Dolls Behaving Badly (6 page)

“Nah, it was from a movie over at Alan’s.”

After Jay-Jay went to bed and the house was quiet, my belly filled with chocolate, I decided to work on my
Woman Running with a Box
painting. In some demented part of my mind I believed the supernatural promise of Halloween would lend a mysterious aura.
I was pulling my supplies from the closet when Killer let out a deep growl and charged for the door. A moment later a distraught
vampire flew into the kitchen. A vampire with flaming red hair.

“Laurel?” I squinted at the chalky pancake makeup and bloodred lips. “You colored your hair.”

The vampire plopped down in the chair across from me and began devouring a Nestlé Crunch bar. Then a Hershey bar, followed
by a Mr. Goodbar, a Kit Kat, and a handful of chocolate coins.

“Holy shit, slow down.” I grabbed the candy bowl and hurried it over to the counter. “You’re gonna be sick.”

Laurel whispered something from behind her chocolate-smeared mouth.

“Huh?”

“I’m seeing someone,” she said, staring at the window behind me.

I jumped up and looked out, sure some nasty little goblins were toilet-papering our backyard again.

“I said I’m
seeing
someone.” She jammed another Kit Kat in her mouth. “A man,” she slurred. “I’m seeing a man. Okay, I’ve said it.
Are you happy now?
”

“I heard you.” I didn’t know what to say. Laurel and I don’t tell each other private stuff; we stay on the surface as much
as possible, where things are as safe and bland as white bread.

“It’s not what you think,” Laurel sobbed, her vampire makeup smearing down her face. “I love him!” The legs of her chair slammed
down as if for emphasis.

“Who?” I finally asked.

“Promise you won’t get mad?”

“Why would I care?”

“Promise?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“It’s Mr. Hankel.”

“Who?” The name sounded vaguely familiar, and I ran through a mental list of Jay-Jay’s teachers and camp counselors.

“You know. The weatherman.”

“On TV? With the broadcaster wife? Holy shit!”

“You promised,” Laurel hiccupped. “You promised you wouldn’t get mad.”

“Well,” I stuttered. “I’m not mad, not at all.” I forced my voice low and soft, the same tone I used to comfort Jay-Jay. “It’s
just unexpected, that’s all.”

“He came to the office about a summer rental on the Kenai earlier this spring,” Laurel said. “I was wearing my yellow blouse,
you know the one? The creamy silk with the cunning collar?”

“Ummmm.” I had no idea what she was talking about.

“We were in the middle of the paperwork and I leaned over, and he smelled so good, Carla, sharp and crisp, like a pair of
freshly ironed pants. His neck looked lost and vulnerable above his shirt, so trustworthy that I couldn’t help leaning over
and kissing him.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I muttered “Ummmm” again.

“That’s when it started.”

“It?”

“You know.” Laurel gave a proud little laugh. “The sex.”

“At work?”

“Carla! Do you think I’m so cheap? Hank took me to a nice hotel.”

“Hank Hankel?”

“Yes,” Laurel sighed, all dreamy. “Isn’t it wonderful?” She wiped her face on one of my dish towels until her skin emerged,
pale and beard burned. Then she put her face down on the table and sobbed again. “Oh Carly, I don’t know what to do. I love
him. I do! But it’s impossible. We’re both married.”

I ate three Milk Duds and waited for more.

“But I love Junior, too. Don’t look at me like that, Carla. I’ve been with him over fifteen years. He can’t see without his
glasses. He’s so
helpless
. He gropes around every morning like a baby bird. Oh, oh. What am I going to do?”

“I’ll make you something to eat,” I said, handing her a fresh dish towel to mop up her eyes. “How about tuna casserole?”

“Like Gramma used to make?” Laurel asked in a small voice.

“Yeah, just like that,” I lied, desperately trying to remember the recipe: cream of mushroom soup, egg noodles, cheese, and
something else, something that gave it a strange, spicy taste. Peppers? Cumin? Garlic powder? “Go watch TV.” I nodded toward
the living room. “There’s a bunch of old movies on tonight, a Halloween fest. I’ll let you know when it’s done.”

“Okay.” Laurel slumped out of the kitchen. The tuna smelled salty and strong when I opened the can. Gramma used to say that
fish was the meat of the gods. Each week she made some type of fish, not on Friday, the typical Catholic fish-eating day,
but on Monday, the beginning of the school week. She said the fish would swim up my brain and make me smarter.

