Dreamland Social Club(54)

“No.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what you look like, exactly.”

“Thanks,” she said. “Thanks a lot.”

“I don’t mean anything.” He nudged her with an elbow. “I just mean I’ve never met anyone quite like you before.”

“Quite so boring, you mean?”

“Who said anything about boring?”

“Well, I don’t think it’s a reach to say that I’m the least interesting member of my family.”

“Meh,” he said. “Being born a few weeks early doesn’t make you that interesting. Neither does pretending to be part bird.”

“It doesn’t?”

Leo laughed. “Okay, you got me on the bird bit. But I don’t know. You seem like you have, I don’t know, an interesting point of view. I mean, just having lived so many different places.”

“If you say so,” Jane said.

“I heard you gave H.T. some old photo of his idol.”

“I hadn’t known it was his idol.”

“He won’t shut up about it.”

The car swung then, and they both almost dropped their beers. Then they sat there swinging and swinging and swinging. Finally Jane said, “I don’t think this was the Wonder key.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. Just too hard to sneak onto at night, don’t you think? And then to operate? It feels different than the others. And your mom said they used to sneak beers onto the Wonder Wheel, not that they snuck on.”

The ride was over; the beers were empty and the cans put back in the backpack. Leo said, “Next stop, Wonderland.”





A water-gun game was open for business when they walked by the games section and they looked at each other, shrugged, and stepped up. Leo paid for the both of them, and the guy barking the booth shouted out to try to scare up some other customers, but none came. “Can’t run the game without three,” he said. “That’s the rule.”

Jane looked around for any takers, but the place was pretty empty. Leo slapped down a few more bills by a different gun and said, “How about we pretend.”

“Fine,” the guy said. He flicked a switch and announced the beginning of the race and then suddenly, Jane’s water gun was alive in her hands. She focused the spray of water on the clown in front of her and then studied its features: the exaggerated arch of the eyebrows, the candy-color red of the stretchy lips, the big ears and red dot on the nose. She realized that in her mind, images of this kind of water-gun clown and of her grandfather had sort of morphed into one another so that her vision of her grandfather was one of a clown.

The balloon over Leo’s clown head burst, and he put his gun down. Jane put her own gun, no longer working, down too.

“What’s it going to be?” Leo said to her. “Inbred panda bear or inbred crocodile?”

“Panda bear,” Jane said, and Leo said, “You heard the lady” to the guy working the booth, who handed over a small white toy.

“Why was the baby bear so spoiled?” Leo asked as they walked away. She could only shrug.

“Because his mother panda’d to his every need.”

Jane groaned and Leo smiled and said, “Admit it. You’ve heard worse.” He took the panda out of Jane’s hands and studied it. “There’s this old dude downtown. Like near Wall Street. He’s like sixty and unemployed and he dresses up as this sad panda to try to make money. It’s one of the saddest things I’ve seen, really. Almost sadder than that orphan film.”

“Does it work?” Jane asked. “Do people give money to a sad panda?”

“I guess,” Leo said. “Sometimes.” He handed the panda back and, somehow, it looked even sadder now.

“People really liked your grandfather,” Leo said out of nowhere as they stopped in front of one of the kiddie rides. “I just mean, don’t let the whole Claverack thing skew your perspective. And my mom said your grandmother was really great. Kooky, but great.”

A mishmash of trucks and fire engines and cars were going round and round. In one fire truck, a little girl’s face went from delight to horror in a matter of seconds when she lost sight of her mother, who was standing outside the gate surrounding the ride, waving and calling out, “I’m over here, Sadie. Over here!”

Over and over.

But it was no use and, finally, the operator stopped the ride and the mom went and got her crying Sadie out of the fire truck. The relief on the little girl’s face was so immediate, so primal, that it made Jane swell up with empathy, not for Sadie but for her own six-year-old self. A self that had no way of comprehending the magnitude of that loss. All these years later, Jane was still struggling to understand, still silently screaming Mommy.

Over and over.

They walked the perimeter of the park then, checking the padlocks, but the key didn’t open anything. Jane couldn’t hide her disappointment.

“Listen,” Leo said. “It has to be one of the old gates here. It’s the only thing that makes sense. So let’s just figure the locks are long gone and leave it at that.”

“Not very satisfying,” Jane said with a frown.

“Well then, when we’ve figured out the last one we’ll ask my mom and see if she knows for sure. Deal?”