Dolls Behaving Badly (11 page)

“Some guy’s on the phone.” Jay-Jay’s head appeared in the doorway. “He’s leaving this super-long message, and Mom, he used
the word
mulligrubs
, isn’t that cool?”

“Delete it.” I opened a new magazine.

“But, Mom, he said that he hoped you didn’t have the mulligrubs after today’s misunderstanding. How can you delete something
like that?”

“Easily.” I threw down the magazine and picked up another. “Mulligrub guys are a dime a dozen.”

I knew that they weren’t, though, and apparently Jay-Jay did also, because he didn’t delete the message. I listened to it
after everyone was asleep, leaning over the answering machine with a towel over my head to muffle the sound of Francisco’s
voice apologizing for not being able to reach me. He had to catch a last-minute flight to Barrow and cell reception was down.
He was stuck inside a motel with polka-dot curtains. “Please don’t be besieged with the mulligrubs,” he said, and then he
laughed. I started to laugh and then pressed my hand tight against my mouth as if to hold it all in, because I suddenly realized
that I was being given an out. Fate had handed me the perfect excuse to stop whatever might happen with Francisco before it
had even begun. It was almost too perfect. I closed my eyes, poised my finger over the Delete button.
Just one tiny press,
I said to myself. My hand wavered in the air. I stood there for a long time, unsure of what to do.

Sunday, Dec. 11

Sandee and I walked along the frozen beach out by Point Woronzof, Jay-Jay’s BB gun swinging against my chest. The wind blew
damp and cold, and large blocks of ice littered the beach. We moved slowly, due to snow pockets that plunged us down past
our knees.

“Did we have to come this far?” Sandee stumbled and caught herself on a jagged iceberg shaped like a huge breast. “Couldn’t
we have shot cans in the yard?”

“It’s illegal to shoot in the city.”

“It’s a BB gun, Carla. We’re not using real bullets.”

“I didn’t want anyone to see us,” I admitted. “It felt, I don’t know. Private.”

Sandee nodded and kicked snow off a log, clearing it off so that we’d have a place to sit. “Should we shoot into the water
or the bluffs?” We were on a narrow strip of beach that curved around the Earthquake Park, the inlet on one side and bluffs
rising above our heads on the other. No one else was around; it was silent except for the wind and the water bobbing against
the ice. I took the cans out of my backpack and arranged them facing the water. Sandee and I had decorated them earlier, hers
covered with photographs of Randall and mine with blond-haired models that reminded me of Francisco. We stacked the cans three
high and then moved back toward the bluffs. “You first,” Sandee said.

I pumped the gun, which was modeled to look like a rifle though it was much lighter, held it up to my shoulder, took aim with
one squinty eye, and pulled the trigger. The shot cracked and two cans flew through the air.

“Wow, I didn’t think you’d actually hit anything,” Sandee said.

“Thanks.”

“No, I meant it as a compliment.” She raised the gun, shimmied her hips, shot and missed. “Fuck,” she whispered, and tried
again and again. “Help me out here, okay? I refuse to embarrass myself in front of Randall’s photos, the bastard.”

I showed her how to position the gun, how to sight her target, how to hold her breath the moment she pulled the trigger. “Don’t
aim directly at what you want to hit.” I tried to remember what Barry had told me when he first took me hunting years ago,
back when he still harbored illusions of turning me into a rugged Alaska outdoorswoman. “Aim very, very slightly to your dominant
side. See, watch me. See how I lean into my right a few seconds before I shoot? So I aim a little past my target to the left,
to compensate.” I couldn’t remember if this was what he had actually said or if I was making it up, but it didn’t matter.

Sandee hunched over the BB gun, pulled the trigger, and missed again. “Fucking bitch,” she yelled. “I won’t let you do this
to me, Randall.” She moved closer to the targets, missed again, moved closer and finally hit the edge of a can with Randall’s
picture. It slowly toppled over. “Wow!” she smiled over at me. “That’s super intense, isn’t it? It’s almost sexual.” She pumped
the rifle, raised it, and blew two cans away. “Did you see that!” She danced around the snow in her heavy winter clothes,
looking carefree and ridiculous.

After we obliterated the cans, we gathered the pieces in a plastic shopping bag and headed up the bluff path to the car. “I
feel like I’m on a high.” Sandee shoved the can remnants inside a bear-proof garbage can with a complicated lid. “Like I’m
invincible. No wonder men are so arrogant. I would be too if I grew up shooting.”

“Well, there’s probably more to it than that.” I started the car and headed toward the grocery store. “I think it has to do
with testosterone levels.”

“Probably,” she said. “I’m starving, what about you? I feel like a banana split. I haven’t had one in years.”

“Yeah, me too.” My teeth were ready to rip into raw meat, into a live animal, though we ended up buying twenty dollars of
sugary carbohydrates. We made banana splits for everyone, and after we finished I lured Sandee over to the answering machine
to help analyze Francisco’s message.

“What do you think he meant?” I sat on the floor, the carton of Safeway chocolate ice cream between my legs. “You think he’s
telling the truth? You think he’s worth seeing again?” I sprayed whipped cream on my fingers and ate it.

“You can’t believe him.” Sandee spooned ice cream from her bowl. Her lips glistened with chocolate sauce. “Maybe everything
he said was true, and probably it wasn’t, but let’s just say it was. It doesn’t matter, you know why?”

I swallowed and waited.

“Because he didn’t call you first. How many messages did you leave, three? Four? It was his duty to call and leave a message
first, since he was the one in the wrong. And yes, I realize that he was in a hurry, but a phone call takes less than a minute.
But that’s not the point, either.”

“So what
is
the point?” I was getting cranky from too much sugar.

