Ron wondered if maybe he could get away with introducing her to his sister and her family. He didn’t see why not. He phoned Kathleen. She said sure.
‘Only thing is,’ he explained, ‘she’s on this very strict diet, so she won’t eat anything. I thought I’d better tell you.’
‘Well, I can fix her a salad.’
‘No, it’s sort of everything. She’s allergic.’
Kathleen told him not to worry. He put Dolly into the car, together with a change of clothes and her rubber boots. He drove carefully, thinking all the time that if they crashed, or if she were to cut herself in some other way, he wouldn’t know what to do, where to take her. He didn’t even know what was inside her; if she got hurt seriously, whatever was in there might all leak out.
Kathleen decided, as soon as she saw Dolly: she didn’t like her. Her husband, Ben, thought Dolly was great. The children liked her too, but they didn’t understand why she wouldn’t pat their dog, when it was evidently so interested in her and kept sniffing around her. Ron grabbed the dog and kept it by him. Later in the afternoon while they were walking along the path by the creek, the dog ran ahead and almost made Dolly trip over. At that moment Ron thought it couldn’t work: his friends at the gym were going to accept her, real or not, but his family never would.
Before he drove off he sat Dolly in the car, walked back to where Kathleen was standing, and asked, ‘Well? Do you like her?’
‘Sure. She’s fine,’ Kathleen said. ‘A little dumb, maybe.’
‘But nice. She’s got a heart of gold.’
‘I guess it’s just – if people are really silly all the time, it’s too much like being with the kids. I start to get aggravated.’
All the way back to town he felt angry. It wasn’t right that he should have to hide Dolly away like a secret vice. She should be seen and admired.
The next day he took her on an expedition into town: through the parks, into the big stores, around one of the museums. The weather was good, which was lucky. He didn’t know how she’d react to rain or whether she’d be steady on her feet over wet sidewalks. Of course, he didn’t know how a prolonged exposure to sunlight was going to affect her, either, but she seemed all right. Her feet, too, looked all right.
He took her by public transport, since that was part of the idea. They rode on the subway, then they changed to a bus. He had his arm around her as usual, when one of the other passengers got up from the seat behind them, knocking Ron’s arm and the back of Dolly’s head as he went by. Ron clutched her more tightly; inadvertently he hit several of the control buttons.
Dolly’s arms raised themselves above her head, her eyelids flickered, her legs shot apart, her hips began to swing forward and back. ‘Ooh,’ she said, ‘you’re so good.’
He tried to find the switch. He panicked and turned it on higher by mistake.
She went faster, gasping, ‘Ooh, you feel so nice, ooh do it to me.’
He fumbled at her hairline while people around them said, ‘Come on, Mister, give us a break,’ and, ‘That’s some girlfriend you’ve got – can’t you do it at home?’
He found the switch just as she was telling him – and the whole bus – the thing she loved best about him.
The driver put on the brakes and said, ‘OK, Mac, get that tramp out of my bus.’
Ron refused. If he got out with Dolly before he’d planned to, he’d never be able to walk her to where they could get a cab or find another bus. ‘She can’t help it,’ he said. ‘She’s sick.’
The driver came back to insist; he had a big beer-belly. Ron got ready to punch him right in the middle of it and then drive the bus away himself. Dolly slumped against him, her face by his collarbone, her eyes closed. ‘It just comes over her sometimes,’ he said. That wasn’t enough of an explanation, apparently. He added, ‘She had a real bad time when she was a kid.’
The bus went quiet. Everyone thought over the implications of what Ron had said. The driver went back to the wheel. The bus started up again. Still no one spoke. The silence was beginning to be painful. Ron didn’t know why he’d chosen that particular thing to say, even though it had worked – it had shut everybody up fine. But it left him feeling almost as strange as everyone else seemed to. By the end of the ride he’d begun to have a clear idea of the appalling childhood Dolly must have lived through. And he promised himself to take even better care of her than before, in order to make up for her sad life.
