The Cost of Sociotropy
Each morning, Enid stepped outside onto her little weathered porch, greeted the dawn with the juncos, finches, and, on fortunate days, a flock of waxwings.
Enid's ample body bore marks: past addictions, a desperate need for approval, and a string of tragedies in her family that she and her sister called the Oser family curse. Those burdens had faded now. When she laughed, it was because she was caught off guard by someone’s quip, and she would belly laugh, especially if it was absurd or dirty or mean. For example, when reading Annie Dillard’s Teaching a Stone to Talk, she laughed for a solid 10 minutes when she read what nineteenth century Arctic explorers brought with them on their expeditions: “With the two skeletons were some chocolate, some guns, some tea and a great deal of table silver.”
Enid also found solace in shedding things, as if each giveaway erased a little more. And though she had said goodbye to her physical beauty, she kept the holes in her ears for no other reason than she liked colorful stones. If Shakespeare had written about her, he would have said she was as civil as an orange. “The count is neither sad, nor sick, nor merry, nor well.”
Enid liked to walk her dogs on the steep hills of her hometown. It was a maze of nothing interesting, though she liked the changing landscape – mostly roses and sycamores and flowering plants. On a day she walked down a large steep street, she noticed the unusual architecture of a house midway down. Mid-century…or before? No, it must be Art Deco, its top floor curved around to the left, with opaque glass making the same path along the curve. She thought it pretty, and said so to the owner who was standing outside. His dress reminded her of Robin Williams in the movie Insomnia; pressed slacks, shirt, cardigan, like he had been dropped in from the 1950s, his gold-rimmed glasses the size of small apples. They chatted a bit, and he said next time she was around, he would show her inside. Ok, sounds good, she said, a slight horror rising from the hairs on her neck.
She returned days later without the dogs. She didn’t know if it was out of politeness, curiosity, or a strange compulsion – the house wasn’t all that interesting, but maybe there was some history in it. And though her spidey sense was heightened, a certain gullibility remained, an unfounded belief in the goodness of others, even when a familiar dread crept in. She likened this to Charlie Brown repeatedly trying to kick the football Lucy was holding, where hope met inevitable letdown. Like the other day a neighbor she had just met a few moments before asked her to pick up a package (would you be a doll?) that was arriving soon; they would be out of town. Two thoughts were there: that she couldn’t remember the last time she went somewhere, and why the hell was it ok for them to ask.
Enid entered his house and immediately sensed the colors. The home’s interior was painted in Hydrangea blue and a deep brown – stately – quite lovely in fact. The furniture was all curves and all angles and she was struck by the lack of personality in the room, almost as if it was staged. They didn’t talk much as she looked around. George – was it?
After they talked about the furniture, the weather, George asked if she wanted to see downstairs. Enid looked to her right and saw the narrowing staircase leading down and curving to the left. A basement? Immediately her mind went to the front door behind her. Did he lock it? She looked out his window, it was bright out but very dark in the room, the aura not unlike when one is day drinking in a bar.
Sure, lead the way. But instead he held out his left hand and offered to let her go ahead. This she knew was stupid and in a stroke of agency she said, no, I’ll follow you.
And then she thought about death, which she did most days. Death came to see her as the sun would begin to set, settling in her stomach like a tired but insistent weed. Death didn’t used to be there, but he started to land in her body after her brother hung himself from his garage just six years ago, his wife vomiting on the lawn, his son pulling him down, blinded by tears. No matter. This feeling, not the memory, was more interesting. It was just a jumping off point, like the chair.
They wound down the stairs, her marking how steep and narrow the passage was. Not many steps, but precarious.
And then she saw them. The dolls. They were all lined up above a low cabinet, and were the kind one’s aunt would collect – varying sizes of baby dolls, mostly girls. Nearly bald, bodies patchy, cracked and worn, they stared back at her. Why the dolls, she stuttered in what was less of a question and more of a disquieting utterance.
They were my mother’s.
The room got very small. Fog appeared on either side of her peripheral vision, her pupils, pinheads. If she ran up the stairs, he seemed strong enough to pull her back down. If he led the way again, and he got to some door, any door, he could lock it. She stared at the dolls, nearly resigned, then back at George.
There was something about the dolls. Their hair, it seemed wrong, somehow. In the dimly lit room, without her glasses, she thought they had human hair, placed clumsily on their hard plastic heads. And on one doll, the little Latina in a dress covered in cherries, the light was such that she imagined the red fruit was blood. But what struck her most was how unanimated they were, like her, frozen there.
She ran. Just a few steps to the first stair up and she expected him to be on her, but he didn’t make a move from his chair in the corner of the basement. Instead, as she bolted, he eventually rose and slowly followed behind. Calculating, as a lion, she thought in haste.
She reached the landing, tripped on the corner of the Marion Dorn rug, catching herself on flat palms. She leapt up, grabbed the front door knob – it was open. She ran down the small porch stairs and back up the steep street, grateful for how bright the sun shone.
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