“Go back to the office!” Dad said, his voice becoming a yell.
I considered standing my ground. But I was afraid he would yell louder and louder until I left.
So I turned and walked away, feeling Winnie’s gaze on me but trying not to look rattled.
* * *
• • •
I sprawled on the office couch and texted Jason.
Dad just blew up at me. This doughnut thing is getting to him.
Jason didn’t write back. I kept typing anyway.
I think Dad thinks Winnie is more competent than both of us, I typed, and set the phone on my stomach while I closed my eyes.
A couple of minutes later, my phone buzzed.
Winnie Malloy?
Do we know any other Winnies? I was typing furiously now, encouraged by his unexpected response. Yes, Winnie the queen of the carousel. Mistress of the fried dough.
Jason came right back with: Dad just doesn’t want you to get any grease burns. And he knows how much you like the cotton candy machine. Do you really care about any of this? Next year you’ll be headed to college. And if you’re smart, you’ll find a summer job somewhere else, like me.
I couldn’t help rolling my eyes before typing, Don’t you ever feel bad that you turn your nose up at Fabuland, when it’s paying for your fancy college?
Jason’s reply was immediate: I’m not turning my nose up.
Yes you are, I shot back.
After a minute or two, Jason’s response appeared.
Fine, maybe a little. But what I want to know is why Winnie just came up again. Did you hear something about her? Did she say something to you?
Something like what? I typed.
No reply. A sharp tweeeeet sounded from outside. I sat up and glanced out the window. A lifeguard named Jayna was on duty at the waterslides. She was standing and waving her arms at someone. Then she sat down and spat the whistle casually out of her mouth.
I decided to call Jason. And he actually picked up.
“Hey,” he said. “I only have a few minutes. Did it have something to do with Winnie, when you said that thing about being his daughter?”
Well, that was an interesting theory. Did Jason think I felt like an inadequate daughter in Winnie’s cool and competent presence? Did he feel the same way when he was with Dad and Chris? I decided not to ask. Instead, I watched Jayna for a moment. She took a drink from a water bottle, then folded her hands behind her head.
“Not really,” I said.
“Oh. Okay.” Jason sounded tired. “Then why are we talking again?”
“Let’s talk about the Yo-Yo,” I offered. “So, it used to be a different color?”
“Yeah.” Jason paused for a moment. “We painted the two rides at the end of last summer. Tim Malloy and Ben the Rotor Lord painted the Scream. I painted the Yo-Yo.”
“Even the parts way up high?”
“Even those.”
“All by yourself?”
“Yeah. I mean, Tim helped me get the cherry picker in the right position. But I was the only person doing the actual painting.”
“Huh,” I said, grateful I’d never been given such a task.
Score one for Jason. Score one for the son having it harder than the daughter. Even if Jason wasn’t afraid of heights like me.
“Who decided those would be the rides that would go?”
“Dad and Chris.”
“Why paint them?” I asked.
“Dad said, We want to make them look snazzy. He said it was customary to tidy up the ride before selling it.”
“Ivy?”
I jumped. Dad was in the doorway.
“I wanted to talk to you, honey,” he said. “Now that we’ve had a little while to cool off.”
“I’ve gotta go, sorry,” I muttered into the phone, ending the call. I sat up straighter, crossing my feet.
“Ivy. I want to clarify something.” Dad sat at his desk, leaning back in the swivel chair just slightly.
“Yeah?”
“I wish you hadn’t snooped like that.” He made a clucking noise and shook his head. “It’s really disrespectful, like I was saying. And I like to think you’re a respectful person.”
“Uh-huh.”
I liked to think so too.
“But I’m going to give you an explanation.” Dad opened a desk drawer and took out a package of peanuts. “I’m not sure you deserve one, but since you’re my right-hand woman, you’re going to get one.”
Dad opened the bag and threw a handful of peanuts in his mouth.
“Okay,” I said, trying not to let my mind linger too much on the word woman.
“Reggie has been struggling,” Dad said. “I don’t know if you heard about what happened last night, but he was struggling before that. I can’t say that I’m surprised, although I am deeply sorry.”
“Struggling…how?” I asked. I hoped it wasn’t a stupid question.
“He was…you know…upset.” Another handful of peanuts. “He’s been struggling since Ethan died. Like, grieving. Depressed. He hasn’t been up for working. But I feel for the kid, you know? So I told him to take as much time as he needed. With pay.”
I stared at my dad. He licked salt off a couple of his fingertips.
“With pay?” I repeated.
“Yes, hon.” Dad peered into the snack pack and picked out what I had to assume was a particularly choice-looking peanut. “There are things you don’t know about being a boss, Ivy. When you manage people, sometimes you make a judgment call, things like that. Quietly. Without making a thing of it. Like I’m doing for Chris. I’m giving him a few weeks to himself with pay. Then we’ll see where we are.”
I sat up straighter. “What’s going on with Chris, Dad?”
Dad tipped his head back and poured several peanuts into it. “His wife. She’s got cancer.”
“What? Why didn’t you tell me? What kind of cancer? Is she going to be okay?”
