Revenge of the Dolls Read online

  “Make a smoke ring,” Trissy begged. Her fingers were sticky with maple syrup and she licked them, smiling beguilingly at Uncle Jason.

  “Don’t lick your hands,” Mama said.

  Cousin Grace passed Trissy a napkin, but I didn’t think that would help much. Trissy needed a good wet washcloth.

  Uncle Jason blew smoke rings, and Trissy gave up licking her fingers and tried to poke them through the smoke rings.

  “Smoking is a filthy habit,” Aunt Christina said.

  She was all in blue this morning, like a summer sky. Her jewelry was turquoise and silver. I thought it would be nice to be Aunt Christina. As calm and blue as a summer sky. I was waiting for Aunt Sarah, and I had six thumbs and a jumpy stomach.

  Paulie took another pancake, and when he saw me watching he stuck out his tongue.

  When breakfast was over and I could get him alone at last, I faced him accusingly. “Aren’t you even sorry about what you did?”

  “She’ll never miss it.” Paulie pushed at me. “She’s got a whole roomful of those old dolls. How’s she going to miss just one?”

  We were standing by the stairway. Polished mahogany banisters curved up and away from us. Through the living-room doorway I could see Mama and Aunt Christina talking together by the window in low voices. No one could hear. They were talking about Aunt Sarah, I thought, and about going to the doctor yesterday. Mama was fiddling with her necklace the way she did when she was worried or nervous about something. Finally she walked away with a helpless gesture, as though she didn’t want to talk anymore.

  “Paulie — ” Aunt Christina turned and saw us. “Have you got your things together? We’ll be leaving soon.”

  Uncle Jason came down the stairs and set a suitcase in the hall where the umbrellas had dried the day before.

  “Come on, pal.” He ruffled Paulie’s hair. “Get your things. Shake a leg.”

  It wasn’t fair, I thought. Aunt Sarah would come down after Paulie left. I would be alone to face her.

  Come down now, Aunt Sarah, I prayed.

  But Aunt Sarah did not come down.

  When Aunt Christina and Uncle Jason were ready to leave, they went upstairs to say good-bye to her.

  “Come along, Paulie,” Aunt Christina said, putting her arm across his shoulders. I sat on the bottom step of the stairs, listening for an explosion when they got to Aunt Sarah’s room.

  No explosion came … only the silky rustle of Aunt Christina’s raincoat as they all came downstairs a few minutes later. And I heard Aunt Christina’s hushed whisper to Mama: “I don’t think she really knows we’re leaving.”

  “I don’t think she even knows we’ve been here,” Uncle Jason joked.

  “Jason!” Aunt Christina chided him. She stroked on her kid gloves.

  Paulie smirked at me with an I-told-you-so expression.

  They had been to Aunt Sarah’s room and nothing had happened.

  Uncle Jason carried the bags out to the car, and Aunt Christina kissed Cousin Grace good-bye and told her not to worry. A pale sun came out, streaking the hall carpet. Mama gave Paulie a hug, but he didn’t like that much and pulled away, jamming a cap down over his ears.

  Annie stood by the dining-room door, smoothing her hands on her apron.

  “You’re as good a cook as ever.” Aunt Christina blew her a kiss. But she didn’t say, “See you next time,” as she usually did.

  Mama walked out on the porch with Aunt Christina, drawing her sweater about her shoulders and shivering in the chilly air. Paulie ran around the car with stiff outspread arms, pretending he was an airplane.

  “Whhhrrrr, whhhrrrr.” He tried to sound like an airplane, and Uncle Jason finally hauled him into the back seat of the car. Aunt Christina rolled her window down and called, “Good-bye, good-bye,” one more time.

  When the car had driven off, Trissy and I put on our coats and roamed the damp garden, sprinkling bread crumbs for the birds. Behind us the house loomed against the sky. The pale sunlight faded and disappeared.

  “Here, birdie. Here, birdie,” Trissy called up to the tree branches, straining her head back. The wind tossed her hair around her face and carried her thin little voice away.

