From The Dots
On a Monday morning, Dot was getting ready to go to class. Her head hurt, but not because she’d drunk with Dorothy last night. She hadn’t seen her aunt in a few weeks, actually—not since what her mother told her. Instead, the night before, she’d nursed a bottle of Stoli Vanil in her dorm room, draining almost the whole thing by herself. She knew this was self-destructive behavior, but she was hoping, praying, that drowning her system with that much alcohol would change what was real. What she feared might be real. And also, she just liked the escape.
Marlon eyed her soberly from the chair in her dorm room. A lot had happened in the past month. At first, things had been chilly between them. Dot didn’t confront him about how he’d betrayed her confidence; instead, she conveyed her fury by giving him one-word responses, or by taking the last chocolate-chip cookie in the dining hall (the only real edible thing there), or by denying him blowjobs. He kept trying to bring it up—“I’m sorry,” and “What happened?” and “I just love you so much. I was just so worried”—but Dot would always change the subject, loudly solving the puzzle on Wheel of Fortune, or yelling out a quote about Hinduism from their World Cultures textbook.
But then she looked up Dorothy’s past. Before, when Dorothy was missing, Dot had always concentrated on looking into what she was up to in the present—she’d always taken Dorothy’s stories about her history at face value. She went to the largest branch of the public library, a place she hadn’t been to in years. There, after hours of searching, she found a photo of Dorothy in a Life magazine article about a place called Bridgewater Hospital.
The article was dated January 14, 1979. It featured a photo of Dorothy—and it was definitely her, with her porcelain skin and almost identical haircut and that saucy little upturned mouth—sitting in a faded gray gown in what looked to be a music room. The picture was blurry, and she wasn’t looking at the camera—it didn’t even seem like she knew the camera was there. According to the article, Bridgewater was a psychiatric hospital in Menlo Park, California. Some say it was the inspiration for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The article was about the deinstitutionalization of mental hospitals to community mental health services, though Bridgewater, at that time, was still very much an isolated institution whose staff used manipulative and coercive methods. Most of the patients in the hospital had severe mental incapacities and were considered dangerous and unsuitable in other hospital environments.
So there was that.
Dot kept searching. Wading through the records for the county of Los Angeles, she found a protection order filed with the court against one Dorothy Banks. Protected in that order was her niece, Dot, and, surprisingly, Dot’s mother. Dot sifted through documents to see if the order had ever been lifted or revoked or whatever you’d call it in legal-ese, but she found no record.
Dot felt furious. She didn’t want her mother to be right about any of this. She also felt devastated. If her mother was right, then who was she to her aunt? A pawn? Did Dorothy ever love her? Did Dorothy love anything? Or perhaps this was all some sort of complicated ruse. What if it was her mother who was pulling the strings here? Perhaps creating a story of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, and convincing the nurses of it, too, and getting Dorothy sent away, and drafting that restraining order out of spite? But there was the record of the strychnine. Could her mother have drugged Dot herself, and then pinned it on her sister?
What was the truth? Who could she trust?
She didn’t know what to do. She found herself spinning into violent rages over so very little—a guy who cut her off on the freeway, a snappish sales clerk, how the Q button on her keyboard kept sticking. She threw books. She didn’t like this new version of herself. Finally, two nights ago, she told Marlon everything she’d found, including her mother’s accusations. How they matched up, dreadfully, with her experience in the hospital when she was young. In her dreadful research, she’d found out that in California, she was still well within her statute of limitations of bringing what her aunt had done to her to trial. Or her mother bringing it to trial, if it came to that.
And maybe it would come to that. Her mother had called the police, after all. Had they gone to the Magnolia? Was Dorothy in jail? Dot kept scouring the news, but she found nothing. Wouldn’t a Munchausen story be interesting to the local public? A glamorous ex-socialite behind bars for torturing her niece? Finally, she called the Magnolia Hotel and asked if Dorothy Banks was still staying there. “No, she checked out several weeks ago,” a concierge said. But was that true, or was the Magnolia protecting her?
