The Elizas: A Novel(36)

From The Dots


Dot met her boyfriend her junior year in college. Marlon sat in the back row of her Introduction to Art History class, which every undergrad was required to take, no matter your intended major. The rumor swept through the class that in high school, her soon-to-be boyfriend was a performance art ingénue; at the beginning of the year, he stole rats from a local pet store and released them in the school hallways, and then he videotaped the whole thing. Apparently, it was so amazing some art gallery in Silver Lake was giving him his own show.

Marlon always seemed to be holding court at the back of the lecture room, telling some fantastical story, getting a lot of laughs. Whenever the teacher called on him, he had interesting interpretations of the artists’ motivations. Puzzlingly, though, Dot overheard someone saying he was a physics major and wanted to study quarks after graduation. Dot had no idea what a quark even was. So he wasn’t an artist, then?

One day, Dot noticed him embracing a very short girl in the quad, and she’d seethed with jealousy—what did she have that Dot didn’t? But later, she found out the girl was his neighbor from when he was in kindergarten. Dot was surprised at her relief; by that point, she realized she couldn’t deny her crush. She was good at making the first moves with guys, and so, when she came upon him at a holiday party in her dorm, that’s just what she did.

Apparently, Marlon knew about Dot, too. “You’re famous,” he said, after they’d kissed.

Dot lowered her eyes. She thought he was going to mention her tumor. Her illness had garnered unexpected attention through the years: In junior high, older girls doted on her like a baby doll. In high school, angst-ridden boys found her intriguing because she’d walked the thin line between life and death. In the high school locker room, changing for gym, she noticed girls sneaking looks at her head. She heard the name Frankenstein directed at her more than once. Along with getting a lecture on how Frankenstein was actually the creator and his brain-stitched creation was called “the monster,” those girls also received dead mice in their lockers. Matilda would giggle as she played lookout as Dot placed them there, atop lacy pairs of underwear and love letters and unopened pregnancy tests. But for the past three years in college, she hadn’t bothered to mention it to people. She didn’t want it following her anymore. She wanted to start over. Still, she wasn’t surprised someone had found out.

But no, Marlon said she was famous because she was Dorothy Banks’s niece. “My grandparents live near the Magnolia Hotel,” he said excitedly. “She’s, like, an institution there.”

“She doesn’t live at the Magnolia anymore,” Dot said quietly.

“She doesn’t?”

“Nope. She moved out years ago.”

He looked confused. “Oh. Huh. I swear they said they just saw her.”

“She has this doppelganger, sort of,” Dot said. “Maybe that’s who you saw. She still lives in town, I think. But I haven’t seen my aunt in twelve years.”

“Where’d she go?” he asked.

“She might be at the Sorbonne. In Paris.”

“Really? You should visit her. Paris is awesome.”

Dot started up. Why hadn’t she? Just because her mother said that bullshit about Dorothy being troubled didn’t mean she had to buy into it. And she was old enough now. She could find the Sorbonne and track Dorothy down.

That weekend, home with her family for dinner, she mentioned to her mother she was going to buy a ticket. “Paris?” Her mother wrinkled her nose. “What’s in Paris?”

Dot couldn’t believe her mother had forgotten. “Dorothy,” she said haughtily. “At the Sorbonne? That ringing a bell?”

Her mother looked shocked. “Oh, Dot, I don’t think that’s actually true.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I said she might be there. But she’s probably somewhere else.”

“No, you said she was there.” But as soon as Dot said this, she was sure her mother was right. She’d never definitively said anything. This angered her. She’d hitched her star to Paris. All the fictitious letters she’d written from Dorothy were from Paris. She’d bought coffee table books of Parisian photography so she could imagine Dorothy sitting at the Tuileries Garden or hunting around the Catacombs.

“Do you know where she is at all?” she demanded.

Her mother shook her head. “I haven’t heard from her since you were in the hospital.”

Dot fumed. “If I had a sister, I would cherish her. I would look for her if she went missing.”

“You have a stepsister,” Dot’s mother pointed out, gesturing to her stepsister’s empty chair. The stepsister was at college marching band practice. “And honestly, Dot? I used to hear you talk about her behind her back to that weird girl you were friends with in high school in a voice that says to me perhaps you weren’t cherishing her. People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”

When Dot made some calls, she found out no one at the Sorbonne had heard of Dorothy Banks. She slammed down the phone, staring at the globe that sat on her stepfather’s home office desk. Dorothy could be anywhere on that spherical map. On one of the bumpy mountain ranges, in the middle of the turquoise ocean.