by Gene Wolfe
He snuffled and was ashamed, amused, and heartbroken all at once; without his knowledge or consent, his eyes had filled with tears. He pulled out his handkerchief, blew his nose, and wiped his eyes. But a tear dotted the green smock, another fell upon the graceful little legs, and a third plashed full in the doll’s piquant face.
And the doll moved like a living girl in his hand.
The Mad Tea Party
He nearly dropped it.
“Hello.” The doll sat up, or at least, sat up as well as it could, its hips resting in the palm of his left hand. “Hi, I’m Tina.” The wide hazel eyes blinked slowly, then focused on his face.
One final tear fell, wetting Tina’s hair.
“I belong to you,” Tina said. “I’m your doll, and I can talk.” Her voice was almost too high for him to hear, as high as the chirp of a cricket, he thought, or the twitter of bats. “If you want to have a tea party, I can help you set the table.”
He nodded, more to himself than to her, and said, “Would you like some tea?”
“Yes, please,” the doll answered formally. “I would like some tea very much.”
He nodded again. “Can you walk?”
“I can walk, but it might be better if you carried me. You can carry me like a baby if you like.” She seemed to sympathize with his expression of dismay. “Or I can ride on your shoulder. That’s the best way of all. You see, if I walk we’ll go pretty slowly, because my legs are so small. And if you stepped on me, I might break.”
He nodded solemnly and put the doll on his right shoulder, where she held the top of his collar with one tiny hand. “Don’t go too fast, and I’ll be fine.”
He said, “I’ll try not to.” He blew his nose again, being careful not to move his head, and wiped his cheeks.
“Why were you crying?”
“Seeing you reminded me of somebody else, of somebody I’d forgotten.” He hesitated, not sure what he had said was fair to Lara. “Or at least that I’d put out of my mind.” As he stood up, moving as slowly and smoothly as he could, he added, “Dolls don’t talk here, or anyway, not as well as you.”
There was no reply.
He went into the kitchen. Most of the water he had heated for coffee remained in the pan, but it was cold now and scummed with lime. He threw it out, put in fresh water, and turned on the burner again. There were tea bags in the canister, the remnants of a box of exotic teas he had bought (in Gourmet Foods, at the discount) for an assistant manager in Lingerie but never given her.
“I don’t know if I’ve got a cup small enough for you,” he said.
He settled on a demitasse cup, pushed the tea bag into it, and doused it with boiling water.
Tina said, “May I talk?”
“Sure, why not?”
“You said I wasn’t supposed to. But I like just a teeny-weeny pinch of salt in my tea.”
He passed the saltcellar over it. “That enough? You take sugar?”
“No, thanks,” Tina chirped. “No milk either.” She bounced from his shoulder like a tennis ball and stood, legs wide, on the dinette table to drink from the cup. It was as big for her as a wastebasket would have been for him.
When she put it down, it seemed to him that it was as full as it had ever been, but she patted her midriff and wiped her mouth on the back of one bare arm. “Now if you’ll just leave it there, I could come and get some whenever I wanted to.”
That seemed no crazier than talking to a doll. “All right,” he said.
“And I won’t have to bother you. I’m really not very good at doing things for myself. I couldn’t have turned on the water like you did.”
He nodded.
“Well, I can do things a little.”
He asked, “Can you tell me how a doll can talk?”
“Because I’m built that way. It’s my insides.” She patted her middle again. “But I can’t add or subtract or spell or any of that other stuff. I haven’t been to school.”
He nodded again.
“I’d like some nice clothes. Have you got any?”
“Not that would fit you,” he told her.
“I’d like a ball gown, just to start. And a vanity set, so I can do my hair.”
“It’s too late tonight,” he told her. “I’ll get you some things tomorrow.” He was confident that tomorrow she would be gone, or at least inanimate and silent.
“And I’d like a bra and panties. I’d like two of each, so I can wear one and wash one.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“One pair could be fawn, and the other pair could be ginger. That way we could tell which I’d worn last. And a nightie. Can I sleep with you?”
“If you don’t snore,” he told her.
“I don’t. You can’t even hear me breathing.” She threw out her chest as though to prove she did indeed breathe, tiny, conical breasts pushing impatiently against the metallic fabric of her smock. “Tomorrow night I’ll put up my hair, if you get me rollers. It would be better if you carried me, remember?”
He asked, “What if you want some tea in the middle of the night?”
“I won’t,” Tina chirped. “But if I did, I could come out and get it without waking you up. You wouldn’t have to worry about stepping on me then. Besides, I can move faster now.”
He picked her up and replaced her on his shoulder. “Is that what you work on? Tea?”
“Sometimes silly children want us to drink more tea than we can hold.”
“I won’t do that,” he promised. He recalled something a bartender had once told him, and added, “If you don’t want it, don’t drink it.”
“I like you. We’re going to have a lot of fun.”
“Not now,” he said. “Right now I’m going to take a shower, and then I’m going to bed.”
“I could have a bath in the washbowl while you’re taking your shower.”
“All right.”
“All you have to do is turn on the water for me. Not very hard. Not very hot, either.”