When his stop came, he carried her out in his arms. She appeared to be asleep. A few of the other passengers made hushed exclamations and murmurs of interest as he left.
He had to admit that there was always going to be a risk if he took her out in public. Driving alone with her in the car wouldn’t be such a problem. He wanted to take her to the beach: to camp in the dunes and make love on the sands at night. He thought her skin would be proof against the abrasions of sand, the burning of the sun, the action of salt water. But he wasn’t sure. The more he thought about her possible fragility, the more he worried. If he were hurt, even severely, he could be put together again: but could she?
*
Helen did the shopping, cooked the meals and began a thorough cleaning of everything in the house: the curtains, the chair covers, the rugs. She wouldn’t have a spare moment to use for thought. She wanted to maintain her sense of outrage at a high level, where it could help to keep her active. She had no intention of breaking down into misery. She vacuumed and ironed and dusted. She washed and scrubbed. Once, just for a moment, her anger subsided and she felt wounded.
Edgar had done all that, she thought – he’d been driven to it, because she wasn’t enough for him. She obviously hadn’t been good enough in bed, either, otherwise he wouldn’t have needed such a blatant type as compensation for her deficiencies. Her only success had been the children. She should really give up.
She caught herself just in time. She fought hard against despair, whipping her indignation up again. If things were bad, you should never crumple. Do something about it – no matter what. She stoked her fury until she thought she could do anything, even break up her marriage, if she had to. She was too mad to care whether she wrecked her home or not. Let him suffer for a change, she thought.
She could sue him: win a divorce case hands down. You could cite anybody nowadays. There had been a story in the papers recently about a man whose wife, without his knowledge, and – if he’d known – against his will, had had herself impregnated by a machine in a sperm-bank clinic. The husband had accused as co-respondent, and therefore father of the child, the technician who’d switched on the apparatus. The fact that the operator of the machine was a woman had made no difference in law. And soon you’d be able to say it was the machine itself. Helen could name this Dolly as the other woman. Why not? When she produced the doll in court and switched on the buttons that sent her into her act, they’d hand the betrayed wife everything on a plate: house, children, her car, his car, the bank accounts – it would be a long list. If she thought about it, she might rather have just him. So, she wasn’t going to think about it too hard. She kept on doing the housework.
Up in the attic Edgar worked quickly – frenetically, in fact – although to him it seemed slow. When the replica was ready, he brought it downstairs to the living room and sat it on a chair. He called out, ‘Helen,’ as she was coming around the corner from the hall. She’d heard him on the stairs.
‘Well, it’s ready,’ he told her.
She looked past him at the male doll sitting in the armchair. Edgar had dressed it in one of his suits.
‘Oh, honestly, Edgar,’ she said.
‘What?’ He sounded close to collapse. He probably hadn’t slept for days.
She said, ‘He looks like a floorwalker.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with him. It’s astounding, given the short time –’
‘He looks so namby-pamby. I bet you didn’t even put any hair on his chest.’
‘As a matter of fact –’
‘You didn’t?’
‘The hair is extremely difficult to do, you know. I wasn’t aware that all women found it such a necessary item. I understand a lot of them hold just the opposite view.’
‘And the skin. It’s too smooth and soft-looking. It’s like a woman’s.’
‘Well, that’s the kind I can make. Damn it, it’s an exceptionally lifelike specimen. It ought to give complete satisfaction.’
‘It better,’ she said. She glared at the doll. She didn’t like him at all. She moved forward to examine him more closely.
‘And now,’ Edgar announced, ‘I want Dolly.’
‘Not till I’ve tried him out. What’s this? The eyes, Edgar.’
‘They’re perfect. What’s wrong with them?’
‘They’re blue. I wanted them brown.’
‘Blue is the colour I know how to do.’
‘And he’s so pale. He almost looks unhealthy.’
‘I thought of building him so he’d strangle you in bed.’
She smiled a long, slow smile she’d been practising. It let him know that she realized she was in control of the situation. She asked him if he wanted to check into a hotel somewhere, or maybe he’d stay up in the attic: because she and her new friend planned to be busy in the bedroom for a while.
