The Dollhouse

by Fiona Davis

  “You can find someone who’s much better, I’m sure.”

  “It’s not about that. It’s about the way we sound together.” Confusion wrinkled Esme’s forehead, her bright red mouth set in a pout. “You really don’t want to?”

  Darby didn’t know how to make her understand. “You’re destined for something big, I know that. But I’m not. Why pretend? I’ll only embarrass myself.”

  “You need to change the way you look at things. Why settle for your mother’s sad little picture of you? Who cares what she thinks?”

  Esme’s words rankled. “You don’t know my mother, or what we’ve been through.”

  “I know that she wants to turn you into a bore. When you should be enjoying life, enjoying being a beautiful girl in Manhattan.”

  “First of all, I’m not beautiful. Second, it’s better to be a bore who can support herself than to throw everything away on a whim. Mother had to marry Mr. Saunders to survive. Her only skills are gossiping and playing tennis. She had nothing to fall back on. What will you do if everything collapses underneath you?”

  Esme’s eyes were fierce. “I’m scrambling to make a living, so I know what it is to work hard and take care of myself. If I don’t become a star, I guess I’ll be a maid at the Barbizon the rest of my life.”

  “No!”

  “You got that right.”

  Darby blushed with shame. She had no right to assume anything about her friend. Coming to New York City from Puerto Rico was completely different from her posh train trip East. “You’ve got a point. You work hard. What have I done? Graduated from high school. That’s it. You’re glamorous and you can sing and act. You can probably tap-dance, too, am I right?”

  Esme wasn’t so easily placated. “Why do you hide from everything that life is throwing at you right now? You can make some easy money, and instead you want to stay uptown and practice typing. You have until June, and then my guess is you’re going to run back to your mother and work as a secretary at the local high school or something like that.”

  She didn’t want to mention Charlotte’s offer after the fashion show. Esme would get upset, and by the time Charlotte returned from London, she’d probably have forgotten all about their exchange anyway. “Mother wrote and said she’ll be able to get me a job in Cleveland, working for some businessman Mr. Saunders knows. It’s in the sanitation industry, apparently.”

  Esme threw back her head and laughed, causing the old ladies sitting nearby to tut-tut at them. She pretended to be typing. “Dear ma’am, I’m sorry our toilets have been backing up on you. I assure you that your sewage is our foremost concern.”

  “It’s a steady job.” Darby scooped some custard out of her éclair with her finger. Esme’s teasing hurt. “Or maybe I’ll go into publishing.”

  Esme grimaced. “Don’t be stupid. Either way, you’re stuck behind a desk all day. There’s my friend. I’ll be right back.”

  Esme crossed the room, sashaying with every step, and sat down across from an older man, maybe in his thirties, with tightly cropped hair and a rumpled brown suit. He spoke hurriedly, barely moving his mouth. Esme reached into her purse and handed a small parcel to him, which he glanced at before tucking into his jacket pocket.

  She was back at the table a couple of minutes later.

  “Who was that?”

  “Guy from my acting class. Wants to do a scene with me, but I’m not so sure.”

  “Why did he come all the way here to meet?”

  “He wanted the notes from our scene study class. He missed it last week.”

  “What kind of notes?”

  Esme picked up her éclair and took a big bite, the custard oozing out the other end.

  “That’s indecent,” Darby said, giggling.

  “Anyway, his name is Peter and he’s too old to be going to acting school. Kind of creepy, didn’t you think?”

  “I guess so. Is there an age limit on acting class?”

  “Nope. Especially with the soldiers; we got lots of those.”

  “Is Peter a soldier?”

  “No idea. You have a lot of questions. Now it’s my turn. What about Sam?”

  “What about him?”

  “He likes you. He took you to see his mentor, Mr. Kalai, right?”

  “He did.” A cold sweat rose up her neck.

  “Aren’t you the lucky girl? Maybe when Sam’s brother comes back, we’ll double-date.”

  “Sam has a brother?” She was surprised he’d never mentioned it.

