“Say something,” James said.
Doc’s mouth moved and James heard the static again, like someone flipping a tuner, looking for a radio station. “I’m hearing crackles,” he said. “I can’t make out words, but there’s sound now.”
Doc smiled and gave the A-OK sign. Then he shook James’ hand. It felt like they accomplished something together.
To celebrate, James got them both more cookies. But he knew cookies couldn’t heal anything.
C
ooley chose the room the furthest down the hall from James’. He didn’t blame her, this room was an old favorite. It was right above the living room and so it had a fireplace too and he quickly fell into the habit of building one for Cooley every night, even when the weather was warm. She settled her grandmother’s acorn clock on the mantel. James just had extra pieces of furniture in there, an old couch, a chair, an end table, furniture that was too good to throw away, but not good enough to sell. He went to the furniture store in town and bought Cooley a bed, a double-sized number that had a bookshelf headboard. He bought her an easel too and some art supplies, but while they stood at the ready by the window, she hadn’t touched them. James had the picture of the little girl learning to tell time on his dresser. Eventually, he wanted to have it framed. But for now, he liked picking it up and tracing Cooley’s lines and feeling the weight of the paper and the way it rumpled and wrinkled under her pencil strokes.
Cooley spent a lot of time in her room. She helped out after school and had dinner with James, of course. While the Home was open, she busied herself following visitors around, looking like a visitor herself, and she was always right there if someone was about to do something they shouldn’t. She was better than the security system. James began taking more breaks when she was around. He still sat in his office, watching people on the cameras, but he sipped coffee and reread the paper too.
Cooley always left her door open, even when she was sleeping, and so he looked in on her as he puttered around at night. She was usually in front of her computer or curled up in a chair, a book open on her lap, but he caught her quite often standing in front of the fire, looking at her clock. She always smiled when she stood there and it seemed like she wasn’t even in the room. James could walk in, stand next to her and watch, and she’d never notice he was there.
She showed James around the internet on her computer. And she introduced him to eBay. It was like an online flea market and he just couldn’t get over it. The first time she typed in “clocks” in what she told James was a search box, 70,886 items came up. Of course, they weren’t all clocks, they were clock parts, clock puzzles, clock toys, but it didn’t matter. There was a lot. He couldn’t get over how many people were dumping clocks and dumping them like they didn’t matter, to people they couldn’t even see. The first night, James just kept looking and looking and eventually, Cooley stretched out on her bed and fell asleep. After a few more nights of this, they went out and bought James his own computer. She had to teach him how to work it, but all he really wanted it for was eBay. She kept showing James other stuff, but he didn’t care. Clocks started arriving regularly in the mail. It felt wonderful to be able to reach beyond Iowa and rescue them. James even bought one from Africa.
So after a couple weeks, they settled into a routine of sitting in their separate rooms and staring at their separate computers. James knew this wasn’t good, but he didn’t know what else to do. His hearing was still sporadic and he knew they could talk through the notebook, but he just didn’t know what to say anyway.
At night, James watched his mother’s anniversary clock spin round and round, the dancers following their worn path. But he held Cooley’s drawing. And he wished a thousand times or more that he’d had a different mother, a different father, so he would know what to do now. James hadn’t worn a collar in years, but suddenly, he felt chained to his room every night. Cooley was out there, just down the hall, and he didn’t know how to reach her, any more than he knew how to reach his mother.
Though James knew Cooley wouldn’t hurt him. But it was like there was this wall, a physical wall, that kept him in, just in case. Just in case. Just in case she was dangerous too, just like the rest of the world. The wall was just too big. It was like James’ mother managed to glue those locked cellar doors to his mind and he just couldn’t get out.
