How to Talk like a Doll
The four of us were playing badminton out on the lawn—Jilly and Forrest on one side of the net, Hayward and I on the other.
Regina was off on the sidelines with her knitting, half-watching from her spot on the recliner.
I’d been feeling relieved that, after that one uncomfortable time when she’d confided in me over her feelings about Forrest’s sexual needs, Regina had made no further mention of the topic.
In the days since the Barnetts’ visit, Brenda’s name had not been spoken again.
If anything, Forrest seemed more attentive to Regina than usual.
That was saying a lot. But he had been gone a lot more than usual too.
Training for the triathlon took a lot of time, he explained.
Suddenly he put down his badminton racquet and shot off toward the house so fast you might have thought he’d smelled smoke.
When he returned a few moments later he was carrying a glass of ice water and one of Regina’s many pill bottles.
In my days at Wonderland, I’d come to recognize how many of these there were, and the care with which Forrest kept track of them all.
“I should have brought you these back at lunchtime,” he said, leaning over her, almost as if she were a sick child. “I hate it when I mess up the schedule.”
“What does it matter?” she sighed. “Whether I take these or not, I’ll still feel like shit.”
What could you say to that? He didn’t try, just rubbed her back and rearranged the cushions under her feet.
“Just give it a few minutes,” he said. “I won’t be late with these again.”
Some men—my father, for instance—might have shown annoyance at a moment like this.
(More accurately, my father would probably have broken a plate, if one had been within reach.) Not Forrest. It occurred to me that as annoying as it must be, looking out for Regina in all the ways Forrest did, some part of him seemed to love his role as her protector. Maybe it made him feel needed.
After the game was over, I’d put away our badminton racquets and doled out the kids’ Popsicles. I was leaning on the counter in the kitchen, flipping through a J.Crew catalog and sucking on a Popsicle of my own, when Regina came up alongside me, so quietly that when I heard her voice, I jumped.
“I like watching you play with the children,” she said, in that oddly flat, whispery voice of hers. “I like seeing them having a good time with someone. Even if the person isn’t me. Which it never is.”
“I’m not very good at badminton,” I told her. “I never played it before.”
“But you know how to play,” she said. “I’m not talking about a particular game. You know how to play is all. You know how to be playful. I have no clue.”
I might have refuted this to make her feel better.
But she was right, of course. I’d seen what happened the one time Jilly tried to get her mother to engage in one of those inane scenarios with her American Girl doll—tea parties, discussions of boys or kittens.
When she told Regina “you be Molly,” Regina went mute.
“I don’t know how to talk like a doll,” she’d told Jilly. “I don’t know what dolls are supposed to say.”
“My husband, on the other hand,” Regina continued, “there’s someone who’s a master at playing. Playing may actually be the only thing Forrest knows how to do. To Forrest, everything’s a game. The man’s got a unique talent for having a good time. That’s probably why everyone loves him so much.”
I was still standing there, leaning against the counter, licking my Popsicle. I was studying a pair of J.Crew pants I’d never be able to afford.
“It’s true about me, isn’t it?” she asked me. “I’m just not much fun, am I?”
I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say.
“Everybody loves Forrest,” she told me again. “But nobody understands him the way I do. I know everything.”
I had finished my Popsicle. Now Regina did a strange thing.
(Regina did many strange things, but this was stranger than most of them.) She reached out and took the Popsicle stick out of my hand.
She considered it for a second. Then she drew the stick across her neck as if it were a dagger. As if she were slitting her own throat.
“Let me tell you something, Frances,” she said. “It’s not a gift to be envied, knowing everything. There’s such a thing as knowing way . . . too . . . much.”
Sometime in the middle of that night, I thought I heard noises in the bedroom below mine, where Forrest slept. I was half asleep. At first I thought there must be some kind of animal in the house, making some kind of high-pitched wailing. Maybe the animal had been injured, and snuck in a window.
I took a minute to realize it wasn’t that.
It was Regina, crying out. And a second voice, deep and low. This voice I knew. It belonged to Forrest. This must be what he sounded like when he was making love.
She’s trying to hold on to him, I thought.
Then came another thought: But he’s already drifting away. And there’s probably nothing she can do to stop it.