Nils

Come next spring...

The thread had snapped three weeks into December, but I was aware of my seasonal propensities, and so I closed my eyes as I fell into the emotional squalor of winter, trusting my anguish to subside with the blooming plum blossoms. And like clockwork, by the time March had arrived, me, this hideous creature, somehow inflamed and scrawny at once, emerged from my tattered pupa with something akin to hope; my soul fluttered.

I turned my face to the sun and my waterlogged spirit sizzled with gladness. One fluffy white cloud hung in the sky as if from wire in a child’s nursery. The birds conversed. People laughed from passing cars with their windows down, hair whipping madly, their cheap car speakers thumping, providing tempo to this budding new world.

The warbling song of a robin, spirit high, hidden in the blossoming trees, made my heart soar. I basked in the early sun and hummed along with the bird’s morning hymn. The world was good. Finally, the world was good again.

On my morning walk, I passed my favorite oaks, now adorned in moss as bright green as artificial turf, and moseyed across the bridge of the babbling creek where, during the winter months, I would smoke cigarettes and stare at the rocks below. I stopped halfway across and peered down at the creek. There were two children at play on the creek’s bed.

I saw the game: in the hands of the little blonde girl was a doll, nearly as tall as she, wearing a little blue jacket with a red sash around its waist. Its white pants and black shoes were muddy. I couldn’t see the doll’s eyes, because the girl was holding it facedown in the water, pretending to drown it.

The boy child, older, but not by much, and who shared the same round nose as the little girl, shouted instructions from a few steps away.

“Deeper—don’t let it breathe!”

I shook my head and turned to go, but before I’d moved ten feet, I heard the girl yelp. By the time I’d run back to the railing of the bridge, the children were gone. But there was the doll, on its back looking up at me, one eye open, the other closed, winking as if we shared a secret. Its amused pink lips and rose-red cheeks peeked through the mud.

I climbed down the embankment and lifted the doll from the umber-hued debris. Embroidered on the inside of its collar was the name Nils. I wiped his face with my shirt. His right eye was cerulean-blue. But his left eye was closed, and as hard as I tried to push it open with my thumb, it wouldn’t budge.

I looked around for the children, but finding only a glittering pink hair barrette, I tucked Nils under my arm and went home.

After dinner, I watched TV with the windows open. The warm spring air made even the most mundane habits feel eventful and fulfilling. I had cleaned the doll and put it in the rocking chair in the corner of the room.

“Well, Nils,” I said, lifting the television remote. “What do you want to watch?”

The phone rang. It was my sister, Marlow, wanting to know if I’d received an invitation to our cousin Beth’s wedding happening that July.

“I’ll see you there,” I said. “Look for the man wearing a wrinkled linen suit.”

“How long has it been?” Marlow said, exhaling her cigarette smoke on the end of the line in a measured wheeze. “We were starting to think you didn’t like us anymore. Mom’s going to tear into you.”

Nils was staring at me with his one open eye from the corner. I winked at him.

“Well, Mom is eighty and thinks everything is about her, doesn’t she? Listen, I should take off. I’ve got a busy few days of doing nothing.”

“Rough life.”

“Being out of work pays. Besides, if I had a job, who would tend the garden?”

“What are you planting?”

“Everything.”

We said our goodbyes, and when I could no longer keep my eyes open, I laid a small blanket over Nils’s lap, told him to sleep tight, and went upstairs to my bedroom.

Even with the bedroom window open, it was hot, but I managed to fall asleep happy and hungry for the opportunity this summer wedding would afford me: good food and drink, and a chance to, however cliché as it may sound, revisit the good old days with family.

But as pleasant a takeoff as my initial journey into slumber had been, once in flight, my dreams became turbulent. In one such dream, a one-eyed magpie hopped onto my chest, and in the bird’s solitary eye there was Nils, laughing and spinning madly like a wood-peg top, his red sash trailing behind him like fire and blood, until he unraveled completely. Beneath the resin and linen and silk was nothing but dried leaves and lichen-encrusted sticks. I woke up tearing at the sheets with my teeth.

When I’d finally fallen back to sleep, the magpie was back on my chest. This time, when I looked into the magpie’s eye, Nils was staring at me through the iris. He pushed his face against the glossy-black window, opened his pink lips, and mouthed the word, “Sorrow.”

