Chapter Text
"And time, merciless beast, keeps speeding by" - Matt Gould, Lempicka: Original Soundtrack
- - -
In the spring of 1968, Emily had a suitor.
Jessie, relegated to her place under the bed with the record player, the plastic horses she still carefully tended, and pairs of outgrown leather boots, had not expected a suitor to come along because, with the exception of the immediate family, no one had entered Emily’s bedroom since early in Emily’s sophomore year of high school.
Emily was always out. She would be at school or her job at the hamburger stand that made her smell like fried onions or out with her friends who lived closer to town. In the last two years all Jessie observed of Emily was her feet as she came in to change, the light from her desk lamp as she sat to do homework, and the creak of the mattress as she went to sleep. Her routine was like clockwork, except for the nights she’d be out to sleep at friend’s homes, which in the summer was very frequent and left the room quiet save the sound of the cicadas in the trees outside.
One night in spring there was a new sound. A tapping on the window like the crow that one summer Emily had fed in exchange for scraps of Christmas tinsel, nails, and once a whole quarter which landed on the sill with a heavy “clack” and had been met with the delighted shriek of the child. But the crow had been gone many years now, before even Jessie had fallen under the bed so that the crow couldn’t have been the source of the tapping. It was just after the last snow melt in May and there was no wind to rattle the branches of the tree outside the window, just the calm air filled with smell of small growing things ready to burst.
The lurch of the mattress told Jessie that the tapping had woken Emily. Emily turned in bed and gave a gasp that was much softer than the shriek of a child entertaining a crow with shelled peanuts, but Jessie could still hear the buoyant edges of her delight.
Emily’s socked feet hit the floorboards and ran with careful tread to the window.
“What are you doing?” Emily whispered.
“Just thought I’d swing by,” a new voice. Not one of Emily’s friends, not Cheryl or Mary Ellen or Donna; it was a man’s voice. No not quite a man, either a very old boy or a very young man. Someone Emily’s age.
Emily stood on tiptoe and a cool draft settled into the room.
“Sh, shhh,” Emily whispered and giggled at the same time, “We have to stay quiet.”
“Aw, Ems, I’m not here for any talking- woah!”
There was the sound of something scuffling up the wall, like a raccoon or the barn cat, and then a heavy WHUMP as a pair of dirty Converse sneakers and the hems of faded blue jeans entered Jessie’s view and stumbled, almost falling, before regaining upright balance.
Emily’s socks moved closer to the sneakers and then there was the larger, stiffer, groan of springs as more than the usual weight rested on the mattress overhead.
“Take off your shoes.” Emily’s request was followed by the double thunk of the sneakers as they were carelessly kicked onto the floorboards. Jessie stared at the mud caked waffle pattern on the soles as she listed to the strange new sounds above.
Once settled the two teenagers didn’t move much. It was obvious that the boy wasn’t supposed to be here. They whispered like dolls gossiping while their girls slept at a sleepover and then, unlike toys, another noise entered the silence. It was kissing sounds.
Jessie rolled her eyes and made a face like she was going to vomit. She couldn’t vomit. She was a toy. But she knew that was the face Emily would make at the thought of kissing a boy. Except… except that this was Emily and she really was kissing a boy.
It was some amount of time before the mattress springs croaked and the two sat up again. Big hands reached down and pulled the sneakers onto too big feet- smelly too- with holes in the socks. Disgusting! Emily’s socks never had holes, her mother would never allow it.
The boy crept to the window in an ungainly attempt at stealth and Emily’s pristine socks followed silently.
The muddy sneakers disappeared and the animal scuffling on the wall came back.
“Oh!” the boy’s voice broke the careful silence, “I forgot to ask you something.”
“Shh! What?!”
“Did you want to go to the Spring Fling with me?”
Emily’s feet went on tiptoe twice in excitement. “Oh, Bobby Krusinski, I thought you’d never ask!”
Bobby Krusinski ?! The boy Emily used to decry as “disgusting” over the telephone to Cheryl and Donna? The boy who Emily had even confided to Jessie had pulled her hair on the first day of second grade?! Jessie feels a weight like a marble in her stuffing start to form, not because it’s Bobby Krusinski but because the first day of second grade must have been years and years ago.
“You wanna go or not?” Bobby Krusinski asked.
“That’d be right on.”
“Right on! Okay! Bye, Ems’!” Instead of the quiet crawl of some animal landing on the tree there was the abrupt sound of crashing in the branches and the bushes outside the window and Emily’s loud shriek awoke the whole house.
- - -
The coiled telephone cord dragged across the floor as Emily’s saddle shoes shuffled into the room.
“I don’t know how he’s going to dance with me in his crutches,” she was saying absently, “But I bought the makeup anyway.” The sound of a paper bag tilting over and a compact of blush rolled towards Jessie. Knowing the girl would reach in after it, Jessie caught it, just to see how Emily looked these days.
