The Dollmaker

Twelve

The lawn sprinklers along St. Charles Avenue were already twitching as Claire drove in to work early the next morning. Live oaks stood like brooding sentinels at the edge of the street, their dense, spreading limbs a cool green ceiling overhead. Orange and red hibiscus lined cobblestone walkways, while climbing roses spilled over cast-iron gates, and brick walls encased magnolia trees, ginger and thick clumps of oleander.

The summer gardens were in full bloom, and the ravages from Katrina that lingered in other parts of the city were nearly invisible here. One had to be a native or an expert to notice the diminished tree canopy or the scars from severed limbs left by the chainsaws.

Claire and her mother and sister had evacuated to a cousin’s house in Shreveport before the flood, and when the first reports of the compromised levees came over the news, they’d listened in horror and disbelief to the accounts of whitecaps on Canal Street. Lucille had kept wringing her hands and saying over and over that it couldn’t be that bad. It just couldn’t.

Weeks later, when they were finally allowed back into the city, they’d found the magnitude of the destruction overwhelming. Entire neighborhoods destroyed. Streets piled high with debris, flooded cars and uprooted trees. Doors on almost every house marked with a spray-painted X, a date, the search unit and the number of casualties found inside the building.

Claire’s family had been luckier than most. Her old Uptown house and her mother’s home in Faubourg Marigny had been virtually untouched by wind or water, and Charlotte’s loft in the Warehouse District had suffered only broken windowpanes and minor roof damage. Despite the lack of utilities and city services, they’d moved back home as soon as possible, determined to help with the cleanup and get on with their lives. But the devastation wreaked by the storm would live on long after the physical evidence had been swept away. Decades later, when people sat out on their porches watching dusk settle over the city, the memories would still come creeping back, Claire imagined, and a soft breeze from the Gulf would always bring with it a renewed sense of foreboding.

But she didn’t want to think of the past this morning, not of the storm and not of her own personal tragedy. She was anxious to get to the studio early and put in some time at her bench before the gallery opened at ten. Work had always been her salvation, and now she looked forward to having her mind occupied by something other than the doll. At least until Mignon Bujold returned on Tuesday.

And then what? Claire wondered uneasily. What would come of finding that doll? The discovery might lead to nothing, but it wasn’t in her to give up. She’d waited too many years for even one small clue, and now she had two. The doll…and the missing photograph of Ruby.

After going back up to bed last night, Claire had lain awake for a long time, listening to the storm move off to the west as she tried to convince herself that she’d put the photograph away and forgotten it. She even got up and searched through her picture drawer, but it wasn’t there.

Claire had no idea when or why the photo of Ruby had vanished, but she had the strangest feeling it was somehow connected to the doll. And the notion that someone might still be obsessed with her daughter after all these years sent an icy chill up her spine.

Saturdays were always busy in the gallery, and Claire spent most of the day on her feet. During lulls between customers, she stayed busy packing shipments, and late that afternoon she conducted a large tour of the hot studio, where the tourists were able to watch Ansel Ready, a master craftsman who had been blowing glass for more than forty years, go through the process step-by-step.

Afterward, when Claire led the group back into the gallery, she mingled with the out-of-towners, chit-chatting about the studio, the artists and about individual pieces that had aroused someone’s curiosity. She rang up their purchases, and as the last of the tour slowly filed back out into the street, she hoped to finally have a moment to catch her breath.

But long after everyone else had cleared out, a woman in a flowing skirt and dangly earrings lingered in the showroom, her gaze fixed on a display case that featured some of Claire’s pieces. Claire had noticed the woman earlier on the tour, deciding something about her demeanor had seemed a bit odd. Instead of interacting with anyone in the noisy, enthusiastic group, she’d hovered at the back, isolating herself as if she didn’t quite belong.

However, she’d seemed intensely focused on the tour. Every time Claire looked up, the woman’s gaze was on her. Claire had never had anyone hang on to her every word the way this woman seemed to, and after a while, the undivided attention became a little unsettling.

Claire pretended to work at the register, but her gaze kept straying to the woman. She wore a thick matte foundation on her face, and her eyes were rimmed in black kohl. But even through the heavy makeup, Claire found the woman’s features strangely arresting.

She looked up, caught Claire staring and smiled.

Claire shivered and suddenly she knew why the woman’s appearance was so striking. Her colorless face was reminiscent of a mannequin’s or a doll’s. Beautiful to look at, but not quite real. She had no emotion in her eyes, no expression in her features. And when she smiled, only her lips moved.

Taking one of Claire’s pieces from the display shelf, she approached the counter. “I’ve decided I can’t live without this,” she said. Her fingers around the rippled bowl were long and tapered, and she didn’t wear any rings.

