Shadows of the Emerald City (31 page)

“
I’m Hal Tatum, this is my wife Betsy, and this is…Ronie.”

“
You’re real name is Dorothy?” Ronie asked, breathless.

“
Yes, most call me Dotty, though, dear.” She lifted a palsied hand and patted Ronie’s rainbow colored fishing cap with it.

“
I wish my name was Dorothy,” Ronie said.

“
Well, I think Ronie is a wonderful name, beautiful, really. But tell me, is it Gillikinese or Munchkinlander?” She winked, and Ronie managed a little giggle. “Shall we?” She said, and opened the door wide and motioned toward row after row of old store shelves filled with bric-a-brac. A long haired cat jumped up in surprise and dashed out of sight. “I’m sure we have your heart’s desire lying around here somewhere, Ronie.”

“
Well, that is what we came for,” I murmured to Betsy with a shrug and held the door for her. Ronie was already walking up the aisles putting a tentative hand out here and there, to jostle a scarecrow bobble head, or trace a line in the dust covering an emerald city snow globe.

When she turned a corner, her right knee seemed to buckle and Ronie started to fall. Some Popsicle stick marionettes rattled as she caught herself. Betsy ran to scoop her up. Ronie waved her away with a hand.

“
She’s a tired poop-shute, that she is, dear thing,” Dotty Woodrow observed.

“
She’s very sick,” I said.

“
Yes.” She said, and licked her lips. “Honey, that poster was autographed by honest-to-God real Munchkins,” she called out. Ronie nodded her head and moved on.

She disappeared around the corner and then let out a tiny gasp.

“
Ronie!
” I yelled, feeling glued down in syrup next to that old woman, that old witch. That was what I felt at the time, and I guess I still do. The woman was a witch.

We came around the corner and found Ronie looking up at a set of old china figures. Her mouth was open and she nodded at them. Then suddenly she burst into laughter and grinned at me.

“
Aren’t they wonderful?” Ronie laughed, pointing.

I looked at the dusty china figures carefully and then at the colorful oz merchandise hanging all around us and then at my daughter. She continued to gawk and stare at the quaint set of old fashioned china figures, so I gave them a closer study. A stout farmer stood proudly with his hands stuffed into his overalls. A matron, equally stout, presumably the farmer’s wife, held a bouquet of flowers. A young jack of a boy with a wicked grin of mischief balanced on one leg and was either tossing jacks or playing some rustic form of
bocce
ball. A very happy milkmaid grinned benevolently while she hoisted two pales of milk from a stick over her shoulders. Why was the milkmaid smiling so broadly? What wicked rendezvous was the milkmaid returning from to make her smile so?
Why were the milkmaids always so happy
? I wondered distantly to myself. Certainly the life of rising early in the morn’ to dodge cow kicks and meadow muffins wouldn’t cause that kind of bliss. Beside her was a cream white cow, which of course was also smiling. A ring of lacquered violet flowers entwined its neck. Suddenly my mind hearkened back to the Keats poem I had memorized for intro to Lit class in college:

To what green altar, O mysterious priest,

Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,

And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?

A shiver ran through me with the thought. My daughter had asked me if I found them wonderful. The truth is I didn’t. Looking at them, I felt a staleness of presence, a distinct quality of quiet despair that had something to do with the accumulation of dust and time.

Ronie reached up, grabbed my shirt front and pulled me down so that her mouth was at my ear.

“
We have to get them out of here,” she whispered.

“
Ah, those,” Dotty Woodrow said. We both startled. Her presence and the smell of decaying lilacs surrounded us. “I was told by my mother, bless her soul, that those are authentic china people from the outskirts of Quadling country. Such a beautiful set, isn’t it?” She put a hand out again to rest it on Ronie’s head. Ronie stepped sideways under the protection of my arm.

Betsy was suddenly flanking Ronie’s other side. I had the distinct impression that she did so protectively.

“
Are you sure, Ronie, those are what you want? There are plenty of other things that…” Betsy started.

Are what?
I wondered,
less breakable?
Suddenly I thought I understood the unconscious sensibilities of my little fragile girl. I thought of her swimming, pale and bruised surrounded by the colorful and dynamic children at the resort pool.

“
Yes,” she said simply and a hand encircled mine and squeezed with tenacity.

“
Well, it looks like our minds are made up,” I said suddenly and the lady grunted and turned and went off looking for a shoebox and tissue paper.

I paid the woman too much, I knew it. Ronie’s hand kept tugging at mine, and it only exasperated my own desire to flee the dusty warren of knick knacks where this woman ruled like a witch queen from a an old storybook.

“
You should have bartered her a little,” Betsy said when we got back to the car.

“
Let it go,” I said, which was rude. But I was tired, as we all were. Ronie slept in the back seat all the way to the airport, clutching that shoebox in her lap.

On the flight home Ronie sat between Betsy and I, instead of busily scanning from the window seat for signs of twisters. I assumed she wanted to feel safe after a long and tiring journey. I felt relief, but a sense of bewildering disappointment, as well. The dream trip was done and over, and all Ronie had to show for it was a shoebox full of antique figurines on her lap. She clutched it jealously too, especially after the flight attendant asked her if she could store it in the overhead compartment for her.

An hour in and she put a sluggish pale hand on my arm.

“
Daddy, hold them for me. I’m getting too tired.”

“
Of course, sweetie.”

“
But, hold on tight, Dad, don’t let go!” And then she leaned against her mother and drifted into a deep sleep. Sitting there watching but not listening to a period drama, I clutched that shoebox tight, as if it contained my sweet Ronie’s life.

