Doll Hearts

by Colleen Clayton

  It sounds demented but it makes me feel connected to her somehow. Makes me feel like she’s not alone and is okay at the moment. I feel like I could be at my house this very minute, in my room listening to the sounds of her TV below me. I relax my head and make my eyelids into slits that block out the immediate surroundings of Dana’s apartment. Through blurry eyelash curtains, I watch the Wonder Gadget hostess, Nicole, putting carrot after carrot into the noisy contraption. Nicole’s energetic pitch for TurboScrape, the “next big thing in culinary convenience,” combines with the buzz of the machine and forms this familiar sort of home shopping lullaby. Its so oddly soothing that I’m asleep within seconds.

  11.

  It’s my second week at Cedar Point and I won’t get a paycheck for another week. I’m anxious about how much it will end up being. Dana was not even joking when she said you have to be “quick to the trigger” with picking up extra shifts. I’ve been checking the online portal regularly but have only been able to pick up three extra hours. I try to keep in mind that whatever lucky sweep is out there snatching up the extra hours might have eight hungry siblings at home. Still, it’s hard for me not to get irritated when I see a green, hopeful “Sweep Hours Available” sitting on my screen only to have it replaced within one mouse-click by a red, disappointing “Vacancy Filled.” At least I haven’t been late or lost any hours.

  While I’ve been good at making the last ferry, I’m going to stay at Dana’s again because it’s employee ride night. Ride night is when the park stays open an extra three hours and the office staff runs a few of the roller coasters so that the employees can have the park to themselves. It’s like a big party; they’re going to feed us and play music in the pavilions. I’ll have to hang around the park by myself for a few hours until the park closes, though. And then Dana can’t ride with me because she’s been assigned to run Gemini, a twin-track wooden roller coaster. Brandon is working, too. He’s scheduled to draw employee portraits during the party. Dana has been stalking his schedule and giving me full reports so I’m going to make a point to bump into him at the party.

  I’m just over my break, its three o’clock, and I’m sweeping up some garbage near the game booths. While sharing some friendly chitchat with Ring Toss Nita, I look over by the coin fountain and see a little boy sitting on the ground crying. He looks about five, and his brother, who looks a few years older, is kneeling next to him, trying to help him up. I scan the people passing by but don’t see any adults or parental types coming to their aid. The older boy tries to haul the little one up by the armpits, but the little one screams and his face contorts. He’s hurt and something is definitely wrong.

  I drop my broom and dustpan and hurry over to them. The little boy’s arm is twisted the complete wrong way and he’s soaking wet.

  “Oh! Um…uh…,” I say, trying to touch him without actually touching him.

  “He fell! It was an accident!” the older one says. “He climbed in the fountain, he was hot and thought it was a pool, and when I tried to get him out, we slipped and he fell.”

  “His arm, oh…oh…,” I say and looking at it makes me want to cover my eyes and run. But both kids are watching me, watching my face, and the more upset I get the more the little one howls and the more the older one looks like he’s going to burst into tears, too.

  “Okay, don’t worry. You’ll be fine. Just fine,” I say in the soothing voice that I use when handling Lolo. As gently as I can, I lift the little one from the hot cement and walk to the nearest bench to sit him on my lap.

  “Okay, now don’t move. Just stay really still. I’m going to call for help, okay?”

  I pull out my walkie-talkie and call the office to send for the park ambulance. They’ve already heard about the accident from Ring Toss Nita who’s been watching from her booth. They tell me to sit tight, that they will only be a minute or two.

  “What’re your names?” I ask, looking back and forth between the boys.

  “That’s Joel,” the older one says, standing next me, pointing to his brother, “I’m Sam.”

  The little one starts crying louder. His sobs are seriously breaking my heart. He’s in excruciating pain.

  “I’m Julianne,” I say, stroking Joel’s hair, trying to look anywhere but down at this kid’s twisted arm. He holds his arm into himself and shakes. At least there’s no blood. I try to think of a distracting question so I can kill some time until the ambulance arrives.

