Tuesday

The next day was more of what had become my normal. I woke up at 7:55 to Bree’s compulsory good morning and text-message briefing. I left for the firm at 8:50. I tried to enjoy being a lawyer while I still could. Then I left for the campaign at exactly 5:00.

I turned right off Main and left onto Reading. Coming to a stop sign, I wished I could take the ramp to the interstate and leave town. I could hang another shingle in another small town—maybe Redford or Gaynor. That’s all I had ever wanted to do: practice law and help people. I knew that winning this campaign would mean going into politics as a career and leaving the law behind for good.

Driving down Reading towards Highway 130, I remembered that I had at least been able to take a new client that day. Dr. Wei Tate, the family doctor who had seen Bree and me our whole lives and seen our parents even before then, was finally retiring. I was happy for Dr. Tate. The old man certainly deserved to rest.

I only wished I was doing something to help Dr. Tate instead of representing Quality Care, the regional hospital chain that was buying out the old doctor’s clinic in an offer he couldn’t refuse. I had read about how hospital monopolization hurt small towns like Dove Hill, but their grand opening would bring dozens of new jobs and a guaranteed ribbon-cutting. I told myself it was the greater good. Even if it wasn’t, Quality Care’s offer to start a financial relationship with a rising star politician was one that Bree couldn’t let me refuse.

Lost in dreading work on the Quality Care acquisition, I realized I had arrived at the publicist’s office. Set as close to the town line as it could be, the building looked ashamed to be in a place like Dove Hill. It wouldn’t have been within the municipal limits but for a favor the construction company’s owner owed Mayor Thomas. I wasn’t sorry for the distance. The building’s ostentatiously corporate aesthetic would definitely have disrupted the streets I grew up on.

I arrived in the overwhelmingly white lobby of Scarnes and Blumph and found a kind looking older lady sitting behind the desk. Her name plate read “Mary Ann.” I approached her. “Hi there,” I smiled. She smiled back a bit surprised, like she had not been spoken to in some time. “Excuse me. I’m here for a meeting with Mr. Scarnes.”

“Of course,” she answered. It seemed like she was happy to have something to do. “Right this—”

Before Mary Ann could stand all the way up, Ryan Scarnes entered with the energy of a used car dealer. Without so much as acknowledging Mary Ann, Ryan reached out to shake my hand. It was a demand. “Well hello, Mr. Dobson. Welcome to our humble abode.” I glanced at Mary Ann who was already back in her chair as though she had never moved.

“Hi,” I said, feeling my hand reach to meet Ryan’s. I knew it was the right thing to do, but I thought my hand might leave the shake coated in grime. Despite Ryan’s clearly tailored suit, razor-straight teeth, and stone-set hair, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something filthy about him. “I’m Mikey Dobson. Nice to meet you. Thank you for meeting with me today.”

Ryan looked down at Mary Ann. “Mary Jane, would you please get Mr. Dobson a sparkling water in a champagne flute?” I didn’t bother to mention that I didn’t drink sparkling water. Turning back to me, Ryan forced a laugh. “It’s a little early for champagne, but we can pretend.”

Ryan walked back down the hallway where he had emerged while continuing his monologue. I assumed I was supposed to follow. When we reached the large conference room stuffed with as many mirrors and gilded paperweights as Ryan’s idea of taste would allow, Bree was poring over a table covered in pictures.

“Hey sis.”

“Hi,” Bree said, partially looking up from the oversized conference table. In the second she turned her eyes to me, I saw that same fleeting flash of warmth.

“Good to see you…again,” I joked while opening my arms for a hug.

Bree responded with a polite laugh and a reach for a more professional welcome. “You too. How long has it been? 21 hours?” Of course she knew the precise time.

Sinking into one of the gold-trimmed leather chairs, I thought that Bree and Ryan looked like the actual politicians. Bree in her dark gray pantsuit and Ryan in his bespoke charcoal coat and glaring red tie. I laughed at myself as I looked down at my department store slacks and wholesale button-down.

