Right now, Dotty peers inside as I tease, brush and spray, thecrest high on its head as if its eponym had just finished back-combing the hell out of its feathers.
“Higher the hair, the closer to God,” I swear I can hear the roadrunner say to me in the real Dotty’s voice. “And most of us need all the help—and height—we can get.”
I look at Teddy and Trudy. I am now hearing voices because they have been engaged in a silent standoff ever since we returned home from the theater. I forced the two into my bedroom to talk.
However, the only noise I’ve heard in the last twenty minutes has been the hiss of a hairspray can and a short, sharp bark from the roadrunner.
Trudy is wearing a vintage, oversized tunic color-blocked in angled panels of pink and yellow that makes her look significantly thinner. It finally hits me that it’s from Teddy’s store, and I wonder who gifted it to her to wear tonight. I admire the guts it must have taken for Trudy to wear something like this in public.
The silence buzzes. I could cut the tension with a pair of salon scissors.
Trudy lifts her cell with a shaking hand and aims it at the roadrunner.
“I’ve never seen one in real life,” she whispers, as though it might hear her. “A roadrunner was the one thing I was most excited to see in the desert.”
I was not expecting her to speak, and I jump at the sound of her voice, a comb sticking in the back of Rose’s wig.
“Gee, thanks,” Teddy replies.
I look up as Trudy’s face falls.
“That’s not what I meant, Teddy.”
She snaps a photo.
“Do you remember when we used to watch cartoons on Saturday morning?” Trudy continues, still staring at the roadrunner. “While Mom and Dad slept in?”
“You mean, slept it off,” Teddy interrupts.
“We’d grab our cereal—Quisp for you and Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries for me—and we’d watch cartoons all morning?”
“Yeah. We’ve already shared this touching family story, Trudy.”
Trudy closes her eyes, and a whisper of a smile appears on her face. She talks as if she is in a trance.
“We’d watchLand of the Lost,H.R. Pufnstuf,Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm,Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!,” she continues. “But our favorite wasThe Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show. You loved Bugs Bunny the most.”
I swear I can see a tiny smile trace its way across Teddy’s face.
“The coyote was always trying to outwit the roadrunner, but it was too smart to get caught,” Trudy says. “Remember, Teddy?”
“I do,” he says. “Ironically, everybody thinks the roadrunner is the innocent one,” Teddy continues, watching it as it watches us. “But they’re not like the cartoon character, Trudy, just like life is not a sitcom. Roadrunners are omnivores. They eat and kill just about anything that crosses their paths. Did you know they can kill a rattlesnake? If a pair of roadrunners wants to eat a rattlesnake, they just team up and peck its head until it dies. I’ve seen it happen. It’s horrifying to watch. They will torture anything—birds, frogs, reptiles—just pecking and pecking until it gives up.”
Teddy looks at his sister.
“Sound familiar?” he asks.
Trudy’s eyes fill with tears.
“Teddy, please!”
I don’t mean to say this with so much force, but my words emerge as an angry shout. The comb shakes in my hand.
“Spare me, Ron,” Teddy says with so much contempt I can almost feel the venom. “You’re the one who caused all of this with your pathetic codependence and unshakeable belief in a God that has never believed in you. You’ve been alone your whole life and made do with an invisible friend to get you through.”
“Teddy, stop it,” Trudy now says. “Ron is just trying to help.”
“I’ll go,” I say, “so you two can talk. My presence isn’t helping matters.”
