Trepidation in the Teahouse of the Dolls

“Our American Ladies High Tea special today is Princess Kailani’s Hibiscus, in honor of our Great American Lady of 2022,” Lady Brynda chirruped. “It has a delicate hint of ginger and a sprinkling of pineapple-infused turbinado.”

I inspected the open pink leatherette case and its multicolored selection of packets, each adorned in a gilded, Disney-infringing script. “Ah, Marquis of Queens' Berry. Just like The Crown.”

“I’d have to ask, but it IS a very popular choice,” our tea wench sang. Sarah’s toe connected under the table. “So’s the Duchess Chamomile and the Her Chai-Ness’ Unicorn Spice.”

Ella’s head popped up, her complementary tiara slipping. My granddaughter was a victim of the My Little Pony complex. Brynda beamed, her nose ring capturing the early afternoon sun through our lead-glassed window overlooking the alley behind the Aeropostale.

“And what makes it unicorn-ey?” I inquired, shifting slightly out of my wife’s range.

“The Her Chai-Ness’ is served in a complementary cup with an invisible rainbow that magically appears when you fill it. That’s why there’s a $5.99 upcharge.”

That raised a question in semantics, but Ella and our tea girl had locked eyes in a Jerry Maguire moment. Melanie rolled her eyes and consented to a heat-sensitive plastic mug in exchange for the sequined rodeo boots Ella’d been eyeing. Why my daughter got a free ride at NIU.

Then it happened, like a mariachi band detonating on a crowded El car.

“Happy Birthday Teatime! A jolly day to you! Happy Birthday Teatime! We’ve got a special brew! Happy Birthday Teatime! Cakes and clotted cream! Happy Birthday Teatime! It’s every dolly’s dream!”

A gang of servers and busboys dispersed from the next table a COVID-friendly eight feet away. I daubed water from my lap as our Brynda and The Girls applauded along with an incrementally older moppet and her millennial mom. The moment faded, and a second thirtysomething, more fashion-forward but clearly annoyed by the spectacle, bore into the pallid redhead who’d led the birthday serenade.

“My lemon,” she sighed, with an aggrieved British accent. Verisimilitude. Cool. “I’m supposed to have lemon. Bad enough you’ve steeped this overpriced compost into an acridly floral sludge. Where is my lemon?”

The redhead stammered something about the pandemic supply chain, a resulting absence of citrus on the premises, and the proffer of a replacement pot of sludge. The timing seemed ripe, so I shifted focus.

“I was wondering,” I began. Brynda was grinning malevolently at the civilized ruckus next door, but she blinked as she registered me and transformed from Cruella into a hipster Ariel. “I saw online you have cheeseburger sliders?”

The ladies in my company fell silent. Only Annalisa was still smiling – that unnerving Gioconda smirk, her dead eyes boring into me, her complementary tiara askew. Great American Lady 2019, my ass. I momentarily met Sarah’s glacial gape of low expectations met. Ella obliviously attended to Annalisa’s freshly styled ash-blonde braids as Melanie attended busily to Ella’s.

“The High Tea Package includes a very nice platter of cucumber sandwiches,” Brynda chafed. “We reeeally aren’t supposed to substitute.”

I didn’t point out that the original “high tea” of the good old 1600s included honking boar sandwiches with a side of meat pie and Welsh rarebit, whatever that might be. Lot of screen time on the Elburn/Loop Metra. I did give Brynda the hurt pup look that once got us a free year of under-the-table HBO.

Brynda glanced at the now-hushed trio next door, silently sipping as their “clotted cream” melted like MacArthur Park in a storm of drowned spirits. “Lemme talk to the manager. And I’ll get you a new water.”

I scanned the tearoom, avoiding Sarah’s gaze. A compact woman with a tight gray afro and canary American Ladies blazer huddled with Brynda. I recognized her from a framed placard in the American Tearoom foyer I’d studied as my stomach rumbled. Thea Todd, loyal member of the American Ladies Store family since 1995, recipient of the AL Outstanding Corporate Performance Award 1997, 2002, 2004, 2010, 2013, and 2018.