“That why you answer all them right on your spelling test,” she said.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her I cheated off Bobby Wright’s paper. He sat catty-corner from me and wrote extra big in
exchange for the chance to watch me pee into a jar. Bobby saved the pee to pour over his mother’s houseplants and then waited
for them to die. When they didn’t, he fell in love with me and insisted, in that logical persuasiveness common to eight-year-old
boys, that he would never, ever love anyone as much as he loved me. Sometimes I still believe this. Sometimes I’m sure that
I will never do anything to impress a man the way I impressed Bobby when I peed in those jars.

Wednesday, Nov. 2

“DID YOU CALL HIM YET?”
Sandee asked as we fake-smoked during a cig dig outside of Mexico in an Igloo. A stingy inch of snow covered the ground,
and the air was crisp and cold.

“Call?”

“The god, you know, the Swedish guy.”

“Norwegian,” I corrected. Then I sighed. “I doubt he even remembers. He was just being nice.”

“Yeah,” Sandee snorted. “Guys are so
nice
. They leave their numbers for the hell of it.” She looked at me sharply. “When was the last time you fucked someone, Carla?
Can you even remember?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but she waved her finger in my face. “And don’t you dare say Barry—he doesn’t count.”

Well, I couldn’t remember, that was the thing. Sex with Barry was fierce and angry and intense, but it certainly wasn’t deep.
It didn’t startle my soul. Afterward I sometimes sat in front of the refrigerator and ate whatever was handy: cheese slices
or lettuce dipped in mustard or Jell-O scooped up with my hands. I wasn’t hungry but I had to eat. I ached inside. And the
few men I’ve seen since my divorce have been insipid and vague. Sex with them was like watching a rerun, everything dulled
and lacking in surprise or wonder. Right after I left Barry, when I still felt adventurous and brave, I had an affair with
the Mighty Muffler man. When I dropped the car off I told the young man (and he was young, sweet Jesus, barely legal) that
I didn’t care what he did, to just fix the goddamned thing. I was crying by then, and Dave (his name stitched across his pocket
in blue letters) patted my head as if I were a dog.

“There, there,” he murmured, offering me a soiled rag pulled from his pants. “We’ll have her ready by five.”

What is it about a sad woman that melts a particular kind of man’s heart? When I picked up the car, Dave slipped me his phone
number. I swore I wouldn’t call but two nights later I broke down and did just that. We went at it on the couch, the dishwasher
turned on to drown our sounds. Afterward, I cried again, but Dave didn’t mind. He had grown up in a family of sisters, so
he was used to a woman’s tears.

“Baby,” he said, kissing my forehead. “Poor sweet baby.”

But he was just a kid, barely out of high school. When he invited me over to play video games with a bunch of his buddies,
I knew I had to cut the cord. Still, he was such a nice, tender man. Boy. Man-boy. I still have his Midas shirt tucked in
my dresser drawer. Sometimes I take it out and trace his name over and over, the curve of the D, the jut of the V, the clever
jaunt of the E.

I didn’t love him. I was too raw and hurt at the time. But I needed to believe that someone loved me. And he did, I think,
his fingers lingering against my skin as if learning the shape of my cells. He was the last one, almost three years ago. He
was the last one that filled me up.

Friday, Nov. 4

Barry stormed over, just as I was starting dinner.

“Hold it!” he yelled from the living room. “Jay-Jay Jiggers, go tell your mama to move away from that stove right this minute.”

Jay-Jay charged in from the living room.

“Dad-says-move-from-that-stove-right-this-minute.”

I wiped my hands with the dish towel as Barry slumped into the kitchen carrying a large plastic grocery bag.

“Nippy died.” He slammed the bag on the counter. “Thought I’d cook up some lasagna. Kind of a tribute.”

Barry cooks when he’s troubled. He cooks when he’s depressed or sad, worried or afraid. Basically, he cooks all the time.
Except when he’s happy. Then he bakes.

“Who’s Nipper?”

“Nippy,” Barry said. “With a
y
, not
e-r
.”

“As if it matters,” I snapped.

He sighed and tore open a box of noodles. “Got any butter? Forgot mine.”

“Yeah.”

