OtherWorld

by Sarah Dreher

  “Easy,” Marylou said. “She was desperate for room service.”

  “Marylou, I promise you, in the Walt Disney World Contemporary Hotel, there is room service.” She shook her head in dismay. “All I can say is, I’m glad you’re bunking with your mother and not with us.”

  “Ah, yes.” Marylou rolled her eyes. “Dr. Edith Kesselbaum, psychiatrist extraordinaire. That promises to be a lot of laughs. How would you like to spend a week at the Magic Kingdom with your mother?”

  A week in Hell, Stoner thought, would be a vacation by comparison. “Your mother’s not the same as mine.”

  “You’re only saying that because she was your shrink.”

  “That isn’t true, Marylou. And it was a long time ago. We’ve gone beyond that.”

  “Maybe you have,” Marylou said. “But don’t count on Edith. She takes this therapist business very seriously. Just when you least expect it, she’ll lean over to you and whisper, ‘How are you really?’” She glanced at herself in the mirror. “God, Stoner, why didn’t you tell me I was getting so fat?”

  “You’re not. You haven’t gained a pound in three years.”

  “I’ve looked like this for three years?”

  “You look just fine.”

  Marylou stepped back a couple of feet and rotated, studying herself. “I have to go on a diet.”

  It made Stoner sad when Marylou started talking about diets. Being Marylou meant loving to eat, and showing it. There was something sensual about the way she ate, as if food were the most exciting, magnificent, utterly elegant experience one could have. It wouldn’t be the same if she were thin. When Marylou started talking about going on a diet, Stoner felt as if she were talking about dying.

  “I like you the way you are,” she said.

  Marylou gave herself one more critical look. “Well, then, it’s time to re-read Fat Is a Feminist Issue.” She patted her bosom affectionately. “When does your aunt check in?”

  Stoner picked up a classic Hitachi Wand and studied it. “Not until later tonight, around dinner time. She’s visiting her friends at the psychic camp in Cassadaga.”

  “Really?” Marylou raised one sculpted, ebony eyebrow. “I’d think that crowd would be a little conservative for her taste.”

  “They go ’way back. She was a little nervous, though. Isn’t sure how they’ll take to her conversion to Wiccan.”

  “Not well, I’ll bet. Kind of a hard-core Christian lot, aren’t they? But preferable to Jewish Mystics. Now, there’s a formidable and terrifying bunch of believers.”

  There was a tap at the door.

  Marylou sang “Come.”

  Gwen walked in. “Stoner, that call came again.”

  “Same as before?”

  “Well, not really. I mean, a call came, and when I answered it I thought there was someone there—you know, how you just kind of know—but they didn’t say anything. I tried to have it traced, but all they could tell me was it came from outside the hotel.” She looked at Marylou’s vibrator collection. “Planning to have a little fun?”

  “Mayhap.”

  “What do you think?” Stoner asked.

  “I think we’re not going to see much of Marylou on this trip.”

  “About the call.”

  Gwen went to the window and gazed out. “I think it certainly could be a prank, even if it isn’t from inside the hotel. We have an efficient phone system here, and about a thousand child-infested acres. If it isn’t a prank, there’s not much we can do until we have more information, and I haven’t the slightest idea how to get it. Do you?”

  “No.”

  “Then I suggest we enjoy our vacation and await further developments.”

  “I guess so.” Stoner went to stand beside her. The room overlooked the swimming pools and the lagoon beyond. Small bright yellow motor boats scampered back and forth like water bugs across the sparkling lake. A few sailboats drifted in the distance. At the center of the lagoon, a motor-driven launch packed with sightseers was pulling away from a jungle island. The October sun, low in the sky, burned through the humidity with a pinkish glare. “What should we do first?”

  “I don’t know. Marylou?”

  “Don’t look at me,” Marylou said. “I’ve never traveled before.”

  Stoner leaned over to Gwen. “I don’t think she ever will again, either.”

  “Come on,” Gwen said to Marylou. “This place is magic.”

  Marylou grumped incoherently.

