Kelly Girl

by Wanda Cunningham

Kelly Girl 25

"Floop or Consequences"

 

Down the hall from Barbie and Kelly, in the boys' part of the house, Richard and Pete dozed in front of the big TV in the children's lounge. Richard woke up from a very vivid dream and stared at the screen for several minutes, not really seeing the infomercial that had replaced the Australian Rules Football he and Pete had been watching.

"Pete," he said.

"Uh," his older brother grunted.

Richard turned off the pitch for the ultimate kitchen gadget and poked Pete in the ribs, not too gently. "Go to bed."

"Get out of my room," muttered Pete.

"You're not in your room. Get up and go to bed. You don't want Skipper to come in here in the morning and find you scratching your balls in your sleep do you?"

Pete grunted again, but opened his eyes and yawned, then stretched and got up. They headed down the hallway to their rooms, making manly, or at least, boyish, noises. "Good night, peanut," Pete said at his doorway.

"Good night, loser," said Richard. "Hey."

"Hey what?"

"I'm gonna marry Kelly when she grows up," said Richard. They blinked sleepily at each other. "I'll protect her from lunatics like that Phil guy. And you."

Pete pointed at him. "Good idea, moron. Except one thing, you can't."

"Why not?" Richard asked.

"'Cause Dad is gonna marry Barbie and adopt Kelly; you can't marry your sister."

"Sonuffa! That's just not right."

"Only one way to make it work," suggested Pete. "You gotta marry Kelly before Dad marries Barbie, ain't no law against marrying your son's mother-in-law."

Richard considered this suggestion. "You already been thinking about this, you bastard, haven't you?"

Pete grinned. "Way ahead of you, little brother."

"But Kelly likes me better," sneered Richard.

"Ha, ha," said Pete. "You wish. I asked her to be my girlfriend first."

Richard grinned. "I remember, she told you she couldn't because she was a boy."

"She did not."

"She did, too!"

They left their doorways and shoved one another a couple of times. "Well, she'll have to make up her mind which of us to marry," said Pete finally. He backed off, knowing that if he used his height, mass and muscle to overpower his smaller brother, the mock fight would quickly come to real blows. Pete could push Richard around any time he wanted but if he won unfairly too often, he could wake up with a knee in his groin.

Richard glared at him, then seeing the physical contest was over, he scratched his head. "She's only twelve. How soon can we ask her to marry one of us?" he asked.

"I think she has to be sixteen, even if Barbie or a judge says yes."

"Four years? Dad's never gonna wait four years to marry Barbie!"

"Only one thing to do," said Pete.

They nodded. "Kill Dad," said Richard.

"You do it," said Pete.

"You're the eldest, you do it," said Richard.

Pete considered. "He'd cream me."

Richard sighed. "And he'd probably haunt us anyway."

They grinned at each other sleepily and went each to his own bed.

 

* * *

 

Very late that night, or rather very early the next morning, a middle-aged lady with light brown hair and very blue eyes got off the Greyhound bus in a small town in New Mexico. In the ladies' room of the bus stop, she used the privacy of a stall and a mirror from her purse to shave with the little travel razor Kelly had bought for her. Then she touched up her makeup and, carrying her bags and the heavy overnight case she had brought along, she took a room in one of the old-fashioned downtown hotels. She'd done a lot of thinking on the long bus ride so she signed the register, "Virginia Bellamy," and paid cash in advance for a two night stay.

Up in her room, Ginny made a careful list of things she would need in her new life and notes of how she might obtain them. Then she settled back to re-read the copy of "The Horse Whisperer" she had bought in Yuma. After a nap, she got up and went to the nearby Catholic-run homeless mission. She waited through the services to talk with the priest and told the father that she wasn't Catholic but she was looking for work as a maid.

"You're running away from your man?" asked the old priest.

Ginny blinked. "Why would you think that, sir?"

"First kind of work a woman leaving her husband thinks she's qualified for, doing housework. Either that or you're a recent widow?"

