It was perhaps in Janet Ping that this state of affairs was most effusively expressed; she had appeared, as promised, to meet Happy Masters the Monday after the taming of the drunken mob, dressed in her best dress, which was of unadorned navy blue silk, and sleeveless. It goes without saying that she was cold, as it was the middle of September, and cloudy, and early in the day, and right next to the lake. But she barely noticed; her fanaticism warmed her. She carried with her a small, lined notebook (a chewed pencil tucked tightly into its spiral binding) and a hardcover edition of Janet’s War, the book that had accompanied her doll of the same name.
She arrived at the former Framdsen House at ten minutes to ten, having vastly overestimated the amount of time it would take her to walk down the hill from the college and two blocks along Main Street to the appointment. And so, unwilling to appear overeager, she chose to wait outside for five minutes more. There was a large white panel truck in the circular drive, its cargo doors standing open; and a trio of burly workmen were passing in and out of the house, cradling in their strong arms a succession of small wooden crates resembling coffins. They carried these objects with unusual diligence for movers, concentrating on the ground before them as if to ensure a clear path, and passing gingerly over the threshold and into the house, and back out again a minute later. So mesmerizing was their solemn procession that it took Janet several moments to realize that a man was standing beside her.
It was James Masters, his lanky body bearing a navy blue suit fitted so well it seemed to have grown on him. Beside him sat a wheeled leather suitcase as trim and compact as a wallet.
Janet knew who he was from the Happy Girls web site, where he served as an angularly attractive foil to Happy’s authoritative cuteness. At lecterns, accepting awards; at gala benefit banquets, accepting thanks; at New York toy stores, accepting the admiration of girls, Happy was forever accompanied by this figure, who, though as old as Janet’s father—well, perhaps not quite that old—radiated as powerful a magnetism as any leading man who ever shared a stage with a woman who eclipsed him. Ken to Happy’s Barbie, he was simultaneously commanding and emasculated, qualities that Janet considered well-matched in a man.
Not that men were her area of interest. She couldn’t even have expressed her taste in women, so unfocused were her romantic designs—but, it was certain, James Masters was an appealing fellow. And his surprise at seeing her made him more appealing still: he let out a grunt and threw back his shoulders, keeping his balance only by transferring his weight to the suitcase. Involuntarily, she giggled—not a sound she enjoyed hearing come out of herself, though it did seem to put her at ease. “Hello!” he said, heartily enough, and her reciprocal hello was almost assertive enough to be audible.
“I remember you,” were his next words, and she blushed.
“I came with those people,” she said. “That mob.”
He looked at her frankly. “You yourself seemed rather subdued, though.”
“Yes,” she said. She cleared her throat. “So what’s going on?”
James Masters raised his eyebrows, as if in puzzlement. And then: “Ah! Yes. The movers. It’s Happy’s doll collection. She couldn’t be without it, it seems.”
“Oh!”
“Not all of it, of course. That will have to wait.” He sighed. “I’ve shared space with dolls for half my life, I suppose I can bear to continue. By the way,” he added now, adjusting his necktie, although it hadn’t seemed out of place. “I’m James.”
“Not…Jims?”
He leveled her a look both flirtatious and scolding. “That’s Happy’s name for me. How do you know about that?”
“I read it. On a web site. And she called you it, that night.”
“Hmm,” he said, glancing at his watch, and then at the road. “So you’re a fan, are you.”
She nodded.
“What’s your name?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Janet.” She didn’t extend her hand to be shaken—such niceties had always managed to escape her—so he reached out and took it and gave it a squeeze. He made a motion, a sort of near-bow, that made her think he was going to kiss it. But he didn’t. He let it go, and then stood straight. For a moment he looked frankly at her, and then he said, “My car’s here.”
“Okay!” was all she could manage.
She watched him walk away, the leather bag trailing behind him, bumping on the flagstones. A black car had crunched to a stop in the gravel behind the panel truck, and a man got out of it and opened the rear door for James Masters. The man took the bag, and James climbed in, and looked back at Janet again, this time for some seconds, before he closed it. He didn’t wave, he just looked. Then the car drove off and she was left standing on the grass.