T
he Fat Girl kept her private world miniature because she was anything but. Every morning, she shuffled around her apartment and adjusted all of the rooms in a dozen large and fancy dollhouses, moving couches in the Victorian living room, then setting a table in the Colonial, then transforming a child’s bedroom into an art studio, a dining room/living room combo into a ballroom. In her own kitchen, the Fat Girl maneuvered her collection of tiny tea sets, arranging and rearranging the cups so that hundreds of fairy guests would have their share of tea. In the living room, she looked in a minuscule mirror, filled with only her mouth as she put on lipstick. She turned over two tiny hourglasses, one brass, one wooden, and checked the time on her miniature mantel clock. Nine o’clock. All this before she left for work in the Large and Luscious Women’s Apparel store in the mall.
The Fat Girl hated her job which she took because she thought she blended in which was why she hated it. Everything there was gigantic. Sizes 24, 36 and 48. XL, 2XL, 3XL, 4, 5, and 6XL until the idea of so many X’s made her eyes cross. There were shirts that promised to button down, but always gapped open. Pants whose pleats claimed to hide baggy bellies, but cradled them like unborn babies. Underwear that could flap for surrender in the wind. And girdles that lured women in with the promise of never having to come to a store like this again. Her customers bought scores of these, then flew out with large pink plastic bags, secure in the promise that once the girdle slid over their soft thighs and hips and squeezed in their stomachs in an attempt to find a waistline, they could cross the hall and shop at the Petite Sophisticate. The Fat Girl never tried these on. She never bought one. She wasn’t blind.
Even the Fat Girl herself glanced over at the Petite Sophisticate on her lunch breaks as she sat alone on the bench outside her store. She no longer ate in the food court; the tables were too small and the looks were too long. So she pulled things out of fast food bags one by one and chewed and thought about going from Luscious to Sophisticated. Luscious. She looked down at her body, spread like an unbaked loaf of bread on the bench. Luscious was only in the store name because it started with an L. Large and Lard-Ass Women’s Apparel just wouldn’t sell.
But at home, in her miniature world, the Fat Girl could be Sophisticated too. She looked in the dollhouse rooms and spoke out loud about the fairness of the weather, the social events for the evening, the latest promotion or beau or dalliance. Her voice was high and soft and the accent changed from house to house, just a hint of British or gentle southern belle or the lilt of French which she took years ago in high school. She spoke for the dolls in her bedroom too, each having a distinct and refined voice. She turned the hourglasses over every time she strolled by. And she tilted her head, wherever she was, to listen to the delicate sound of the miniature mantel clock chiming the hour.
And she did all this naked. Sophisticated People walked around their homes nude, she assumed. They came home from their high-power, business-suit, do-lunch-eat-salad jobs and they stripped, putting their clothes in wicker and brass laundry hampers, the dry-clean-onlies on padded and scented hangers in their closets. Sophisticated People sighed as the air returned to their exposed, slim, beautiful bodies, their skin reflecting gold in the evening light flickering in the garden window, or rosy pink in the warm glow from the brick and marble fireplace. Sophisticated Women stretched agile cat limbs on black leather sofas and they sipped martinis from crystal stemware. Sophisticated Men stood by the home bar, their sculpted genitals rock hard as they shook another martini for themselves. Sophisticated Women watched and desired.
The Fat Girl did this too, although she had to imagine the genitals. She sprawled naked on her brown corduroy sectional, trying and failing to keep both legs on the cushions at the same time. She drank a light beer and wondered what a martini tasted like. How could something wet be dry? She thought they might taste like Arizona air.
At home or at work, Sophisticated or not, the Fat Girl avoided mirrors, in the bathrooms or the dressing rooms, the front windows of the stores in the mall, or even the minuscule mirror that she used for lipstick. A few dollhouses had mirrors as well and she stood in such a way that no part of her ever reflected.
When it came to slimming down, the Fat Girl tried it all. Slimfast. Weight Watchers. Jenny Craig. Gyms and wraps and hypnosis. She liked the hypnosis, it made her very relaxed, but her hunger never went away. She came home from each appointment, stretched out on the couch, every bone and muscle loose, and ate a bucket of ice cream.
But she tried.
One afternoon, after lunch, she lumbered down the mall to All Things Remembered, a gift shop. She loved it there, although the close aisles and breakables made her very anxious. After many trips, she planned out the best path possible for someone of her girth and she followed it each time, until she ended up in front of a glass showcase filled with miniatures. This was payday and depending on the sales, she could pick out one or more.
