literature

FFM: The Toy Store

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Down on 5th and Avenue there used to be a toy store, where they sold trains and BB guns and real china dolls and on Saturdays bubblegum by the scoop. There used to be a man in a clown suit, not a scary one, just a clown in a colorful suit and tie with orange hair and a cherry-red nose and a wide pink smile painted over his wide gap-toothed mouth.

It was the place to be when I was young, the hot spot for all daydreaming boys and girls to pick out their teddy bears and play a game of marbles while our parents shopped at the department store around the block. It was the place I bought my first model air plane, and the place where I swapped it for a candy ring to give to a girl I liked on Valentine's Day. It was where I made my Christmas lists, my birthday lists, my wishing lists, there under the orange-striped awning while the clown man and I enjoyed cherry-flavored suckers together and watched the rain come down. I kissed my first girl there, though as I learned later on it didn't count as a kiss if you weren't touching lips to lips (cheeks were for mothers only). I walked past it my last day of elementary school, looking disinterested in front of my friends too cool for baby stuff but longing secretly for the dart tag set in shiny yellow wrappings.

The years went on, and as I got older the town grew up too, throwing up shiny strip malls and gas stations and one Super Wal-Mart. The clown man, once so tall to me, hunched slightly underneath the faded orange stripes, waving and smiling but fading just like the store around him. One night—I had just gotten dumped by my girlfriend, as I recall, and I was feeling sad and lonely and a little bit angry—I went back to the toy store. There was a glaring CLOSED sign, red block letters against grubby white, hanging on the door. I clenched and unclenched my fists, blinking back something very like tears (but not really tears; I didn't cry now that I was all grown up).

"You looking for somethin', son?"

I hadn't noticed the clown man, now pretty old and stooped, sitting like a deflated balloon on the bench between the toy store and the old hardware store, long closed. Gone were his colors, gone was his cheery smile. He was part of the building behind him, all grey crumbling broken hearts.

"What happened?" I asked, because I didn't know what else to say between Marcia leaving me for Todd Mickelson and the three college rejection letters and the diner threatening to get a new fry cook. The clown man produced a cherry sucker from his pocket and held it out to me, popping a similar one in his mouth. My parents told me that nowadays it wasn't safe to take things from strangers, but the clown man wasn't a stranger, just an old friend I'd forgotten about. I took the sucker and sat down beside him, crumpling the wrapper between my fingers and sticking the candy in my mouth.

"Everyone stopped comin'," the clown man said simply. "'Tain't no mystery. People move on."

"Why, though?" I asked, scuffing my shoes against the pavement as a few drops of rain bounced off the awning. "People loved this place. Why'd they stop?"

"It ain't no fault of their own," the clown man shrugged. "People change. Old things pass away to make room for new things. The way of life, kid."

I wanted so much to say how it wasn't fair, it just wasn't fair at all, but I didn't know how to find the words and kept my mouth clamped around my sucker. The sugary cherry taste was helping me, a little bit.

"It's not so bad, though," the clown man mused. "Maybe one day some bright young thing like you will see this place for what it was and what it could be, and make it even better than it used to be. That's the thing about history, kid—life changes, but history always repeats itself." He leaned back into the bench and winced as his back cracked audibly. "The more things change," he held out his cherry sucker, half-gone and gleaming ruby in the dim streetlight's glow, "the more they stay the same."

I studied my sucker alongside his. Somehow, what the old coot was saying made sense. I stuck it back in my mouth, swirling the candy bit around for a minute.

"It's still a pretty great place," I said. He nodded, returning to his candy. "Maybe with some fixing up it could be really something again."

"Could be," the clown man said comfortably. We didn't say anything else, just finished our suckers and watched the rain.
FFM Day Two!

Just feeling nostalgic, for some reason. Enjoy.
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witchsmart's avatar
You captured a really nice moment here. It's quiet and simple, and that really works to its advantage in establishing a scene that illustrates an instant in which two people's lives and experiences overlap--the young, inwardly turbulent character complimenting the older, more at peace character nicely. A pleasure to read. :D