“Now where were we, Ms. Dobson?” Ryan asked with a humility that almost broke under the weight of pretense.

Bree seemed not to notice. She seemed not to notice a lot about Ryan Scarnes. In her mind, the campaign was all too fortunate to have signed with a publicist as young, tenacious, and data-loaded as him. She promised me that Ryan’s discounted prices were worth the implicit promises of access she had made on my behalf.

“We were just reviewing the options for the final mailer,” Bree reported.

“Right. Our focus group suggested that they liked seeing Mikey outdoors. They said it made him look approachable, friendly. You’ll see the outdoor shots in the top-left quadrant.”

As Ryan and Bree walked to the other side of the table, Mary Ann gently entered the room. She was like a friendly mouse: eager to help but afraid to be seen.

“Here you go, sweetie,” she cooed.

“Thanks, Ms. Mary Ann. I appreciate it. I’m Mikey by the way. How’s your day—”

“That’ll be all,” Ryan interrupted. He looked at Mary Ann like she had been caught.

“Yes, Mr. Scarnes.” I gave her a smile as she snuck back out the door.

Bree and Ryan continued to talk about me. Or at least about the face in the gallery. Ryan had done his job once again and made me unrecognizable to myself. They examined every picture on the table as if it were a unique masterpiece with hidden details in every inch.

I just saw the man I didn’t know. In one, the man was sitting on a bench. In another, he was standing in front of a tree. In another, he was leaning on a brick wall. The only thing I especially liked about the pictures was that they were all taken around the Mason County Courthouse.

“I’m torn between the ones standing in front of the doors and the ones sitting on the steps,” either Bree or Ryan said. They had both long since forgotten I was in the room.

I felt their conversation grew louder and louder as it went on. It grew from a business transaction into a cable news debate. Looking at all of the photos of the man who was not me, I felt my breath catch in my chest. “Who is this?” I thought. My head began to spin into lightness. “It’s not me.” I wanted to scream. That would have been inappropriate.

Inching my eyes up and down the rows of pictures of the other me, I caught something strange in the corner of my eye. In one of the pictures on the courthouse steps, I saw something in a bright shade of blue. Not the cautious blue of a politician’s tie. The rich, glowing blue of a gemstone.

I stood from my seat and leaned over to the picture with the blue presence. I saw it. Sitting over my shoulder on the white concrete steps was a smiling blue turtle. The turtle sat like a small child with its legs out in front and its eyes looking straight at me. I couldn’t tell if the turtle’s eyes were looking at the me in the conference room or the me on the courthouse steps. But they were looking. Watching. The turtle’s smile was stretched so far that it looked like its felt was going to rip at the seams.

I didn’t know how I knew the turtle was made of felt. I just did. I also knew it’s—his name was Tommy and that he liked trains. I had met Tommy before. But it hadn’t been at the courthouse. No one had been there except for me, Bree, and Ryan. I remembered that because, despite my silent objections, Bree and Ryan had convinced the county judge to end court early that afternoon.

Looking into Tommy’s eyes, I felt two conflicting emotions. My panic continued to build. I knew that turtle had not been at the courthouse that day. Why were my eyes telling me otherwise? But I also felt a sense of peace. Even though Tommy’s eyes were watching both mes like they were afraid I would stop smiling, I somehow felt like Tommy was an old friend. Like we had played together as kids.

Before I could decide what I was supposed to feel, Ryan turned his schmooze away from his conversation with Bree. “You have good tastes, Mr. Dobson. Ms. Dobson and I were just deciding to use one of the courthouse steps pictures on the mailer.”

“Yeah, sounds good,” I said without turning away from Tommy.

Ryan turned back to Bree. “Now just to decide which one.”

While Bree and Ryan carefully discussed which of the nine seemingly identical photos to use, I carefully picked up the one with Tommy. When I looked at it more closely, Tommy was gone. If Bree or Ryan noticed one of their pictures missing, they didn’t show it as they continued their deliberations.

