Dolls Behaving Badly (23 page)

“It’s ready,” Barry said, pulling the pan out of the oven. I sat down at the table with my ex-husband and his new lover and
ate the moose meatballs Toodles made, the small red potatoes Barry made, and the cranberry-apple pie they baked together.

“I picked these cranberries up by Denali last year.” Toodles helped herself to a second piece. “Ahhhhh,” she said, and then
she crinkled her nose and opened her eyes. “Something is missing. See if you can catch it, Bear.” She forked a piece into
his mouth and they closed their eyes, identical expressions on their faces.

Sitting there across from them, I thought of what the Oprah Giant had said about following one’s true path and no matter how
far you stray, sooner or later you’ll be redirected toward your destiny. I wondered if the reason Barry and I had met was
to have Jay-Jay, and if the reason we broke up was to direct Barry toward Toodles. Maybe that was even why Randall left, because
if he hadn’t, Sandee wouldn’t have hired Toodles, who wouldn’t have thought about Barry again. It sounded preposterous, but
sitting there, I believed it with all of my heart, all of my being. I opened my mouth, took another bite of pie, closed my
eyes, and savored.

Saturday, Feb. 11

I was happily smearing purple inside a dark shadow on my
Woman Running with a Box, No. 11
painting when something rustled against the sliding glass door that leads out to the porch. “Bullwinkle,” I said, and Killer
thumped her tail because we both knew that moose liked to cozy up to the trailer when the temperatures dipped. Last week a
large male had slept on the porch, its bony head so close to the sliding door that its breath left moist spots over the glass.
I hurried over to the door to take a peek, and two eyes peeked back at me. I yelped, and Killer Bee whimpered against my legs.

“It’s me, damn it,” a muffled voice yelled.

“Sandee?” I lifted the blinds again and there she was, her face mashed against the window, her nose flat and wrinkled pale.

“Open up, it’s freezing out here,” she yelled.

“Can’t you go around to the front door?”

“No, I cannot
use
the front door. The squeak of the hinges might do me in.”

I slid open the latch, which was lined with ice, and watched Sandee struggle through the snow that had drifted up against
the door. Her hair was wet, her sweatshirt covered with food stains.

“Where’s your coat?” I asked.

“My life is falling apart and you’re worried about a coat?”

She pulled up a kitchen chair and started talking before she even sat down. “I got it. Not that I asked but Toodles came in
to work tonight. I
told
you she was pushy.” She lifted her head. “Did you make brownies? I swear I smell burnt chocolate.”

I shook my head no. I had spent the night obsessing over why I wasn’t painting as much as I should, and Stephanie had spent
the night obsessing over the college applications she sent in months ago. Sandee sighed and continued: “I was in the middle
of an eight-top of servers from the Sheraton, you know how well
they
tip, and suddenly Toodles scurries over to my table and waves a manila envelope in my face and I swear, all I could think
of was that
Let’s Make a Deal
show I watched as a kid. Remember how Monty Hall waved those envelopes in contestants’ faces?

“So she places the envelope on my tray—she was very polite, I have to give her that—and she says, ‘I was waiting for the right
time, and then last night I dreamed of your body with a wolf head.’ A wolf head, Carla, like it was predestined by something
bigger than us.”

She reached into her apron pocket and pulled out a folded tan envelope, salsa smeared across the top. “I can’t open it. I
tried, but my fingers won’t work. Could you?” Her voice trembled and she swallowed a loud gulp. “But don’t tell me, okay?
I don’t want to know where he lives or what he looks like or if he’s with someone else. I just want to know that he agrees
to the divorce.”

I picked up the envelope. “You sure you want me to?” It was like opening my
Woman Running
box and how once those dirty dolls scampered out, I couldn’t ignore them, couldn’t pretend that they didn’t mean as much
as they did. “We could wait until later, give you time to consider your options—”

“Do it.” Sandee’s face was scrunched so tight I was afraid her forehead might crack. I slid the edge of my paintbrush beneath
the envelope flap and tore it open. A picture of Randall fell out and I clapped my hand over it, but not fast enough. Sandee
tugged it away. “He’s fat,” she gasped. “He’s put on about fifty pounds.” She shoved the photo over to me. Randall stood beside
a heavyset woman with two heavyset blond boys, all of them holding fishing poles and smiling fat, silly grins. They looked
ridiculously happy and sunburned. “Toodles was right,” Sandee said. “The woman does look like me.”