  “Drummer. Very talented. Mr. Buckley thinks the world of him and lets him do whatever he likes. He’s off on tour now, but he promised to take me out when he returns. Can you imagine, you and me as the Mrs. Buckleys?”

  “But your career comes first.”

  “It does. And don’t ever forget that. Hey, I just thought of something to convince you to sing with me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Finish your dessert and I’ll show you.”

  Hordes of people had descended upon Times Square for the Wednesday matinees, and the girls were forced to walk in the street to avoid being separated.

  “Like a bunch of cows this time of the week,” yelled Esme. “Being herded into their stalls for milking.”

  Esme grabbed Darby’s hand and pulled her close. She’d narrowly missed being sideswiped by a yellow cab. Darby stifled the urge to put her hands to her ears, overwhelmed by the noises. Honking, screeching brakes, and giddy conversation swirled around her. She clutched her purse to her side and held Esme’s hand tight as they cut through the throng like ants tunneling through sand.

  Once they were inside a double glass door, the noises were just as loud, only different. Arcade games blasted tinny music, and high-pitched bells rang at irregular intervals.

  “What are we doing here?” Darby stopped in her tracks, refusing to go any farther. “I have a class to get to.”

  “The Playland arcade; it’s famous. Come on, this won’t take long.”

  At the very back of the arcade, nestled in a corner, was what looked like a blue phone booth. VOICE-O-GRAPH was printed on the outside in cursive letters. The side was emblazoned with MAKE A RECORD HERE, PLAY IT ANYWHERE.

  The memory of the boy in the park, Walter, swept over Darby. He’d worked for this company, had told her about the machine that recorded sounds. She didn’t want to step foot in the thing.

  “It’s a kind of recording studio, a tiny one.” Esme stopped and posed beside it, twirling her wrists and presenting the booth as if she were one of the girls hawking washing machines on television ads.

  Darby laughed. Walter wasn’t anywhere near this place; she had no reason to be afraid. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’ll drop in a quarter, and then we sing into the telephone. Once we’re done, a record drops out the bottom.”

  “So you want to sing into it?”

  “I want us both to sing. We’ll do ‘Lover, Come Back to Me.’ Then I’ll play it back for you and you’ll see what we sound like, what you sound like. Come on, it’ll be fun.” Esme popped open her purse and held up a shiny quarter with her gloved fingers. “Follow me.”

  They squeezed into the booth and Esme slammed the door shut behind them. Inside, the air was still and quiet, a relief after all the commotion. A regular telephone handset was attached to the machine with a black wire, with instructions printed in block letters at eye level. Esme dropped in the quarter and picked up the handset. “You ready? Come closer.”

  Esme wrapped her free arm around Darby’s waist and pulled their bodies together, as if they were conjoined twins. The red light turned to green and a nervous laugh escaped from Darby’s lips. Esme sang the first line and Darby joined in, their eyes glued on each other. With no band behind them, the timing was slow, languid. Darby took her cues from Esme as Esme’s fingers tapped the be
at on Darby’s side. As the seconds ticked by, the outside world faded away. Stenography, Sam, the girls at the Barbizon, none of that mattered anymore. Esme’s face was just inches away. The button turned red in the middle of a line and they both stopped singing at the same time, then burst out laughing.

  “That was ridiculous,” said Darby. “And fun.”

  “I told you.” Esme didn’t release her grip on Darby. Unexpectedly, she leaned in and gave her a quick kiss on the lips.

  Darby drew back as much as she could in the cramped space. “Esme.”

  “Sorry, you looked so beautiful as you sang, I couldn’t help myself.” She reached up and touched Darby’s face, her fingers soft as they ran over her jawline and up to her ear.

  Darby stood frozen in place as the feathery tracing of her ear sent tiny shock waves down her body. The gesture was innocent, almost childlike, and Esme gazed at her with her lips slightly parted. Their breasts touched when Esme inched closer and this time Darby didn’t pull away. She wanted to soak up the essence of this woman, this human gravitational force who had pulled Darby into her orbit.

