Plain Bad Heroines, page 31
Mr. Packard said bland things about industry, but those things were wrapped in the always-pretty sentiment of promise for America’s bright future. People applauded. People toasted and drank.
Alex then met a group of Libbie’s very stylish childhood friends, including, for the very first time: Miss Sara Dahlgren. Certainly, she was pretty, Readers. The sum of her features almost uncannily encompassed the preferred look of the moment: head of blond hair pinned into a (deceptively) simple chignon that topped her thin, pale neck; her smart evening dress fashion-plating over the most desirable S-curve shaped by her corset. But Alex also found her to be too loud and too dominating, always looking for the chance to cut in with something witty. (Or Sara Dahlgren herself at least seemed to think the things she said were witty.)
Libbie had told Alex previously that when they were younger—before Libbie had gone to Wellesley to study and Sara had gone to Europe to play—the two of them had shared an intimacy. It had been Libbie’s first love affair. Alex believed Libbie when she said she no longer had such feelings for Sara Dahlgren. She did not believe Libbie when she said that Sara Dahlgren felt the same about her.
And she was right not to.
“I didn’t know old Harold was going to be here,” Sara said through her teeth. Alex could see that she was looking at whomever Mr. Packard was talking to right then. “Ooh la la—all the way from Pittsburgh to glad-hand your dad.” She turned to Libbie. “Is she with him?”
“I’m sure she must be,” Libbie said, glancing toward those in question without interest. “Somewhere. He so rarely travels without her.”
Alex could already tell that Sara Dahlgren savored moments like this, when she had the ability to translate some social interaction for the person in the party who could not speak the language. Meaning she could therefore decide if, and how, to do so: whether to give them the full translation, or only her selective interpretation.
What Sara now said to Alex was, “Of course you’ve heard of Harold Brookhants.”
“Have I?” Alex said.
Libbie smiled at her and squeezed her arm and said, “You have. He’s the Brookhants behind Brookhants Lumber and Steel. But everyone loves to talk most about his séances.”
In the space of just that smile, that touch, Alex felt better about them spending the next two weeks together than she had since she’d first arrived at the train station. So much so that she almost didn’t hear what it was that Libbie had said about the man.
“Oh, I’m sure I have heard of him,” she said, looking at him again. His wide forehead and crown were shiny with perspiration, and the froth of hair at the back of his head washed brick red into gray, matching his beard. (Though somehow, the well-kempt—if massive—moustache beneath his nose was hanging on to true ginger.) He had the paunch of an epicure, which he was apparently known to be, and his tan summer suit and tie were of the latest cut and style. Harold Brookhants might have been old but he was not without taste. Alex thought he wore the self-satisfied look of a man who has just played an impeccable prank on someone who deserved it. Or perhaps a lot of someones who deserved it.
“I see her,” Sara hissed. “To the left of the ice sculpture. Don’t everyone look at once—she’ll know! With the necklace.”
“She’s talking about Harold’s personal soothsayer,” Libbie said dismissively.
“Seer,” Sara said.
Alex couldn’t tell if Sara was taking any of this seriously or not. She looked where they were looking, across the glittering room to the dessert table, where a woman wearing an amethyst gown set off by earrings and a choker of the same gem was fussily selecting strawberries from a platter. The cascading stones in her chandelier earrings were surely large enough to produce a clicking or tinkling noise when she turned her head, like wind chimes for the body. Alex thought such an effect would give her a headache.
The Spiritualist turned to speak to someone behind her, and then she turned back to the desserts. When the woman was viewed from the side, Alex thought her facial features were rather unfortunately squashed together at the middle, rendering her profile lumpy. But when Alex saw her face straight on, it seemed scrubbed of definition, difficult to get a handle on. Slippery. This save her eyes, which were very keen indeed.
“Who is she?” Alex asked.
“Madame Verrett,” Sara said. “Of the French Verretts.”
This meant nothing to Alex. “And how does your father know Mr. Brookhants?” she asked Libbie, though at this point she didn’t really care.