Ginny shook her head, thinking quickly. "N-no.You were right the first time. W-we weren't really married and I'm afraid of what might happen if he finds me. What else can I do?"

The priest sighed. "You won't find maid work in this town, not at a living wage. Do you think you can waitress?"

For a waitress job, Ginny knew she'd have to have a social security card. She shook her head. "I'd be afraid he might find me in a restaurant. It would scare me so bad I couldn't work."

He nodded. "I'll ask around," he said. "Mayhap someone in the parish knows someone who needs a maid."

Ginny smiled at him, and he thought, what remarkably blue eyes she has.

 

* * *

 

Barbie and Kelly slept late Sunday morning, no one disturbed them. Harold and Andie got up early enough for a long quiet drive down the coast together while Buzzy read his sister the riot act. "What the hell were you thinking?" he demanded as his ranting finally ran down near Main Beach in Laguna.

"I don't know," she confessed. "You thought the kid was a girl. I thought I'd push a bit and shee how Kelly reacted. He took to it like a duck to water."

Harry frowned.

"He never threw the kind of fit any other boy would have. Most boys would have been retching and puking and cusshing like crazy to keep from being dresshed in girl's clothes, or even thought to be a girl. Yeah?"

He nodded. He'd done a lot of reading in this subject, not just professionally but because his own little brother had needed help in becoming the person sitting next to him.

"He even let me do a makeover; he complained about it but he co-operated and he liked it, Buzzy. He really liked it," Andie insisted. "She liked it."

They were quiet for a few miles. The trees and cliffs and water raced past, another day in paradise.

"What do you think we should do?" Harry asked cautiously. He made the turn-around in Dana Point and started back up the coast. Andie didn't answer right away.

"I should shtop pushing," she said finally. "And you should let Kelly shtay a girl until she decides he wants to be a boy again."

After a bit, Harold nodded.

 

* * *

 

Barbie and Kelly lay in the big guest room bed together till nearly noon, talking about what had happened. "Do those hurt?" Kelly asked about Barbie's new implants.

"A little," she admitted. "They ache in my armpits."

"Your armpits?" Kelly giggled.

Barbie rubbed them carefully, Harry had told her they needed to be massaged frequently as soon as she could stand it. Of course, he'd volunteer to do that, she reflected and grinned. "Still tender a bit and there's like a tube running from my navel to each one."

"Your navel? He put them in through your navel?"

"Uh huh," Barbie pulled up her pajama top to show Kelly the stitches in her belly button. The curve of the underside of her new breasts looked startlingly prominent.

Kelly hesitated then asked, "Can I touch them? Your new boobies?"

Barbie giggled. "Sure."

Kelly touched one, it felt soft but firm, as yielding as real flesh, though Barbie's skin seemed warm and taut as a drumhead. Kelly snatched his fingers back after only a moment.

Barbie rubbed them again, a bit more vigourously than before. "They itch, too," she told Kelly. "A stretchy sort of itchy feeling."

"Wow," Kelly said. "The bra I wore yesterday made me itch."

"Why were you wearing that? Did Andie put it on you?"

"No, it was part of my disguise to help get Phil out of the mall," Kelly said.

"Uh huh. Tell me about that, you left off last night with leaving Andie's to go to Triangle Square." Barbie settled her pajamas back around her and propped her head up on her hand.

"Um, yeah," said Kelly. He reached onto the head of the bed and retrieved Robin, the old, yellow-haired, plastic boy doll that Andie had given him. He hugged the doll, thinking of how scared he had been yesterday when the boys from school had found him outside the mall.

Barbie blinked. Kelly had told her about the doll last night and shown it to her. He looks about five when he hugs that thing, a five-year-old girl, she thought. "Did you buy the bra there at TS?" she asked, prompting him to continue.