Life entered this strange twilight spiral after that. At work, and then walking across the parking lot at the supermarket, I had this strange feeling like I was sinking, that it took a whole lot of concentration to stay on top of the ground, as if it were a thin crust of February ice over very deep and suffocating snow. I know Betsy felt it, too, but even at night when we were smoking on the front porch like bad kids,
especially
at night, we did not talk about it. Instead, we talked about things that had happened to us together when we first met; when we were first married. I suppose it was our way of gearing up to the time when we would find ourselves, inevitably alone again without Ronie. We felt guilty about it. I know I did. We only did it when we were out there, but then talk would come around to our childhood, or the silly things Ronie had done as a toddler, and we would be back up there using mouthwash and checking in on our little girl.

She slept a lot, or at least I thought she did. But I wonder, because sometimes I would be tiptoeing past her door and I would hear her babbling quietly inside.

“
Hey, kiddo, what’s happening?” I would whisper. We were always whispering, then, I realize now. I suppose we were really worried about waking some cranky librarian’s wrath so that she would turn us out and there would never be anymore summer reading for us, no more trips to Oz, or Narnia, or laughing at the precociousness of Matilda or Ramona.

“
Dad, the family was just telling me about the trouble Lula-Belle got in when she got loose and wandered out of Quadling territory. They had quite an adventure, very dangerous. They have to be very careful you know, Dad. They are made of China.”

“
You know, you’re right there, sweetie,” I said.

“
But Pipo was very brave,” she said pointing to the little boy leaning over on one leg. Then her face turned a little pink and she put her shaved head down and giggled. I don’t know why this alarmed me so, the girl was all by herself with her ailment and she was a creative girl, but it did. I maneuvered myself between the girl’s line of sight and the figurines on the low shelf.

“
Why don’t you tell me about it,” I said.

She said she would, but only if I got out of the way, so they could correct her if she forgot something or started to tell it wrong.

This went on the rest of that August. Betsy and I marveled at the clarity of the stories, the detail in the descriptions of life on the edge of Quadling territory that came pouring out of Ronie.

“
She could be a writer…
” we would start, but would not finish, for our little Ronie was getting weaker all the time. It was getting to the point where we were afraid of calling the doctor for fear that she would be taken into the hospital and would not come out again.

She should have been a writer, but we never said it. It would have been too awful. It still is.

Another fear fell on both of us when Ronie started to ask vigilantly for the date. As the end of August came closer, we feared that when she responded to the date by saying: “Well, good, then there’s still time.” , that she was hoping to return to school with everyone else, take a seat beside Tracy and get on with business as usual. Even if Ronie had felt up for it, we couldn’t have let her go.

“
Kids are germ factories,” the oncologist had reminded us at the end of the school year.

“
Still time for what?” Betsy finally asked. She has always been the brave one.

“
Time for the family to get back home,” she answered.

“
Honey, there is no way we can bring these all the way back to Kansas.” She ran one of her cool long fingers down the side of Ronie’s face.

“
No, not Kansas. Kansas is not their home!” Betsy had that look of exasperated emotionality that traditionally would have indicated that she needed to get to bed and rest up so she could put back on her game face. But, she was already in bed. “Why do you think they can’t move?”

“
Sweetie…,” I said, sitting with gentle paternalism on the bed. “They can’t move, because they are made out of China. That’s just what they are, china figures.”

“
No!
You don’t get it, because you can’t hear them.” Her voice and her little pointer finger shook in the air. “They can move when they are where they belong.” Her voice was getting higher with uncharacteristic anger.

“
Okay, funny pants. Don’t get all worked up,” Betsy said, smoothing the bed sheets over Ronie’s lap.

“
If the china people, (
I refused to say family
) are bothering you, I can take them out of here.”

“
Don’t you dare!” She cried.

“
Hey, I just thought if they,
you know
, were talking all night. I thought you could use your sleep.”

“
I can sleep when I’m dead,” she said, putting her arms over her chest. We had heard this in some movie we had watched together, and I snorted, as I have always done, when Ronie used a quote like that to over-dramatize her life.

Betsy was not laughing, and the look she and Ronie gave me cut mine short.

“
Honey, we just want to understand,” Betsy said. “How does the family expect to get back home if they can’t move?”

“
Well, they explained that part to me,” Ronie said. “They need the right kind of storm to get home.”

“
Which is
where
?” I asked.

“
Oz,
silly head
,” she responded and rolled her eyes up at me. “You know, like when Dorothy got pulled back. It has something to do with what happens to the air. Anyway, they said they have been keeping track, and now that they are out of the witch’s house, (
We had never said it out loud to each other, but we all knew what she meant
) they can feel the weather more. They will be able to tell when a storm like that is coming. They think one may be building soon.”

“
And then what will happen?” Betsy asked in her best getting this over so you can rest your silly head and get some sleep voice.

“
We take them to where they need to go. Then they go home and they are free to move again.” She said this with the gracious hand sweeping of a cartoon narrator wrapping up a happy ending.

“
Well, you tell us when, all right?” I said. And we kissed her three times each and turned out the light. Truth is: I didn’t remember the conversation till after. There are too many worries, too many things to occupy folks that live on the edge of an emotional cliff.

It had rained a lot that summer, but the sky relented by mid August and we had enjoyed a clear, warm and sunny month. That weather built up one heck of a storm that finally broke over us on the equinox. Some of the leaves on the trees of our road had started to change, but we hadn’t noticed. Ronie had taken a turn for the worse, and we understood that it would be a matter of days before we made that fateful trip to the oncology respite ward.

“
I was hoping for one more Halloween,” I said to Betsy as she went out for errands. She had taken a leave from work, and I tried to give her as many breaks from the house as I could.