The Little Girl in the Hall
Lila Haggarty eyed the handgun on the coffee table, contemplating suicide for the tenth time that month. There was only one bullet in the chamber, but that was enough to end her life. As on the previous occasions, however, her nerve failed. She got up from the sofa, walked into her bedroom and got dressed, her mind forcing her body to face yet another day of her miserable existence. Lila did not understand why she bothered putting on clothes and brushing her hair. There was no need since she would not leave her condo, and no one would see her during the course of the day.
There was a time when she interacted with the world, when she had a large circle of close friends and when she made personal appearances on television and radio. She also devoted many days and weeks to crisscrossing the country on book-signing tours, taking the time to meet her young fans. However, that was back in the days when she still believed life held the potential for happiness and that people were fundamentally decent at heart—in other words, before her great awakening to reality.
After making her bed and straightening up her kitchen and living room—deliberately leaving the gun on the coffee table in case she finally found the courage to pick it up, put the barrel in her mouth and pull the trigger—she walked down the hall to her studio. Crossing the threshold into her workplace was like entering another world. Where her living space was decorated with eighteenth-century antiques and expensive reproductions, the studio was an eclectic blend of state-of-the-art computers and decorated with chrome and glass furniture. Against this modern backdrop were Erté prints and dozens of dolls scattered throughout the room.
The most striking feature of the studio was a large picture window overlooking the Boston skyline. From her lofty vantage point, Lila could see the Common and Public Gardens, the gold-domed State House, and in the distance the Atlantic Ocean. Breathtaking though it was, she had long gotten used to the view, just as she had become jaded about so many things she had previously enjoyed in life.
Like an automaton, she walked over to her drafting table, picked up a pencil and began drawing. On the shelf next to her electric pencil sharpener was the John Newbery Medal she had won for Queenie Misses the Bus, the first book in her highly acclaimed Kindergarten Kids series. How proud she had been to receive the coveted honor, and at such a young age, too!
Her life had irrevocably changed in the years since she won that medal, not the least of which was that she had been stood up at the altar—if not exactly on her wedding day, close enough to it. Both the bouquet and cake had been completed, the cruise tickets for the honeymoon purchased, the wedding gown and bridesmaids' dresses finished and the wedding shower held. Mere hours away from becoming a married woman, Lila had her dreams shattered when her soon-to-be husband ran away with another woman, leaving her to cancel the wedding arrangements, return the shower gifts and explain the change in plans to friends and family members from both sides.
While the loss of the man she loved—not to mention the humiliation of being jilted for another woman—was the most devastating blow in Lila's life, it was by no means the only one. In fact, despite her literary accomplishments, her existence seemed to be a never-ending series of disappointments, losses and heartaches. Was it any wonder then that she grew more bitter and untrusting with each passing year and more determined to end it all?
* * *
Lila worked through the morning and into the early afternoon before stopping for a break. Just after two o'clock she went to the kitchen, made herself a roast beef sandwich, sat at the table and picked up her novel. An annoying noise from the hall broke her concentration.
Thump, thump, thump.
When she opened the door to see what it was, she spied a young girl—approximately nine or ten years old—bouncing a ball against the outer wall of Lila's living room.
"Who are you?"
Lila knew everyone on her floor, and no one had any young children.
The little girl turned her head and acknowledged the woman's presence, but she did not answer her question.
"Are you visiting someone here?"
The only reply was the thump of the ball hitting the wall.
"I wish you would either stop that or go somewhere else and play."
"I'm thirsty. Can I have a drink?"
"May I have ...?"
Lila realized she was parroting her mother's words and immediately stopped speaking.
"May I have a drink, please?" the child rephrased her request.
Lila looked to her right and her left. There was no sign of her neighbors. Where had the little girl come from?
"All right," she sighed. "Wait there and I'll get you a glass of water."
Instead, the little girl followed her inside.
"Chocolate chips!" the child exclaimed when she saw a jar of Toll House cookies on the kitchen table. "They're my favorite."
"They're my favorite, too," Lila admitted, experiencing a rare moment of nostalgia. "Go ahead and take one," she offered.
The child ran forward and removed the lid of the cookie jar.
"How about a glass of milk?" Lila asked. "You can't dunk cookies in water."
"Yes, thank you."
Lila went to the cabinet for a glass and then to the refrigerator for a carton of milk. When she turned back to the table, the little girl was gone.
"Where are you?" she called.
In a moment of panic, she raced to the living room—thank God the child hadn't touched the gun! She then searched the bedroom, the bathroom and even the studio, but there was no sign of the little girl with the ball.
"That's strange," she declared on her return to the kitchen.
While finishing her sandwich, she noticed there were four cookies in the jar. This morning there had been six. More disturbing, the glass of milk was empty.
