Dolls Behaving Badly (7 page)

“Open up, it’s me!” Laurel cried.

I hurriedly placed my painting on the farthest kitchen chair and opened the door. Laurel leaned against the frame, snow stuck
in her hair, which was no longer red but back to its usual glossy brown.

“I’m stuck,” she said, tromping across the floor without taking off her damp boots.

“I’ll get my shoes,” I started, but she held up her hand.

“Not in the snow. I’m stuck in life.” She laughed bitterly.

Her lips were chapped, her nail polish chipped. She was slowly coming undone. Was she—oh!—was she the woman from my painting?

“Do you have a white box?” I leaned toward her. “About this big? Tied with ribbon?”

She looked at me as if I were mad. “Hank said he loved me,” she said in a weary tone, as she eased herself down into one of
the kitchen chairs. “He said I was the one.”

“Which one?” I was still trying to imagine her with a white box.

“
The
one, Carla. You know, like in songs and movies.” She let out another harsh laugh and fiddled with the T-shirt overflowing
from the laundry basket.

“And that’s bad?”

“Well, it’s not good. He’s married. He’s a public figure, almost a celebrity.”

“I wouldn’t quite say that. I mean, it’s not like…”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” She squared her shoulders and suddenly looked like herself again.

“It’s late. I don’t want to start.”

“Start what?” Laurel challenged, and that was when I realized why she was here. She wanted a fight. She needed to unload her
conscience before going home so that she wouldn’t say too much, reveal in her tone or mannerism that Junior’s supposedly devoted
wife of fifteen years was stepping out with the TV weatherman.

“So that’s the way it’s gonna be, huh?” My tone was tough, the voice I used at work when I had to cut off a customer from
the bar.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She flounced prissily in the chair. “You’re just jealous,” she murmured.

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing. I just said… Okay, this is for your own good, Carla. I just said you were probably jealous. Not about Hank, because
I don’t think he’s exactly your type, but—”

“No, he’s not,” I interrupted.

“You just can’t stand to see me happy, can you? You want everyone to be as miserable as you.” She lifted up her voice. “‘Oh,
I’m just a single mother who lives in a trailer, please feel sorry for me.’ Just because
you
can’t get your life together doesn’t mean the rest of us have to suffer.”

“You’re married,” I hissed. “You took vows. And now you’re running around like, I don’t know. Look at you!”

“Like you can talk.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just keep your mouth shut, you hear me? You have no right to talk about Hank and Junior that way, not when…I think I’m going
to be sick,” she gasped, running for the bathroom and throwing up in the middle of the hallway.

“Sorry,” she sobbed, crouching down in front of her mess. “I couldn’t make it, I just couldn’t make it in time.”

“You’re drunk,” I hissed. “You shouldn’t have driven over here.”

I helped her to the bathroom and sat her down on the closed toilet seat. Then I wiped her face off with a warm washcloth,
gently, gently.

“Three months ago I was happy.” Laurel’s voice was low and toneless. “Not happy, but content. Now it’s as if my eyes have
become magnifying glasses. Everything Junior does is enlarged. Even his footsteps are too loud. He walks on his heels, slams
around the house. He practically echoes. How could I have not noticed before?”

“I’ll fix the couch up and you can stay over,” I said. “Need a shower first?”

Laurel shook her head. “I can’t,” she whispered. “I don’t want to wash off Hank’s smell.” She buried her face in her arms.
“I’m an awful person, Carla. A terrible, terrible person.”

“No, you’re not.” I patted her shoulder awkwardly. “You’re just on overload. You’ve had too much to drink, and—”

“I only had orange juice, not even half a glass.” She pulled a towel over her head. “Jay-Jay can’t hear us, can he?”

I shook my head. “He’s been asleep for hours.”

“I couldn’t bear for Jay-Jay to think his aunt was a slut.”

“You’re not a slut.” I pushed Laurel toward the living room, making sure neither one of us stepped in her pile of throw-up,
and then situated her in the shedding lounger and started making up the couch. “You’re just, well, you’re confused, that’s
all. You’re looking out for yourself. Men do it all the time and no one thinks twice. But women are supposed to put everyone
else before them, and if they don’t…” I ran out of steam. “Would you like some water? Milk?”

