Kelly Girl

Chapter 26

"Desert of My Heart"

 

Elise Fremont didn't get to pick up Barbie and Kelly in her cab when they left Newport a few days later; Harold had leased a car for them to use and Barbie had the five thousand dollars in cash she had been promised for the whirlwind Las Vegas date. Barbie had chosen a Saturn, a green one that practically matched her eyes. She liked the little car's reputation for reliability and quality and Saturns were among the friendliest cars made for short drivers. They'd had to wait most of a week for Barbie to heal well enough to drive after her breast implant surgery on Saturday. It still hurt a bit to put her arms above her head but the Saturn had power-assist steering.

They could have flown where they were going but Barbie didn't want Harold to know exactly where the would be for a few more days at least. They had new luggage and new clothes, too, and most of their things from the little apartment on the Penninsula had gone into boxes and bags stored in Harold Mann's huge garage.

"I'm missing the start of school," Kelly noted as they drove away. Pete and Richard had started class on Tuesday and weren't there to see them off on Friday morning. Harold had said his good-byes to Barbie last night and left for his clinic in Rosarita Beach, Mexico, early in the morning. Andie had been avoiding them since their Disneyland trip on Monday. No one wanted them to go and had painfully chosen not to watch them leave. Only Connie, the housekeeper, waved as they pulled away.

"Did you want to start school dressed like that?" asked Barbie.

Kelly glanced down at the same yellow blouse and turquoise slacks he had purchased in Triangle Square the day of the kidnapping. "I guess not," he admitted.

Barbie grinned. "It's okay with me if you want to jump the fence, you know? We talked about it, right?"

"Uh, yeah," said Kelly. "I guess I don't want to do that. Not right now?"

"Right. And if you're not going to tell Richard and Pete that you're really a boy, well, we can't stay with the Manns."

"I'm sorry, Barbie," said Kelly.

"Don't be. We both need time to think, away from big people." They both grinned.

"Are you sure Harry knows?" Kelly asked.

She nodded, "He knows, I told him."

"He doesn't act like he knows. He still treats me... I mean, he's worse than the guys?" Kelly squirmed, the last few days, Harold Mann had taken to calling Kelly "princess".

Barbie considered. "I think he's always wanted a daughter? And he thinks you're like Andie."

"Yikes," said Kelly. Then he asked, "Do you love him?"

Barbie shook her head firmly. "No. No, I don't think I love Harry. He's nice, he's super-nice, I like him a lot and I think he thinks he loves me. Which could be trouble." The idea of falling in love with Harry scared Barbie a bit, he was the most considerate lover she had ever had, he was crazy about her and Kelly, he was rich and handsome and smart and he didn't mind that she was little and uneducated and poor. What was there not to love? Still, Barbie held back on that commitment even though she had agreed to marry Harold. They just hadn't set a date yet.

"Oh," said Kelly, exactly as if he had read all of the confusion and complexity of Barbie's relationship with Harry in her voice.

They took a familiar route north then east. Kelly watched the scenery through the fancy emerald-frames of his new glasses, part of the set Andie and he had finally picked up Sunday afternoon. Barbie turned off to the north on the I-15 before they passed Amanda's exit on the 91. Neither of them mentioned the woman they both called Mom.

Somewhere near Devore, Kelly asked, "I'm not like Andie, am I?"

Barbie glanced at him sitting there with his platinum hair in curls—his heart-shaped earrings, his feminine eyeglasses, his pink nails—dressed head to foot in girl's clothes. "Well," she said judiciously, "you don't have enough tattoos or hardware."

Kelly grinned. "You know what I mean?"

"I can't answer that for you, honey," said Barbie. "You're the only one who can know something like that? Do you think you are?"

"I dunno," said Kelly. "Everything's been so crazy?"

"Well, why didn't you want to tell Pete and Richard that you're really a boy?"

"I did tell them," Kelly insisted. "I told everyone and no one believes me."

Barbie laughed. "Yeah, I think you might have to whip it out and pee on the wall to convince them."

"Ack! Barbie!" But Kelly giggled too.

"You didn't let me tell them either, or Harry. They might have believed us," Barbie pointed out.

"Yeah, well," Kelly murmured. "I didn't want them to stop liking me," he almost whispered.

"They wouldn't have stopped liking you, sugar," Barbie said. "They know all about Andie and she's their aunt."

"Not the same thing, is it?" Kelly said.

Barbie thought about that for a moment. "No, I guess it isn't. You don't get to pick your relatives and you have to take them as they come, feebles and all."

"Foibles," he corrected her.

"Foibles," she agreed. "And Andie has a real collection." She thought of her own mother, Amanda, and Kelly's father Phil. Kelly had confided to her how he had gotten Phil out of the mall under the noses of fifty or more policemen. Maybe it runs in the family, Barbie had thought, imagining how Phil might look disguised as a soccer mom. "I guess I see what you mean, they like you as a little girl and if it turns out you're a little boy, they might decide you were fooling them?"

"I'm not so little, I'm twelve," he pointed out. "And, and I don't think Richard likes me as a little girl..."

"Ah. Even more reason he might be annoyed?"

