Toys Come Home: being the early experiences of an intelligent stingray, a brave buffalo, and a brand-new someone called Plastic

CHAPTER THREE

What Happened to Bobby Dot

It is now three months later. Sheep has forgotten how it felt to ever have a matching set of ears, but she remembers the grass very well and talks about it often. The clover, too.

StingRay plays solitaire with a deck of cards she’s secreted under the bed. She also spends hours looking out the Girl’s window at the neighborhood below, wishing for someone interesting to talk to.

The leaves have begun to turn red, orange, and brown. Pumpkins are perched fatly on people’s front steps. People huddle in jackets and scarves. It is fall.

Today, the Girl is sick. It started with feeling hot in the face on Thursday, then a fever and Friday staying home. Then a sore stomach and now the Girl is puking.

Her dad comes running as she starts, but it is too late. She has thrown up all over Bobby Dot, who was cuddling with her on the high bed. The vomit covers his thick whiskers, his long tusks, his insufferably self-satisfied eyes. It covers his chubby plush body, sparing only his back flippers.

“Here, take your towel,” says the dad, rubbing the Girl’s back. He hands her a large rectangle of yellow terry cloth, which she uses to wipe her mouth and hands.

The dad tosses Bobby Dot and the soiled patchwork quilt onto the floor near where StingRay is watching. He and the Girl head down the hall to the bathroom.

“Excuse me,” whispers StingRay to the walrus. “Was that a towel?”

“Puke! Puke! I’m covered in puke!” Bobby Dot does not answer the question.

“Because you said towels had teeth and claws—”

“I can’t believe she puked on me. Ug! So disgusting!”

“—and that was just a big terry-cloth rectangle. You told me they were vicious!”

“Oh, it smells. Can you smell me? Do I smell like puke?”

“You’re telling me the whole scary towel gang is nothing but a club of rectangles?”

“Yes, it’s a club of rectangles!” Bobby Dot barks. “Very obnoxious rectangles who do their rectangle thing and sing together and aren’t very welcoming! How could you not know what a towel is?”

“I knew,” lies StingRay. “I knew what a towel was. I just thought these ones at this house had teeth and claws, because that is what you told me! The only reason I was confused is because you lied.”

“I am covered in puke! I can’t worry about your problems. Can you believe the Girl puked on me?”

“She’s sick,” snaps StingRay. “She couldn’t help it.”

“She could have turned away. She could have just puked on the blanket. She was thoughtless.”

“She puked on you with love!” StingRay is outraged. “She was cuddling you on the high bed to make herself feel better!”

“This is the most disgusting experience of my life,” moans Bobby Dot.

“It is an honor to be puked on by the Girl.” StingRay rears up in anger. “You are not appreciating what an honor it is. I would give anything to be up on that high bed, being puked on and cuddled.”

At that moment, the dad and the Girl return from the bathroom.

Dad tosses the vomity yellow towel onto the pile of Bobby Dot and the patchwork quilt. He helps the Girl put on a clean nightgown and get back under the sheets. Then he scoops up the linens and the walrus, and heads downstairs to do laundry.

. . . . .

Bobby Dot does not return that day.

Neither does the towel.

Neither does the patchwork quilt nor the dirty nightgown.

The Girl sleeps under a crocheted afghan with the one-eared sheep.

She does not puke any more.

The next morning, the dad brings back the linens from the washer and dryer in the basement. He puts the patchwork quilt on the bed and hangs the worn yellow towel in the hall bathroom. The Girl is feeling well enough to go play downstairs, so the toys are left alone.

“Where is Bobby Dot?” asks StingRay.

Nobody answers.

“Sheep, did you hear me?”

Apparently, Sheep did not.

“Mice, where is Bobby Dot?” calls StingRay. “Rocking Horse? Does anybody know?”

“He went to the basement to get washed,” squeaks a tiny voice from under the bookcase.

“Yes. Well. We know that. We all know that,” says StingRay. “The question is, where is he now? Because he hasn’t come back and the basement is full of spiders and maybe ghosts.”

Nobody answers.

“If you don’t have any suggestions for me,” announces StingRay, “then I’ll have to go down the hall and ask that yellow towel.”

Again, no answer.

Oh.

Now StingRay has to go ask the towel.

It is not nearly so scary a prospect as when she thought towels had teeth and claws, but she remembers what Bobby Dot said about them being clubby and unfriendly, and she wishes she had not just announced that she would talk to one.

Still, Bobby Dot has not returned.

And StingRay needs to know what happened.

She waits until night. Until the Girl is asleep and the house is quiet. Then she scoots down the hall and peers nervously into the bathroom. StingRay has never been in there before, and she is surprised at how very tile-y it is. Tile on the floors. Tile on the walls. There is a smell of tangerine soap. The black-and-white whales printed on the shower curtain look menacing.

