“Dear me,” Sarah said, slumped in the shape of a question mark. “I don’t understand it. He was right here on the chair.” Her eyelids fluttering, she looked down at the floral upholstery and grew quiet, as if once again studying the face of Jesus in the pattern.
“There’s Spike.” I pointed to him on the grassy lawn, gnawing on something. “Get him,” I yelled to Ruthie.
Twice Ruthie darted after Spike, but each time the dog shot a couple of feet ahead of her. On the third try, she sprung and stomped both feet down on the leash. Spike’s big head jerked backward, and his huge body came to an abrupt halt.
“Drop it. Give it up,” Ruthie demanded, taking the leash.
Holding back my breath, I waited for the mean dog to obey, but his clamped jaws produced nothing but a faint grinding sound.
“You’ll have to pry his mouth open,” I told Jason, who from the doorway snapped, “What, and lose a hand?”
“He’s your dog.”
“Here, let me.” Ruthie straddled Spike from behind and tugged at his choke chain, strangling him and urging him to cough it up. Instead Spike sounded a gulp and licked his lips.
“He’s swallowed it,” I moaned.
Jason cried, “If it’s wood, the splinters could puncture his intensities.”
I let out a cheer, and Lisa cast me a withering glance, to which I responded, “He ate Miss Kitty. I saw her remains.”
“You beast,” Lisa shrieked and thumped Spike hard on the back. The violent maneuver worked, for instead of turning on her, Spike heaved and gagged. His gut muscles working, his lips pulling back wide, he thrust his head forward and vomited a shiny object.
“It’s Wolf’s boatswain whistle.” With a tissue, I reached for the dented piece of metal with wadded red string.
“No! Leave it,” Ruthie ordered Spike when he snapped at my withdrawing hand before I put it in my pocket.
“Here, bring him here,” Jason called from the safety of the doorway. “I’ll take him up to the apartment.”
As Ruthie moved to hand the leash over, Spike tugged toward an overgrown bush and lifted his hind leg. When finished, he supplemented his claim with a hefty scratch from his back paws.
“Look!” shouted the officer who’d been examining the grounds. “The dog found the missing person.”
“Wolf,” I cried, seeing his wooden hand poking from a shallow grave. “Spike must have buried him. We have to dig him up.” I fell to my knees and began clawing the earth. The uniformed officer pulled me away as if to stop me from corrupting the evidence of a crime scene. But at the same time, I grabbed hold of Wolf’s wrist and pulled him to a sitting position with such vigor that his crossed eyes snapped opened and jiggled wildly in his doll-like sockets.
Their own eyes widening, both police officers recoiled.
“I’ll have to send this to the cleaners,” I complained, brushing dirt off the front of my manny’s sailor suit.
“I’ll pay for it,” said Ruthie.
Sarah chimed in. “No, I will. This is all my fault.”
“It doesn’t matter, as long as he’s all right,” I said, on the ground, checking him out, pleased that no additional tooth marks were evident.
Meanwhile, the two officers stood off to the side, looking as if they had just entered an insane asylum where the inmates were in charge. A few minutes later, Ernie approached them, saying that whatever went on here was all a mistake. No break-in had occurred, no homicide had been committed, and none of the tenants involved was into abusing pharmaceuticals, as far as he knew. The pair of officers then shook Ernie’s hand and retreated, visibly glad to be going.
The way again clear, Jason proceeded to return Spike to their apartment, with the animal lurching ahead as usual.
Ruthie watched their departure and muttered, “I’ve had it with that butt-sniffing, leg-humping mutt. Come next week, he’s off to obedience school or Jason is out of the house for good.”
An Exhibit
If I could have swapped the two free passes to Bodies, The Exhibition, in exchange for tickets to The Nutcracker, I would have. I’d gotten the tickets the weekend after Thanksgiving, after running into Ruthie in the hall. I was on my way to Lisa’s office to pick out my new kitten, a male I named Figaro. My little pet had come courtesy of Miss Kitty, who was alive and well, after all. She’d been off on a jaunt and had come home with a fine litter of six black-and-whites, fathered by the ever-madly-in-love Pepé le Pew from the looks of things. Turned out that the handyman’s wife thought Miss Kitty was a stray and had been feeding her and her brood for some time.
Ruthie had just returned from taking Jason to visit Spike. Jason was in his first week of venturing out of the house. Spike was in his second week of doggie boot camp. “Finally,” she sighed gustily on relating the news. She then waved the brochure in her hand. “I just picked up some tickets in the mail. My old travel agency sends things sometimes, perks for filling in as a tour guide.” She placed the tickets in my hand, closed my fingers around them, and patted my fist. “I’m grateful for all you’ve done.”
I read the brochure holding the tickets. Attend the wondrous Bodies exhibit. Bodies will change the way you view yourself forever.
“Thanks, Ruthie,” I said, hoping my lack of enthusiasm hadn’t showed.
The tickets had to be used by tomorrow, a Monday. Since Harry had to work and he’d have no interest, anyway, I took Wolf, decked out in his freshly cleaned sailor suit.