That morning, as she was nursing her hangover, a hangover that felt authentic and nothing like the obliterating fog that hung over her on the mornings she woke up in Dorothy’s suite, a knock sounded at her dorm room door. Her boyfriend looked up but didn’t stand. Dot walked calmly to the foyer, but a few feet away, she froze. Dorothy was on the other side. Dot just knew.
She turned back to her boyfriend, her eyes wide. Her heart was thumping in her throat. He cocked his head. And then: “Dot?” Her voice. “Darling, can you let me in?”
Her boyfriend paled and half stood. Dot licked her lips and motioned for him to remain still.
The pounding began. “I know you’re in there. I saw you through the window.”
Dot met her boyfriend’s horrified gaze across the room.
“I miss you, darling,” came Dorothy’s voice. “What’s going on between your mother and me is our business—she shouldn’t be putting you in the middle of it. I just want to see you for a moment. I have something for you.”
Dot was biting down so hard on her knuckles—she knew there would be teeth marks in her skin. Finally, she walked to the door and opened it a crack. Dorothy stood on the other side. Her face was drawn, and her hair was shot with gray. There were bags under her eyes and wrinkles corrugating her forehead and around her mouth. She smelled sour and unwashed. A mink stole hung limply on her shoulders. It was as though she hadn’t slept or eaten or done her makeup since the last time Dot had seen her. Dot wondered, suddenly, if she had fled from the Magnolia—from the police. Maybe she’d been living in her car. It was probably a risk for her to be here.
Relief flooded Dorothy’s face when Dot opened the door, and she threw her arms around Dot’s neck. “Oh, darling,” she breathed. “I missed you so much.”
Dot let her arms hang at her sides. Her heart was pounding very hard. “Um, I have class soon.”
“I understand. But here.” Dorothy rooted around in her tote and handed Dot something wrapped in red paper. Dot went to tuck it away, but Dorothy bobbed her head, indicating she open it now. Slowly, Dot pulled the paper off. Inside was a dusty copy of The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.
“It’s a first edition, first printing,” Dorothy explained. “A collector’s item.”
Dot raised the book to her nose. It smelled like mustiness and paper, an old bookstore. She’d read The Bell Jar already. The choice felt oddly significant, eerily canny, like Dorothy knew what Dot had found out about her.
“Have dinner with me,” Dorothy whispered, clutching Dot’s hand. Her fingers felt cold and bony. “Tonight. Please, darling. At our place. Please, and I’ll explain what’s going on. I’ll tell you why your mother is doing this. I need you to hear my side.”
“Aren’t you worried about the police?”
“Oh, honey, there’s no concern about the police. Your mother . . . that was just to scare you. And me. Please. You won’t be doing anything wrong. Please meet me. It’s very important.”
Dot could feel her boyfriend shift his weight in the chair. A flare of pain pinged in her head, then fizzled out. “Okay,” she whispered. “I’ll see you there.”
She shut the door and turned back to her boyfriend, her knees shaking. Her boyfriend gawked at her. “What the hell is wrong with you? We should call the cops right now!”
“No, I have an idea. A way to prove if it’s actually happening. And if it’s true, then we can go to the police.”
She told him the idea. He pressed his hands over his eyes and shook his head. “No, Dot. No. You can’t do that.” He went through all the reasons why. Dot nodded. Maybe he was right. It probably was dangerous, even illegal. What they should do is wait until Dorothy came to them again at the dorm. Then they would call 911. Dorothy’s boyfriend said he would stay with her every night to protect her. He would make sure she was never alone here.
Dot’s boyfriend’s watch went off. It was time for him to go to class; her too. “You promise you won’t see her later?” he begged her as they parted at the quad.
“I promise,” Dot answered.
His expression was guarded, haggard, and sad. He pressed her little hands between his big ones just as Dorothy had done. “All right. If you need anything, call me. I’ll keep my phone on. I’ll check it every ten minutes.”
“Okay.”
“And I’ll see you in eight hours, right?”
She nodded. “I’ll be here.”
But eight hours was a long time. Dot tried to wait it out, she really did. Seven hours in, she changed her mind and left campus. If she didn’t go, if she didn’t try her plan, she would always wonder.
She needed to know the truth.