Mrs Caliban and other stories

by Rachel Ingalls

  She looked like a nice, respectable woman; pretty, took care of herself. The kind that said no. Her clothes cost something, which was a good sign; so was the trouble she had getting the wheels of the case up on to the kerb. Of course, she could be getting on a train.

  He followed her all the way around the corner to the lockers. He watched, standing against the wall and pretending to look at his paper. When she was through, he followed her far enough to see that she was coining back. She put a lot of money in the locker: good – the case would be there a while. But he’d probably better get it quick, before somebody else did.

  She left the building. That might mean she was going for a second suitcase that she hadn’t been able to handle in the same load. He looked around, folded his paper, held it to cover what he was doing, and stepped up to the locker. He took a metal slide out of his pocket and stuck it into the keyhole. It was a cinch.

  Some people could never have looked unsuspicious while wheeling away stolen luggage, but you had to believe in yourself: that was the main thing. Ron did his best. He didn’t hurry. He got the bag into the back seat of his car and started off. Her car, he noticed, was already gone.

  Normally he’d have stopped just around the block somewhere, to go through the contents; but the traffic was building up. He decided to drive straight on home. He was beginning to get curious about what was inside. The suitcase was really heavy. The moment he’d pulled it from the locker he’d thought: Great – gold bars; silver candlesticks. A lot of people had those lockers. She hadn’t looked like that type, but how could you ever tell? She could be helping a pal, or a husband. A guy he knew had found some cash once – a whole overnight bag full of the stuff. And all of it counterfeit, it turned out; he’d done time for that.

  He got the bag out of the car, into the apartment block where he lived, up three floors in the elevator, down the hall to his bedroom. He broke the locks as soon as he’d thrown his jacket over the back of the easy chair. He unzipped both sides.

  A powerful odour of mothballs was released into the room as the lid sprang open, disclosing a blonde woman in a pink dress. She was huddled up like a baby rabbit and he was sure she was dead. He’d be suspected, of course. He’d have to ditch the case someplace, fast. He put his hand on her arm to squash her in again. The arm was warm. He jumped away. He closed the curtains and turned on the lights.

  He couldn’t put her back. She might be alive now, but soon she’d suffocate. It was a good thing he’d found her in time. When he thought of that respectable type who’d shut her in the locker, he was amazed.

  He got the plastic sheet he’d used to cover his Norton Atlas before one of his friends had borrowed the machine and smashed it to pieces. He spread the sheet over the bed and lifted the woman on top of it. He thought she looked fabulous, just like a dream. She seemed to be unharmed except for a mild discoloration on her left cheek, which might have been sustained in the packing. There was no blood that he could see. He thought he’d better do a complete check, to make sure she was all right. He took off her clothes. The dress was a bit weird, but she had some pretty classy underwear. Under the underwear was OK, too. He thought he might have some fun with her, while he was at it. He’d saved her life, after all: she owed him.

  He was beginning to wonder what was going on – despite the warmth, she didn’t actually seem to be breathing – when, accidentally, as he was running his hand through her hair, the side of his thumb hit two tiny, hard knobs of some kind and his problems were over.

  The woman sighed and stretched out her arms. Her hands came softly around his back. Her eyes opened, her mouth smiled. She said, ‘Ooh, you’re so nice.’

  *

  Helen was curled up in her favourite living-room chair when Edgar came in from work. She was reading the paperback she’d had to buy at the station; a nurse novel called Summer of Passion. She heard the car, the slam of the door, his feet crunching on the gravel of the driveway, the door being opened and shut. He called out, ‘Hi,’ going up the stairs. She answered, and read to the end of the paragraph: at last Tracy knew that she had found the man of her desires and that this summer of passion would live in her heart forever. Helen yawned. She put the phone bill between the pages of the book and stood up. Edgar was taking his time. Maybe he was running around the attic in circles, every time coming back to the empty sofa and not believing it. She didn’t feel sorry. She felt mean-hearted, even cruel, and absolutely satisfied. Let him be on the receiving end of things for a while. It might do him some good.