  The sound of the record dropping into the knee-level slot broke Darby out of her trance.

  Esme reached down and grabbed it, then held the recording up, one arm still around Darby’s waist. “Now we’re going to go and listen to it.”

  “Where? I don’t have a phonograph.”

  “No, but I know someone who does.”

  Darby was dying to hear the recording, she had to admit. But when she realized what Esme had planned, she wished she’d gone back to Katie Gibbs instead.

  “We can’t go in there. What if she’s there?” whispered Darby, as they stood outside Candy’s room at the Barbizon. Esme held the master key in her hand, inches from the doorknob. Darby hadn’t spoken to Candy since the awful night when Esme had come to her aid.

  Esme knocked. “Laundry delivery.”

  No one answered.

  “It’ll only take a minute.”

  She let them in and closed the door softly behind them. Darby’s heart pounded; she didn’t want to hear the recording this badly. If they were caught in another girl’s room uninvited, she’d be kicked out of the hotel and Esme would be fired. And she was still confused by what had happened in the booth.

  By the time she opened her mouth to say something, Esme had opened the phonograph on Candy’s desk. She snapped on the record and dropped the needle.

  The sound was soft at first; then Esme turned a dial and their voices rang out in the tiny room.

  “Too loud,” warned Darby.

  Esme turned it up even louder. “Just listen.”

  Esme’s voice was as Darby had always heard it, smoky, strong, and low. As if her throat were made of the finest sandpaper, roughening up her breath as it traveled from her lungs. Darby’s own voice, which she’d always believed to be too reedy, softened the tone. The individual strains melded into one voice, Darby’s harmonies pure and on pitch.

  “It’s beautiful.” Darby nodded. “You were right. We’re good together.”

  “Because your voice is gorgeous.”

  “Thanks.”

  Outside, a door slammed. Esme grabbed the record, handed it to Darby, and closed the lid of the phonograph. They huddled by the door, listening for sounds of activity.

  “I’ll go first, wait here,” directed Esme. “When I give you the signal, head to your room. I’m on duty, so I’m going straight to the basement.”

  Darby nodded.

  “But you’ll sing with me, right? You promise?”

  As if she had a choice. Would Esme have kissed her if she hadn’t wanted her help? The sensation of her lips lingered.

  “I will. I promise.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  New York City, 2016

  The evening after the talk with Malcolm, Rose opened a bottle of wine and worked her way through Darby’s bebop collection. The recklessness of the music matched her mood. She rummaged through the drawers of Darby’s desk while a Sarah Vaughan record played in the background.

  The top drawer contained receipts and ancient office supplies, including a pad of carbon paper. Nothing to provide any inkling of where Darby had run off to. The red light on her answering machine stayed unblinking, no new messages.

  Before Stella had gone into the hospital, she’d implied that Darby rarely traveled anywhere. So why had she left in such a rush now? She’d left behind no clues at all.

  Rose yawned, the wine kicking in. She grabbed the top issue of The New Yorker magazine from a stack piled up under the desk and carried it to the couch. She’d find a story she’d never usually read, a profile of a sports hero or something like that, and drift off to sleep. But the corner of one page, near the front of the magazine, had been turned over. The jazz listings. In fact, Darby had circled several of the week’s events, and placed a couple of exclamation marks by two. Both were tributes to old bebop heroes. Rose worked her way through the rest of the issues and every one was similarly marked. Circles, exclamation points, and short notations in the margin. Darby had certainly stayed on top of the latest performances. Which explained her late-night forays.

  The ladies would make excellent subjects, but she needed Darby’s contribution to make it sing. Darby would open up to her, she was sure of it. Even Bird had warmed up to her presence. She looked down at him now, wheezing into her armpit, and a wave of melancholy washed over her. What she was doing was wrong, stalking the back stairways of the Barbizon like a crazy woman. She wasn’t hanging around the building because of the research or the dog.

