After all the time that she and Ivy had spent stealing what they needed and growing their own food, Harley took a special delight in going shopping now that she had her own money. Her arms were laden with shopping bags, brimming with brand-new clothes and shoes and jewelry that gave her a light step nevertheless.
The mall sat squarely in the center of Gotham’s biggest shopping districts, new and airy with skylights abounding, clean bathrooms and fountains burbling at either end of the concourse. Harley skipped clear from one end to the other, and only noticed the booth set up in the middle on her way back to the car. There was a small crowd forming, and several well-dressed people smiling pleasantly around at the crowd.
Harley had only started to crane her head toward them, when she jumped at a tap on her shoulder. “Oh, I’m sorry, hon!” Harley turned to see a blonde woman with the same smile as the others, standing behind her with an approving look in her eyes. “I didn’t mean to scare you!”
“It’s cool,” Harley chuckled at her own reaction. “What’s going on around here?”
“Why, we’re recruiting,” The woman’s smile brightened, although Harley hadn’t thought it possible. “My name is Lauren Montgomery, with the Greater Gotham Talent Agency. And you would be just perfect for one of our upcoming projects!”
“Talent agency? You mean like acting?” Harley blinked and put down her shopping bags.
Lauren nodded. “Exactly. How would you like to be in commercials, Miss…”
“Ah, Quinzel. Harley,” She answered and shook the hand that Lauren offered. “Sounds like fun!”
“It does indeed.” Lauren took a card out of her front pocket and handed it to Harley. “You’ve got a great look, Harley. I think you’re exactly what we’re looking for. All I’d like you to do is come down to this address next Saturday, will you? We’ll be auditioning all day long, starting at ten o’clock.”
“Do I have to bring anything?”
Lauren laughed softly. “Just that adorable face of yours! I’ll see you there, won’t I, Harley?”
Harley nodded, her pigtails bouncing. “Yeah, I can do that!”
“I bet you can!” Lauren gave her one last pearly smile, and then she was back in among the crowd.
Harley looked at the card and stuffed it into her pocket, bouncing even harder as she grabbed up her things, and darted off home. It would be fun, kind of a lark, and didn’t she deserve to have some fun these days?
*****
“Saturday? At ten? In the same old building?”
“Mary, please don’t get too excited. You shouldn’t go.”
“I have to go!” Mary Dahl slammed her fist down on her desk, shaking a bobble-head doll and an old, graying snowglobe that sat near the edge. “I have to!”
“Okay. Alright. Calm down, Mary. Same old place. Saturday at ten. You can call me, okay, if you need anything?”
She swallowed, and nodded into the telephone. “Fine. I will. Thanks.” Mary hung up on her old agent, only aware in the back of her mind how grateful she should be that he still told her these details at all. It had been so many years since she’d had a job through him. It was only his kindness that gave her the secretarial job that kept her afloat, but even he couldn’t feed her soul anymore.
The bobble-head stopped bobbling, and Mary picked it up. The figure was a little girl, her legs crossed in a curtsy and her head held up high. Her eyes were wide and blue, full of innocent mischief. She wore a flowery blue dress with soft white ruffles, and her gold hair fell in perfect plastic ringlets around her heart-shaped face. Mary touched her own cheek, the same curve though beginning to wrinkle. Mary’s ringlets were a little longer now, a touch of silver working its way in at her roots. Her big blue eyes started to swell with tears, and Mary took the doll to her desk, stuck it in a drawer and slammed it hard.
The room was filled of pictures of the little girl Mary had once been. Posters, autographed photos, toys, a trivia game – all specially-made for the Baby Doll TV show. Baby Doll had been the height of situation comedy, and had drawn hungry audiences every weeknight at seven-thirty for years. Mary had been five when it started. She barely remembered a life before the limelight. She had grown up around cooing co-stars and studio audiences, showered with love.
But Baby Doll was all grown-up now, and no one loved her anymore. Mary was thirty-four, and it had been so long that the show didn’t even air in the early-morning slots anymore. It had grown old and aged badly with her, and despite Mary’s tearful please it didn’t even have a DVD release. She was forgotten, but she didn’t forget.