“All right,” he said again. He pulled up the chrome handle that stoppered the bowl, and adjusted the hot and cold knobs to produce a thin stream of tepid water.
Tina hopped from his shoulder. “Can I use your soap?”
“Sure.” He took off his shirt and tossed it in the hamper as he always did. Tina had skinned out of her metallic green smock; she had no pubic hair, but her breasts were tipped with minute pink nipples.
He turned his back to remove his trousers, and when he went into the bedroom to hang them up and get his pajamas, he debated putting on the bottoms before he returned to the bathroom. It would be useless, since he would have had to take them off again immediately.
Tina had worked up a fine lather in the washbowl. He asked if the water was too hot.
“No, it’s fine. Could you give me a drop of shampoo?”
He did, tilting the bottle just enough to pour a single emerald drop into her cupped hands.
As soon as he closed the shower door, he felt certain she would be gone when he came out. Perhaps the basin would be full of water; perhaps not. He made the spray colder and revolved beneath it, grunting because he wanted to shout.
“I’m going to use one of these little towels, okay?”
“Sure.” His next appointment with Dr. Nilson was Tuesday. Five days. He wondered whether he should call her now; she had given him her home number, though he had never used it. As he thought about that, the memory of a disheveled man in hospital pajamas playing an out-of-tune piano returned with such force that he seemed to see and hear it, seemed to feel the unyielding wood of the bench upon which he had once sat.
When you find your true love,
When you see her eyes,
When you’ve left your new love,
At the end of lies …
Tina was singing as she dried herself, singing in a voice sweet and yet so high that at times it soared beyond audibility, singing to the tune of the cracked old piano someone had donated to the hospital. No
, he could not call Dr. Nilson. He couldn’t even mention Tina when he went on Tuesday.
He reached for a towel.
In bed Tina said, “I can sleep on top of the covers. But it would be better if I slept under them. I’d stay warmer.”
He lifted the blankets for her, and she snuggled beside him. After a time he said, “How old are you, Tina?” He could just see her in the faint light leaking past the blind.
The doll turned over and yawned theatrically, an elfin hand covering her mouth, a tiny arm stretching above her head. “How old are you?”
He told her, then added a year. “My birthday was last month. I’d forgotten.”
“That’s old.”
“I know,” he said.
“I don’t think you’re that old. I’m not.”
“I didn’t think you were.”
“What did you get for your birthday?”
“Nothing. I really didn’t pay any attention to it.”
“Didn’t Mama and Daddy give you anything?”
He shook his head. “My mother’s been dead for a long time, and I haven’t seen my father for ten or twelve years.”
“But he still loves you.”
“No, he doesn’t. He never did.”
“Yes, he does.”
“Tina, you’ve never met him.”
“I know about Daddies, though. And you don’t.”
“All right,” he said, strangely comforted.
“What did you give him for his birthday?”
The question surprised him; he had to think for a moment. “Nothing. I never do.”
“You could give him a big kiss.”
“I don’t think he’d like that.”
“Yes, he would. I’m right and you’re wrong.”
“Perhaps,” he said.
“Next birthday, what would you like?”
He told her about the desk.
“I think you should get that for your next birthday. I’ll tell Daddy.”
“It’s been sold already.”
“Maybe the lady would sell it, too.”
He nodded to himself. “Maybe she would. Would you like some more tea, Tina?”
“Yes!”
He threw back the covers, rose, and switched on the light. By a route he could not quite follow, Tina leaped from the bed to the dresser. “Is your tea set in here?”
“I don’t have a tea set,” he told her. “Not yet, anyway. I was looking for this check book.”
“I can’t read. I haven’t been to school.”
“I’ll read it for both of us,” he said. “I’ve got thirty-two hundred dollars. That’s more than the desk cost.”
“You should have bought it.”
“You’re right. Now let’s have some tea and talk about it. Do you think she’d sell it at a profit? Where do you think it ought to go?”
“Not facing the TV.” Tina hopped onto his shoulder. “So you’ll do your school work.”
“Not in a corner,” he told her. “I hate things in corners. Against the window.”
“All right!”
He turned up the burner under the pan of water, rinsed out Tina’s demitasse cup, and found a cup, a saucer, and a spoon for himself. There were only three tea bags left in the canister. “I’ll have to get more tea tomorrow,” he said.
“You sure will.”
“Tina, do you know a girl named Lara?”
“I don’t know anybody but you.”
“You remind me of her. I used to be in love with Lara—that’s why I bought you. Lara was the woman in front of the fireplace.”
“I don’t think you told me about that.”
“But I lost her, somehow. I lost her walking through the snow.”
“You have to dress really warm for a bluskery day.”
He nodded. “I bought the coat, and some other things. I got some money, somehow, and I put it in the bank. That’s where most of the thirty-two hundred’s from.”
“Maybe Lara gave it to you,” Tina ventured.
“No,” he said. And then, “Yes, maybe she did.”
The Desk
“I’d like to talk to you about it,” he said. “That’s all.”
The ugly woman’s voice crackled from the earpiece. “We’re talking now.”
“I’d rather do it face to face. I could come out to your house any evening that’s convenient.”