“I hope so. We all hope so.” Dad chewed the peanuts heartily. “Uh, it’s colon cancer, I think. Or…no. Cervical? One of those. It began with C, anyway. Either way, at least they caught it pretty early. But she’s in the hospital right now.”
“But…” I studied Dad’s shiny red peanut package, finding its presence during this conversation particularly distracting. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“Because you’re not the boss, Ivy. Remember? I am.”
I thought about all this. It wasn’t surprising, really. Dad gave money to lots of different people for different reasons. There was Ethan’s family and his funeral expenses, of course. And a year ago, he had helped a local family fund reconstruction of part of their house to accommodate a wheelchair ramp, an extra bathroom, and living space for their son—once a Doughnut Dynasty employee, years before—who’d been in a car accident that had left him partially paralyzed. And then there were all Dad’s donations to the Boy Scouts and the Special Olympics.
This was a little different, though. There were no newspaper articles or special plaques he’d be getting for helping Reggie Wiggins or Poor Chris.
“That’s nice of you,” I murmured. And it was. I wished my dad showed more of this side of himself to other people. The little hidden kindnesses that I knew so well.
“You want some peanuts, honey?”
“No thanks.”
My father tipped backward in his chair and studied me. “You’re so much like me, Ivy. I mean, I’ve always known that. But I can really see it right here, right now.”
I looked down at my old jean shorts and pink T-shirt with the collar cut off. I couldn’t remember if I had brushed my hair this morning. Feeling weird about both of these things, I stared at my sandals, hoping he’d look away.
“I’d have done the same thing, in your position,” Dad
continued. “You see a text like that, you start to wonder. You don’t take bullshit from anyone.”
I didn’t look up but tried to smile.
“Well…why would I?” I murmured.
Dad laughed. “Exactly. Did I tell you about the time we had a spy come into one of our sprinkle parties at the Goffsbridge shop?”
“No,” I replied, holding in a sigh.
“Oh. Well, it was quite a few years back. See, there was this young man at one of the kids’ parties. And I saw him taking pictures on his phone. There was just something about him…didn’t feel like he belonged there. I went up to the mom of the birthday girl, and I said, Do you know this guy? Did you invite him? And the mom says no. So I confront the guy, and he tells me that he’s got a daughter who would love a party like this, so he came in to take a couple of pictures to show his wife. Now, the guy doesn’t have a wedding ring on. So his wife? Come on. The guy was a squirt, he didn’t seem old enough to have a kid. I chased him into the back parking lot and told him to get lost. I gave him a quick punch in the gut to show him I meant it. And he hobbled off to his car. I’m pretty sure he was from Snowy’s Ice Cream Shop, because lo and behold, a month or two later, they were having ‘build-a-sundae’ parties that bore a suspicious resemblance to my sprinkle parties. Not as good, but the same idea.”
“I don’t know, Dad. He might not have been a spy. He could’ve been some kind of a…” I hesitated. “Kind of like a perv.”
The word felt weird on my lips. Especially in front of Dad. We didn’t talk about stuff like that generally.
“Well, sure,” Dad offered. “But either way, the point is I can always sniff out when someone thinks they can put something over on me. And I think you can too. I think you get that from me.”
“Well, I never heard that story before,” I lied. He’d told it to me a few times over the years, but he sometimes got mad when you pointed out that he’d repeated himself.
“Now you know, honey. And you know what else I like about you? Not just that you don’t take any bullshit from anyone. That’s not the only thing.”
I didn’t reply. It would seem a little egotistical, a little leading, to say What else? like I did when I was a kid.
“You’ve got good survival instincts.”
“You think so?” He’d never said that before.
“Don’t think I’ve never noticed that you hardly ever go on the rides.”
“Yeah, well…”
“Instincts.” He pointed to his head. “Survival over thrills.”
“I just don’t find the rides thrilling. It has nothing to do with survival.”
“Sure, honey. You might look at it that way. But I’ve known you since the day you were born, and you know how to take care of yourself.”
He didn’t wait for a reply. He tossed the empty peanut package in his desk drawer and got up. “I guess I’d better get back to that dough ball.”
“You guys just frying the one?”
“For now. If it goes well, we’ll fry a whole bunch more this afternoon and do a full practice-run doughnut after closing tonight.”
“Sounds exciting,” I said.
“It is, Ivy. I’m glad you said that. Look. If you’ve tended to the press contacts, you can probably go back to cotton candy.”
“You sure you don’t want help with the big doughnut?” I asked.
“I don’t want you to get hurt. You can help us when the real one rolls around. Ha! Get it?”
“Naturally,” I said.
“Good deal.” Dad grinned, and then I turned toward the stairs.
TWENTY-TWO
The Rotor was in full spin when I walked by it. Ben was watching the riders from his little perch above it all. I stepped up there with him, keeping a few feet between us but watching alongside him for a couple of minutes. I wondered what it was like to see this all day, every day—people swirling around and around in a big tin can.
An older man was hooting wildly inside the cylinder.
A girl was yelling, “Hold on to your pancakes!” and giggling.