She stood there and pondered, her arms pressed tightly against her sides. There was a blue china cabinet she liked, complete with tiny plates and saucers and cups hanging on hooks. It would go well in the Country Dollhouse’s kitchen. There was also a clawfooted bathtub and a little toilet, complete with a tank hanging above it with a pull chain. Her Victorian Dollhouse didn’t have a bathroom yet. She debated back and forth for a while, wondering which house was more important, which was closer to completion, and then she decided to splurge. It was payday, she had no plans for the weekend, what the hell.
She went to the cash register and told the clerk what she wanted. She watched the girl go through the curtain to the back room, where all the lovely things were kept boxed up. The Fat Girl noticed the snug-waisted dress, the slim legs, the ankles that looked oh so chic in strappy red slingbacks. She looked at her own brown loafers, soles worn down on the inside, giving her heels a tilted look, her body knock-knees. When the clerk returned, she handed over the boxes for inspection and the Fat Girl noticed a large diamond on the skinny left hand. The Fat Girl quickly peeked in the boxes and nodded. “These are fine,” she said softly.
Back at Large and Luscious, the Fat Girl found all the other salesgirls in a huddle around several huge cardboard cartons. “Look at these!” one called and the Fat Girl joined in, lifting a long and narrow pink box. On the front was an undoubtedly large woman, but she was also curvaceous and sleek in a full and round way. Inside the box was a long, one-piece body shaper. When the Fat Girl held it up, it flowed from her neck to her ankles.
“It trims everything!” one of the other girls said.
“Get a display set up,” said the manager. “Put one on a mannequin.”
The Fat Girl went to deposit her things in the back room, then joined another girl by a large squat podium. The girl was quickly stacking the body shaper boxes, so the Fat Girl dressed the mannequin. While the mannequin was large, the Fat Girl always noticed how she wasn’t
that
large. She wondered if customers really thought that a body shaper could change the way a mannequin looked. If they thought that a body shaper could change the way anybody looked.
And yet, by three o’clock, the Fat Girl lost count of how many pink boxes she put into pink bags. As the afternoon and evening wore on, she held each purchase a bit longer, looked at it more closely. With her employee discount, it would only cost her forty-nine dollars. Which was less than the miniatures, both of them, combined. If it worked. The Fat Girl doubted it, but she hesitated more and more as she looked into the eager eyes of her customers and listened to their excited chatter. By closing, the Fat Girl noticed not a single body shaper had been returned and so she moved a little slower, studying the curvaceous woman on the slim boxes as she bagged them for each of her co-workers. Everyone else bought one. Even the manager.
It was the Fat Girl’s weekend off which meant she was the Friday night closer. She stayed after everyone else, balancing the cash register drawers, straightening up, locking the doors. She stopped and looked at what was left of the body shaper display. The delivery cartons were empty and collapsed in the back room and there were so few pink boxes left, the Fat Girl couldn’t even make a pyramid. She formed what she thought was an artful display, the body shapers spinning in a domino row, just one touch would send them falling. She glanced through the front windows and saw that the mall was empty, the lights dimmed. The security guard wouldn’t even know she was here. Carefully, her fingers poised, she snatched the front body shaper and took it to the dressing rooms.
Selecting number eight, a number she always thought was lucky and the size she secretly wanted to be, the Fat Girl shut the door firmly behind her. With her back to the mirror, she undressed, then pulled the body shaper from its box.
Stepping into it was like pulling on a spandex noose. The Fat Girl grunted as she pulled it over one thick calf and thigh, then the other. It went over her backside first, then she yanked it over her stomach and she gasped as she felt herself squeezed. She tucked one arm into a strap and pulled until her right breast was squashed, then the other strap came up and her lungs compressed.
Stiffly, her body encased in white elastic (why not pink, she wondered, to match the box?), she stepped back into her clothes. Her pants did feel looser, her blouse didn’t gap. She allowed herself one moment to wonder. One moment to wish.