  The attic door slammed. He’d figured out she had to be the one to blame. He came thundering down the stairs and across the front hall. She put the book down on the coffee table. Edgar dashed into the room, breathing loudly. His hair was sticking up, as if he’d been running his hands through it. ‘Where is she?’ he demanded.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My experiment. You know what I’m talking about.’

  ‘Oh? It’s a she, is it?’

  ‘Where is she?’ he shouted. ‘You get her back here, or you’re going to wish you’d never been born.’ He took a step forward.

  ‘Oh no, you don’t,’ she said. ‘You lay a finger on me, and you’ll never see her again.’

  ‘What have you done with her?’

  ‘That’s my business. If you want her back, we’re going to have to talk it over.’

  He looked defiant, but he gave in. She took up her stance by the red roses, he struck a pose in front of the Chinese lamp with the decorations that spelled out Good Fortune and Long life. He said, ‘You don’t know what you’ve done. It’s a masterpiece. It’s as if you’d stolen the Mona Lisa. The eyes – my God, how I worked to get the eyes right. It’s a miracle.’

  A woman, she thought, can get the eyes and everything else right without any trouble: her creative power is inherent. Men can never create; they only copy. That’s why they’re always so jealous.

  ‘What’s her name, by the way?’ she asked.

  He looked embarrassed, finally. ‘Dolly,’ he said.

  ‘Brilliant. I suppose you’re going to tell me this is love.’

  ‘Helen, in case you still haven’t grasped it after all these years – my main interest in life is science. Progress. Going forward into the future.’

  ‘OK. You just let me know how long it’s going to take you to come up with the companion-piece.’

  ‘What?’

  This was her moment. She thought she might begin to rise from the floor with the rush of excitement, the wonderful elation: dizzying, intoxicating, triumphant. This was power. There was even a phrase for it: drunk with power. No wonder people wouldn’t give it up once they got hold of it. It was as if she’d been grabbed by something out of the sky, and pulled up; she was going higher and higher. Nothing could hurt her. She was invulnerable.

  ‘I want,’ she said, ‘what you had – something nice on the side. A male escort: presentable, amusing, and a real stud.’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘Then I guess it’s goodbye, Dolly.’

  ‘If you don’t tell me –’

  ‘Don’t you dare touch me,’ she shrieked. ‘It’s all right for you to play around in my own home, while I’m down here doing the housework, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t think you understand.’

  ‘I don’t?’

  ‘It’s just a doll.’

  ‘Pubic hair and nipples everywhere you look – that’s some doll. And what about that twitch and switch business she does? That’s a couple of giant steps ahead of the ones that just wet their pants and cry mama.’

  ‘It may turn out to have important medical uses. Ah … therapeutic.’

  ‘Good. That’s just what I’m in need of.’

  ‘Helen,’ he said, ‘let’s forget all about this.’

  ‘OK. It isn’t that important to me. I can find a real man anywhere. But if you want your Dolly back, you can make me a perfect one. That’s only fair. One for you and one for me.’

  ‘I don’
t know why you’re so steamed up.’

  ‘I’m not that crazy about adultery, that’s all. Especially if I’m the one who’s being acted against.’

  ‘There’s no question of adultery. In any case – well, in any case there’s no moral lapse unless it’s done with another person.’

  ‘No kidding? I thought the moral lapse was there even if you only did it in the mind.’

  ‘Let me explain it to you.’

  ‘Fine,’ she told him. ‘Just as long as you keep working at my gigolo. And if there aren’t any lapses, we’re both in the clear, aren’t we?’

