Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead Page A

loathes Jacob. Sandy stops short of imagining some nefarious plot to keep Chloe down, but, looking at her child and Joan’s as they sit with ice-cream-smeared Amber between them and avidly monitor the approach of a person in a fuzzy yellow Pluto suit, she can’t see how one is smarter than the other. Harry is so quiet, such a mama’s boy, while Chloe is opinionated and confident.
    Pluto stops, waves a big-mitted hand, and crouches down, inviting a hug. The children rise and move toward him, opening their arms, drawn into the embrace by the irresistible gravity these suited characters hold for them. Chloe buries her face in the dog’s shoulder while Harry presses his palm against its smooth red tongue and Amber reaches to stroke its muzzle. Chloe has been shy around the princesses and the other characters who are recognizably human, but she hugs the animals fearlessly, emotionally. All three children engage with their whole bodies, allow their backs to be rubbed and patted by the big stuffed paws. Often, dazed and pleased, they have to be gently peeled off by the characters themselves.
    “What I want to know,” Tim says quietly, “is who these people are who want to go around hugging kids all day.”
    Sandy is disappointed he wants to ruin the moment with a joke, but she plays along. “I’ve heard,” she says, “that the people inside don’t even get to wear their own underwear. Apparently there have been issues with crabs.”
    “No shit!” Tim says and then covers his mouth, looking to see if the children heard. But Amber, Chloe, and Harry are lost in the afterglow, arms slack, staring after Pluto’s skinny tail.
    “Dad,” says Amber, squinting, “I want a Pluto doll.”
    “Maybe later, okay?”
    “Dad.”
    “Later, baby.” The ice cream and the hug have appeased her, and she does not persist.
    Joan is playing reflective. “I thought the kids might be scared of the characters, but they act like they’ve always known these people—or mice or dogs or whatever.”
    Tim looks at her like she’s a genius. “I never thought of it that way.”
    “I was just thinking the same thing,” Sandy says. “They’re really having fun. It’s great.” But nobody says anything, except Chloe, who says she has to pee. Sandy says okay, she’ll take her, and then they should all be brave and go on the Matterhorn.
    Amber has no intention of riding any roller coasters, but she wants Tim to go so he can tell her about it, and it is decided, mostly by Sandy, that Joan will take Amber on the teacups and then on Alice in Wonderland while Harry and Chloe and Tim and Sandy ride the roller coaster.
    “It’ll be a good chance for you to …” Sandy mimes a cigarette at Joan.
    Joan ignores the gesture. “Does that sound okay, Harry?” she asks. “Do you want to go on the Matterhorn?”
    “Okay,” the child says.
    Sandy suspects Harry is afraid but doesn’t want to be shown upby Chloe. She wishes everyone would go away for a while, let her and Tim be alone in little cars in dark places, get rattled around and pushed into each other.
    Yodeling music is piped through speakers along the line for the Matterhorn, which is very long, wrapping partway around the mountain before a series of switchbacks inside an open structure meant to suggest a Swiss train station or chalet or something, not that Sandy’s ever been to Europe. Gary promised to take her, but now he says it’s too expensive. Hearing Joan casually mention her time in Paris and all the other places she went on tour with the company doesn’t help. Sandy once confessed her dream of seeing Big Ben and the Tower of London, and Joan only said the food was bad in England. Sandy asked her how she would know, since she never eats, and Joan had not laughed. She wishes she could be nicer to Joan; she wishes she liked her more.
    The Matterhorn is a craggy cement sculpture of a miniature mountain with a white-painted overhanging peak. Speeding toboggans flash through the