  On the other side of the garden birds began to fly down to get the bread crumbs we had left. Paulie couldn’t scare them away today. But now that Paulie was actually gone, I began to miss him a little. I remembered his face flushed with excitement as he colored the cardboard black and cut out his dagger. I remembered how funny he looked with the eye patch shoved around over his ear.

  As I stared up into the trees, I was startled to see a huge dark mass high overhead in the branches. It scared me for a moment, even though I realized almost at once what it was. I was seeing the squirrels’ nest Cousin Grace had said was in the yard. I had never seen it before. You couldn’t see it in the summer when the leaves were out, but I had known it was there. Sometimes we saw squirrels in the yard, and Cousin Grace had told me they had a nest in one of the trees. It gave me a queer feeling to look at it, revealed at last, far more gigantic than I had imagined it would be. There was something threatening about a nest so big. Surely some strange monster must live there. It was better to have it hidden by leaves, as sad things in life are hidden by daily routine. But I had seen it now, and I would always know how it looked fastened between the branches, dark and bulky and menacing.

  “Here, birdie. Here, birdie,” Trissy called.

  At the far end of the garden, rocks formed the rim of what had once been a goldfish pool. As long as I could remember the pool had been dry, overgrown with weeds in the summertime. A few withered stalks still remained, and I sat on one of the rocks and tried to imagine what it had been like when goldfish were swimming in the water long ago.

  Trissy came and stood on a rock beside me, shivering and looking for “birdies.” But none came down to eat bread crumbs from her fingers. I wished it were summer now, so there would be flowers and we could watch the bees and play hide and seek in the grape arbor. By late afternoon the four o’clocks would come out. And the squirrels’ nest would be hidden by leaves rustling in the sunlight.

  “Can we be gypsies again?” Trissy trotted after me toward the house at last.

  I didn’t think it would be the same, just the two of us in the dusty attic.

  “Maybe we can make fudge,” I said. Annie had taught us one summer, and she always said our fudge was good — even when it was too soft and we had to eat it with a spoon.

  “Goodness,” Mama said as she met us at the door and saw Trissy’s tangled hair. “You look like a waif. Alice, run upstairs and bring me the hairbrush.”

  The afternoon had grown gray, and the upstairs hall lay in shadow with a patch of flickering light. It came from Aunt Sarah’s room, where the door stood slightly ajar. Aunt Sarah was in her chair, and I could see only the back of her head as she sat before the fire, the dolls ranged around her silent and watchful.

  “No one can fool me, Aunt Sarah had said. My dolls are always watching.

  The room was still except for the crackling of the fire.

  I thought Aunt Sarah might sense me there in the doorway. I was afraid to breathe or take a step for fear she would turn and see me. But she sat straight, unmoving, as still as death. And then slowly her head moved forward, as though something had caught her attention, as though she were listening.

  Firelight flickered on the grotesque faces, the crumpled skirts and stiff arms of the dolls.

  And there was one dreadful empty place at the end of the sofa … where Paulie had picked up a doll.

  Aunt Sarah’s head bent toward the dolls, and my breath caught in my throat.

  Were the dolls talking to her? Were they saying, Paulie did it … Paulie did it … Paulie did it …?

  There was something about the glimmering room and the old lady with her head bent forward to listen that was worse than all the shouting and fussing I had expected.

  “Alice, are you getting the hairbrush?” Mama’s voice came from the foot of the stairs, floating up like a voice from a peaceful, normal world I had forgotten.

  I turned and ran away down the hall.

  Chapter 9

  COUSIN GRACE drove us into town the next day, our first trip to town since we had come. Mama always wanted to go at least once. There was an antique shop she liked, and she would usually buy something. Then we would go to Lacey’s Tearoom for lunch, and Trissy and I could choose whichever French pastry we wanted for dessert. It made up for waiting while Mama poked around among the brass candle snuffers and pewter jugs.

  In the summer the door of the antique shop was propped open by a large cast-iron urn with tarnished metal rings set in the sides. Limp breaths of humid August air wafted in upon the old cane-bottomed chairs and coffee mills and lamps with colored glass shades. But now in this drear season of belated spring the door was closed against the cold. No one was sitting on the bench by the sidewalk.