- - -
Andy’s mother let him watch old cowboy movies. Sometimes it was because was all that was on the television at 2:00 p.m on a Tuesday in July but sometimes they rented.
Of course Andy needed his cowboy toys to watch a cowboy movie so Woody, Jessie, and Bullseye were the main witnesses to these screenings though sometimes others were permitted to join. Jessie enjoyed the films, found the action exciting and liked that even in the boring ones she could look at the horses. Some of them she’d seen before at the drive-in with Emily.
She remembered being held by Emily as she scrambled over the dyed leather upholstery to the front seat of Emily's father’s station wagon. The whole car had smelled like melted butter on popcorn and Jessie's pull string had got caught on the window crank. At a particularly tense scene in the film Emily had clutched her tighter and the pull string came loose, causing an involuntary yodel from her voice box to make everyone in the car jump and then laugh.
Sometimes there was kissing in the movies. She had been shocked on her first day in Andy’s room when she had stumbled upon Woody and Bo Peep locked in a tangled sort of embrace with their faces mashed together. People in movies kissed. Emily had kissed Bobby Krusinski. Jessie hadn’t known toys to do that to each other. Perhaps it was that Woody and Bo Peep had seen more movies than her.
On two occasions Jessie had had the pleasure of accompanying Andy to the VHS rental store. Woody and Bullseye were there too of course, for Andy had wanted the pimple faced clerk behind the counter to know that he enjoyed playing the distinguished game of cowboys not dolls.
The shop was air conditioned and unlike other stores she had visited with the family, didn’t play music. Instead a series of overhead television sets throughout the store played synchronized advertisements for movies and video games. The whole store smelled of the static of clean vinyl.
Jessie would learn that some newer toys, such as Woody’s fascinating astronaut friend Buzz, found an odd natal comfort in the smell of fresh vinyl and would ask about the smell of the video rental shop on their return. She couldn't relate to that sort of sense memory- she had been packaged in a cardboard box and spent about a third of her life in a sour smelling Styrofoam lined storage case. At the rental store Jessie had liked looking at the pictures on the front off all the video tape boxes- miniature versions of the posters that once had been pasted outside movie theaters and drive-ins. It seemed every movie in the world was lined up perfectly on a metal wire shelf.
“What do you think, Jessie? Look rootin’ tootin’ enough for ya?” Andy asked her, holding her up to a box bearing a title she never thought she’d see again.
Andy always drifted away from his mother and sister in the “Family” section and could usually be found in “Western” or “Science Fiction” and on odd occasion, “Horror”. The toys would become uneasy when he went into the “Horror” section, but when he clutched them tighter than usual that night they would relax knowing they still had a few more years.
- - -
She still has panic attacks on occasion. Her triggers were small dark isolated space, such as when she was carelessly left under the bed for more than a day or if, in the specific event that Andy had seen an old horror movie (that he insisted was not that scary), placed Jessie into a shoebox as a “vampire bride” and then abruptly left for family dinner.
The shoebox incident had been particularly bad, especially since she couldn’t compose herself enough to pop open the lid. Buzz had been the one to open the box and lift her out, talking her through the panic to focus on her breathing. She was embarrassed by how tight she had held onto him when she regained her breath and then Andy was heard on the stairs and Buzz had to convince her to get back into the box. He left one of her arms hanging limply out and squeezed her hand as he dropped to the floor. She could feel his stiffened fingertips grazing hers as Andy entered the room and resumed his play.
To her relief it was only a short amount of time before she was allowed to rise from her crypt and turn Buzz into a vampire before getting staked with a golf tee by Woody who was a cowboy vampire hunter. After Andy went to bed, Buzz let her tease him about the game.
- - -
Andy was not Woody’s first child. It should have been immediately obvious, he was as old as Jessie. Surely he had had other kids, but did not speak about them.
Jessie tried to get him to talk about them but he would raise his hands up in protest and shake his head. “It doesn’t matter,” he would say, all too calm, “What matters is that we can be here now for Andy while he has us.” She hated how complacent, how... uncaring his philosophy sounded.
They would get into arguments about it, Jessie trying to pry some information about his past as Andy grew older. She just wanted to see if anyone else in the room could relate to her anxieties about the swift pace of time and he may well have been the only one.
“You can’t be that heartless! I know you feel something!” she’d shout at him, and he’d act like he was taking the higher ground by walking away and she’d stamp her boots and throw her hat down and call him a rude name which would make him double back and then they’d wrestle until Bo or Buzz broke them up.
At certain point Woody started to ignore her questions.
“We’ve had this conversation before. Let’s not.”
