“I’ve never seen so many dolls,” Claire crept closer. She hated dolls. Always had. She didn’t care how rare they were. Dolls had always filled her with anxiety, even as a child. She couldn’t see them face down on the floor … they had to be upright (imagine being face down like that every day). No, and they had to be adequately covered, too, not naked in a cold garage the way some thoughtless little girls left them. The worst part about dolls was that once you got them dressed and sitting comfortably, they scared the living daylights out of you … looking at you the way they did with icy, unblinking eyes. They were diabolical once they got you alone in the dark.
Iris went away to boil water or something, and Claire had time to investigate the shabby finery of the room. It was sad if you looked at it one way, almost Havishamesque. On the other hand, it was the place of a person who’d chosen her poison at one point and stuck to it, dammit. Each nook and doily held some memory, Claire supposed. There was a series of cat portraits, from aging sepiatone to a brilliant, though blurred, color polaroid of Lü. She guessed she’d rather live like this one day should she become old, independently eccentric, instead of tediously predictable like the other old women around the neighborhood, fastidiously correct with their starched curtains and whitewashed stoops. Dry and forgettable. Interchangeable. You wouldn’t find any of them inviting anyone in to tea at midnight, would you? No matter how the visitor had arrived.
Claire decided she liked Iris after all. There was a cut glass bowl filled with colorful marbles on the coffee table. They refracted the light from the art deco lamp beside it in a mottle of pastel along the walls. And who but Iris would think to upholster the Biedermeier hassock like that, in indigo with tapioca constellations? One whole side of the room consisted of shelf upon shelf of books. Metaphysics in six different languages. Leather-bound volumes of the philosophers: Leibniz, Kant, Descartes, Spinoza, Bacon, and quite a few by that old chauvinist Nietzsche. Freud and Jung had their own rows. This all spoke in favor of Iris’s innocence, as far as Claire was concerned. Nobody with that much psychological knowledge of self would go around killing children. They just wouldn’t. Would they? They would not.
Claire took a quick peek out the window just in case. Zinnie and Emil were still there. Sure. Snug as bugs in her hammock. You could look right into the house from here. She could see her father leaning over some weapon or other in his den, even hear his music, Puccini’s something or other. Her mother was up in bed doing her crossword puzzle, her bent, fissured form happily oblivious to all but obscure word origins.
Iris came back in carrying a tray overloaded with pastry and cups and saucers.
Claire smiled. “What’s this? The Viennese hour?”
“If you like.” Iris rotated her shoulders with a mambo back and forth, getting into the swing of her tea party. Iris apparently didn’t go in for supermarket goodies. She baked herself. There was a slice of rum-wafting fruitcake. With a thrill of horror Claire spotted the powder-sugared rugelach. She resigned herself to tomorrow’s fast and helped herself.
“Dat’s vot I like to see,” Iris sat down happily, “a goot healthy appetite.”
“These are hard not to like,” Claire took another.
“Milk? Sugar?”
“No, nothing. Just the way it is, thanks.”
“A little schnapps? Because you’re vet?”
“Schnapps? What about a cordial?”
Iris threw open a cabinet no farther away than her fingertips. It sparkled with imported bottles. “Pear, plum, orange, peach, hazelnut, or apricot.”
“Um … pear.”
“Pear.” With an admirably steady hand she opened the bottle and plunked a good slosh into Claire’s teacup and then one in her own. Her fingers were gnarled with arthritis but her nails were perfectly manicured. With what painstaking diligence Iris had achieved that was anybody’s guess. Her hands alone would make an interesting portrait. She was going to have to come to a decision soon about using the camera. Why did everything have to be so difficult? You never seemed to be able to do the things you really knew you should be doing without compromising. Nothing was for nothing. “Relationships are so complicated,” she said out loud, but Iris wasn’t interested in pursuing the mundane.
“Vy,” she said, “don’t you get yourself knocked up?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You know, pregnant. You’ve got the age. Und nothing else to do. It vood be a fine ting to see some new life around dat house.”
Claire lowered her eyes and swallowed her mouthful. “What does that mean, I haven’t anything else to do?”
“Vell, I mean, I see you over dere. Vandering around all night long. Dat’s nice to come home und readjust but now you ought to have someone else besides yourself to take care of. Pretty soon it vill be too late. Trees only ripen in season, you know.”
“I can’t believe this. I can’t believe I’m sitting here with you and you’re telling me my biological clock is running out. And just with whom should I have this baby? Have you got that figured out, too?”
“Pfuff! Plenty of men around your house. Dat one always vatching in da vindows at night.”
“Johnny?”
“I don’t know. Dat one alvays hanging around. You two vould make beautiful children.”
Claire nibbled on her cookie. “He’s a cop.”
“So? Dat’s a goot chob.”