Bad dolls, p.11
Bad Dolls, page 11
She laughed. “Oh, Mac. You know me so well.”
“I do.”
“And I know you,” she said. “It’s not a weakness. Asking for help. It’s not weak.”
I picked up my mug and drank. Too sweet.
“If I need help, I’ll ask,” I said.
“No, you won’t.”
I doubled down. “I’m good.”
“Okay. But know I’m here if you need me.”
“I know,” I said. “Thank you.”
I took another sip. The sugar went straight up. Instant headache.
“I said something shitty to my mom the other day. I said that sometimes I don’t miss Audrey, which was stupid, and I don’t know why I said it to her of all people. But it was a lie. I don’t think I miss her at all.”
I looked over at Violet, waiting for a reaction. Her face was expressionless.
“I mean, I didn’t spend that much time with her. I was in Boston for the past seven years. She and I never talked on the phone. We barely texted. I saw her when I came home for holidays and stuff, but there hasn’t been a holiday. So, I don’t know. I don’t miss her. Because it’s not real yet. It is, but it isn’t. I can’t articulate it. Like, I’m sad. But am I sad enough? Should I be struggling to get out of bed? Crying more? My grief kind of comes and goes. I’m not in constant mourning. That’s bad, right? I mean, I mostly just feel guilty all the time. Like I fucked up. Like I did something wrong. Like I was a bad sister.”
“You weren’t a bad sister.”
“Yes, I was. I was a bad sister. I was caught up in my own shit. And if she didn’t react to something the exact way I wanted her to, I was a bitch. Maybe not directly to her. In general, I was a bitch. I’m a bitch.”
“Mac.”
“You know it’s true. You know me.”
“You’re not a bitch.”
“See, you’re too nice. That’s why we get along so well. We balance each other out.”
“I think you need to stop worrying about how you think you’re supposed to be dealing with it and just deal with it,” she said. “There’s no right or wrong way.”
I thought about the doll. She’d been on my mind like a blister—a distress I’d gritted my teeth through and tried my best to ignore. I thought about telling Violet. Offering up the doll as proof that there was in fact a wrong way to deal, and that wrong way had a lot to do with a mysterious porcelain doll and my fixation with her. My fear. My suspicion. Maybe then she’d get it, get that there was something very, very wrong with me and how I was handling the loss of my sister.
But I already sounded crazy enough.
Violet tapped her pastel-painted nails against her mug.
I said, “Are you serving me melted chocolate? Is that what this is? Because it’s fucking delicious.”
She laughed. “Basically.”
* * *
• • •
I got into the habit of drinking. I would pick up a bottle of bourbon at the liquor store after work and bring it home to my apartment. Drink it squished in the tiny bathtub, legs dangling over the sides, torso soaking in a heap of excessive bubbles, candles burning, wax melting into the tiles. It was indulgent. I felt like I should have been taking quick cold showers instead. But I took baths. And I drank.
I stole a snow globe out of Audrey’s room. A small one of New York City, inside it the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, the Twin Towers still standing, flecks of fake snow. I got it on a visit when I was young, too young to remember. I gave it to her when she was too young to remember. I pocketed it during one of my secret trips to her bedroom. I kept it with me. I held a bottle in one hand, the globe in the other, and sat in the bath, waiting to prune up.
I got out when the water cooled, wrapped myself in my thick hotel robe, and put on my fuzziest socks. I sat on my bed reading. There was a rustling over by the window. I assumed the wind. It persisted.
When I brought my eyes up from the book, I saw the doll climbing down from the shelf.
I blinked twice. She landed on the floor with both feet, her black Mary Janes making a faint tapping noise as she began to walk across the floor toward the bathroom.
I stayed perfectly still, paralyzed by shock and awe. I couldn’t tell if I was breathing. I was numb, save for a burning sensation at the base of my neck, like someone had struck a match against my spine.
The doll walked into the bathroom. There was a moment of silence before the door began to creak closed, hinges wailing. It lacked the momentum to latch. A few seconds later, I heard glass breaking.
The doll reappeared, opening the door and pausing there in the doorway to look at me. I thought she might speak.
She began to walk in the direction of her hatbox. When her back was to me, I started to cry, my body’s best stab at a reaction to what I was witnessing.
She turned her head, a hundred eighty degrees, back to me.
I bit down on my quivering lip until she turned away and settled back in her box, bringing the lid over the top with her small porcelain hands.
Time passed. Time enough for me to regain control of my limbs, grab my phone, and lock myself in the bathroom to call Bryce.
I almost stepped on a shard of broken glass. The snow globe, which I must have left on the edge of the tub, had been shattered.
“Bryce, I need you to come over now.”
“It’s midnight.”
“Bryce, I’m not fucking around. Get over here now.”
“Are you at Mom and Dad’s? Is something wrong?”
“I’m at my place. Mom is still mad at me. Just come over. Now. Please?”