The yellow towel, damp and slightly wrinkled, hangs over the shower rod. Some floating bath toys are lined up on the edge of the tub: a boat, an orca, two pirates, a purple spray bottle, and a squirty rocket.

StingRay addresses the pirates. “Ahoy. My name is StingRay. I am looking to talk to the yellow towel in hopes of investigating the disappearance of a walrus.”

No reply.

“What I need to know is: Is this towel friendly? Do you think I can just ask it a question?”

Again, no reply.

“Or do I need an introduction?” StingRay goes on. “Or, like, membership in a club?”

“It’s friendly,” says a voice from above. A soothing, droopy voice.

StingRay looks up.

The towel is speaking to her. “None of those bath toys talk,” she continues. “But I do. My name is TukTuk.”

“Hello,” says StingRay. “I—I’m wondering about the walrus. Bobby Dot. Do you remember? He was covered with puke and he went down to the basement for a wash, but—”

“He never came back.” TukTuk finishes the sentence.

StingRay nods.

“They should never have put him in the Dryer.”

“What’s a dryer?”

“Dries towels and clothes after we’re done in the washing machine. Everything spins around very hot.”

“Why shouldn’t Bobby Dot have gone in?”

“The Dryer is very sensitive. They should never have put in those sneakers, either.”

“What happened?”

“I was in the load ahead of him. He washed up okay, even though his tag said Dry Clean Only. I saw him come out of the washer clean and fresh.”

“And then?”

“The Dryer can’t handle sneakers.”

“TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED!” StingRay shouts, and is surprised to see the towel’s edges curl up slightly in recoil.

For a moment, TukTuk doesn’t answer. Then she says: “The Dryer’s barrel got out of line. Started thumping. No one came. She went through the whole cycle. When the dad unloaded, the walrus was in shreds.”

StingRay is so shocked she can’t speak.

“He was nothing but fluff and scraps of plush,” says TukTuk. “The rest was clogging up the lint collector.” She sighs. “Maybe the threads that held him together were plastic. Maybe those threads melted. Or could be all that shaking was just too much.”

“Oh.”

“They threw what was left of him in the trash,” TukTuk finishes. “But he was gone long before that happened.”

Oh, oh, oh.

Bobby Dot is gone.

Bobby Dot will never, ever come back.

StingRay tries to feel sad, because she is pretty sure that’s how you are supposed to feel, but fear washes over her instead. Fear, like a cold wave that creeps up her tail and across her belly. Frrrrrr, Frrrrrr.

Because now StingRay knows something she really and truly did not know before. A life can be over.

“Was he your friend?” asks TukTuk gently. “I’m very sorry.”

“No,” says StingRay, truthfully. “But he was the Girl’s friend.”

. . . . .

The other toys take the shredding of Bobby Dot very calmly. “Too bad, too bad. But no one lasts forever,” squeaks one toy mouse, and the others take up her cry: “No one lasts forever! No one lasts forever!” until one of them spots a Cheerio dropped on the rug and scoots over to practice chewing it. The others follow to lend encouragement.

The rocking horse just nods seriously when StingRay tells him. And Sheep opens one eye from her slumber to ask, “Bobby who?”

“The walrus.”

“The walrus who used to be here a long time ago?”

“He was here yesterday morning.”

Sheep squints. “I thought it was a long time ago. What did you say happened with him?”

StingRay can’t face explaining it again. She changes the subject.

The toys don’t care much, but the Girl is bereft. When her parents tell her what happened to Bobby Dot, her face swells with all the crying. She whimpers “Walrus, walrus” before bed each night, and starts the morning with a solemn look on her face. Even after her health improves, she looks wan.

On the third day of this grief, the Girl picks up StingRay at bedtime and takes her to the high bed. She sobs a bit—“Walrus, walrus”—but snuggles her damp face against StingRay’s soft plush body and seems consoled.

The high bed! Specialness!

The Girl! Wants StingRay!

On the high bed!

Oh, specialness, specialness!

Being up there, cuddling and falling asleep, is the best feeling StingRay has ever had in her short life.

And yet, she wakes up in the middle of the night. Thinking about Bobby Dot. Thinking about how, now that he’s gone, she feels as if she’s supposed to have liked him. As if she should remember nice things about the departed.

Only, she didn’t like him.

Sometimes, she even wished he would disappear so she could sleep on the high bed instead of him.

And now he has.

Now StingRay—who thought Bobby Dot so horrid for saying “Better her than me” when Sheep was being thrown across the yard—now StingRay herself is thinking: “Better him than me.” Thinking it quite a lot, actually.

It is a bad thought.

But sleeping on the high bed is good.

Now, while the Girl is sad, StingRay is happy.

Does that make StingRay a bad person?

The joy, the guilt, the loss, and the relief: all these feelings toss around inside her in the night, while StingRay stares at the ceiling, cozy under the heavy arm of the sleeping Girl.