Mad Hatters and March Hares

by Ellen Datlow

  There’s work to be done, it never stops; I hug her, flooded with a vision of Kumiko in her late twenties, married, telling a depressed patient in a sea of tears that there are endless reasons to go on. Her office has bronze statues of naked bodies. On the wall is a picture colored by the son I figure she’ll have, a smiling family with a cat, all bigger than their house.

  Alex forgets the chutney requested by two grand dames at Table Three for their walnut bread. They declare, in ringing tones, that they did not ask for the jasmine teabags; they want the expensive Tienchi Flower, twelve dollars a cup.

  Jason approaches them and says, “Shall I fix that?”

  “Someone should!” trumpets one with so much plastic surgery that her nostrils are holes, her head a skull. She seems ready to start throwing the dishes.

  “Where is the manager?” asks her friend, wearing an honest-to-God turban with a jewel on it, like the kind favored by fraud magicians who saw people in half.

  Am I invisible? Alex stands helpless, a pleading expression trained on Jason for rescue. Much of my tearoom is staring.

  “Shall I get their tea?” whispers Kumiko. “Or just kick their asses?”

  She’s brilliant at getting me to smile.

  Because she knows what to do without being constantly told, Kumiko sidles into the kitchen, unlocking the cupboard where I store the expensive stuff. I have some Yellow Gold Bud—it sounds like weed—painted edible gold. $120 an ounce.

  Turban Lady launches into a tirade about the city falling apart; I gesture at Alex and Jason to attend to the rest of the room, to distract it, as I force myself to coo at the women that we’ll put everything right. Did they know Tienchi Flowers—a refined choice!—relieve pain and cure rashes?

  They assault me with a barrage of nonsense: Is the water in my Wonderland Tea Shop drawn from the tap, or do I have a proper reverse-osmosis system? Did I bribe some inspector to grant me that “A” grade? Why do so many menu selections start with “M”—mountain mint, marvelous mango, mascarpone, macaroni, moon cakes, and much about melons? Molasses. They suggest I need a haircut. I venture they needn’t be rude. Why is the Duchess on my mural so fatheaded? Why can’t I say what I mean? Why is the clock on the wall five minutes fast? Are the macarons—another “M”—stale? Why are crumbs on their butter knives? Why is my expression blank; why am I trembling?

  “Excellent, ladies, here’s your tea,” I murmur as Kumiko brings out a fragrant batch in the teapot painted with Dutch children skating on a pond. I want to gorge on a stack of pressed cheese sandwiches until my body threatens to resign.

  After the imperial pair finishes and offers parting complaints and leaves nary a tip for Alex or Kumiko, I notice a mother and daughter tucked in the corner. The girl is black-haired like my Alicia, five or six; I wander closer to see that yes, her eyes are Alicia’s green. She smiles, a tooth missing.

  Alex interrupts my reverie with a rare apology; sorry he got that order topsy-turvy. His apron is off; he never stays a second past his shift. His lashes brush the lenses of his hip glasses.

  I assure him it’s not the end of the world, not by a long shot.

  He’s not accustomed to admitting a failing, to feeling bad. He’s not used to making a slight mistake that someone pounds into the dirt with a sledgehammer.

  Kumiko and Jason commandeer the room as I approach the corner table. The mother lights up and whispers at me companionably, conspiratorially, “Gosh, those ladies were something else. How do you stand it?”

  “There are worse things,” I say. The child is daintily eating the mozzarella—M!—flatbread, and her teacup, the artful scarlet-rose one, holds the Sweet Dreams and Citrus, which shivers when she brings it to her lips.

  What else may I do for them; are they having a good time; what else may I bring?

  The mother is around my age, nearing forty, though she is much more in the forty-is-the-new-twenty category, olive-skinned, mahogany hair with yellow highlights. Her bracelets jangle out music. The girl has a rhinestone barrette shaped like a spider, and she tells me proudly that her name is Charlotte.

  “Did you spin any webs for Wilbur?” I ask; my blood flows as if gates have lifted in my veins. The child beams at me. “Yes!”

  We chat about the places where Charlotte’s Web made us cry, and the mother adds that she even gets teary-eyed in public when she recalls certain parts.

  I almost say my little girl loves books, too. I wrote and taught poetry, once.

  “I’m Betty,” says the mother, “but my friends call me Bird.”

  The creature my child saved, brought back to life. Yellow feathers now yellow streaks in hair. Betty praises the butter’s sweetness, and the apricot tarts, today’s special. It’s lovely to be here. Her clothing is pressed, high couture. Piercing her ears are diamonds.

  “Look at us, enjoying high tea,” she says to Charlotte. Because it’s around twelve o’clock.

  I explain that high tea is so-called because the tables are high. People at a social gathering wander and graze on food and drink set up for easy access. “High” doesn’t signal the hour. Americans think of high noon. Gunslingers! Time to settle scores.

  “That’s amazing!” Betty proclaims. Her daughter nods. They’ve learned something, together. They probably dance at night, Mother making Baby giggle by offering to toss her into the stars. I’m dying to ask what Betty “does,” other than care for this smart, pretty, alert child. My skills in chatting with customers need sharpening.

  Charlotte swings her legs and gazes with a devotion at her mother so profound that I glance away, because it’s not meant for me. Well-trained, a city girl, she thanks me for the tea, the cup, the mozzarella and desserts. Kumiko clears tables; Jason shines the coffee urn. My staff knows nothing about Alicia, nothing of my history. Charlotte near-shouts, “Could we have my birthday here, Momma? May I, please?” Her fingernails shine with dots of crimson polish still wet-looking.

  Betty wholeheartedly agrees: Certainly! Charlotte’s sixth birthday will be here next week, at the Wonderland Tea Shop! We live only two blocks away! Sorry she must hasten now, she tells me, but she has a deadline. Her aspect clarifies as familiar, from the papers and from my long-ago, long-slumbering days as a poet. It’s Betty Lezardo, the novelist whose successes have been capped recently with a National Book Award.

  A soaring career and the most darling child alive; a woman my age accomplished and kind.

  When I inquire if she’s Betty Lezardo, she shyly nods and asks for my name.

  Dorrie. Doreen Dias.

  A hand extended to press against mine. Betty/Bird says, “I have a question about your murals.” She points—artist’s eye—toward the Hatter and March Hare, the crazy duo at their table, in leg irons. That, she avers, is odd enough. “But where is the Dormouse?”

  Almost no one catches that omission. That absence.

  “The Hatter and Hare pinched the Dormouse several times, in the original story,” I say. “Remember? The Dormouse had done nothing to warrant that. They used it as a cushion. They poured hot tea on its nose, to torment it. I don’t want to stick it anywhere near those two.”

  Betty finishes her tea. Basic green, superior for weight-watching and longevity.

  For fear of upsetting the child, I omit mentioning the other detail about the Dormouse that gets glossed over: When Alice left the table, the two madmen were stuffing the poor tiny thing headfirst into the teapot. Another reason I had the muralist clap the madmen in leg irons. Were they trying to kill it? Or just escalate the torture? The Dormouse appears at Alice’s trial in the famous book … so it survived, unless its appearance is obeying the rubric of fantasy and it’s come back from the dead. But the madmen, at the very least, must have watched it struggle for air.

  Betty and Charlotte’s tea and edibles are on the house, in thanks for wanting the birthday under my roof. My face is an unreadable mask over agony when Charlotte throws her arms around my middle to say goodbye and rests her head where I can hold it, t
hat soft dark hair.

  No reason to add that the two Princeton dropouts who drowned my child for kicks stuffed her headfirst into a drainpipe near the Hudson. She was not raped. The defense attorney cited this as cause for leniency. I hold my breath sometimes, to own the exact feeling she suffered. But I can’t begin to fathom it. I’m not at the mercy of someone else.

  The customers disappear, a breather before the late afternoon tide, and then nothing; we close at six; then prep for tomorrow and me under an afghan as I watch an umpteenth rerun of Mad Men, starving myself, alert to street noises. I should take my pistol upstairs, but I hate having it near Alicia’s Mr. Bun, Mabel, and Jackie. Does Charlotte have a spider doll, a pig? Is Betty’s book award in a frame?

  The water runs hard in the kitchen; Kumiko is scrubbing the grill pan. Baking soda and boiling water clean the pots; no detergent to interfere with the delicate balance of tea. Jason is belting out lines from Cats because he’s in the chorus; Kumiko groans and orders him to stop. She meets my eyes with sadness that she’ll soon be gone. I let myself feel touched she’ll miss me.

  * * *

  Some drunken fool is yelling as time-wasters spill out of a bar. Two in the morning. Scratchy blanket, gut like a drum. I awaken from my recurring dream of carrying a sleeping Alicia, her head on my shoulder. Since her death, I imagine her everywhere, and therefore everything is Alicia: flour, lightning rod in the distance, Mrs. Marcy’s lapdog drowsing as she drinks chrysanthemum tea. Alicia is the blue of the caterpillar on my wall.

  A prayer for her phantom to visit; a prayer I won’t keel over of fright. A rattling of my shop’s door! I should sleep with the gun near, though I barely know how to fire it.

  The sound goes away. Probably they’d only invade my refrigerator. Zucchini frittatas tomorrow; hibiscus herbal tea on special.

  In the week of planning Charlotte Lezardo’s party, I get to know her and her mother better; they stop by for tea daily. Charlotte favors a brooch with a fake-emerald lizard. Momma allows her a hint of rouge, “just for fun.” Betty wrings her hands about writer’s block, and I say, Oh, that must be awful. Terrible.

  Betty has ordered new living room furniture. I picture their high-ceilinged home, with bookcases and a kitchen in candy shades. The fireplace has tiles from her love affair with Art Deco. Tempera-painted pictures by Charlotte. Of jellyfish and friends, Mom and Dad, the aurora borealis she discovered on a nature show, leaving her stunned.

  Betty/Bird splurged on a Carolina Herrera dress to attend an upcoming literary event and got a matching floral number for her child. Her husband, Vincent, is a corporate lawyer on business in Chicago and promises to be back in time.

  “Beautiful Momma!” cries Charlotte.

  “What do you think, Dorrie?” Betty says, showing me a picture on her phone of her modeling the dress. She gleams with pleasure. Is she ever scared or afflicted or desperate?

  “Not bad,” I say.

  Yesterday my landlord increased my rent. I tuck Charlotte’s hair behind her ears as she sips from the cup with a winking man in the moon. Kumiko makes her celebrated corn fritters, her last days drawing near.

  * * *

  A glorious truth about tea is that it’s like that quote from Heraclitus, about not being able to step into the same river twice. No sip from a pot is like a preceding mouthful. The steeping deepens; the color mellows. A second pot aiming to recapture the perfection of an earlier one is doomed. It’s itself, with its own intensifications.

  We shut the restaurant for Charlotte Lezardo’s sixth birthday. I am blurry with insomnia, puffy from succumbing to such lunatic, midnight cravings that I wolfed profiteroles drowning in chocolate sauce, a shameful sight, chin dripping, fingers smeared. In addition to my rent going up, I’ve received notice of a tax increase.

  About a dozen girls and six of the mothers—and one father—show up at four o’clock. Jason finishes tying balloons to the chairs. We’ve shoved a few tables together. Alex has the day off. Kumiko is cutting crusts off the tomato-and-basil sandwiches. Charlotte is a vegetarian because she does not want to harm animals. My Alicia was the same. I’ll never forget the evening she wept enough to smash me to pieces when she looked at a pork chop and realized it was from a piggy.

  “This is fantastic!” declares Betty/Bird, gripping Charlotte’s hand and surveying the streamers twisting from the ceiling’s light fixtures to the sconces.

  “Mrs. Dias!” the birthday girl cries, flinging herself into my grasp. Grateful. She’s in a sparkly peach-tinted belted dress, and Betty/Bird wears a chic white shift. Does she never spill? She moans about the price of the blow-out she treated herself to. We exchange girlish asides about how women lie to husbands about the cost of salons. I haven’t much focused on my good years flying by, without a real romance since my divorce. (One or two misfiring relationships, sex tales from the crypt, don’t count.)

  Another mother exclaims how terrific it is to discover this darling spot hiding in the Village. Everyone piles into seats, Charlotte in the place of honor. There’s mint and orange tea, and Charlotte’s Birthday Mix, rose and lemon. The grown-ups down mimosas as if they’re on fire inside. Kumiko, Jason, and I cart out teapots, desserts, and finger food.

  Jason offers to read tea leaves. There’s squealing. Gifts stacked high are wrapped in neon papers with cascading, curled ribbons. I keep a tiara on hand for these events, and I crown Charlotte. She rewards me with her happiness.

  Jason, reading her leaves, announces, “Well! This is incredible!”

  “Tell me!” begs Charlotte.

  “Mmm,” muses Jason. “What’ll you pay me?”

  The birthday girl giggles. “Please?”

  A dramatic pause. “Miss Charlotte. I believe I see—” and he scrutinizes the cup. “I hate to disappoint you. But since you’re already adorable, you’re stuck with growing up adorable. Since you’re already smarter than I am, you’ll get even smarter. Hmm … it’s murky. I’m trying to read what you’ll do with your life…”

  “I’m going to be a writer like Momma,” Charlotte offers, voice hushed.

  “Don’t tell her,” he replies in a stage whisper, “but you’re going to have so many fans, they’ll mob you. Your picture’s going to be everywhere! How does it feel, to be a star?”

  Applause. Betty’s the perfect vision of the proud mother. Charlotte reaches up to award him a kiss. She’s not timid with strangers. Her mother should warn her about how that’s good in one way but bad in another.

  Jason moves on to a woman waggling her cup (violet sprigs) at him. The dipped strawberries and cucumber sandwiches vanish. Betty calls for champagne! Out come the flutes, and the red velvet cake with vanilla frosting and piping of a web cascading off “Charlotte.” Happy sixth birthday, love. The gifts are abundant, T-shirts and a lacey dress that elicits sighs, and from me, Through the Looking-Glass. She contemplates the book in a hush, solemnly rises, embraces me again, and says, “Best present ever.” Betty converses with a friend, slapping the table with glee over a story I can’t hear.

  Charlotte continues, her face upturned toward me, “One day, I’m going to paint you a picture, Mrs. Dias.”

  I tell her I can’t wait.

  And I don’t know what comes over me, my sorrow at peak agony; maybe my unrest is from cramming a surfeit of sickly-sweet junk down my gullet alone in the chilly hours after days of hunger. It might arise from something as simple as Kumiko and Jason having no clue about Alicia; what could they possible offer, were I to break down and inform them? They clearly haven’t Googled me. Maybe I’ll flat-out die if I mount those stairs to my bide-a-wee lodgings tonight where, under a waning moon with my memories, I’ll tolerate another night of intoxicated dolts in shouting-distance putting their twelve-dollar drinks on their credit cards because, God knows, the hour of reckoning will never come. Maybe I’ve always been murderous about wanting to kill those guffawing bastards who took my Alicia. Or maybe I’m welling up with nothing, and everything, a formulating of an admis
sion to the police: I thought my girl was gone, but she’s come back to say hello, to tell me, using the tea party I prepared for a birthday numerically matching the last one she knew on earth, that she would have been sensible and strong, lovely and thriving, unafraid of the arts and other people, maybe, just maybe, like the mother I lost my chance to have been. She’s come to my rescue. Or, rather, Charlotte has lightly muscled her into view.

  A trance envelops me; a mist descends. The party’s streamers sway. Kumiko gathers the ripped paper and puts the gifts in our Wonderland tote bags. She says softly, “Bellevue wants me to start tomorrow, Mrs. Dias. A few days early. What should I tell them?”

  I smile and hand her an envelope with the bonus I’ve been saving, along with a set of blank books with ornate covers. She has mentioned wanting to take notes about patients by hand. Her head is bowed. Mine, too.

  The first guests file out, profuse in their thanks, and Jason is rushing because he has an audition … I tell him I’ll clean up. Go on.

  Kumiko cries at the door. I hug her and say, “There, there. Going now isn’t much different from leaving in a couple of days, right?” The children, as they begin to leave, want to know what’s wrong, and I say nothing. Nothing; my friend is moving on. I watch her disappear, and the room clears, except for the guests of honor.

  Betty is lingering over more champagne. As if it’s finger-painting, frosting mars the table, floor, and chairs. Betty glances up as if she just noticed she’s in my place. Empty now, except for her and Charlotte and me.

  I’m behind the counter. While Charlotte heads to the ladies’ room, Betty comes over, weaving slightly, to pay the bill. “That was memorable,” she says. “So glad we found you.” She adds that she’s not sure when they’ll be back, but hopes it’s soon.

  What possesses me? I’m calm. I take her money. The gratuity is twenty percent on the nose. I unlock the drawer that holds my silver pistol and take it out and put it on the counter, the business end pointing in her direction. Her eyes turn the size of saucers.