I held the picture closer to my face. The woman had Sandee’s hair and facial features, though she was shorter with ungainly,
splayed feet. “Well, that’s that,” Sandee said. “He’s practically married himself.”

“I thought that’s what you wanted.”

“I didn’t want him to be
happy
. I wanted him to be miserable. I wanted him to suffer for his sins.”

“Pictures don’t tell everything.”

“Maybe he’ll die of a heart attack. Think he’s fat enough?”

“No.” I shook my head. “He’s mostly chubby.”

“Bastard.” She smacked the photograph. “Look how fucking content he is.”

I didn’t remind Sandee that she never really loved Randall, not the way she needed to love someone, because she wouldn’t have
heard me, and besides, she already knew. I made her hot chocolate with the last of the Baileys, a nice, healthy shot, and
then I bundled her up in the recliner with the extra quilt and a box of Kleenex. I curled up by her feet until she fell asleep
and then crept back into the kitchen, turned on the lamp, and began painting again. The shadows I had been working on had
dried to a rich magenta I found particularly appealing. I added small drips of yellow and white to lighten the shade and began
spreading the shadow out toward the sky, adding more and more yellow so that it slowly faded into a pale, sultry gold. Then
I called Francisco. It was the first time we had talked since our fight on Sunday. I didn’t say that I was sorry or that I
had missed him.

“Sandee found out where Randall is,” I said instead.

“Carlita, it’s nice to hear your voice.” He sounded sleepy; it was 3:17 a.m. “Who’s Randall?”

“Her husband, the one that left three years ago, no note or anything. You want to hear or you wanna sleep?”

“I want to hear.” He laughed. “I think.”

“He’s living in Tonopah with a woman who looks like Sandee’s high school picture.”

“Makes sense.” His voice picked up. “Everything repeats, it’s the law of history. Everything has been done before, in one
sense or another. It’s kind of depressing but it takes the pressure off.” He yawned. “Hey, I almost forgot. I Googled you.
Your art. Your dirty-doll figurines.”

“Oh. I’m painting,” I told him, embarrassed. “For my show.”

“That’s the reason you did it, those paintings you left sliced up like a puzzle.”

“A pie. They’re shaped like a pie.”

“Right. I saw those funny creatures frolicking around the bottom and thought,
Hmmm, those must be dirty dolls,
and so I Googled and there they were.”

“Oh.” Obviously it wasn’t possible to separate my artistic life from my romantic life, at least not with Francisco.

“Come over,” he said.

I sucked in my breath but didn’t say anything.

“I just got back from a short trip to Bethel. They didn’t feed us on the plane. All I had for dinner was a stale donut.”

“I’m not cooking.”

“I know.”

“I’m supposed to be painting.”

“I know.”

“Maybe,” I stalled, “when I finish shadowing.”

“I’ll leave the door unlocked. Don’t mind the beasts. I usually throw socks to settle them down.”

I hung up and stared at my canvas. The Woman Running stared back with my eyes, my grandmother’s chin, my sister’s wrist, Sandee’s
chest, and Stephanie’s mouth. Francisco was right: nothing was original or even new. We painted what was familiar, and that
was how we lived. You couldn’t really blame Randall for picking a woman so much like Sandee; probably he couldn’t help himself.
He was a weak man, and like most weak men he had to leave one woman in order to feel strong for the next. Maybe I would tell
this to Sandee in the morning. I rinsed out my brushes and moved my canvas to the closet so that it didn’t accidentally fall
over, and then I pulled on my coat and checked on Jay-Jay. He slept with the blanket kicked down to his knees, his hands curled
slightly, as if waiting to receive something. I kissed each palm; then I slipped out the door and drove to Francisco’s without
bothering to even change my underwear.

“I didn’t change my underwear,” I said after I let myself in the front door.

“I didn’t either.” In the soft glow of the night-light, his sheets were pale green. “Come on in.” He drew back the covers
and I hesitated. He was wearing boxers with skulls printed across the front. “A gift from my brother, get it, because I’m
an anthropologist.”

“I get it.” Lincoln pressed up behind me, his paw stepping on my foot. “Ouch,” I said, and then I kicked off my pants and
crawled in beside Francisco. We lay beside one another without touching.

“This is odd,” he said. “Does it feel odd to you?”

“Yeah. Sex is always awkward at first.”

