The Dollhouse Society: Felix (10 page)

He knew I loved the danger dogs they offered out on the street, so when we went back down, he offered to buy me one. I wrinkled up my nose. “Not today,” I said.

“
Ah, perhaps something more elite?” he offered. “I could take you to the Royal if you feel your tastes are beginning to mature.”

I ignored his ribbing. “To tell you the truth, I haven’t felt very good since I got up this morning.”

“
Migraine?” he asked, suddenly becoming very concerned.

“
No, I feel a little green, is all. Could we get an ice cream? It might settle my stomach.”

We found a street vendor selling those Good Humor bars covered in almonds that always seem so elusive and hard to find when you look for them in the supermarkets. We sat on a bench side-by side and people watched while I bit into the frosty cold ice cream. It settled my stomach a little.

“
You’re not getting sick on me, I hope?” Mr. Ishikawa asked, keeping his arm around me in a protective and slightly possessive way that seemed to tell everyone on the street that I was his, that I belonged to him. It had bothered me once, but now I found it comforting and romantic.

I knew he was afraid I might be putting him on, or overly nervous about our appearance at the Dollhouse the following weekend, but I’d really been sick this morning, no lie. I hadn’t thrown up, but I’d come pretty close. As I chewed on frozen almonds and ice cream, I started feeling even sicker to my stomach. Now that I thought about it, I was more than a week overdue for my period.

We watched a procession of bicyclists in the street, riding for a cancer cause. A popular celebrity was among them, waving to everyone. Mr. Ishikawa was asking me a question and it took me a moment to backtrack and understand what he’d ask.

“
The article?” I said. “I did all right on it.”

In the end, I’d chosen to submit my article on the BDSM scene in New York, but without making mention of the Society. I’d thought it was a pretty extensive and well-researched article, but it turned out a lot of other students had chosen a similar subject and had done a much better job than I had, one actually scening with a well known Dom in order to better understand her subject.  

I’d been left with material better suited to an erotic novel than a news article. I looked at Mr. Ishikawa and wondered if it was worth it, giving up the chance to be famous just to protect a group of men whose world I would no longer be a part of in just another week. I could feel the tension mounting in my shoulders, and the ice cream was doing nothing for the seed of worry taking root in my belly. “Would it be okay if you drove me back to my apartment? I still don’t feel very good and I’d really like to lie down.”

“
Of course.” He looked worried but stood up and took my hand. We headed down the street toward the waiting limo.

I was in only five seconds before Cookie bounded out of her room. She was sweaty from aerobics and doing a series of cooling-down stretches. “Spill. How was your date?”

I stopped and looked at her. “You know, you really need to stop living vicariously through me.” She looked confused by my words, so I added, “You know, go out, eat some ice cream, get some take-out or pizza or beer. Find someone to take you around the city.
Live
, Cookie. You need to loosen up and go live your life.”

She looked hurt and I realized I’d really overreacted. “Sorry,” I muttered, looking down at the plastic sack in my hands with a popular pharmacy logo on it. “I didn’t mean…”

“
Are you okay?” She looked at the package. “Are you having another migraine?”

“
No…I just…yeah, I think I feel one coming on.” I skirted past Cookie and aimed for my room. I locked the door and shucked off my spring jacket. I stood for a long moment in the dark, breathing hard, trying to control my panic. From inside the plastic sack, I unscrewed the bottle of Polar Spring I’d bought. I drank down the whole bottle and then waited.

Ten minutes later, my mind still full of rambling, half-panicked thoughts, I finally picked myself up and took the plastic bag to the bathroom adjacent to my room. From there, I dug the Clearblue box out and read over the instructions four times before following them.

For a while, I mused on the irony of the manufacturers putting little crosshairs in the window to indicate pregnancy. I threw the stick away and ripped open the second test I’d bought. Crosshairs again.
Maybe it’s wrong
, I thought in an attempt to calm my panicked heart and whirling, stuttering thoughts. These things were wrong sometimes. Weren’t they? And stress made me late. Stress had
always
made me late.

Yes, I could feel a migraine coming on.