  “Well,” Gwen said, “I, for one, plan to give Mr. Disney a chance. What say we hop the monorail and get an overview of the sights? Stoner?”

  “Great. Marylou, want to join us?”

  “I have just survived a death-defying plane ride, and now you want me to get on a speeding bullet-train. Thank you very much, but I believe I’ll wait for Edith.”

  “You really are welcome,” Stoner said, not wanting Marylou to get that fifth-wheel feeling she sometimes got because Gwen and Stoner were lovers.

  “Really,” Gwen put in.

  “In all honesty, Loves, I do need to settle in.” She swept her arm in an arc that took in the room, the luggage, and the bed full of vibrators. “Specifically, I have to stow these little items away before my mother arrives.”

  “Surely your mother’s seen vibrators before,” Gwen said. “Though probably not so many at one time.”

  “The Liberated Dr. Edith Kesselbaum is one thing,” Marylou said. “Edith Kesselbaum, mother of Marylou, is another. Edith Kesselbaum, mother of Marylou, will be shocked and speechless.”

  Speechless? Stoner had never known Edith Kesselbaum to be at a loss for words—which was why, Edith had explained to her during her lengthy and successful stint as Stoner’s therapist ten years ago, she could never be Client-Centered. “They sit there,” she had said. “Nodding and reflecting like senile dogs.”

  “When the Mother Thing is upon her,” Marylou explained, “she turns into Donna Reed. It’s not a pretty sight.” She gave them a little push toward the door. “Go. Enjoy.”

  “If you get bored,” Gwen suggested, “you can always study the room service menu.”

  “The WHAT?”

  Gwen picked the hotel information folder from beneath Marylou’s well-thumbed copy of People Magazine on the bedside table and handed it to her.

  “You,” said Marylou as she clutched the folder to her bosom, “are an absolute saint. Don’t hurry back.”

  The Grand Canyon Concourse had a deep, muffled feel to it, like a carpeted ravine. Or Grand Central Station with rugs, Stoner thought as the monorail slid in and regurgitated its load of passengers, who immediately began pushing, shoving, and milling. Tiers of rooms towered fifteen stories above the main floor, and men in business suits leaned over concrete balconies, drinks in hand. Somehow, the convention-going look of the suits was incongruous against the ninety-foot tile mural of cute, round-headed, round-eyed Indian children. Cute and suits don’t go well together.

  As a matter of fact, the cute, happy, round-eyed Indian children cast a little doubt on Disney’s ethnic sensitivity.

  Unlike Grand Central Station or even a carpeted ravine, the place was filled with light and color and air. The monorail, yellow-striped, slipped away like a ghost train though an opening that framed trees and sky like a trapezoidal painting. Or a cartoon of sky and trees. The Terrace Cafe, nearby, was open-aired with a southwestern motif, and you went inside to get your meal, then sat outside—which was really inside—to eat. There seemed to be a lot of outside inside the Contemporary. All part, Stoner suspected, of a Disney plot to scramble your senses and warp you into a world of real/unreal where you couldn’t tell the two apart.

  Maybe Marylou was right. Maybe it was all the product of a sick mind.

  Gwen had wandered off. Stoner looked around in a panic and saw her headed for an escalator. She ran to catch up. “What are you doing?”

  “I thought we might as well get our World Passports as long as we’re here. Besides, we have to g
o up here to get on the monorail.”

  “Don’t leave me like that!” Stoner panted. “I’m experiencing culture shock.”

  Gwen slipped her hand into Stoner’s. “I’m sorry. I won’t let you get lost.”

  That’s right, Stoner thought as she trotted along behind her, Gwen keeps me from getting lost.

  And had from the day they had met, in Wyoming, in Grand Teton National Park, when Stoner had been overwhelmed with the beauty of the mountains and the thrill of her first sight of the West, and the just plain knock-out amazing presence of Gwen herself.

  CHAPTER 2

  There were other lesbians on the monorail. Two of them. Holding hands right in the face of God, Mickey Mouse, and a straight, two-child-two-parent-one-grandparent Traditional Family.

  Stoner made eye contact.

  Acknowledged.

  Smile contact.

  Acknowledged.