“I’m not entirely sure,” Libbie said. “Everyone knows Harold Brookhants.” She paused, smiling a charmed smile at Alex. “I mean everyone except you, of course.”
Sara Dahlgren didn’t like this. She turned to Alex as if she was really pondering something and then said, “From what Library tells me, you might have more in common with our Harold than you know.”
Alex was beginning to think she might really dislike Sara. “Oh, I doubt that very much. I don’t go in for rapping on tables and lecturing in a trance.” She held up her hand as if taking a solemn pledge, and said, “I promise hereafter that all of my lectures will be delivered when I’m fully awake—even if my students say otherwise.”
Libbie squeezed her arm again.
“I wasn’t talking about Harold’s spiritual beliefs,” Sara said. “I was talking about—”
“Sara, look who came,” Libbie said, cutting her off and pointing toward a group of loud revelers who had just entered by the stage.
“Ashley Marcum!” Sara said. She crossed the room like a hummingbird in a dress, flitting through the crowd to her destination.
“She’s an acquired taste, I know,” Libbie said. “But she’s my—”
“Oldest friend,” Alex said. “I know. I can try to expand my palate. For one night, I can.”
But all that night, as their otherwise happy group rode together on one of the massive cars of the exhibition’s great modern machine, the Ferris Wheel; and as they tossed pennies (and a few nickels too, because all but Alex could afford to be so wasteful) into the tiered cascade of the Columbian Fountain; and as they pretended to be frightened by the dancing cobras drifting to the music of the shirtless snake charmers—Sara Dahlgren played the role of instigator. She was always touching Libbie’s arm, grabbing her hand, pulling her off into the crowd to whisper secrets in her ear.
Sara Dahlgren knew what Alex was to Libbie. Libbie had told her. And yet it seemed to Alex that Sara took great delight in pretending that she did not know. Or that if she did, that it meant nothing to her.
As strings of colored bulbs lit up like boiled sweets around them, Alex watched Sara pull Libbie toward her yet again, this time telling her to close her eyes and stick out her tongue. Libbie did this with no questions, only trust. Sara then looked right at Alex, a knowing look, as she unwrapped a stick of the much-hyped Juicy Fruit chewing gum being debuted at the fair. Sara continued to look at Alex, her face now clearly in a leer, as she placed the gum on Libbie’s pink tongue, whereupon it lay like a stiff piece of cardboard.
At least until Sara squealed, “Chew it, Library! Chew!”
Once Libbie did, her eyes still closed, but a smile drawing over her chewing lips, Alex again felt a tug of unease.
Libbie said, around her chews, “Fruity!”
The faces of Libbie’s encircled friends, especially the teeth in their wide, laughing mouths, were then colored so strangely by the lights: jagged patterns of red and orange and green making stained glass windows on their bodies. The scene looked and felt wrong to Alex, nearly malevolent: Sara’s leering, Libbie’s chewing, the awful laughing of the circle. It seemed as if a darkness was right then scuttling about the group of them, these brash, young, moneyed Americans, with no one the wiser but Alex. And even she couldn’t quite bring herself to believe it. She thought she must be a touch delirious from such a long journey ending in this night of too much spectacle. She was in need of calm and quiet and sleep.
Near to where they’d stopped was a vendor’s tent. The young woman behind its counter was selling something she was calling Matryoshkas—intricately painted papier-mâché dolls, shaped somewhat like bells, that opened to reveal smaller dolls nesting inside, until came one no larger than a thimble. The vendor had been regularly calling out to passersby to get their attention, but she’d stopped hawking when Sara had circled their group next to her booth.
The vendor had also watched Sara feed Libbie the gum. She’d watched intently, but she did not cheer as the others did when Libbie began to chew. Instead, she’d turned to look at Alex and watch for her reaction.
Now, as Libbie’s friends continued on through the twisting aisles of booths selling scarves and marionettes, ornate knives and hand mirrors, the woman with the Matryoshkas reached out across the counter to brush Alex’s arm. Alex was then trailing her party, still disturbed by what she’d seen and felt, and the woman’s touch was as light as a wraith’s.*
When Alex slowed to turn and look at the vendor, she wasn’t even entirely sure if she had been touched.