“Butter,” he stressed. “Not margarine.”

“I said yes.”

“Don’t gotta yell.” He slumped against the counter. “I can’t believe he’s gone.”

“How’d it happen?” I still had no idea who in the hell Nippy was.

“I was driving home from work during that dim-dark time when it ain’t light but ain’t dark? A couple blocks from the house,
right where the road curves, this darkish shape runs right out in the road. ‘Whoa,’ I thought. ‘Some skinny dude with long
legs.’”

“That was Nippy?”

“No.” Barry was irritated at the interruption. “Not a dude. A moose.”

“Ohhhhh.”

“Crossing the road with his mama. Right in the crosswalk like they knew what they was doing. Light was even green. Then this
lady in an SUV comes barreling around the corner and smacks right into him: Ka-bam!”

He stopped chopping onions and wiped his eyes.

“Nippy didn’t have a chance. Been watching him and his mama hanging out in the yard. Left some lettuce one night.”

“But I thought—”

“I know, I know.” Barry waved his knife. “It’s illegal feeding wildlife. But they was so skinny. Darned near broke my heart.
Reminded me of the kid who sat behind me in second grade. Hummed under his breath and about drove me crazy, but then one day
he moved and darned if I didn’t miss all that humming.”

He covered the noodles with tomato sauce while I washed the dishes littering the sink.

“Sandee coming over?” he asked hopefully. Barry has a bit of a crush on Sandee. “Got enough for four, maybe five if nobody
hogs.”

“Working.”

“Shit.”

After Barry slid the lasagna into the oven, we all sat in the living room and watched a movie about talking ants as the smell
of garlic and onions seeped through the air.

“How’s the job?” I asked Barry.

“Shhhh,” Jay-Jay warned. “This is the good part.”

“Banquets are about killing me,” Barry said, as he scratched his armpit.

“You’re ruining it,” Jay-Jay cried. “You guys have to shut up during the good parts.”

I didn’t bother disciplining him for saying
shut up
. I got up and walked through the kitchen and down the hallway to my bedroom, which is at the back of the trailer. The reassuring
thud of Killer’s feet followed. I shut the door, stripped down to my underwear, and stared at myself in the mirror. My skin
was pasty, my bra straps fraying, my Hanes underpants grayish from too many washings. My stomach, which was rounded but not
fat, looked especially lonely. No one had touched it in so long, or at least touched it with gentleness, with adoration. I
crawled into the closet and shut the door, the hems of my shirts fluttering my face. A moment later I crawled back out, grabbed
the phone, and punched in Francisco’s number, counting the rings: three, four, five. On six, the answering machine clicked
on, but I didn’t wait around to leave a message. I hung up quietly, as if to erase the call from my mind because really, what
could a man like that see in a woman like me?

When I finally straggled back to the living room, fully clothed again, the movie was over and Barry and Jay-Jay were setting
plates over a blanket spread over the floor. They hadn’t even noticed I was gone.

“A picnic,” Jay-Jay said excitedly. “Except we don’t have any potato salad. Or pickles. Or ham sandwiches. Or…”

I sat down and forked warm noodles into my mouth, a spicy tomato sauce shivering against my tongue. The lasagna was superb:
rich and comforting and lingering in my chest like a hug. Jay-Jay told a story about a kid who had thrown up during gym, and
Barry told about the mess one of the prep cooks made when he dropped two dozen eggs on the floor.

“Your turn, Mom,” Jay-Jay said. They both looked expectantly at me; I didn’t know what to say. All of my stories were bleak.

“Sandee thinks Randall is still living in Vegas,” I finally said. Barry leaned forward and scratched his foot. “She thinks
he was married before and that’s why he left, you know. He was living dual lives.”

“Parallel lives,” Jay-Jay said excitedly. “It’s physics, see? Particles exist in more than one place at a time.”

“Don’t see how that’s possible,” Barry grunted.

“You can’t explain it,” Jay-Jay said. “You’ve just got to trust it, that’s what Mr. Short says. If you try and understand
this stuff, you’ll go crazy.”

One of these days Jay-Jay will look around his shabby life and wonder what cruel twist of fate stuck him with two such silly
and insignificant parents. Maybe he’ll hate us. Or worse yet, pity us. He’ll pat our dense heads like beloved but stupid pets.

