Small World (17 page)

Lucy, lazing on a chaise in the midday sun, sat up quickly and checked the metal snap on the top of her cut-off denim shorts to make sure it was closed. The zipper was zipped, too. She stood up and stretched.

‘Hello, hello,’ her mother-in-law was shouting, as she came around the picket fence. ‘Lucy, darling, you look marvelous.’

Lucy did, indeed, look very good. She nodded.

‘Thanks.’

‘Oh, this is Roger Tinker, Lucy. He’s writing a book on miniatures.’

Lucy shook Roger’s slightly damp paw in polite puzzlement. Miniature-making and collecting was a relatively small world that she knew well and she had never heard of Roger Tinker.

‘Pleased to meet ya,’ he mumbled. He stared down the front of her halter and stuck his hands back in his pockets, nodding his way through an introduction to Lucy’s father. The camera case dangled from his neck like an outsize pendant.

‘And this,’ Dolly was saying proudly, ‘is my cutie-pie, Laurie.’ She was clutching the little girl fiercely. Laurie Douglas squealed, making the most of the attention.

Dolly looked expectantly at Zachary. The little boy ignored them all.

‘Zach!’ his grandfather scolded, ‘say hello to your grandmother.’

Two little spots of color appeared on Dolly’s cheekbones. Zach looked up from his business and stared at them solemnly.

Dolly laughed. ‘Come on, you silly. Come see Gee.’

Slowly, with a sense of ritual, Zach stuck one finger delicately into one nostril. This was too much for Lucy.

‘Zachary,’ she said.

The finger came out, and disappeared into his pocket guiltily. He shuffled to within reaching distance of his grandmother.

‘Lo.’

Dolly considered him. Mud covered his legs to the knees like dirty stockings and he was gloved to the elbow as well in the stuff. She found a patch reasonably clean skin over one elbow, ducked in for a hasty kiss, and withdrew to a safe distance.

‘Don’t let me keep you,’ she told him archly.

He looked at his mother hopefully, received a nod of dismissal, and trudged back to the pool, where there were still worlds to explore.

Lucy smiled apologetically at Dolly; he was only four.

Dolly raised her eyebrows.

You might have cleaned him up. You knew I was coming.’

Lucy’s mouth set stubbornly and she ignored the reproof.

Laurie broke the tension by offering them all a cup of tea. Roger looked eagerly into the cup in her hand. Hope rumbled away as he realized it was plain water. Dolly laughed, and refused the offer. Rudely, Roger thought, since she didn’t bother to ask him if he wanted any.

‘Thank you, darling,’ Dolly was hugging the kid again, ‘but I have to talk with your mother first.’

i'll keep an eye on the little ones,’ Lucy’s father offered. He touched his cap lightly in Dolly’s direction, and settled back in his chair.

Laurie shrugged and went back to her tea party. Grown-ups were always busy with themselves and their work. It must be

boring.

Lucy led Dolly and Roger away to her workshop, giving Roger a chance to walk behind the two women, from which vantage he could admire Lucy’s behind in her denim shorts, and Dolly’s, in iinen trousers. A good view, he decided. Worth the trip.

Lucy stepped to one side and let Dolly look over the set-up on

the worktable. It was bare except for a tiny wardrobe. One of its two doors stood open just enough to permit the light to glint off the mirror inside. A pool of red glowed in the mirror, a reflection of a garment hung within.

‘Very nice,’ Dolly murmured. She opened the door a little more with a light push of one long fingernail. The red within developed a white shadow. She drew out two tiny gowns. She stroked them in an unspoken compliment.

‘Perfect.’ She put them back.

‘I have something else, a surprise." Lucy produced, magically, from some dark corner, a tiny silver bowl perched on a silver tray. The bowl was piled with fruit.

Dolly took them in the palm of one hand. She popped a loupe into one eye and stared at them. Then she sniffed. She looked up in amazement.

‘Lucy!’ Plucking a tiny orange from the bowl, she sniffed at it curiously. Roger drew closer to see what she was so excited about. She held it out to him and he sniffed too.

‘Marvelous!’ Dolly exclaimed. ‘Smells like a real orange.’