Mary sighed and let her head fall on her desk. Saturday at ten, she thought, and chanted it in her head. Saturday at ten. That was her chance. One more audition, one more try. And if it didn’t come through…Mary couldn’t finish the thought. This time it would work. This time, she’d be successful again. This time, she’d get her life back.
*****
One look at the morning crowd told Harley that she had no reason to worry about being recognized. The ad agency’s building was crammed full of people, girls and women, boys and men, most already pouring over scripts and muttering lines to themselves. Harley laughed at herself for having felt so exclusive at the mall – it was a cattle call, where several different commercials were pooling as many hopeful young actors as they could find. If she had been Supergirl showing up in full costume, Harley doubted anyone would have taken it as more than a gimmick to get noticed. So she walked through the crowded halls, found her name, took her papers, and relaxed.
Within a few hours, Harley had gotten what sounded like pretty good praise. A shampoo commercial had kept her for a good 20 minutes reading her lines and getting different smiles from her face. Something about the camera made it fun, and Harley mugged even for a minute after she was free to go. With nowhere else to be, though, she decided to stay in the building. Maybe there were more things she could try out for. Maybe there were people who needed day-care. Either way, there was no harm in staying.
“No, I’m not finished, wait!” The shout crashed into the hallway when the door opened, and much of the ambient noise vanished as people turned to look. “Just let me do it one more time, just one more, please, I know I can do it!”
The voice that responded was much more discreet, and Harley had to strain to hear it. “Miss Dahl, I’m sorry, but we have a lot of people to get through today. I can put you on our mailing list for the next time we’re looking – “
“No! No, I’m not going to wait again, I’m not!” Dahl wailed. Her voice was high-pitched and girlish, and Harley craned to see the woman’s red polka-dot dress.
Someone behind Harley turned to his friend. “She looks familiar, doesn’t she?”
“Eh, lot of people do.”
“What’s she wearing?” asked another whisper.
“Isn’t she a little old for that hair?”
A second executive clapped his hands loudly. “Okay, come back, everyone. Lots of work to do. Number 412…”
But the whispers kept coming, getting louder as they multiplied and had to compete with each other. Mary stared out at the crowd with a child’s frightened eyes and started to yell, her voice raising and the color drained from her face. “You’re not going to forget me again! You won’t, I won’t let you! Don’t you remember Baby Doll? Didn’t you love her? What are you doing?” Mary keened as a pair of tall, strong men in uniform gently took her arms and started to lead her out. “No! No, no, you’ll all see, you’ll remember, you’ll care, I won’t be forgotten again!”
The whispers were gone even after Mary had been dragged out. An executive cleared her throat and repeated, “Number 412 for the Waynetech Labs spot, let’s go, people.”
Harley watched the crowd separate out into its own groups, but she didn’t feel much like staying, now. The girl-woman’s shouting stuck in her head the whole way home. Harley wondered who she had been, thinking that she was as guilty as any other of forgetting.
*****
“So…vegetarian, huh?”
“Only seems fair to me.”
Renee Montoya and Pamela Isley walked down the street, both conspicuously aware of their identities. Ivy might always go by her nickname in public, but worlds were colliding for Renee.
“They give up their whole lives to grow energy for us,” Ivy continued. “Spend so much time making our food, it’s only right we eat it.”
“Never thought of it that way,” Renee chuckled. Her shoulders shrugged in an old green leather jacket, with her dark hair free around her neck. It gave her a moment’s laughter to think she was wearing the pants – her black slacks walking so close to the pale legs that poked out of Ivy’s dark skirt. “Makes enough sense. Somehow I didn’t peg you for the kind who just feels bad for the cute little moo-cows.”
Ivy gave her a smile, and slipped her arm around Renee’s. It had been Ivy’s idea to go out for their first real date. It would make it feel official, she had said, like any normal couple. True to form, Renee had arrived at her door right on time, and they began walking toward the busier, fancier Gotham streets.