Later that evening, Lila went to the three other condos on her floor and asked the owners if they knew the identity of the little girl. No one had any knowledge of her. There was the possibility that the child lived elsewhere in the building and had gotten off the elevator on the wrong floor since one hallway looked pretty much the same as the next. Yet how did the child leave the condo without Lila seeing or hearing anything, not even the sound of the front door opening and closing?
"The empty glass!" Lila suddenly exclaimed with a smile of satisfaction. "I was holding the full glass of milk when I noticed the girl was gone. I put the glass down on the counter to look for her. She had to have been hiding somewhere nearby. Then when I searched the other rooms, she must have drunk the milk, walked out the front door and went back to her own apartment."
Considering the mystery solved, Lila went upstairs to bed.
* * *
The following morning was a repetition of the previous one. Lila woke, went down to her living room in her pajamas and stared at the handgun on her coffee table. She contemplated suicide for more than fifteen minutes before staggering into the kitchen for a cup of coffee and then forcing herself to begin her yet another day.
It occurred to the children's author while she was drawing Queenie's unruly pigtails that the day before had been the first time in months that she had spoken to or seen her neighbors and the first time in weeks that she had ventured outside her condo. Lila was by no means an agoraphobic, nor had she ever intended on becoming a hermit. It was simply a matter of her not having the motivation to go out; and if she did, where was she to go? Over the years, she had lost contact with her friends and family. Furthermore, she had no interest in cultural or sporting events and—unlike most modern women—found no joy in shopping.
A creature of habit, Lila worked until mid-afternoon and then stopped and went into the kitchen where she made herself a roast beef, provolone and mayo sandwich on a Kaiser roll. It was the same sandwich every day with no variation. The roast beef, cheese and rolls came from the same deli. Even the brand of mayonnaise was always the same: Hellmann's. While she was eating and attempting to finish the chapter of a paperback that she had started reading nearly a month earlier, she heard a thump, thump, thump out in the hallway.
"That little girl has come back."
Lila opened the door and confronted the child.
"Where did you go yesterday?"
The girl shrugged her shoulders.
"It's not nice to play tricks on people, you know."
"How come you're home in the middle of the day?" the little girl asked. "Don't you have a job?"
"Yes, I do. I write and illustrate children's books in my studio."
"What books did you write?"
"The Kindergarten Kids series, the VanTassel Triplets books, A New Daddy for Brendan, Queenie Misses ...."
"They're dumb books," the girl said, rudely interrupting the writer's answer. "Did you write any about magic and wizards? You know, like Harry Potter?"
"No. I don't think adults should fill children's heads with silly nonsense. I prefer to write more instructive, educational books."
"Can I see where you write?"
Lila thought it over a minute or two before answering.
"I don't see why not. Just don't touch anything—and leave the ball out here."
While an adult's attention would probably have been drawn to the studio's panoramic view of Boston, the little girl's eyes immediately went to the artist's doll collection.
"Were these yours when you were young?"
"Most of them were. Others are replacements for dolls I used to have, like that Thumbelina. I had one just like it, but I lost it when my parents took me on vacation to Cape Cod when I was eight."
The little girl picked up the baby doll and cradled it in her arms.
"When I grow up I want to get married and have lots and lots of children."
Lila rolled her eyes. How naive youngsters were, believing in happily-ever-afters. She looked at the little girl rocking the vintage Thumbelina doll in her arms and remembered that she had once been as foolish and innocent. Tears welled in Lila's eyes and she walked over to the window, seeing not the streets of Boston below but her own past in North Plymouth. Hers had been a perfect childhood with loving parents, close friends, a happy home and a bright future ahead of her. Somewhere along the way her hopes and dreams dried up, leaving behind a bitter shell of a woman.
"I think this Thumbelina is my favorite doll, but I like the other dress better: the pink one with the fuzzy white bunnies on it."
It took a few moments for the child's remarks to penetrate the writer's reflections. When they did, she shivered. The little girl could not possibly have known about that pink dress. It was an outfit Lila's mother had made, and it was on the doll when Lila lost it in Cape Cod.
"How could you ...?" she began, but when she turned from the window, she discovered the child was gone.
* * *
Lila sat at her drafting table, unable to draw, until late in the evening. It seemed as though the narrow path she had been treading for the past ten years suddenly ended, and she was faced with a multi-pronged fork in the road. She took hours deciding upon a course of action.
"I have to find out who that little brat is," she decided.
The following morning Lila did not go into the living room and stare at the gun on the coffee table. She didn't even go into the kitchen for a cup of coffee. Upon waking, she immediately got dressed and went into her studio where she made a detailed drawing of the face of the little girl she had twice seen in the hall. Then she went down to the ground floor of her building and began ringing bells.
"Yes? What is it?" one frazzled stay-at-home mom inquired when she answered the door.
