A Theory of Expanded Love

by Hicks, Caitlin;

  I tried to see Dominic in everything we did that day, but it was hard. I don’t even know where he sat in the car as we sang “I love to go a wandering” and “The Ash Grove” altogether as we tooled down the Pasadena Freeway. We were a whole family with no one missing while we sweated under the overcast smog, waiting for the Teacups, but I couldn’t remember seeing him, exactly. We weren’t thinking treasure these last moments with Dominic when we went down Main Street, inhaling the smell of cotton candy. We piled into the Skip Jack, and I don’t even know where he was sitting. Where was Dominic on the Jungle Boat ride, with fake hippos and alligators rising up out of the swamp at a totally unrealistic speed while water dripped off their teeth?

  And I don’t remember him when giant Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck came lumbering by. I remember Markie barfing after eating too much cotton candy on an empty stomach. And this girl about my age sitting on the bench in broad daylight, popping zits on her boyfriend’s cheeks. Even though we weren’t paying attention to Dominic all morning, he was with us then. Maybe that’s what Mom and Dad meant by “more love going around.” You kind of love them in the background to everything, even if you don’t have time to have a good look at them, or even notice if they’re on the same ride with you.

  Beehive hairdo talked to Daddy through the glass, making gestures with her hands, and shortly a couple of guys in overalls came up to the booth with walkie-talkies. Daddy had to describe what Dominic wore. He had to ask Mother, who asked me.

  “Red shorts,” I said, “a green short-sleeve shirt with a collar. Tucked in. Green like Peter Pan. Buzz cut. Sneakers.”

  Mother told how tall.

  I said, “Big ears like Dumbo.”

  Mother said, “Annie!”

  Bartholomew said, “The car doors are open on both sides.”

  “His head is the car,” said John-the-Blimp.

  We followed them back into Disneyland. Markie yanked on his tether, practically pulling me down. We actually split up the twins—Jeannie took Matthew, so I only had one twin as my charge.

  I thought about Tinkerbell the whole way over there. Too bad she wasn’t a saint, she might have some pull with God here. She was in the same realm as my guardian angel, only our parents didn’t believe in Tinkerbell. Meaning, they thought she was made-up, while they wholeheartedly and sincerely believed that we each had this invisible angel hovering around us 24 hours a day, trying to help us get into heaven. An entire heaven of characters, several different kinds of the Blessed Mother, three persons in one God—why couldn’t there be elves and fairies, too? Maybe there are, and we just can’t see them. We never get to hear or see the guardian angel, and all the miracles happen in Europe where we’ll never go. But sometimes I think it would be so great if you could sit long enough in the garden, just looking. You might find the little hideouts belonging to the fairies and elves. Or even the elves themselves. With Tinkerbell, at least you can see the light of her and hear the tinkling sound.

  We went first to the restrooms by the lunch booth near the Matterhorn. This is where we agreed we would meet if anyone got lost. There was no Dominic here. The girls went into the ladies’ room and the boys went into the men’s room, looking under all the doors. No Dominic. I felt sick to my stomach.

  I made up a prayer to his guardian angel and his namesake saint, St. Dominic (the patron saint of astronomers)—and to Tinkerbell—to bring him home. Since Tinkerbell was such a favorite of his. It couldn’t hurt. It wasn’t like I was praying to false gods. Walt Disney is practically a god. And Disneyland is, after all, practically heaven.

  But it gave me an idea. Dominic admired Peter Pan for refusing to grow up. Dominic enjoyed creating the happiness of the thing that made the children fly. He loved saying, “Think of Christmas!”

  We were on Main Street, peeling our eyes into all the stores and whistling. Three notes: two high, one low. It was how we find each other in public. Whee-whee, whir, whee-whee, whir. People wondered, but we knew that if Dominic heard this whistle, we’d find each other.

  “Hey!” I said, “Do you know where Peter Pan is?”

  “Really, Skinny, that’s enough. We’re not looking for Peter Pan.”

  “But that’s where he is! Dominic is with Peter Pan.! He’s a lost boy!”

  “Annie!” Mother said. “It’s not the time for puns.”

