Dollface

[fiction]

Eleanor is outside on the porch screaming obscenities at the neighborhood. I know I should pull her back inside, but I choose instead to peer out the living room window, half my face shrouded by curtain, and watch everyone’s reactions. Eleanor is ninety-two so no one dares confront her or call the cops. All the neighbors just assume she’s gone senile and doesn’t know where she is or what she’s doing. But she knows. Everything Eleanor does is deliberate, and usually premeditated at that.

Eleanor has always been a mean bitch. Nothing has changed. She made me call her Eleanor instead of “Grammy” or “Mimi” or any of the other nomenclatures that granddaughters throughout history have used for the mothers of their parents. “My name is Eleanor. Calling me anything else is gauche,” she had declared to my father when I was a mere hour old. Over the years, women I dated would tell me tales of their Nanas baking cookies or tucking them into bed. They would drift into sleep on waves of soft maternal voices reading their favorite stories. I’d watch the expression in their eyes soften and melt like butter as they remembered the smell of snickerdoodles rising in the oven. That I had no equivalent stories of Eleanor disturbed them, as if this lack of experience was a reflection on my character. It was something they usually mentioned when they broke up with me.

“Eleanor K. Westfield-Parker doesn’t bake,” I would say, leaving it at that. That’s not to say Eleanor and I didn’t do anything together. From the ages of five to thirteen, I went to her house every day after school so she could look after me while my parents were at work. Together we’d sit on the couch watching the Home Shopping Network and dialing in to buy the porcelain dolls that caught her eye. Wallace J. Parker, a.k.a Mr. Eleanor Westfield-Parker, was out in the world earning the dollars, and we were inside the house spending them. Wallace was my step-grandfather, my real grandfather having died years before I was born. Eleanor wasted no time and got herself remarried within a year of my grandfather’s death. Wallace had lost his wife to cancer. He and Eleanor seemed indifferent to one another, each of them a scuffed, second-hand shoe. Still, two old shoes together made one pair, and that sure was better than being alone.

* * *

“Well, I feel better now,” Eleanor says as she steps into the house. She lets out a deep breath as if she’s just finished a yoga session or a deep-tissue massage.

“What upset you this time?” I ask, though I already know the answer.

“My salad dressing,” she says in a haughty, teenage tone.

“That salad dressing had been in the cabinet for at least five years. It was growing mold,” I say. “Do you know how hard it is to grow mold in a vinegar dressing?”

“You should have asked me first. I bought that on sale.” There are eight bottles of the exact same dressing in the pantry, all bought on sale throughout the years. I don’t say this though. When Eleanor is upset about something I’ve done, and she’s often upset, it’s best to let her stew and scream because, by the time Jeopardy comes on, she’ll have forgotten about the whole thing. Eleanor blames growing up during the Great Depression for her urge to squirrel away supplies. She has drawers in her bedroom full of extra buttons, old newspapers, and Christmas cards she received in 1974. When she and her dolls moved in with me over a decade ago, she brought an entire suitcase dedicated to items from her pantry, all the bug-infested crackers and stale spices that she refused to toss out. Eleanor is an expert at saving things, everything except for other people’s money.

Every month when Wallace would receive his credit card bill and get angry, Eleanor would insist that I had nagged her into submission. “What was I supposed to do, Wally? She wouldn’t stop.” I would play along, aware that a ringleader always split the loot with their best accomplice. “You’re a spoiled kid, you know that?” Wallace would say. Eleanor would smile and wink at me over his shoulder. When the goods were delivered, I hopped from foot to foot as I waited for Eleanor to open the box. She would bat away foam packaging peanuts and tug at bubble wrap, and soon there was the beautiful doll from the television right there in Eleanor’s hands. Sometimes Eleanor gave me the bubble wrap to pop, but she never gave me any of those dolls.