That’s one thing I’ve always liked about the ride—people are more often laughing than screaming.
“I’ve got a wedgie!” some kid yelled.
Ben turned to me. “Almost every day, someone announces the status of their underwear.”
Then he said into the microphone, “For those of you with your knees up, please lower them now. Lower them, so as I slow the ride, you can slide more easily to the floor. Thank you.”
The ride came to a stop. As everyone was filing out, Ben said, “Did you want to talk about something, my friend?”
“Umm…yeah, I think so,” I said.
It felt like I wanted to talk about something. I just wasn’t sure what. I knew I didn’t want to spin cotton candy, and I knew I didn’t want to be alone anymore. I cast about in my head for something to say.
“Did you and Tim and my brother paint some rides last summer?” was what I came up with.
“Uh…yeah. We did.” Ben shrugged. “Why? Your dad thinking of selling some more rides?”
“He didn’t ever actually sell the ones from last year,” I pointed out.
“Oh. Yeah. I guess you’re right. Just trying to figure out why you were asking.”
Ben glanced at the small group of kids—tweens, by the look of them—queuing up for the next spin. He was waiting for me to get to the point.
“U-umm…,” I stammered.
Ben tilted his head quizzically to one side for a moment, then reached for the microphone.
“Just a ten-minute wait before we load up the next ride, folks,” he said into the mic. “Sorry for any inconvenience.”
The kids who’d been waiting huddled, chatted for a moment, and then headed toward the Starship 360. I noticed one of the kids, with gelled hair and a Red Bull T-shirt, straggling behind. Poor kid. He didn’t want to have to go upside down. I could tell.
“You didn’t need to do that,” I said.
“This way you won’t be rushed. What’s up? It seems like there’s something else.”
Yes, other things were up. But I couldn’t very well say Did you hear about me and Reggie? Do you think it was me that almost put him over the edge? Do you hate me?
“Did anything weird happen while you were painting the rides?” I asked instead.
“Anything weird? Like did I paint myself red and pretend to be a lobster?”
“I don’t know.” I chuckled at the image, in spite of myself. “Just wondering if anything out of the ordinary happened when you guys were doing it.”
While I waited for an answer, I watched the Red Bull kid part ways with his friends and go into the bathroom block. Good save, kid. Don’t wait for me, I’ll bet he said to them.
“Mmm…no.” Ben’s mouth contorted quizzically as he thought about this. “More generally, I thought it was weird that Chris and your dad were getting rid of the Yo-Yo. I mean, the Scream isn’t that popular, so that kind of made sense. But the Yo-Yo still seemed to have a decent following. But then, executive decisions have always been beyond me.”
“It might not have been exactly executive,” I said slowly, thinking that my dad might have simply decided he didn’t like the name or the look of the ride. That was just the way he was sometimes.
“Well…the kiddie rides that replaced them seem to be a hit, so someone knew what they were doing,” Ben offered.
“Except that the sale of those rides never happened,” I pointed out again. I wondered, for the first time, why this was the case.
“I’d be surprised if anyone wanted the Scream.” Ben looked thoughtful for a moment. And in that moment, I noticed that his eyes were the color of hot cocoa. “That’s a ride of a different era, I think.”
“A traveling fair ride company would probably b
uy it,” I said. “Just maybe not a newer amusement park.”
I thought of what my dad had said on the recording, about Jason costing him a lot of money. Had he charged Jason with the grown-up task of selling the rides—as he was doing with me now with the press contacts—and Jason had dropped the ball? But why hadn’t my dad sold them himself after Jason had gone, or had Chris do it?
“Makes sense,” Ben offered. “But I don’t know. This is all out of my wheelhouse.”
“So the Yo-Yo used to be yellow and was painted purple. And the Scream used to be red but was painted…” I looked at him with a question on my face.
“Red. The same color. Just touched it up to be a little brighter.”
“But why was the Yo-Yo painted a different color, then?”
Ben shrugged again. “Search me. Ask the executives.”
He was right. My dad was available for asking. If he could remember where that impulse had come from. Sometimes he didn’t have a great memory for details. Either way, I had a feeling it had to do with a fire sale on red and purple paint somewhere.
“I guess I will,” I murmured.
Ben gazed at me for a moment, then at the Rotor controls.
“Was there…anything else you wanted to ask me, Ivy?”
“No. Sorry to hold things up.”
“I think I need to get this next batch of Rotorists spinning.”
“I get it,” I said. “Of course.”
I looked at the short line of people about to get on the ride.
“I think I’ll join them,” I said. “For old times’ sake.”
“Yeah?” Ben smiled. “You’re gonna go for a spin?”
“Uh-huh,” I said. I hopped off the metal platform and got in the back of the line.
Ben gave me a questioning sort of look when he let me on with the herd of kids and a couple of accompanying grown-ups. I just shrugged. I didn’t understand the desire myself—the desire to be spun silly at this particular moment. I had a lot to think about. Maybe the Rotor could shake up the contents of my brain and bring something new to the top.
All the Pretty Things Page 19