The Land of Laughs by Jonathan Carroll

white Midwest-solid. Picket fences and aluminum siding and some metal statues on the lawn. Mailboxes with names like Calder and Schreiner, and my favorite — “The Bob and Leona Burns Castle.” I could imagine Christmas-tree lights on these places in December. Christmas-tree lights hung over the front doors, and big light-up Santa Clauses on the roofs.
    And then there it was. It wasn’t hard to make out the house, because I had looked at the magazine picture enough times. Huge, brown, Victorian, full of intricate gingerbread woodwork, and on closer view, small stained-glass windows. Hedges in front that were full and carefully trimmed. Even though it was a kind of dark cocoa brown, the house looked freshly painted.
    My grandmother lived in a house like that. She lived to be ninety-four in Iowa and refused to see any of her son’s movies. When she died and they went through her belongings, they found eleven leather scrapbooks on his career that went back to his first film. She had wanted him to be a veterinarian. She kept lots of animals in and around her big farmhouse, including a donkey and a goat. Whenever we visited her, the donkey always bit me and then laughed.
    “… go?”
    Saxony was in the crook of my arm again and peering at me.
    “Excuse me?”
    Her expression was tight and flushed, and I assumed that she was as nervous about this as I was.
    “Don’t you think we should go? I mean, I think it’s time, isn’t it?”
    I looked at my watch without really seeing it, and nodded.
    We crossed the street and went up the walk to the house. A screen door, a natural-wood mailbox with just the name in white block letters (what incredible mail must have been in there at one time!), and a black doorbell that was as big as a checker. I pressed it and a deep chiming went off in the back of the house. A dog barked and then abruptly stopped. I looked at the floor and saw a matching brown mat that said “GO AWAY!” I nudged Saxony and pointed to it.
    “Do you think she means us?”
    That’s all I needed. I had thought the mat was a funny idea, and then she had to make it into something else to worry about. What if Anna really didn’t want us —
    “Hi. Come in. I’d better not shake hands with you. I’m a little greasy from the chicken.”
    “Hey, look, it’s Nails!”
    It was. A white bull terrier had shoved its head between Anna’s knees and was checking us out with those hilariously tight, slanty eyes.
    Anna closed her legs tighter and held its head between them like a punishment stock. The dog didn’t move, but I could see its tail wagging behind Anna.
    “No, this one is Petals; she’s Nails’s girlfriend.” Anna let her go and Petals came right over to say hello. She was as friendly as the other one. I had never seen bull terriers before today, and then the two of them within a few hours. But it made sense, with Nails just down the street.
    A wide hallway led straight to a flight of stairs. Halfway up them, above the landing, two big stained-glass windows beamed Technicolor light across some of the lower steps and the last part of the hall. The walls were white. On the left as you walked in was a big gold fish-eye mirror next to a bentwood hat rack with two slouchy men’s hats on them. His hats? Had Marshall France actually worn them? To the right of the rack were eighteenth-and nineteenth-century ascension balloon and zeppelin prints in expensive modern silver frames. Next to them, and a big surprise to me because I’d pictured France as a modest man, were framed mock-ups of the Van Walt covers to all of his books. I didn’t want to appear too snoopy, so I stopped peeking at the pictures. Maybe later, when we were all more comfortable with each other (if there was going to be a later after tonight). I began playing with Petals, who kept jumping up and down by herself in the middle of the hallway. Then she started jumping on me.
    “These dogs are incredible. I neyer really knew of them before today,