  “So did you get to ride any of the rides, Joel? The kiddy cars?”

  “Am I in trouble?” Sam blurts out, interrupting.

  “What, no! You’re not in trouble!” I say, looking from Joel to him. “But where are your parents?”

  “They went to ride the GateKeeper. They said they’d be right back. I was in charge. We weren’t supposed to leave the arcade but I thought it would be okay to just go over and ride the carousel real quick. It has other animals besides horses. But then Joel ran into the fountain before I could stop him.”

  His face grows more distressed.

  I can’t believe what I’m hearing. GateKeeper, on a nice day like today, is a minimum ninety minute wait.

  “It’s not your fault. Honest, it’s not,” I say. “This could happen to anyone. Kids fall down and get hurt, it just happens. How old are you guys?”

  “I’m eight. Joel is four.”

  Someone left an eight and four-year-old alone at an amusement park? What kind of parent does that? I knew they were young but hearing it out loud knocks me back a little. I try not to show it though. The sound of the park ambulance picks up in the distance.

  “You hear that siren?” I whisper into Joel’s ear, “That’s the doctors coming. They’re going to put you into a really awesome van and take you somewhere to make you all better.”

  I stroke his sweaty hair and cheeks with my fingertips. He’s a cute, chunky little thing.

  He stops crying, hiccups, and looks at me.

  “I like the tiger,” he says, sniffing, his face all sweaty and filled with tears. “It’s faster than the horses.”

  “I like the tiger, too,” I say. “He’s totally the fastest.”

  The ambulance pulls up and I hand him over to the paramedics who put him on a little red surfboard thing and wrap some padding around his arm. As they strap him onto a gurney. I tell them what Joel told me. The paramedics don’t want to separate the boys so they try to escort Sam into the back of the ambulance, too. He grabs onto me and starts screaming. Both the boys start screaming.

  “She has to come with us!” Sam yells. “She has to come!”

  The female paramedic looks at me. She’s about thirty and has that “mom” look about her.

  “Looks like you’re going for a ride,” she says.

  When we get back to the First Aid station, which is located in the same building as the employee offices, the regular hospital ambulance comes to pick up the boys, along with two police officers, a male and female. I can’t go with them to the real hospital in town but the female officer seems to have won their affections over with free Snoopy dolls and a cheap handheld video game.

  The rest of the park has gone bonkers trying to track the parents down. Dana has heard the news and comes over from her side of the building to see what’s going on. It’s only after the real ambulance has left with the boys that a sunburned couple comes stumbling into the First Aid Station.

  “Where’s my boys!” the lady yells. Her face and shoulders are red and blistered and she’s got a serious case of the crazy eyes. There’s a red stain down the front of her tank top where she’s spilled something on herself. The guy is a mess, too. They are both completely plastered. The stench of alcohol fills the room.

  “Ma’am, Sir,” the first officer says, “We’ll need to see some identification.”

  “But my boys! You took my boybies! They got lossht and you took them!” she says, whining and slurring her words.

  Her next sentences don’t even make sense. I’m getting more and more
upset by the second, listening to this woman carry on about her babies while the husband, or boyfriend, or whoever he is, stands behind her, using every bit of his concentration and energy to remain upright. He’s got his feet rooted firmly to the floor while the rest of him sways like drunken sea kelp. He doesn’t even know what’s going on because his gaze is one hundred percent focused on a random spot on the floor.

  “They got lost, I turned around and they were gone!” the woman yells. “And Sam fell off one of yer shhtupid rides, so I heard. I should sue you! My cousin’s a lawyerrr, I’m gonna—”

  “Oh, what a box of crap!” I yell.

  Dana whips around and looks at me, her eyes flung open like two exploding stars but I don’t care. This lady is a terrible person and she’s lying. I want to punch her face and tell her that she’s missing out on everything good about being a mother. Even though Drunk Mom is a more dangerous type of animal, she reminds me of Christine. She’s wired with the same innate soul-sucking selfishness. Want, want, want, fill, fill, fill, more, more, more. All id, Drunk Mom and Christine. Poor me 24/7.

