Happyland

by J. Robert Lennon

  She had never had a doll, not one. She had wanted one, of course, when she was small, had dreamt of it, but she knew what would happen if she ever had one, or anything else she was foolish enough to love: her cousins, those virtuosi of cruelty, would find it and destroy it. Even at twenty-seven, Happy could still feel their vigilant malignance, could still see their noses twitch in the presence of pleasure, could still hear the gears turning in their minds as they plotted to crush it. Here in her car, she bent over the doll, protecting her. She was beautiful, she was perfect. Happy named her Ivy.

  Back in the city, she cancelled all appointments—the brunches, cocktails, stylings, manicures—and went to work. She checked books out of the library, brought a giant sack of supplies home from the art store. She scraped and sanded away the excess cement, filled the gaps, repainted the flesh. She stitched a new dress and mended the body where the sawdust spilled out. Lovingly, she washed the wig, and combed it. She reinforced the pate with glue. Jims, when he was around, watched all this with interest. He had never seen Happy so happily absorbed. For her part, Happy had forgotten her troubles, her newly discovered incapacity to bear children, her apparently pointless marriage. The fissures her past had created seemed to mend themselves; her aunt and cousins rarely crossed her mind. There was only Ivy—that face, round and serene, and the piercing glass eye. She discovered, in the phone book, a doll hospital—and how ridiculous she would have found such a thing, mere weeks before—that was able to provide her with an eye to match. When her restoration was through, Happy placed Ivy on a shelf and regarded her with pride. The doll seemed thankful.

  But not as thankful as Happy. Now she had a project. She would find all the broken dolls and fix them. She would bring them back from the dead. There was no shortage, she discovered, of such dolls in New York; over the next two years she visited every junk shop, every antiques dealer, and rescued them from oblivion. Kestner, Floradora, Simon and Halbig. Armand Marseille, Bru, Dep. German and French, and their Japanese imitators. She became an expert, able to tell you the year, the maker, the city of origin from nothing more than the line of a jaw, the curl of an ear. She could identify an Almond-Eyed Jumeau at twenty yards.

  After two years, she had found and saved them all—every imaginable bisque-head, from every known dollmaker. Their apartment, a suite of rooms on the Upper East Side overlooking the Temple of Dendur, was stuffed with them. The problem now was that Happy had run out of holy grails.

  She complained to Jims, who had been agreeable enough about the entire doll thing. Anything to keep her busy, even if he had to evict a cluster of fourteen-inch china babies from the couch in order to watch the Rose Bowl. He said, “Why not make your own?”

  “Make my own?”

  “Start a company. Make your own dolls.”

  “My own dolls,” Happy said.

  “I’ll give you the capital. And the lawyers. I’ll put you in touch with the right people.”

  They had been eating dinner. Happy laid down her knife and fork. “A doll company.”

  “Masters, Limited?” said Jims. “The Masters Doll Company? Master Creations?”

  She leveled a stern look. “Happy Girls,” she said.

  It took a while to catch on. What mother, after all, would buy her child a hundred-dollar doll? Happy Girls were plastic, unbreakable, but otherwise faithful copies of the classic designs, decked out in period clothes. They came with certificates of authenticity and signed and numbered tags, and stood in glass-fronted cases in upscale toy stores. But for the most part that’s where they stayed. There was little to distinguish them, aside from price. It took Happy years to come up with the hook. She was fitting a dress on a doll named Lily when she slipped, smudging the doll’s face with her pencil-darkened fingers—and then she had what might be called a vision. She imagined the doll alive, a real child, hiding in a cellar, a coal cellar. It was…the Civil War. She was a southern girl, from a plantation family. Sherman was marching through town, setting it afire. Lily was hidden there with another girl, a slave girl. Now they are both in danger. They embrace, breaking the chains of racism! The girls survive, but are separated, by their families, by emancipation, by the Reconstruction, only to be reunited years later…

  She lay the doll down on the desk and grabbed her notebook. She wrote furiously, illegibly. The slave doll would be named Sally. She called a meeting of her creative team. Within a week, Sally was in production, and the book that would accompany her and Lily had gone to the printer’s. A month later the new Happy Girls had arrived in toy stores. It was November. Nobody could keep them in stock. Near-riots ensued where merchants had ordered fewer Sallys than Lilys—everyone had to have both. By March the company had introduced two more pairs of friends united by war: a patriot and a Tory from the American Revolution, and a Jewish girl and her protector in occupied Holland. Happy wrote the books herself. Pamphlets containing sample chapters were provided to retailers, but if you wanted the whole story, you had to buy the dolls.