“Remember, you can look, but you must never touch them,” Eleanor would instruct. She kept the dolls on shelves that rose from the floor to the ceiling of her and Wallace’s bedroom. From all sides of the room, green, blue, and brown glass eyes stared down at me. I envied those dolls, their perfect curls and the endless attention they received from Eleanor. My favorite was a Victorian-era gentlewoman with long, pale limbs. She wore a gray wool dress with round, shiny black buttons. White gloves covered her delicate hands and on her head was the most glorious hat I had ever seen, wide brimmed and decorated with blue and pink feathers. Secretly I named her Margaret. I’d imagine what it would be like if Margaret were my girlfriend, the two of us walking arm-in-arm down a moonlit Parisian street. Sometimes when I knew Eleanor was occupied downstairs, I’d sneak into her bedroom and rub my fingers against Margaret’s smooth, pink cheeks. “How do you do?” I’d whisper before pressing a gentle kiss onto her cold mouth.

* * *

I’ve just arrived at the office when I notice there are five missed calls from Eleanor on my cell phone. When I call her back, it takes three tries before she picks up. “Hello?” she says, as if it’s a question of who could be calling her.

“Eleanor, what’s the matter?” In the background I hear beeping car horns. There’s a woman yelling, too. “That’s my fucking kid!” I hear her scream. “Don’t you talk to him like that!”

“What the hell is going on?” I ask.

“Oh this dumb bitch is mad at me for yelling at her brat. She’s got traffic all stalled up,” Eleanor says.

“On the porch?”

“Fighting with an old woman. Can you imagine? What a bitch,” Eleanor says.

“Eleanor!” I yell into the phone, so loud that a few of my coworkers turn and look at me. “Where are you?”

“Oh, I went over to the supermarket. Wanted to see if that dressing was on sale again. You know, so I could buy a replacement for the one you threw out? And then I thought I’d check if they had any good raspberries. Which they don’t.” The beeping continues, but now I can hear sirens too. “Great, cops,” Eleanor says.

By the time I pull into the grocery store parking lot, the angry woman is gone and it’s just Eleanor and two cops standing there. Eleanor is wearing a long mink coat even though it’s the middle of July. “Are you responsible for this woman?” the cop asks when I introduce myself. He has a large gut that spills over his belt. His partner is a woman with a shaved head. I say a silent prayer that Eleanor hasn’t said anything offensive to them already.

“Yes, she’s my grandmother,” I say. “I’m so sorry about all this. She’s not well.”

“I am like hell,” Eleanor yells. I try to grab her hand, but she shakes me off.

“I understand. I have an aunt with dementia,” the overweight officer says to me. “We’ll let her off with a warning this time, but you have to keep more of an eye on her.”

Once we’re in the car driving home, Eleanor tells me that the woman’s son accused her of stealing so she called him an asshole. “Then she just went crazy and started yelling, and we both got kicked out of the store,” she says. Eleanor puts her hand inside her coat and pulls out a container of raspberries which she opens with some difficulty. She pops two ripe berries into her mouth. “How did you pay for that?” I ask, and she just shrugs.

Wallace Parker died when I was in my late twenties. I had just bought a small house in an “up-and-coming neighborhood,” or at least that’s how the realtor had described it. In his will, Wallace left Eleanor infinitely less money than she was expecting. She searched every drawer and crawlspace in their house trying to find an alternate will, but there was nothing. Most everything he had owned went to his children and grandchildren. “Cheap fucker,” Eleanor whispered as she passed his casket. The grave diggers lowered Wallace into the ground while Eleanor eyed his bereaved kids with suspicion. A few months later, Wallace’s children sold the house right out from under her. Eleanor dropped the Parker off her name faster than Wallace had dropped to the floor during his heart attack. Oh how the mighty had fallen. Mrs. Eleanor K. Westfield, formerly Mrs. Eleanor K. Westfield-Parker, who had lived with her second husband in a three-story brownstone in the city, was forced to move into my spare bedroom. It was the only living space that anyone in my family offered to her.

