August 2022 through May 2023
Madeline and Sally check in to the Hotel Benjamin on Tuesday afternoon. Madeline (or “Maddy,” as her parents called her) has never stayed in such a nice hotel before, so she’s excited. She walks into the big lobby with Sally, who has a suitcase on wheels and a purse across her shoulder. Maddy’s clothes are all in Sally’s bag, but Maddy carries her backback with her blanket curled up in the bottom, and her bear’s head poking out of the top of the bag watches behind Maddy as she walks. Sally and Maddy go up to the big desk where the man waits for them. Sally talks to the man over the desk, but Maddy can hardly see: the rim of the marble counter meets her right in the forehead. The man (Sally calls him the “receptionist,” which Maddy finds difficult to say: “recepyoniss”; Sally laughs) hands Sally a key and points across the lobby to the elevators. Sally and Maddy cross a sea of carpet to reach the golden doors. Maddy makes faces at her reflection.
Sally and Maddy’s room is enormous: Maddy jumps on the bed (“get down from there!” cries Sally, but she remembers her youth and lets Maddy enjoy herself a little longer), opens the minibar (“now don’t drink any of that…”), looks in the bathroom and every cupboard (“what’d you find?”, and Maddy shows Sally the iron and ironing board, the safe in the closet, and the soaps and towels and shower caps), and falls into bed, exhausted. The sun is just beginning to set, and the windows are turning gold.
Sally says, “what do you want for dinner?” and Maddy asks for a ceasar salad. Sally talks into a telephone on the nightstand, and soon a man arrives with a cart on wheels. He rolls the whole cart into the room and parks it in front of Maddy. There’s a white table cloth and silver utensils, and the silver dome in the middle makes Maddy’s reflection look tiny and distant. The man whisks the dome out from under Maddy’s nose and swirls it behind him with a flourish of the wrist. “Your dinner, madam,” and he bows slightly. Madeline nods her head in thanks. The man straightens, winks at Maddy, nods to Sally, and flies out of the room; his jacket tails flutter behind him as he leaves. Maddy eats dinner.
“How was it?” Sally asks.
“Very good, thank you,” Maddy replies.
The sun is red and the light in the room is dimming. Sally says it’s time for bed and she and Maddy begin to unpack. Maddy opens her backpack: Mr. Poppins and Ms. Bubble seem to breathe easier once released from their confinement. Maddy and her blanket and her stuffed bear snuggle into the big bed and sink among the stacked cushions. Sally turns off the light next to Maddy’s bed and reads until Maddy’s breathing is deep and slow.
The next day, Sally and Maddy go to a museum. Maddy leaves Mr. Poppins and Ms. Bubbles in bed when she gets up and doesn’t think anything more about it. Maddy loves going to the museum: the people in the paintings are funny-shaped, like her face in the silver dome over the salad last night. She remembers going to museums with her parents, who took her through and pointed out their favorites: her mom always loved still lifes of flowers; her father, landscapes. Remembering their advice, Maddy takes our her notebook and copies down the names of her favorite paintings from the museum; Sally promises to help Maddy look the artists up when they get back to the hotel for dinner. Before going to the dining room, they stop by their room, which has been cleaned and the beds made. Mr. Poppins and Ms. Bubbles aren’t there. Maddy pulls back the bed covers to look for them. They aren’t there.
“Maybe they’ve fallen under the bed?” Sally offers, and Maddy gets down on her hands and knees to look. They aren’t there.
“Maybe in my bed?” and Sally pulls back the covers, but they aren’t there either.
“I don’t know what happened to them!” Sally says at last, after Maddy has looked under both beds, in all the cupboards, in the bathroom, in the safe, under the ironing board, and in the minibar. “They’re just gone!”
Maddy supresses panic: they can’t be gone!, she thinks, there must be some mistake. Maddy remembers when she left Mr. Poppins and Ms. Bubbles at the hotel by her grandparents’, and how her parents convinced the staff to look for them and send them back to her express with a note saying “please take care of this bear and blanket.”