  “Like in the story! Dominic is totally crazy for Peter Pan. He has tights and a hat. He jumps off things all the time, thinking he can fly. He volunteered to read Peter Pan to the little kids before bed for the past month. We’re at Disneyland where Peter Pan hangs out. If we find Peter Pan, we’ll find Dominic. I’m pretty sure!”

  So Daddy stopped people right in their tracks, asking, “Have you seen Peter Pan?”

  “Or Tinkerbell,” I said. “They go together.”

  It was getting darker and darker, and all the lights started to glow like a party around us. A big spotlight cut a swath of white against the dark sky behind the castle up ahead. Seeing it, I felt more and more sure. We all trudged up the steps inside the castle. We heard an announcement about Tinkerbell.

  Inside the rooms of the castle, it was this flowing sea of shorts and purses and summer dresses. I started to doubt if I would even recognize my own brother; there were so many legs and feet and sunburned faces and the red toenails of mommies in cotton skirts. At the top, there was a window out to the square below. And at the window there was a slouching kid in a green shirt and marine haircut. It was Dominic.

  “Dominic! Dominic!” I squealed. “There he is!” But he couldn’t hear me. His arms were hanging out the window, holding him up, and his knees were bent. We were a crowd ourselves, but we pushed through the people traipsing around. “Dominic! Dommy!” Me and Jeannie mobbed him, along with the twins, Matthew and Mark, everyone hugging him and saying, “Vo Biscum!” John-the-Blimp whacked him on the back of the head—we all had to touch him to believe he was real and alive.

  His face lit right up. “I’m hungry, he said. “Do you guys have hot dogs?”

  “Where were you?” Daddy asked him gruffly. You would have thought Daddy would be grateful to God for saving his lost son, but instead he was instantly irritated to see him. “How did you get separated from Annie?” he demanded. Everyone was talking at once.

  “We said a whole rosary for you!”

  “Mother counted heads, and you were missing.”

  “Petow Pan,” said Luke, bouncing in Clara’s arms.

  Daddy was angry, practically screaming at him, which ultimately silenced the rest of us. The people who normally stare because of the leashes were staring because of Dad’s military voice and the fact that there were so many of us huddling around this one child with white-chalk knees.

  “Why didn’t you wait there? Like we told you!” Daddy barked. Bartholomew, at the periphery, inched a little closer.

  “I did.” Dominic said quietly, looking at his feet, “I waited a long time.” Then he started sucking in sobs. We were all afraid to hug him because Daddy was so mad. But Mother opened her arms and wrapped her purse around him and patted his head until he calmed down. Daddy stood back, clearing his throat and pacing.

  “We’d never leave you,” she said, right after having done just that. She was crying, too. That seemed to energize him. He looked around, realizing he had an audience.

  “Now I’m really A Lost Boy!” He unraveled, like a metal handle on the back of a toy going in circles. “Captain Hook? He’s a high school guy in a costume. I’m really hungry. I’ve been waiting for Tinkerbell,” he said, pointing out the window. “Look at that!” Just then the fairy light flew across the square. “Does anybody have any popcorn?”

  Luke had been saving a hard candy in his pocket that he had already sucked on. It had fuzz on it, but when Luke held it in his fat little palm, offering it up to his big brother, Dominic popped it into his mouth and smiled. Then he ruffled up Luke’s hair.

  Downstairs in the square, in the cool, under the lights, Daddy
bought Dominic two hot dogs with all the mustard, relish, onions, pickles, and ketchup. He wolfed it back, and we watched him eat it all. Then we got him French fries, and then a cotton candy cone. No one was jealous of him, even when John-the-Blimp snatched some of the pink cotton candy. We said another rosary on the way home in the car, and the twins fell asleep on my lap, one on either side, drooling on my shorts. I held Dominic’s hand as he nodded off to sleep on his own shoulder, waking up every time his head drooped. He let me.

  When we got home, Jeannie and I helped the little kids get their jammies on and everyone went straight to bed. Except for The Hands.