  She couldn’t bear to sever the last tie with the man who’d broken her heart.

  But enough was enough. The next day at work, Rose spent most of the morning scouring the real estate listings for a reasonable rental. The prices were a shock, a reminder of how long ago she’d moved into her apartment in the Village, and how quickly the cost of living had risen. Even apartments out in the farthest corners of Brooklyn were unreasonable, considering the fact that she would be paying for her father’s room and board at the same time.

  She’d stopped by a couple of days ago and been alarmed by the change in him. He tried to get up and open a window three times, waiting until her gaze was averted to the book she was reading aloud from. He jumped up with the swiftness of one of those dancers in the old movies, but when he couldn’t manage the lock, he pounded on the glass and tried to roar. The sound came out strangled.

  Rose quickly called for the nurses and they resettled him in the chair, but in her heart she knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to leap out the window, replace the antiseptic environment with freedom and the feel of the wind. It was what she would have wanted to do as well.

  “How’s the Barbizon project going?”

  Tyler stood at the doorway to his office.

  Rose minimized her browser, hiding the apartment listings from view. “Fine. We’ve got some footage and started in on the interviews.”

  “Make sure it’s not depressing.”

  “Sure thing.”

  After he’d slammed his door shut with more emphasis than necessary, Rose turned back to her monitor.

  Two of the real estate listings up in Washington Heights might work. The photos were nice enough. The rent was high, but if she took some extra freelance work, she could manage it, just barely. Something to ask Jason about.

  She made calls to the real estate agents and left messages. Good. She was on her way.

  After transcribing Malcolm’s interview, she looked up at the clock. Early afternoon. The best part of being a journalist was you could always use the excuse of research when sitting at a desk became unbearable. And if walking Bird in the park on a glorious summer day, thinking about the ladies of the fourth floor, counted as research, so be it.

  Bird seemed pleasantly surprised when she showed up at the apartm
ent and took him off to the park. During this time of day, the river of motion on the park’s main road was constant, with cyclists weaving around horse-drawn carriages, pedicabs, and spandex-clad joggers. Somehow, all the different speeds and methods of conveyance managed to work together. Every so often, a family of tourists on clunky rental bikes broke the trend by going clockwise, the mother looking panicked, the father grimacing, kids ducking their heads in embarrassment. The cyclists on road bikes, who considered themselves the top tier of park users, hollered out in annoyance as they whizzed by.

  Today the park seemed to be filled with couples walking hand in hand. Before Griff, she’d dated several men, boys really. Some were charismatic at first, then grew tiresome. Or grew tired of her. But Griff was an adult, successful in his career and respected by the maître d’s of the fancy restaurants he took her to.

  One evening early in their relationship, they’d taken a leisurely stroll together past the Boathouse, the restaurant perched over the lake in the middle of Central Park. Griff admired the building out loud, and she admitted she’d never been inside. “Too many tourists,” she said, laughing. “Who else would be willing to pay so much for a tired piece of steak?”

  “We are,” he answered, a boyish smile lighting his face. And with that, he dragged her through the double doors, and they drank two bottles of wine while watching the rowboats idling on the pond. A terrible thunderstorm sprang up, as if on cue, while they shared profiteroles for dessert. While the thunder roared and rain poured against the glass walls, he kissed her and told her he loved her.

  He’d been the driving force in their relationship, and she was only too happy to enjoy his attention. Slowly, she gave up her identity, leaving her apartment and her job for what she assumed was the next step in her life. Marriage, supporting a husband who had political aspirations. Then he blew it all to bits.

  She reached the terrace that overlooked the boat pond, with the restaurant off to the right, and the enormous angel sculpture spurting white water into Bethesda Fountain in the plaza below. A group of teenagers splashed each other with water and shrieked, the girls covering their heads, all black fingernails and long legs. One of the teens was louder than the others, more physical with the boys. Rose stared hard before she recognized the girl. One of Griff’s daughters.