  Nothing was the same as in summer. There were no awnings rolled out over shop windows to keep off the sun. There were no store-front fruit bins, no children scampering along with ice cream cones dripping on flimsy summer shirts. The town, the street, the antique shop had a cheerless quality that depressed me. I wished I were home. I wanted to see Daddy and feed my turtles and go to sleep in my own bed. Most of all I didn’t want to go back to Aunt Sarah’s house.

  Trissy and I followed Mama through the three rooms of the antique shop, fingering what didn’t look too breakable.

  Cousin Grace in her beaver coat stood talking to the woman who owned the shop. The woman listened intently to whatever Cousin Grace was saying, and nodded her head a lot.

  On one table I found a large photograph album with a brown velvet cover. The pages were empty, and I wondered who had owned it and never once pasted in a picture. The velvet cover reminded me of the album at Aunt Sarah’s. The album was on a table by the living-room windows. It was covered with dark-blue velvet, worn at the edges. I had looked at it a lot. Every page was filled. Ladies and gentlemen of another time stood in gardens, on porches, beside old-fashioned cars. I had thought how hot it must have been for the women of those days, bundled up even in hottest summer with long skirts and high-necked dresses.

  There was a picture of Aunt Sarah when she was about my age. I noticed it especially because it was the only picture of Aunt Sarah in the whole book. But to my disappointment it told me very little.

  The picture had been taken in bad light. Aunt Sarah stood with her sister, now long dead and gone. The sister was smiling, but Aunt Sarah was just staring at the camera with a blank face. It made me wonder what she had been thinking about as she gazed like a stone image out of the murky photograph.

  The picture had been taken on the front porch of the house where Aunt Sarah lived now, where she had always lived, where she probably had even been born a long time ago, when mothers had their babies at home. I wondered what she had been thinking when the picture was taken. Her face seemed to say, I won’t tell you.

  “Listen to this.” Mama’s hand, holding a music box, came between me and the empty pages of the brown velvet album. Tinkling strains of music began as she lifted the music-box lid.

  “It’s the ‘Blue Danube Waltz,’ ” she said. Her face was full of delight, and she moved her head dreamily in time to the music.

  Cousin Grace had come up beside us, and Mama said, “I’ve found what I want. Isn’t it lovely?”

  “Can we eat now?” Trissy looked up into the faces so far above her.

  Cousin Grace bent down in her beaver coat and straightened Trissy’s cap.

  Mama closed the lid of the box, and the music stopped.

  In the tearoom Mama took off her gloves and laid them beside her purse on the edge of the white linen cloth. Her blue-gray dress was just the color of her eyes. Earrings swayed when she turned her head.

  Cousin Grace let her coat hang around her shoulders. She lifted her water glass. Ice clinked softly as she set the glass back on the table, and she looked around with the pleased expression of someone who did not often sit so easily in midafternoon in places blazing with lights, humming with muted voices. On the walls were still lifes and landscape scenes in ornate gilded frames.

  “You can probably sell some of the things at the antique shop,” Mama said. She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table, her graceful fingertips touching in a steeple.

  Cousin Grace moved a spoon a few inches sideways and then back again. “I suppose so,” she agreed without enthusiasm. “I don’t like to think about all the details.”

  I pretended to be reading the menu, but I was listening. I knew they were talking about the day when Aunt Sarah would be “sent away.” Then there would be that luxurious old house and its possessions to dispose of. I thought the lady at the antique shop would love it all. Someday other people, strangers, would sit by the fireplaces, climb the winding steps to the attic, put birdseed on the garden feeder — and maybe water back into the rock pound. But I would never see it.

  Trissy wriggled in her chair, and Mama said, “Sit up straight, honey. Stop wiggling.” …And I thought about Paulie throwing the doll in the fire.

  I had been trying to think of everything else I could, but the burning doll kept coming back.

  Paulie, stop! I had cried. But he hadn’t stopped.

  And even here in the red-carpeted tearoom I couldn’t forget what had happened.

  Cousin Grace excused herself to go to the ladies’ room, and I whispered to Mama, “Is Aunt Sarah going away?”

