Perfect Recall

by Ann Beattie

  Outside the house in which Marcia has an apartment, they see Buddy, the landlady’s son. He’s shooting an airplane from something that looks like a hypodermic needle: aiming into the hibiscus hedge. Buddy is too old to invite the tragedies he invites; he’s ten, and he should know better than to bring home stray kittens his mother will toss out, or to aim fast-flying toys into thick hedges.

  “She’s gone,” Buddy says.

  “Your mom?” Derek says. “That’s okay; Marcia gave me a key to let myself in. We’ve got a TV here we need to return to her.”

  “Not Mom. Marcia,” Buddy says.

  “Gone? Marcia’s gone?” Tad says.

  “She went to Tallahassee,” Buddy says, releasing the spinning plane. It falls to the cement in front of the hedge.

  “When’s she going to be back from Tallahassee?” Derek says, turning to help Tad lift the TV.

  “Never,” Buddy says. “She sold Mom her brass bed, and now it’s mine.” Buddy is preening. He loves this one-upmanship.

  “And what’s she doing in Tallahassee?” Derek says, trying not to let on how rattled he is.

  “Same thing she was doing here,” Buddy says. “She’s gone to be a nurse at the hospital there, and she can still use her pussy.”

  This provokes a moment of stunned silence. Then Tad starts laughing. He nearly doubles up, bracing himself on the side of the truck. “That so?” Tad says. “She took her pussy with her?”

  Buddy nods, a self-satisfied smile on his face. There: he said something dirty.

  “How’d she find a job so fast?” Tad asks Derek.

  It remains a rhetorical question. Buddy snaps a hibiscus from the hedge and tucks it behind his ear, swaying his hips and pouting, dancing a satirical dance.

  “What are we going to do with the TV?” Derek says. It’s more a question to himself, which he happens to ask aloud. Both Buddy and Tad answer at once: “Smash it,” Buddy says. “Take it home,” Tad says. Derek looks at the TV, under its gray cover. He can see it smashed, all over the ground; he can imagine it back in his house, making him feel even more guilty.

  “Hey, you guys got any pot?” Buddy says. He picks up a Frisbee from the ground and pretends to sail it toward them. Tad ducks. Derek, who’s still trying to take in what Buddy said, sees the Frisbee, but doesn’t much care if he’s hit. What’s one more thing?

  “Hey, man, let’s go,” Tad says to Derek.

  “I’m going to tell Mom you came here and that when I told you Marcia was gone, you cried and cried,” Buddy says to Derek.

  “Why are you going to do that, Buddy?” Tad says. He’s started back to the driver’s side of his truck, but he looks over his shoulder to ask the question.

  “So she’ll think he’s a sissy,” Buddy says.

  It isn’t until he’s seated in the truck and it pulls out from the curb that it occurs to Derek that Buddy might have made it all up. “Turn around,” he says to Tad. “I don’t trust that little bastard. I want to see with my own eyes that she’s gone.”

  “Really?” Tad says, slowing. “That didn’t even occur to me.”

  “It just occurred to me,” Derek says.

  They go around the block and return to the house. Buddy is nowhere to be seen. Tad puts the truck in park and keeps the motor running. Derek jumps out and reaches over the side gate, undoing the latch. He walks through the side yard, littered with Buddy’s toys and rotting lawn furniture, and climbs the stairs to Marcia’s apartment. He puts his key in the lock and turns it.

  Inside, Marcia’s sofa is where it always was. The pictures have been taken off the walls. The shades—were they Marcia’s?—have been removed from the windows, so the room is very bright. He walks into the tiny bedroom. Nothing there, except a pillowcase thrown on the floor. The shades are also gone from the bedroom windows. He’s almost out of the room when he sees something in the corner: a piece of clothing, or something. But it isn’t that. It’s a doll. A voodoo doll, pins stuck in its cloth body, small charms sewn to its upper arms, black bull’s-eyes drawn on forehead, stomach, and thighs—one thigh pierced with a small metal stick. There is a tiny puff of real hair on its head. Around its waist is the thing he can’t stop gawking at: HILLARY, spelled out in pink paint on its seashell belt, some curlicues of lavender paint spiraling away from the last three letters. A large safety pin runs down its spine, more of the purple curlicues flying away from the head of the pin. Below the pin is stitching with black thread. Piercing both feet are tiny gold balls: Marcia’s earrings. The gold studs she always wore.

