Bari Wood
Doll's Eyes
To Jonathan and Pamela,
Alexis and Zachary
I tell the future. Nothing easier. Everybody’s future is in their face... But who can tell the past—eh? You lie awake nights trying to know your past. What did it mean? What was it trying to say to you? Think! Think!
Split your heads.
Prologue
“Higher! Higher!”
He was out on the swing again, demanding to be pushed, and her meek, mild, stupidly accommodating son was pushing him. Up and down the little one went; she could see excitement on his face even from there.
“Higher,” he screamed, “higher, Mikey...”
She backed away from the window, and the voice faded. The house was quiet and finally clean. The floor shone, the rug nap stood up, the air smelled of pine oil out here and of butter cookies in the kitchen.
She went back to the kitchen and looked up at the ceiling again.
She still couldn’t believe it was there. They’d been in this house almost a week and she’d seen it every day, but it was one of those things you keep having to reassure yourself about because it’s too good to be true.
A pulley.
She went to the brown paper bag on the counter and pulled out the roll of clothesline she’d bought in town this morning. It might be too thick for the slot in the wheel, but she wouldn’t know until she tried.
She got the ladder out of the broom closet and leaned it against the wall, then moved the table out of the way, taking time to lift each end so she wouldn’t scuff the floor. She positioned the ladder under the pulley, then unwrapped the clothesline. It was coated and sprang loose like a snake uncoiling.
She climbed three rungs of the ladder, looped the line around the wheel, then pulled, and it dropped smoothly into the notch. The wheel was sticky; she worked it until it ran smoothly, then climbed down and went over what she needed: hobby knife, paring knife, enema bag, and so on. She laid a fresh towel out on the counter and arranged the implements in a gleaming row on the white cloth.
Only the enema bag would be hard to explain if anyone saw it. But she’d say she wanted to wash it out since it hadn’t been used in a while and everything... everything... gathered dust.
She went back to the front-room window.
Her boy would be going to meet his friends soon. They’d been there less than a week and he’d already made friends.
“Higher,” the little one yelled.
The sun on the lake cast ragged patches on his face as he zoomed up on the swing, arching back. “Higher...”
The little one was pretty, but so were the whores who hid in doorways on Meade Row back home. She missed home, couldn’t understand what had possessed her husband to rent a summer place in the mountains. It was pretty too, with the lake, mountains, endless miles of trees, but prettiness was a snare that lulled you into thinking it was a good world, and it was not.
Mike stopped pushing; the swing lost momentum. The little one tried to get him to go on, but Mike shook his head. The little one tried to push himself, but couldn’t get much height, he slid off the swing. Mike walked to the path cut through the trees and the little one stood alone in the clearing, watching him going away.
His shoulders heaved. He was crying, and she thought, I’ll give you something to cry about, just like her mother used to say.
Mike disappeared and the little one was alone. It was time. The clothesline would go around his knees, the pulley would do the work. She could see how it would look in a couple of minutes and felt a thrill that was closer to pleasure than anything she’d ever felt before.
She opened the front door and called him.
He heard them talking in the kitchen. She must be telling them he had to be sent to bed without dinner.
He climbed up on the top bunk and tried to fall asleep, but it hurt too much. Tickled too, where blood still oozed a little.
He wanted to wash again, but they’d see him sneaking to the bathroom, and climbing down would probably make the bleeding worse.
It got dark. Mike came into the room and he closed his eyes and listened to his brother getting undressed.
“Hey, faker,” Mikey called up softly.
He didn’t answer.
“You hungry?”
He kept quiet.
“God, she’s got you bulldozed, don’t she? Well, I got some cookies down here if you want them.”
“I’m okay,” he said.
“Sure. You can take it, kiddo. I’ll put the cookies next to you in case you do get hungry.”
He didn’t say anything.
“She’s a big old shit windbag, kiddo.”
The bed frame shifted as Mikey climbed into the lower bunk.
“’Night, kiddo,” Mikey whispered.
“’Night,” he whispered back.
The moon came through the window and made odd-shaped patches that moved across him as wind off the lake blew the trees. The light looked cool, but he imagined it was warm enough to dry up the blood. The pain wasn’t really bad anymore, and he was hungry. He felt along the edge of the bunk and found a paper package. Mikey had wrapped three cookies in a napkin and he sat up carefully so he wouldn’t pull on the cuts, then unwrapped the cookies and ate them, looking out the top half of the window at the moon on the lake. He brushed the crumbs carefully into the napkin then crumpled it and wedged it on the top of the open window where she wouldn’t see it and lay down again.
He couldn’t tell anyone what happened today; no one to tell except Mikey. But she’d said if he told Mike she’d make it worse. He couldn’t imagine what that would be like and didn’t want to find out.
The patches of moonlight kept moving and made him feel dopey, forgetful. He’d forgotten what he’d done to deserve what she’d done today; it must have been pretty terrible, about the worst thing you could do short of killing somebody.
If he’d done anything.
He stared hard at the moonlight until he got that idea out of his head. Of course he’d done something, he just didn’t remember what, and if he could forget what he’d done, he could forget what she’d done. “Way to go,” Mikey would say.
1
Eve closed the sitting room door, went to the phone, and dialed the only number she had for Sam. When he’d left, they’d agreed she’d only call for emergencies. But she’d called once a week for seven weeks and they’d have a fast, morose conversation that consisted of his trying to get off the phone and her trying to keep him on. She’d give up after a few minutes and say, “I just wanted to hear your voice, Sam. I love you.” He’d mumble back that he loved her too, then he’d hang up, and she’d wait with the phone to her ear until the dial tone kicked in. Today probably wouldn’t be any different, only she’d gotten sick again this morning, as she had every morning this week, and she thought she was pregnant. She didn’t feel pregnant, exactly, but didn’t know what it would feel like.
She wouldn’t tell him until she was sure. She’d put off going to a doctor because she didn’t want to hear that she wasn’t pregnant and was afraid to hear that she was.
She was a mess, she thought, smiling a little to herself as she picked up the phone and dialed. She got a truncated ring, then a click, then a machinelike voice intoned the NYNEX coda for oblivion: