Baby Doll Games

by Margaret Maron

  “What about Corrie?”

  Tanya looked at me warily. “She likes Aunt Sheila and Uncle Lyle, too.”

  I backed off and, in a few minutes, Tanya volunteered, “Maybe she’s afraid Ray’s going to come back.”

  “Are you afraid?”

  “No!” she answered scornfully. “Uncle Lyle would knock him down with his big pipe wrench.”

  As we put the toys back on the shelf, I found myself in agreement with Martha’s lay assessment: Tanya will be all right. She might regret her mother s violent death, but she has a deep-seated, almost primal, need for the routine and order Darlene had never provided. She is also pragmatic enough to know that one minus one equals zero, and this pragmatism has allowed her to embrace without guilt the satisfying regimen that the Berkowitzes offered once her mother was gone.

  Tanya did seem worried about Corrie, but if I could solve that problem, I felt she could integrate the whole experience into her subconscious with no lasting I’ll effects.

  “Good luck with your arithmetic,” I smiled as I returned her to Mrs. Berkowitz, who waited outside.

  Corrie did not resist when I took her hand and led her across the vestibule to my office, but I could not get her to respond that first day.

  She wouldn’t choose anything from my shelves and if I gave her a doll or toy animal, she merely held it, scarcely looking at it, until I took it away and gave her another. I tried pictures, balloons, we even sat on the floor and rolled a yellow ball back and forth; but it took me five sessions before she would smile or speak beyond the simplest yes/no to my questions.

  We scheduled three sessions a week.

  While Tanya and Mrs. Berkowitz sat in the waiting room and plowed methodically-and contentedly-through a third-grade math workbook, Corrie and I tried to push through the gray cotton wool that seemed to muffle all her emotional nerve endings.

  At least I tried. Corrie gave no outward signs, but experience (and all the textbooks) said that something had to be happening underneath. It was only a matter of time.

  By Labor Day, Tanya could rattle off the multiplication tables up to eight times ten, and Corrie trusted me enough to take a teddy bear off the shelf of her own volition, an authentic bit of progress.

  By mid-October, Mrs. Berkowitz reported that Tanya had been moved into the top section of her fourth-grade class and Corrie finally told me the names of the family of dolls she had constructed.

  “This is the mommy,” she said, setting a wasp-waisted Barbie doll on the hassock.

  (Martha H. had described Darlene Makaroff as a pretty woman with light brown hair.) “This is the big sister,” said Corrie, but I had already guessed that Tanya was symbolized by the large brownhaired doll with a miniature schoolbag on its shoulder.

  “And this is the little sister.”

  Instead of a doll, “little sister” was the small teddy bear Corrie had first touched back in August, a honey- brown creature with black button eyes and a red satin bow around its neck.

  “Big sister” and “little sister” were soon joined by the “aunt," a rag doll whose embroidered features do somewhat distantly suggest Sheila Berkowitz’s.

  Corrie is a good mimic and when the various dolls "spoke” to each other, I could soon tell without looking which person was being acted out-.

  “Who wants an ice-cream cone?” Aunt Rag Doll would ask.

  “Mel” cried the schoolgirl doll.

  “Me, too,” piped the little bear voice.

  “Then let’s pick up our toys and come out to the kitchen,” said Aunt Rag Doll.

  [NB-I've been encouraged from the beginning by “little sister«” willingness to follow the “aunt’s” instructions. This indicates to me that, whatever the problem, Sheila B. herself does not set up negative vibrations in Corrie’s subconscious & this bodes well for the future.] Once Corrie became comfortable with me, I began some gentle probing. “What does the mommy say?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” answered the child. “She doesn’t feel good.”

  I didn’t push and a few minutes later, I heard "little sister” say, “I’m thirsty, Mommy.”

  "That’s my ginger ale! Leave it alone,” said the angry high-pitched voice that signified Darlene.

  "Mommy, I have to go to school,” said the schoolgirl doll. “I have to say my timeses to the teacher.”

  "No, you don’t. I’m sick this morning. Fix you and Corrie some cereal and then you can watch cartoons, okay?”

  The mommy/Barbie doll dominated the next few sessions and I was saddened to hear the maudlin endearments when the doll was drunk and the casual neglect when it was sober. There’s been a constant stream of "don’t bother me,” or “you lads keep it down, I’ve got a headache.” Several times I heard, “Over my dead body. She’s not your real aunt” or “I don’t care if she did say you could come visit. You’re my honeybunches, not hers.” Last week I asked Martha H. if Darlene used the phrase “over my dead body” very often or if it were one of Corrie’s embellishments and she gave a tired smile. “Darlene said it all the time. Ironic, isn’t it?”

  “It could be significant,” I told her. “If Corrie wanted to live with the Berkowitzes, she might have taken Darlene literally.”

  “Wishing for Darlene’s dead body?”

  “Not consciously,” I speculated. “But when it happened, she got her wish, so now she may feel she caused Darlene’s death.”

  [I’m thrilled with how perfectly my baby doll games are working. Everything’s meshing like a textbook case. Do hope I can interest Anne Harald in this case. It would be a pity not to show the public one of Social Services’ happy endings. Taxpayers do get so tired of hearing what’s wrong with the city. I know I do.]

  Chapter 16

  November was beginning messily and meteorological reports were already making pessimistic noises about early snow flurries, possibly by the end of the week.

  From Sigrid’s office, Chinatown was only a brisk walk away through narrow rain-lashed streets^ Despite its distance from Wall Street and the difficulty of finding a cab in the near-freezing rain, her mother’s favorite dim sum restaurant was jammed with its usual noon-hour crush of gray suits from the financial district. Even so, Oriental faces outnumbered Occidental and testified to the authentic excellence of the restaurant's reasonably priced food. As tall as most of the men crowding past her, Sigrid paused in the entry to shake water from her beige rain hat and to scan the steamy interior, where the smell of damp wool blended with the comforting aroma of fresh noodles, hot sesame oil, and a dozen different Chinese herbs and vegetables. Eventually, she saw her mother waving from a far corner.

  Anne Harald had arrived early enough to secure two places at the end of a long table and she had already snagged three dishes from the loaded trays carried from the kitchen in endless relays by deft Chinese waitresses.

  “Shrimp toast, fried wontons, and steamed noodles,” Anne greeted her happily, gesturing at the dishes with her chopsticks. "I know you like spring rolls, but they haven t come by yet.”

  Sigrid unbuttoned her raincoat, draped it on the back of her chair, and straightened the cuffs of her white shirt. “You also know I like a fork.”

  “Now don't be provincial, honey. You're never going to get any good if you don’t keep practicing.” Sighing, Sigrid obediently picked up her chopsticks and tried to make her long slender fingers imitate her mother's efficient movements. Anchoring the bottom stick was no problem, but to manipulate the upper one into picking up anything smaller than a whole shrimp was a clumsy effort at best. It didn’t help that a Chinese tot seated diagonally across from her at their table was effortlessly maneuvering delicate wisps of noodles to his mouth in a dazzling display of chopstick virtuosity. Between mouthfuls, his black eyes seemed to appraise her own performance.

  Sigrid resolutely ignored him, managed a bite of crispy shrimp toast, and bent her dark head toward Anne, the better to hear her mother's words above the noontime din.

  Only in the color
of their hair and eyes did the two resemble each other. As much as she loved her mother, Sigrid had always felt gawky standing next to her. By the age of thirteen she was well on her way to her full five-foot ten-inch height, a good six inches taller than Anne; and she tried not to mind when her mother’s well-meaning southern relatives repeatedly assured her that breeding meant more than beauty, that all the Lattimores possessed charm and Sigrid would too if she would only relax and let it flow.

  Sigrid considered herself an early realist. At thirteen, her wide gray eyes had observed what value the world placed on physical beauty and while she didn’t think her features were particularly repulsive, she knew she couldn’t compare with any of her female cousins south or north. Her neck was, too long, her mouth was too wide, her forehead too high, and her skinny frame, all arms and legs, refused to curve in any of the proper places. Buying clothes became such an ordeal that Sigrid was left with a lifelong hatred of department store mirrors.

  Nor did her hair please her any better. It may have been the same color as Anne’s but it had always been straight and so silky-fine that, until her recent and absolutely irrational fit of madness, she had pulled it straight back from her face in an easy-to-manage knot at the nape of her neck, a sharp contrast to Anne Harald, who wore hers in an explosion of short curls which had only begun to show traces of silver in the last year or two.

  Now in her early fifties, Anne’s slender body was still shapely beneath her burgundy sweater, and the waist of her gray corduroy skirt was only two inches larger than the skirt she’d worn when she eloped with Leif Harald. A light film of makeup smoothed away all trace of wrinkles except for the fine laugh lines around her hazel-gray eyes, and thirty-odd years in the North hadn’t erased all the drawl from her voice either.

  44-and everybody’s been real sweet about talking to me,” she said, completing her description of the city officials she’d spoken to that morning about the New York Today series she planned to do on how the city handled its social problems.

  “Well, they’d be fools to give the runaround to a photojournalist of your standing, wouldn’t they?” Sigrid asked reasonably; then said, “Yes, please,” as a passing waitress offered a dish of pearl balls.

  “And here I thought it was all because of my southern charm,” Anne smiled.

  She was probably only half-joking, thought Sigrid. “There’s nothing wrong with being good at what you do, Mother.”

  “I know. It's just that-”

  “‘A business lady shouldn’t be all business?” she asked, rudely mimicking one of Grandmother Lattimore’s favorite dicta.

  “Mama didn’t expect any of her daughters to have to earn a living. ” said Anne, in defense of her own mother’s prefeminist teachings. “And speaking of your grandmother, what are you getting her for Christmas?”

  “Oh Lord! We’ve just passed Halloween. I haven’t even begun to think of Christmas. What does she need, do you think? What would she like?”

  “I know what she’d like.” Anne’s lips twitched with a mischievous smile. “Let me tell her you’re having an affair.”

  “Mother!”

  “Well, you know how she worries about your love life. Next to news of a marriage proposal, it would be the best present you could give her.”

  “Except that it wouldn’t be true,” Sigrid said stiffly. “But I thought sure that you and Oscar-I mean, you cut your hair, started wearing makeup-”

  Anne Lattimore Harald had been caught with a foot in two worlds. Needled on the one hand by a traditionalist mother who felt that no woman could be fulfilled without first acquiring husband and children, and concerned on the other hand that her analytically minded daughter was insufficiently connected to the passions of the heart, Anne had found herself with mixed emotions when Oscar Nauman suddenly appeared in Sigrid’s life.

  It had never occurred to her that Sigrid’s first real love affair might be with a man even older than she herself. Nauman’s reputation as one of America’s leading artists helped, of course, but what actually made her keep any reservations to herself was the humanizing effect he’d had on Sigrid. In the last two months, she’d felt closer to her daughter than at any time since childhood, and sensing Sigrid’s new vulnerability, she now leaned forward solicitously. “You haven’t quarreled with him, have you, honey?”

  “No quarrel. It’s just that-oh, I don’t know. The art department at Vanderlyn’s in the middle of reaccreditation, and if he’s not flying up to Toronto for an exhibit of his work, then he’s off to California to judge something or other or pipes are leaking in Connecticut. It’s not important. I don’t have time now anyhow. I've got my own hands full with Tillie gone.”

  “How’s he doing?” asked Anne, momentarily diverted. She had not approved when Sigrid decided to follow in Leif Harald’s footsteps and seldom inquired about Sigrid’s work, but she knew about Detective Tildon’s close call when a bomb exploded beside him in October.

  “He hopes to be home by Thanksgiving, but they don’t expect him back to work before the first of the year.” Sigrid absently rubbed her left arm, souvenir of her own most recent brush with death, and her voice was unemotional, but Anne knew her daughter. “You miss him, don’t you?”

  “He’s a good partner." Sigrid turned uncomfortably from Anne’s penetrating gaze. “Here come the pork- stuffed peppers. You want some?”

  “We’ll split a portion,” Anne said equably, and to Sigrid’s relief, she let the conversation move on to family gossip and the weekend she’d just spent out in Port Jefferson with her niece by marriage, Sigrid’s cousin Hilda. “She wanted me to take some new pictures for their Christmas card. The baby’s getting awfully cute. They think he’ll be walking by Christmas.”

  They spoke of Thanksgiving plans, a movie they’d both seen, and eventually their talk wound around to Anne’s New York Today series. “You’ll never guess who called me about it last night: one of your old friends from St. Margaret’s.”

  “I know. She came by my office yesterday. But Christa Ferrell wasn’t exactly a friend, Mother. We roomed on the same hall one semester, that’s all.”

  “Oh? From the way she talked, I thought you two were closer than that. She sounded real sweet.”

  Sigrid murmured noncommittally and with her chopsticks poked at the savory pepper before her. A knife and fork would make the meal so much easier, she thought longingly. Across the table, that small Chinese boy was smugly polishing off another dim sum dish with flamboyant dexterity.

  There was nothing quite so annoying as a smart-alecky child who knew he possessed a skill you lacked, “Are you going to use Christa Ferrell in your article?” she asked as she pondered the mechanics needed to separate a bite-sized morsel from her whole stuffed pepper “I might. She made a good point about how easy it is to find adoptive parents for infants but not for older children. And these two-their age, the psychological trauma of seeing their mother murdered-it should make dramatic copy. She’s going to let me sit in on the last couple of sessions with the younger one.”

  “Won’t that interfere with her treatment?”

  “Nope,” said Anne, expertly quartering her fried pepper “She says there’s a one-way window between her office and a cubicle next door so that I ran watch without the child knowing I’m there. She uses something called baby doll therapy. Ever seen it?”

  Sigrid shook her head. “I’ve heard about it, though. Lawyers use a similar procedure when molested children have to testify in court. It’s easier for the children to describe what’s happened to them if they can point to a doll's body and talk about it instead of their own.”

  “It sounds fascinating,” said Anne. “And very visual.” Sigrid refilled their teacups and left the lid of the pot tipped back. An attentive waitress immediately hurried over with a fresh pot.

  “Serendipitous that you investigated the mother’s death,” said Anne.

  “Actually, I didn’t.” Again, Sigrid explained how she’d merely put the machinery in motion.r />
  “Then you haven't seen the children?”

  “No, but don’t worry. If Christa Ferrell says they're photogenic, I’m sure they will be.”

  “Is she?”

  “Very,” Sigrid said dryly.

  Anne gave her an appraising look, a look Sigrid had learned to dread over a lifetime of failures to live up to her mother’s image. “I thought you promised me last year that you were going to give that suit to the Salvation Army.”

  “I like this suit,” Sigrid said, feeling thirteen again as she hunched into the shapeless black wool jacket. “It has proper pockets, it’s warm-”

  “It looks like something you’ve slept in,” Anne interjected.

  “-and it’s loose enough to hide my gun.”

  Anne held up her hands in surrender. “It’s just that Macy’s is having a wonderful sale and I saw a blue tweed jacket that would do terrific things for your eyes. It would go with everything and-”

  “Not now, Mother, okay? I’ve really got to get moving.” She signaled for their bill. “We have a temporary replacement for Tillie and-”

  “Someone unmarried?” Anne asked sweetly.

  Sigrid laughed in spite of herself. “Hardly. Cluett’s an old-timer from one of the Brooklyn precincts, finishing out his forty years. I gather there’s a wife and grandchildren even.”

  “Cluett?” Anne had suddenly gone very still. “Not Mickey Cluett?”

  “Mick, yes. Do you know him?”

  “Not for a million years,” Anne said slowly. She fumbled in her shoulder bag for a filigreed gold compact and renewed her lipstick. “He and your father rode patrol together a few months when Leif first joined the force.”

  By then, their waitress had totaled up the number of empty dishes between them and Sigrid reached for the bill.

  “No, I’ll get the check if you’ll get a new suit,” said Anne, but for once Sigrid recognized her mother’s tactics.

  “You always change the subject when Dad comes up,” she said. “I’ve just realized that. Why, Mother?”