Small World (32 page)

What she really remembered of that night was the few hours that had bridged it and the next day, the time when Nick Weiler had been with her. She knew he had answered her imperious Mimmons because he had been on the outs with his new girl, partly Leyna’s doing, and because he had wanted something from her. It hadn’t cost the network anything, but she had seen to it that it had not come exactly free to him. All because she had wanted him to erase, for a few hours, the polite murder-suicide of her own marriage.

She hadn’t thought about Jeff much lately. Not for months, really, before she had gone jogging on the Mall on the last day of a hat she now thought of as her real life. The state of their marriage had been j ust a fact of life that would, in time, work itself out. There was no rancor, no bitterness, no emotions involved on either side. Just an arrangement that hadn’t worked, loosening like a badly made sweater, soon to unravel.

It too was unimportant. She had her work. That was part of the problem, of course. They never had had much ofamarriage. They both had had their work. His and hers. A careful separation of careers, personalities, lives, leading quite logically to a parting of their hearts and bodies.

Now there was no work to take her mind off the accident of themselves that had befallen Jeff and Leyna. She had to look at it, the way she had to look at herself in the wardrobe mirror, a mass of bruises, a rack of bones, skin the color of an evil moon.

Something Bad had happened to Leyna. Somehow, Dorothy Hardesty Douglas had made her crazy. Or made her tiny. She pushed that possibility away. She was crazy, just crazy, that’s all, and her particular craziness put her inside Dolly’s goddamn dollhouse.

So she would never see Jeff again, not in a lawyer’s office to settle their marriage like a real estate deal, not in his mother’s table-cursed mansion in Philadelphia, over a mile-long linen-covered dining table bordered with horse-faced relatives, and not in her naked little barracks of an apartment, with its pricey view of the Potomac. Her marriage would end, not discreetly, with the promise of a civilized nostalgic encounter in a luxury hotel, one last bittersweet romp, but here, in the mad birthday party of her own mind. In rooms that mocked the Center of Power she had served.

She pulled herself hastily from the bed and ran to the bathroom. Squatting on the toilet, she ran out of evasions. There was one small fact she was tucking away, like her cache of elderly fruit in the commode. Dolly, the Giant Dorothy, had mocked her. Would her own mind do that? Surely, not even Dorothy had the power to reduce full-grown adults to the size of fairies, to the stature of a doll, a plaything? It wasn’t possible. Human beings were not reducible, not shrinkable, like cheap underpants.

Leyna returned to the tray on the floor. There was no longer a fork, so she ate with her hands, and never mind the mess. The wine was tepid, sour-tasting, but she drank it directly from the bottle, ignoring the glass that had been provided.

It came back to herself, she decided, as she swallowed the gelid mess in great gulps. She was the end of the circle. She had created her own mad prison out of bits and pieces of an antagonistic relationship with a woman who meant, in the total context of Leyna Shaw’s life, next to nothing to her. The Giant Dorothy was an insane metaphor, her present existence her own crazy poem. She had hoped, when she first began to suspect that she was living an irrational hallucination, that her mind would heal itself. Now, with her mouth and stomach full of the spice and grease and acid of her meal, she thought she couldn’t bear the terrors she was inflicting on herself much longer.

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When the light came around again, there was a new tray, laden

-    :a aromatic delicacies. She didn’t move to claim it. The room *as fragrant with the odor of coffee, croissants, eggs benedict, strawberries in cream. Curled in her quilt, she inhaled their rtrfumes and then became inured to them. The rush of saliva -_rsided; her stomach growled in protest once or twice, and fell sient when she didn’t respond.