  Mama looked at me sadly from her beautiful blue-gray eyes. I wished she would look happy again, as she had looked listening to the music box, to the “Blue Danube Waltz”.

  She shook her head and put a finger to her lips. I had touched a subject she didn’t want to talk about.

  “But what happened at the doctor’s?”

  “Nothing, darling. Look now.” A dainty finger traced a line on the menu. “Have you decided what you want?”

  Yes, Mama. I want to go home.

  Trissy dropped a fork and ducked under the table to get it back.… Cousin Grace came walking along between the tables toward us.… I can see it all as clearly as though it were happening now.… I am sitting in the tearoom. And I can feel again that sense of changes coming and of grown-ups worrying about things I only dimly understood.

  A waitress hovered above us with her pencil poised over an order pad.

  “The crab salad, I think,” Mama said politely, as if there were not another concern in her life but ordering lunch from the Lacey’s Tearoom menu and then settling back in her chair to admire the landscapes on the wall.

  Chapter 10

  DADDY ALWAYS SAID there is nobody as easy to kid as yourself. Before we got home from town I had begun to think that maybe Paulie was right and Aunt Sarah hadn’t missed just one doll. She hadn’t said anything about it. She wasn’t looking through the house for it. Everything would be okay. There was only one more day to go. Nothing had happened yet, and nothing would.

  The things we had played with from the attic were still lying in a heap on the bedroom window seat, where Trissy and I had left them. I stood by the long mirror with one of the shawls draped over my shoulders. I spread the fan open and put it up to my face, peering dramatically over the fluted rim. I wondered what being a gypsy would be like. It was fun to think of traveling around in a wagon drawn by a strong black horse, sitting by campfires at night listening to violins.

  But what did gypsies do when it rained? When it was cold? Did it snow in the land where the gypsies lived? Did they really kidnap babies and steal chickens and pierce their ears?

  And could I, Alice, live a gypsy life, so wild and unprotected?

  Finally I folded up the shawls, the long skirts, the fan, and lugged them all up the stairs again.

  I opened the attic door and a flood of light startled me.

  Aunt Sarah turned from her table with the alarmed motion of someone caught unawares. Light from the bare bulb fell full on her wretched old face.

  I stood in the doorway with my armful of dress-up clothes and gaped with dismay to find her there.

  Only one more day to go, I had thought. Then everything will be okay.

  She had been working on something at the discarded walnut table, and she spread her hands out to hide what it was. But there was too much to hide. More scraps than ever littered the table’s worn surface. The sewing basket spilled threads and pins. In the midst of all this lay a small bundle of cloth. She seized up the bundle and held it close. Her voice was a harsh whisper.

  “Don’t tell Grace.”

  I could only stare in confusion, and a hand shot out and took hold of my arm with a strong and pinching grip.

  “Don’t tell her. She doesn’t like my dolls.”

  Aunt Sarah looked at me across the table with such a piercing, dreadful gaze that I felt as if my heart had stopped beating.

  “I won’t tell.”

  My mouth was dry. The words were a croak. I wanted to turn and flee back down the stairs. But she still held my arm. She was watching me intently to see if I was going to wrench away and run to tell her secret.

  I had a sense of thoughts being formed and weighted in her mind … and then gradually I felt her grip loosen and fall away.

  “It’s for Paulie,” she said. Her expression was furtive as she held out the object for me to see.

  She had made another doll. She must have been working all day. As crudely as the doll was made, some time had been spent on it. The pirate costume was Paulie’s in miniature. Red sash, black eye patch, bandanna tied around the forehead. She held it close even now, so I wouldn’t touch it. But I didn’t want to touch it. There was something fierce and vengeful about the one-eyed face, the sinister crayon mouth. The cloth she had used for the face was the stark white of death.

  “It’s a present.”

  Her face at that moment looked quite insane to me. Quite mad. Oh, yes. To begin with, Aunt Sara was mad.

  “And wait! See this.” She fumbled in the pile of scraps that littered the table, lifted out the single blade of a small, curved manicure scissors, and stuck it into the doll’s sash, as Paulie had put his dagger at his waist.