“But it was just a trick,” he says. “It was just spring flowers all folded together and secured with a rubber band.”
“But you thought it was real.”
“No. He made it look real. I mean, the trick was in a book that they had for sale inside.” He tilts his head at me as if he’s trying to see past whatever is blocking his way. “It was the illusion that was magic.”
“But what if there wasn’t a book, and all you had to go on was what you saw? What if you didn’t even know it was a trick? Didn’t know it was an illusion?”
“Ella, I’m not sure what you’re asking.” I can tell that he’s trying to figure it out, but it’s like he’s trying to figure out what I’m saying when I can only speak Russian and he only knows English.
“I guess I’m just asking how you know what’s real.”
“The same way you know everything else,” he says.
“That’s what I was afraid of.” He keeps watching me, but I look up at him and smile. “Want to walk some more?” I ask, and he smiles and takes my hand. Behind us I can hear Winnie the Pooh and Rabbit start up again. Another performance. Another audience. Another show.
Aunt Sara said she would forward anything that came for me, but until today all I’d gotten was something from the alumni association at Vermont College addressed to “The Parents of Eleanor G. McKenzie,” outlining the various ways they could stay involved in “the life of your college freshman.” The letter in the blue envelope is on official Whole Heart Inspired Missionaries (WHIM—as in my parents decided to go halfway around the world on one) stationery and was signed by someone named Judith Reynolds. It outlines the various ways that I, too, can contribute to their organization. For just three dollars and ninety-nine cents a week (less than the cost of a glow-in-the-dark necklace or a pair of mouse ears), I can buy enough food to feed a whole village for a year. Different levels of contributions entitle me to different gifts. For a fifty-dollar contribution I get a WHIM mug. A hundred-dollar contribution would get me a WHIM T-shirt to wear to bed. I wonder as I refold the letter and slip it back into its envelope what gift my contribution of two parents entitles me to.
I feel bad about the way I treated Mark. Half picking fights with him and half asking him questions without real answers. He kissed me again before leaving me to go and meet up with Cassie to get to work on their list. “She’s really eager to get going,” he told me, letting his hand slide down my arm.
“I’ll bet,” I said.
“You aren’t jealous, are you?” He leaned down to give me a kiss on the nose. How cute, the princess is jealous. And something inside me jumped a little, but it wasn’t really jealousy, but more protectiveness. Something about Mark and Cassie together made me think of those inspirational calendars with a lamb sleeping peacefully with a lion.
“Just be careful,” I said, reaching up for his cheek. I knew Cassie was just into Mark for his knowledge of all things Disney. Mark, with his earnest looks, was so trustworthy. I just didn’t want to see Cassie gobble him up. So I let him kiss me again, making myself think about it. Lip, tongue, lip, lip, fingers, cheek, lip, lip. But I couldn’t get past the biology of it, the anatomical description of it. I tried to think about it less, letting myself drift in the kiss, but that didn’t work, either. I just ended up thinking about how damn hot it was even in the shade and how after all that lemonade I needed to get upstairs fast. And it wasn’t because I didn’t like the kissing. I did, but something about it just made me feel like I was holding my breath, waiting for something. Like if I tried hard enough, it could be right, feel right, but there was this little quiet voice that kept saying that it wouldn’t. That no matter how many times we kissed or hugged or touched, it would feel exactly like this.
“Same time tonight?” I asked, more to make him stop kissing me than anything. He nodded and smiled before turning to head over to the other side of the park, where I’m sure Cassie was tapping her foot and staring at her black Timex.
I lean back against my pillow and will myself to take a nap, but I can’t get the image of the magician out of my head. Rabbits tumble out of hats. Flowers grow in thin air. Coins appear behind ears, and cards fly by themselves. There’s a knock on my door, and I push myself to standing.
“Did you get stood up?” I call through the door before opening it to see Luke standing there.
“Stood up by who?” he asks, smiling at me. “Want to get to work on our list?” he asks.
