The Line Between

They came pattering down on the dinner table, fast and hard, like wooden rain, one after another, after another, after another … perfect little copies, miniatures, of the madly smiling doll-thing, plopping out of it — just like Milady used to drop kittens in my lap, Angie thought absurdly. One of them fell into her plate, and one bounced into the soup, and a couple rolled into Mr. Luke's lap, making him knock his chair over trying to get out of the way. Mrs. Luke was trying to grab them all up at once, which wasn't possible, and Aunt Caroline sat where she was and shrieked. And the doll kept grinning and having babies.

Marvyn was standing against the wall, looking both as terrified as Aunt Caroline and as stupidly pleased as the doll–thing. Angie caught his eye and made a fierce signal, enough, quit, turn it off, but either her brother was having too good a time, or else had no idea how to undo whatever spell he had raised. One of the miniatures hit her in the head, and she had a vision of her whole family being drowned in wooden doll–babies, everyone gurgling and reaching up pathetically toward the surface before they all went under for the third time. Another baby caroomed off the soup tureen into her left ear, one sharp ebony fingertip drawing blood.

It stopped, finally — Angie never learned how Marvyn regained control — and things almost quieted down, except for Aunt Caroline. The fertility doll got the look of glazed joy off its face and went back to being a skinny, ugly, duty–free airport souvenir, while the doll–babies seemed to melt away exactly as though they had been made of ice instead of wood. Angie was quick enough to see one of them actually dissolving into nothingness directly in front of Aunt Caroline, who at this point stopped screaming and began hiccoughing and beating the table with her palms. Mr. Luke pounded her on the back, and Angie volunteered to practice her Heimlich maneuver, but was overruled. Aunt Caroline went to bed early.

Later, in Marvyn's room, he kept his own bed between himself and Angie, indignantly demanding, «What? You said not scary — what's scary about a doll having babies? I thought it was cute.»

«Cute," Angie said. «Uh–huh.» She was wondering, in a distant sort of way, how much prison time she might get if she actually murdered her brother. Ten years? Five, with good behavior and a lot of psychiatrists? I could manage it. «And what did I tell you about not embarrassing Aunt Caroline?»

«How did I embarrass her?» Marvyn's visible eye was wide with outraged innocence. «She shouldn't drink so much, that's her problem. She embarrassed

me.»

«They're going to figure it out, you know," Angie warned him. «Maybe not Aunt Caroline, but Mom for sure. She's a witch herself that way. Your cover is blown, buddy.»

But to her own astonishment, not a word was ever said about the episode, the next day or any other — not by her observant mother, not by her dryly perceptive father, nor even by Aunt Caroline, who might reasonably have been expected at least to comment at breakfast. A baffled Angie remarked to Milady, drowsing on her pillow, «I guess if a thing's weird enough, somehow nobody saw it.» This explanation didn't satisfy her, not by a long shot, but lacking anything better she was stuck with it. The old cat blinked in squeezy–eyed agreement, wriggled herself into a more comfortable position, and fell asleep still purring.

Angie kept Marvyn more closely under her eye after that than she had done since he was quite small, and first showing a penchant for playing in traffic. Whether this observation was the cause or not, he did remain more or less on his best behavior, barring the time he turned the air in the bicycle tires of a boy who had stolen his superhero comic book to cement. There was also the affair of the enchanted soccer ball, which kept rolling back to him as though it couldn't bear to be with anyone else. And Angie learned to be extremely careful when making herself a sandwich, because if she lost track of her brother for too long, the sandwich was liable to acquire an extra ingredient. Paprika was one, tabasco another; and Scotch Bonnet peppers were a special favorite. But there were others less hot and even more objectionable. As she snarled to a sympathetic Melissa Feldman, who had two brothers of her own, «They ought to be able to jail kids just for being eight and a half.»

Then there was the matter of Marvyn's attitude toward Angie's attitude about Jake Petrakis.