“Okay, okay.”
I carefully picked up the shards of glass and placed them in the garbage bin. I talked to myself as I did it, repeating, “This isn’t real,” over and over again until I believed it.
I doubted my sight. I rationalized. I was tired, drunk, stressed, not wearing the glasses I was told I needed in the fourth grade but never got.
It was a creepy doll. It wasn’t so far out that my mind would go there.
I thought maybe I had broken the snow globe by accident. Maybe I was having a Fight Club moment. Maybe I was the doll.
But then the scratching started. The sudden sound of the latch straining against the pressure on the other side of the door. And the laughing. The giggling. Like a little girl’s but not. It wasn’t the laugh of a girl.
“Bryce?”
The scratching intensified. I thought the wood was splitting, splintering. Soon. Soon the doll would claw her way inside.
I was nauseous, my heart thumping so violently I swore I could see it through my robe. The edges of the world frayed and then there was nothing.
I woke up to Bryce’s pounding. I opened the door to find him red-faced.
“Jesus, Mackenzie. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Is she out there?”
“What?”
“The doll! Is the doll out there?”
“What doll?”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on or do I have to guess?” he asked. “You’ve got whiskey breath.”
“I’m not drunk. There’s a doll. An old doll I found when I moved in here and she’s terrorizing me.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Oh, shut up,” I said.
“Didn’t say anything.”
“I know how it sounds, okay? I’m not an idiot. But I swear to God, I’m not making this up.”
“I believe that you believe you’re being terrorized by a doll.”
“Fine,” I said. “Can you stay with me while I pack a bag? Can I crash at your place?”
“Where’s the doll?”
“On the shelf over there.”
He walked over to the shelf. “In this?”
The cabinet was already open. He picked up the hatbox.
“Don’t!”
“No?”
“Put it back! I’m serious.”
“Why don’t we throw it out?”
“It doesn’t want me to!” I said, surprising myself. “It’ll get mad.”
“Ah. Yes. Of course.”
We didn’t say another word to each other on the way back to his condo. He handed me a blanket and a pillow without a case. He pulled out the couch.
“Night,” he said.
He left the light on.
In the morning he made me strong coffee and a Toaster Strudel.
“You have to stop drinking.”
“I wasn’t drunk. And don’t tell Mom.”
“Too late,” he said. “You have to go to therapy. By yourself.”
“Goddamn it!”
“Don’t blame me,” he said. “What was I supposed to do? You were talking some Toy Story shit.”
“I’m going to hit you.”
“Just don’t stab me again. I think I still have lead poisoning. Traces of lead.”
“You are so stupid.”
“Mom should have put you in therapy after that. You and your pencil shank.”
“Exceptionally stupid.”
“Sharpening it up with, like, a Swiss Army knife in your room.”
“If I had a knife, why would I have needed the pencil?”
“Waiting for the perfect opportunity . . .”
“I’m leaving now.”
“Watch out for killer teddy bears.”
“Watch out for writing utensils. Prick.”
About an hour later, I received the call from my mother.
“Six o’clock tonight. Don’t be late.”
“Mom.”
“Not an option.”
“Fine.”
“You’ve always been dramatic.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Overactive imagination. When you were five, you were convinced a little boy named Jedediah visited your room at night.”
“I have no recollection of that.”
“You said he was dressed like a Pilgrim and had black eyes.”
“Jesus.”
“This will be good for you, Mackenzie. It’ll help. I worry about you.”
Normally I would have refused but I was grateful to be forgiven after what I’d said to her in the car and didn’t want to push my luck.
“I’m going. I’ll go.”
“Thank you.”
I went to therapy. I showed up tired and sloppy, my hair frizzed, mascara smudged. The therapist wasn’t fazed. I guess she was used to that sort of thing.
“I’m here because my family thinks I’m crazy,” I said. “They thought that before Audrey died, too. So . . .”
“Why do you say that?”
“They’ve told me. They’ve said it.”
“How does that make you feel?”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“It makes me feel like I have a Cassandra complex or something. Like with this doll.”
“What doll?”
“This doll that I found in my apartment. It’s alive. It moves.”
The therapist gave no indication of surprise.
“When did this start?” she asked.
“Shortly after I moved in.”
“After moving back? After Audrey’s passing?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think that you might be associating the doll with your sister? She was much younger than you.”
“I don’t know. Audrey didn’t like dolls.”
“You could be projecting some of your feelings about the loss of your sister onto this doll. Do you find it difficult to discuss your sister’s death?”
“No, but can we talk about something else?”
“Like the doll?”
“Look, the doll is alive. I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“The doll is alive?”
“Yes.”
“But your sister isn’t.”
“I’m just here to make my mom feel better,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
I spent the rest of the session venting about my failed relationship with Maren and avoiding any further discussion of Audrey or the doll.