With Happy Masters. “At last,” came that practiced, brown-sugar voice, and then the full round face turned to greet her. “Janet, welcome. Please follow me.”
Too stunned to speak, she did as she was told, pursuing Happy’s muscled derriere up the marble steps, passing a panting laborer on the way. If, out on the porch, James Masters’ gaze had been suffused with unreciprocated erotic energy—and now, with a moment to think about it, Janet realized that it had been—then here the opposite obtained, with Janet’s eyes tracing the flexing edges of Happy’s bottom, and her heart pulsing like a prison riot in her breast.
But it wasn’t just lust. (Though it was that.) It was the frisson of approved transgression, of a boundary being erased. This woman, whom she idolized, inviting her into her home, up the stairs and to some unimagined inner sanctum: she was reminded of a night when she was nine, back in Wisconsin, when she woke from a nightmare and, less terrified than lonely, came downstairs for a few moments of companionship. Her mother was slumped in a recliner—the one her father occupied during daylight hours—with a glass of red wine at her side rendering a wet pink circle on the jacket of a book nearly as thick as it was wide. The book was called Twentieth-Century French Poets. She could remember the title because she owned the book now (though had read little of it), and had added many rings of her own.
Melanie Ping, that night, had seemed glad to see her daughter. She was friendly, relaxed, content. These were not qualities Janet had, until this point, ever associated with her mother—generally, coming downstairs again after being put to bed resulted in, at the least, a firm command to return, if not a shout. But on this night, her mother extended a graceful hand, and smiled expansively, and said, “Jaaanet,” as if she had been sitting here waiting for Janet’s nightmare to happen.
“I had a bad dream,” Janet said.
“Poor kid,” Melanie Ping said. “C’mere.”
Janet went over and sat on the footstool her mother used in lieu of the lever-operated footrest, which had broken off. The chair had come that way—they found it by the side of the road near Janesville. Her mother ran her fingers through Janet’s hair. “Your grandmother’s hair,” she said.
“Grandma’s hair is curly. Like yours.”
“No,” she replied, and took a swig of the wine, “your father’s mother. The one you never met. You have her hair.”
Her mother’s fingers felt strange—she was not, ordinarily, a toucher.
“Was she nice?”
“No,” her mother said quickly, as if she’d been dying to say it. “She was a terrible old hag. I spent a week in her house. She gave me the evil eye.” Another swig.
The living room, where they were sitting, was her mother’s alone at this hour. After dark, Janet’s parents parted, indulging their preoccupations in separate rooms. Her mother read here, in this chair, and her father sat at the kitchen table, underneath the bright light, drinking decaffeinated coffee, reading week-old Chinese newspapers, and drawing diagrams on graph paper.
“That looks good,” Janet said, meaning the wine. She said it just to have something to say, a remark to combine with a shrug away from her mother’s fingers. But the fact was that it did look good—her mother truly savored each sip, closing her eyes i
n a kind of bliss that one might have mistaken for pain. Much later, Janet would know that sensation herself, the sting that alcohol created as it swept away anxiety, like peroxide on an open wound.
“You wouldn’t like it,” her mother told her.
“How do you know?”
The response was a shrug, followed by a nod of the head toward the glass. There was something amazing about this night—the reprieve from suffering that the dream’s end conferred; her mother’s acceptance of her here, in this sacred space; the soporific quality of their words, though Janet was now as awake as if it were morning: the combination seemed to imbue the glass of wine with magical power, like a potion. And there was nothing in the sip that Janet took to indicate otherwise. The tang of alcohol was like a spell, and with it she felt the roundness of the grape on her tongue, and the warmth of it in her throat, though it was no warmer than the air. Her mother was wrong: she loved it. She drank a lot of it in one long draught. Melanie Ping’s eyes grew wide and she laughed suddenly, a delighted cackle.
“I stand corrected!”