  By the end of that year, 1983, Happy Girls, Inc. had quadrupled in size. It made its first profits. Since then, there had never been a bad quarter. The company had grown into a veritable empire. There were inexpensive cloth dolls with tiny paperbacks, and genuine limited-edition collectors’ bisque-head dolls that Happy herself signed. A team of six writers had produced one hundred thirty-seven books in the “Girls in History” series, forty-nine in the “Girls of America” series, and thirty-eight “Girls of the World.” There were ninety-two different dolls currently in production, and one hundred fifty-six discontinued models, which had their own separate category on eBay. There were web sites, conferences, clubs. There was fan fiction. There were full-size clothes for real girls to wear. There was an animated cartoon and a live-action dramatic series. There had been one movie, Lily and Sally, critically panned but big box office. The girls who played the belle and the slave had become instant celebrities and real-life best friends. Happy had even treated them to dinner, along with their starry-eyed parents.

  And so, Happy’s life had found a purpose, and thoughts of divorce had fallen away, lost in a flood of gratitude and newfound ambition. Which is not to say that her worries were gone for good. Her infertility, to her surprise, had shaken her. It wasn’t as if she had wanted children—that had been Jims’s idea, his proposed solution to her lethargy and depression. But the doctor’s news had unleashed a river of rage inside her, as if her barren womb had been transformed into a second, toxic heart. She blamed her aunt and her cousins, their violations, their cruelty: they had ruined her. A succession of well-meaning psychiatrists had striven to convince her otherwise, but ultimately, she found the notion useful and decided to keep it. She liked having been wronged. Her marriage, dulled by familiarity, had now become sharp and furtive. She and Jims, busy with business, saw one another infrequently, over weekends and at holidays, and their meetings were explosive collisions, cataclysmic unleashings of pent-up emotion. Where once they argued, they now fought, open-handed and filthy-mouthed. Where once they made love, now they fucked, teeth and fingernails bared. Happy emerged from their meetings bruised and restored, confident in the rightness of her life. She liked Jims better now that she could overpower him. She liked his money more now that she didn’t need it.

  This had been the state of Happy’s existence for some time. Happy Girls, Inc. had grown exponentially, devouring its competition like a forest fire, and showed no sign of slowing; her marriage was violent and strong as a hundred years’ war. There seemed little to do except keep going, and that’s what Happy had done. But here on the deck, with the sun finally low enough to burn her eyes, and the little girl in the yard glowing like a haunt; with another nemesis dead, Happy was beginning to feel a convergence of desires. A desire to retreat and contemplate; a desire to move forward, toward her next conquest, whatever it might be. She closed her eyes and stared at the bloody shadow the sun made. She drank her cold bad coffee.

  Maybe, she thought, the answer was here: E
quinox, New York, population 410. Why not? She had learned long ago that there was no point in looking for the thing you wanted; only the weak wanted things that could be found. The greatest desires could only be fulfilled by creating their object: a toy, a man, a state of mind. She heard the innkeeper’s voice calling to the girl: “Don’t dirty your dress, it’s time for church!” You see, Happy thought, I knew it—or, rather, I made it. I willed it to exist. She stood, slipping a twenty under her empty mug, and left the Inn. She walked south through town along Main Street, appraising: a hardware store, dilapidated but functional; a market, its windows and elderly proprietor hoary with dust. She saw a bar, a real estate office, a gas station, an ice cream stand. She saw the college, empty now, but soon to be populated by students, their ambitions, their lust. And when she reached the end of Equinox—it didn’t take long—she turned around and came back, on the other side of Main Street. This time she saw the town differently. She saw the college buildings renovated—sandblasted, repointed, their façades purged of air conditioners and aluminum gutters; she saw the parking lots torn out, replaced by wooded groves. She saw the library (“H. SHINOHARA MEMORIAL LIBRARY”), a jagged, arresting product of ill-conceived fifties architecture, razed, and a proper edifice erected in its place. The market she saw painted pink, awning’d, stocked with fresh bright fruit. The bar converted into a tea house. The gas station removed and a period kiosk installed, from which cold treats could be sold by happy, round-faced teenagers.