"Uh, no," he shook his blonde curls and rolled his eyes. "At first, I was gonna buy boy clothes? But the sales lady kept showing me girl's slacks and tops and stuff and I already had my nails done and hair and earrings..." he paused. "I just decided to spend Andie's money on things I didn't think I'd wear after we were through playing her silly game." He squirmed a bit. The rationalization sounded even thinner than it had at the time. "She was going to take me to Disneyland today."

"Uh huh," said Barbie. "Maybe we can go tomorrow." Barbie knew Harold would take them if she asked and she loved the park as much as Kelly did. But how would Kelly be dressed.

Kelly continued his story of his adventures; Barbie giggled about the kisses at the Upper Crust, squealed about the kidnapping in the basement garage and laughed happily as Kelly told how he had disguised Phil. "I don't know," he deadpanned, "the idea just occurred to me. And it worked."

"Phil was a real cute guy," said Barbie, "I guess he'd make a passable girl."

"More than that," said Kelly. "He can sound like a girl, too. Scary."

Barbie considered. "I wonder what happened to him in prison?" She didn't dwell on that for Kelly's sake. "We'll probably never know. He got away, didn't he?"

"I think so," said Kelly. He sighed, "I'll probably never see him again."

 

* * *

 

That same Sunday, in the afternoon, the Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach discharged Amanda, convinced that her mild concussion had healed well enough for her to go home. Amanda dressed quietly in her semi-private room, saying goodbye to her temporary roommate, an elderly Filipina whose endless family had visited her in large noisy groups last night and already filled the hospital room again at a little after nine a.m. "Vaya con dios, carita," said the old lady. "Buena suerte."

"Good bye," said Amanda, not risking an attempt at her faded high school Spanish.

Rachel had promised to come and take her back to Riverside when she called, but Amanda didn't feel much like company. She hadn't had a drink since her tiny sip yesterday and she thought that if she waited at the hospital for Rachel, she wouldn't have a chance to sneak away and be bad before she got home to the hidden bottles in her kitchen cabinets. Two more hours without a drink looked like a huge obstacle; her hands shook a bit already.

If she took a taxi, it would cost her fifty dollars or more but she'd be able to stop somewhere and get a drink. The doctors had warned her not to drink at all for at least two days because of a chance of a relapse from her injury. "If I could keep from drinking for three days, I wouldn't have made such a mess of my life, already," she muttered.

A young orderly pushed Amanda in a mandatory wheelchair to the circular drive in front of the hospital. The Pacific Ocean stretched away in two directions, southeast and southwest; misty silver under a periwinkle sky, so beautiful it hurt to look away. To the south, below the little hill the hospital sat on, Newport Avenue crossed Pacific Coast Highway leading onto the Balboa Penninsula. Half a mile away, near the Crab Shack and the Spaghetti Factory, in front of the McFadden Pier, Balboa Avenue branched off from Newport where the Penninsula took a dogleg to the southeast. Down along that narrow spit of land, two narrow for even two parallel streets in places, down there lay the tiny apartment where Amanda's daughter Barbie had tried to raise Kelly alone.

Amanda took her eyes off the view and looked for the cab she had asked for. By coincidence, Elise Fremont, coming back from another fare, had answered the call to the hospital in her green-checked taxi. Not that she knew Amanda or Amanda her, but it was an odd happenstance. Both Amanda and the orderly waved to her as she wheeled the vehicle into the valet line in front of the hospital. Only in Newport Beach do hospitals have valet parking, thought Amanda; but she was wrong, Hoag Memorial is partly in Costa Mesa.

Elise dashed around the green-checked taxi to open the rear passenger door. The orderly helped Amanda into the backseat. She settled in, feeling oddly fragile and unsure if it were lingering effects from her concussion or just the over-solicitous attention..

"Where to?" Elise asked the tiny redhead before closing the back door. Amanda thought Elise looked like a dyke. Her short gray hair stood out in spiky disarray. She wore a short-sleeved, denim shirt, minimally decorated with flowers, a turquoise necklace, khaki pants and the sort of shoes nurse's usually wore. Her horn-rimmed prescription sunglasses gave her face an impossibly anachronistic air. It was the hair, Amanda decided.