  *

  The instant Dolly opened her eyes, Ron fell in love with her. Everything was different. Everything was solved. He’d never thought it would happen to him. He hadn’t believed in it: Love. It was going to come as a big surprise to his friends down at the gym – they’d all agreed long ago that life was a lot better without women. They’d just have to get used to her. She was part of his life now. The fact that she was a doll he regarded as an advantage. You didn’t need to feed her or buy her drinks or stop the car so she could keep looking for a rest room every five minutes. She was unchanging. The extraordinary skin she possessed cleaned and preserved itself without trouble; the mark on her cheek faded even before the smell of mothballs had worn off. A fresh, springlike fragrance seemed to breathe from her body. His friends would have to accept her as they’d have had to if he’d gotten married. That was what things were going to be like – like having a wife, except that not being human, of course, she was nicer.

  That first day, he figured out how to use all the push-buttons. He knew her name because she told him: she got right up close to his face, winked, gave a little giggle and whispered, ‘Dolly wants to play.’ She was so good at answering his questions that it took him some time to realize she was repeating, and that if he asked a particular question, she’d always give the same response, or one of several set replies. A similar repetitiveness characterized some of her physical reactions, but he didn’t mind that. And when you thought about it, her conversation wasn’t much more limited than most women’s. She sometimes said something that didn’t fit, that was all – never anything really stupid. And if she came up with the wrong wording, that wasn’t her fault. It almost never happened. Her answers were so good and she was so understanding about everything, that he believed she knew what he was getting at; even if she was a doll, even if she wasn’t real in any way. To him she was real. When he looked into her beautiful eyes, he was convinced that she loved him. He was happy. He was also sure that there were no others like her. There could be only one Dolly.

  He told her everything. All about himself, what he wanted out of life, what his dreams of success used to be, how he’d grown up: all the things he used to think. He didn’t know what he thought any more and he didn’t have any dreams left. He cried in her arms. She stroked his hair and called him darling. She said, ‘Hush, darling. It’s all right.’ He believed her. He talked to her for hours. He knew that if she could, she’d speak as freely as he did.

  *

  Edgar applied for emergency leave from his job. It knocked out the holiday they’d been planning to take with the boys in the summer vacation, but he needed the time. He worked all day and most of the night. Helen brought up his meals on a tray. She tried to make comments once. He screamed at her. He shouted threats, oaths and accusations, ending up with a warning that if she didn’t shut up about absolutely everything, he wouldn’t be responsible. She smiled. She said in her gooey, peacemaker’s voice, ‘What a pompous twerp you’ve turned into, Edgar.’ It was all out in the open now.

  And he no longer felt guilty about his infidelities, mental or physical. It served her right. He wished that he’d been more adventurous, all the way back to the beginning, when they’d married: he wished he’d led a double life – a triple one. It was galling to be so hard at work, wasting the strength of his body and brain on the creation of a thing intended to give her pleasure. He could do it, of course; he had mastered the technique and the principles. But it was infuriating. It seemed to him now that there hadn’t been a single moment when she’d been anything but a hindrance to him. She nagged, she had terrible moods, she wasn’t such a wonderful cook, every once in a while she made a truly embarrassing scene – like the one at Christmas with his uncle – and she could wear really dumpy clothes that he didn’t like. She’d keep wearing them after he’d expressly told her he didn’t like them. And he didn’t think she’d brought the boys up that well, either. They got away from her just in time.

  He had needed Dolly in order to keep on living with his wife. If he couldn’t have Dolly back, there was no point in going on. Now that there was no longer any secrecy, there was probably no more hope for his marriage. Still, as long as he could recover Dolly, there was hope for him.

  When he thought about Dolly, he was ready to go through any trial, do any amount of work. He missed her. He missed the laugh in her voice and the look in her eyes when she said, ‘Let’s have a good time. Let’s have a ball.’

  He lost his concentration for a moment. The scalpel slipped. The voicebox let out a horrible cry. He waited to see if Helen would come charging up the stairs to crouch by the banisters and listen. Nothing happened. Now that she knew, she wasn’t worried. She’d wait and be silent.