“What are you talking about?! We’ve never had a conversation about this! We wrassled about it, and I won I might add, and then you had to get your butt saved by your girlfriend.”
“Don’t bring her into this!”
Jessie won that wrestling match too.
- - -
Andy had a girlfriend now. Her name was Sarah. Sarah was on the swim team. They’d do homework together and then kiss on his bed until one time Andy’s mom walked in with the laundry and after that Andy wasn’t allowed to close his door when Sarah was over.
Maybe Woody’s last owner, whoever they were, also kissed someone. Jessie was aware now, after several years in Andy’s room, that Bo was older than she looked, perhaps older than Woody. She had spent decades on a bedside lamp base so she’d have a better understanding of the whole “kissing” process than anyone else. Was it always on beds? Nah, Woody and Bo were pretty indiscriminate of where they smooched.
- -
One day after Woody deflected her questions about his past kids without the decency to throw hands about it Jessie stomped off to the bookshelf.
“What’s got you in a tangle, Missy?” said a voice behind her. It was Slinky Dog, his front extending out from where his bottom half had fallen behind the shelf a few months ago. Jessie was always sure to visit him when it was clear Andy had forgotten him.
“Oh nothin!” she shouted, gesticulating her arms outward, “Just that Woody won’t tell me anything about his life before Andy! That he’s not an inch nervous about Andy growing up and what comes after!”
Slinky quirked an eye at her. “Ah,” he sighed, “Is that all that's botherin' you?
“Nothing bothers me! I just wish he’d talk about it!” she shouted in Woody’s direction.
“Woody and me we go way back, waaaaaay back, and you see, old timers like us, sometimes we don’t like to talk about our old kids. Hurts too much. Better to focus on the kids we’ve got and how to make them happy.”
“So you’d rather forget your old kids?”
“Naw, not forget, just put them to the back of your mind, y’see? It’s easier that way.”
“Well I ain’t ever gonna forget Emily,” said Jessie pulling the flare of her chaps to expose her old address.
“And you don’t have to,” said Slinky, “Just have some compassion for us old dogs tryin’ to get by. You know how bad it feels to remember.”
“I’d rather feel it that shove it down, but sure,” said Jessie still pouting. She looked up over her crossed arms and looked out at Woody pouring his attention into grooming Bullseye with a lint roller.
Later that afternoon she fetched Bullseye and greeted Woody with a long low whistle.
“Bullseye looks mighty fine today, Sheriff, are you usin’ that new tape Mom bought from the Dollar Store?”
Woody gives her a flat expression and then quirks a testing eyebrow at her.
Jessie continues, “I know I couldn’t have done it better and goodness knows Andy’s won’t come around to it.”
“I just want him to look nice for Andy,” said Woody, pride in his voice, but now Jessie could hear the faint tiredness at the edges, could tell there was that marble feeling in Woody's stuffing too.
“And my does he,” she bumped him on the shoulder then pulled him aside.
“I’m sorry for fighting with ya, Woody. I didn’t know.”
Woody shrugged and smiled. “Apology accepted, Jessie. We can’t all wear our heart on our sleeve like you do. No, don't worry about it, Jessie, it's a compliment. You wear yours just fine.”
- - -
If Woody was an old timer then Buzz would be a first timer. He’d meet Jessie on the windowsill when she was feeling low and share her worries about Andy’s age and their general lack of playtime. Unfortunately he was still a little naive.
“Well hopefully Mom finds us a nice new kid to go to,” he said, swinging his plastic boots over the ledge.
Jessie’s initial smirk faded when she realized he was serious.
“Buzz, we might not all get to go together.”
He blinked into the air and then worry spread over his face. “Oh.”
“Y’see why I’m worrying myself to pieces over here?”
Where he’d normally pat her awkwardly on the shoulder she patted his instead.
- - -
Molly’s room was brighter and cleaner than her teenage brother’s room. It smelled like strawberry chapstick and the exhalations of moss covered rocks collected at the creek. The sunlight of the southeast facing window filtered through ruffled pink curtains and turned the floorboards to something warm and golden.
Jessie has been hiding under Molly’s bed for three days in a glorious vacation from her rightful child’s negligence. All of Andy’s toys had held their breath as the toy chest’s lid opened for the first time and months and were surprised to see Molly, nine years old and hunting for a villain in her game. It was a rare occurrence these days that Jessie’s static smiling face matched her internal excitement at being chosen. She didn’t care if Molly made her the witch in animal skins who threatened Barbie’s animal rescue center. She didn’t care that she had given mancala gems to a penniless mother (Barbie again, with a rag from sewing camp arranged over her head) in exchange for her first born to raise into a secret weapon in the vengeance against the Wise Woman of the Magic Lamp (Bo Peep, surrounded by Molly’s collection of slips from takeout fortune cookies). Playtime was playtime and everyone took turns playing their role, what mattered is that she was played with!