  The following night, when we all knelt down for the rosary, I thought maybe Mother might say something to the boys about what happened under my covers, but she didn’t. She could have, because she had everyone’s attention. But she just thanked the Good Lord for Dominic being returned to us. It would have been embarrassing for me, to tell in public that someone was trying to feel up my breasts in the dark, even if it was a chance to make an example for the rest of the kids. As I was falling asleep, Jeannie said, “What’s wrong with Clara?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s her boyfriend.”

  “I think they broke up.”

  “That Todd guy?”

  “I don’t know who he is.”

  “She’s really mad and upset.”

  Then there was a long pause as we thought about Clara. Rosie was making puppy-licking sounds in her small bed in the corner, so I could tell she was drifting off. I heard Daddy’s footsteps outside the door. He had no reason to say, “Pipe Down Kids.” The wood creaked under his feet.

  “Good night, girls. God bless you.”

  “Good night, Daddy.” I could hear him on the stairs.

  “Jeannie,” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Someone came in last night.”

  “In where?”

  “In here. You were asleep. He didn’t know I was awake.”

  We both lay there in silence. I wasn’t sure I could tell her what he did. Even though it wasn’t my fault, it made me feel ashamed. After a while Jeannie said, “Annie, I know who it was.”

  “The Hands?” I asked.

  “Yeah, The Hands.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do.”

  “Who?” I asked her again. I was pretty drowsy, waiting for her answer, and then it was morning and Daddy was tugging on my feet for 6:30 Mass.

  Dear Jesus, Mother had us move our bedroom downstairs, away from the boys. John-the-Blimp and Bartholomew helped move our table, chairs, and a chest of drawers. Jeannie and I took our clothes on the hangers and carried them down the steps. We didn’t move the beds, we just switched places. Mother changed the sheets. It was all done by the afternoon. We had quite a time because Jeannie wanted her bed here and I wanted it there. As usual, she was backed up by Clara, Madcap, Mother, and John-the Blimp. As usual, only Rosie was on my side. And she’s only seven.

  When I run away, they are going to miss me. They are going to be so sorry.

  Chapter 11

  camp holy hill

  June 20 – Dear Jesus, I don’t know if this is good or bad. They are going to have a new red hotline between Washington and Moscow in case someone gets trigger-happy with the nuclear bomb. It’s just to stop everyone from being blasted to smithereens if Khrushchev loses his temper, or if the translator isn’t too good. But more importantly! In a few more days they’re going to scour the Sistine Chapel for vagrants and then lock all the Cardinals in. The Cardinals are going to be trapped in there until they elect the Supreme Pontiff and Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth. Are you going?

  No one in my class suspected, but at our house, there was no news whatsoever out of the Vatican. If truth be told, we were just as ignorant as every other family in the parish—only we knew we didn’t know anything. Other than one phone call our father made to the archdiocese of Baltimore to Cardinal Stefanucci when the Pope died, it was all made up. Even so, throughout the month of June, we added an extra prayer at every meal to get the Cardinal elected Pope; it was supposed to be a typhoon of begging that would overwhelm God into doing our bidding. I was a Doubting Thomas as to whether or not it would work, but maybe if I threw in my “vocation” as a nun, the group effort would get him elected. I could drop out once he became Pope.

  Clara didn’t seem to notice anything about the impending celebrity sweepstakes we were hoping to win, what with her slamming doors, crying, and running off in a huff whenever she and Mother had a fight. She ditched the last two days of school and she and Mother went to the doctor. When they got back, it was even worse. What the heck was the matter with her? After a flurry of cleaning up, I happened upon her sitting on the floor amidst a stack of magazines, staring at the Life article with pictures of deformed Thalidomide babies. I had to stare at them, too. Somebody had made a huge mistake. All those mothers trusted the government and their doctors that the drug was perfectly safe.

  “What are they going to do with those little babies?” I asked Clara.

  “What do you mean?”

  “They won’t be able to sit up. Or do anything normal. Luckily they’re so cute.” She just stared at me.

  Cuteness is definitely a survival technique for babies, but I wasn’t even sure their mothers would want them, with hands growing out of their shoulders and feet attached to their hips, and some of them, no legs at all. I wondered if something like that had happened to Mother’s “Baby Adamson” and that’s why he’s disappeared.