I took a few deep breaths. I’d almost convinced myself that I was all right. Then I broke down and cried on the bathroom floor.

***

 
Felix, I’m very concerned. Please contact me.
 

I looked at the text message on the phone Mr. Ishikawa had given me. It was the seventeenth one I’d gotten from him over the past two months.

I read it, re-read it, dedicated it to memory, and then deleted it. I sat back on the big, fluffy pillows on the bed in my room at my aunt’s house and stared vapidly at the old Holly Hobby wallpaper. When I was a little girl, my dad would often take me to see Aunt Sarah here in Castine, Maine. I usually stayed with her over the summers. Daddy felt it was important I was exposed to a female influence—or that was his reasoning, anyway.

Castine was a beautiful and tucked away harborside town with soaring elms, grand historical homes, and quaint little inns. My Aunt Sarah had married young but she and her husband Cyril had never had children. Aunt Sarah couldn’t carry a child, but she only learned that after three miscarriages. So I had come to fill that place in their lives for a few brief summer months once a year.

My aunt had even dressed her spare room up so it would always be mine, always be here and ready for me. Granted, the room, with its childlike wallpaper, white rattan furnishings, canopy bed and the old, stuffed Care Bears clustered on the pillows, belonged to a younger Felix, but I still felt very much at home here. Uncle Cyril was gone now—cancer, he’d died four years ago—but Aunt Sarah hadn’t changed very much over the years. She was still short, plump, and had a bottomless heart full of love and forgiveness for me.

She’d been well-night ecstatic when I’d asked her if I could stay with her until the baby was born. I’d first went to see my dad, to break the bad news to him in person, but even though he’d been unbelievably supportive of me despite what I was heaping upon him, he felt a long series of dangerous oil rigs were not the best place for his pregnant daughter to be. For once, I had to agree with him, which is how I’d wound up at my aunt’s house right after graduation.

I clutched a Care Bear, then stuffed Mr. Ishikawa’s phone under it and went downstairs. I was starting to feel sick again.

Aunt Sarah, always one step ahead of me, was busy preparing a morning tray of tea and crackers for me.

“
Oh, you’re wonderful!” I told her.

“
I would have been happy to bring it up to you, dear.”

“
That’s quite all right,” I told her and stuff a Saltine in my mouth to help combat my incessant morning sickness.

Together, we took our tea out to the deck behind the house and sat under the sun umbrella to watch the sun rise. I breathed in good, piney air mixed with sea salt, so different from New York City. I listened to the seagulls swirling overhead and felt a momentary peace.

“
You do know that morning sickness is a very good sign,” Aunt Sarah said, smiling at me overtop the rim of her teacup. “If means your child will probably be very healthy.”

I sat beside her, sipped my tea, and ran a hand over my belly. I wasn’t showing just yet, though I knew if I kept eating Aunt Sarah’s good homemade cooking I was likely to get quite fat. “I’m sure.” I mean, it was Mr. Ishikawa’s child, and he was a very strong and healthy man. I was certain my son or daughter would be tall and handsome, with dark hair and intense eyes.

“
Are you having second thoughts?” she asked.

“
What do you mean?”

Aunt Sarah set her teacup down. “It’s not my place to say, of course, but if you feel this pregnancy isn’t right…that now isn’t the right time…” She left it at that.

I knew what she meant, what she was implying. “You’re right,” I told her. “I’m
not
ready, and now isn’t the right time. Frankly, I never saw myself having any children at all. Isn’t that funny? But I just can’t…terminate…this baby.”

The very thought of it made me sick to my stomach. A few days after I’d learned about my pregnancy, after I started getting over the shock of it all, I’d visited one of the free clinics. I went down to the Planned Parenthood on Bleeker Street and sat in the brightly painted office, looking at all the sad, remote faces of the women, the medical pamphlets and sterile watercolor paintings on the wall, and finally started questioning my future.

If I could get through this, I could graduate a free woman. I could even go on to be Mr. Ishikawa’s courtesan, if he still wanted me. But the moment my name was called, I remembered what Mr. Ishikawa had said about his mother forcing his father to take responsibility. A sudden horror broke over me and I stood up with my purse and ran from the clinic. No, I decided, this was my responsibility, my mistake, my burden to bear.