“…Rachel’s problem from now on,” Thea concluded with a dismissive wave before marching off presumably to attend to a supply chain issue. Brynda pivoted toward us, froze for a moment, then pasted that American Lady sunshine back on her face. I turned quickly back to The Girls, now occupied in Ella’s plans for Annalisa’s new sister. The next table had calmed, as well – the birthday girl was babbling away at Annalisa’s brunette doppelganger, while the adults cheerfully chatted and Mary Poopins squirted a lemon wedge into her sludgy compost.

“No problem, Mr. Dodge,” Brynda piped. “We can add a side of sliders for a $7.99 upcharge.”

I looked to Sarah, who simply shrugged. I had the lunch check anyway, and with Sarah’s Capitol One miles, the rest of this Chitown expedition might get us a seat on Elon Musk’s inaugural lunar shuttle.

**

It happened as I lifted the final lavender macaron to my lips, as the rainbow faded from Ella’s faux-Spode, upcharged cup. Ella was squirming to escape back into the gallery, and Melanie was stuffing prune teacakes and lemon scones and ganache tarts into her Delnor Hospital tote for the Monday Pediatric Admissions crew or Ella’s post-Pixar snack. Brynda had dropped the bill and disappeared into the ether per accepted Chicago Servers Union practice.

Birthday Girl was the first to scream, and my macaron exploded. I craned to see Mom shove awkwardly from the table and hug her distraught tot to her chest, staring at her companion. Whose face now was buried in what I believe Brynda had identified as a Victoria Sponge cake. Before I could get to my feet, I was knocked back into my chair by a passing blur that resembled Melanie.

“911!” my daughter bellowed, parting the gathering servers. A half-dozen phones emerged, including mine, and Melanie yanked Mary Poopins’ head from the pastry and began to wipe custard and strawberries from her face and, with her fingers, from the woman’s mouth. Melanie ignored a spray of cake and mucus as the woman began hacking and flailing. She eased the woman to the maroon carpet, and pressed an ear first to her chest, and then near her mouth.

“What?” Melanie frowned. The woman hissed a single word, then slumped. Before Melanie could respond, a stout young woman in a white EMT’s blouse and N-95 clasped pulled her gently away. A second paramedic dropped his kit and joined his colleague as she worked away at the prostrate Brit.

Melanie turned curiously to Birthday Girl and her mom. “Who’s Sam?”

**

“So who’s Sam?” the CPD guy demanded after they’d carted Mary Poopins off. AKA Phoebe Clewiston, late of the University of Illinois-Chicago Center for Socio-Anthropological Studies.

We were clustered in a sloppy circle well away from the abandoned remains of the tea, like the denouement of a Poirot movie as executive-produced by Dick Wolf. Minus Sarah and Ella – the detective had graciously released them to forage for doll ware with Ella’s new BFF, Arianne the Birthday Girl. The cop had held onto Melanie, and I volunteered to stay back, after weighing an active police investigation against the next two hours with a pair of avaricious first graders.

Phoebe, as it happened, was researching “pre-adolescent modeling of anthropomorphized avatars and associated imprinting of gender archetypes,” according to assistant professor of sociology Hannah Doxstadler, and virtually busted an academic nut when she learned Hannah’s daughter would be celebrating her birth at the flagship American Ladies Store. Phoebe had recorded comprehensive notes as Arianne flitted from display to display, grilled numerous associates and -- to varying and colorful response -- multiple moms. I think I may even have spotted her terrorizing a millennial and her twins as I snuck into the galleria for a pre-tea pistachio-lemon old-fashioned at the Do-Rite Donuts. The mixed-class Union Station-Water Tower speedwalk had left me hobbling on fumes.

“I really don’t know her that well,” Hannah insisted as our detective ordered an ER hold on the prof’s phone. “Dr. Clewiston sort of imposed herself on us. On pretty much everyone, actually. But she’s very influential, and there’s an important team leader post coming up, and Arianne didn’t care, so... Sorry, Detective Yontz – the short answer is, I don’t know of any Sams on the faculty or staff or among our grad assistants. I have no idea if Dr. Clewiston even has family here.”   

Detective Yontz. That was it. Detective Yontz looked to Thea Todd. “Any Sams on staff?”

