Doll Parts by Ximena Escobar

“I won’t talk about the past anymore,” she said. “I’m only talking about what will happen from now on. I’m using this pain to make something wonderful.”

He held her hand, like he had so many times. Her masculine hands. Creative hands for making wonderful things. Like her saddest smile.

But pain stung her like acid, welling up and blurring the bus window, the hideous yellow foam peeping through the torn seat cover. She looked up at the dangling handles, defying her tears (it helped her to imagine a bus-leather and yellow-foam dress.) 

The handles swayed with the bus stopping. She clasped the seat in front, composed, just then, by the physicality of inertia. By the loud door opening. By the loud woman who obviously ran into someone and wants everybody to know it, laughing her way off. Look at her, still waving from the pavement. Look at the hideous day. It’s not even grey. it’s brown.

“He doesn’t see me….” she said. “It’s bad enough that he won’t look at me. But he doesn’t even perceive me in the periphery. It’s sad, because I can still love that about him, you know? That he’s decided. I always admired how he can decide so resolutely, separate the wheat from the chaff…”

He looked at her beautiful hand; her masculine hand circling the air when she talked. That’s the Italian in her. And her doll-like features. Skin darker than skin. Eyes greener than green eyes. Her natural hair colour looks fake too.

“… But this is just… Honest, plain, brutal…  Indifference…” 

A space opened in her lungs, cold and huge like her front door opening, and his things not being there. A void that opened under her feet.  Like when he said, ‘I don’t love you anymore’.

“It’s not like he’s trying to protect his decision… He’s not trying not to feel… This is just absolute, brutal, absence of feeling… Not even his sweater touched me, when I leaned over for the jug… Even when I was exuding all my energy, sweating it, he was oblivious… God… I pulled so much… I pulled and I pulled and kept pulling the finest, most invisible threads of fluff left between us… I said to Sarah, loud so he could hear it, ‘the cucumbers made the sandwiches soggy’—little things that should remind him of us, little ‘winks’ to make him laugh, you know? But he’s made of ice… He didn’t pick up the extra cup I filled; he filled himself another one.”

Bryan’s hand on her hand squeezed gently. She saw the Off-Licence just then, through the glass, and was home, suddenly, pressing the buzzer like a cliff-hanger. Like her body was dangling into infinity.

Press the loud buzzer again. How many heads do I see? Things I can count. Things I can touch. Two steps down. My yellow Doc Martens on the pavement.

“I’ll be ok… I’ll stop talking about it when we get home.” 

“I know,” said Bryan.

He smiled the saddest smile, but she only saw the man walking his dog.

There was the building. She imagined her body plummeting from the balcony. Arms and legs twisted, like her mannequins. That would make a beautiful sculpture. Her heart beat loudly, ominously. Like the scary music in a movie as the key inserts into the keyhole. In real life she was still looking for the keys in her pocket. Bryan was looking at her young blue vein, at all the pain running through her beautiful young hand. Hands that made beautiful things. Fantastic things.

She clasped the doorframe. Archie won’t bark—that’s one thing she won’t miss on her fabrics, his fur everywhere. But his computers will be gone, his music. The closet. The empty closet. The emptiness will be there. The emptiness in her chest.

“I’m putting all my things in here. My chests, sewing machines. Everything.”

She imagined her colourful paraphernalia piled up against the walls, but she felt sick underneath it all. Deep down, buried under every other truth, she wanted to do something wonderful for him. So that he heard of it. So that he admired her, wished he’d never left her.  She gripped the toilet seat. Veins ran swollen up her arms—her silent scream, begging him to notice her, remember her—gushing out of her mouth like a torrent of doll parts.

She will wake him. The remnant of his love will surface somewhere in his subconsciousness. And she will rest her head in the sweet pillow of that certainty, because he has cut all ties, to the last thread, but true love doesn’t die, and her art did speak to him once.

Or maybe love was all about fluff brushing fluff. Maybe love was all about fingerprints on fingerprints, kissing on plastic cups. Maybe love was all about the intimacy.

She looked in the mirror, Bryan was standing behind her. Her heart leapt. She hadn’t seen him since he died, since he stormed off from the solicitor’s two weeks before his accident.

He hated her talking to Bryan. It was just too much for him, well over the line between quirkiness and madness. If he could only see Bryan now, gaining matter and particles and flesh as she breathed… Each. Overwhelmed. Breath.

“I’m leaving now,” he said.

Her hand rose silently to cover her mouth, like a scared doll. A bellow that didn’t materialise and was sucked, instead, by the void of a dreadful door opening. Bryan had opened the door and found them; found her legs, her beautiful legs in a jumble of sheets, skin, and betrayal.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, looking into his eyes, on the glass.

“I know.”

She hadn’t meant to hurt Bryan, but her joy for David was always far stronger than her regret. Not once did Bryan’s pain cripple her. Not once did she really feel it.

“I know you feel it.”

The electricity of Bryan’s nearness intensified. She longed to turn around and hug him, cry on the pillow of his chest. But what if he wasn’t there anymore when she did?

She wanted goodbye to last forever.

Escobar, Ximena

Image: Two hands clasped. From Pixabay.com