“Why don’t we go down to the front desk and ask?” Sally suggests. She takes Maddy by the hand and steers her into the hallway. The door to their room is heavy and closes slowly behind them. It glides across the carpet, and Maddy’s view back into the room narrows to a tiny slit that shuts — click. The sound echos up Maddy’s spine. Something in her life has permanently changed. Her eyes are heavy and full; her chest is weirdly empty; her heartbeat echoes in her ribcage.
Maddy and Sally step out of the elevator on the main floor and walk over to the big front desk. The same man who was behind the desk the day before is there. Maddy stands back from the counter, so that he can see her as she speaks.
“Why don’t you tell the man what happened?” Sally prompts Maddy.
“I left my stuffed bear and blanket in our room, and now they’re gone.”
“I see. And what is your room number?” the man asks, and Maddy doesn’t know. She looks silently up at Sally, who says,
“Four thirty-five.”
“Very good. And could you describe the lost object in more detail?”
Sally looks down at Maddy, who blushes. “Go ahead and tell the man about Mr. Poppins and Ms. Bubbles,” Sally says to Maddy. Hearing their names spoken in the big lobby embarasses Maddy. She has never felt so young, so much like a child.
“There’s two of them. One is a bear, fuzzy, brown, and handsome; the other is a blanket, quilted, red, blue, and green, with animals on it.” Maddy falls quiet: she feels that she should not tell the man too much about her bear and blanket, even though his face remains still and calm.
“I see. When did you see them last?”
“I left them in the bed this morning, and when we came back just a few minutes ago, they were gone.”
“Ah, let me see here…” The man clacks at the computer terminal on the desk in front of him and peers at the results. “I don’t see any reports of a lost item fitting the description you gave, but I’ll let you know if anything pops up. I’m sorry for the loss; we’ll do everything we can to help.”
“Thank you very much,” Sally says (Maddy looks down at her feet in silence) and leads Maddy by the hand across the lobby to the hotel’s restaurant. “Do you want to eat down here tonight, Maddy?” Sally asks. Maddy peers into the large room, with golden ceiling and crystal chandeliers. It is still too early for the main dinner crowd, but a few tables have people Maddy’s age with their parents.
A woman in a black dress and white sneakers, about Sally’s age, approaches them and asks, “how can I help you?” Sally asks for a table for two, and the woman walks them over to a table with menus under her arm.
“Here you go, my dears,” she says, delivering them to a table with glasses and silverware all laid out on white cloth. Maddy and Sally sit, and Maddy makes faces at herself in the shiny silver spoon: she looks at herself, distant and upside down, in the concave side; she flips the spoon and sees herself, still distant, but right side up. She twirls the spoon around and imagines she’s tumbling head over heels.
After dinner, Sally tucks Maddy into bed, and Maddy reaches out to hug Mr. Poppins and Ms. Bubbles. But they aren’t there. Maddy’s arms are empty. They rest against her chest, awkwardly bony, deflated: Mr. Poppins should be there, with Ms. Bubbles around him. Maddy should bury her face in Mr. Poppins’ fuzz and rub Ms. Bubbles edges between her fingers. She should be able to smell them, but all she can smell is the clean sheets. Her chest is hollow, and her throat dry. Maddy stays awake a long time, long after Sally goes to bed and her breathing becomes smooth and regular.
The sun shines on Maddy’s face and wakes her. Sally is already up and dressed: “you seemed tired, so I decided to let you sleep in some. Want to go to the zoo today?” Today is Thursday, and Maddy and Sally are staying in the hotel until Friday. Mr. Poppins and Ms. Bubbles are still missing, and Maddy doesn’t know what to do about it. As she and Sally walk through the hotel’s lobby, Maddy looks at the counter: nobody there. She and Sally cross the lobby and leave through the big revolving door. Maddy watches her reflection in the glass: she’s almost transparent, like a ghost floating over the world beyond the window. Then they’re out of the door and on the bright street with the noises.