  He puts the doll in his back pocket—pushes it in, though he knows that most of it protrudes. Like a child eager to show something he has drawn to Mommy—not a good analogy: this is most certainly not something he has created—he thinks about showing it to Tad. To get corroboration that the thing really exists. That he could possibly have found such a thing.

  Tiny Tim is warbling on the tape deck. From somewhere, Tad has gotten himself a Diet Coke. He raises the can in greeting as Derek approaches.

  “Something really awful,” Derek says. “Something you are not going to fucking believe.”

  “She’s dead?” Tad says immediately.

  “No, she’s not dead, but I think she wishes Hillary was, for some reason.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “This,” he says, reaching behind him and extracting the doll.

  “What the—”

  Tad reaches for the doll, but hesitates. It’s clear he doesn’t want to touch it. “God almighty,” Tad says. “This, from a nurse?”

  “I don’t think she was thinking along the lines of helping mankind when she made it.”

  “No. I can’t imagine she was,” Tad says slowly. “I tell you,” he says, “you’ve got to road test them for a good long while before you get in deep. There’s more crazies out there than you can ever imagine.”

  “Does this seem like anything Marcia would do?” Derek says.

  “My point, exactly,” Tad says, after a moment’s silence. “God almighty,” he says again.

  “Do you know anything about this stuff? Do you have any idea whether we should . . . I don’t know: is this something most people would tell the cops about?”

  “Most people like us don’t think of cops as our saviors,” Tad says. “Just to remind you,” he adds, after a long pause.

  “But what if she’s violent? This is really off the wall.”

  “I’ll say,” Tad says. He puts a finger tentatively on a bull’s-eye, as if he’s touching a little bruise; he still doesn’t reach for the doll. He stares at it. “Did she ever even meet your kid?” he asks.

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s the way people really get even,” Tad says. “They go for what you love the most. They lynch your dog, if they know you love your dog, or—hell—even the Mafia plays dirty now: they’ve started killing people’s wives, people’s sisters. That Getty kid—remember, years ago? They kidnapped him and cut off his ear and sent it to the old man, to get the money. Remember?”

  “I’d just as soon not,” Derek says.

  “It happens all the time. Fingers in the mail . . .”

  “Stop talking about it!”

  Tad looks at him. “You don’t really think this thing has any power, do you? It’s a stupid doll that a psycho made—forgive me for casting aspersions on one of your girlfriends.” Tad takes the doll, a look of disgust on his face. He holds it in front of his face and begins to wave his fingers, moving his hand from the tip of his nose to the face of the doll. “Booga, booga,” he says, in as ominous a voice as possible. He looks at Derek. “You should certainly be bummed out that you found such a lunatic, but hey: good riddance, huh? I say we unload her TV so she won’t have any reason to come knocking on your door.”

  Derek nods. He most certainly does want to return the TV and never see the inside of the apartment again, never see Marcia again, never see snotty little Buddy again either, for that matter. He gets out, and the two o
f them wrestle the TV off the back of the truck. Supporting the TV one-handed, Tad fumbles for the gate lock and unlatches it, and the two of them proceed through the littered lawn, up the stairs, into the apartment Derek, in his shock, left unlocked. They leave the TV in the middle of the living-room floor. They both leave immediately, and this time Derek locks the door, then drops the key through the mail slot.

  Back in the car, Tad takes the doll off the passenger’s seat and tosses it on the dashboard, where it lies on top of a small clipboard. There is also a dirty bandanna and a crumpled Dove Bar wrapper.

  When Derek gets home, he stuffs the doll in his back pocket again. He feels smarmy, as if he’s sneaking in pornography. He’s glad that Miss May and Hillary aren’t home. He goes quickly to his bedroom and puts the doll on a shelf in the closet, slamming the door instead of gently closing it.