Up hopped a second magpie—I felt the weight of it on my sternum. It squawked and tilted its head, the nictitating membrane of its third eyelid flashing white with every blink. But as upset as I’d been by the first bird, I was now filled with a tentative sense of hope. I knew the rhyme: One for sorrow, two for joy. But when I looked into the second magpie’s eye, I saw nothing but my own reflection, and I felt an incredible sense of condemnation.

I touched the tomato plant leaf, lifted my finger to my nose, and reveled in the fragrance. Maybe I’d make salsa in the summer. Maybe I’d sit in the garden with the sun on my face and drink sangria and listen to jazz and eat tortilla chips and homemade salsa. I picked out a small plant with a sturdy stalk from the bunch, put it in my cart, and wove in and out of the spring gardeners to the checkout line.

Standing in front of me, a father and daughter were buying an assortment of vibrant flowers. I smiled at the young father, nodding approvingly. His child was looking at the back of a packet of seeds. She had her hair pinned back on one side of her head with a glittering pink barrette.

“Spring has sprung, huh?” he said to me, patting his daughter’s blonde head.

I held the tomato plant to my nose and inhaled. “It couldn’t have come soon enough.” I nodded down at the kid. “Spring break?”

He plucked the packet from the little girl’s fingers and smiled down at her. “Daddy’s gotta pay—I’ll give it right back.” He patted her on the head once more for good measure. “No, this one has been out all week due to an injury. Isn’t that right, honey?”

The daughter looked up at me, and I gasped, stumbling backward into a crinkled woman holding a jug of hummingbird nectar.

It was the same round nose, same glittering pink barrette from that day at the creek. But there was a difference. The girl, whose right eye was as green as glass, was wearing a swath of white gauze over her left eye.

That summer was better than anything I could have hoped for. I found work at a company not far from home, I’d met a woman, and the salsa I made with the tomatoes from my tomato plant was heaven.

I credited Nils for my good fortune. He’d come with the spring thaw, and together we watched the birds sing and the neighborhood children play. We felt the sun on our faces. And because I’d grown used to having him beside me—even sleeping in my bed—I brought him on the four-hour drive to the wedding that July.

“You look happy,” Marlow had said over wedding cake.

“I am happy,” I replied.

By November, I was single again. And while I still had a job, they’d put me on a PIP. This was meant to be a kick in the ass, but it only made me less motivated. At night, Nils and I drank wine and watched the news. Nils never looked upset by the terrible things happening in the world. His perpetual smile and wink began to grate on me. It felt unjustified. And when I looked in the mirror at my own face, and pushed and pulled my lips into a smile, it looked just as wrong.

One evening, I forgot to bring Nils upstairs with me. The next night, I remembered, but pretended like I hadn’t. Soon after that, I didn’t bring him anywhere.

The magpies were back and on my chest every evening. Squawking and preening, Nils spinning and laughing, and my cold face, looking back at me through coal-black eyes. One for sorrow, two for nothing. One for sorrow, two for nothing. Until three weeks into December, I woke to find Nils sitting on a chair in front of my bed. How did he get there? His smile was gone. But like with anything that was something and now is not, I wasn’t sure it had ever been. How did he get there? I stared at the doll for a long time, until its face began to contort in the low light. I laid down and squeezed my eyes shut tight. I’d look again, and its face would be normal. I’d look again, and his smile would be back.

Did I bring it upstairs with me?

I sat up—its face was back to normal. I exhaled, shot out of bed, and snatched it by the arm. Downstairs, I dropped it into a chair without regard. I didn’t cover it with a blanket. I didn’t tell it goodnight. It was only a doll. It was an it—resin and linen and silk.

I didn’t fall asleep right away; my mind was spinning and spinning and laughing, and when I finally did sleep, the one-eyed magpies were back on my chest, beating their wings.

I woke up, and there again was Nils, sitting in a chair at the foot of my bed, its face morphing in the low light. I laid down and shut my eyes.

It’s not there, I thought. It’s not there. This is only a dream—a nightmare.

But I felt it on my sternum.

It’s a dream. It’s the magpies.

I opened my eyes and saw its pale resin face frowning back at me. Its cerulean-blue eye was closed. Its left eye, as green as glass, was open. And I saw myself again. Finally, I saw myself again.

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