"Riverside," she told Elise. "Do you know where Mockingbird Canyon Road is?"

Elise groaned. "That's nearly a fifty dollar meter, lady. Then I've got a half hour drive to get back to where my medallion is any good."

Amanda chewed her lip. "Twenty buck tip," she offered.

Elise sighed. "Fifty bucks tip, or double the meter total, whichever is less?"

Amanda groaned. "Seventy bucks total, you pay the meter."

"Eighty-five," said Elise. Amanda made a face and before she could answer, Elise said, "Okay, eighty bucks, I pay the meter. I really can't do it for less and I might get caught in traffic on the way back. Santa Ana Canyon can be murder on Sunday afternoon."

Amanda nodded, Elise closed the door, raced back around to the driver's side, got in, started the engine and dropped the flag. "We're off," she said, happy to have a long fare and a nice tip. She leased the taxi for one hundred fifty per day, paid for gas herself and anything she made, she kept.

They took Newport Boulevard to the 55 and merged smoothly into freeway traffic. Amanda realized that she should have negotiated a stop somewhere to get a drink but she had only gotten a hundred out of the hospital ATM. She dithered for a bit and then she turned her head to look back toward Triangle Square, thinking of Kelly and Barbie and wondering where they might be and what they might be doing. They didn't seem to need her anymore or even want her in their lives.

Why had Kelly been dressed as a little girl? She'd never found out. The police had called her this morning and told her that her "granddaughter" was all right and back with "her" mother. She hadn't corrected them. The police had told her they were still looking for Phil and that if she heard from him to call them. She had promised she would but she wondered about that. I never seem able to do the right thing at the right time, she told herself.

"I need a drink," she said out loud, intending to start negotiations.

Elise heard what she said but ignored it until the cab had crossed the 405. "You'll be home in forty-five minutes," she promised, obliquely.

"Okay," said Amanda after considering it. "I can wait that long."

"Boy howdy," said Elise, wonderingly. "Can or can't?"

"Can," repeated Amanda. "I can."

"Good deal," agreed Elise. She didn't tell Amanda the story about her own father who had gotten "potted and planted" all in one day because he tried to pass a slow moving lumber truck on a curve. In her experience, talking about drinking or drunks with a drinking person was a sure way to encourage the desire for a drink. She suspected her fare had just gotten out of detox; she's got the look of a drunk, something about the eyes, Elise thought.

They didn't say anything else much going north up the 55 and east on the 91. Amanda thought Elise had exited one exit too early in Riverside but the cabbie turned out to know a quicker way to Amanda's neighborhood than Amanda had ever found.

Elise let Amanda out in front of the little mobile home in Space 234 of Mockingbird Canyon Wheel Estates less than forty-five minutes from the valet parking circle at the hospital. Amanda paid the fare as agreed and hurried to open up her door, worried about her cat, Flooper, and trying to think about that and not the liquor bottles hidden in the cabinet. Her hands trembled only a little as she worked the key.

Once inside, she saw that someone, Rachel surely, had already put food out for the lazy tom. Floop's buttered-toast-colored tabby body with the darker Siamese points at ears, tail and feet lay stretched out on the turquoise couch. When the door opened, he turned his head in a way impossible for mere humans and blinked his pale green eyes at Amanda. Then he made a production of stretching, rolled over, dropped to the floor and sauntered toward her, perhaps curious that he hadn't seen her since yesterday. "Mow?" he asked

Amanda laughed and scooped him up. She sat down in her easy chair and put the cat in her lap. Floop purred contentedly, working his claws against her leg, right through her slacks. She glanced once at the liquor cabinet and resolved to call Rachel before she opened it again. She petted the cat and her hands didn't shake. "Well, I'm back," she said.

  

  

  

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