“An aspirin would be nice.”

By the time I returned with four of Jay-Jay’s old baby aspirins, Laurel had fallen asleep on the couch, little gasps escaping
her throat. I called Junior and left a message that Laurel had had too much to drink and was staying over. My voice was high
and shrill, the way it always gets when I lie, but I counted on Junior to not notice. People seldom see what they don’t want
to until it’s too late.

Tuesday, Nov. 8

I’M NOT SURE WHERE THIS DIARY IS GOING
. The Oprah Giant said that writing about our lives would prompt our unconscious needs and desires to surface. Yet skimming
over what I’ve written so far, most of my entries are about lack: Lack of money and lack of artistic merit. Lack of parenting
skills and lack of control. Lack of common sense and lack of good sex. There’s talk about love, not real love but wishful
or regretful love. There’s also a lot about Barry, which strikes me as terribly unfair. The man is behind in child support!
He borrowed my blender and hasn’t returned it! What right does he have to hog so much of my story?

But the truth (and I hate to admit it) is that I will always love Barry George, though I’ll thankfully never be in love with
him again. He’s the first man I ever opened up to. I don’t even know if it was him as much as geography. Alaska is so far
removed from everything else, tucked away as it is between towering mountains and cold salt water, that you begin to feel
free. You slowly shuck off the old layers of who you used to be, throw them down on the ground, and leave them to be trampled
on by knobby-kneed moose and nearsighted bears, and you don’t even care because you’re sure something better waits for you.

I loved Barry more than I loved myself, and then I loved Jay-Jay more than I loved Barry, and one day I looked up and I was
no longer there. But sometimes I stand by the window at night and imagine I can see the woman I used to be running down the
road, her hair streaming behind her, her thighs strong and muscular. She is so beautiful, my former self. She doesn’t trip
or hesitate. She runs because she wants to, because she loves to feel the wind against her face.

Thursday, Nov. 10

Mr. Tims, the manager at Mexico in an Igloo, poked his head in the pantry door and informed me that since Velda had unexpectedly
quit, he had signed me on for her Saturday night shift.

“I don’t have a babysitter.” I sliced flan into eight wavering pieces.

“Second-best station in the house, nets a hundred bucks, a hundred and fifty if it’s busy.” He leaned down and pulled up his
socks. Mr. Tims always wears yellow socks—he says they make him less cranky. “Be here by five.”

“Six.”

“Five thirty.”

It was snowing by the time I left work, an obstinate, lingering snow that made driving slow but gave the trailer park a cheery
glow. Even the Huberts’ blaring red trailer looked festive, the torn window shade flapping merrily in the breeze.

“Oh boy, it’s getting deep,” Jay-Jay yelled as he charged up the walkway and skidded across the porch. Once he settled down,
he poured himself a bowl of Cheerios and cleared a spot on the kitchen table. A dirty shoe sat in front of him, along with
two stray socks and a threadbare copy of
Foolish Women, Foolish Choices
.

“If we lived in Finland, it would snow 101 days a year,” he said, milk dripping down his shirt. “In Sweden, it’d be 95. That’s
on average, of course,” he added self-importantly. “You can’t
accurately
know until it happens.”

I peered down into the coffee I had poured, as if willing it to give advice. I could see my reflection; sugar crystals wavered
around my nose.

“…desert gets snow but everyone pretends it doesn’t,” Jay-Jay was saying. “And the mountains? It snows more but melts faster
’cause it’s closer…”

“I’m going to start working Saturday nights,” I interrupted.

Jay-Jay stared suspiciously at my chin.

“Of course, I’ll find you a sitter.”

“Drop me at Dad’s.”

“He’s got banquets,” I said. “We’ll find someone dependable. I wonder if—”

“Can we get high-speed Internet?” Jay-Jay blurted out. “Ours is soooo slow. It’s embarrassing, Mom. It’s like we’re stuck
in the Pliocene era.”

After he wiped his face with the grimy dish towel and headed to his room to start his homework, I ate the rest of his soggy
Cheerios and worried over how I’d find a babysitter on such short notice. The three Sanchez teenagers next door had found
more lucrative jobs at Subway, and the girl I used last time, recommended by the neighbor of a neighbor, had gotten high and
dabbed Magic Marker circles over the living room walls.