Lila showed her the drawing.
"I'm sorry to bother you, but I'm trying to find out who this little girl is and where she lives. She dropped a doll in the hall outside my door, and I would like to return it to her," she lied.
The woman looked from the drawing to Lila's face and back.
"Funny," she said. "The girl looks just like you. She's your daughter, isn't she?"
Lila looked more closely at her drawing, and her hands began to shake. She turned and quickly headed toward the elevator.
"If she's run away, you ought to call the police and report her missing," the woman called after her.
Once she was safely inside her own living room, Lila collapsed on the floor in tears. The stay-at-home mom was right. The little girl did look like her daughter. Furthermore, the child was about ten years old. Ten years earlier, just days after her fiancé broke her heart, she discovered she was pregnant. For seven months she vacillated between longing to keep the baby and wanting to give it up for adoption. In the end, the decision was taken out of her hands. The baby girl she delivered died only minutes after she took her first breath.
"But what if she didn't die? What if my baby was taken from the hospital, and the hospital staff lied about her death to prevent a police investigation? I read that there's big money in illegal adoptions. Could my child have been sold on the black market?"
It was possible that an infant could be kidnapped from a busy maternity ward, but was it probable the child would suddenly show up on Lila's doorstep ten years later?
"Maybe the person who took my baby knows my identity," she reasoned. "Of course! The kidnapper must have seen my name or photograph on the back cover of one of my books."
Based on this hypothesis, the motive became clear. The kidnapper somehow hoped to extort money from her.
"You won't get away with it!" Lila vowed.
Then she got up off the floor and headed toward the phone to call the police. A sound from the hallway made her stop abruptly. It was the thump, thump, thump of the little girl's ball. Lila ran to the front door and threw it open.
"It's you again. Who put you up to this? Is it the kidnapper?"
The little girl stayed calm despite the fact that Lila was clutching her upper arms.
"Where are you?" the writer stood and cried, believing someone in league with the child was hiding nearby. "I know what you're up to, so you might as well come out and show yourself."
"There's no one here," the child declared. "No one but you."
The tone of the little girl's voice was cold and menacing.
"You know who I am, don't you?" Lila asked her.
The girl nodded.
"You know the relationship we share."
"Yes, but do you?"
"I'm your mother, and you're my daughter."
The little girl giggled, but there was no mirth in her laughter.
"I'm not your daughter. I'm you. How else could I have known what dress was on our Thumbelina doll when you lost it?"
Frightened and confused by the girl's words, Lila ran back into her condo, slammed the door and locked it behind her.
"You can stay out in the hall until hell freezes over, but it won't do you any good," she screamed. "You're not going to get a dime ...."
"There's no need for you to open the door."
Lila jumped at the sound of the girl's voice beside her.
"How did you get in here?"
"It was easy. I don't have a physical form."
"This is it," Lila whimpered. "I've gone insane. Now I'm seeing things that aren't really there."
"No, you're not," the little girl argued. "I've been a part of you all along. You just forgot about me. You forgot that I wanted to grow up and be a wife and mother, to have friends, to travel, and to lead a rich, full life."
"No, you're not real. I'm losing my mind."
In desperation, Lila ran into the living room, picked up the gun off the coffee table and pointed it at the child.
The little girl faced her adult self defiantly.
"You want to shoot me, don't you?" she asked tauntingly. "You think if you do I'll go away. But if you destroy me, you'll destroy the last vestige of hope in your pathetic life. Go ahead and shoot then. You've wanted to commit suicide for months now. Summon the nerve to finally pull the damn trigger, you spineless coward!"
Crying hysterically, Lila aimed the gun at the little girl's chest and squeezed the trigger.
There was no spray of blood, no lifeless body collapsed to the floor, but she had not expected there to be any.
"It was either her or me," she reasoned once the deed was done. "I certainly didn't want to kill her, but I had no choice. She wanted to die anyway; she just didn't have the guts to do it. Besides, it's not as though she had any kind of a life, cooped up in this apartment day after day, year after year with no friends, no family—nothing of any value."
With renewed hope and determination, Lila walked to the bedroom, packed her suitcase, got her purse from beside the bed and after getting the Thumbelina doll from the studio, took the elevator to the lobby where she walked out the door and hailed a passing cab.
"I want to go to North Plymouth," she told the taxi driver.
"That's more than half an hour from here," the cabbie informed her. "It'll be expensive."
"That's okay. I'm good for it."
As the taxi headed north, Lila Haggarty hugged the baby doll to her breast, smiling in childlike wonder at what the future might hold in store for her.
When Salem was a kitten I knitted him pink pajamas with fuzzy bunnies on them, but he shredded them in a matter of minutes. (Not all little ones are sweet and innocent.)
