Liberty always examined the dollhouse carefully, noting what had been added and what removed. That night, as she knelt there, touring it carefully with her eyes, the Frenchwoman came up to her.
“You are a romantic, I know,” she said. “You remind me of myself when I was your age, when I was just beginning. Lots of things can go wrong with girls, you know, with boys not so much. Girls lose sight of themselves more quickly. Your little boyfriend, he is just a little boy, but he has many men inside himself. Perhaps you will not love them all.”
“Tonight’s my birthday,” Liberty said.
“Yes, yes,” the Frenchwoman said. “Everything is just beginning now.”
For dessert they had cake and ice cream. A sparkler flared from Liberty’s portion.
“This was so nice of you,” Liberty said, “all this.”
“What was in that package you got from your momma today?” Doris asked. “I’m just curious. Curiosity is something I just can’t stamp out of myself.”
“Well,” Liberty said, “it was a Fry-Pappy.”
“A Fry-Pappy!” Calvin said, slapping at his jacket pockets to call forth his wallet. “What you want with a Fry-Pappy?”
“We could make some banana fritters,” Doris said. “Maybe that’s what she had in mind.”
“Was it supposed to be a present or what?” Calvin asked.
“I guess,” Liberty said.
“We’ll make some banana fritters in it,” Doris said with determination.
“I’m not sure if it works,” Liberty said.
“It’s not a new Fry-Pappy?” Calvin said, puzzled.
“It might have come from a yard sale,” Liberty said. “It looks like it might have. My mother likes to go to yard sales.”
“Terrible advantage can be taken of a person at those places,” Doris said.
“Where’s your heart?” Willie said to Liberty. He put his hand against his own throat.
The heart Willie had given her was no longer there. The pendant had fallen from the cheap clasp. They all searched for it, on the table, on the floor, but it could not be found.
The Frenchwoman helped them look. “I know, I know,” she said to Liberty. “It’s just as though it were real. It is very important.”
Liberty thought that the woman did not know anything, although she was very pretty, very nice, crouching on the floor, searching, wrinkling her pretty skirt. She would later die of cancer, a year after she refused to have her breasts removed. She would die alone, the lonely death that disease had prepared for her.
“It is a great loss,” the woman said, trying to comfort Liberty, “but a romance like yours requires obstacles, dangers, fantasies. Always. Again and again.”
Then the locket was found. Willie found it. It was by the dollhouse on the lip of one of the staggeringly intricate rooms. After holding it in her hands for a moment, Liberty put it in her mouth and swallowed it.
“What a metaphor!” exclaimed the Frenchwoman. “What lovers they will be!”
“She is just a little girl,” Doris protested.
Afterward, they made Liberty eat a piece of bread.
But this was long ago. Liberty is not a little girl now, she is a woman, wedded to the boy who shared her childhood. She still has a beautiful hand and the power to render blood, wax, oil and grass stains invisible, but the mornings once spent in Doris and Calvin Stone’s house have darkened and become the afternoon. Years pass as moments do. And the moments of the past are stones behind her, over which she stumbles forward.
2
It was not yet light. The heavy, fish-scented air felt like a curtain falling, instead of rising, on the day. On the road to Buttonwood Beach, just before the macadam gave out, was a twenty-four-hour grocery and tackle store. There was a gas pump and phone booth in front of the store and a set of swings and some animal cages to the rear. By the pump was a large camper with a sedan in tow. Inside were a man, a woman, and a little thing in a terry-cloth playsuit eating a Ring Ding.
There were lots of things for sale inside — rods and lures, dirty greeting cards, food and wine, and souvenirs of all kinds including stuffed and varnished possums wired to pieces of driftwood. The possum creations were made by the owner, who had one arm. Whenever people asked him how he had lost the other one, he said he had lost it as a prank.
When Liberty went into the store the man who owned the camper was reading loudly from a printed tag tied by a rubber band to the varnished possum’s tail.
“ ’Because possums have spurred the imagination of man over a period of four centuries, a great deal of folklore exists concerning this common little animal. The forked penis of the possum is doubtless responsible for the long-held belief that copulation took place through the female’s nostrils, these openings being the only obvious dual orifice!”
“Argghh,” his wife said.
“I’ve got to buy one of these things for Woody,” the man said. He read on. “Since the mother was frequently seen pushing her snout into the pouch shortly before delivery, country people believed she was blowing the babies out of her nose into it!” The man looked up, baring his teeth. “Is this for Woody or is this for Woody!” he yelled.
The owner leered at them.
Liberty bought a container of coffee and two cheese sandwiches. Behind the counter, the schedule for the high school football team was posted. On the left side of the poster it said HERE, on the right, THERE. Beside the playing schedule was a flyer advertising the services of something called CounselLine, a tape service for the distraught. LET MR. BOBBY HELP YOU the flyer said. The tapes were categorized and numbered, and there were dozens of them available. There were commentaries on fear — fear of women, men, foreigners, heights, disease, success — and on loneliness, rage, alcoholism, depression and unwanted things. New topics would be added all the time, CounselLine stated. The number to call was the same as Liberty’s except for the final digit, which was a three instead of a four.
“How long have these things been up?” Liberty asked.
“ ’Bout a week,” the owner said. “I tell you, I use it all the time. That Mr. Bobby’s been so helpful I’d give him my other arm if he asked for it.” He flailed his good arm around to show it off.
“Can you think of anybody other than Woody?” the man was asking his wife. “How about Diane? Diane’s got a sense of humor.”
“Diane’s got a big nose,” the woman said. She leaned over and nibbled soft Ring Ding off her child’s fingers.
“I’d like to give my dog some water,” Liberty said to the store’s owner. “Do you have a bowl I could use?”
“Sure I do,” he said. He gestured with the shoulder his missing arm hung from. “There’s a faucet and a couple pans out back where the deer is at.”
Clem was lying beneath one of the swings in a furrow caused by children kicking the earth away. The morning was brightening and Liberty could see the cluster of cages, which seemed to be emerging step by step from the dark. Clem ate his cheese sandwiches. The family walked out of the store and headed toward their camper, the man swinging his possum basket.
“This is such a sick idea,” he said happily. “I love this sort of crud. It’s what this state is all about.”