1956
Debbie sits cross-legged on her bed, surrounded by books and picture windows looking out on the lake. Her eyes are glazed, her right hand grips the leg of a worn stuffed bear, and her thumb is anchored in her mouth. Pedro is the consolation of her day, her sleeping pill, her refuge. Debbie has the ability to relax totally, while I m a youthful voyeur, envious of her safety and obliviousness. “ Where did Pedro come from?” I ask her, a tad hostile, glaring at the bear as my ten-year old class friend tunes out our game of checkers. She’s taking a Pedro break and doesn’t answer.
Time stops, everything stops for Pedro. I stand up and look through the window to where her quaint wooden rowboat is parked on the stones above the lakefront. Today is Saturday and it’s grey and raining and there’s not much to do. I see Pedro has new glass eyes. Debbie’s mother takes care of Pedro whenever she can coax the bear from Debbie’s clutches, which is seldom. A sweet gingerbread smell floats up the staircase from the kitchen. There’s a knock and her mother gently pushes open the door with a tray laden with two mugs of cocoa and a plate of ginger cookies.
“Time for goûter!” she sings, placing the tray on a side table. Debbie’s mother has twinkly eyes and a twinkly smile, acquired during the Great Depression, when she she’d played the ingenue on Broadway in Arsenic and Old Lace for over nine years straight with no replacement.
I think Debbie's mother is amazing. I would like to borrow her for a few years. I wonder whether, if Debbie had the misfortune to lose Pedro, her parents would cross France to fetch him, as my parents had not fetched my divinely soft stuffed white cat. Oh yes, Debbie’s parents would. Debbie has Pedro and a mother who does room service and would take Pedro to China for new ear tips if called upon. This thought enables me to feel quite deprived, with my younger brother hoovering up all the household attention while I grow less cute and less visible every month.
But I love ginger cookies and cheer up instantly. Debbie stands up for just long enough to reach up and scrape a cookie off the plate and returns to sit on her bed. I stare in fascination and disapproval as she grips Pedro’s limb, this time a leg, with Pedro tilting sideways with the other limbs asprawl at odd angles from the torso. She’s not sucking her thumb at this moment as she’s working on a cookie, which crumbles randomly over the rumpled sheets.
When I visit a few months later I notice Pedro is starting to look damp and disheartened. His brown cloth ears are frayed and he lacks his former wooliness. Arms and legs are balding and you can see cross-hatching of muslin. When I point this out, Debbie informs me Pedro can be fixed, and has already been to the doll hospital in Connecticut twice before.
The doll hospital! I imagine racks of naked dolls and flayed stuffed animals in rows of white cots, with human doctors armed with needles, thread and glue performing emergency procedures as nurses tend to the dolls’ every whim. But here in post-war Geneva it seems the Swiss are not developed enough to provide advanced doll surgery.
“Hello girls!” chirps her mother, placing a tray of chilled coke and chocolate chip cookies on the table. “Look at Pedro,” I say. “He looks icky and old”. “I know,” her mother replies. “Poor Pedro. We’ll have to fix him up, won’t we?” she says, as if I’m part of her rescue team. “I’ll show you what we have so far.” I follow her out into the hallway, and she unrolls something from a paper bag. It’s a piece of beige wool. “This is for starters,” she beams. I wonder how she’ll pry Pedro from Debbie’s grip, but she’ll find a way. She’s resourceful.
When I return a month later, Pedro has changed—he’s a couple of shades lighter, and, to be honest, not looking very much like his old bearish self. His jaw is a bit shorter and his eyes have a new, leather-button look. Debbie accepts the new Pedro. Trusting and secure as only an only child can be.
Pedro is Pedro and will always be. Debbie grabs an arm and her eyes go far away. Ah, to believe......
