Joy Williams - Breaking and Entering

When Liberty was twelve, Willie gave her a heart pendant for her birthday. It was a pretty little heart, thin and gold-plated.

“I was looking for a locket,” Willie said. “Something you could open up, but they were all too big. I wanted just a tiny one so you could maybe wear it all the time, so you’d hardly even know that you were wearing it.”

“I like it,” Liberty said. She was still a little frightened of him, but now she thought it was love. She clasped the necklace around her neck and kissed him.

“You don’t know how to kiss,” Liberty said.

“Sure I do,” Willie said.

Liberty giggled. “No, you don’t. You don’t kiss like that with your mouth just hanging open.”

“Well, where did you learn to kiss?”

“Travis kissed me once at school, but I’m sure I didn’t learn anything from that.” She made a face.

“Whores won’t let you kiss them. That’s why I don’t know.”

“Oh, Willie, you’ve never been to a whore.”

“One of them told me that the Devil was Jesus’ older brother. She insisted upon it.”

“You’ve never,” Liberty said.

“I might have,” Willie said. “But it’s a secret.”

“Just because you’ve told a secret doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve told something true,” Liberty said.

That night, on her birthday, Calvin took them all out to dinner. They went to Liberty’s favorite restaurant, a place called The Dollhouse. The building had once housed a loud, mean bar until, after a series of maimings and maulings, it had been shut up by the town, then bought by ladies of the Garden Club, an organization of which Doris was an active member. In the center of the restaurant was a five-foot, twenty-room, elaborately decorated dollhouse with over two thousand pieces of tiny furniture, the collective hobby of the Garden Club ladies. Doris had sewn the draperies for many of the rooms and the cabbage rose slipcovers for the chairs on the sun porch. Calvin himself had carved out a small plaque that was mounted near the front door of the dollhouse, because besides being a banker, he was a devoted fan of history. The plaque said:

On This Site

in 1865 Nothing

Happened

The Club was divided in their enthusiasm for Calvin’s addition. Some thought it too flippant an accord for all the work they had put into the project. Calvin Stone was a peculiar man, most of them agreed. He seemed to have no more pretense than a broom, but you never quite knew where you stood with him.

“How you all doing,” Calvin said to the diners to his right and left. He knew almost everyone in town. Doris followed and Liberty and Willie ambled behind. The hostess seated them at a round table near the dollhouse. She was a Frenchwoman with a fine bosom and round, fragrant arms.

“Ah,” she said, “it’s so good to see you and it’s an occasion, I can tell. May I bring you some wine?”

Doris placed her hand on her heart and shut her eyes, weakened by the very suggestion.

The hostess laughed and quickly removed the wine glasses. Her lips blossomed into a pout. “My car today, it just stopped on the road. You might have see it. It didn’t want to be a car anymore. My life, at times, seems planned by enemies. It’s an effort to live gracefully a life that seems planned by enemies, don’t you think?”

Calvin looked at her, bewildered. Liberty smiled.

“You look good today,” the woman said to Liberty.

Liberty had straw-colored hair, the white straight teeth of a dentist’s child.

“And your necklace, it is so beautiful. Is it a gift from your boyfriend?” She tousled Willie’s hair. “Un monsieur qui est par hasard un enfant,” she said. “It’s only chance that such a man is still a child.”

Calvin shook his head and grinned. “You sure are one heck of a hostess,” he said. “Do you believe we could all have some Coca-Cola?”

Whenever Liberty came to the restaurant, she would kneel on the padded platform encircling the dollhouse and raptly study its cluttered contents — its satin pillows, its variety of windows and cupboards, its closet hung with tiny clothes. The grand staircase in the hallway was papered with an optical deceit of gardens and flowers stretching into the distance. The parlor had wooden wainscotting and blue walls and in the corner was a New Year’s tree — a twig from a tree festooned with confetti. The ceiling of the nursery was painted with stars. In the kitchen was a black stove that flickered with paper flames and on the table was a plate of donuts. The donuts were toy automobile tires coated with baking soda. On the table too was a tiny knife and a pink-and-white roast on a platter. There was a gilded haircomb for the headboard of a bed, and there was water in the sinks and books on the shelves. There were a man and a woman sitting on leather chairs in the library, sprawled rigidly as though dead. There was always a lady writing a letter at a desk and always a child being given a bath by a girl in a white uniform. In the dining room, someone was always dining. In the pantry, a maid was always looking in horror at a plate just dropped and broken.

Liberty always examined the dollhouse carefully, noting what had been added and what removed. That night, as she knelt there, touring it carefully with her eyes, the Frenchwoman came up to her.

“You are a romantic, I know,” she said. “You remind me of myself when I was your age, when I was just beginning. Lots of things can go wrong with girls, you know, with boys not so much. Girls lose sight of themselves more quickly. Your little boyfriend, he is just a little boy, but he has many men inside himself. Perhaps you will not love them all.”

“Tonight’s my birthday,” Liberty said.

“Yes, yes,” the Frenchwoman said. “Everything is just beginning now.”

For dessert they had cake and ice cream. A sparkler flared from Liberty’s portion.

“This was so nice of you,” Liberty said, “all this.”

“What was in that package you got from your momma today?” Doris asked. “I’m just curious. Curiosity is something I just can’t stamp out of myself.”

“Well,” Liberty said, “it was a Fry-Pappy.”

“A Fry-Pappy!” Calvin said, slapping at his jacket pockets to call forth his wallet. “What you want with a Fry-Pappy?”

“We could make some banana fritters,” Doris said. “Maybe that’s what she had in mind.”

“Was it supposed to be a present or what?” Calvin asked.

“I guess,” Liberty said.

“We’ll make some banana fritters in it,” Doris said with determination.

“I’m not sure if it works,” Liberty said.

“It’s not a new Fry-Pappy?” Calvin said, puzzled.

“It might have come from a yard sale,” Liberty said. “It looks like it might have. My mother likes to go to yard sales.”

“Terrible advantage can be taken of a person at those places,” Doris said.

“Where’s your heart?” Willie said to Liberty. He put his hand against his own throat.

The heart Willie had given her was no longer there. The pendant had fallen from the cheap clasp. They all searched for it, on the table, on the floor, but it could not be found.

The Frenchwoman helped them look. “I know, I know,” she said to Liberty. “It’s just as though it were real. It is very important.”

Liberty thought that the woman did not know anything, although she was very pretty, very nice, crouching on the floor, searching, wrinkling her pretty skirt. She would later die of cancer, a year after she refused to have her breasts removed. She would die alone, the lonely death that disease had prepared for her.