Janet smiled and replaced the glass where it had stood. It took willpower: she wanted it all. When, a few minutes later, she returned to bed, sleep came easily and lasted until late in the morning. She missed the school bus; her mother drove her in on the way to the college. The look they exchanged as Janet got out of the car was private and loving and proud.
Was it Janet’s imagination, here, today, that Happy Masters regarded her with a similar look when at last they reached her office? Probably it was. Square, unadorned, the room impressed Janet as a place where thoughts could be extended for hours without interruption—a luxurious inner sanctum. Happy sat down behind a large, dark, clean desk and gestured with a plump hand toward an empty chair. “Sorry for all the activity!” she said, in a tone not at all apologetic. “My babies have arrived. Someday the public will get to see them all, but for now they’re mine alone. It hardly seems fair.” On the floor beside the desk, a few of the coffins lay open, and dolls gazed up from beds of wood shavings. Janet thought of old photos she had seen, in a creepy book about nineteenth-century Wisconsin, of children, real children, lying dead in their coffins, their horrible eyes wide open, the life not yet fully drained from them.
She sat, suppressing a shudder. “So,” Happy said. “Let’s see what you have there.”
“Huh?”
“That book!”
Of course—Janet had forgotten she was holding it. She leaned forward, passing the book to Happy, who turned it over, approvingly, in her hands.
“Janet’s War,” she said. “First printing, no less. When I was writing them all myself.” She handed it back. “I suppose you know that’s quite a collector’s item.”
“Yes,” Janet said, though she hadn’t.
And suddenly Happy laughed. “I forgot! You probably want me to sign it!”
“Oh! Yes!” Handing it back.
Happy scrawled her name with a fountain pen produced from a drawer. “Now it’s worth twice as much!”
“I would never sell it,” Janet said, accepting the book with trembling hands.
Happy folded her hands together and leaned forward. “Oh, no? Why not?” And Janet sensed that the interview had begun.
“I just like keeping things. Important things.”
Happy nodded, leaned back again. It seemed to have been the correct answer. She waved toward a glass case against the wall. “That doll there, the one in the middle, is only worth about a hundred dollars. But she is the most valuable thing I own. It was she who started it all—she was the first.”
“When you were a girl?”
Happy snorted. “I was twenty-seven! I didn’t have much when I was a girl.”
“Me neither,” Janet said, and instantly felt the hot weight of the lie on her shoulders. Why had she said that? Her mother would have been appalled.
“Well,” said Happy Masters, “another reason for us to get along just fine.” And she offered what seemed a kind smile: the sort of smile, gentle and understanding, that Janet had long imagined Happy Masters would bestow upon her, if only they could meet. Janet returned it; she was helpless to do otherwise.
* * *
There was more than that, however, to that smile. Happy’s initial impression of Janet had not been good—there was something disgusting to her about her fans, the adult ones anyway. Middle-aged ladies in middle-class homes overflowing with Happy Girls merchandise: the orderly shelves of books in every imaginable edition, translated into every imaginable language; the Victorian sofas dedicated to seating dozens of dolls; entire rooms, floridly wallpapered and curtained, encrusted with every manner of Happy Girls paraphernalia—Happy had seen these things, they had sent her pictures. These women had carried their childish fixations into adulthood and adhered to them with a disturbing fervor. They had been brainwashed. They creeped Happy out.
And so, at first, had Janet. But the girl was different from her more matronly counterparts; she was devoted not to the Happy Girls brand, or aesthetic, or lifestyle. She was devoted to Happy herself: as a role model, perhaps, and maybe as other things as well. Most adult fans wanted to talk to Happy—they had ideas they wanted to share. They wanted to go out for coffee. But Janet barely spoke. She seemed satisfied to bask in Happy’s presence, and Happy suspected that Janet would do anything she asked, if she asked nicely.
A toy, in other words, that could be wound up and pointed in whatever direction Happy wished: to be sure, a useful and entertaining kind of thing to have around. They chatted for some time longer—twenty minutes, maybe—with Happy doing almost all of the talking, and a great deal of thinking as well. Perhaps Janet could be her mole at the college: she could gather information, profile personalities. All at minimum wage!