Late in the afternoon, she left the bed to empty suddenly liquid bowels on the chilly porcelain throne. She shivered and trembled, shuffling back to the bed, but took no water to ease her throat or ; eanse the bile from her mouth. When dark came, she crawled on her belly across the floor, and consumed the cold contents of the 'reakfast tray, and the lunch tray of cold lobster in avocado, and the tepid supper tray, abandoned with much clucking about sleepyheads by the Giant Dorothy. She ate with her fingers, -tuffing the food in slippery fistfuls into her mouth, swallowing it whole. No sooner did the last pasty glop of mashed potatoes f ollow the last fibrous chunk of roast beef down her gullet than she was stricken with cramps. Scuttling across the floor to the

-    throom, she lost most of the day’s meals into the bathtub, while suffering spasms of diarrhea on the john.

Grasping the basin for support while she gathered her strength to go back to bed, she glimpsed herself in the dimly lit mirror. There were sores around her mouth. Her hair had become curiously dull and colorless. She touched it gingerly. Threads of it ;arae away with her fingers. She was losing her hair. She moaned 'Oftly and began to cry. The oblivion of sleep between the sheets came much later, a careless boon from indifferent gods.

The War ended, or a truce fell. She wasn’t sure; she was sick. Her meals came on time, silently, and the intrusions of the Giant Dorothy were brief and unthreatening. Sometimes she heard the Giant humming and she felt dread, but nothing else happened. Dorothy did not speak to her. The days began to assume a new, more normal rhythm.

Leyna ate frequent, small meals and slept long hours of mostly dreamless sleep. When she felt a little stronger, she walked through the nearest rooms, never venturing as far as the elevator. She listened for it often but it never moved. In the other rooms on the third floor, she found a few books and took them with her to while away the time. The fevers and chills gradually left her. Her bowels returned to something like normal. Her hair seemed slightly more secure on her scalp. She washed it very carefully and

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one day, feeling especially strong, used the art blade to chop it off close to her scalp.

Another day there was a gift of clothes that fit her. They were ugly clothes and ill-made but a change that kept her warm and covered. It amused her that they were exactly the sort of clothes she had once dressed her Barbie dolls in. Flashy, tarty things, meant to show off a plastic figure that was far, far from her present bag of bones.

Feeling better, she was able to achieve boredom. Her restlessness must have shown in the disarray of the bed and the clutter in her room. One morning the Great Dorothy appeared, to take away the breakfast tray, and lingered, noticing the mess. Leyna trembled. So far her illness had absolved her of household duties.

But the Giant only clucked mildly and then, surprising her, said, ‘I have a treat for you, if you feel up to it.’

Leyna watched her warily, clutching the bedsheets, white-knuckled.

‘It’s a little gift from Roger.’

This made Leyna twitch visibly. Dolly noticed it with amusement. She was no doubt remembering she had paid dearly for her last treat from Roger.

‘Trot outside, dolly-mouse. Your chariot awaits. No treats for
me.
I have to clean this nasty room.’

The wall began to move in its slot. Leyna slipped from the bed and vanished into the walled warren of the house as fast as she could move. She had to take her treat, she knew. There was no hiding. But the elevator that had before given her the creeps was safety this time. Within it’s cage, going downward, she realized that for a moment she was beyond the Giant’s reach.

Once it reached the ground floor, she dared not remain in it. Now Dorothy’s cleaning activites reverberated through the house. Apparently she had not lied about that. So Leyna padded down the corridors in a pair of gold lame Barbie pajamas. The seam along one leg was shredded, and the collar, sewn with fine plastic thread that felt like suturing stitches to Leyna, irritated the back of her neck. She peeked back over her shoulder at intervals, but the Dorothy noises remained a safe, same distance away.

She left the house by a side entrance, one that in the real White House was used for discreet diplomatic visits and by the president and his family, when he had one. It meant walking around the side of the house to the drive where, presumably, ‘the chariot’ stood, but she could pass through the Rose Garden which gave at least a feeling of cover to the South Portico.

The tinkling music of the Carousel came to her before she saw it. She had heard it before, from the safety of her bedroom, and it tugged at her, calling her to ride again. She always refused the summons, convinced in her heart that another time the magic would be lost, perhaps forever. Glimpsing its circus colors, she slowed and shrank as much as she could into the cover of the shrubs. But no Giant Dorothy shadow waited to pounce on her, only a small racing car, a garishly colored projectile, sitting quietly in the drive.