  He believes they are at the beach. Why wouldn’t they be? How could he know they’d be at the emergency room: that Hillary is being treated after being stung by a sea nettle?

  By the time Miss May and his daughter are ready to leave, the swelling and pain have all but disappeared. Because he wasn’t at the beach, Sallie can’t even pretend to blame him. Hillary was in the care of Miss May; he was off doing an errand when it happened.

  He says good-bye to them at the airport. He buys Miss May a big bottle of aloe lotion and the new issue of People magazine, and Hillary a painted wooden fish from the airport gift shop, as well as a bag of Hershey’s Kisses and a water gun shaped like a flamingo. As he bends to embrace his daughter, he notices how substantial she feels: her rib cage; her sturdy hands grabbing his shoulders; even her hair—long, and sleek, cascading below her shoulders. “Ow!” she says, as his shoulder clamps her hair to his chest. “Ow, Daddy, watch my hair!” He kisses Miss May, and she smiles and turns her head and offers him the other cheek, as well. Kiss, kiss: then they’re both on their way. He waves at them in the departure area. Miss May waves him away, and eventually he goes—back outside the airport where the pink cabs wait for arriving passengers.

  Just to make sure—call it superstition; call it simple silliness—he isn’t going back to Key West, though; he’s going to Sugarloaf, where Dr. Frankel Hidburt lives. Dr. Hidburt is not a medical doctor, but a doctor of philosophy; a professor of Jungian studies formerly connected to the Church of St. John the Divine, in New York City. Several years before, Derek met Dr. Hidburt when he was researching hospices in Florida. In his retirement, Dr. Hidburt worked with a well-known holistic healer in Boca Chica, giving additional information and counseling to patients who consulted the healer for homeopathic treatment, as well as volunteering at the hospice founded by the healer and his brother. The hospice no longer exists, but through St. John the Divine, he had been able to track down Dr. Hidburt who, he was pleased to hear, still lived in the area and was writing a book about his years at the hospice. Hidburt remembered him at once: the young man who had persuaded him he must take one more patient, when the place was already Old Mother Hubbard’s. “Yes, certainly, come and have coffee,” Hidburt had said to him when he called, without even asking why he wanted to see him again.

  The directions Hidburt had given to his house were precise. Hidburt’s house was high up on stilts, flat-roofed, starkly modern, with a few small palms dotted around the lawn. The most incongruous detail was a window box, filled with red geraniums. An old black Lab got up and jingled his collar and wagged his tail. “In the house, in the house,” a woman called to the dog, as Derek got out of his car. The dog looked at her as if she was crazy. It thumped down and rested its chin on the sand.

  “Are you afraid of dogs?” the woman called to Derek.

  “No,” he said. “I hope I don’t have any reason to be.”

  “I never know if people might be afraid,” the woman said.

  As he passed the dog, it thumped its tail. It was such an unthreatening dog, it was ridiculous.

  “There aren’t any pets inside,” the woman said. She had still not said hello, or said her name. He felt that he should introduce himself, so he extended his hand and told her his name.

  She shook his hand firmly and said that her name was Casey Carswell. “I have a brother named Derek,” she said. “I don’t meet many people who have that name.” She added: “Where I grew up, in Maryland, Casey was a very common name. Down here, I haven’t met anyone named Casey, but maybe it’s just coincidence that I haven’t met them. What do you think?”

  “What do I think?” he said, not sure how to answer her.

  “Casey, let the gentleman in,” Hidburt called. “You’re standing right in the doorway.”

  “Dr. Hidburt has a new pool table,” Casey said.

  “Hello, Dr. Hidburt,” Derek said. When he raised his hand in greeting, Casey flinched and recoiled. He frowned, taken aback. Then, as Hidburt walked toward her, she backed up so that she stood against the wall. Hidburt seemed not to notice. He smiled at her, and then at Derek. “Nice to see you,” he said, extending his hand. “Nobody ever told me a writer’s life was so lonely. I guess that not knowing that is why so many get taken in.”

  “Will you be playing pool?” Casey said.

  “No, dear,” Dr. Hidburt said. “We’ll be having coffee, as we discussed a short time ago.” He looked at Derek. “That is, if you’d like coffee. We also have juice and tea.”