  *

  At the beginning Ron was satisfied with keeping Dolly in his bedroom. But as he began to depend on her, he felt the desire to take her out. He’d found the buttons to make her walk and respond to his request for her to sit down or get up. A mild pressure on her arm would help her to change pace, turn a corner. Naturally the pink dress wasn’t right for outdoor wear. He bought her a T-shirt and a skirt. She looked great in them. But the shoes were a problem: you had to try them on. He didn’t want to spend money on the wrong size. He asked his friend, Charlie, in a general way, what to do if you didn’t know your size and couldn’t put the shoes on to find out: if you were buying a present, say. Charlie told him to try L. L. Bean. ‘All you need to do,’ he told Ron, ‘is send them a tracing of your foot.’

  He had a lot of fun making the tracings with Dolly. He sent away for a pair of flat shoes. When they arrived, he walked her around the room in them for a long time, examining the skin on her feet at intervals. He didn’t know what would happen if her skin got badly broken or damaged. He had no idea where he could take her to be fixed. He asked if the shoes felt OK; she said everything was just fine and she loved him – he was wonderful.

  He sent away for a pair of high heels and some rubber boots as well as socks, a parka, a shirt and a sweater, a pair of corduroy trousers and a blue and white flannel nightgown with ruffles around the neck. He also went out and bought some fingernail polish. Her nails appeared to be indestructible, but the polish was chipping. The girl behind the counter gave him a little lecture about the necessity of removing the old polish before putting on a second coat. She sold him quite a lot of cosmetic equipment. He thought, since he was there, he might buy eye make-up and lipstick, too. ‘Does it come with instructions?’ he asked. The salesgirl sold him a book with pictures and an expensive box full of tiny brushes.

  He got hold of an airport case that contained a roll of traveller’s cheques and five silk suits. He won on the races and after that, at the tables. Dolly was bringing him luck.

  He took her out. People turned to look at her because she was so beautiful, not because they thought something was wrong. He felt like a million dollars walking down the street with her. It was too bad that he couldn’t get her to eat or drink, because then he’d be able to take her into a restaurant or a bar. But just walking along, arm in arm, was nice. One afternoon he bumped into Charlie, who took a look at Dolly and nearly fell over. ‘Jeez, Ron,’ he said, ‘what a doll.’

  Dolly wrinkled up her nose and giggled. She squirmed a little with excitement. Her eyes got bigger.

  ‘Jeez,’ Charlie said again. ‘You going to introduce me?’

  ‘Charlie, this
is Dolly,’ Ron said. ‘Say hi, honey.’

  ‘Hi, honey,’ Dolly said. She put her hand in Charlie’s.

  Charlie said, ‘Oh, boy. You been holding out on us, pal. Hi there, Dolly. I don’t know why my old buddy Ron here didn’t tell me about you before.’

  ‘We got to be going,’ Ron said.

  ‘Oh, come on. You don’t have to go, do you, Dolly?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ron said. ‘Say goodbye, sugarpie.’

  Dolly twiddled her fingers at Charlie. She gave him a breathy, hicupping laugh and then whispered, ‘Goodbye, sugarpie.’

  ‘Oh, boy,’ Charlie said again.

  Ron pulled her away fast. She clip-clopped beside him quickly in her high heels, her hips swaying, her large eyes roving happily.

  It hadn’t gone too badly, but he didn’t trust her for extended conversation. He figured they’d better put in some practice first.

  He took on a job delivering goods for a friend. Everything was packed up in boxes. Maybe the boxes contained stuff he shouldn’t know about. Normally he wouldn’t care, but now he kept thinking about Dolly: what would happen to her if he got caught? She’d be found by somebody else, who’d take her away and keep her, just the way he had.

  He stopped checking out the airport lockers. He began to look through the papers for legitimate work. Down at the gym they thought he was crazy – at least, they did at first. Word had gone around about Dolly; everybody asked about her. When was Ron going to bring her in to meet the gang?

  He coached her for a while and then took her down to the gym. They all loved her. And they thought she was real. They said they could understand how Ron would want to settle down to something steady, if he had a girl like that. An older man named Bud actually clapped him on the shoulder and said something about wedding bells.