Leyna looked up. The sky was the same uniform blue it had been every day. The orb of the sun was never visible yet the light was strong, warm, and diffuse. It came and went at regular intervals. There was never rain or cloud cover; the garden remained lushly green and colorful thanks to a sprinkler system that operated every day. It was all evidence that this world was artificial, and yet, because it was evidence gathered by her suspect senses, she could not believe it.

The little car attracted her. It promised power and speed. The dashboard was not what she was used to, but then she was very out of practice driving anyway. She had never really mastered standard shift and noted the stick shift on the floor nervously. There was something intimidating, sweaty, and masculine about its black leather knob and cowl. She climbed in and sat there, examining the display of dials and buttons she did not comprehend. At last, she began a systematic exploration, trying them out. Wipers swept across the low curve of the windshield; lights came on all over the dashboard. Leaning across the horned half moon of the wheel to twiddle the various knobs, she put her elbow squarely into the horn. It blatted. She sat back hastily.

Nervously, she scanned the roofline of the house. The protest of the horn might draw the Giant Dorothy. After a few tense moments, it appeared that it hadn’t.

Leyna settled back, closed her eyes, and concentrated, calming herself. She wanted, very much, to master this odd gift. Opening her eyes, she looked at the stick shift. She moved it idly through its pattern. The little car jerked once and then was still. Suddenly, she was sure that the little automobile had been parked in neutral. That was new to her. Still, she had never had anything to do with this hot a machine before, so for all she knew, they were all parked in neutral. She moved the stick into the most forward position.

Then moved it back to its original position. She would have to assume that was the parking gear.

Then, she resumed her study of the dashboard. Magically, her exploration was rewarded; the engine turned over after a couple of tentative twiddles, and after a polite cough, began to chug smoothly. It had a diesel sound to it, reminding her of a Mercedes-Benz that her husband had run while in college and now kept in storage in fond hopes of its attaining classic status.

She danced nervously on the foot peddles and with much jerking and some minor league cursing on her part, she had the little pink car rolling at a sedate pace down the drive. It was a very pleasant sensation, passing through the sweet fresh garden smells, along the gracious curving drive. Picking up speed after a time, the rush made her feel almost euphoric. She had forgotten how an automobile could free her. Behind the boasting roar of the car’s engine, she was no longer a prisoner, not of the Giant Dorothy or of madness, if they were not the same.

Passing through a bridge of shadows, she realized they had not been in that place on her first few circuits of the drive. Looking up, she saw Dorothy. Then her attention was given to regaining control of the little car. She slowed then and stopped it, waiting to be told the treat was over, or that it might continue a little longer. As she waited, it came to her how foolish it had been to stop. It might be fun to see if the Giant could catch her. But the car would run out of gas and then she would be punished. The illusion of freedom vanished as the shadow and its substance hovered over her.

‘I see you figured out how to run it. You must remember to thank Roger for being so good to you.’

Leyna giggled wearily. Her mother talking. She would write him a thank you note.

‘Isn’t this little track rather boring? Wouldn’t you like to ride somewhere else?’

Leyna listened without hearing. What did she mean?

Dorothy showed her immediately. An enormous Hand descended, and while Leyna cringed, trying to fold herself into the well of the seat, closed round the car and lifted it. Leyna sensed upward movement and peeked over the edge of the car door. Below her, the White House she lived in was shrinking as she was carried away from it. It receded and disappeared, no longer a compass point.

The journey was quick. The car and its passenger felt solidity beneath them almost immediately. The Giant Dorothy crouched beside them, the currents of her hot breath flowing over Leyna, reinforcing the nausea that was already strong under her breastbone. And as quickly as she had come, Dorothy withdrew a considerable distance. Her smell and sounds were still heavy in the air, but the mass of her blurred and became blue like a mountain on a not-quite clear day.