have another call coming in. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Night, dear.”
“Hi, this is Courtney,” a young voice said, childlike, waiflike.
“Courtney?” Wrong number, Gretchen thought. “You must have…”
“No, no, this is the right number. I’m sure of it. This is Courtney.”
Dim bulb, Gretchen chided herself. How many Courtneys do you know? None? Think again. You’ve heard of one, Steve’s Courtney, the intern.
“Ah,” Gretchen said. “Courtney.”
“Yes, well, how are you Ms. Birch?”
Ms. Birch? Immediately establishing an age barrier, manipulative, catty. Gretchen had a bad feeling, a Nina moment.
“Gretchen. Please call me Gretchen, and is something wrong?”
“No, nothing’s wrong.”
“Is Steve all right?”
“Oh, he’s fine.”
Courtney’s voice was vaguely familiar. More than vaguely. It matched the voice of the anonymous caller who had first informed her of Steve’s cheating ways.
Silence on both ends. Gretchen waited her out, palms damp, feeling disoriented, a sense of foreboding causing her heart to beat a little too fast.
“Steve told me that you know about our thing,” Courtney said.
Our thing? Such small, innocuous words. A certain lack of literary excellence. Like the words nice or good. But what a punch they pack when used in this context.
Several times in the last several years she’d suspected Steve of being unfaithful. Even before the indisputable proof, she used to have to convince herself that it was her imagination, an uncontrollable jealousy from childhood that caused her to be suspicious over every little occurrence. A flaw in her character, not his. Every time his eyes stayed with a passing woman longer than Gretchen thought they should. Every time his hand brushed gently across another woman’s hand. Accidental or intentional?
Steve was a hugger, she’d rationalize. He enjoyed women. Gregarious. Loquacious after a drink or two. And his career mandated proximity to females. Divorce law. Women constantly in and out of his office, seeking solace in his legal strength, projecting hope on their attorney after betrayal, failed love.
Natural, Steve said, to have admirers. After all, his job is to take care of them, like a big brother or uncle or family friend.
Gretchen closed her eyes.
Courtney plowed forward. “Steve has no clue that I’m calling. It was my idea. I wanted you to know that we’re still together, in spite of what Steve tells you.”
Of course, Steve wouldn’t approve of honesty; he’d already become proficient at practicing deceit as well as law.
“I wanted you to know because I can’t stand lying to you.”
Touching, isn’t it? Courtney taking the high road.
“And I want you gone,” Courtney said, steering for the low road. “He’s mine now.”
Gretchen hung up the phone without another word. She wanted to slam the phone, break it, wrench its traitorous cord from the phone jack and wrap it tightly around Steve’s cheating neck.
Instead she picked up a broken doll from an overflowing bin heaped with dolls and steadied her shaking hands.
Standing at the padded workbench, she cut a length of elastic in the proper weight and with clamps and hooks spread out before her, she went to work, looping the elastic through a hook in the arm socket, carefully drawing it through and attaching it to the body. Rifling in a parts bin to find a replacement for a missing leg. Finishing one doll and starting another.
What would her life have been like if she had joined her mother’s business? Made dolls her life’s work? There was something appealing about working at home, dropping out of the nine-to-five rat race. Working in pajamas. Forgetting about snarled rush-hour traffic, appropriate work apparel, the proper business demeanor, fighting for raises, dodging a coworker’s efforts to sabotage your chances for promotion.
Gretchen gave a bath to a soft vinyl doll, found underpants, a hat, shoes. The right clothes for the right doll. Worked a bow into her hair.
What would life have been like?
The list of exquisite and valuable dolls was seared into Caroline’s memory bank, her human cerebral memory bank, not that of the artificial random access memory lying on the cheap pine dresser. Close to two hundred dolls, each rare and unique, a haphazard, eclectic collection.
A rare George II wooden doll with painted, gessoed face in silk polonaise gown. Two French shoulder papier- mache dolls with bamboo teeth. A German waxed composition lady with inset blue glass eyes. Parians, chinas, bisques representing the finest from France and Germany. A group of Italian Lenci cloth dolls. A finite list with infinite worth.
Now a collector’s dream turned into a freakish nightmare.
Excessive greed had dimmed the glow, dampened the glory of the fine collection.
Caroline could recite all the particulars of the inventory, could describe every photograph in detail, although her hope of recovering any of the collection diminished with every passing hour.
Her lips curled in momentary satisfaction.
At least she had the prize.
The French fashion doll.
19
A doll’s book value is an arbitrary guide to its actual worth. Most dolls sell for much less than their book price, and many dealers are happy to receive even half of the stated value. Some dolls, however, are so rare, so exquisite, so one-of-a-kind, that they command prices far beyond any written value. For these dolls, collectors with unlimited funds might offer exorbitant prices. Bidding wars are not uncommon.
– From World of Dolls by Caroline Birch
Gretchen turned over onto her back and rearranged the beach towel to cover her torso without opening her eyes. Her arms dangled over the sides of the lounge chair and brushed against the tile. The summer storm had passed, and the sun beat down on her face, searing and hot. She didn’t care.
A door banged in the front of the house, and the patio doors slid open. She heard Nimrod’s tiny nails clicking on the Mexican tile surrounding the pool and a small rush of air as he ran by. Another rush of air. Tutu. Gretchen refused to open her eyes.
“What the…!” Nina’s voice. “It’s a hundred and sixteen degrees outside. How long have you been lying here?”
Gretchen didn’t respond.
She poked Gretchen’s arm through the towel. “I’ve been calling you all morning. Your face is as red as a Roma tomato. Can you open your eyes, or are they burned shut?”
Gretchen pried one eye open and squinted at her aunt. “Go away and let me die.”
Nina yanked the towel away, ran around to the back of the chair, and pushed Gretchen up by her shoulders. “Come on. Into the shade with you. At least you had the sense to cover the rest of your body with a towel. Otherwise we’d be on the way to the hospital again.”
Gretchen slowly rose to her feet and let Nina lead her under an expansive table umbrella. She sagged into a
