Dolls Behaving Badly (4 page)

“…out of my mind,” Laurel was saying.

“Huh?”

“The newlyweds. I can’t stop thinking of them. ‘Are you sure these are the counters you want?’ he kept asking. They were so
endearing, so careful of each other’s feelings.”

“Give them a few years and they’ll be fighting over those very counters,” I snorted.

“Maybe not. If you find the right man it doesn’t have to happen that way.” Laurel’s voice was dreamy, as if she were talking
from far away. I got up and stuck another piece of bread in the toaster.

“The question is whether this is a sign or merely a coincidence,” she said.

I didn’t know how to answer. Laurel has been acting strange, calling and asking off-the-wall questions: If I were a bug, would
I rather be a beetle or a grasshopper? Were socks invented before shoes? And why do we care what color our car is when we
can’t see it while we’re driving? These questions make me cringe. They’re like seeing Laurel without her bra, her pale, sad
breasts forlorn and defenseless without their normal wedge of armor.

“Some days I put on a yellow sweater yet all day I feel as if I’m wearing black,” she was saying. “Oops, there’s my phone.”
The theme from
Jeopardy!
blared as Laurel pulled out her cell and hurriedly tapped out a text message reply. When she looked up, her face was flushed.

“Where was I? Oh yes: if you had five hundred dollars, would you spend it on a swimsuit that makes you look perfect or a new
radiator for the car?” She leaned back in her chair and flashed me a hopeful smile; lipstick gleamed against her teeth.

If I had five hundred dollars, I’d pay off some of my credit cards and buy a new pair of work shoes, but I knew that wasn’t
what she meant. “I guess it depends on how often I used the car.”

Laurel’s face fell for a moment. “Okay, it’s your
second
car, the one you don’t use much. The one you keep for summer.”

“Summer?” I repeated stupidly. I knew she was trying to tell me something but it was too early in the morning to make the
kind of mental leaps I needed to understand my sister. I nodded and chose the swimsuit.

“Yes!” She tapped the tabletop with her hand. “That’s
exactly
what I thought. So you agree, then? That I’d look good as a redhead?” She pulled a strand of her hair and stared at it with
fascination.

“We’re talking about hair?”

“What did you
think
we were talking about?”

I paused. “I thought Junior hated redheads.”

“Oh,
him
,” Laurel said with disinterest. “I need something new, you know? Something bold. Something that shouts, ‘Here’s a woman who’s
not afraid to take chances.’”

Laurel
was
afraid to take chances, but I knew better than to point that out. “Red is bold,” I agreed. “But I’ve heard that it’s hard
to cover back up.”

“I know!” Laurel cradled her head in her arms. “It’s such a dilemma, Carly. I can barely sleep thinking about it. I want to
look as if I’m in charge, but sexy in charge, you know?”

I was at loss for words. Except for the few days before her period, Laurel doesn’t allow her emotions to get the best of her.
She’s logical and precise and careful. Yet there she was, sitting in front of me and revealing more moods then she’d had in
years.

“The time!” Laurel stood up and pranced her way to the door without bothering to rinse out her dirty coffee cup. “I’ll call
you,” she yelled over her shoulder. “About the hair, okay?”

The slam of the door, followed by the purr of her car’s expensive motor as she glided down my driveway. I watched out the
window and wondered what was going on in my sister’s mind. Women always try to change their hair when they really want to
change their lives. I did this myself, back before the divorce, before Barry and I dared utter the word, when we were still
rolling it around on our tongues with an almost frenzied joy, each of us sure all our failures were the other’s fault. Instead
of bringing up the subject of divorce, I began cutting my hair. It had been long when I married Barry, down past my waist,
and I often wore it in a fat braid that hit comfortingly against my spine. I loved my hair. It was a shiny, dark blonde that
picked up yellow highlights in the summer. Sometimes I wove ribbons through it or curled it in a mad array around my face.

“Getting loose,” Barry yelled when I let my hair down. “My baby’s a’gettin’ loose.”

I sacrificed my hair to free myself from my marriage. I hacked away, inch by agonizing inch, with Jay-Jay’s toenail scissors,
ripping and tearing until my hair lay in uneven strips across my back, slowly creeping up toward my shoulders. Barry never
uttered a word, not even when my hair littered the bathroom floor and stuck to the sides of his socks.

To retaliate, or maybe to keep up, he started killing things: a few spruce hens here, a rabbit or porcupine there. King salmon
so fat and heavy the middle of the kitchen table sagged, and then a coyote, a lynx, and—god help us—a sheep and finally a
caribou. The day I walked in the bathroom and found a moose head floating in a cold bath was the day I knew we had gone far
enough. Next time, it could only be a person.