Folding the picture and placing it into my shirt pocket, I noticed a new sensation. Pressing against my skin, the picture felt warm. It was a comforting heat—a log fire at Christmas. But it was also narrow and pointed—an eye staring through my heart.

By the time Bree ended the meeting at Scarnes and Blumph, I had convinced myself to forget the burning in my shirt pocket. My skin felt it, but I decided I didn’t. Following Bree’s car back into town, I could only think about Tommy. How did I know the too-friendly turtle? And how had he seen me?

* * *

I was reassuring myself of my senses when Bree and I pulled up to Delano Plaza: one of the several strip malls that had risen from Mason County’s ground during the early 2000s. We got out of our cars and met each other in front of China Delight. Our town’s sit-down dining options had dwindled to not much more than a handful of nearly identical Chinese buffets.

I appreciated Bree making the time on my schedule for this. Every Tuesday since we had moved back home after school up north, we kept the standing commitment. During these weekly dinners, we tried to avoid talking about work. Or politics. Or anything “real,” as Bree put it. When the campaign started, I made her promise to keep our sibling dinners sacred. I wondered if she could with only weeks to the election.

Bree followed Sue Lee, the restaurant’s newest waitress, through the winding path to the back of the building. Sitting us at a table next to a wall strewn with red and yellow lanterns, Sue Lee asked about our parents. Bree confirmed that they were doing fine. As Sue Lee handed me the menu that no one ever read, I asked her how she liked working at China Delight. She said it was a job. Still, I was happy for her. I knew Sue Lee in her harder times in high school.

After we made our plates of fried chicken, fried rice, and fried donuts, I attempted small talk. That had never been the Dobson family’s gift.

“So have you heard from mom and dad?”

“Yeah,” Bree said with all the care of someone saying they had seen that afternoon’s episode of Judge Judy. “Mom texted—either last week or the week before. She asked how you were.”

Between sips from my oversized red cup, I looked at her with expectation and mild dread.

“Don’t worry. I told her you were fine. She said that dad said to make sure you were keeping up at the firm. Still not sure why I’m always the messenger.”

“You know how they are. Honestly, though, I’m glad they text you and not me.” I wished I meant that. It was one of those technical truths that our father had taught us to use to avoid making anyone uncomfortable. Truthfully, I would have loved to feel my phone vibrate with a text from our mother. But ever since spring of senior year, and everything that had happened, our parents’ words to me had faded from well-meaning smothering to benign silence.

“You’re welcome,” Bree smirked. I knew she was only half joking. Even when we were kids, Bree had taken care of me. When our mother scolded me for using the wrong fork for salad, Bree would change the conversation to her recent science fair win. When our father had had too much wine and soap-boxed about the wrong kind of people coming to Dove Hill, Bree would distract everyone by playing “Clair de Lune” for the twenty-second time. As we blew the powdered sugar off our donuts, I realized I had never told Bree how I felt.

“Really though, thanks.” Bree paused with dough in her mouth and looked at me like I had spoken Welsh.

“For?”

I hesitated as I worked to express something “real.” I laughed when I saw the bit of dough sitting in Bree’s mouth. I hadn’t seen her that unpolished in years.

“Oh, no,” Bree said, laughing and finally swallowing. “I’m not paying again this week. You’re the fancy attorney after all.”

“No,” I stammered. I mentally smacked myself for ruining the fun and tried to find the words I had lost. I needed to say this. “It’s just… You’ve always taken care of me. Especially with mom and dad. I appreciate it.”

I could tell I struck a nerve. Bree Dobson didn’t like to receive gratitude. At least she didn’t think she did. It was unwieldy.

“Well, you can start paying me back by ordering me a beer.” Looking at my sister, I knew that was the best I was going to get. Bree was her mother’s daughter after all.

I turned my eyes towards the ceiling in an attempt to escape the awkwardness that had come to sit with them. I noticed the television sitting in the far corner.