* * *

When we reach the house, Eleanor stands on the porch and screams “fuckity fucker” five times in a row. Her hands are clenched into fists that look like two wrinkly, rotting tomatoes. I want to take Eleanor by the shoulders and shake her until her bones snap and she collapses into a pile of dust. “I’ve had it with you,” is all I can say.

“Why? I didn’t do anything.”

“I’ve done my time,” I say. “It’s someone else’s turn now.”

“You’re kicking me out?” Eleanor asks.

“No, I’m just suggesting it might be time to make other arrangements for you.”

“I see,” Eleanor says in a weak voice. It’s the softest I’ve ever heard her speak, and for a moment I think she may start to cry. The very thought of salty tears running down Eleanor’s cheeks terrifies me. But she doesn’t cry. Instead she announces that she’s tired and is going to bed. It’s three in the afternoon, but she goes into her room, slamming the bedroom door the way I used to when I was sixteen and pissed at the world.

It took until I was in my twenties before I came out to my parents. Eleanor had known I was gay long before that though. I was thirteen and Eleanor, I thought, was downstairs engrossed in the Home Shopping Network. Instead, she walked in on me holding Margaret’s delicate hands and promising to take her as my wife. It was a beautiful Victorian wedding under the Eiffel Tower in progress right then and there in Eleanor’s bedroom. Hundreds of Margaret’s porcelain kin were our witnesses. “I told you not to touch the dolls,” was all Eleanor said. For a week I was cautious around Eleanor, bracing for her to tell me how disgusting I was, sure she would reveal the truth to my parents. But she never said a word about it. Nothing changed.

The next morning at breakfast Eleanor declares that she’s thinking of putting new curtains in her room. “Something less lacy I think would be nice,” she says. We let the whole business of her moving out drop, neither of us mentioning it again until a few days before Christmas when Eleanor sits me down and tells me she’s met someone.

“His name is Harold Jensen,” she says. “And we’re in love. Thank you for all your hospitality. I will be moving out.”

“You’re ninety-two,” I exclaim.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. I’m just surprised. I didn’t know you were dating anyone.”

“Well, I am. I answered Harold’s personal ad. He’s an antiques dealer who specializes in porcelain dolls.”

“What are the odds,” I say.

Eleanor insists that we start packing her things that afternoon even though she won’t be marrying and moving in with Harold for another month. “If we don’t start early we’ll be rushed, and then I’ll forget something,” she says. We dump all the old salad dressings into a cardboard box. Eleanor counts to make sure I haven’t tossed any more bottles. The drawer of cards and buttons is emptied into a plastic bag and stowed into another box along with Eleanor’s nightgowns and socks. I offer to help her wrap her dolls in bubble wrap, but she won’t let me touch them.

Harold and Eleanor get married at the town hall at two o’clock in the afternoon on a Wednesday. “Third time’s the charm,” Eleanor says, which is the closest anyone gets to saying vows that day. I’m the only person that they invite to attend. The ceremony is quick and simple. Eleanor turns and gives Harold her cheek instead of her lips when the town clerk pronounces them man and wife. I take the newlyweds out to a celebratory pasta dinner. By day’s end, Eleanor’s things are in the trunk of my car, and I’m driving her to Harold’s house.

Before I go to bed that night, I step into the guest bedroom where Eleanor used to sleep night after night. The only sign she was ever here at all are the clean circles in the dust on the dresser, left there by the stands that held each doll upright. The house is so quiet I consider stepping out onto the porch and screaming obscenities into the stillness of the neighborhood. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye I notice a small, white-gloved hand peeking out from the closet. I bend down and pick up the one doll that Eleanor has left behind. Her Victorian dress and perfect pink cheeks look as beautiful as they did the day she arrived at Eleanor’s house decades ago. I place the doll on the nightstand next to my bed. I’m thirty-seven now, too old to play with dolls, yet before I go to sleep, I run my fingers across Margaret’s face and whisper goodnight.