That night I waited up for Barry, who was working an insurance salesman banquet. I waited until he walked in the door, his
ridiculous chef’s pants dragging on the floor, and then I coughed, cleared my throat.

“Divorce,” I said, and we both froze, the silence between us thick and dangerous. I said it again. It was as if I had no control
over my mouth.

“Divorce, divorce, divorce,” until the very word became strange and blurry, like something you might read about in the newspaper.

“Shut up!” he screamed, which made me scream even louder: “Divorce, divorce, divorce.”

He finally had to hit me to shut me up, a gentle tap that didn’t even leave a mark, but still my eyes watered and I stared
at him, momentarily betrayed. How dare he!

I kicked him, sly and quick, but he didn’t bother to fight back, just stood there, his shoulders slumped, his chef’s hat sagging
against his neck. I hated him then, hated him with a passion so extreme that if someone had handed me a knife, I wouldn’t
have hesitated to stick it in.

“You win,” he said in a horrible, gravelly whisper. “Happy now, god damn it, are you fuckin’ happy now?”

But I didn’t win. We both ended up losing more than we ever imagined, more than we even knew we had. Divorce sounds so simple,
a two-syllable word about two people breaking apart. It’s not simple, though, and the break is never clean. And just when
you think it can’t possibly hurt any more, it hurts more than is bearable, more than you can take. But you do take it, and
that’s the worst part of it all.

Tuesday, Oct. 11

I can’t seem to finish my dirty doll orders. For the past two nights I’ve sat at the table, X-Acto knife in hand, and accomplished
nothing. Oh, I did manage to slice open Ken’s buttocks and insert a small wedge of latex to give him a plumper, sexier behind,
but my heart wasn’t in it and poor Ken ended up with lopsided cheeks and an ugly scar, which I didn’t bother to cover with
dabs of flesh-coated tint. Instead, I stapled Ken’s mouth shut. Then his eyes, and his ears and hands, all the while wondering:
what is it I don’t want to see or hear or touch or say?

My dolls are a camouflage, a distraction. They keep me from seeing my real self. But what if I were braver? What if I dusted
off my brushes and concentrated, really concentrated, on the
Woman Running with a Box
painting? Finishing it would make it permanent, and permanence scares the hell out of me. Which is ironic, because one of
the reasons I yearn to be an artist is to leave something behind, a record of my life, a yell in the dark: I was here.

Gramma was the one who first put a crayon in my hand when I was two, and forget the fact that I ate the first couple she handed
me (primrose, followed by burned sienna and then midnight sky), I soon began coloring everything in sight, from Mother’s good
white slip to the bathroom walls.

“
Ach
, you got the gift,” Gramma said,
ooh
ing and
aah
ing at every smeary new creation. “You are a gifter.”

Gramma always believed I’d make it as an artist. She was the only one in the family who believed I would amount to something;
she said she knew it the first time she plopped a piece of honey-glazed cabbage into my mouth. I sucked it slowly, intently,
as if trying to draw out every single flavor.

“Greedy for life,” Gramma called it. She insisted it was a sign of a strong personality, someone with the gumption to go out
and get what she wants. Poor Gramma, with her messy hair and unshaven legs and ugly flowered dresses clinging to her massive
hips. Poor onion-smelling, mole-spotted Gramma. She was never good at predicting anything, not even the weather. If she said
it was going to be sunny, we all made sure we carried our raincoats that day.

Friday, Oct. 14

“Midway through your diary writing you will be surprised by offerings of mysterious gifts,” the Oprah Giant wrote. “It could
be money, free car repairs, or a letter from the sister you haven’t spoken with in years.”

When this happened, she continued, it was our obligation, our duty, to offer up praise.

So praise be the mailman with his balding head, his shuffling gait, his knobby knees (in the summer) and big red ears (in
the winter). Praise be his little truck that creeps and coughs up our road each morning before I leave for work. Praise be
his gloves with the chewed fingers and his cheery “Good morning, Miz Richards” and his breath that smells of butterscotch
candies.

Praise be to you!

Because today you brought me two Alaska Permanent Fund dividend checks, each made out for the whopping amount of $845.76 and
tucked inside a small envelope with stars from the Alaska flag running up the side.

In Alaska, October is a holy month. It’s when every man, woman, and child, plus a few dogs and hamsters squeezed illegally
into the system, gets a portion of the oil profits from the North Slope. Forget the fact that those same oil companies pollute
our waters and kill our wildlife. Most of us are happy to receive this money we didn’t do a damn thing to deserve. We feel
vindicated, as if it is our right, our pat on the back for having suffered through winter after dark winter, along with crappy
springs and too-short summers. These checks usually average around a thousand dollars, though they’ve been known to soar past
the fifteen-hundred-dollar range.