Pointing towards it, I asked, “Do you remember watching TV on Saturday mornings? When mom and dad were on their weekends in the country?” I always loved those weekends. “I can’t believe our eyes didn’t fall out from staring at the screen that long.”

“Those were good days. Not exactly how I remember them though.”

“What do you mean? We would watch TV. And eat our weight in sugary cereal. And—” I stopped. Bree was forcing a smile now. It was the polite thing to do. “Hey…what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she lied. “It’s just…I’m glad you were happy. But for me, those days were for cleaning the house for mom.”

I went quiet with a guilt I couldn’t name. I had forgotten about it, but Bree was right. While I was watching cartoons, Bree was doing the chores for the whole family. “You…you could’ve asked me. I would’ve helped you.”

“I know,” Bree said with a proud smile. “I know you would have. But I wanted you to be a kid. To be happy. I was happy to help.”

Seeing the faintest hint of longing in her dimples, I felt the burning on my chest again. Sue Lee brought Bree her two-bit beer. Even on a supposed night off, Bree was minding the money. The heat rising in my pocket, I remembered the picture. And Tommy.

“Do you remember me watching a show called Sunnyside Square?”

“No. But honestly, you watched so much TV that it would be a miracle if I remembered any of it. You would even wake up before I did to start. And that was an achievement even before I started Adderall.”

I kept thinking out loud. “I think it was like a puppet show… Hand puppets maybe?”

“Well, I may not remember what shows you did watch, but I know it wasn’t that. I never saw anything but cartoons. I tried to turn on a science show for you once, and you asked where the talking animals were.”

I paused. Describing Sunnyside Square, I remembered more and more. It still wasn’t much, but I knew I watched a show called Sunnyside Square. I remembered seeing the blue turtle sitting on a brick wall: the brick wall from the dreams. My mind felt like there was someone else there. Someone I loved—but didn’t know.

“Really? I remember puppets I think? And always feeling…happy…”

It was more than that. I couldn’t see Sunnyside Square, but I could feel it. I felt lost so often as a kid—and as an adult. I felt left behind when his parents went to the cabin and Bree went to work. But, when I would watch that show, it felt like home. I always felt seen.

“Must have been some show,” Bree teased, taking a sip from her bottle. “But yeah, I’m sure I don’t remember it. It was cartoons or…well, different cartoons.”

No. Sunnyside Square was something better than cartoons. Something real. Someone real. With that thought, I remembered. Her name was Sunny Sandy. She was perfect.

I wanted to drive straight home. Instead, I tried to finish the sibling dinner as normally as possible. I read my fortune from the freshly stale cookie, paid Sue Lee a 25% tip, gave Bree an awkward hug, and then rushed back to my apartment going as fast as I could without speeding.

I didn’t stop to undress when I got home. I pulled my laptop from my bag and sat at my desk. I couldn’t stand to lose any glimpse of Sandy’s face in my memory.

Then I realized I had no idea what to search. All I knew was the name Sunny Sandy and the title Sunnyside Square.

Searching “Sunny Sandy” led to a handful of beach-focused social media models and a few cloyingly cute children’s books about a yellow cat. I spent what felt like an hour looking through the results only to learn that both the models and the smiling cat in the books looked almost desperately “sunny.”

Searching “Sunnyside Square” at least brought up places, but none were the park that hauntingly graced my dreams. I wondered why a name that was anything but subtle had been used for everything from parking garages to a neighborhood in Cambodia. Still, trying to find anything that would lead me to my Sunnyside Square, I spent an hour—or two—three?—working through every turn on the phrase I could think of.

Pausing for a breath, I looked at the clock in the corner of my screen. 1:52. I had to be back on the campaign trail in a little over six hours for the first of the morning meet-and-greets. I needed to rest. I was going to face a firing line of voters all wanting a piece of me in exchange for their ballot. I could already feel the exhaustion. I felt the dread in my bones. The guilt in my marrow.