  “I know what you did!” I say. “You walked around and thought about yourself all day!’

  And I’m starting to get teary-eyed, my voice shaky. I look at the cop.

  “She dumped them off at the arcade so she could get drunk and ride roller coasters.”

  “I did not dump my kids!” she says. “They wandered off!” Her eyes flare up as she walks closer to me, her fists clenched.

  The two officers step in between us.

  “Ma’am, Sir,” the one says to them. “I need to see your ID’s. Now.”

  Dana grabs me by the arm and drags me out of the First Aid Station and back toward the Human Resources offices.

  “She dumped them!” I say.

  We’re sitting at Dana’s desk outside Alberta the Hun’s office.

  “I know, it’s terrible,” Dana says, handing me another tissue.

  “People do it every season,” she says. “They drop their kid-baggage off at the arcade, or the Peanuts show, or the Splash Zone baby pool and just take off. It’s like, why even bring your kids in the first place? Get a freaking sitter, already.”

  “I know, right?” I say, blowing and wiping.

  Alberta comes storming into the reception lobby from down the hall.

  “I heard what happened,” she says, towering over me with her hands on her hips.

  I can only nod. My voice box is paralyzed. Alberta smirks and hands me a slip of paper.

  My eyes squeeze shut all by themselves when I take it from her because I know what a “slip of paper” means. It means I’m canned. Just like after my tragic, three-hour stint at Burger Boy.

  In my mind, an image of my dismal, falling apart, soon-to-be foreclosed house takes shape. It sits amongst tall weeds in the gray rain, listing to one side, and sinking into the soggy ground. A single crow lands on a partially caved-in roof. Caw! Caw! it says.

  “It’s a meal voucher,” Alberta says, “Twenty-five bucks. You can use it at all the indoor dining places at the park. We give them out whenever an employee goes above and beyond. Get yourself a nice dinner.”

  I look at the voucher.

  Then I look back up at Alberta.

  Then I look over at Dana who smiles at me really wide.

  Dining alone is something I wish I could do without feeling uncomfortable. I’m sitting alone at a restaurant in one of the park’s beachside resorts. My loaded potato skins and Reuben have been ordered so I call my mom and leave her yet another message. This is the third message I’ve left her today. Over the last week, I’ve left a dozen at least.

  I feel bad about how ugly we left it. I didn’t even hug her goodbye. I just stormed past her while she sat at the picnic table, despondent and crying, stroking the treasures she’d saved from the clutches of Billy the Junk Detective. My barrage of accusatory voice messages have surely not helped in lifting her out of the despair. The longer I go without hearing from her, the more worried I get. What if she’s done something rash? If I don’t hear from her by the end of today, I’m sending Lindsey over to check on her. I’ll be embarrassed about Lindsey seeing my house but I’d rather consider that particular scenario than the other, more gruesome ones that keep popping into my brain. I shake my head like a mental etch-a-sketch but the images of my mom lying open-eyed and motionless in her recliner start redrawing themselves. My phone rings which startles me. It’s a number I don’t recognize.

  “Hello?” I say, picking up.

  “J-bear?”

  It’s her!

  A wave of relief washes through me. My eyes well up and the gruesome residual images disappear. The sound of my mom’s voice saying my name is like hearing a person come back from the dead. All at once, I feel badly about putting her into the same category as Drunk Mom. Christine is self-involved and void of emotion a lot of the time but she was never dangerous or mean. Drunk Mom was mean. There was a cruelty there, you could see it.

  “Mom!” I say, my voice catching. I press a finger to my ear because it’s crowded and noisy in here. “What’s going on? Are you okay? Why haven’t you called?”

  “I’ve been busy working on the house!” she says, chirpily.

  My heart bounces with hope.

  “How’s it coming along?” I say. “Are you getting rid of stuff?”

  “You know, I’m really getting some stuff accomplished,” she says. “Mr. Phelps is having a fit about the Dumpster, though. He went to the city about it. I have thirty days to get rid of it.”