“Only if you answer one question,” I say, turning to push my feet back into my flip-flops.
“Depends on what it is,” he says. I step into the hall and pull my door closed behind me. “Wait,” he says, putting his hand on my arm. “I’ll answer it.”
“Okay,” I say, sliding my sunglasses down over my eyes. “Luke S. Krause, do you believe in magic?”
8
Luke
After a day and a half of searching, we find the drawing of Mickey shaped like a piece of broccoli, and that same afternoon we track down the Bluebeard tomb outside the Haunted Mansion.
“We are kicking ass,” I say. “And the broccoli Mickey is the only vegetable-related thing on the whole list. Unless you count Pinocchio, who’s vegetable, I guess, in the sense of animal, vegetable, or mineral, since he’s made of—”
“Would you hush,” Ella says. “I’m trying to take a picture.” We lean our heads together by the tomb and she holds the camera at arm’s length and clicks it. When we look at the screen, most of my head is cut off.
“Nice job,” I tell her.
“It’s Bluebeard’s memorial,” she says. “Head-cutting-off is appropriate.” We delete that photo and try three more before one finally works.
“Well, that’s two,” I say, scanning our list. I glance at my watch; we only have an hour until we have to be back in costume. “Maybe we should look more tonight, after closing.”
“I think we have dates,” she says. We both sit, shoulder to shoulder, leaning against the tomb. At least it’s in the shade.
“I think we don’t,” I tell her. “Cassie’s feeding Matt intravenous coffee and NoDoz until their list is finished.”
“It’s Mark,” she says. “You do that on purpose.”
“No, he really is forgettable.”
She elbows me. “I think Bluebeard is a little racy for Disney, you know? I mean, what with the serial killing of spouses and all.”
“Yeah, but the colorful beard makes it seem fun. You know, whimsical.”
“Was he even real? Did he exist?” She yanks the list from my hand and looks over it, drawing her finger down the page.
“Matt? No, he was just a bad dream. It’s all okay now.”
She tries not to laugh. “God, you are such an ass. You remind me sometimes—”
She stops like someone has slapped her, the smile vanishing from her face. She looks away for a moment, almost like she is talking to herself.
“Of ?” I say. “Ella, what’s wrong?”
She swallows. “Nothing.” She shakes her head, smiles like someone is holding a gun on her and telling her to smile. “You just remind me of a multitude of other asses I’ve known. It’s hard to choose.” She studies our list like it suddenly contains the secrets of the universe. I watch the side of her face for a minute, wondering what it can be, what’s in there creating a sadness she is scared even to acknowledge.
“Anyway,” I say, “the answer to your question is no.” I click the button on the camera, looking back over the pictures we’ve taken, thinking how much I like seeing us together in them.
“That was the have-you-ever-met-anyone-cooler-than-me question, right?” She stands and holds her hand out to yank me up.
“Not quite,” I say. Her hand might as well be electrified, sending currents and waves all through me.
“Oh, then it was the have-you-conquered-the-bed-wetting-issue question. Thanks for your honesty.” She laughs out loud as she slaps the dirt off the back of her shorts.
“Be g
lad smart-ass isn’t on our list,” I tell her. “Everyone would be coming up to take pictures with you.” We walk off toward Frontierland, where we figure to find “whiskey bottle,” number 127 on the list. We could probably just look under Robin Hood’s bunk, but Frontierland sounds like more fun, with fewer smelly socks.
“Everyone already does take their picture with me, silly,” she says.
“Well, I guess a healthy ego is a good thing.”
“Luke, I’m Cinderella, remember? I’m like photo central.”
I nod. “Yeah, I forget that. Not too many people are clamoring for pics of Dale.” We stop at one of the kiosks, trying to figure out how to get to Frontierland.
“I bet Chip is,” she says. “Naked ones, even. Then she’ll sell them for a profit, invest, and you can both retire at twenty-one.”