“Oh, wow, look, Dad,” Jay-Jay screamed as he ran toward the window. “It’s snowing.”

They stood at the window together, Barry’s stocky body next to Jay-Jay’s slim grace. Jay-Jay takes after Barry; there’s no
denying the way their bodies resemble each other, how when one shifts, the other instinctively leans forward. Watching them
almost broke my heart. I remembered camping at Destruction Bay in the Yukon years ago, the waves wild, the autumn night wicked
with wind as Barry and I lay in our sleeping bags staring up at the sky. Just as we were about to close our eyes and drift
off to sleep, we were hit with the most magnificent display of northern lights I’ve ever seen. It began subtly, a vague streak
across the sky, followed by a whitish yellow that soon deepened to green. The colors zigzagged here and there, brightening
and then retreating, and just when we were sure they were gone for good, they reappeared, swaying and expanding above us,
a phosphorus green that picked up pinks and oranges, lilacs and reds. Before long the colors had deepened to a crimson so
rich and true it reminded me of our grade school auditorium curtains shimmering and swaying as they opened for school assemblies.

Barry and I lay on the ground and watched. I was newly pregnant with Jay-Jay at the time, my stomach just beginning to puff.
I don’t know which one of us started, but we were soon shouting at the sky, singing at the top of our voices, “This little
northern light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.”

Singing until we were hoarse and even then we couldn’t stop. We stood up, kicked off our shoes, and danced barefoot over that
cold ground as the colors swayed above us.

“Honey-muffin,” Barry cried, lifting me up and twirling me around. He used to call me food names back then: baby buns, sweetie
peach, cakey-bakey. We kissed, and the sky was brilliant and Jay-Jay was a fish swimming in my belly.

“Hello? Anyone home? This is Francisco, Francisco Freebird, and this number was on my caller ID. I guess you called? I don’t
know who you are but if you still need to catch me, give me a holler at 555-4289. And hey to you, Jay-Jay. Whoever you are,
you sound like a mature young man.”

I listened three times before hitting the Delete button. I didn’t dare leave the message on the machine; it would be a temptation,
like the apple hanging on the tree. Eve couldn’t resist, and I doubt I could, either. All evening, as Jay-Jay chattered on
about last year’s Halloween costumes and I folded laundry and watched
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
, I thought about that apple hanging from a tree, golden yellow with a hint of peach and green, the kind of apple that might
be hanging in one of Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings: sensual and erotic and looking more like a breast than a piece of fruit.
I saw green happy leaves swaying in the background, I saw myself running in a gauzy summer dress, my feet bare, my hair floating
out behind me as I reached out to pluck that perfect apple off that perfect tree. But I didn’t call him back.

Sunday, Nov. 6

I spent the evening sanding down the penis on a dirty doll order. It seemed a shame to make it smaller when all over the country
men were shelling out thousands of dollars to make theirs larger. But an order is an order and I desperately needed the money
so I buckled down, and by the time I finished, G.I. Joe’s dick stuck up in a permanent hard-on that looked like nothing more
than a crease in his pants. I folded him in bubble wrap, boxed him up, and addressed the label. Tomorrow morning, the FedEx
man would stop by and pick him up, and from the looks of the FedEx man’s pants, he’ll never have to worry about his hard-on
not being noticed. His is thick and large and makes such a nice bulge that I want to reach out and pet it—it seems rude to
not acknowledge it.

To distract myself from such thoughts I got out my paints and mixed yellow pearl with golden bronze, trying for that unearthly
tint of the time right before dusk, when the sun colors the horizon with a yellow-spotted aura. I was struggling with my
Woman Running with a Box, No. 3
painting, which had somehow evolved into a series. Each piece appeared identical to the previous one until I leaned closer;
then differences became apparent. The box was smaller and shabbier, and the woman was slowly unraveling. Her hair fell out
of its knot, her dress sagged. She was still running but she looked out of breath; her purse had opened, and a trail of belongings
spread out behind her: hairpins and tissues, car keys and cell phone, an address book and an opened compact, the broken mirror
reflecting the light so that a shadow glared off her lower back.

I had no idea what this meant. Who was this woman and why was she running? More importantly, why was she unraveling? And what
was in the box? I began evening out the woman’s ear when someone banged on the door. Killer rushed forward, her toenails skidding
on the linoleum.