Then it came to me. The words that Sunny Sandy used to start every episode of the show. “Welcome to Sunnyside Square—where the sun can never stop shining!” I had always been struck by that phrase. Not “where the sun always shines” or even “where it’s always sunny.” Sandy said the sun could never stop shining. I didn’t know whether that inspired me—or petrified me.

I typed “where the sun can never stop shining” into the search engine. This time there were zero results. If I ever allowed myself to feel anger, I would have felt it then. I had been so sure that that was the one. Standing from the thrifted office chair, I walked to the kitchenette. I wasn’t hungry after all the fried rice, but I wanted to consume.

Reaching towards the dusty counter for the hard candy I took on the way out of China Delight, I found an invitation in the dark. After seeing what my father had become, I never drank alcohol, but a corporate client had recently given me a bottle of what Bree had told me it was bottom-of-the-barrel red wine. I had wanted to throw it away, but it was a polite gesture. Looking at the glass reflecting the moonlight, I decided I had earned a drink. I was working hard—for Dove Hill, for my parents, for Bree, even for Ryan Scarnes. I was happy to do it, I reminded myself. It was my job. This would make it easier.

I took the bottle back to the desk and took a long drink. I almost spit it out, but I was supposed to like it. Lifting my hand to close the laptop, I noticed it. I figured the search results had refreshed while I was picking my poison. There was one result now. “Keep On the Sunny Side.” A PDF file with the URL https://www.dovehilldaily.com/news/1994/alwaysonthesunnyside. I clicked it.

A black-and-white scan of a newspaper clipping appeared, pinched and pulled in strange places. Whoever had scanned it was shaking. The distortion made me think of the screeching scrapes of a dial-up. I started to read.

SANDY MAKES GOOD.

I trembled and told myself it was from excitement. I took another drink.

Right below the title and the byline, surrounded by faded text, was a picture. It was her. She was on a stage receiving a bouquet of flowers and a sash that said “Miss Mason County.” She held a friendly-looking puppet at her hourglass side. A dairy cow. I couldn’t be sure through the grayscale, but her ballgown looked pink—almost electric. Her hair was a lighter gray than the rest of the picture.

My mind flashed with memory. On TV, she always kept her hair in a stone-stiff blonde beehive. Here, it was natural and flat. Her face was the brightest part. She was happy, or at least she was trying to be. In the caption, the journalist nicknamed her “Sunny Sandy.”

I drank more of the cheap wine and kept reading. The article said that the woman was Sandra Alan. When she was in community college, she won Miss Macon County and a scholarship to finish her degree in elementary education at the state school. The cow in the picture was her talent: Maggie the Magenta Moo Cow. On the day the article was published—June 22, 1994—her mother had just told the editor that Sandra and Maggie’s show Sunnyside Square had been picked up by the National Television Network. They wanted 20 episodes. Sandra had been in Los Angeles for 5 years, and she had finally caught her dream.

I remembered it all. Sunnyside Square was about a girl named Sunny Sandy and her multi-colored menagerie of farm animal friends. One was Maggie, the cow from the picture. She always sang a song when the mail came. Another was the turtle from the picture: Tommy the Turquoise Turtle. Every episode, Sandy would help one of the animals learn how to be sunny. Whether they were sad, angry, tired, hungry, or hurt, Sandy fixed them.

I loved the show. I felt like Sandy understood me in a way that no one in the real world did. She knew that all I wanted to do was make people happy.

I looked at her smile again. Even reduced to black and white, it felt like looking directly into the sun. Then I looked at her eyes. They looked at the audience—at me—like an old friend lost in time. Like a ghost who knew my name and saw me too clearly. I finished the bottle and fell asleep.

That night, I dreamed of the park again. This time, I was in the park. The benches were still white, but they weren’t polite any more. They were like still specters surrounding me—their frames carved from bone. The trees were still green, but they had spread beyond ominous. Their branches formed cages in the air. And the wall—the wall that I finally remembered Sandy and Tommy and Maggie playing on—looked like its bricks had been dyed in blood. Even through my sleep, I felt relief when the park faded into pink. Then the drowning started again.