Suspiciously: “Isn’t it genuine?”
He inhaled deeply, wanting to lie—and found he could not. “It’s perfectly genuine, I’m sure. But it’s Indian, even though it was made in the British style. Indian things don’t command high prices, as a rule.”
“Well, whatever you want to tell me about it, you’re going to have to say here and now. Then perhaps we’ll meet face to face, if I decide we should.”
“Mrs. Foster,” (this time he positively gulped for air) “I can offer you a five-hundred-dollar profit.”
There was a long pause. “If it’s genuine, why should you people want it back?”
“I’m not calling for the store,” he told her. “I want to buy it myself.”
“You’ve found out it’s worth more than they thought.”
“No,” he said. “No, not at all.” He waited for her to say something; she did not, and he was forced to speak again to fill the silence. “I think that when you bought it I told you I felt it was overpriced. I still do. I study the auction catalogues and follow the results, Mrs. Foster. It’s part of my job.”
“Go on.”
“A piece not much different from your desk went for only a little more than half what you paid, two years ago in New York.”
“But you’ll give me a five-hundred-dollar profit.”
Hope surged. “Yes,” he said.
“You’ll pay me more than twice what it’s worth.”
“Yes,” he said again.
“Why?”
He tried to speak, but no words came. At last he said lamely, “I don’t know if I can explain.”
“I’m listening.”
“I sell these things …”
“You’ve got a buyer?”
“No, no. I don’t mean I’m a dealer myself on the side—I couldn’t do that and keep my job. I only meant that I sell the things here, in the store.”
“I know that. You sold me this desk. I’m sitting at my desk right now, as it happens. This is where I put the phone.”
“I never wanted a piece for myself.” He felt that he was talking into a void, pleading with a soulless thing of wire and plastic far less human than Tina. “I’d check out a particular piece, you know—”
“Don’t say, ‘you know.’ It’s the one thing I absolutely cannot stand.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I. Go on, Mr. Green.”
“I was just trying to say I’d look at a certain piece and think that it was nice—or really not so nice. Or at one like your desk and think that it was a good piece but I wouldn’t have priced it quite so high. I’ve seen hundreds of pieces like that, I suppose, but I never saw anything except your desk that I really wanted for myself.”
Again she left him floundering.
“I thought they’d mark it down after Christmas, and then maybe I’d take it.”
She grunted. “You told me you thought it would be lower in January, and you suggested I come back then—when you planned to buy it for yourself. It would have been gone.”
Desperately he continued, “I hadn’t decided to buy it then. Really I hadn’t. Not firmly—I thought I wouldn’t. It wasn’t until it was gone—”
“That you realized how much you wanted it.”
“Yes,” he said. “That’s right.”
“Do you know, Mr. Green, I’ve felt the same way myself a time or two. May I ask how your wife feels about your spending so much money?”
“I don’t have a wife.”
“You’re divorced?”
“I’ve never been married, Mrs. Foster.”
“Marriage isn’t
for everyone. Why, I know several men, the nicest, kindest—”
“I’m not gay, Mrs. Foster.” He knew that he had lost, and he wanted to hang up. “Once a girl even lived with me for a few days, but I’ve never married.” He made one final effort. “I’ve got thirty-two hundred dollars. That’s every cent I have in the world, and that’s why I said I’d give you a five-hundred-dollar profit. I’ll make it a thousand if you’ll take the second five hundred in installments.”
Silence again, stretching on and on; this time he did not speak, and at last she said, “I’m president of the Collectors’ Club. Did you know that, Mr. Green?”
“No. No, I didn’t, Mrs. Foster. I know about your club, of course.”
“We’re serious collectors, Mr. Green. And I will not sell this desk.”
There was a metallic click as she hung up. He hung up too. The desk was gone. He tried tiredly to guess her age: fifty or fifty-five, perhaps. Perhaps there would be an estate sale in twenty years or so. No, she was the kind of woman who hung on forever. He could get her address, as he had her number, from Accounting. He could write her and suggest that she contact him if she ever wanted to sell the desk; but it would do no good.
“Staying late, Green?” It was Mr. Cohen, the Art Gallery supervisor.
“Had to make a phone call, sir. It took a while, I guess. How about you, sir?”
“Getting set for Christmas. You know, firelight, candles, and snow.”
The images danced through his mind as he walked to the bus stop: snow—candles—firelight—children and other gifts under the tree. The headline of the paper in the vending machine was SUICIDE RATE CLIMBS.
If I’d made the world, he thought, Christmas would be a good time for everybody.
Quite suddenly he recalled that he had promised Tina a tea set, new clothes, all sorts of things. He left the bus stop and walked down to the arcade, an old-fashioned sort of mall he had sometimes peered into, but never entered.
Old-fashioned or not, the arcade had already gone over to extended hours. More than half of its little shops were bright, and shoppers bundled against the cold stamped up and down the clangorous iron walkways. He passed a travel agency, a beauty salon, and a chiropractor’s office, the last dark. A toy store—in both senses of the word, for it was hardly larger than the make-believe stores given to children—provided dresses that he thought might fit Tina and a minute tea set of real china.