  They exchanged niceties and names.

  Pauline was tall, blonde, and looked like an outfielder—not too athletic but able to handle herself on the women’s softball level as long as she played on the Feminist team that wasn’t into heavy competition. She had eyes the color of the late-afternoon sky reflected in the lagoon—blue shading to purple. She installed aluminum siding for a living and was called “Stape.”

  Stape’s partner—or “friend,” as she said, out of deference to the sensitivities of the Traditional Family, who looked a little midwestern—very clean, kind of stiff—was Georgia. Short, tawny-haired, and looked as if she kept score at the round-robin tournaments at best, but was probably a mean catching machine no one dared steal on, even on the competitive teams. George—as she preferred, after her favorite Nancy Drew character—worked for Walt Disney World, but turned slippery when they asked what she did. Stoner suspected she had something to do with security.

  Stoner volunteered the information that she and Gwen were from Boston, that she was a travel agent and Gwen taught junior high school history—which brought sympathetic murmurs from Stape and George. Gwen remarked that it was even worse than they could possibly imagine.

  One of the Traditional children rolled his eyes and muttered, “Teachers! Gross!”

  Gwen smiled sweetly at the parents, who had the good sense to look embarrassed.

  “Can’t be much of a teacher,” Grandma opined. “They let you out in October.”

  “I’m on accumulated sick leave,” Gwen explained, adding pleasantly, I was afraid I’d kill a child if I didn’t get away.”

  The boy looked at her with renewed interest—and possibly respect, “They took me out,” he volunteered and indicated his parents.

  “Well, good for them,” Gwen said. “Is it a special occasion?”

  “Motels are cheaper Grandma grunted. She nodded toward the father and sniffed. “He wanted to save money.”

  Son-in-law, Stoner thought.

  By the time they were crossing the inlet to the lagoon, with the towers of Cinderella’s Castle reflecting a pink, Disneyesque sunset—Stoner wondered if it was a real sunset, or a special effect—Stape had given them her business card, which also showed their phone number in Kissimmee, and they had offered to get together some evening, and George and Stape would “show ’em the sights.”

  Daddy Traditional Family pulled his daughter a little closer. Stoner wondered what kind of lurid pictures his Traditional mind was entertaining.

  “Most folks miss half of what we have here,” George said. “They never leave WDW. Hardly anyone goes to the Tupperware museum.”

  “The Tupperware Museum?” Gwen asked eagerly.

  George grinned. “You interested?”

  “Of course I’m interested. How could I not be interested?”

  Stoner slouched down in her seat and tried to make herself invisible.

  “You oughta see the blue outfits the guides wear,” Stape said. “Cute. And they’re real nice, too. Ordinary gals, nothing glamorous. Make you feel right at home.”

  The Traditional women, mother and grandmother, were unconsciously leaning forward a little. Stoner smiled at them.

  They smiled back, tightly.

  “There’s an entire house inside the museum,” George said. “Kitchen, dining room, living room, you know. They show you how you can use Tupperware in every room in your house. I’m not kidding. They even have Tupperware baby toys. You wouldn’t believe the stuff they make.”

  “George wants to have a baby,” Stape said to Stoner. “I don’t know. What do you think?”

  Stoner shrugged. “Depends, I guess.” She knew a couple of lesbians with babies—boys. A midwife friend had told her most babies born through artificial insemination were boys. It seemed to her the world didn’t need any more boy babies. Boy babies tended to grow into boy adolescents. Things were likely to go downhill from there pretty fast.

  “They have a whole new line of stuff,” George was saying. “For the microwave. They call it Tupperwave.”

  The Midwest women were practically drooling.

  “Have you ever tried it?” Gwen asked.

  “Use it all the time. Comes in sections, and you can stack them on top of one another and cook a whole meal at the same time. You have a microwave?”

  Gwen shook her head. She and Stoner had discussed it once—now that Gwen had broken with her grandmother over being a lesbian, and was living in her own apartment—and they had both admitted that microwave ovens seemed like the ideal appliance for a small apartment and busy life style. They had also both admitted they were terrified of them.