So, with my hand hooked to the back of the metal brace that held him on his wheelie-stand, I steered him among twenty-one male and female cadavers enhanced by a variety of vivid colors. Most of the departed had been stripped of their skins, some of them were sliced into halves and thirds, all of them had their insides exposed. Warm bulbs poured flattering illumination on the bodies displayed atop pedestals and arranged in varying poses.
The sights thrilled me. My appreciation for the human body soared. The corpses were from China. According to rumor, in life they had been prisoners, who allegedly died of natural causes, yet had no say in the disposal of their remains. For the bodies to have been positioned like figures caught up in athletic-type motions, they had to undergo some fairly rough handling. However this had been managed, the stink and decay was halted through a polymer preservation process. It’s like they were dipped in epoxy resin.
Wolf and I began exploring the several organs on display. Yet it was amid the exposed hearts, livers, and kidneys that my steps slowed as a part of me felt suddenly foolish for bringing a dummy to a very human exhibit, an exhibit that celebrated the complexity of my species, the fantastic end product of human evolution. Only out of habit, I experienced a fleeting notion of a manny expo, hardly as fascinating as a human body expo.
Then I saw the little girl I’d noticed earlier who was captivated by all the genitalia on display. She turned her attention to Wolf, giggling at him like he was an oversized toy.
“Are you a sailor?” she asked.
“Yes, he is,” I answered.
“Do you live on a big ship?” she further asked.
“Yes, on The Flying Dutchman.” I was about to explain that it was a ghost ship with a crew made up of dead people when my earlier foolish feeling resurfaced. With jarring realization, I got an objective look at myself and it wasn’t flattering.
The mother and child pair stared at my manny, compelling me to also turn to Wolf, and similarly view him as he was, a dummy, of which I had endowed with human privileges. I hoped by bringing my manny here that I didn’t appear disrespectful because I had nothing but respect for those who had once lived and now appeared as works of art.
It was at that moment that I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
Outside, in winter’s brisk air, I took in the tiny lights that twinkled in the bare trees and the colorful wreaths that decorated the lampposts. It felt good to get away from death, especially in a form that polymer chemistry had caused to never end.
On the drive home, I joine
d in on the Christmas songs coming from the radio. In a festive mood, I had the urge for eggnog spiked with rum, so I purchased the fixings before heading for Whitehall.
Back in the car, I used the cell to call Harry and tell him I’d be home soon. I’d been to the ballet and stopped to pick up a little holiday cheer. I felt heady and glad to be alive.
By a blaze in the fireplace, I sat on the sofa, sipping rum-laced eggnog and telling Harry about the Bodies exhibit. I then cast Wolf a proprietary glance. “What do you think of a manny exhibit, call it Mannyland?”
“A Mannyland,” Harry said. “Let’s explore that. We’ll start with a stick of dynamite and a blasting cap.”
“I was just testing.” I heaved the sigh of acceptance that follows a lengthy denial. “Don’t think people will go for it, huh?”
“Not a chance, especially now that I’ve heard back from Collidi, Italy.”
That got my attention. Despite feeling woozy from my third glass of eggnog, I put it together. “So that accounts for the travel book from the Dummies Press.”
He explained that he’d found the town on a map and wrote to its chamber of commerce. He told them about my chance encounter with Mr. Gippo and about the manny’s damaged eyes. He requested that they forward the letter to the appropriate sources.
“Did you know that one of the things Collidi is known for is its association to Pinocchio?”
“No kidding,” I said with counterfeit surprise.
“Something must have gotten lost in the translation.” A sly grin formed on his face. “A couple hours before you got in, a crate arrived UPS.” He strode over to the bedroom’s double doors and swung both wide open. A wooden female-shaped manikin about the size of Wolf lay on my side of the king-size bed. Her burgundy velvet dress, trimmed with ecru-colored lace, had the distinct styling of a bygone era.
“It’s Mrs. Kin,” he said. “Sent special delivery and free of charge. Only cost was a couple hundred for postage due.”
I held up her head, staring in disbelief. “She looks like me on Botox.”
Her cartoonish face was made up similar to Wolf’s. Her false eyelashes touched her brows, her hair was painted on, and her red lips formed a startled little O. I touched her lacy collar, drew my fingers between her hard breasts, and let them settle on her sensible shoes, glistening black Mary Janes, also painted on.
“She’s beautiful.”
After standing overwhelmed for several more minutes, I asked, “But who ordered her?”
In unison, our heads swiveled back toward the living room, to Wolf in the recliner, facing the TV.
Perhaps in part from the spiked eggnog, we burst out laughing and didn’t stop until we nearly collapsed, exhausted.
Later that night, Harry lifted Wolf off the recliner and laid him beside the missus in the bed. We slept under a down quilt on the living-room floor.
Returning to Sender
It was early December, and about to start snowing outside, when Harry and I pasted four large RETURN TO SENDER labels under the addresses scrawled in Italian on the front and back of both secured crates. We loaded our cargo in the red pickup truck borrowed from the handyman and drove to a shipping company down on the docks.