For a short space each October, the financial burden lifts from my shoulders and I am left feeling light and airy, as if I
can accomplish anything. It’s an illusion, of course. Still, it’s a welcome reprieve. I buy balloons and decorate the kitchen.

“We’re rich,” I sing, dancing around the kitchen with Jay-Jay and Killer. I order take-out pizza—a luxury—and we sit on the
worn linoleum and look through catalogs, deciding what to do with this windfall, this gift from god and the state and our
pigeon-toed mailman. Jay-Jay usually buys video games and I always buy art supplies.

So thank you, Mr. Mailman. For the filbert brush and the bone-​handled fettling knife, the Schmincke soft pastel set and the Totally Hair Ken doll, and especially for the 1966 blonde ponytailed
Barbie I won on eBay, which is splendid and glorious and should arrive in your humble little truck sometime next week.

Monday, Oct. 17

Phone call at 8:03 a.m.

“Carla Richards?”

“Mmmmmm.”

“This is Darlene, over at Alaska Consumer Credit Counseling. I see by my records that your dividend checks were scheduled
to arrive this week.”

“Oh. Right. Yes.”

“Wonderful! Do you still have a copy of our payment budget?”

“I-I guess so.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll e-mail you another.”

“Uh, okay.”

“You need to send out your payment checks the minute you cash your dividend, and I mean the minute. This way you can get your
foot in the door, payment-wise.”

“Sure!” I lied heartily.

“Now, have you…” I heard papers rustling in the background. “Have you looked into further education to procure better job
opportunities?”

“That’s next on my list,” I lied again.

“I must say, Miss Richards, you are doing exceptionally well. If you only knew some of my other clients, why, they’re practically
helpless. But for someone who works in the service industry, you seem to have things well under control.”

“Yes.” I could almost feel my nose growing longer.

“I’ll call in January, to see how you’ve survived the holidays.” She gave a little laugh and hung up.

My hands were slick with sweat by the time I put the phone down. Gramma would have sympathized. Her spending habits were as
sloppy and unpredictable as mine. Every Thursday she “borrowed” a handful of bills from the cash register of the deli where
she worked and bought as much hamburger as it would cover. Then she cooked up huge vats of goulash and soup, which she took
down to the park and left for her poor neighbors. She left dishes as well, bowls and spoons and even cloth napkins. She never
worried that people might take things.

“Just ’cause they ain’t got money don’t mean they ain’t got hearts,” she’d say, chopping onions and celery, her fat hands
moving so fast they appeared to blur.

No one ever stole anything from Gramma, even though she lived in a rough neighborhood and never locked her door. She was esteemed,
like Mother Teresa or Gandhi. Even the street punks nodded when she waddled past. They called her Grannie P, for Gramma Polack.

“Hey, Grannie P, what’s shaking?” they yelled, giving her high fives.

Gramma pinched their cheeks and asked about their mothers. She knew everyone’s names, even though she lived in a predominantly
Hispanic neighborhood and few people spoke English. How they understood my grandmother’s butchered speech is beyond me. Maybe
food speaks louder than words, for at the beginning of the month when the men lucky enough to have jobs got paid and the others
received their welfare checks, the women left offerings on Gramma’s doorstep: a bowl of fried rice, a jar of homemade salsa,
a plate of green chili tamales. Gramma and I ate these in front of the TV while watching
The Price Is Right
. Gramma had a crush on Bob Barker.

“That one spunk of a man,” she sighed.

“Hunk,” I corrected her, but neither of us cared much about semantics. I sat beside my grandmother eating foods so hot my
mouth burned, and I almost wept from the pleasure of it all: the food, my grandmother, the dusty TV set spilling out words
in Bob Barker’s smooth, silky voice. Food. House. Grandmother.

Good.

Wednesday, Oct. 19

I. Am. So. Ashamed.

“Wake up,” I hissed earlier this morning to the lump snoring beside me.

A grunt from beneath the covers.

“I
said
, wake up!”

“Wh-what?” The covers flew back and Barry scrambled out of bed, his naked penis swinging back and forth, as if unsure of which
direction it wanted to go.

“Jay-Jay’s in the kitchen.”

We stared at each other, eyes wide.

“Mom?” Jay-Jay called, his footsteps pounding up the hall.

“Don’t come in!” I shouted. “I’m getting dressed.”

