The Accidental Siren

5.1 Fairytale Part One: The Girl

CHAPTER FIVE

FAIRYTALE, PART ONE: THE GIRL

To prepare for this descent into my past, I took a weekend vacation to my childhood home. I stooped in my closet and unhinged--with a crowbar because of the nails--the hatch to my childhood lair. Dismembered limbs from a fake tree expanded from the open square like a wrung sponge. I removed the branches one by one, piled them beside the dismantled bed frame, and coughed in a plume of spray-on snow.

I was taller than the boy who wrote stories in that narrow hole, but I was thinner too. Inside, my legs were crossed and my chin could rest on the lowest pipe. The smell was unfamiliar--like soot and wet newspaper--but the memories were bountiful.

Mickey's bulb was broken, confirmed by the rattling noise when I shook it, so I relied on the thin beam from the hatch to navigate the cavern. My comic books were still intact and I made a mental note to check the going rate for Batman memorabilia on eBay. My yearbooks--dating from 1991 to 2002--were in various stages of disrepair. I scanned the pages of my freshman year and found on the twenty-first page a smushed piece of paper like a pressed flower: “Idea!” it said. “Maybe I Should See His Emergency Room!”

The real treasures were those christened by little Mara; a zebra-print snap bracelet, a plastic VHS case that boasted Disney's Beauty and the Beast but contained no tape, Dorothy's collar, a blue diary with a broken lock, and a statuette of Saint Michael, wings ablaze and poised to fight. I placed the statue by the exit, then cracked the diary's spine and flipped to the last entry: August 26, 1994. It was the night of the carnival. The night when everything changed.

A dead mosquito laid upside down on the lid to a particularly heavy storage bin. As I swiped it away, I recalled the time when Mara swatted a dozen flies around the playroom, then left the squished bodies as a warning to the other bugs that she was serious.

A Play-Dough sculpture sat at the bottom of the bin. I removed the colorful slab and admired Mara's fingerprints preserved for ten years in the petrified clay. It had a flat bottom and round top; a model of a hill--Mara's hill--with trees etched meticulously around the base and bluff like a crest of male-pattern baldness. A stout water tower had been whittled out of red clay and smushed on the plateau like a miniature Shriner hat. The hair on my neck stiffened as I studied the sculpture; a reminder that even Mara had her obsessions.

Her costume was bundled in the corner by the library exit. I unfolded the light-green fabric as if it was the Shroud of Turin. I examined the neat folds and perfect stitching where Mom demonstrated her sewing machine, then the lopsided gnarls of thread when I took over. The corset top was lashed with leather shoelaces, slack since the completion of her final scene. There was a blouse too, yellowed from years in hiding, flared sleeves, a hole on the left shoulder, and grass stains on each elbow.

Beneath the costume was a forgotten box--meant for a rock collection--that contained trinkets slipped into Mara's pockets by the twins. There were crayons, a headless G.I. Joe, a tube of toothpaste, little green army men, and a slip of lined paper that read, “MARA” in big, crooked letters. One item was missing, and I recalled The Panty Incident when Bobby stole a pair of my mother's underwear and slipped them under Mara's pillow. Mara knew the culprit immediately and returned the undies to their owner. Mom and Bobby had a talk after the incident which put an end to the giving of secret gifts.

Hidden in a bin of Christmas ornaments was the reason for my visit; the complete “Fairytale” screenplay with twenty-six pages, golden brackets, the distinct spacing of my father's word processor, and a title page:

“FAIRYTALE”

 By James Parker

 With help from Mara Lynn

and Whitney Conrad the 3rd

I scanned the text, marveled at our grade-school ambition, and made the decision to supplement “The Accidental Siren” with unmodified excerpts from several key scenes. I hope these descriptions set a humorous tone while providing a peek into the collective creativity of a boy and his pals.