“Who said anything about sex?” And then he laughed. “Come here, Carlita.” His arms were around me, his legs twined around
mine.

I suppose I should write about sleeping with Francisco for the first time and his skin, which is more golden than mine, and
so warm. And his mouth, hungry and fierce and how it covered me, how it became mine, and what it took and what it gave and
what it was like as I lay there with him, covered by him. I’d like to say that it was earth shattering, that lights blazed,
that my head exploded, and while it was like that, it wasn’t like that at all. It was simple and pure and deep and urgent,
and afterward, my stomach felt full, as if I had eaten a good meal.

Tuesday, Feb. 14

“MOM! KILLER CHEWED UP
my Valentine’s Day box,” Jay-Jay yelled this morning as I scraped the burned edges from the toast. He ran out and threw a
crumbled shoebox covered in tissue-papered hearts on the counter. “You’ve gotta fix it. The bus comes in eight minutes.”

I pulled out the duct tape and got to work. Duct tape is the Alaskan staple. Every household has at least one roll, and since
we live in a dilapidated trailer we have four: the standard gray plus green, yellow, and bright red, which I used to cut out
hearts and paste them over the chew marks from Killer’s teeth. I added glitter and glued on conversation hearts. I was impressed;
it actually looked good, but what else can you expect from duct tape?

“Cool,” he said, snatching it up and running out the door just as the bus zoomed by. Poor Jay-Jay; he’s been late forty-two
times so far this year and recently brought home a note chiding me on my shoddy scheduling skills. Jay-Jay nudged me. “Mom,
I don’t want to miss library exchange.”

On Tuesdays Jay-Jay’s gifted class is bussed to other schools’ gifted classes to do geeky and stimulating things like play
Scrabble and chess and practice for the Junior Science Bowl the district puts on each year. I sighed and leaned over to tie
my hiking boots. When I glanced up Laurel was standing by the kitchen table looking pale and unsteady. “I’m coming,” she said,
tying the sash of her fuzzy green robe and heading for the door.

“A coat,” I cried. It was minus eighteen, and the car hadn’t had time to warm up properly.

“I’m always warm,” she said. “Pregnancy is nine months of having the flu and instead of getting better, you give birth.” She
smiled bravely. “Come on Jay-Jay, let’s get you to school.”

Jay-Jay wasn’t pleased, since bringing Laurel meant he had to sit in the backseat. “It’s insulting to see everything a millisecond
after you guys,” he complained.

After we dropped him off two minutes before the bell (“Run, Jay-Jay, run,” I shouted as I braked hard and left impressive
skid marks across the parking lot), Laurel decided to have breakfast at Village Inn.

“I want a pancake. Just one. I need that doughy sponginess in my mouth.” Then she sagged against the headrest and closed her
eyes. “Turn left on Northern Lights and go toward Forest Park.” Her voice was flat and cold. “Keep going through the stop
sign. It’s the big monstrosity on the right.”

I knew immediately that she was directing me to Hank’s. “Are you sure?” I asked. “I don’t think you’re ready to face him.”

“Oh, I’m not
facing
him,” she said. “I have no desire to
ever
face him again. I need to get something back.”

“Clothes?” I couldn’t think of anything else that Laurel would risk such a confrontation over.

“No, my verve.”

“Y-your what?”

“My verve. You know, my courage. It’s Valentine’s Day, damn it, and I’m not going to let him win. I’m going to, well, I don’t
know what I’m going to do, but I’m going to do something, Carly. He owes me, don’t you see? Until I take back a payment I’ll
never be able to live with myself. Don’t worry,” she said quickly, “I’m not going to do anything illegal, I’m just going to
make myself known in sly and devious ways.” She smirked and looked over at me. I knew I should have talked her out of it,
but she looked like herself for the first time in weeks. Her color was back, her eyes flashed, and her mouth curled into a
smug little grin that reminded me of the Cheshire cat. I parked down the street from Hank’s house, which was large and imposing
and painted a haughty burgundy, and we both got out. It was windy and the moon hung fat and low, even though the sky had already
lightened. We were caught in that transitory stage of it no longer being night but not yet daylight either, a watery blue
transition that’s impossible to capture in paint.

“Remember,” Laurel said. “If anyone stops us, we’re from the church.”

“Which one?”

“Huh?”

“Which church?”

“
The
church,” she said. “If you say it like that they’ll be too intimidated to ask which one.”

“But you have your bathrobe on.”

“Priests wear robes and I can, too.”