I ignore the little dig at Cassie, the way she ignored mine at Mark. Actually, since all of this started, I spend my time with Ella pretty much pretending that Cassie doesn’t exist, but then when I see Cassie, she smiles at me, kisses me, and I feel guilty, like I abandoned her. She pulls me in close to her and whispers that she missed me, and when I really look at her, I realize I missed her, too. Beautiful Cassie. But the weird thing is that it feels like I miss her more when she is standing there holding me than when she is gone all day. So I hold her tighter and close my eyes, smelling her hair, and she will make a little sound in her throat, and I hold on to those things, the little sounds, her smells, thinking they might be enough to fall in love with. Is that how it works for everyone? But all the while some part of me is wondering if I will open my eyes and find her not there at all, my arms embracing nothing.
“Well,” I say to Ella, “all the photos of Dale are naked, since he doesn’t wear any clothes, so I don’t think there’s that big a demand.”
She briefly takes my wrist to tug me down an asphalt path to our left. Electric currents again.
“Yeah, what is up with that?” she says.
“With what?” We move past groups of people, whole families, and I notice how many of them seem just worn-out with too much heat and too much mandatory enjoyment. They always look like they’ve been mugged, forced by vandals to have a nice day.
Ella tugs me again, and for half a second I think I feel her hand linger on my wrist. But no, it’s just me, some kind of wish. And despite what it says on all the information kiosks, wishes don’t always come true.
“Okay,” she says when the crowds thin out a little, “what is the deal with Disney pants? I mean, the most obvious example is Donald Duck. He wears a sailor shirt, so he has some combined sense of fashion and modesty—but no pants? If you had to choose, shirt or pants, what would you leave the house without?”
“I understand your position,” I say, as though we are two philosophers arguing phenomenology, “but you’re missing the larger point—that I’m not a duck. Your question is moot, professor.”
She tries hard not to smile as she continues. “Yes, point taken. But Donald is anthropomorphized to have human, not duck, qualities. I mean, he speaks, he’s married, he has anger issues, and so on.”
We pass through the upward-pointing sharpened logs that indicate a Wild West fort, and suddenly we are in Frontierland, crossing over this little bridge across a pond. In the middle of the bridge, kids are buying food out of a gumball machine to feed to the fish.
“Why would they put a goldfish pond in a fort?” I say.
“Hush, we’re discussing cartoon clothing, remember?”
“Or the lack thereof.”
“Exactly.” She points to a strip of grass that rings the pond, and we settle in beneath the droopy branches of a willow. Crowds are still moving about all around us, but it feels like we are inside something, inside the tree, hidden. And safe, I think.
“Well, think about this,” I say. “Mickey sometimes has pants and no shirt, sometimes a tuxedo, magician’s robe—”
“His closet is full,” she says, settling beside me against the trunk of the tree.
“Exactly,” I say. “But Winnie the Pooh? Same as Donald, shirt and no pants. For most Pooh characters, total nudity—except Christopher Robin, but why not him? He’s no more or less human than the rest.”
“It’s like there are no rules,” she says, nodding.
“And you know what else? Goofy wears pants and shirt and vest and hat, and he’s a dog. Goofy can speak and drive a car; yet Pluto is also a dog, and he wears nothing but a collar and he barks. I mean, my God, it’s chaos.”
“Well, listen,” she says, “you know how we established that Donald spends his life pantless? Then tell me, please, why whenever he gets out of the shower and wraps a towel around his waist, he blushes when it falls down? I mean, it seems like inconsistent blushing to me.”
I start laughing, and she bumps me with her shoulder, cutting her eyes at me.
I bump her back, and she bumps me, and then we stop and she is leaning against me, her brown shoulder pressed against the sleeve of my T-shirt.
“Maybe we should forget the list,” I say. “I mean, we get three hours off and we spend it running around the park? Seems dumb when our job is to run around the park.”
“Yeah.” She picks up a blade of grass and uses it to poke my leg, then tosses it away. She seems suddenly very far off again, like there is some movie playing deep inside her mind and she keeps stopping to watch it. She pulls another blade of grass and shows it to me.
