Blackwood Farm - Anne Rice [58]
“It has nothing to do with my story, except perhaps to state that I had eyes to see such things, and a heart to be sensitive to them. But what is germane is that we went to the house of a very affected and artificial lady, much younger than Aunt Queen, who had a whole room full of toys, and the first dollhouse I’d ever seen. Not knowing that boys weren’t supposed to like dollhouses, I was of course curious about it and wanted to play with it more than anything else.
“But the lady wanted to direct things, as I recall, and bombarded me with soft affected questions, in her phony baby voice, mostly pertaining to Goblin, who glared at her the whole while with a sullen and angry face. I didn’t like her soft tone when she asked, ‘Does Goblin do bad things?’ and ‘Do you feel sometimes that Goblin is doing something that you would like to do but can’t?’
“Young as I was, I caught her drift, and I wasn’t surprised afterwards when Aunt Queen made a phone call to Pops from the limousine and said, quite oblivious to Goblin and me beside her, ‘It’s just an imaginary playmate, Thomas. He’ll outgrow Goblin. He’s a brilliant child and he has no playmates. So we have Goblin. There’s no point to be worried at all.’
“It was very soon after my encounter with the beautiful flower-strewn sidewalk—and the lady psychologist—that Pops drove me to a new school. I hated it passionately, as I had the others, talked to Goblin belligerently and without cease and was sent home before noon.
“The next week Pops made the long drive into New Orleans to take me to a fancier kindergarten in Uptown, but with the same result. Goblin made faces at the children and I hated them. And the teacher’s voice grated on me, as she talked to me as if I were an idiot, and Pops was soon there in the pickup truck to take me back to exactly where I wanted to be.
“At this point, I have a vivid yet fragmented memory, very distorted and confused, of actually being incarcerated in some sort of hospital, of being in a small cubicle of a room and of sitting in one of those vast playrooms again, complete with a dollhouse, and of knowing that people were watching me through a mirror because Goblin made signs to me that they were. Goblin hated the place. The people who came in to question me talked to me as if they were great friends of mine, which of course they weren’t.
“ ‘Where did you learn all the big words?’ was one prize question, and, ‘You talk of being happy to be independent. Do you know what “independent” means?’ Of course I knew and I explained it: to be on one’s own, to be not in school, to be not in this place; and out of there I soon went, with a sense that I had gotten my liberty through sheer stubbornness and the refusal to be nice. But I had been badly frightened by this experience. And I know that I cried hysterically when I rushed into Sweetheart’s arms, and she sobbed and sobbed.
“It may have been the night of my return home—I don’t know—but very soon after, Aunt Queen assured me I’d never be left in a place like that ‘hospital’ again. And in the days that followed I learnt that it was Aunt Queen’s doing, because Patsy loudly criticized her for it in my presence and this confused me because I so badly needed to love Aunt Queen.
“When Aunt Queen shook her head and confirmed that she had done wrong with the hospital, I was very relieved. Aunt Queen saw this and she kissed me and she asked after Goblin, and I told her that he was right at my side.
“Again, I could have sworn that she saw him, and I even saw Goblin puff himself up and sort of preen for her. But she said only that if I loved Goblin, then she would love Goblin too. I burst into tears of happiness, and Goblin was soon in a paroxysm of tears as well.
“My next memory of Aunt Queen is of her sharing my little table with me in this room and teaching me more words to write with my crayon—in fact, a great list of nouns comprising the name of every item in the