‘And the apples smell like apples, the bananas like bananas, the grapes like grapes,’Lucy chimed.

Roger grinned at Dolly. ‘Not bad,’ he grunted.

She caught his eye. An unspoken thought passed between them:
but we can do it better.

‘It’s a gift. For you.’ Lucy blushed.

‘Why thank you, dear.’ Dolly was a little startled. Lucy would do something like this and make things even more awkward. She stalled.

‘How did you do it?’ Roger jumped in helpfully.

i’ve been fooling around for weeks now with artificial scents. For the grounds. I wanted to get the roses right and the flowering shrubs and perhaps the grass. It would be awfully complicated. But I see possibilities now I didn’t know existed three months ago. Been writing to chemical companies and perfume manufacturers, giving myself a crash course. I know I can do better than plastic grass on a mat and wired plastic roses.’

Lucy noticed her enthusiasm didn’t seem to be catching. Dolly didn’t seem particularly interested. And her friend seemed peculiarly amused, as if he’d caught her picking her pants out of her crack. Confused, she plunged on.

‘The stickler’s going to be the grass. Real grass has so many properties, like moving in a breeze and feeling silky and smelling good, that it will be hard to do it right.’

Abruptly she stopped and faced down Dolly. Roger looked away from the two women. He didn’t really want to listen to what was coming next. Lucy seemed like a hard-working woman. Cute, too. He studied the workbenches and the tools on the pegboards, the materials neatly arranged on industrial shelving.

‘Lucy, dear,’ he heard Dolly say in a low voice, ‘I don’t want you to do the grounds.’

In the silence that fell like a shadow over them, Roger fiddled with a neat little jigsaw. Lucy didn’t seem to notice. She was so still she seemed not to breathe. Her face was white and faraway.

Roger looked around some more. He noticed the sun coming in through an old storm window that had been stuck in the roof as a skylight. There was a sliding glass door at the rear of the shop, behind Lucy, that looked out onto a big kitchen garden. The place had a homemade air that made Roger think of his own cellar hideout, back home in California. He found himself feeling terrible for Lucy.

‘Is there something you wanted me to do first?’ Lucy asked in a puzzled tone.

‘Well, no.’ Dolly turned back to the dresses in the little wardrobe. ‘Actually I’d like to leave the Doll’s White House as it

is, for now.’

Lucy straightened. ‘Do you want the wardrobe?’

'Oh, yes. Very much. It’s delightful.’

i'll pack it for you, then.’

Lucy scooped up the piece and began wrapping quickly and carefully in a fibrous brown paper. She didn’t spare a glance for either Roger or her mother-in-law. The way she moved made Roger think of the spare violent motions of a butcher. He began to sweat heavily.

Dolly drifted to the sliding glass door and stared out into the garden. Roger studied the tools. Tiny sawblades, gouges, a jeweler’s frame saw, a small power drill, a disc sander, a pin vise. Fine tools. Anyone who worked with these as well as Lucy Douglas did, Roger could respect.

She opened a drawer to take out a thick elastic band. Roger i .mpsed small clamps, pliers, the nose of a jeweler’s snip, tweezers, the debris of anybody’s tool box. Lucy slipped the elastic around the small cardboard box and set it carefully on the •able before her. Then she slipped the fruit bowl into a penny-candy paper bag.

Dolly was watching the operation now, smiling as if the air were not charged with Lucy’s unspoken anger.

‘Do you want the files?’ Lucy asked quietly, her voice carefully purged of emotion.

Dolly nodded.

The younger woman began rummaging in a small filing cabinet that stood in one corner of the shop. Odd pieces of carpeting were piled unsteadily against it. They looked as if they had been used as a slide by some small child.

Idly, Roger picked up a sweet little X-acto number two handle and slipped it into his pocket. A number eleven blade followed it. Dolly was busy, groping for cigarettes in her handbag. The files, once found, went from Lucy to Dolly to Roger. Roger held them the same way he would hold a baby if anyone were fool enough to hand one to him.

‘The correspondence with Dud Merchent about the wallpaper you wanted is in there. I was going to ask if you wanted the sample he sent, but I guess you want to handle that yourself now.'