‘Don’t overdo it,’ he told her. ‘It’s possible to injure yourself that way, you know.’
‘You let me worry about that.’ She asked for full instructions about the push-button system. She got the doll to rise from the chair and walk up the stairs with her. Edgar went out and got drunk for two days.
She tried out the doll at all the activities he was capable of. She still didn’t like him. He didn’t look right, he could be uncomfortable without constant monitoring, and his conversation was narrow in the extreme. His sexual prowess was without subtlety, charm, surprise, or even much variety. She didn’t believe that her husband had tried to shortchange her; he simply hadn’t had the ingenuity to programme a better model.
As soon as Edgar sobered up, he knocked at the door. He was full of demands. She didn’t listen. She said, ‘Who was the nerd you modelled this thing on?’
‘I didn’t. He’s a kind of conglomerate.’
‘Conglomerate certainly isn’t as good as whoever it was you picked to make the girl from.’
‘I didn’t pick anyone. Dolly isn’t a copy. She’s an ideal.’
‘Oh, my. Well, this one is definitely not my ideal.’
‘Tough. You made a bargain with me.’
‘And you gave me a dud.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘He’s so boring to talk to, you could go into rigor mortis halfway through a sentence.’
‘I didn’t think you wanted him to be able to discuss the novels of Proust.’
‘But that could be arranged, couldn’t it? You could feed some books into him?’
‘Sure.’
‘And he isn’t such a high-stepper in the sack.’
‘Come on, Helen. Anything more and you’ll rupture yourself.’
‘Reprogramming is what he needs. I can tell you exactly what I want added.’
‘You can go jump in the lake.’
‘And I want him to teach me Italian. And flower painting and intermediate cordon bleu.’
‘No demonstration stuff. I can do a language if you get me the tapes, but they’ll have to be changed when you graduate to the next stage. There isn’t that much room inside for extra speech.’
He was no longer angry or contemptuous. He looked exhausted. He made all the changes she’d asked for on the doll and added a tape of Italian lessons. She tried everything out. The renovated model was a great improvement. She felt worse than ever.
‘Where is she?’ Edgar pleaded, looking beaten, unhappy, hopeless.
Helen gave him the key to the locker.
*
Ron stopped taking Dolly to the gym when the boys began to pester him with too many questions. They pressed up around her in a circle, trying to find out what she thought of everything; that got him nervous and mixed her up. And then they started on him. What they most wanted to know was: where did she come from?
He had no answer to that, but no ideas about it, either. Lots of things – some of the most important things in life – remained completely mysterious. That didn’t matter. It made more sense just to be happy you had them instead of asking questions about them all the time.
But one day while they were making love, instead of waiting for the end of the cycle she was on, Dolly went into a totally different one. Ron guessed that he must have given her some verbal instruction or physical signal. She started to do things he hadn’t realized she knew about. He’d never done them himself, only heard about them. He did his best to keep up. She laughed with pleasure and said, ‘Does Edgar love his Dolly?’
‘Who’s Edgar?’ he asked.
‘Edgar’s Dolly’s honeybunch, isn’t he? Dolly’s so happy with her great big gorgeous Edgar, especially with his great big gorgeous –’
‘I ain’t Edgar,’ Ron yelled at her. He did something calculated to startle and possibly hurt her. She told him he was wonderful, the best she’d ever had: her very own Edgar.
It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t know any better. But it just about killed him.
He began to feel jealous. He hadn’t wanted to think about how she was made – he’d assumed that she’d been made by machines. But now he had it figured out: she’d been custom-made for one person – a man named Edgar. It still didn’t occur to him that this Edgar could have built her himself. He didn’t think of things as being made by people. He thought of them as being bought in stores. She would have come from some very fancy place like the big stores where rich people bought diamond necklaces and matching sets of alligator-skin luggage, and so on. You could have all that stuff custom-made.