  “Mr. Phelps is a pervy lurker who has nothing better to do than stare into our yard from his bedroom window,” I say. “But, listen, the mess, the clutter, that comes second now. We need to talk about the mortgage. That is the bigger problem, now. I’ve been trying to fix it by phone but you HAVE to go into the bank. Like today! Do you understand what’s happening? How serious this is?”

  “I’m working on it,” she says, “I’ve made an appointment with a credit counselor. It’s this free government service where you can get help with finances and straightening out your FICA score and that sort of thing.”

  “FICA score? What the…no, that’s not…no, you have to go into the bank. You have to—,”

  “—Honey, I’m kind of running out of minutes on this phone so I can’t really talk long. It’s one of those throwaway burner phones. My old cell—I dropped it in the mall at Penney’s, I think. I just wanted to pop in and tell you not to worry. How are you? You enjoying your new job?”

  “Yeah, it’s a real blast. Mom, the bank, they’re going to—,”

  “That’s great,” she says, interrupting me. “I’m so proud of you, J-bear! But seriously, I have to run, this phone is about to croak on me. Take care of yourself, okay?”

  “Mom, wait, no! We need to talk about—,”

  But we’re cut off and I don’t get to finish saying: Our impending homelessness. The spark of hope and relief that I felt for a few moments sputters out and then reignites into an angry flame. Are you flipping kidding me?

  I shove my phone back into my bag and then look around at all the families sitting together, at the mothers tending to their children. My food comes and it is the hugest portions ever. I know I should be careful and think about things, keep track, count, dose, wait, and all of that crap but I’m freaking pissed-off and hunnngry so I do what I’m not supposed to, I dig in with wild abandon. While I eat, I text with Dana to foster the illusion of having company.

  How’s Alberta? Rampaging on anyone?

  She just microwaved cabbage rolls. The whole place stinks.

  Gross.

  Omg she just belched in her office. Alberta = HAWWWG!

  This makes me crack a little smile. Dana’s really funny. When I go home after summer, I’m definitely keeping in touch with her. I finish off the salad and bread rolls that came with my meal and then ask for another iced tea. When I’m done I feel stuffed and guilty. I’ve eaten enough for two people. I’m going
to pay dearly for this later.

  On the way out of the restaurant, my phone rings again. I pull it out, hoping it’s my mom again, but it’s not. It’s Lindsey.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Sucka!” she says, “I’m on break. They’ve shut things down for the time being because some kid fell and busted his arm.”

  “Oh, my god, that happened to me too!” I say, and we compare stories while I walk back to work. A little ways into my trek back to zone one, I start getting winded and there are so many people walking behind and around me that I just pull over and stand in the shadow of a giant vertical drop ride called Top Thrill Dragster. The ride is shaped like a very tall, narrow horseshoe and I plan never, ever to go on it.

  “Sounds like people are being slaughtered over there,” Lindsey says.

  I look up at the cars on the roller coaster as they shoot into the air, hover on the little bump for a split second, and then plummet straight back down again, twirling, twirling, the passengers screaming in terror.

  “No,” I say. “They’re all having simultaneous heart attacks.”

  She laughs and it sounds nice. Lindsey has a great laugh.

  “I’m coming home for a visit on my next day off. Whenever that is. Maybe next week, I don’t know. They haven’t put up schedules. Would your parents mind if I crash?”

  “No, they won’t mind,” she says. “Did you get a hold of your mom? What’s happening on that front?”

  I tell her about the phone call with my mom. How she’s being a dodgy little shit with me. How I called the bank and they shut me down when they realized I was an imposter. She tells me that she kind of snooped around her dad’s office and asked him a few questions but that she didn’t get anywhere productive with it.

  “I think you’re going to have a hard go of it, Jules,” she says. “If she’s not willing to do the adult parts, like sitting down with the bank and cutting her spending and getting a job? If she doesn’t do those things, I don’t know how it’s going to work. You’re kind of screwed don’t you think?”