“That’s fine then. There’s an Italian place up a ways with a great bar.” Renee hooked her arm to give Ivy’s a perch, and still couldn’t quite keep her eyes up when she talked. They kept moving to Ivy’s thickly-braided hair, her v-neck sweater, or quickly just down to the ground.
“Look like you need it.” Ivy tapped Renee’s cheek with her finger and forced the other woman to look at her. “If I didn’t know better I’d think you were being shy.”
Renee laughed, swallowed, and turned her face back to the street. “Sorry. It’s just been a really long time…and I haven’t had that many dates to begin with.”
“And I’m so gorgeous,” Ivy supplied.
“That too.”
“That bad, were they?” Ivy asked.
Renee shook her head. “Nah. Just…not great. Not right.”
“No second dates?”
“They never called back, and I didn’t care enough to.”
Ivy stopped walking as they approached the restaurant, and pulled Renee with her to the wall of the nearest shop. She reached for her dark, loose mane and tugged Renee’s head close enough to kiss, slow and steady. When they broke apart, Renee’s eyes never left Ivy’s.
“How’s Friday?”
“I can make it work,” Renee nodded with a breathy voice.
“Good. Now you’ve made a second date,” Ivy chuckled, took Renee’s arm again, and led her in to dinner.
*****
Something really must have gone well, because a week after her first foray into the commercial world, Harley found herself in the studio for a second time. It was easier to breathe and move this time, with most of the hopefuls weeded out, and Harley had dolled herself up in the hopes that if she couldn’t get a job, she could at least turn an eye or two. She wore a thin pencil skirt over a pair of dark hose, topped off with a ruffley baby-blue shirt. Her blonde hair had been freed from its pigtails and tied instead into a neat bun at the nape of her neck. Those who didn’t know any better would have thought her professional and well-put together.
“Good to have you back, Ms. Quinzel,” Lauren from the mall greeted her with a handshake and the same grin she gave everyone. “Right this way, we’ll get started shortly.”
Harley was lead into a large room, high-ceilinged and with a few rows of bleacher seating still set up. “It’s easiest to keep everyone in one place,” Lauren explained, “We don’t do any filming in here anymore. There are better studios we can do smaller groups in. So if you’ll just wait here until you’re called, Ms. Quinzel.”
“Yeah, ‘course,” Harley nodded. She wandered the perimeter of the room once she was left to herself. It was the kind of set-up they used to use for sit-coms, although the stage was bare now. It looked sad, lonely even. But Harley’s own excitement bubbled in her stomach and drowned it out.
At least, until the lights went out. A few shrill screams came from the assembled actors. Harley could hear frantic whispers from the directors in charge, and steeled herself: if she and Ivy were going to be hanging out with superheroes now, this was exactly what she should get used to expecting.
“What’s going on? Somebody call security!”
“Nothing but static, someone’s cut the lines.”
“Can we get the lights back, like, now?!”
Then a laugh. It started triumphantly, and petered down, a high-pitched giggle that echoed over the single security guard’s walkie-talkie. “I’ll turn the lights back on, but then you’ll all have to do something for me!”
The double-doors into the studio slammed open, bringing in a shaft of light from the hallway to frame the woman. She dropped the radio and giggled again, with her hands together in front of her face in her glee. All eyes were on her, and within moments the lights came back on, but the door shut fast behind Mary Dahl.
The guard’s radio crackled again. “Sir? You’ve gone into lockdown, is everything
alright?”
Mary’s ecstatic grin became a glare faster than the eye could see, and she drew a small handgun from a pleat in her polka-dot dress. “Tell them it’s fine. A malfunction in the system. Nobody’s going to get hurt. Everyone’s just. Fine.”
The message went back. “Ah, something just…tripped the systems.” Harley’s ears picked up the man’s desperation. She’d heard the same in the Joker’s minions every so often. But even as she wanted to beg the man to do his job, she couldn’t blame him – from her spot near the door, she too could see the mad look in Mary’s eyes.
“Don’t sound like you don’t believe me!” Mary gasped her shock at the very idea. “I don’t want to hurt anyone! Today is going to be a celebration! I just needed something…extra for people to pay attention,” she put the gun back in her skirt, a hand-sewn holster, and didn’t let anyone forget it was there. “But this is perfect! Oh, there’s so many of you! They work, don’t they?”