When she’d had enough, she guided Janet down the steps and showed her to the door. Yes, this would be excellent. What she would need now, however, was a mole in the town, as well—an intelligence officer who could serve in the future government, after the takeover. But that was for later. For now, there was Janet to inform—“You’re hired, Janet, why don’t you stop by tomorrow with your schedule?”—and send on her way.
Ah, the priceless expression on that baby face—so similar, actually, to Okinawa Michiko, Happy’s Pacific-theater World War II doll, which had never really taken off, perhaps owing to the gruesome taint of nuclear Armageddon—those big round eyes glittering with grateful tears! Perfect, just perfect. And then, a surprise—Janet reached out and embraced Happy, her narrow hands digging into her back. And when she pulled away, one of those hands found her cheek. Oh, my. Evidently shocked at her own behavior, Janet pulled the hand away quickly, drew back, hung her head. “Thank you,” she said, “oh, thank you,” and scurried off down the path to the driveway and street. She didn’t look back.
Peculiar girl.
12. We don’t recycle around here
Jennifer Treisman was possibly the only resident of Equinox who actually missed Glenda Parsons, and as she busied herself this late September day with the tedious task of repainting the pump island of Ice Cream & Gas, she ran, in her mind, through the series of twice-weekly encounters she had had with the old bitch over the years, trying to extract from them some sense of what precisely it was that she missed. She dragged the drooling-white brush over long-dried spatters of birdshit and the black smears of tire rubber, and remembered herself tossing pack after pack of cigarettes onto the market’s filthy countertop, and dropping bill after crumpled bill beside them; and she recalled Glenda’s countless series of slack, irritated frowns, and her grunts as she fished the change from the drawer, and the way she spat, “Wanna bag?” under her breath. Every encounter was identical, and identically unpleasant. And yet here Jennifer was, getting all misty over them. At some point Bud came out from the garage and asked, in his cringing way, what was, you know, up.
“Fuck off, Bud,” she replied.
“Aw, c’mon, Jenny,” he said, and retreated with the alacrit
y that long experience had taught him.
Jennifer supposed she had identified with Glenda Parsons: a middle-aged bitch herself, she hoped to become an old bitch someday. Glenda was the antithesis of the reflexive friendliness, the workaday bullshit courtesy, that everybody liked to indulge in all the time, and which Jennifer couldn’t stand. These apple-cheeked nineteen-year-old lesbos were in violation of the social order, whereas Glenda’s dirty looks were honest and right and pure. Her hostility was tinged with respect: she and Glenda were stubborn piss-ants who didn’t take shit from anybody.
So it was hard to believe that the old hag had checked out willingly: she might have offed herself, but she was driven to it. She had stood in the path of progress and got run over. Well, as far as Jennifer was concerned, that’s what the world needed more of: people who stood in the way. People who said, Go ahead, why don’t you kill me? And what the world needed fewer of was people full of bright ideas. People who wanted to plaster the landscape with frills and flounces and little pink polka dots. People like goddam…
“Hello!” Happy hooted from the window of her big red SUV. She’d slinked onto the lot without Jennifer noticing. “Good morning!” The cheerful little bobblehead smiled, the fat fingers waved, and Jennifer stood before her, in the middle of the lane, blocking the path to the pump.
Christ. Maybe she ought to just stand her ground, stare the dollie down until she gave up and left. “Why don’t you kill me?” she could shout, and close her eyes, and wait for the impact. But it cost a small fortune to fill up one of those idiotic cars, and there were bills to pay. With reluctance, and a familiar sense of defeat, she stepped aside and set the paint can on the ground.
“Whaddya want?” she said, as Happy slid into place.
“Ice cream and gas,” Happy chirped.
“Don’t be a wiseass.” And she headed for the pump.
“Jennifer? No, I’m sorry, you misunderstood.” Jennifer stopped and sighted down the broad side of the car. The head was poked sideways out the window. “My tank is full, and I’m not hungry. I just wanted to give you this.” And out came a hand bearing an envelope. “I want Ice Cream & Gas.”
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