Short Story: Beyond Repair

Short Story: Beyond Repair

My front wheel is over it before I have time to react. I swerve and run the car on to the grass verge. I stop, heart hammering, afraid to look back at what I have done. In the dusk, it is difficult to see.

I think it is a child.

I get out of the car and creep back to the bundle lying on the road, expecting blood. It is a doll. A rosy baby doll, with one leg crushed, perhaps beyond repair. But it is still smiling - tiny teeth peeking from behind plastic lips. I straighten the doll’s clothes. It is dressed in a hand-knitted jacket and one woolly bootee. The other is missing and I need to find it. The woollen garment is warm on my skin. It feels comfortable, and I shift the doll into my arms as I search the ground for the sock. I cup one hand around the bare foot. It is cold. I find the bootee - it is hard to see, covered with dirt from my tyres, and, gently, I pull it on to the mangled limb. I look around for somewhere to put the doll, thinking of the little girl who has dropped it from a car window - or thrown it out in a tantrum. Either way, she will be heart-broken at the loss. Perhaps she will make her mother turn the car around and come back to look for her dolly.

When I approach the fence, intending to hang the doll from the wire by a loop of wool, I hear another vehicle. It will be the child. I keep the doll in my arms as the van draws up. But it isn’t the little girl. It’s a man.

He points to the doll, ‘All right there?’ His voice is like the squeak of nails on a blackboard. He is very thin and when he turns to look back along the road, I see that his head is oddly flat and sloping at the back. His lank hair touches his collar.

I show him the toy.

‘It’s a doll.’

‘Yeah, I see now,’ his eyes gleam wetly in the half-light. ‘But what are you doing with it?’

I force a laugh. ‘Oh, silly of me. I ran over it and got out to see what it was.’

He comes closer and I can smell something foetid. I inch away from him. He takes hold of the ruined leg. Then he strokes the doll’s face. I want to pull her from his touch.

‘I’m just…I’m going to leave it here in case the little girl comes back.’

He peers into my eyes, ‘The little girl?’

‘Well, that’s the most likely owner, isn’t it?’

Another car approaches. The headlights flash on reflective strips on his boiler-suit, and for an instant he is a Halloween skeleton. The other car squeezes past and continues without stopping.

He draws back his lips, ‘You’ll see she gets it now, won’t you? The little girlie.’

When he drives off I find I’m gripping the doll’s foot so tightly that my hand is beginning to cramp. I loosen my grasp and turn back to the fence. It starts to rain. Tilted back in my arms the doll’s eyes have closed. Raindrops glisten on her eyelashes, like tears, and I can’t bring myself to abandon her to the night. Or to the stranger. I take her into the car and start the engine, then I realise that I have decided the doll is a girl. A small, helpless girl.

My baby had no gender. But there was blood - lots of it - endlessly pouring on to the bathroom floor like red, red wine from a bottomless vat. And lumps. But no gender.

When I get home Jake says - ‘You’re late, Donna.’

I don’t tell him about the doll, because I know what he’ll say. Besides, I’m well aware of what I’m doing, and I don’t care. Warmth trickles into me. Sublimation be damned, this is anticipation, and I want to hold on to it.

Jake goes out to play squash on Tuesdays. I can hardly wait until he’s gone before fetching the doll from the car.

Tears edge my own eyelashes as I touch the crushed foot. I wonder if there is still such a place as a doll’s hospital. They told me that was where my baby doll went, after the fire. Then we moved house. Polly that was her name - the memory rushes back. She never returned, and I knew that my mother had lied to me. It’s not surprising really, that Polly got lost in the nooks and crannies of my history. But I feel sad about it now. Sad is my normal state. A lode of sadness runs in me, like cold metal through rock. It’s been four months now. They all say it will get better, but they don’t know. Jake is recovering, it’s obvious.

I push the dishwasher closed with its breathy squeeze, and press the button. Against the slurping background I sit at the kitchen table and undress the doll. It is virtually gender-free, but she’s my baby girl now. I decide to call her Daisy. That’s one of the names I had chosen. Jake didn’t care for it, but I was determined to win when the time came. The time will never come. I kiss the tip of the little nose. Another lost baby. Her face is made of something pliable, like flesh, and she has dirty smudge on her cheeks.