“This you need,” the woman said, taking her chance now that she had Alex’s attention. “For you.” Though the dolls she was selling were Russian in origin, the woman’s French inflection was thick. She gestured to the doll on the polished wood counter before her, though she did not pick it up. She only held her open palm behind it so that Alex would look there.
It was awful, what Alex saw when she did.
While the other dolls in the booth were painted with serene or even beatific expressions, the trim on their dresses intricately detailed with flowers and hearts and curlicues, this doll was a grinning skeleton. Her cunning smile—for it was a smile, Readers—formed only of bone and teeth and her violet eyes narrowed. She still wore the headscarf and clothing of the other dolls, but blackberry brambles wrapped her throat like a noose, and her flesh was stripped from her body and painted as a pile of folds of peach and red at her feet.
And in her hands she held a book, bound in red. This detail was particularly striking.
The vendor had her dolls displayed in various states of undoing, some arranged with all the versions in a row, from big to little; others only partially unnested. But the doll on the counter in front of Alex thankfully still had all of its selves shut up within it.
“Oh no,” Alex said quickly, turning to leave, “not for me.” She felt seasick even looking at it.
“It is for you,” the woman said, her voice like a music box. “Maybe not for now but for days to come.”
Alex looked more carefully at her. (She was happy to look anywhere that wasn’t the doll.) The vendor seemed quite young to be alone in this booth at the great fair. She certainly wasn’t as old as Alex, perhaps not even nineteen, though her face had a curious way of looking like one thing and then another, older and then much younger, in shadow and then in light—a sharp nose, a round chin; a flat nose, a pointed chin. Which was it?
It must be the colored bulbs that were confusing Alex, and the heat, the whir of this mad fair around them—for now the whole space seemed almost to buzz. The sound filled her ears and thickened her thoughts.
“I don’t want it,” Alex said, making a point of turning away from the booth completely before raising up onto her tiptoes so that she might look over the crowd in the direction Libbie had traveled. But it was a useless effort. She couldn’t see Libbie or Sara or any of her party.
“You will want it,” the woman said. “And I’ll give you a fair price.”* She’d put on a pair of green-tinted pigskin gloves so quickly it could have been a magic trick.
In her periphery, Alex could see her now pick up the doll. She did not want to move her head to look, but felt she could not help herself, and turned in time to watch the woman carefully pull off the doll’s top portion to reveal the face and torso of the next inside.
This doll was at least a girl and not a skeleton. Despite herself, Alex now peered at its pale, painted face.
“See how beautiful?” the woman said. She tipped the contents from the bottom of the largest doll into one hand. The wooden pieces made a tapping noise as they fell against each other. She connected the now-empty halves of the first doll, the largest doll, and set it back on the counter where it had been.
Alex could see the second-largest doll in full. She was also painted with cunning eyes, a red book in hand. About her flitted a swarm of insects, the hem of her dress clogged with leaves and brambles.
Alex did not want to stay at the booth any longer. She did not want to see more of the doll’s selves revealed, but she felt as if in a trance. The woman’s hands were gentle, purposeful as they pulled the doll into halves, the clicking of the wooden pieces like a metronome.
The faintest trickle of music, a song Alex knew but could not place, wafted over and around the booth, until the chaos and color of the fair seemed to dim, and it was only the clicking Matryoshkas, the young-old woman showing them, and Alex watching.
The next doll wore pants and a boy’s shirt, even despite her feminine face and curls. She was holding a branch dotted with apples. At her feet were still more apples. And a red book.
The next had stunned eyes like black seeds, her mouth slack and dark. Large white trumpet blooms twisted into a crown over her hair and cluttered the bottom of her dress. She held a red book.
The next had eyes opened wide in fear, this because her mouth was sewn shut, the stitches painted to look like they’d been done in thick, black twine. Her head was painted as if slopped to one side. She held a red book.
The next was washed out, its colors pale and its details faded, almost as if it had been submerged in water. Indeed, it was shellacked with a mange of coarse sand coating its form, the red book painted as if waterlogged.