  The summer stretched in front of us with six little kids needing supervision. The only way to deal with it was to start a military camp. Jeannie liked the idea too.

  Every Navy Brat knows that the foundation of good conduct is reward and punishment. I felt the call of this instinctive understanding when the first thought I had was lickable gold stars. Mother found some in her secret cupboard and gave them to me. Campers got stars for going to Mass and saying random prayers for Cardinal Stefanucci, and we named ourselves Camp Holy Hill. I was the Founder and Chief Counselor. It was a role I was born for: I felt a surge of happiness when things were in order and everyone was busily doing my bidding. “All hands on deck!” I loved making them scramble to line up in front of me with that one. Campers got demerits for anything I deemed demerit-able, but mostly for neglecting obligatory chores and leaving anything messy.

  In the beginning, it was bliss. I’d tape the signs up to greet the campers as they entered the dining room first thing after 6:30 Mass in the morning.

  “Good Morning, Campers. Today we are serving French Toast.” I know, this made it sound like utopia camping, but it wasn’t really because of a certain level of obligatory chaos: one of the twins always ran in stark naked and the other chased him, a superman cape tied around his neck. Or somebody whined, “Big Bully,” “Fatso Freshie,” “Stinkin’ Diaper!”

  “Please. Sit. Down. And say grrrace.” Rosie stood in front of the signs and pointed out each word as she was reading them. Plump and short, she reminded me of our next-door-neighbor, Mr. Franklin, when he watered his lawn in bare feet. The widest part of Mr. Franklin’s body is his waist, and you wonder how he got the shorts up around himself. He looks like an egg with legs. Rosie is like that, only shorter. She doesn’t have glasses, but it’s like she’s always wearing thick ones, and there’s this glassy reality between her and what she sees.

  At first, everyone loved the routine.

  “Stomach in, chest out, shoulders back!” I barked as we all stood in formation on the front lawn. They looked straight ahead while I inspected them. These are two of the best parts of the Navy—drills and blind obedience.

  “Jeannie! Bathroom detail! Shape up or ship out!” I picked up a thin stick off the ground and hit them on their bare arms and legs, like my ballet teacher does to me.

  “Dominic! Mow the front lawn!”

  “Rosie! Vacuum the hallway and living room! Now! Let’s hear that sucking sound!” I loved how cle
an the house was—in the ten minutes between morning chores and lunchtime. The demerit system worked for the first few days, but soon there was a lot of abandonment of deck swabbing and other forced cleanup jobs. Our home resumed its natural state of chaos and we went outside.

  In the front yard, we played Statues, where we froze whenever a car went by then discussed whether or not the people in the car were fooled.

  “The driver of the car didn’t even look!”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “He did so!”

  “How could he? He was looking at the cigarette he threw out the window.”

  “The motorcycle guy waved! He thought we were real.”

  “His girlfriend on the back looked confused.”

  “How could you tell? They went by so fast.”

  “I do! I do!”

  I had them do wheelbarrow and relay races around the house until they couldn’t walk. It wore them down so they would sleep at night. And at bedtime, the big attraction was The Jiffy Bath.

  Each Jiffy Bath only lasted about 39 seconds. The little kids had to stand around naked, hovering in the corner until it was their turn. Rosie, first in line, stripped herself down to nothing and sat on the back edge of the bathtub, which was half-full of warm water. I splashed her and she soaped up. Then I said, “Okay, mark, set, go!” and she slid down the back of the tub into the water, rinsing off the soap and splashing around. She stepped out into an open towel, which I wrapped around her as Buddy scrambled over the tub and perched himself at the back. I had put a pile of clean jammies outside the door. Once they were all snapped up in their buntings, they brushed their teeth and I combed their wet hair and inspected their beds.

  Then we all sat around on the bed for stories. That was my favorite time of the day; they looked so fresh and sweet. The dust and dirt had been washed away, they smelled of shampoo, their wet hair was plastered to their scalps, their skin was soft, and their eyes shone.