sat at the top of a yellow brick road.
They looked at each other and laughed, memories of every time they’d watched the movie as kids and adults making them giddy. Greta grabbed Ray’s arm and said, ‘Come on, Scarecrow. It’s time to follow the yellow brick road.’
‘If only I had a brain,’ Ray said.
Together, they skipped down the yellow brick road for a moment, turning back when they realized it ended in a dead end.
‘Well, there’s no rainbow over here,’ Greta said. They made their way across the street into the museum. They made their way around the artefacts, which had lots of information about the Oz books, the life of L. Frank Baum and the subsequent movie. They sat and watched a documentary about the making of the film. When Victor Fleming admitted that he slapped the young Judy because she giggled during a scene with Bert Lahr who played the Cowardly Lion, they were both shocked and outraged on her behalf.
‘Judy was such a contradiction – a triumphant and tragic figure all at once. But with such an extraordinary talent. There was no doubt she was destined to perform. You share that with her.’
‘The industry doesn’t seem to agree with you, Uncle Ray.’
‘You have to keep the faith and your time will come. I know it. Your acting career is going to take off. If that’s what you still want, of course.’
‘I’m not sure most would call it a career,’ Greta answered with a self-deprecating laugh.
‘Why do you always use humour to deflect questions?’
‘Why do you always counter my humour with more questions?’
‘I can still remember seeing you in your first-ever drama-club show. You were Dorothy in their production of The Wizard of Oz.’
‘I suspect that I was given the role because I was the only one who knew the words to the movie off by heart. Mam made my costume out of a gingham tablecloth she had. And I borrowed Mrs Oaks’s dog from next door and stuffed it into a picnic basket.’
‘When you sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”, you could have heard a pin drop. It was magical.’
‘I can remember taking the final bow, watching Mam, Dad, Gran and you in the audience. They were on their feet, cheering. Mam was pregnant with Aidan, I think. Her bump was sticking out. But she stood up and cheered, tears in her eyes. I can remember thinking to myself that I wanted to make them proud like that over and over again.’ She stopped and shook her head. ‘Now, the only tears in their eyes are of pain and shame. Not pride.’
‘They were both proud when you came home from therapy. Seeing how well you’d done. They may not have told you that, but I could see it.’
‘I hope you’re right. Judy died from an overdose of sleeping pills at forty-seven years old. We nearly had that in common too. I think about that a lot,’ Greta said.
‘Are you done with the pills now?’ Ray asked gently.
‘Truthfully, I can’t imagine ever taking one again. Just the thought of going back to that … that mess, scares me more than any flying monkeys ever did.’
‘That’s my girl,’ Ray said. ‘I think for Judy, she paid a tragic price for her early fame. A child who never had a childhood. What kind of parents give their child pills in the first place, then allow the studio to mess with her diet the way they did? She didn’t stand a chance. But that’s not your story. You have a family who support you. If you gave it all up tomorrow, t
hey would still support you.’
‘Even Dad?’ Greta thought about what he had said at the family therapy session. You used to be the cutest person on this planet, and you blew it. We used to go out, and everyone would point and stare and say, that’s the girl from the advert. But now, instead, they point and stare at the fatty.
‘He didn’t meant that,’ Ray said. ‘He lashed out, because he felt cornered. He’s always been the same. He’s not without flaws, but he loves you. And he fought for you. Fought to save your life, any which way he could. Don’t forget that.’
Uncle Ray was right. Maybe it was time to focus on that, rather than on the things he might have said in anger. And maybe it was also time for her to reach out to her dad, try to mend some bridges with him. She’d held him at arm’s length since she got home. The more Greta thought about it, the more she realized that she had put a barrier up between them for a long time now. She made it her business not to be in his company on her own. He wasn’t the only one at fault for their fractured relationship. And she wasn’t a child any more. It wasn’t his job to fix them. It was theirs.
She opened her phone and, rather than just sending a message to the family WhatsApp group, she messaged her father directly.
