A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [98]
“Yeah.”
“Would you rather use the doll to show us what happened in the nurse’s office? Would that be easier than telling us in words?”
His nod was imperceptible.
“All right then, sweetheart.”
Robbie accepted the doll, awkwardly holding it at first with his shoulders hunched up. He held it as if it were fragile, like a real infant. It was dressed in blue shorts and a red-and-blue-striped T-shirt. It had brown yarn for hair. Robbie turned the doll to face him. He seemed to melt, to finally have an expression. He was squinting at it. His thin mouth trembled and turned down at the corners. I’m sure I will never forget how he looked at that doll. He was shrinking back, in its stead. He whimpered, studying its face. He was squeaking. It was then that Alice sat up. She turned around to see if I was there, I suppose because she knew how I would look. I felt her eyes on me and it was with reluctance that I jerked away from the boy, to acknowledge her. I thought, even as she stirred in her seat, that she was trying to scramble the message. Robbie was going to have to do something hateful to the doll. She was distracting me. He didn’t want to go ahead; he didn’t want to recall what had been done to him.
Mrs. Dirks was providing a tray of tools a nurse might have in her office. She was offering him a stethoscope, cotton balls, tongue depressors, tweezers, scissors, Band-Aids, and a roll of surgical gauze. She was holding the tray as if it was a platter of hors d’oeuvres. Alice had caught me. She had looked expressly to see if I was uncertain. She had seen something in me that I would have preferred to keep to myself. I was not going to watch the boy give cruel and unusual punishment to the doll. I wasn’t going to be part of the bizarre play. “It’s a lie when it’s strange,” Robbie had said. It followed by his logic, that that room, the building, the unfathomable story, everything there was a lie.
“Do you know what that is for?” Mrs. Dirks asked, when Robbie selected a tongue depressor.
“You say Ahhhh,” Robbie said.
It had gotten dark on our porch as I tried to tell Theresa the salient details of Robbie’s testimony. I explained that he seemed to understand the difference between the truth and a lie, that he knew it was wrong to lie. At the very least, I said, his visits to Alice had apparently upset him. I got up to light an old kerosene lamp that had come with the house. Except for small exclamations along the way, Theresa had been quiet. I was thankful for her presence, and even her sympathy, but I was tired now. I couldn’t go any further. I looked around the corner to see if Emma was hiding again, and listening. She was in the living room, lying next to Claire in front of the television. “You know the Woodland Indians, who lived here about 500 B.C.?” I said, shaking the match out. “The fathers taught their sons, at puberty, to experience the dream life. They believed, they knew, in fact, that there were divine spirits in the forest and in the prairie. By fasting and through dreams they made intense contact with the spirits. And they believed, when they died, that a god guided their soul to paradise, to a large village where there was peace, perfection. You’d play lacrosse forever. I remember reading in college about the fathers passing down this dream life to their sons. Nothing like that is given to us. I don’t think there’s anything that can be compared to it in our life. Sometimes I feel an association with the people who used to live here in this house. Not ghosts or spirits. It’s only a tie to the past, a kinship of ideas, maybe.”
“Oh, Howard,” Theresa said in alarm, “this is so awful for you.”
I looked across at her. I hadn’t actually realized that I was speaking out loud.