Dolly flicked her lighter. She was bored. Roger recognized the signals.

‘And the photographs of the vermeil from Linda Bloch are in there. And of course everything I’ve done to date about the grounds. I’ll bill you for the wardrobe and the exploratory work on the grounds model. I hope you understand I consider myself free to use what I’ve developed.’

Dolly picked up the boxed wardrobe and the little bag of fruit. ‘Good afternoon, Lucy,’ she said,, not bothering to keep the amusement from her voice. She strode out of the workshop. Roger trotted after her, bearing the files.

She departed smiling and waving like royalty at Lucy’s father and the children. The old man tipped his baseball cap again. Laurie waved back. Zach, stuffing mud by the fingerful into the nozzle of the hose, ignored the whole business.

When Lucy failed to reappear after a long time, her father went looking for her. The workshop was empty, the door to the garden open. He found her picking bugs off the tomatoes.

Her cheeks were wet with tears she had already failed to stifle and her nose was red. She looked up at him, managing a stiff, brave little smile. She held up a slug in the palm of one hand.

‘This slug’s name is Dorothy Hardesty Douglas, Pop.’ She dropped it into the tin can of salt water at her feet. ‘Good-bye, you miserable bitch.’

‘Oh, Lu,’ her father said. He squatted down next to her.

'It’s the best thing, really,’ she continued. ‘She just uses people. She doesn't care. When she’s done with you, she flushes you down the nearest toilet, I’m glad to be done working with her. I wish I could be rid of her entirely.’

Mr. Novick nodded. ‘Right you are. But you don’t like being fired, do you, baby?’

Lucy grinned. She examined the underside of a leaf. She liked the musky smell of tomato plants. They always made her feel better.

‘No. You know what, Pop?’

What, Lu?’

i hate the thought of that rotten cu—bitch having all those things I put so many hours of my life into. I feel like I sold myself on a street corner somewhere.’

‘Ah, Lu,’ he drew closer, hugged her. ‘Lu, now you can do some of the things you’ve been talking about. It’s for the good. You’re right.’

‘Sure, Pop. That’s what’s next.’ She stood up and stretched, so that he could see she was over the weeps. ‘Did you ever think when I brought Harrison around to meet you that it would be so important?’

Her words evoked a vivid picture in her father’s memory: the shy, whipcord of a boy in a summer uniform, holding hands with his nineteen-year-old daughter on the rickety old porch swing, the rair of them so young and beautiful. His daughter had grown up; the boy had not, but it was his children who played in the swimming pool out front and his mother who had savaged a perfectly good summer day. He shook his head. Life was a complicated curious business, and he didn’t need to watch the soap operas to know that just because it was a cliche, that didn’t ~iean it wasn’t true. Magical and painful, the way time doubled Dack on itself, and nothing ever really seemed to end.

No,’ he answered, unable to put his emotions into words.

Let’s barbecue tonight. I’ll make the lemonade if you’ll do the hotdogs.’

Better get the coals going. Where’s those kids? I’ll put them to work setting up.’

Lucy wiped her hands on her shorts and set off for the kitchen. Her father watched her go. He wished she hadn’t broken up with that Nick Weiler. She was almost happy with that fellow. But she'd get along. She always had. Tough little creature, though not so little anymore. Who would have thought Louisa and he would produce a child like Lucy? Not he. It made him smile.

In the kitchen, Lucy dialed the telephone.

is Nick there, Roseann? This is Lucy Douglas. I’d like a quick word with him, if I may.’

i’m sure he’s in, Lucy.’ Unmistakeable surprise in Roseann’s voice. And curiosity.

‘Thanks,’ Lucy said.

it’s nice to hear you again,’ Roseann said unexpectedly and cut out.

‘Lucy?’ Nick sounded anxious.

‘Nick,’ she began and had to stop and think what she was going to say. ‘Nick, I’m sorry to bother you. But something funny just happened. Would you come and see me tonight?’

7

In her
hotel suite, Dolly tucked the small package of the wardrobe into one of the crates of dollhouse furnishings. Opening the bag of scented fruit, she rolled the pieces into her palm and sniffed at them ecstatically.