Mary looked expectantly at a man wearing a headset around his neck, who looked from side to side before realizing he had to answer. “What, do what work?”
“The cameras! Get them ready!” She ordered, her voice never losing the girlish tone. “We’re going live!” She skipped away from the camera toward the crowd, and the crowd shrank back.
Lauren found her way to the forefront, to the relief of the actors, and other executives. “Miss Dahl, what do you think you’re doing? If you don’t let all of these people out of here immediately, you will never work in this business as long as you live!”
Mary’s eyes narrowed once again, and her thin arms tensed under puffed sleeves. “Don’t you tell me about this business!” She growled through her teeth. “No one’s going to tell me what I can’t do, not again, not ever again!” she started to laugh, her whole body shaking with it. Someone tried another door into the hallway, only to find it shut as tightly as all the others on automated lockdown. “Don’t you see? I AM working again! And you all get to work with me! And if you don’t…if you don’t, I get to press this button,” she pulled a small remote control from her dress and showed it around, “and the bombs will go off, and the whole studio will come crashing down, and the papers will never get enough! Isn’t it swell?!”
The silence in the studio was deafening. Harley could hear a few dozen gulps from her fellow actors, and Lauren stepped slowly back into the crowd.
Mary composed herself, batted her long eyelashes, and spoke as sweetly as if she had been invited to take charge. “You see, they filmed Baby Doll here. Right in this very room. Oh….so many memories…the people have been denied the show too long, it’s time we bring it back!” She started to walk up closer now, and there wasn’t very much more room for the people to retreat. Mary studied each face, and the delight glowed on her own when she found what she was looking for.
“You’re going to be Daddy!” She announced, tugging an older man out of the throng and clutching his hand so tightly in hers that he couldn’t get away. “And Sister!” a teenage brunette who looked as though she were about to cry. “Brother!” another teen, still looking too bewildered to be scared. Mary placed each new family member’s hand into the last one’s, and her free fingers reached out to scan over the crowd one last time. Finally, she rushed forward, and her hand closed around Harley’s. “Mother!”
*****
The stage was set again. Harley’s professional wardrobe had been deemed a good enough costume. Brother and Sister hadn’t been so lucky – the poor kids were stuffed into too-small 50s-style clothes, a sea-green dress for the girl and a striped red-and-white shirt for the boy (who had confided to Harley in a spare moment that their names were Jessica and Steven). Father was given a corncob pipe, the only close enough prop still left in the studio. Mary had just about dissolved into tears when she found the furniture from her old set, battered and faded but still the same. A soft brown sofa in the middle of the room, a mustard-yellow kitchen counter, a child-sized bed in the other end of the set. Behind the camera were the operators who had expected to shoot commercials tonight. Tucked into the studio audience was everyone else.
When all was in place, Mary took out her remote and struck a button. The flinch that spread through the entire studio was audible; but there were two buttons on the device. All this one did was light up an old, buzzing “applause” sign. Mary looked expectantly around the room. When there was no response, she took out her gun, and hit the button again.
The audience stormed into applause and cheering, and Mary beamed. “Welcome back to Baby Doll! Sponsored by Fleetfoot Tires, and Little Sweetheart single-serving pies!”
Sitting together on the couch, Jessica turned to Harley with a small gulp. “Do, do they still make those even?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t think it matters,” Harley answered her.
“What are we going to do?” the girl’s voice cracked, “She’s crazy!”
“She sure is, I know crazy,” Harley nodded. “Just…act natural.”
“Just what?”
“Keep her happy, and buy some time. Improv!” Harley told her, and the conversation was stopped short by Mary bounding across the set into her “mother’s” arms.
“Mommy, Mommy, Sister was tugging my hair!” Mary wailed, her bright smile never leaving her face. She threw her arms around Harley’s neck, and with a gulp, Jessica reached up to tug just barely on Mary’s curls. “OW!” Mary exaggerated her scream, “See, she did it again!”
“Now, Jessie, you stop teasing your baby sister,” Harley half-scolded the girl, and gave her a wink.