At first, it seemed impossible, a bad joke. I was always so careful about taking my birth control medication in the morning. I never missed a single day. But then, when I asked my doctor about it, he said when you changed birth control medications, you were supposed to abstain from sex for a month, to give your body a chance to adjust to it. It had been in the literature he’d given me, but, of course, I hadn’t pored over that. And even if I had, I probably wouldn’t have remembered anyway, not once I was alone with Mr. Ishikawa.

Mr. Ishikawa.

My heart hurt each time I thought about him. I was half of the mind to get rid of the phone, wipe the last trace of him from my life. I knew it was the only way I would stop getting his incessant messages demanding I answer him, to tell him where I’d run off to. Maybe then I could begin the process of forgetting.

As if reading my thoughts, my aunt said, “Are you certain you don’t want to contact the father, Felix?”

“
Oh god, no.” I set my cup down with a clink on my saucer. “I couldn’t face him. Besides, it would do no good. He wouldn’t want a baby.” I flashed back to that time in Central Park, when we’d watched the children play baseball on the diamond, and the expression on Mr. Ishikawa’s face, like he smelled something bad. I knew how much he hated children. I knew how sad and angry the very sight of them made him. A fatherless child who had never really recovered from the rejection he’d experienced as a boy. I couldn’t possibly bring this to him. I couldn’t stand to see his eyes when he rejected both me
and
the child. I’d always thought of myself as strong, but there’s only so much a person can handle.

Besides, I’d made all my decisions. I’d left New York, absconding like some thief in the night. I’d come here to see this thing through. My aunt had generously offered to let me work in the little flower shop she ran in town until I found something that better suited me. Like my dad before me, I would raise my child alone, single-handedly. I would give him or her everything I possibly could. I would be a good mom. And, after all, I’d had a happy childhood. I saw no reason why this child couldn’t as well.

I was about to ask Aunt Sarah about the job again when I spotted a limousine driving up the snaky gravel road to my aunt’s house. I recognized it at once. “Oh god,” I said, standing up. “Tell him I’m not here.” I hurried inside, through the sliding glass doors, and raced up the stairs to my bedroom. I closed and locked the door, then backed up until I reached my bed and fell upon it. My heart was flitting in my throat and my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

A few moments later, my bewildered aunt came up the stairs and knocked gently upon the door. “Sarah, there’s a Japanese gentleman here to see you.”

“
I told you…I’m not here.”

“
He seems very insistent.”

“
I can’t, Aunt Sarah! I can’t see him!” I’d started to cry.

She was silent a long moment. “Is it…him?”

“
Tell him to go away. Tell him I’m not here. Tell him anything to make him leave.” I knew it was childish, but I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t face Mr. Ishikawa.

I listened as she went downstairs. There was an exchange of voices. I recognized one as Mr. Ishikawa’s. Finally, a door slammed shut in anger. I let out my breath in a trembling sigh and tried to get my tears under control. How in
hell
had he found me?

A few minutes later, I heard Mr. Ishikawa’s steely voice come to me, just below my window. “Felix, stop playing these silly games and talk to me. I’ve come a long way to see you.”

I lay down on my bed, grabbed a Care Bear for a shield, and shivered. Maybe, I thought, if I waited things out, he’d go away.

“
Felix, I need to speak to you. I’ll stay here as long as it takes until you face me! Felix!”

I shivered again.

***

By early evening, curiosity finally overcame my good sense.

I climbed out of bed and went to peek out my bedroom window.

Mr. Ishikawa was still there, still waiting as he had promised. His car was parked in the gravel drive and he was seated on the hood, dressed in one of his prim suits, a newspaper in his lap. But the moment I looked down, he seemed to sense me and looked up. I saw his eyes, the hurt and anger etched so deeply around them, and I started feeling bad all over again. “Felix…!” The softness in his voice, that control I responded to so well, was gone. He sounded hoarse, as if he’d been screaming for hours.

“
I’ll come down if you promise we can go somewhere private to talk.”