“Anchors aweigh,” Harry said, turning the crates over to the shipping clerk.
In silence, I wished the couple bon voyage. I hoped they’d have a safe journey and arrive at their destination intact.
Shortly afterward, we bought two steaming coffees and two hotdogs from a vender at an outdoor stand. At a safe distance from the breaking waves, we strolled along the windy shore as we ate; my manny still on my mind.
“I’m curious,” I said, matter-of-factly. “Why did you put up with my manny eccentricities?”
“The manny made you feel less lonely. You aspired to new goals and dreams, as zany as they were.”
It saddened me that I no longer felt direction in my life, as separate from my husband’s, at least one that hadn’t yet risen to my frontals.
“Okay. That’s why I put up with him. What’s your excuse?”
Harry took a moment before saying, “I couldn’t figure what Wolf had that I didn’t. Here I was, trumped by a dummy. A stud, I might have understood. The charade was okay as long as Wolf was just your little wooden buddy. The thought of a manikin becoming your provider, bringing home a paycheck, well, that got to be too much.”
“The takeover,” I mumbled. “The takeover that never was.”
Harry chewed a bite of his hotdog. “He couldn’t get in my skin, but he did a damned good job at filling my neglected role. Watching him, I got a good look at myself. He was dumb, but I was dense.”
I nodded my head in agreement. “Still, plenty penetrated your thick hide. You went along with the gag. That proves you’re a flexible guy.”
“I was anatomically complete, but the manny had the right stuff. The stuff you wanted to see in him, the stuff I lacked.” Harry drew in a breath and gazed skyward. “You favoring a blockhead really hit the mark.”
I watched Harry take a chunk of his hotdog bun and hurl it toward a seagull wheeling overhead. “I’ll miss him, I mean, my projections of him. We had some silly times. In some ways, it was almost like having a kid of our own, a pretend kid.” The seagull caught the bread and flapped away, squealing to ward off other feathered competitors.
“So why not have a kid of our own?” Harry asked.
“Having a baby…I don’t know. It’s a big decision.”
“Considering the care you took of the manny, I’d say you’d make a great mother.”
“Can’t compare the two,” I said, before launching into what we could expect. To conceive at my age, we’d have to pay strict attention to the three weird sisters of fertility: menstruation, ovulation, and basal-body temperature. After that hurdle, there are lots more. With pregnancy came morning sicknesses, food cravings, and severe backaches. Should the birth and its attendant risks turn out well for both mother and child, we’d be looking at an endless round of wet nursing, bottle feeding, and diaper changing at least until potty training sets in. For the sake of planning, we’d need to couple this with teething, crawling, walking, and talking. And for me, a possible bout of postpartum depression brought on by screwed-up hormones and sleep deprivation from being up with a cranky baby night after night. Besides a crib, playpen, and stroller, we’d have to get a bouncy swing, a high chair, and a car seat, several of them as the child grows. Our once little less-than-neat home will become all the more cluttered; this time with sippy cups, happy face stickers, noisy toys, and sticky messes in every nook and cranny. Then there’s medical and dental care, healthy nutrition, clothes, oh, and school supplies, laptops, cell phone, boom box…
“It’s expensive,” I said in conclusion.
“Sounds like there’s not much to recommend it,” Harry said, looking glum.
“That’s just the beginning,” I again began on a negative note. “So our growing adolescent survives the turbulent years of beer bashes and pubescent sex. He or she makes it through high school and college unscathed. Our kid is finally an adult, off on his or her own, starting a career and pursuing a love interest. Then we’re set, empty nesters. But before you know it, our kid’s back, maybe even with a spouse and a few kids.”
Harry broke another hunk off his hotdog bun and flung it upward. Another hungry seagull caught it mid flight.
“Billions have survived it.”
I gazed beyond the ocean and toward the horizon, recalling that one of the more crackpot functions for my manny was to help curb overpopulation and its associated ills. “If only there were more people like Mr. Gippo.” His magical character alone renewed me with a sense of hope. “There is hope, isn’t there Harry?” I said as much to him as to myself.
My hands stuffed in the pockets of my Windbreaker, I resumed our trek on the shore. That’s when my fingertips touched a crumpled piece of paper. I hadn’t worn the Windbreaker since the last time I’d been on the beach, the day after H
arry left for a four-month engagement of naval exercises. I removed the paper, unfolded it, and read the flamboyant script. One Unique Manikin. Made to Order. Thank you, Mr. Gippo.
Mystified, I stared at the writing.
Harry gave me a questioning look.
But I was too dumbstruck to answer, when the wind snatched the paper from my hand. I scrambled after it, grabbing at air, but a wave broke around my knees and the surf foamed higher. Caught in an updraft, the paper spiraled skyward. Then amazingly, one of the seagulls circling overhead, swooped down, snatched it, and carried it out to sea.
“It was just an old receipt,” I said, turning back to Harry.
When we again began walking, I slid my arm around his waist and pulled him closer. “Now, what was it that we were discussing?”
Me and My Manny Page 18