As she and Sally return from the Zoo, Maddy’s head feels clearer. She and Sally ate lunch at a restaurant Maddy often went to with her parents, near the zoo overlooking the wide lawn sloping down to the pond. Maddy’s mother loved to order a scoop of mint chocolate chip ice cream for dessert (“just one scoop!”), and her father always had the ceasar salad (“best in town!”). Sally bought Maddy a cone of mint chip ice cream on the way back from the hotel, and Maddy’s breath is still cool when she enters the lobby again. Seeing the receptionist back at his post, Maddy steps over to the front desk. The receptionist is the same man from before, but he doesn’t show any sign that he recognizes Maddy.
“Excuse me sir, have you located my comfort objects?” Maddy asks the man.
“Have I located your what?” The man seems confused.
“My comfort objects: the bear and blanket!” The man squints down at Maddy for a moment, then his face clears.
“Ah yes, now I remember. No, I’m sorry madam: we haven’t found anything yet. I will let you know the moment anything appears.” He speaks gently, but without any great emotion. Maddy sees nothing in the man’s face to suggest that the man is terribly upset. Maddy can tell that he intends her no harm by the openness of his expression, but by its mildness she knows that he is not deeply invested in helping her. Maddy takes the initiative:
“Is there anyone else who might know anything?”
“Well,” the man thinks for a moment, “the cleaners might have seen something. You said that you left them in the bed in the morning and they were gone in the afternoon? Normally, the cleaners come by in that time.”
“Where can I find the cleaners?” Maddy asks.
The man checks his wristwatch. “They’re cleaning the rooms as we speak. If you go through the hallways, you’ll be able to find them. They move with a cart of cleaning supplies; if you see the cart, you know the cleaners can’t be far off.” Maddy thanks the man and runs to meet Sally at the elevators.
As they step off on their floor, Maddy sees the cleaner’s cart parked by the side of the hallway outside the open door to a room. It has a big basket filled with dirty sheets from the rooms, and bottles of all shapes and descriptions. Through the open door, Maddy can hear a vacuum cleaner running. As Sally continues to their room, Maddy strays behind to talk to the cleaners. She looks in the open door and sees the same woman from the restaurant last night vacuuming. Maddy waits for her to turn the loud machine off, and Sally waits in front of the door down the hall. The woman switches off the vacuum and wheels it towards the door, when she sees Maddy.
“Hello!”, her face is bright.
“Hello,” says Maddy, “I lost something, and…”, she hesitates, unsure, “I wanted to know whether you’ve seen anything.”
“What did you lose?”
Maddy thinks about how to answer this question. This woman seems warm enough, but Maddy remembers the way the man at the desk responed: polite yet unmoved. Maddy decides to say, “my stuffed animals. I left them in bed yesterday morning, and by the afternoon they were gone.”
“What’s your room number?” The woman’s brows drift closer together, her lips purse slightly, and her eyes focus closer on Maddy’s face.
“Four thirty-five.” Maddy looks down the hallway towards Sally, who still stands in the doorway. The woman looks down the hall, then back at Maddy.
“No, I haven’t seen anything. I’ll ask the rest of the staff if anything’s turned up. I’m in the restaurant again tonight — come down and see me. My name’s Meg. If you ask for me, they’ll know who to bring you.”
“I’m Maddy.” The younger girl holds out her hand, and the older girl shakes it. “Thank you for your help.”
“Not at all. Oh! and one more thing: do the stuffed animals have names?”
“Their names are Mr. Poppins and Ms. Bubbles. Mr. Poppins in a fuzzy brown bear, and Ms. Bubbles is a red, blue, and green quilt.”
“Alright,” says Meg, looking straight into Maddy’s eyes, “I’ll see what I can do.” Even though Meg is much taller than Maddy and doesn’t stoop down, Madde feels as though she and Meg are looking at one another from the same height. Maddy nods, thanks Meg again for her help, and continues down the hallway to her and Sally’s room.
Sally is holding the door open when Maddy reaches her. “Learn anything?” she asks. Her face is still.
“No, but Meg promised to look around. She says she hasn’t seen anything, though.”
“Too bad!” Sally’s response is honest, but her mood isn’t dampened. The two of them go into the hotel room, and Sally drops on her back into her newly-made bed. “It’s so hot! I may just take a nap for a while. If you promise not to leave the hotel, you can run around for a bit and do whatever you want. I’m beat.” Sallly kicks her shoes off and stretches her arms above her head. She rolls on to her side and is instantly asleep.