Though it made logical sense that I would link my younger sister and the doll, I still didn’t feel comfortable going back to my apartment. I called Violet.
“I understand not wanting to be alone,” she said as she made up her spare bedroom for me.
“Do you have any wine?”
We drank a few glasses lying in the guest bed, playing nostalgia games and painting each other’s nails.
“You probably don’t believe in it,” she said, “but I know a medium. She’s a friend of Danny’s mom. She read for me once. She’s pretty legit.”
“Really? Remember that time we played with a Ouija board at Wren Coleman’s house, and she got so mad because you kept spelling out ‘poop’?”
She snorted into her wineglass. “I forgot about that.”
“She was pissed.”
“I didn’t believe in any of that until Sadie. She told me things she couldn’t have known. Things I never told Danny. Like, she knew my grandfather flew planes in the war and that my grandmother used to bake fresh bread whenever I would go over there as a kid. She said she died of lung cancer and kept touching her throat. It was pretty crazy.”
I had a vision of the medium telling me something about Audrey, like that she was somewhere happy and safe. That she didn’t blame me or Mom or anyone. I could tell her that I loved her and that I was sorry. Promise to stop touching her stuff. Even if it was a sham, I thought it would be nice.
I thought maybe it’d make the doll stop moving.
“Okay,” I said. “Set it up.”
* * *
• • •
The weather started to change. Summer slouched into autumn, the trees exposing their skeletons, leaves shriveling at their feet.
Violet turned the medium thing into a whole ordeal. She baked. Cupcakes, brownies. She served fresh ground coffee and hot apple cider with cinnamon sticks and set out a vegetable tray. She made dip. A casserole. She invited three other friends: two who had recently lost parents to cancer, the other apparently just curious and morbid. The air in her house was warm and silky from countless linen-scented candles.
The other friends cornered me, asked me questions. They touched my hands like they knew me. I would rather have been back at my apartment with the doll.
Not really, though.
I hadn’t slept at my apartment in almost three weeks. Not since the night with the broken snow globe. I returned only during the day to get new clothes or grab a forgotten charger. I kept the door propped open and stayed on the phone the entire time. Always with Jade.
“Stop calling me in the middle of the day,” she’d said. “I have a job.”
“I need you.”
“Okay, okay. I’m here.”
I slept at Violet’s or Bryce’s or my parents’. I continued to lift stuff from my sister’s room. Used school notebooks, stuffed animals. I stashed them in my old bedroom, bottom-left drawer of the dresser. In high school I had hidden condoms there.
I asked Violet if I could have my reading last and she said I could, but then one of the other girls started crying before her turn, so I went instead.
It was cold in the dining room. Sadie, the medium, looked like your average soccer mom with slightly better hair. She wore a turtleneck.
“Hello,” she said. She sat at the head of the table. I sat a seat away, not wanting to get too close.
She reached out for my hand. She had to stand up and hunch over the table.
“I can just, like, move over,” I said.
She smiled and nodded. She took a deep, hearty inhale.
“Who is Alex?” she asked.
I shrugged. “No idea.”
“There’s an Alex coming through for you,” she said, her voice buttery, sweet.
“I don’t know any Alex,” I said. “Boy or girl?”
“Male. A strong male presence. Alex.”
“Nope.”
She was undeterred. “He says you’ve always liked his smile.”
“Presumptuous.”
“He says he will see you later.” Sadie inhaled again. “You are very lost.”
I laughed.
“I’m seeing a spotlight. You want to be an actress.”
“No,” I said.
“Light. You need light. You search for light. Spotlight. Fame.”
“I don’t want to be famous,” I said. A lie. I wanted to be a little famous. Everyone does.
“I’m getting a Judy. Judy is coming through. Judy is here with us in this room.”
“Okay.”
“She says hello, darling. Judy.”
“Nope. Don’t know any Judy,” I said, starting to get antsy. I was eyeing the clock, calculating how much time I had left with the medium. She did only fifteen minutes. Any more than that she claimed was too taxing.
I realized then that the reading was a terrible idea.
“No Judy,” I said. “Sure the name is Judy?”
“Yes, Judy, darling. She says you don’t know her.”
“Oh, does she, now?”
“Judy. Judy has a message for you.”
“It’s not Audrey, is it? Not Judy. Audrey?”
“Judy. It’s Judy. Judy says—” Sadie’s face went white. She slammed her hands down on the table so hard I jumped. “Judy says the doll is not Audrey.”
“What?”
“The doll isn’t Audrey. It’s not Audrey. Mackenzie, darling, the doll is not Audrey. It’s not Audrey.”
I was choking, the air robbed from my throat.
“The doll is bad. The doll is bad. The doll is bad. The doll is bad. The doll is bad. The doll is bad.”
“Okay!” I stood up fast, the chair falling behind me. “I get it!”
Sadie shook her head. “I’m sorry.”