“What?” I say.
“I think it’s the only real thing in the park,” she says. “Nothing else, just this.”
“You’re in the park,” I say, taking the grass from her fingers and using it to tickle her forearm. “I am, too. We’re real.”
“Nah,” she says, shaking her head. “Not even close. We’re a creation of the park. I’m a princess, remember? My life is perfect.”
“You don’t have to work here to play a part, Ella. Most people spend their whole lives doing that. I mean, you were in high school, right? Besides, it’s not all bad, the unreal part.”
“How do you mean?”
I watch the blade of grass move up and down along her arm, watch the goose bumps form under the pale hairs on her skin. “Well, like my reality, for example,” I say. “Like Cass said the other day, big job, big truck, big money. I’m all set.”
“And?”
“And that life seems as unreal to me as this place. It’s the same as this place, you know? Spend your life in a costume saying what you’re supposed to say.”
“So what’s real, then?”
I look at her, and her green eyes are looking right back at me. Really looking, like she is searching for something in my eyes, in my face.
“The thing you haven’t imagined yet. The thing that’s out there, that you have to go look for. The problem with this place . . . someone tried to package a dream so they could sell it. As soon as you package it, then it stops being a dream.”
“So how does that figure into your life, all that stuff with your dad?”
I shrug, putting the blade of grass into her open hand. “You asked me if I believe in magic, and I said yes, and that’s how. You just step out, start pulling your life out of the air. You make friends, you find work you really like doing, you find places. You find diners and Laundromats. You find beaches. You find a junk car and drive it for a month, then leave it beside the road. You find someone to fall in love with you. You make it all up as you go. Or, you know, maybe it makes you up.”
“But what about your dad?” She looks suddenly like she can barely breathe. “Luke, what about what was supposed to happen?” As she says it her eyes rim up with tears.
“Ella, if it’s magic, then nothing is supposed to happen. And everything is. You can’t pick and choose. My dad chose for me, and it’s like some trick where you can see the wires and the mirrors and the hole cut in the floor. You know it’s fake all along.”
She nods. “Yeah, but what if you find something you really love, and it disapp
ears? That’s magic, too, right?”
“Yeah, I think so. If you want the real magic, you take your chances. If you want the fake kind, stay here and smile at everything.”
She looks out through the branches of our tree, out at Frontierland, where right now Davy Crockett and Pinocchio are sitting on a bench in the sun sharing a hot dog. It’s a funny sight, and she does smile, the movement of her mouth making her eyes finally spill over. Her tears land on the pale skin of her forearm, rolling down toward the blade of grass, which curls in the middle of her palm.
After dinner Cassie finds me in the bathroom we all share, standing in front of the mirror in shorts and T-shirt drying my hair. One thing about this job, you end up taking about five showers a day.
“You missed dinner,” I say. “And you can guess what Mr. Forrester is going to say about Blank and Dale. I think you need to be there.”
“So, how’d you guys do today?” She stands behind me and slips her hand around me, up under my shirt.
“We got two. And I mean it, Cass. I felt kinda stupid out there dancing with myself.”
“Is that what they call it now, Billy Idol?”
“Cass . . .”
“Okay, Mr. Bossy, calm down.” She plants a row of tiny kisses along the back of my neck. “Wait,” she says, pulling back a bit. “You got two? Like, two columns, you mean, right?”
“No. Two as in two. Two things. But they were really good ones. We’re going for quality over quantity.”
She smiles at me in the mirror, over my shoulder, her hair down and falling across her eyes. But I can see something else in her face, too, something sharp.
“You are sooo lame, baby,” she whispers in my ear, then briefly bites my earlobe. “Ask me how many we found.”
“How many?” I ask as her hand travels up the middle of my chest.
“A hundred and twelve. It’s amazing. I mean, I have the organization, like what order to move around in, and Mark . . . well, what’s there to say? It’s like touring the forest with a squirrel.”
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