Greta: Hi Dad. Hope the training is going well for the marathon.
It wasn’t much, but it was a start.
Chapter 20
They drove for a few hours, moving closer to Billie with each mile, eventually stopping in a town called Manhattan.
‘If you tell me that you’d rather stay the way you are, that’s fine. But if you let me, I’d love to help you change things up a bit,’ Greta said, when they spotted a shopping centre.
‘I don’t want to look like a boy-band reject.’
‘I give you my word that there will not be a single Boyzone vibe. The look we’re going for is the dashing romantic hero.’
When he parked the car up outside the mall, Greta took that as a yes. Within an hour, she’d talked him into buying two pairs of jeans, three sweatshirts, four T-shirts, one shirt – not check – a pair of boots, trainers and a new jacket.
‘I don’t see what’s wrong with the coat I’m wearing,’ Ray moaned. ‘It’s in perfectly good condition.’
‘It’s ancient! You need to bin it. Trust me. You know the saying. The clothes maketh the man. You are a good-looking man. Show that off!’
‘Go away out of that.’
‘You are! And I’m not just saying that because I love you. It’s true. All these clothes do is to add a bit of icing for the top of your cake.’
‘Thanks Greta,’ Ray said, chuffed with her compliment. ‘But if I’m getting some icing, you need to get some too. Go treat yourself to something new. I’m going for a sit-down. I haven’t been in a clothes shop this long … well, ever … it’s tired me out.’
She left him to his own devices for a bit and went upstairs to the women’s section. Maybe it was time she looked at mixing up her own wardrobe, following her own advice. She had got into the habit of wearing black a lot. And here, on this road trip, she didn’t feel that black suited her any more. She needed to technicolour her life up. Adding a splash of colour into her wardrobe was the first step.
A smiling shop assistant walked over to her when she got to the top of the escalator. She looked Greta up and down, from her boots to her double chin, and landed her glance on Greta’s tummy. ‘Our plus-size range is up another level on three.’
Plus size. These two words held so much power that they seemed to strip every ounce of confidence from Greta in an instant. It felt like the shop assistant was saying that Greta was abnormal in some way. Because to be plus-sized didn’t mean that you were simply bigger. It implied so much offence. Greta felt angry, then hurt, then angry again, to have been labelled in this way. She knew she was fat. Fair enough. But that didn’t mean she was a lesser person than someone who could fit into a size zero. Skinny, tall, fat, small – they were all descriptor words. But somehow only negativity surrounded the words plus size or fat, especially when matched with the look that the woman had given her as she uttered them. And in one second flat, they made her doubt herself all over again.
She was sick of it. She couldn’t let all the work she’d done with Noreen disappear. Greta walked over to the shop assistant and flashed her an even bigger smile. ‘You made a lot of assumptions just then. And I didn’t like it. I didn’t ask you where the plus-size clothing was. As it happens, that’s exactly where I was heading. And your directions would have been helpful if they were not followed by a look of disgust. You might need to work on that in the future. Oh, and for the record, I have really nice boobs. They might be big, but they don’t flop. So there.’ And as she walked away, leaving the open-mouthed woman behind her, she felt a little better.
The good news was that the store had a fantastic range of clothes in all sizes. Their changing rooms were large and, for the first time in years, she enjoyed trying on different styles. It was particularly nice that the US sizing meant that she was a size smaller than at home in Ireland. And in the end, she left with several new tops, a pair of jeans and a dress. She found Ray sitting on a bench outside the store, his eyes closed. Jet lag had caught him up. She sat down beside him, feeling exhausted herself. She checked her phone and there was another message from Dylan. He didn’t give up.
Dylan: Well Silver Lady, are you ever going to answer me? It’s freezing over here. Grey and miserable. Depress me further and tell me where you are!
‘Is that Dylan again?’ Ray asked.
‘Welcome back to the land of the living. And yes it is, as it happens. How did you know?’
‘You always smile when you get a message from him. I think you like him.’