Then I remembered the peculiar note duct-taped to our front door last week. I fished it out of the bathroom wastebasket and
smoothed it over the counter:

Below this rather startling announcement was a blurred photograph of a smiling young girl of about seventeen wearing a checkered
blouse and one of those pot-shaped hats from the forties, with plastic cherries dangling over her forehead. She looked harmless
enough so I called and left a message. She called back in less than ten minutes.

“I can totally be over in an hour.” Her voice was loud, with a peculiar lilting tone. “Is your daughter, like, home?”

“Son,” I corrected. “His name is—” But she had already hung up.

At exactly seven fifteen, the new babysitter arrived. Her hair was blue and she wore yellow fishnet stockings, a red leather
skirt, black boots, and an orange-and-green-striped peasant blouse. She nodded her head at everything I said.

“Oh, Mrs. Richards, I totally agree,” followed by an infuriating snap of her gum. I was ready to boot her out the door when
Jay-Jay ran in. Immediately, Stephanie reached out her ringed hand. “Stephanie Steeley,” she said in a serious voice. “And
you are, like?”

“Jay-Jay.” He shook her hand, impressed.

“So you must be in, like, fifth grade?”

Jay-Jay giggled. “No, fourth.”

“Well, you’re totally tall for your age.” She turned her attention to me. “Mrs. Richards, I think I should spend time with
Jay-Jay to see how we, like, hang together.”

An hour later, she walked back into the kitchen and said her boyfriend wouldn’t “totally” like her working Saturdays, but
she’d be happy to take the job. I hadn’t offered it to her yet but that seemed beside the point. We hashed out a price and
she asked if she could stick around and catch the end of the movie she and Jay-Jay had been watching.

“If I don’t see the end, it will totally
haunt
me. I’ll have to, like,
imagine
endings, and that could easily keep me up the whole night.”

Wednesday, Nov. 16

Maybe it was the smell of the acrylic paints I had been using, or the way my brush swirled across my latest
Woman Running with a Box, No. 4
painting, my movements fluid and thick, almost sensual. Or maybe it was how the woman ran, her chest stuck forcefully out,
her face flushed, her mouth opened in harsh breath, that caused me to finally call Francisco back, my fingers smeared with
blue paint as I punched in his number. It was past midnight; I didn’t expect him to answer. The phone rang once, twice.

“Hello?” a sleepy voice answered, followed by a yawn. “Anybody there?”

I didn’t say anything. I listened to his breath: in, pause, out, pause, pause. He didn’t hang up; it was as if he knew it
was me, as if he had been waiting for this very call. I clutched the phone to my ear and breathed along with him: in, pause,
out, pause, pause.

“Okay,” he finally whispered, and then he hung up.

Saturday, Nov. 19

Stephanie showed up promptly at 4:58 p.m. for her babysitting shift, her hair a blaring purple that clashed with her bright
pink sweater. Jay-Jay stood expectantly in the doorway.

“Cool,” he breathed. “You look like this big grape.”

As I tied my apron and spit-cleaned my shoes, Stephanie told Jay-Jay about a friend who had just gotten her tongue pierced.

“She passed right out on the floor and we totally couldn’t get her to sit up and Heather tries to call 911 but, like, punches
in 844 instead and gets the time and temperature and…”

“I’m leaving now,” I yelled, as I rushed through the kitchen looking for my purse. “The number’s on the board, Jay-Jay needs
a shower and snack before bed, and remember, he can only read for half an hour and no—”

“Chill, Mrs. Richards.” Stephanie snapped her gum. “We’ll be totally fine. There’s this show on PBS? It’s about these turtles
with wrinkled heads that totally look like my grandfather.”

She shooed me out the door. It was already dark but clear and cold, the air crisp on my face as I walked out to the car. It
sputtered twice before catching, and I hurriedly drove down the street hoping to make it in time for my twelve-top reservation.