The manager had been consoling Birthday Girl’s now-even paler server. Brynda slouched a few seats away, her American Lady spirit clearly waning, her palm resting open on her left thigh in phantom IPhone rigor.

“Not a one,” Thea answered definitively. “Had a Samantha for a few weeks before COVID, but she left us for Banana Republic. You think one of my people did this?”

Yontz seemed to sink into the wing chair he’d commandeered. “Not at all. It seems pretty unlikely, anyway. Unless, you, um…”

“Rachel,” the redhead rasped. “Rachel McCreary.”

“Rachel, you didn’t know this lady, Dr. Clewiston, before today?”

Rachel drained to a new level of ochre. “God, no. I never saw her before.”

“This girl need a lawyer?” Thea rumbled, flatly.

“Jesus, no,” the cop assured. “For all we know, the woman had an allergy to ladyfingers or Earl Grey. We’ll know more pretty quick, and then hopefully I can let you all go. Mr. Dodge, you folks staying in town tonight?”

“We have a 5:30 train,” Melanie declared.

“Crap,” Yontz scowled. “You know, the EMTs say Clewiston probably wouldn’t have made it to Saint Mary’s you hadn’t acted so quickly, so I hate to ask. But I need to be able to get hold of you guys if the hospital finds anything hinky.”

“We have a 5:30 train,” Melanie reiterated. “A Metra train, at 5:30.”

I’d had this sort of discussion innumerable times throughout Melanie’s formative years, and I knew it would end badly. Mostly for Detective Yontz. I still had psychic scars.

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” I sighed.

Yontz and Melanie turned in unison. Matching “You still here?” expressions.

“Yeah?” the detective breathed.

I tried the injured canine ploy, then dove in. “I used to be a reporter, mostly federal policy stuff. I learned to read when something was off, in a congressman’s remarks, in a piece of legislation. A provision that just doesn’t make partisan sense unless some tradeoff is in the wind. A cancelled hearing, a senator pulling his punches when attack mode seems more his style.”

Yontz looked at Melanie. Melanie shrugged. I felt vaguely offended.

“So what’s ‘off’ here?” Yontz finally sighed. I smiled at the young woman across the sunflowered carpet.

“Rachel, where’d you get Phoebe’s lemon?”

**

“Phoebe demanded a lemon for her tea,” I expanded. “You told her you were out.”

“Supply chain issues—” Thea began.

“Right,” I nodded. “But just a little later, I watched Phoebe squeeze a lemon into her tea. So I assume you must have found a wedge somewhere. Yeah?”

Rachel glared at me, then turned to Thea. “She was making such a big deal out of such a stupid thing, and I didn’t wanna, you know…”

“Have some customer whine about you to the manager, especially when you’re in line for her job. I heard your boss let Brynda let me have some illegal sliders because ‘It’s Rachel’s problem from now on.’”

“I’m retiring end of the week,” Thea told Yontz. “And yes, we’d decided Rachel would move up. Depending, of course—”

“On whether she tried to poison a patron.”

“Dude,” Rachel murmured.

“My bad. You wanted to shut Phoebe down, so you grabbed the one wedge of lemon you knew was left in the kitchen. Well, not in the kitchen.”

“Can we…?” the cop prodded.

“They probably give you a free meal on your break, but I’ve seen the choices. Cucumber sandwiches and teacakes every shift gets real old real quick, and you somehow don’t look like a red meat lover. So, sack lunch, right? The only lemon you could find for Dr. Clewiston was in the staff fridge.” I looked to Yontz, who stared back challengingly, then puffed his cheeks and signaled a nearby uniform.

“The hell are you saying?” Thea snapped. “She tried to kill a…a guest? So she wouldn’t lose, what, a promotion? We get two or three Gold Coast grandmas or Highland Park Stepford moms in here every shift, bitching how the scones are too hard or the madeleines are too dry or the tea’s too cold or too hot. You have to grow a thick skin. I may have to play that customer’s always right shit, but my people know I got them. Rachel, you know that!”

“I know,” the server murmured. “It’s just that there’s been a lot of, you know, pressure the last week. That’s why I wanted to just, I dunno, contain things. That’s why I did something so effing stupid.”