When it was time for supper Molly tossed her brother’s stolen toy under the bed and closed the door behind her. Molly’s guilt over her thievery would keep Jessie under the bed for a whole week until it consumed the little girl and she quietly put Jessie back into Andy’s toy box as if her brother had ever missed his toy. In the meantime Jessie would take the time to bask in her soft new surroundings.
It was like going to a spa- or at least from what she gleamed from daytime television commercials- with the constant rebraiding of her hair and dots of waterbased markers on her nails. It was relief from the cramped toy box in a room that daily smelled stronger and stronger of the sharp rankness of unmanaged body odor that shocked Jessie until she remembered her singular encounter with Bobby Krusinski's socks. When Molly left the room, Jessie was free to move from her place under the bed and socialize with the other toys in the room.
All her life Jessie had been under the unspoken impression that to be a “doll” was to be something vapid and empty headed, that for a girl to reach for a bright bottle of nail polish was some death knell to all innocence, but her one week in Molly’s room was a pleasant revelation.
Barbie poured over all the books on Molly’s shelf and every magazine and newspaper in the house, grasping and saving every shred of information from fashion history to world politics. She also liked dressing up and one quality did not negate the other.
Bo was the sheriff of sorts of Molly’s room, serving the same leadership role as Woody in Andy’s room. Bo had a way with animals- stuffed or real- that Jessie certainly admired and under her lace and ruffles was a character composed of solid rock.
“I can see what Woody sees in you,” said Jessie swinging her legs admiringly on Molly’s white laminate desktop.
“That’s sweet of you to say, sugar,” smiled Bo politely. Even her polite smile on her shining porcelain face was beatific. She was beautiful in every sense. Bo made Jessie feel unworthy and chivalrous all at once. She wanted Molly to stop casting her as a “witch” or a “sorceress” so she could play the hero like Woody and catch her from falling into a pit of monkeys or soft toys. But Bo didn’t really need rescuing did she? Woody could never fall for someone completely helpless and neither could Jessie. Bo was more than capable on her own without even announcing it to the world and her quiet strength endeared Jessie to her more.
“You’re cut from the same cloth as him too you know,” said Bo sitting down next to her.
“Am I?”
“Hm. Maybe a different grain,” said Bo, indicating Jessie’s denim jeans.
Jessie laughed at the joke. Her face had felt too big, too clunky next to Bo, but Bo pressed closer and bumped her shoulder playfully.
“Bo are you worried about Andy?”
Bo didn’t entertain the worried glance that everyone in Andy’s room does. She just tilted her head in Jessie’s direction and looked at her, really looked at her, with genuine interest.
“He’s not my kid. Sure he used to play with me, but he’s not mine. How do you feel about it?”
Jessie felt her breath shorten as the cramped dark path of the unseeable future formed in front of her. “Not great.”
“He’s not your first kid is he?”
“No. Second.”
“Oh honey that’s the worst! You remember what the first heartache felt like and you brace yourself for the next because now you know how terrible it feels.”
Jessie felt that marble in her chest expand and rupture like a ripped seam. She folded her torso across her legs and pressed her shut eyes into her knees.
“Well take it from an old timer,” Bo’s smooth hands rubbed soothing circles on Jessie’s back, “You get used to it, but it doesn’t make the pain hurt any less.”
Jessie inhaled and sat up. “How many kids have you had, Bo?”
“Too many to count. I’m a nursery toy from about twenty years before you and Woody ever existed. Nursery toys have a higher turn over you know.”
Jessie’s eyes widened. “So what do you do about it?” This seam that has opened in her chest.
“I don’t know yet but I’d sure like to figure it out one of these days.”
“Aw come on, you can’t have gotten this far in life without figuring out some part of it.”
Bo sat thinking for a moment. “You have to trust that being alive is enough.”
“What?”
“Kids come and go but you have to find something outside of them that grounds you.”
Jessie thought for a moment. “Like animals?”
“Mm-hm. Or friends.”
“Friends are kind of dependent on the kid, aren't they?”
“Not the really good ones. Those are forever.”
“Like Woody?”
“Oh Woody is more than a friend,” said Bo with a suggestive giggle that earned her a slap on the arm from Jessie. “Oh like you don’t know what I mean, girly. Speaking of which… has that space boy of yours made any moves yet?”
Jessie’s face felt hot. The sudden switch in conversation scrambled her thoughts. “Buzz?!” Bo nodded and flashed her eyebrows.
“Buzz is a gentleman!” gasped Jessie defensively, “He’d never- He wouldn’t- Even if I’d like to- Oh-“
“Hey Barbie! You better get the old baby monitor out! I need you to call Hamm!” called Bo to the other side of the room, “Because I’ve got a penny that’s just dropped!”