  “You ought to get one,” Stape put in. “It’ll change your life. Frees you up for other things.”

  Daddy was now imagining what those “other things” might be. The man was going to have a heart attack if he didn’t get a grip on his fantasy life.

  “Aren’t we ever going to get there?” Traditional Daughter whined.

  Mommy hushed her.

  “I hate this place,” Daughter groused.

  “Oh, you do not,” said Grammy.

  “Do, too.”

  They tried to ignore her, turning their attention back to George and Gwen, eager for more appliance gossip.

  “They’re perfectly safe,” George assured her. “Long as you don’t do anything stupid, like try to dry your laundry or put the cat in them or something.”

  “I don’t think I’d be likely to do that,” Gwen said.

  “I’m hungry,” Daughter fussed.

  “You just ate,” Mommy hissed.

  “Tell you what,” Stape said. “You guys come over to our trailer for dinner some night, we’ll put her through her paces.”

  Gwen glanced at Stoner.

  “Sure,” Stoner said. “Suits me.”

  “We have some friends with us, though,” Gwen said. “We’d have to coordinate.”

  “Shoot,” Stape said. “Bring them along.”

  Stoner could just imagine Marylou’s face when she told her they were going out for a microwaved dinner cooked in Tupperwave. It would almost be worthwhile selling tickets.

  “I don’t know,” Gwen said. “It’s kind of a rough crowd.”

  “I have to wee-wee,” Daughter puled.

  “Do not,” Traditional Son snapped, and poked his sister in the abdomen.

  “Mommy! Davey hit me!” Daughter’s shriek could have awakened the topiary.

  “Stop teasing her,” Mommy ordered.

  Daddy roused himself from his fantasy life long enough to mumble, “Leave the boy alone.”

  Daughter sniveled.

  Mommy turned to Gwen and smiled apologetically.

  Gwen smiled back.

  “I wonder,” Mommy said hesitantly, summoning up great strength of character to address them. “Could you tell me how to find this here museum?”

  “Simple,” George said. “It’s right outside Kissimmee, on 441, just south of the Beeline. If you’re going to the airport, just leave a couple of hours early and stop by for the tour.”

  “They give samples
?” Grammy demanded.

  “Orange peelers,” Stape said. “They work, too.”

  Mommy and Grammy exchanged determined nods that sent a clear signal to Daddy that he was going to be in deep Midwestern fertilizer if he tried to scuttle that little outing.

  “What else you got down here?” Grammy asked, suddenly alert to the possibilities of central Florida.

  “There’s Spook Hill, down by Lake Wales. You can put your car in neutral, sit tight, and the car just moves backward uphill all on its own.”

  “I seen something about that,” Grammy said. “Year or so back, on the CNN.”

  “I saw that, too,” Stape said. “I didn’t understand the explanation they gave, though.”

  “Neither did I,” Mommy admitted.

  Daddy looked as if he might throw up. Here were his women—his women—carrying on with a bunch of… it was disgraceful.

  “If it was late winter,” George said, “you could see the Black Hills Passion Play. But it’s not here now.”

  “Already seen that,” Grammy said with some smugness. “Went to South Dakota for it. I was moved.”

  “She cried,” Mommy offered. “Broke right down and cried at the nailing up.”

  “Yeah, it was gross!” Son put his two cents in. “Blood and stuff. Not enough, though.”

  He lapsed into silence to contemplate inadequate gross blood and stuff.

  “The most amazing thing happened,” Mommy said. “After He got up there on the cross, dying? A storm comes up right behind the amphitheater. Thunder and lightening and all. We got plenty of thunderstorms back home, but that one scared me right back to Church, being in the midst of the crucifixion the way it was.”

  “Yes,” Gwen said, “I can see where it might have that effect.”

  The monorail slid to a stop at the entrance to the Polynesian Village Resort. The Family gathered up its assorted sweaters, jackets, stray socks, and upbeat Mickey Mouse shopping bags and squeezed through the doors.

  “You girls have a nice trip.” Grammy called back to them.”

  Gwen gave her a wave. “And don’t you forget. Tupperware.”