Likes by Sarah Bynum (electronic book reader txt) 📕

it’s possibly perfect. If anyone can make the doll she’s been looking for, these Waldorf mothers can: something touchable and dreamy, something she can give her child to cherish, something her child will love and prefer, instead of settle for. Considering that she’s been searching for this doll since the moment Ondine was born, a hundred and thirty dollars is not so much to spend. For every doll in this barn can be purchased, she’s just discovered; on the back of each little cardboard tag is a penciled number, and it’s become interesting to compare the numbers and wonder why this redheaded doll in a polka-dot dress is twenty-five dollars more than the one wearing a cherry-print apron. She wanders farther into the barn, glancing at the names and numbers, idly doing arithmetic in her head: how much this day has cost so far (seventeen for the giraffe, eight for the smoothies, two for raffle tickets) and how much it might end up costing in the future. Because, if she does find the doll she’s looking for, it’d be wonderful to get that white shelf she’s been thinking about, a white shelf that she could buy at Ikea for much less than a similar version at Pottery Barn Kids, and nearly as nice, a shelf she could hang in a cheerful spot in Ondine’s yellow room from which the doll would then gaze down at her daughter with its benign embroidered eyes and cast a spell of protection. All told, with the doll and the giraffe and the smoothies and the shelf, this day could come in at close to two hundred dollars, but who would blink at that? She’s thinking about her child.

Your attention, please! Ruthie will say. Ladies and gentlemen, your attention! Welcome to the show! And the man with the cape will pull back the curtains and everybody will be so surprised by what they see that they will put their hands over their mouths and scream.

But Ruthie’s own surprise is already turning into something else, not a beautiful secret anymore but just a thing that she knows will happen, whether she wants it to or not, just as she knows that she will have an accident in the barn and her giraffe will be lost and her mother will keep looking at the tags hanging from the dolls’ feet, looking closely like she’s reading an important announcement, looking closely and not seeing the puddle getting bigger on the floor. When it happens, her mother will be holding her hand—she is always holding and pulling and squeezing her hand—which is impossible, actually, because Ruthie, clever girl, kind girl, ballet dancer, hair-twirler, brave and bright Dorothy, is already gone.

TELL ME MY NAME

Ever since the California economy collapsed, people have been coming to our street at night and going through the trash. That sounds worse than it is—I guess if it’s recyclable then it’s not really trash. They sort through the blue bins that during the day were wheeled out to the curb, along with the black and green bins, by the gardening crews. The people who come at night are like a crew too. You used to see just solo collectors but over the past few months they seem to have joined forces. They’re efficient, with one of them holding on to the grocery cart and organizing things while the others pull out bottles from the bins. At first they carried flashlights but lately they’ve taken to wearing headlamps.

My neighbor Betti isn’t happy about the situation. She stands on my porch, waving her extra-sharp tweezers in the air. She came over with a splinter lodged under her fingernail, and after a little poking around I got it out. It’s the middle of the afternoon but she knew I’d be home. Now that the splinter is gone she’s free to be irritated by other things, and my trash cans, lined up at the curb, have started her thinking about the recyclers. “I moved here to get away from this shit,” she says, and even though she talks in kind of an ugly way, Betti is one of the most beautiful people I know.

She has arching eyebrows and the smallest possible pores, flat red lipstick that never rubs off on her teeth or crumbs up in the corners of her mouth. Shining dark hair smoothed back in a high ponytail. Toreador pants and little ballet flats so silvery and supple I hate to see them touching the sidewalk. The math still shocks me: she must be at least forty-five years old! You’d never know it, because her skin is amazing.

I used to look at her picture in magazines, ages ago, when I was a regular girl going to middle school and she was a popular person going to gay dance clubs in New York. Her friends were graffiti artists, punk bands, drag queens, rappers, gallery owners: everything was all mixed up then, in a good way. I used to read those magazines monkishly, over and over again, late into the night, as if they contained a key to unlocking a secret world of happiness. And maybe they did; maybe they taught me something important. Or maybe it was just a way to kill time until I could grow up, get a job, find a partner, buy a house—

A house four doors down from Betti Pérez! The houses are small but they cost a lot. What I mean is that they look sweet on the outside but there may be comedians or talent managers or people like Betti living inside.

“The other morning I’m standing in my kitchen,” she says, “still in my nightie, trying to get the toaster to work, and I hear something funny. A rustling-around kind of sound, like a rat makes? And I look over and there’s a little man right outside my pantry window! Ten feet away from me! Digging away in there, helping himself.”

“You should get your gate fixed,”