I knew we were going to be caught, and I wondered if Hank would be mad enough to press charges. I imagined Barry bailing us
out in his ridiculous checked chef pants. He would drink coffee and tell hunting stories with the policemen. We would be there
forever. “Do you have your phone so I can make sure Stephanie’s around when Jay-Jay gets home from school?”

Laurel looked at me as if I were crazy.

“When we end up in jail,” I said. “Have you thought about that?”

“It won’t happen.” She calmly wiped snow off a flowerpot, reached beneath it, and pulled out a key. “Come on, it’s Tuesday.
No one should be home.”

She slid the key in the lock, snapped her wrist, and opened the door. Three fat dachshunds waddled toward us. “Don’t get them
excited or they’ll pee on the floor.”

It was too late and three puddles spread out across the living room floor, which was covered with an oddly shaped green rug.

“Good boys!” Laurel reached down to pet them, her voice high and childlike. “You pee on Daddy’s floor, okay, yes you do, you
do.” She tugged me down the hall and up the stairs to a child’s room. “Wait here while I look.”

“Look for what?”

“I
told
you. My verve.”

I sat on a bunk bed with a Buzz Lightyear quilt and read
Curious
George
until Laurel yelled for me. She had the dresser opened and Hank’s underwear scattered around her feet. “Go find scissors
in the kitchen,” she ordered.

I knew we were going to cut holes in all of Hank’s underwear. It was in a novel we had both read years ago written by Margaret
Atwood or one of those other plucky Canadian writers. I found two scissors, and Laurel and I spent the next half hour cutting
small holes in all of Hank’s boxers, briefs, and socks; then we sliced the buttons from his shirts. We hesitated when we reached
his pants. “Holes?” Laurel asked, holding up a pair of gray flannel slacks. “Or zipper?”

We settled on the zipper and pulled and yanked until we managed to get them all off track. Then we folded and hung the damaged
clothes back up again.

“This doesn’t feel like enough.” Laurel tucked the last shirt back into the drawer. “Shouldn’t I feel triumphant and victorious?”
When I didn’t answer, she continued, “Mostly I feel sad. Look at these ties! Geometric shapes, like dancing cough drops. This
is the man who will be the father of my child, Carly.” She sat down on the bed and looked around as if she had no idea how
she had gotten there. “What if my daughter has no fashion sense and everyone laughs at her and no one asks her to the prom?”

I grabbed her elbow and maneuvered her down the stairs, through the hallway, and out the door, propping her up against the
porch while I locked the front door. Halfway back home I realized I had forgotten to slip the key back beneath the flowerpot,
but that didn’t matter. As soon as Hank saw the holes in his clothes he’d know who had done it. I hoped he would feel sorry
about the way he had treated Laurel, but I doubted that would happen. Probably he was the kind of man who was unable to feel
sorry for anyone except himself.

I was late for work and caught Mr. Tims’s wrath.

“It’s fucking Valentine’s Day, we’ve got a full house, and you show up whenever you goddamn feel like,” he yelled as I busily
jotted down the specials and headed out to my section, which was already full. I smiled at all of the surly faces. Very few
smiled back.

Sandee was in an equally foul mood. “I’m afraid Joe’s going to propose,” she said as she slammed her tray on the kitchen counter.

“You said that at Christmas and nothing happened.”

“But he’s hokey enough to make a huge romantic gesture on Valentine’s Day. He’s spent time in the bush without running water.
It kind of goes with the territory.”

I had no idea how living without a flush toilet could cause someone to be romantic. “What did he say when you told him about
Randall?” I used my apron to wipe green sauce from the side of a plate.

“I haven’t told him yet.”

“You can’t keep it from him.” I arranged plates across my tray. The enchilada sauce was a runny, sticky mess today. “You’re
a couple now, and besides, he asked about the divorce. He asked
you
.”

“It has nothing to do with him. It’s between Randall and me.” Sandee hoisted the tray to her shoulder and rushed out the swinging
pantry door, a sprig of parsley sticking to the side of her face. As soon as I served my table, the hostess rushed over with
a stack of menus. “You got four at Table Twelve and a loner at the corner booth,” she said.

I wanted Francisco to be at my single-top but knew he was out working by Scammon Bay for the day and wouldn’t be home until
late. Instead I found Barry dressed in his work uniform; his ridiculous chef’s hat sat neatly on the seat next to him. “Sorry
to hog the table. I’ll be out in a couple minutes.”