As much as Claire needed the money, she had a funny feeling about the purchase, as if the woman had chosen the piece not for its beauty but because of its creator. But Claire didn’t know why that would be. Her name was not on the bowl, so this stranger couldn’t know it was one of her creations.

She watched as Claire carefully wrapped the fragile glass in layers of old newspaper. “I can’t help noticing the bandage on your hand,” the woman said. “Do you need some help?”

“Thanks, but I can manage.”

The woman’s eyes held a curious glint. “I’m sorry. I know it’s rude to stare, but…do I know you?”

“I don’t think so,” Claire said. “Although I’ve lived in New Orleans all my life. I suppose it’s possible our paths have crossed.”

“That must be it.”

The woman paid for the piece in cash, and as she waited for her change, she gave Claire a hesitant smile. “I think I know why you look so familiar. It’s your eyes. They’re turquoise, yes? A very unusual color, but I once knew someone with eyes the exact same shade.”

Claire murmured a response as the woman put away her change. Then she picked up the package from the counter and left the gallery.

Even after she was gone, Claire remained uneasy. She went over to the window to watch until the woman was out of sight, telling herself all the while that she was just tired and on edge. The past few days had been trying. The doll, the accident and the missing picture of Ruby. Any one of those incidents would have been unnerving, but to have all three occur at once was overwhelming.

Claire thought again of her grandmother, who’d always claimed that bad things came in threes. Charlotte would say that Claire was letting her imagination get the better of her. And maybe she was. But ever since she’d spotted the doll in the shop window, she couldn’t shake the notion that a door to the past had been opened.

A door that might lead her someplace she had no wish to go.

At a little after five, Claire locked the front door to the gallery, then closed out the register and secured the day’s receipts in the vault. After tidying up the showroom and display shelves, she walked back through the studio. The other glassblowers had already gone home, but Ansel Ready was still busy at his bench, and Claire stopped to watch him for a moment as he separated a striated bronze jar from a punty rod attached to the bottom of the glass.

“You always make that look so easy,” she said.

“When you’ve been doing it as long as I have, it should be easy.” He was a small, pleasant-looking man with a ruddy complexion and long, straight hair pulled back in a ponytail. Sweat glistened on his brow as he carefully dropped the jar onto the insulated knock-off table and then set the punty rod aside. Pulling on Kevlar gloves, he placed the piece inside the annealer, an electric oven that would keep the glass from cooling too quickly. After a few hours, the control system would slowly decrease the temperature to keep the object from shattering.

Sealing the oven door, he came back over to his bench and removed the gloves. “What’s on your mind, Claire?”

“Does something have to be on my mind for me to appreciate your work?”

He put away the jacks he’d been using to open up the lip of the jar. “You’ve been here, what? Almost seven years now, isn’t it? Even since you took your first class from me. I think I know you pretty well. And don’t forget I raised four daughters. I can tell when a woman is troubled about something.”

“I’m not really troubled,” Claire said. “I just wondered if you happened to notice someone in the tour group this afternoon. She was blond, thin, had on one of those long, flowy skirts.”

“Kept to the back of the crowd?”

Claire nodded. “Did she seem at all familiar to you, Ansel?”

“If it’s the same woman I’m thinking of, it was hard to tell what she looked like through all that makeup. I thought she had a mask on at first. Why?”

“I don’t know. I can’t explain it, but I have a feeling that I know her from somewhere. Or maybe that she knows me somehow. Does that make sense?”

“A lot of people come into the gallery. Maybe she’s been in before.”

“I don’t think that’s it.”

Ansel grew all fatherly, his brow puckering in concern. “Did she say something to upset you?”

“No. It wasn’t anything that she said or did. It wasn’t even the way she looked. There was just something kind of strange about her.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about it. This is New Orleans. Strange is normal for us.” He nodded toward Claire’s bandaged palm. “You just worry about taking care of that hand. It’s mighty lonely back here without you at your bench.”

“You still have Esther,” Claire teased, referring to one of the other glassblowers, who had been trying to get Ansel’s attention for years. Despite Ansel’s dogged indifference, Esther Stark was not a woman who discouraged easily.

He merely grunted as he started to clean up around his workbench. Claire said good-night and left through the back entrance. The afternoon was warm and balmy, and at five-thirty, hours of daylight remained. She fished in her purse for her car keys, and as she glanced up, she saw a man standing in the narrow alley that ran between two neighboring buildings. She couldn’t see him clearly, and experience told her that he was probably one of the city’s homeless, but he seemed familiar somehow.

Claire had always felt relatively safe in the American District, but she’d lived in New Orleans all her life and knew enough not to let down her guard, no matter the area. As she hurried toward her car, she kept her eyes on the man in the alley. He didn’t try to approach her, but stood back in the shadows so that she couldn’t see his face.

Claire had the uneasy feeling that he was watching her, and as she opened the door and slid behind the wheel, she glanced back to keep an eye on him. But he’d already disappeared.