The delight was so evident on Mary’s face that it was almost infectious, and Harley even found herself starting to smile. “Don’t be silly, Mommy! She’s not Jessie, I’m not Sister. She’s Sister, I’m
Baby!” After a moment’s pause, Mary pulled out her remote again, and a few laughs found their way out of the audience.
“Of course, Baby,” Harley cooed. Mary was awkwardly large in her lap, a full-grown woman perched on her knee, but Harley tried her best to modify the way she sometimes let her Scouts sit, and she had been in less comfortable positions. “How about you go play with your dollies, so Mommy can make dinner, okay? And Jess… Sister can help.”
“But Mommy, I want to help too!” Mary beamed and slid off of Harley’s lap, skipping to the kitchen. She started to move quickly, her long legs carrying her across the floor, but slowed herself when she noticed. Her skips were thin and small, so she could still run at a child’s pace.
Jessica tugged at Harley’s sleeve and whispered, “What are you doing?”
“I dunno, but she’s not shooting anyone so I’m gonna keep it up,” Harley shrugged and stood up.
The comedy was little better than insipid, but Mary never seemed to notice. She, Harley and the rest of the “family” tromped around the sets, with Mary’s frantic energy leading the charge and Harley close behind, trying her best to guide the others into keeping the show flowing. The cameras were on them, buzzing softly and blinking their lights, but the important thing was the audience behind them, sitting stock-still and terrified and learning to laugh uproariously whenever the sign turned on.
“Baby” made pancakes with invisible flour and eggs, and Harley cleaned up the mess that wasn’t on the floor. Baby teased her brother and sister about all of the hard work they had to do at school that she didn’t, and Harley scolded her good-naturedly, just as she expected. And Harley paid careful attention to the look on Mary’s face throughout it all. At first, she kept a careful eye on the audience, waiting for the right reactions, but something was changing. Her glances to the camera were less frequent as the show went on. She stopped pulling out her remote and threw herself into the scenes until Harley suspected she wasn’t acting anymore. The joy on her face was too true, too simple and young. In her mind, Mary was no longer a woman in her thirties, a wash out, a failure. She was a Baby again, and Harley understood.
“Come on now, Baby, it’s time for bed,” Harley announced, when the time seemed right.
Mary looked up from the old, weathered dolls she had been playing with and her face started to scrunch up. “Mommy, no! Princess Kitty is going to the ball tonight!”
“Princess Kitty can get there in the morning,” Harley insisted. She could hear her voice echoing gently in the studio, and surprised herself with how good she had gotten at the mom voice. Harley bent down and looped her arms underneath Mary’s; the woman stood easily, even as she mimed squirming and wriggling to get away. “It’s time for Baby to go to bed….and Mommy will read you a story,” Harley added, with one more glance at her fellow ‘actors’.
“Okay!” Mary threw herself out of Harley’s arms and across the set, to wrap herself up in a tiny blanket on a bed that she had to bend her knees and keep her feet on the floor to fit into.
“Let’s see…” Harley sat herself on the edge of the bed as best she could, although Mary didn’t seem to mind being sat on. She was curled under her covers with her fingers poking out of the top, the blanket pulled up all the way over her chin. With no props left on the old set, Harley simply mimed opening a book, and began. “Once upon a time…there was a little girl who thought no one loved her anymore.”
“I don’t like this story.” Mary’s lips tightened. The audience started to murmur with confusion, and fear, and hope.
“It’ll have a happy ending, I promise,” Harley said quickly, and continued on. “The little girl had a mommy, and a daddy…and a brother and sister…and they all loved her very much. But the little girl didn’t realize it. Sometimes, mommy and daddy had to work, and brother and sister had to go to school, and it didn’t feel like anyone was there for her.”
Mary shook her head slowly, still buried under her blanket. “Nuh-uh…there’s always the other people….the watching people…they were there.”
“And did they love the little girl very much?”
Mary nodded, and Harley could see her throat tightening up. The other three actors had slowly turned the set sofa around, peering over the top and ready to duck behind it in case they needed cover. Every eye was on her.
