MEANWHILE, BACK ON 86th Street…one night after dinner, with the dishwasher humming and Ellie sound asleep, I was heading to my room when Doris approached me in the hallway. She said she wanted to ask me a question.
“Of course,” I replied. “What is it?”
“I was wondering if you could give me a hug before I go to bed.”
The thought bubble above my head read What the hell? “Really?” I said.
“Yes,” she replied. “It would just make me feel better.”
I immediately started rationalizing, trying to process what she had just said. She seemed to have no friends, no one special in her life. She wanted to be part of the family. What would be the harm in giving her a little hug at night? （I know, I know…）
“Okay, I guess so,” I managed. Then I lightly embraced her, like you do when saying goodbye to a friendly acquaintance, hands fluttering awkwardly around her shoulder blades.
Then Doris hugged me back—a little too tightly, resting her head on my chest like a child.
Maybe she was having an especially bad night. Maybe this was a one-off. Testing the theory, the next few nights I went directly to my bedroom, calling out, “G’night!” Without fail, Doris would pipe up, “Katie, aren’t you going to give me a hug?” I’d oblige, then walk back to my room thinking, How weird is this?
It all felt so creepy. And yet I let it go for many reasons—the main one being I was completely dependent on her. My job was ridiculously unpredictable and demanding, but here we were, settled into a comfortable domestic routine.
Doris was available to me basically 24/7, which came in handy on countless occasions. And she was my proxy—even at those tender, milestone moments, like Ellie’s first birthday. When I was in Barcelona covering my first Olympics, it was Doris who planned the party and celebrated with Jay, my parents, our friends, and a （possibly drunk） clown in a multicolored wig while I was interviewing the U.S. gymnastics team and eating tapas.
And yet, I had the nagging feeling that something was not right, as Miss Clavel would say. I’ll never forget watching the Chilean family drama The House of the Spirits and feeling a shock of recognition as bizarre Férula （Glenn Close）， obsessed with clueless Clara （Meryl Streep）， ultimately sneaks into her bed one night…
But the thought of firing Doris and starting over, going through the time-consuming process of finding someone else, was daunting. Giving her a hug at bedtime seemed a small price to pay. Who cared if sometimes when I walked by her room late at night, I saw her lying on the bed, eating a Baby Ruth, staring at the ceiling? During the day, Doris whipped up baby food and did puzzles on the floor with a happily gurgling Ellie. Our daughter was in good hands. So, rather than establish some boundaries, I pretty much erased them.
On the weekends, it was baby makes three…and Doris makes four. Most times we were frequent fliers, hopping on the Delta shuttle to visit Jay and stay in the former tobacco warehouse we’d bought in Old Town, Alexandria. I still had a lot of friends in the area; later on, they’d tell me about coming by to visit and Doris not letting them in. One of those times, when Wendy and Dana, my friend from channel 4, stood at the front door, Dana heard me call out from the other room, “Who is it?,” like some gaslit woman in peril in a Lifetime movie. Doris turned them away.
An alarming level of codependency had been achieved. In such a subtle, crafty way, Doris had managed to grow deep, twisted roots into our family—and my psyche, leaving me to imagine I couldn’t function without her. And she made me feel completely responsible for her happiness and well-being. Once, when my friend Tammi came to visit, I actually asked her if she could watch Ellie for a few hours because I hadn’t spent much time with Doris lately, and I was going to take her to a movie.
Tammi from Miami said what a lot of my friends were thinking at the time: “This is insane. You’re insane.”
WE TOOK DORIS with us on fancy vacations （Cap Juluca, a resort in Anguilla; Lost Creek, a dude ranch near Jackson Hole, Wyoming; Little Dix Bay—I would joke with Jay that it took a very confident man to go there）。 We bought her expensive presents—sweaters, boots; Jay gave Doris an antique silver perfume bottle he’d found on one of his treasure hunts, serendipitously engraved with her name. My mom was 100 percent Team Doris, and no wonder—Doris would spend hours on the phone chatting her up, filling her in on what was happening. （My mother loved to talk on the phone.）
But I was Doris’s main focus. More than once, she said she had something really important to tell me—voice trembling, tearing up. “Doris, what is it?” I’d say, genuinely concerned. We’d sit down and I’d wait for her to tell me some deep, dark secret that never came. Because, I realized later, she’d gotten what she wanted: my rapt attention.