‘I do not!’ Greta said. ‘That’s ridiculous. We’re just friends.’
‘The lady doth protest too much.’
‘Shut up.’
He pretended to zip his mouth.
‘I’ve been ignoring him. Dylan,’ Greta confessed. ‘I don’t know how to tell him about the whole drug addict thing. So things have been a bit weird.’
‘I can see how that must be a hard thing for you to say to people. But the way I see it, if he’s a good friend, he’ll accept you as you are. The good, the bad and the ugly.’
‘I’m scared.’
‘Of what?’
‘Everything. What if he loses all respect for me, when I tell him about rehab?’
‘I think you are being unfair to your friend there. Dylan always struck me as a decent guy. He clearly thinks the world of you. But maybe there’s more to you avoiding him than just that.’
Greta looked at her uncle in surprise. He missed very little. ‘I did something stupid, really, really stupid, that I need to apologize to him about too.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘I’m not telling you what it is, because it’s too embarrassing. So don’t even try to get it out of me.’ Waking up half naked in bed with her best friend, with no recollection of how she got there, or what she’d done, was not the kind of thing you told your uncle about.
‘I don’t want to know, unless you want to tell me. But it seems to me that you could lose a good friend, because you don’t have the guts to have an honest conversation.’
Greta recognized the truth of his words, but she liked keeping her head in the sand.
‘Listen, for what it’s worth, I’m scared too. What if Billie takes one look at me and only sees a middle-aged man, unrecognizable from the one she loved all those years ago? But I’m not going to let that stop me. And neither should you.’
‘You’re the same inside. Even if you have a few extra wrinkles.’
‘And you’re the same inside too. Give Dylan a chance. If he walks away, then he wasn’t a true friend after all. What did you buy?’ He nodded to the bags at Greta’s feet.
‘Loads! We’re so going over our baggage allowance on the way home! I have a present for you too. I bought it earlier today in the OZ Museum.’ She pulled a
package from her handbag and gave it to Ray. ‘It’s not much. But I thought of you when I saw it.’
He unwrapped the paper bag and inside was a figurine of the Scarecrow, standing with his arms pointing in two different directions.
‘It’s struck me that you’ve always been my Scarecrow, Uncle Ray.’
‘A head full of straw.’ Ray tapped his skull.
‘But he was the wisest one of them all in the end,’ Greta contradicted. ‘You keep us all tethered. All these years, whenever there’s been a crisis, we look to you for help and support. And you’re always there. I’m not sure any of us really thanks you enough for that.’
Ray looked at the Scarecrow and felt tears sting his eyes. He’d never wanted or asked for thanks from his family. But hearing Greta’s words touched him.
‘I’ll treasure this,’ Ray said, placing the Scarecrow figurine in his shopping bags. ‘Answer me this. If I’m the Scarecrow, who is the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion?’
‘I haven’t worked that out yet,’ Greta said, smiling. ‘I’m Dorothy, obviously.’
‘But of course.’
‘It felt like a cyclone, back then. I was out of control and lost in that storm. And then I landed in rehab with a thud. I think that was my land of the Munchkins. And Noreen has to be Glinda, the good witch.’
‘Who did you kill?’ Ray asked.
Greta thought about it, ‘The Wicked Witch of the East is my addiction to sleeping pills.’
‘Well, she’s dead now. You did it. And now we’re on our yellow brick road to the Emerald City, better known as Las Vegas!’
‘I hope we don’t meet any flying monkeys on the way. Or the Wicked Witch of the West,’ Greta said, with a grin.
‘I’ll protect you! And for the record, Dorothy, I’m honoured to be your Scarecrow. I do believe he turned out to be the favourite. If you ever tell Aidan and Ciaran this, I’ll deny it, but you are my favourite too!’
They leaned into each other for a moment, shoulder to shoulder, uncle and niece, happy to rest in the mall corridor for a moment, reflecting on their journey ahead.
My Pear-Shaped Life: The most gripping and heartfelt page-turner of 2020! Page 15