“But one day they went away, too?”
“They were always supposed to be there for me!” Mary started to sit up, and Harley placed a firm hand on her right shoulder. “And they laughed and they ‘awww’ed and they loved me and then they stopped coming! They just stopped! Why did they stop?!”
“Because they weren’t the ones who really loved you.” Harley took both of Mary’s hands, in part to comfort her and in part to check that she hadn’t taken out her button or her gun. “They cheered, and they watched and they laughed but that wasn’t love.”
“Nuh-uh, it was!” Mary insisted. She tried to pull her hands back from Harley, but it was amazing how strong ones hands had to be to run a day-care. “Mommy said they’d love me forever, that’s why she wanted me to go, that’s what she always said! If I didn’t want to be Baby, Mommy said everyone would love her and I needed to!”
Harley reached impulsively and drew the woman into a hug. “But what about Mary?”
“Huh?” Mary looked up, and Harley saw the tears in her eyes. They were the eyes of a four-year-old girl, not the thirty-year-old woman.
“They loved Baby. They didn’t love Mary. And Mary was growing up, and Mary was going to be a beautiful young woman, but the other people didn’t care.”
“NO!” Mary shouted, loud enough to make Harley jump. “No growing up! Baby can’t grow up! When you grow up they don’t love you anymore!”
“That’s not true!” Harley hugged her even more tightly, trapping Mary in her embrace…and under the blanket, kneeing the cold form of what she hoped was the gun off the side of the bed and out of reach. “Your mother, and your father, and your siblings, and your friends, they all still loved you. They still do.”
Mary was shivering. Her hands clutched at Harley’s blazer and her head shook from side to side. “Mommy and Daddy went away too…”
“They wanted to know Mary,” Harley told her. Her voice was soft and soothing, and her fingers played gently in Mary’s curls. “I bet if you called them today, they still do. I bet they’ve been worried about you. But Mary,” Harley finally addressed her directly by name, and the woman looked up. “We can’t find out unless you open the doors up.”
Mary’s lip twitched and quivered, and finally she began to cry. The tears flowed from her eyes and her nose stuffed up, leaking into Harley’s shoulder. With her face hidden from the cameras, from the audience, Mary fumbled in her pocket for the remote control and threw it to the ground. Harley kept the woman curled at her side and nodded furiously at Sister Jessica to pick it up before anything else could happen.
In the audience, people began to applaud. It was slow at first, but soon a shower of praise and acceptance. Harley didn’t really process it, but Mary heard. She had known that sound for as long as she could remember, but up until now it had only come for Baby. Today, they were clapping for Mary. They were clapping for her, that was her only thought, and that meant that she was finally doing the right thing.
A few minutes later, the doors were open and everyone was let free. And until the police came to take her away, Harley held Mary on the bed and let her cry.
*****
The show never aired. The cameras worked, but the studio hadn’t been set up for live broadcasts for years, and all that resulted was a firsthand account of everything that Mary had done, evidence of her threats and her mental breakdown – and Harley’s heroism. She declined any interviews, but accepted a fairly sizeable check and fruit basket when the advertising company felt a need to thank her.
Now was another quiet night – Ivy out with her new beau Batgirl again, and Harley inside with her babies. She flipped on the news on her small TV, and soon grew bored of the coverage of her own story. But one channel had decided to cash in on the public’s combined nostalgia and curiosity, and Harley caught the sound of a theme song she might have only heard once or twice as a young child. She put the remote control down and curled into the couch, and the Baby Doll episode played.
Harley watched the little girl who Mary had so desperately wanted to be again. She romped around the set giggling and playing, and gazing into the eye of the camera from time to time. This was what Mary had tried to re-capture. A life of other peoples’ opinions, where every movement only mattered if it got another’s approval. Without that anchor, Mary had drifted, and could think of nothing to do but try to get it back.
And Harley remembered the way she used to be, and smiled as she hugged Bonnie to her chest. She thought of the Scouts who had unknowingly helped her practice for this moment, and the home she made with Ivy, and the way her heart hadn’t skipped a beat when the Joker had come after her. Harley was moving forward, no matter what.