“Sir?” The detective jumped as the gloved uniform presented a square Tupperware container with the legend “Rachel” scrawled on the lid. I could see something pink and wet sliding about through the translucent plastic.

“What you were expecting?” Yontz asked me, drily.

“Can I see?”

“You tell me. This actually is kinda intriguing.”

I shrugged. “Cool. But can I ask one more thing, please? Can I see the lemon wedge the victim used? I assume you didn’t bag it or whatever you guys do?”

Yontz stiffly dispatched the cop again.

“See, when Rachel brought Clewiston her lemon, it shut her up. But I think when she squeezed it into her Earlene Grey…”

“Earl,” the detective grunted.

“Not in these parts. After Clewiston squeezed it into her tea, she caught a whiff. On the wedge, on her fingers, whatever. When she started choking, the prof might have decided she’d been poisoned. Not intentionally, but by contaminated food. Contaminated citrus, to be exact.”

The cop returned with a mangled lemon wedge in a ziploc’ed, tagged bag.

“Take a sniff,” I urged.

Yontz unzipped the bag and held it under his nostrils like a cork. His brows lifted.

“Fishy,” he announced. “No, I mean it smells like fish.”

“When Clewiston was trying to tell Mel what she thought had happened to her, her throat was probably still raw, and she was probably about to pass out. I don’t think the prof was trying to tell us some mysterious Sam had poisoned her. She had no real reason to think anybody would try to kill her. She just wanted to help Mel, the EMTs, whoever, identify the problem.”

“Salmon,” Melanie smiled.

“Or salmonella, either way – it ain’t an exact science. That’s how she got a free ride to NIU,” I informed Yontz. “Rachel, you pulled that lemon wedge off your fish, didn’t you?”

“Now, that’s definitely a terminable violation,” Thea growled. “The hell were you thinking? That woman or her family’s probably gonna sue.”

“Doubt it,” I said, with absolutely no legal or rational grounds. “Oh, hey. Quit sniffing. I don’t know what might be in there. Sorry, should have said that before.”

Yontz rezipped the bag a bit too emphatically. “Thanks. What do you think’s in here, anyway?”

“No idea. This your regular lunch, Rachel?”

“I’m pescatarian,” she offered.

“Cool. Somebody doctored your lunch. Somebody who had access to the community fridge, who seemed to delight in your distress when the prof had her meltdown.” I fixed on the woman two chairs down. “I wondered why you locked up for a second after your chat with Thea, coming back to the table. You spotted Clewiston squeezing a lemon that wasn’t supposed to exist. The lemon you intended for Rachel.”

Brynda responded in a terminable manner.

**

“Ketamine,” Yontz reported as I muscled through a gauntlet of crazed toddlers and threadbare moms and dead-eyed Brittanys and Harmonys and Beccas and Gwyneths and Maddies and Annalisas. “Our girl’s banging a vet assistant – dude scored her enough Special K to microdose her coworker for a week or so. Soaked her lemon with it before shift. Moron thought if Rachel tripped out on the job, maybe she’d get canned and Mastermind could grab the manager gig herself. Says she couldn’t make cosmetology school tuition otherwise.”

“Sure Jerry Orbach woulda had a great tagline for that.”

“’Guess she’s being groomed for the Cook County women’s facility,’” Yontz grunted in a perfect Lenny Briscoe. “So, saw you talking to the manager. Thea grateful?”

The Girls were on the horizon, a half-dozen sunflower-striped bags in hand. A new member of the family stared blankly at me, with an enigmatic aloha smile. “She realized Brynda’d never cashed us out. Very gracious, though. You want a coupon for a free order of sliders? With purchase, of course.”

“Ah, the kid’s about 15 years past the doll phase, and while I hate to pass on free food, got a feeling my presence would raise too many uncomfortable questions. Hey, makes you feel better, I told MR. Clewiston about your help, and he was extremely grateful. He’d really like to meet you folks.”

“5:30 Metra. Just tell Clewiston I’m glad things worked out.”

“Please,” Yontz implored with an Annalisa smile. “He insisted. Just call him Sam.”