I fill the basin with tepid water and washing-up liquid. I know it’s not the most appropriate thing, but she’s an unexpected arrival, after all. I rock her back and forth in the suds and her eyes open and close. When I am finished I wrap her in a towel while I wash her clothes, and pat them into shape. Upstairs, I tuck Daisy under some sheets in the airing cupboard and push her clothes to dry behind the boiler where they can’t be seen. As I close the door I hear Jake whistling his way in from the garage.

Next day, in my lunch-hour, I buy some of the smallest possible baby-clothes. The assistant asks if I also need some cloth nappies - so much better than disposable. I smile, and shake my head. Nappies would be ridiculous, for a doll.

At the end of the week Jake suggests we go out to the cinema and have dinner - we haven’t done that in a while. It doesn’t thrill me to leave Daisy under the sheets for any length of time but I have to go for Jake.

It is on the following Monday that I see it. Stuck inside the window of the post office, amongst the ads for bikes and sofas and unwanted toasters. The notice has been printed on a computer, and there is a photograph.

‘Lost on Tuesday, September 18th ; five-year old Amy’s much-loved doll.’ The page gives a telephone number, and finishes with - ‘Amy is devastated. Reward.’

I examine the photograph. Amy is only visible as a pair of chubby arms holding the doll on her lap. It is my Daisy - legs intact, wearing a small hat to match the knitted jacket. I have visions of a granny knitting the clothes and Amy’s delight as she pushes the little arms into sleeves and ties a bow under the chin. I turn away, my letters un-posted. ‘Devastated.’ The syllables strike me like blows as I hurry back to the office.

I was older than Amy before I noticed my lack of grandparents. All my friends had some - one or two - even four if they were lucky, but I had none. In fact, I hardly had a father. He was just a male shape who came out of my mother’s bedroom from time to time. Then he would disappear.

At home I tell Jake I have a headache. I take a couple of aspirins and get into bed, smuggling Daisy in beside me. I tuck her under the duvet with her head on the pillow. She smiles up at me. Much-loved.

I have to give her back.

In the morning I fold all the baby things into a plastic carrier and put it out with the rubbish. Then I dress Daisy in her own clothes, lay her in a shopping bag, and walk to the post office to read the phone number.

I can hear Amy’s cries of joy when her mother gives her the good news. They live close by, so I take the doll to the house. And apologise for the damage I have done. I turn down the reward. And I don’t wait to meet Amy.

It’s a sunny day. I carry my empty bag to the park and sit on a bench. The park is full of children - walking, running, jumping, shouting, laughing… crying. I study these specimens - these exotic creatures who will never be mine.

There won’t be a second baby to slither out in a puddle of blood. I am beyond repair. There’s nowhere left to grow another little Daisy. In fact, I don’t have much of anything left. It’s questionable if Jake will hang around for long. Men don’t care for barren women. It diminishes their role. I wonder about my father’s role? He never came back after the fire, although he was there when it started. It was a pity Uncle Peter wasn’t present that night, because he would have put the fire out. And saved my doll. He was my mother’s hero, she said. He vanished too, after she died.

I stare unfocussed, into the distance, then suddenly my vision clears. It is him - the flat-headed man. Today he is wearing denims and scruffy trainers, but I recognise him. He is watching a young woman and her children. The toddler suddenly runs off in the direction of the pond and, panic-stricken, the mother leaves the baby to run after him.

The man is looking into the pram when I get there. The child is asleep. It is small and new.

‘What are you doing?’

The baby’s closed eyelids are transparent, and they flutter as if she is aware of my voice. The blanket is pink, so it’s a girl. The man looks up, and his watery eyes know me too. I take hold of the pram handle. He draws his head into his body, like an animal with a carapace, and slouches off. The mother is still chasing the little boy who, relishing his freedom, sprints around the edge of the pond.

The baby makes a snuffling noise and blows a little bubble as the pram moves.

I walk in the direction of the woman and her other child, and then find myself on the street outside. The trees and bushes which surround the park are not enough to deaden the sound of a mother’s screams.

Two blocks later I reach a corner and the pedestrian signal is red. The rubber handle-grips stick to the insides of my fists as I wait for the green light which will let me wheel the baby away. Then gradually, like leaking blood, the message filters through.

I can’t hide this one under the sheets in the airing cupboard.

When I turn back, the woman is speeding towards me, her son dangling from her arm like a stuffed toy, his feet barely touching the ground.