“Now the last,” the woman said. She had the final doll hidden in her hand. It was small enough to be enclosed entirely in her fist.
Dunnn-duh-dun daaa-dun-dun du-hun flowed the music. Alex might have been one of those dancing cobras from earlier, held in the sway of this vendor and her show.
The other dolls now formed a macabre chorus line at the counter’s edge. Their gruesome finale was still hidden tight in the woman’s gloved hand, which she now held out before her—so close she was almost touching Alex.
Alex shuddered, backed away a step. But she did not leave. She couldn’t. She had to know. She had to see it.
Dunnn-duh-dun daaa-dun-dun du-hun.
The woman uncurled her fingers like a spider stretching its legs.
There, on her gloved palm, a doll the size of two acorns stacked together.
This doll did not leer, or scowl, or smirk. She was not bloodied, or drowned, or made of bone. She did appear younger than the others, a little girl of maybe nine or ten. She was pretty. Smiling. Her eyes curious, but not quite cunning.
Alex bent closer, her face now right above the woman’s outstretched palm. She squinted. This doll looked a little like her Libbie, her eyes and mouth. Or, maybe not quite, but—
“We’ve found you!” shouted her Libbie, her real Libbie, who was now behind her. “Where were you?”
But Alex could not turn away from the doll. There was a resemblance.
“Alex?” Libbie said.
Her name from her Libbie’s mouth, that’s what broke the trance.
“I’m sorry,” Alex said, standing up from the bend she’d been in to better see the doll. She turned around, blinking her eyes as if waking from sleep. Sara Dahlgren was still at Libbie’s arm.
“How did we lose you?” Libbie asked. She was concerned, but also a tad put out.
“How did she lose us?” Sara said.
Libbie seemed only now to take in the vendor, the booth. “Is this what’s kept you?”
“She was showing me,” Alex said, trying to form an explanation but discarding her words even as she said them. Instead, she gestured to the French woman as if to say, See what she has there, but the vendor was putting the doll back together as if that was her only focus, as if, only a moment before, she had not been wholly occupied with selling it to Alex. In fact, she was acting as if she didn’t know the three of them were even watching her or talking about her—as if their stopping in front of her booth had nothing to do with her at all. Four of the doll’s selves were already renested.
“Oh no! Was this for Library?” Sara asked Alex with mocking concern. “Did you think you’d surprise her with one of these, only now the surprise has been ruined?”
“No,” Alex said. “I don’t want one.”
The woman in the booth had worked with unnatural speed and precision and the doll was fully back as one. And now, just as quickly, she hushed it away somewhere down below the counter and out of sight.
“They’re pretty, aren’t they?” Libbie said, really considering the booth’s displays for the first time. “Very clever,” she said to the vendor.
The woman nodded without looking at her. “Merci,” she said, but then she turned around and moved to the shadowy back of her booth, bending over some stacked crates to dig at their contents. She gave every signal that she did not intend to engage them further.
“Can we please move along now?” Sara said. “Unless you have other dolls to visit?” she asked Alex.
“I think I’d like to go,” Alex said. “To leave, I mean.”
“Now?” Libbie asked. “But it’s still so early.”
“You could stay,” Alex said.
“Yes, you must stay, Library,” Sara said, again latching herself to Libbie. “It’s been days since anyone’s even seen you here.”
But Libbie pulled away from Sara and moved toward Alex. “Do you not feel well?” she asked.
“I’m only tired,” Alex said. “And I seem to have picked up a headache somewhere.”
“Probably down your glass of champagne,” Sara said.
Alex had mentioned a headache mostly as a further excuse to leave, though once the words had left her mouth, she found them to be true. Too true. Her temples pounded. She didn’t know how to explain to them—or to Libbie, really, as she felt no need to explain herself to Sara Dahlgren—what had just happened with the vendor and her awful dolls, and even before, with Libbie and her friends and the colored lights. How could she possibly explain her larger sense of foreboding? How chewing gum and children’s toys had so disturbed her?