  Which period? Eighteen-something. That could be worked out later.

  The door of the real estate office opened as she passed, and a woman appeared, keys dangling from her hand, to lock up for the day. Of course, Happy thought, there you are, just when I needed you! She called out from the sidewalk.

  “Don’t tell me you’re closing?”

  “I’m afraid so.” In her sixties, wearing a wrinkled sundress and messy gray hair. Sandals. In her tired pale blue eyes, where someone less perceptive might have seen kindness or perhaps contentment, Happy saw weakness. You won’t be closing on me, she thought, and climbed the steps.

  “I do hope you’ll stay open just a little bit longer.”

  The woman’s hand still gripped the doorknob. She said, after a moment’s consideration, “Is there something in particular you’re looking for?” And then, pointedly, “Ma’am?”

  “A house,” Happy replied, and as she said it, it became true.

  “What we’ve got is in the window.” She gestured toward a grouping of curled and faded photographs, taped to the front window from the inside. Each bore a little inkjet-printed label, yellow from months of afternoon sun. Happy leaned over to examine them.

  There was the faintest sigh from the realtor. “If anything interests you, we can set up an appointment to—”

  “This one,” Happy said, pointing.

  The realtor tilted her head toward the photos. Her hand still on the knob. “The Framdsen House?”

  “Is it lakefront? I want lakefront.”

  “Yes, of course. On the south end of town.” She coughed. “It’s…expensive.”

  Happy smirked. “Show it to me.”

  “Well, I don’t have any appointments on Mon—”

  “I’m sorry. I want to see it right now. I go back to the city tonight.”

  “Which city?”

  “New York,” Happy spat.

  The realtor seemed to consider. Clearly she wanted to say no. She could say no, and life would go on as usual, and she would be home in ten minutes, gin and tonic in hand, listening to NPR. But people just didn’t say no to Happy Masters.

  “Well,” the realtor said. She sighed, more loudly this time, to remind Happy that she was doing a great favor. She turned the doorknob and opened the door. “I’ll get the keys, then.”

  * * *

  It was a seven-bedroom summer mansion, circa 1834. Shielded from the road by a copse of cottonwoods. Cedar shakes, slate roof, leaded glass. A boat house, and a little red rowboat, its paint peeling. The realtor’s name, quaintly enough, was Annabel Boone. “I don’t know what kind of shape the boat’s in,” she said, “I’ll have to ask Kevin.” She leveled a skeptical look at Happy. “The boat guy.” Inside: worn oak floors, plaster walls (“Need a little work there”), wide curving staircase leading to the upper two floors. Modern kitchen, updated by a would-be resident who lost his shirt in the internet crash. “It’s got all the amenities, Viking stove, Subzero fridge, and of course this island.” A chopping surface the size of a pool table. Happy ran her hand over it. In her mind, a cleaver flashed and a cut of beef split in two. A shudder ran through her. “Wine cellar downstairs, still has wine in it, I don’t know if the guy wants to keep that or not. Go upstairs?”

  “Of course.”

  Everything was large and airy, the windows eight feet tall, the ceilings twelve. Hand-carved oak trim. There were twin turrets overlooking the lake, each large enough for a comfy chair. Two bathrooms, his and hers, adjoining separate large bedrooms. Ideal, for Happy slept alone, regardless of whether or not Jims was around: together they did their business, then retreated to their cages. “This chain leads to a system of bells in the kitchen and downstairs bedroom. To alert the servants. It still works.” The realtor pulled and Happy heard a faint jingling from below.

  “Actually, I’m glad we came here,” Annabel Boone said, back in the kitchen. “It’s a pleasure to get to see this place. It has been on the market a long time.” She smiled. “The economic boom never hit upstate, you see. But I’m sure we’ll get to participate in the decline.”