Kelly nodded. "They're huge, Barbie. They are huge guys, if they got mad at me, I wouldn't even be a greasespot."

"They wouldn't hurt you," she said firmly.

"Well, I know that, but still..."

"Do you like it that Richard thinks of you as a girl? A pretty girl?"

"I don't know," said Kelly. "He makes me feel funny." He looked out the window again, avoiding further conversation for a bit.

The desert mountains passed quickly but seemed endless; a monotonic variety that wasn't at its best in the dessication of late summer. Now was the danger time in Southern California, when careless or deliberate sparks might start an inferno that could eat up desert scrub, mountain forest and urban sprawl in a raging, death-dealing wall of fire twenty miles across, or more. Wildfire was more to be feared than the much more famous California earthquakes. And after wildfire, when the rainy season came too late to stop the burning, flashfloods and mudslides would ravage the land no longer protected by vegetation. It was a California story older than the string of Spanish missions along the coast.

Kelly sighed and crossed his arms; under the fake breasts of the padded training bra he was still wearing, Barbie noted. From somewhere, Andie had supplied jiggly little silicone booblets to go into the cups of the smallest bra available in department stores. They made for Kelly a very realistic looking, nearly-A bosom.

"I want to go back to being a boy. I want to try that," he said, tossing his head in an incongrously feminine way.

"Shoot," said Barbie. "We were going to stop somewhere and buy you some boy clothes..." and get you a haircut, and switch your eyeglasses, and clean off your nails, she didn't say, partly because he interrupted her.

"Las Vegas has malls, doesn't it?" While neither had told the Manns, Kelly knew their destination.

"Sure it does, honey." They were going to Las Vegas as a place far from Newport Beach where Barbie could find work and still visit Harold Mann's plastic surgery clinic every week or so for more filling of her free breast implants, a process that might take months. The Metropolis of Lights, the City without Clocks, would be a safe place to live until she married Harry—and Kelly made up his mind about his wardrobe.

"That'll be soon enough, when we get to Las Vegas," said Kelly.

"You can be my little girl for a few more hours, then," said Barbie, teasing, testing.

"Okay," said Kelly. He thought of something and reached into the back seat to retrieve Robin. He played with the yellow-haired plastic boy doll on his lap for a moment then gave the old toy a comforting hug. His mother said nothing until he remarked, "You know, this stuff is just scaring the shit out of me?"

"Poop," said Barbie. "Nice little girls don't say 'shit.'" And holding that doll, Kelly did look like a little girl, no more than eight or nine despite the bustline. It made what he had said sound even more emphatic.

Kelly giggled and kicked his feet. "You say stuff like that?"

"Yeah, well, don't do it around guys unless you want them to think you're... never mind."

"See? That's the kind of stuff that scares me?" He hugged the doll again and rubbed his cheek on Robin's soft plastic one.

"Scares me, too," admitted Barbie.

"I don't know anything about being a girl," said Kelly.

Barbie said only, "There aren't really any manuals."

Kelly nodded. "Not on how to be a boy, either."

"Guess not."

"I don't think I'm very good at it."

"Being a boy? Well...." Barbie didn't want to agree with that but she couldn't think of anything else to say.

Kelly sighed. "I've got to... I mean, I am a boy. I can't just be a girl 'cause I'm better at it, can I?"

"I don't know, sugar? I mean, why not?" Barbie almost bit her tongue when she realized what she had said.

"You think I should be a girl from now on?" asked Kelly. He placed Robin in the seat beside him and looked out the window then turned back to look at his mother; she hadn't answered him yet.

Carefully, Barbie said, "I think you should be whatever you have to be, to be happy."

Kelly bit his lip then began to cry, softly. "I don't know what to do, Barbie? I don't know what would make me happy. I've been a girl at the Manns' house for a week now and—and it was fun? But—I've been a boy for twelve years and I thought we were happy then?" A tear ran down into his mouth; he tasted salt and the strawberry lipstick he had been wearing yesterday.

He pulled down the vanity mirror and took a look to be sure he hadn't put more lipstick on this morning. The pretty girl in the mirror looked back at him, lush golden lashes damp with tears, rosebud mouth unadorned but lovely. "I'm not sure who I am, anymore," he said.

Barbie extended her right hand to clasp Kelly's left. She winced a bit, the muscles of her chest and upper arms were still a bit sore. "We'll just have to find out, kiddo," she said reassuringly.

Kelly nodded, folded the mirror up, took off his glasses, wiped his eyes and sighed. With his glasses back on, he picked up Robin again and settled the doll into the crook of his arm.

"Just between you and me," said Barbie, "I thought we were happy, too." She grinned at him.

He giggled. "Doesn't take as much to make someone our size happy...."

"Short people got no reason," Barbie agreed. They laughed; then they sang the Randy Newman tune in close harmony and very loudly, all the way through, twice. Kelly made the doll dance on his lap, even doing a high kick on the choruses.

Above them, the sky ached; a vast, impenetrable blue so deep it looked painful. Icy crystals twenty miles up made a sunbow of a million phantom colors, a meterological migraine. In front of them, the wide desert floor stretched to three horizons; behind were the mountains they had just come through.

 

End of Book 1

  

  

  

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