As Maddy opens the room door to leave, she turns to look back into the room. For an instant she sees Mr. Poppins and Ms. Bubbles in her bed, propped up politely on her pillow. But even as the tears come to her eyes the vision fades, and Maddy can only see a blur of color where the stuffed animals usually live, like an after-image from a bright light. She holds her ragged breath and crosses the threshold into the hallway.
Looking to her right, Maddy can see Meg’s cart, now a room further along, and the elevators at the end of the hallway. Now is the time to take stock: what do I know of the situation?
Missing: One stuffed bear and one quilted blanket.
Description: The bear is fuzzy and brown, and the hair around his eyes is ragged. (Maddy remembers her mother cutting her hair. “Mr. Poppins needs a haircut, too!” Her mother trimmed the hair around his eyes. “Now hold still…”) The blanket is quilted in red, blue, and green, with patterns of animals: a lion, a walrus, a monkey. (Maddy sat with her father looking at the blanket and pointing: “What’s this one?” “That’s a zebra. They make a honk noise.” “No they don’t, daddy, that’s silly!”)
Last seen: On the window-side bed of room 435 in the Hotel Benjamin, at around 10 a.m. on Tuesday. By 2 p.m., they had disappeared.
As far as Maddy knows, only a few people have access to the room: Sally, whom she can’t suspect on principle; Meg, whom she doesn’t want to distrust; and potentially other employees of the hotel, whom Maddy hasn’t yet met. Of their own accord, Maddy’s suspicions land on the last group; at their head in her imagination is the receptionist.
Maddy knows that she must do something, and that time is running out: she and Sally leave on Friday, and today’s already Thursday. Maddy decides to speak to the receptionist again. She heads for the elevator, passing Meg and her cart along the way.
As the elevator bumps down to the first floor, Maddy looks at herself in the mirrored wall. The mirrors cover the upper half of the inside of the elevator and are about waist height to an adult. Maddy, though, can just see her face perched above the rim at the bottom of the mirror. She looks at her reflection and tries to look fierce, but she can’t conceal from herself how frightened she is. Hopefully nobody else will see the fear in her eyes.
There is no one behind the counter when Maddy reaches it. She has to stand back from the surface a little ways to peer over it, but as far as she can tell, nobody’s there. There is, however, a golden bell with flowers engraved on it; a little button on top swings a hammer to tap the side of the bell and call the receptionist. Maddy doesn’t want to draw any attention to herself, but after waiting a few minutes, she doesn’t see any way around it: she rings the bell, and its ding fills the lobby and lingers than Maddy would have thought possible before finally melting into the plush. The receptionist appears through a door behind the counter.
It’s not the same person she spoke to last time: this is a younger man, and Maddy recognizes him from the room service the first night she arrived at the hotel (how long ago that seems now!). He looks down at her kindly but without urgency. “How can I help you, madam?”
“Yes. I, uhh, I lost something in my room.”
“What did you lose?” Maddy hesitates — how should she describe Mr. Poppins and Ms. Bubbles? She decides that less is more:
“My stuffed animals.”
The man looks at her soberly.
“And when did you see them last?”
“Yesterday morning. I spoke to the other…”, here comes that big word again, and Maddy, with a tightened throat, chokes out “person at the desk, and he said he’d let me know if they’re found.”
“I see. Let me take a look for you.” The man stabs some buttons at his computer termial and examines the screen. “No, I don’t see a report here that it was turned in. It’s possible, though, that it got found today and hasn’t yet been filed in the system. If you wait here a minute, I’ll run back into the office and take a look.”
“Thank you very much,” says Maddy in her most dignified voice. The man nods slightly and steps back through the door behind the counter. While she waits, Maddy turns to survey the lobby. Its ceiling is high, and she tilts her head back to look at it. A giant chandelier is suspended in the air above her. Its crystals’ facets reflect the lights nestled among them on golden branches and cast shards of color across the ceiling.