  “What’s he asking?” Happy said.

  The realtor sighed and named a figure.

  Happy reached into her bag and pulled out a checkbook, nothing fancy, no leather or snakeskin, just the plastic sheath the bank sent with the checks. Money, she believed, should not be fetishized, coddled, euphemized or stylized. “Dirty money,” a jealous acquaintance once called Jims’s business. Happy had laughed in her face, for what money wasn’t? Now she looked up at Annabel Boone. “Who do I make it out to?” she said flatly, and this was her favorite moment, the disbelief, the nervous laughter. Wealth impressed the weak, as Happy was always gratified to be reminded.

  But the realtor merely raised her eyebrows and snorted. “I don’t doubt that you can do that, ma’am.”

  “Please: Happy.”

  “Ah…Happy, then. But…is this really what you want? A house in Equinox?”

  Happy chose to be impressed, rather than enraged. “Why wouldn’t I?” she asked, more as kind of a personality test than as a genuine inquiry, because the house, in all but a literal sense, was already hers. She had claimed it.

  “It is not much of a vacation spot. You have to drive thirty miles for a copy of the New York Times.”

  “I don’t want to vacation here. I want to live here.”

  “All the time?”

  “All the time.”

  “Snow? Mud?” The realtor’s face turned hard. “Drunk college girls?”

  “I don’t mind.”

  The realtor saw that Happy was serious. She shook her head. “Prepare to squander your intelligence, Ms. Masters. Sorry, Happy. Equinox is not one of those liberal enclaves, you know, and the college is not what you’d call a cultural magnet. Those girls are all nuts.”

  Those girls. A wave of recognition passed through her, a kind of orgasmic thrill. Subtly, decorously, she adjusted her legs underneath her dress. “It’s a…women’s college?”

  The realtor nodded.

  Happy felt, in some hidden part of her, the click of another piece snapping into place, another element in some unimagined, fantastic machine. It was unclear what it was, exactly, but it was here, it had taken root. “I act on instinct,” she said, “and my instincts are excellent.”

  This seemed to satisfy Annabel Boone. But Happy could see that her satisfaction cut both ways—she enjoyed seeing a woman stand up to the town, and she would enjoy watching a city girl laughed back to where she ca
me from. Except that she wouldn’t get to see that, because it wasn’t going to happen.

  “And as for the Times,” Happy said, “I can promise you that, when I move to town, you won’t have to drive anywhere to get it.”

  * * *

  Later, with the sun behind the hills and the road clear and shady before her, Happy adjusted her headset, reached out to the phone holster, and hit two buttons. In a moment, a thin voice came on the line, nearly obscured by a pulsing roar.

  “Hello?”

  “Jims. Where are you?”

  “Hey Hap! I’m in a helicopter! Near Lagos! Speak up!”

  “I have news.”

  A crackling. “Sorry, what’s that?”

  “I have news!”

  “Well, what?”

  “I just bought a house!”

  2. Weirdly real

  A month later, the village of Equinox lay beneath a feral bank of hot black thunderheads, which threatened to end the drought that had gripped the town since Happy first arrived. She sat in her office on the second floor of her new house, behind an immaculate mahogany desk, breathing in the cold front that swept across the lake. From below came the whine of a circular saw, and the crack of a hammer; the smell of woodstain and varnish reached her through the heat registers. She liked these smells; she would miss them when they were gone. The men who generated them were her own crew, imported from Staten Island; they were at her beck and call and would remain in Equinox (or, rather, in a house she had rented for them north of here, in the rather less quaint village of Unionville) until her emendations were complete. Vinne, Steve, Franco, Rick. She liked having them around, the crew. They would be here for some time, if things progressed as she hoped. Her ideas were still gestating: enticing vaguenesses: an awning here, a gaslamp there, and somewhere, or rather everywhere, an encompassing aesthetic wholeness—a thematic entirety that, though she did not yet understand its full character and purpose, would transform the town into something better, prettier, more lucrative. The future was uncertain, but it would be corbelled, gabled, and eaved.