“You want anything?”

“Nah, gotta get to work. A banquet’s coming in, a hundred twenty-five vegetarians, won’t even eat fish.” He shook his head
sadly. “Here.” He reached into his coat and slid a small box toward me. I knew, from the shape, that it held jewelry.

“I don’t understand,” I protested.

“It’s your Grammy’s hairpins. They was behind the dresser when I cleared out of the house after we split. Kept wanting to
give ’em to you but didn’t seem the right time.”

I had carried Gramma’s hairpins around with me for years. They were silver and had tiny rubies along the edges, so small they
were almost unnoticeable until the light hit them; then they shined. I had lost them when I was pregnant with Jay-Jay and
had looked for weeks, weeping and mourning in my hormone-induced state.

“Thanks,” I said, shrugging nonchalantly.

“Ain’t nothing,” he murmured. “Jorge still make them green enchiladas with the minced onions?”

“Want some?”

“Nah, trying to lose the gut.” He patted his already shrinking belly. “Tell Jay-Jay to come over. I got a Valentine for him.”

“Okay.”

I watched him walk out, his pant cuffs dragging on the floor, and as soon as he was out of sight, I slipped the box into my
apron pocket and hurried to the bar to pick up my drink order. I felt a twinge of grief, not regarding Barry as much as for
the silly and foolish love we had shared, and how easily we had believed in dreams. Neither of us would ever love like that
again. It was like surviving childhood and how you long to return even though you know it was never as idyllic as you imagine.
Barry loved someone and I was in the process of loving someone, and our new loves would be more mature and stronger and more
resilient. We would love with the love of impending middle age, of the knowledge that our bodies are fragile, and so are our
hearts and spirits. We would be more tender, and more compassionate and more honest. We would be able to be all these things
to someone else because we had loved each other first.

Thursday, Feb. 16

“Florida,” Laurel said, looking up from her
1,000 Baby Names
book. “That’s a pretty name, isn’t it, Florida? Except everyone would associate it with a hurricane.”

I was curled up in the living room tucked under quilts and blankets, picking yellow paint from beneath my fingernails. The
city was still gripped in a cold spell, with nighttime temperatures dipping down to minus thirty; it hadn’t reached above
minus eight in over a week. Yet within that brutal chill lay lavender-hued shadows that were like nothing else. Evenings when
I walk the dog the inlet glows ghostly pale and lightens everything so that it almost feels as if we are walking through clouds.
I am happy then, no one else around, the wind so sharp and cold my face aches beneath my scarf.

The Oprah Giant says knowing what we want is the key to happiness.

“It’s not what you think,” she said. “That’s merely a hodgepodge of family expectations, cultural norms, and your own defense
mechanisms.”

Instead, what we want is usually what we fear, and we fear it because we simultaneously believe we will fail to achieve it
and think that we don’t deserve having it. I worried about my own happiness quest. Was I reaching too high? Not high enough?
Did I want too much? Too little? Was I suffering from lack of ambition? Self-confidence?

Gramma believed that donuts were the perfect symbol of happiness, and not fancy donuts but the simple cake version she made
each Sunday, frying them up on the stove and blotting the grease off with napkins. A donut was sweet, nourishing, and light.
It didn’t weigh you down or pretend to be anything it wasn’t, and it filled the belly in a slow and easy manner. You could
eat three or four and not feel stuffed, which Gramma believed was the true worth of the cake donut, not that you could eat
more but that while you were eating them you weren’t thinking of more.

“I’m not having the amniocentesis test,” Laurel said when she noticed me looking at the ultrasound photos scattered over the
coffee table. “The doctor recommended it, but what’s the point? So I can abort her if she’s not perfect? What kind of person
would do that?”

“There’s different levels of not perfect,” I said. “Some are pretty horrible. It’s a valid concern.”

“No.” She pulled the quilt up around her neck. “I couldn’t do it.” She looked over at me. “Would you?”

I thought of Jay-Jay and how I would love him no matter what he looked like or if he were in a wheelchair and hooked up to
oxygen, his neck too weak to support his head, like one of the students at his school. I would still love him, still rejoice
when he smiled, still pass his room late at night listening to the comforting sound of his breath. But everything would be
different, and he would never have the chance to be the person he is now. Though who knows what qualities he would have been
given to make up for it, what gifts he could still give. “I’d have the test,” I said quietly.