“You got the wrong kind of cereal,” Jay-Jay yelled back. “I said corn-flakes, not bran flakes.
I’m
not the one who—”

“It was on sale!” I rattled dresser drawers so Jay-Jay wouldn’t hear the sound of his father sneaking out of his mother’s
bedroom window after a night of wild and desperate sex. Imagine the confusion! Imagine him thinking we might still love each
other!

We don’t, of course. At least not in that way. But we still fuck. When either of us is lucky enough to be in a relationship,
these sad couplings are supposed to stop. But they rarely do. It has little to do with love or pleasure or even sex and everything
to do with the fact that Barry and I can’t let go. If we did, we’d have to face the terror of loving someone else again. So
we see other people, we sleep with other people, we have relationships, but we never dip below the surface. As long as we’re
secretly sleeping with each other, everything else is a lie. And this lie keeps us safe; it shields us from taking chances
and risking love and finding out that maybe, just maybe, the divorce wasn’t the other one’s fault. Maybe it was a lot more
about our own stuff than either one of us cares to admit.

Sandee can usually tell when I’ve been with Barry. She says I walk differently, heavier, as if I’m carrying a burden. “A very
pleasant burden,” she says, “but a burden nevertheless.”

She didn’t notice today; she was too busy bitching about the guy who wooed and then insulted her at Simon & Seafort’s. Right
after their appetizer plate arrived, he leaned suggestively forward and whispered that she’d be stunning if only she had bigger
boobs.

“Can you fucking believe that?” It was just after eleven thirty and we stood in the alley behind Mexico in an Igloo, furiously
smoking unlit Camel Lights while enjoying our first cig dig of the day. Neither of us smokes, but since the only way they’ll
allow us out of the building is if we’re on a cigarette break, we keep packs of Camel Lights in our apron pockets. We’re experts
at making these fake breaks last as long as possible, sliding our unlit cigarettes to our mouths and pretending to inhale.
Whenever the dining room becomes unbearable, one of us mouths,
Cig dig?
and the other holds up her fingers, indicating how many minutes until our escape.

“I should have left right then and there, but I wanted to make it through to the clam chowder. Ever have it? There’s this
taste that’s real distinct but kind of strange.”

“It’s Barry’s recipe,” I told her.

“Wow, no way!” Sandee paused for a moment, as if out of respect. “Then he tells me he knows this doctor who could fix my boobs
for under five grand, he says this like he’s offering me a prize, so I look him in the eye and say, ‘Baby, I’m sure he could.’
When he goes to the bathroom I call over the waiter and order a bottle of two-hundred-dollar wine and five seafood and steak
platters. Then I put on my coat and walk out.”

“Good for you.” I picked tobacco flecks out of my teeth.

“No,” Sandee sighed. “I shouldn’t have gone out with him in the first place.”

“Barry stopped over last night,” I said, as if to console her.

“You fuck?”

My mouth turned up in a guilty little grin.

“If Randall were around I’d fuck him.” She dropped her unlit cigarette in her pocket and wiped her mouth over her sleeve.
“Then I’d kill him. Or maybe not. He had such tiny ears. I used to worry that if he ever needed glasses he wouldn’t have anything
to hold them up. You can’t kill someone with ears like that.”

Sandee sighed and shook her head. “We can’t let go, don’t you see? We’re clinging to the ghosts of our dead husbands. Metaphorically
speaking,” she added.

I stared at her.

She leaned toward me. “We’re both so busy fighting the corpses of our dead marriages that we’re half-dead ourselves. There’s
no room for anything else—how can there be?” She stamped her heeled foot for emphasis. “You can’t love the dead and the living
at the same time.”

I knew what she said was true. I had said the same thing to myself a hundred times. But hearing it out loud was startling.
It was like hearing a nun swear.

“I can’t keep on like this,” Sandee said, more to herself than to me. “I’m so goddamned sick of sex. Some nights I want to
cut off my vaggy, leave it in the room with the guy, and say, ‘Here, you wanted it so much, you take care of it.’ It’s just
getting too
hard
.”

Amen,
I thought, remembering the way Barry and I had clawed and pulled and bit, almost as if we were trying to destroy each other
or, most probably, some part of ourselves. I stuck my gnawed cigarette in my apron pocket and followed Sandee back inside,
weaving slightly as my eyes adjusted to the dim light. Right before we passed the bathrooms, she turned and laid her hand
on my arm.

“Think I’ll ever love anyone again?” she asked, not a question but more of a challenge.

I stared into her face, her clear and pale complexion, her perfect cheekbones, her wide and too generous mouth, leaned forward,
and pressed my lips against her forehead, a mother’s kiss.