The last time Maddy stayed in a hotel was when she went with her parents to visit her mother’s family. Maddy’s father said that they stayed in the hotel to give Grandma and Grandpa their privacy and winked at Maddy; Maddy’s mother rolled her eyes, but the corners of her mouth twitched upwards despite themselves. Maddy and her parents had rooms next to one another with a door between them. When Maddy’s parents thought she was asleep, they gently shut the door; Maddy heard the door close, but didn’t mind giving her parents their privacy. She knew that they would be there in the morning when she woke, and that she could run into their room with Mr. Poppins and Ms. Bubbles in her arms and jump in bed between them. She held her stuffed animals closer to her chest and felt Mr. Poppins’ fuzz against her cheek and worried Ms. Bubbles’ patches with her thumb till she fell asleep.
The receptionist’s footsteps behind her bring Maddy back to the present. The edges of the receptionist’s eyes are turned down, and his voice is soft when he says, “I’m afraid they aren’t there. I suggest that you check again tomorrow: the night porter might find them and turn them in tonight.” He pauses for an instant, as if not sure whether to continue speaking. Then he says, “I’m sorry for your loss,” looking straight into Maddy’s eyes over the gleaming stone counter and its wooden trim. She holds his eyes for a moment, and her chest begins to ache. Her eyes drop to the floor and she mutters, “thank you,” to her shoes. She walks back across the lobby to the elevator.
Maddy steps into the elevator and the doors close behind her, but she doesn’t press any buttons. Here she is, in this room of mirrors: three of the walls are mirrors, reflecting one another and creating the appearance of infinity in this tiny box. Maddy looks at herself in the mirrored wall and sees an endless hallway fading into the distance. She tilts her head this way and that, she whirls around to catch a glimpse of the end of forever, more and more frantically she tries to out-run her reflection. But she can never look past herself in the mirror: as the reflected hallway drifts off to infinity ahead and behind, her face is stuck to the mirror before her. She looks at her red eyes and swollen eyelids and smiling-grimace mouth.
Her mother wiped Maddy’s tears with a tissue from her purse, and her father pulled out a handkerchief to help. Whenever she skinned her knee, or the other kids made fun of her, or she broke something by mistake, her parents were there to help. There was nothing they couldn’t find, or fix, or bring back. And now they’re gone: I’ll never see Mr. Poppins or Ms. Bubbles again. Maddy doesn’t want to despair, but the situation is beginning to seem hopeless. She’ll see what Meg has to say — she almost forgot! A sudden hope springs in her, and she holds it close and shields it against the chaos around her. She presses the button; the door slides open; Maddy tears out of the elevator across the lobby to the restaurant.
Meg is just coming to the hostess’ stand when Maddy stops at her feet, breathless. “Hi Meg, any news?”
Meg smiles with her mouth, but her eyes don’t move. “I’m sorry dear, but I’ve asked everyone: nobody’s seen your stuffed animals anywhere. I’ll ask again before I leave tonight, but it seems like they’re gone. I’m…” and here Meg has to swallow once, twice, before continuing, “sorry.” Her voice breaks and she turns away from Maddy.
“That’s alright. Thank you for your help.” Maddy’s voice is soft, and she speaks without any change in pitch or quality, as though she didn’t understand the meaning of the words she was saying. Maddy turns and walks back to the elevator. Meg watches her go, and the receptionist; the color of the sunlight in the windows is going to gold and crimson. When Maddy gets to the elevator, she steps in and raises her hand to press the button for the fourth floor, but before finding home her finger stops and floats in space. Everything seems very close to her now, very present. She closes her eyes to block it all out; she bites her lip, harder, harder, to hold back the screams rising in her chest; she puts all her weight behind the tip of her right index finger and stabs the button.
The elevator arrives on the fourth floor, and Maddy walks down the hallway to her room and lets herself in. Sally is still asleep. Maddy’s bed is plain white, and empty of stuffed animals. The patch of color where she thought she saw them is gone. Mr. Poppins and Ms. Bubbles are gone. She won’t have time to look for them tomorrow: she and Sally have to get up early to get dressed and go down to the cemetery to say goodbye to their parents for the last time.