I made it but almost wish I hadn’t. It’s two a.m. as I write this, and I’m still jazzed on coffee and the little sips of tequila
the bartender slipped me for courage. I had forgotten what a nightmare it is to work a Saturday dinner shift. The pace is
frantic, the people impatient, the cooks surly from too much partying the night before. I smiled and scurried for six hours
without a single pause, and by the time I sank down at the back table to count my bank, I felt as if I had been through a
war. I made money, though, over $125 in tips, which I deposited at the ATM inside the Safeway on the way home, so I wouldn’t
be tempted to spend it.

When I arrived home, every light in the trailer was on, and Jay-Jay and Stephanie sat on the grimy kitchen floor, a vast Lego
creation stretching down the hallway as Stephanie relayed a story of her boyfriend Hammie’s pizza delivery job.

“…dude says to him he doesn’t want to be a pain in the ass but he, like, ordered a super combo with everything but olives
and mushrooms and this here is a combo with nothing
but
olives and mushrooms…”

Jay-Jay fit together Lego pieces, a transfixed look on his face. Killer Bee, who seemed equally infatuated, lay contentedly
at Stephanie’s feet. I threw down my apron and collapsed on the couch. After Stephanie gave me a rundown on their night, I
offered to walk her home. A funny look crossed her face.

“That’s okay, Mrs. Richards, I totally just live a few trailers down.”

I insisted and waited for her to pull on her coat, which was hairy and tapered down the back like a tail.

“It’s late,” I grabbed the keys. “Some of the people around here aren’t the most notable of citizens.” I was referring to
the hideous orange trailer over in the far lane that hosted parties so wild the cops had to shut them down. Supposedly the
woman cooked and sold meth. Supposedly the man was in jail and came around each time he escaped from the halfway house. Stephanie
didn’t say a word as she flung an oversized backpack over her scrawny shoulders.

“Got everything?” I said, and then ordered Jay-Jay to lock the door behind us and stick close to Killer Bee. Stephanie shrugged
and followed me down the lane, the hardened snow squeaking beneath our boots.

“The next one,” Stephanie murmured.

“The orange one?” My voice rose. “Are you sure?”

Stephanie nodded but refused to look at me.

“Well,” I stalled. “I never thought—”

“Mrs. Richards, I totally understand your trepidation. But can you, like, imagine it from
my
point of view? I have to live with these people. They’re my
parents
. I have a lock on my door this big to keep them from selling my stuff for dope.” She spread her arms wide. “Trust me, I know
exactly how you feel.”

“Well, it’s just that…” My mouth hung open, cold aching my teeth.

“So do you?” Stephanie snapped her gum and looked suddenly tough.

“Do I what?”

“Want me to come next week?” Her tone dared me to turn her down.

“No, it’s just…” Her shoulders slumped and suddenly I saw her for who she really was: a seventeen-year-old girl who needed
to get out of the house as much as possible. “I’d like that very much,” I heard my voice say. “Saturdays through at least
Christmas.”

“I’ll totally be there.” She stuck her bony wrist toward mine. It hung in the air for a moment before I realized she wanted
to shake my hand. Her palm was dry and cold, her grasp firm yet surprisingly tender.

“’Night, Mrs. Richards,” she said as she opened the door. The sounds of Van Halen blared out, along with a strong whiff of
some really top-notch weed.

“Carlita, what the fuck?” A vaguely familiar, deep man’s voice.

“Francisco?” I pulled myself up in bed and reached for the light.

“Who the hell is Francisco? It’s Jimmie. Where the fuck is your order?”

“I can’t get the penises right,” I said. “They look small and self-conscious.”

“Penises
are
small and self-conscious,” he laughed. “That’s why guys think about sex so much.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Go buy some smut mags—not
Playboy
or
Penthouse
, they’re airbrushed to death. Get something real, with pubic hair and shave marks and pimples.”

“Pimples,” I mumbled.

“Send everything second-day UPS. I got production waiting. Clear out your calendar, too. You’ve got twelve orders coming next
week for Christmas. Turnaround is short but bonuses are long.”

It was hard to imagine that Jimmie had once been a porn star who fucked women while hanging from a flying trapeze bar, but
then again, I never imagined I’d grow up to be a waitress who lived in a trailer and cooked clay vaginas in an Easy-Bake Oven
either.