Someone else had thought her up. She’d been another man’s invention. And Ron hadn’t been the first to love her; he was sure about that. A sadness began to grow in him. The fact that she couldn’t hold a real converstion still didn’t bother him, nor that the things she said were always the same. What caused him pain was to hear her calling him by another’s man’s name. He began to think he could live with that too if only in some other phrase she’d occasionally call him by his own name, too.
The sadness began to overshadow his love to such an extent that he thought he’d have to do something about it. He got the suitcase out from the back of the closet and went over the inside. There was a piece of white cardboard tucked into one of the shirt-racks in the underside of the top lid. Someone had written a name and address on the card, together with a promise to reward the finder for the return of the case. The name matched the initials on the outside. The first letter of each was E; E for Edgar, maybe. People were so dumb, Ron thought. He’d never put a name or address on anything he was carrying around. Somebody could decide to come after you and clean up.
He put the card in his wallet but he still hadn’t really made up his mind.
The next morning everything was decided for him while he was making breakfast in the kitchen. He’d cracked a couple of eggs into the frying pan and was walking over to the garbage pail with the shells. One of them jumped out of his hand. He scooped it up again and threw it out with the others. He meant to wipe a rag over the part of the floor where it had landed but the eggs started to sizzle in the pan. He stepped back to the stove. And at that moment, Dolly came into the room. Before he had a chance to warn her, she was all over the place – skidding and sliding and landing with a thump.
He picked her up and sat her down on top of the folding stool. He asked, ‘Are you OK, honey?’ She smiled and said she was fine. But he could see, in the middle of her right arm, a dent. He touched the centre of the injured place lightly with the tips of his fingers, then he pushed the flat of his hand firmly over the higher edge of the indentation; he hoped that the pressure would bring the hollow back up to its normal level. But nothing
changed. The thing he was afraid of had happened.
‘Dolly’s hurt,’ she said. ‘Dolly needs a four-five-four repair.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Dolly needs a four-five-four repair on her arm.’
‘Uh-huh,’ he said. He didn’t know what to do. All through the day he watched her, to see if the dent got bigger. It didn’t; it stayed the same, but at regular intervals she reminded him that she needed to have the arm seen to.
He knew that it was dangerous to keep putting off the moment of action. He should find out what she’d need to have done if something worse went wrong. He could only do that by getting hold of whoever knew how to fix her; and then by trickery, threats, bribes, blackmail or violence, making sure he got the person to help him. If he could find somebody to teach him how to carry out all her repair work himself, that was what he’d like best.
*
When Edgar began his drive back to the house, Helen was sitting on the living room sofa at the opposite end from the male doll, who was teaching her how to conjugate the verb to be in Italian. While she was answering the questions put to her, she stared up at the wall, near the ceiling. She was already tired of him. The renovations had been minimal, she decided. Edgar wasn’t able to programme a better man, more intelligent, attractive. Perhaps no alterations would make any difference; maybe she just wanted him to be real, even if he was boring. Edgar evidently felt the other way: what he’d loved most about Dolly was that she was perfect, unreal, like a dream. The element of fantasy stimulated him.
For Helen, on the contrary, the excitement was over. Even the erotic thrill was gone. Owning the doll was probably going to be like driving a car – you’d begin by playing with it for fun and thinking it was a marvellous toy: but you’d end up putting it to practical use on chores like the shopping. From now on she’d be using the doll only as a routine measure for alleviating frustration. As soon as Edgar got Dolly back, there’d be plenty of opportunity for feeling frustrated and neglected.
She remembered what Edgar had said about the possible therapeutic value of such a doll. It could be true. There might be lots of people who’d favour the companionship of a non-human partner once a week. Or three times a day. No emotions, no strings attached. She thought about her sons: the schoolboy market. There were many categories that came to mind – the recently divorced, the husbands of women who were pregnant or new mothers, the wives of men who were ill, absent, unable, unfaithful, uninterested. And there would be no danger of venereal disease. There were great possibilities. If the idea could be turned into a commercial venture, it might make millions. They could advertise: Ladies, are you lonely? She might lend the doll to Gina and see what she thought.
Mrs Caliban and other stories Page 35