  “That’s Dr. Hidburt’s pool table,” Casey said, pointing to a very new-looking pool table on the front porch.

  “It’s wonderful,” Derek said.

  “Can we offer you something to drink?” Dr. Hidburt said.

  “Is there orange juice?”

  “There is,” Dr. Hidburt said.

  “One orange juice, one coffee,” Casey said, nodding. She turned and walked down a hallway.

  “Isn’t my fiancée the perfect hostess?” Dr. Hidburt said. He smiled. “You look surprised. Didn’t think the old man had it in him? I met Casey three years ago, when she was recovering from an automobile accident. She had no short-term memory for almost a year. Today she’s an example of what the human will, coupled with rehabilitation, can accomplish.”

  “Wonderful,” he murmured, not having any idea what else to say.

  “She doesn’t have any brothers. She had a husband whose name was Derek,” Dr. Hidburt said. “But come into my study. By which I mean the room with bookcases. You hardly ever see real bookcases in Florida—at least, where I go, I don’t see them.”

  The room was filled with built-in bookcases. There was a long wooden table Hidburt used as a desk, and a leather chair with a mashed blue pillow leaning against the back. There were clusters of framed photographs at both ends of the desk: some were of smiling people; others showed people propped up in bed, some with cadaverous heads, lips parted as if in a smile.

  “Who knew how much healing would be needed?” Hidburt said. “I look back, and I see that for so many years, I was just a gentleman philosopher. Though I don’t imagine anything prepares you for the battlefield. You know, Sugarloaf itself was once set to become the sponge capital of the world. Did you know that? Surgarloaf was purchased by two brothers who had a dream, but like many dreamers, they also made a miscalculation: they didn’t realize what a slow process it would be, breeding sponges. And they ran out of money, and eventually they had to declare bankruptcy. They were going to grow sponges on disks, as I understand it: no problem with sand—none of those bothersome facts of nature intruding. But they ended up bankrupt, because the sponges would only grow so fast. Whereas you look at the things in our world that proliferate when we don’t want them to, and you see them everywhere. There are epidemics of so many things, and there are those who’d call some of them progress. There’s even an epidemic of roads, when you think about it. Too many roads leading too many places.”

  Derek nodded. Hidburt gestured for him to sit in a chair, as he sank into his own leather chair, adjusting the pillow behind him. On the desk, the light of an answering machine blinked. There were several c
offee mugs on the desk. Derek was trying not to look at the desk, because so many of the photographs, which he could easily see from the chair he’d been asked to sit in, were upsetting.

  “What brings you?” Hidburt said suddenly.

  “What prompted my call . . .” He stopped, not sure where to begin. “I have a four-year-old daughter. She was just an infant when I knew you, and her mother left not long afterwards, so I’m not even sure if I ever mentioned my daughter to you.”

  “I’m not sure myself. Is it your daughter you’ve come to talk about?”

  “Well, indirectly. Yes. I mean, this is probably not something you have any direct experience with . . .”

  “Don’t outguess me,” Hidburt said. “Also, it would help if you weren’t so damned vague.”

  “My daughter was visiting me. She left today, to rejoin her mother in Houston.”

  “The roads there!” Hidburt said. He frowned with consternation.

  “A woman I used to date . . . a nurse. This nurse, Marcia, put a curse on Hillary. Hillary, my daughter. She was bit by a sea nettle the same day I discovered the voodoo doll.”

  Hidburt nodded.

  “I remembered at the hospice . . . you once made the comment that there was a real bond between the patients and the toys, not just because the toys were comforting, but because as death came closer—I think this was your point—the line of distinction began to disappear between animate and inanimate objects. You said that it would be foolish to assume that only human beings had souls. That various things had—I can’t remember, anymore: that they had their own qualities. Was that the word you used?”

  “I don’t recall.”

  “But you do remember our conversation?”

  “Yes. You were sobbing outside in your car. Your friend had dropped his monkey, or whatever it was, on the floor, and you had picked it up and had been about to return it to him when you realized you were inclined to bolt with it. Which you did, as far as the car.”