“He didn’t take time for you. It sounds like a small thing, but it’s not. If I had been smarter, I would have noticed the
same thing about Randall and saved myself a lot of anguish.” She squirted more whipped cream over her sundae. “Maybe I should
have shot him. Has anyone mentioned that? Tell me the truth, okay? Do people think I killed my very own husband and buried
his body out in Vegas? Is that what they said when he didn’t come back?”

“No one thinks that,” I reassured her, though of course people had wondered exactly that. “They just thought you were, you
know, a woman who couldn’t keep a man.”

“I’ve been called worse things.” She dipped her fingers in the ice cream and scooped out a handful. “But it would have felt
good to shoot him.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “It probably would have.”

Monday, Dec. 12

“I’M STAYING HERE.”

“Wh-what?” I opened my eyes early this morning to Laurel standing above me eating crackers, the crumbs falling across my arms.
“How’d you get in?”

“You gave me a key, remember?” The side of the bed shifted as she sat down. “You shouldn’t keep the house so cold. It’s bad
for the digestion.” She stuffed another cracker into her mouth. She slid into bed next to me, her feet cold when they brushed
my bare leg.

“Junior came back from Portland yesterday, but he won’t notice I’m gone. I made apple crisp for breakfast, with whole wheat
crust. As long as he gets his fiber he’ll be okay.” She turned over, fluffed her pillow, and was asleep within minutes. It
was odd having someone in bed with me. Barry occasionally fell asleep after our sad little bouts of sex, but I couldn’t remember
the last time I lay awake beside someone in the dark without feeling burdened or heavy. It must have been when Jay-Jay was
smaller and crawled in beside me, his back tucked up against my hip, his lips sucking as if even in his dreams he was aware
of me as mother, supplier of milk.

“Carly?” Laurel was suddenly awake, or maybe she had never been asleep. “We’re out of crackers, but don’t get the Keebler
brand, promise? I keep imagining my baby morphing into one of those elfy creatures from the commercials.” She shivered and
yanked the quilt over toward her side. “What would I do if I had a something like that?”

“I thought you were having an abortion.”

“I
am
, Carly. Just get another kind of cracker, okay?”

Tuesday, Dec. 13

I didn’t expect Laurel to get up for breakfast but there she was, sitting at the table in front of a pile of unpaid bills
when I came in from walking Killer.

“What took you so long?” she said crossly. “I’m starving.”

I fixed scrambled eggs and toast while Jay-Jay complained about the powerlessness of childhood.

“It’s not so great,” he said. “You don’t get to choose what to eat or when to go to bed.”

“If someone had told me when to go to bed I wouldn’t be in this trouble,” Laurel muttered. Jay-Jay ignored her.

“It’s a monarchy,” he said in that smug tone he’s been using a little too often lately. “Kids are serfs and the parents are
feudal landowners. That would make Killer, let me see, a…”

“Where did you learn about monarchies?” I interrupted.

“Mr. Short. He says true monarchies seldom exist. Most are imitation, like processed cheese slices.”

He took a gulp of orange juice and burped. Laurel didn’t say a word. He burped again, louder this time, and she sat quietly
and played with her eggs.

“What’s
her
problem?” he asked.

“I’m going back to bed.” Laurel said. “I feel a little woozy.” She rushed across the room and threw up in the sink. Jay-Jay
was horrified.

“Mom,” he whispered. “Do something, okay?”

I followed Laurel to my bedroom and helped her off with her blouse. Her bra was yellow with tiny orange flowers printed across
each breast. This made me incredibly sad.

“Tuck me in?” she said in a small voice.

I smoothed the comforter and tucked it around her shoulders.

“Now say ‘Good night, sleep tight.’”

“It’s morning,” I stalled.

“I
know
. It’s just something to say.”

“Goodnightsleeptight,” I said quickly, hoping to get to the door before she started crying.

“Carly.” She clutched my wrist. “Will it hurt?”

I didn’t know how to answer. My abortion hurt for a few hours but I knew she wasn’t talking about physical pain. Emotionally,
it hurt for a long, long time. Pain still flares up unexpectedly.

“They don’t use machines any longer,” I stalled. “They have a shot now, it’s more like a miscarriage, you don’t even have
to—”

“Mom! I’m going to be late,” Jay-Jay yelled.

“Call in to work for me, okay?” Laurel burrowed deeper beneath the covers. “I feel so heavy. My lips are too tired to talk.”

“Laurel is staying with us for a while,” I told Jay-Jay as I drove him to school; we had missed the bus again. “She isn’t
feeling well.”

He played with the carabiner clips hanging from his backpack. “We might have to keep it quieter too, especially Thursday.
She has to go in the hospital and well, it’s nothing to worry about really, just day surgery, not even day, more like an hour
or two.” I laughed nervously. “I’ll take the afternoon off, stay with her, be back by the time you get home from—”

“Did you remember lunch money?” Jay-Jay interrupted. “You forgot yesterday and I had to eat Josephine’s sandwich and, Mom,
it was organic. I almost puked.”

“Oh shit.” I had forgotten. “Listen, I’ll swing by the cash machine. It’ll only take a minute.”

“You can leave it at the office.”

“No, honey, I’ll bring it to your classroom to make sure you—”

“Mom!” Jay-Jay hissed. “You have on
shorts
.”

“So?” I looked down at my legs, pale and chapped and partially covered by my long winter coat.

“Forget it.” He reached for the door handle. “I’d rather starve.”

“Fine!” I snapped.

The door slammed and Jay-Jay ran up the school steps, his ridiculous green knapsack bumping against his shoulders so that
he resembled an oversized praying mantis. I wished I could follow him. I didn’t want to return home and hear Laurel snoring
from my bedroom. I felt guilty about her pregnancy and slightly ashamed. If I had paid more attention, listened more carefully,
not necessarily to what she said but what she hadn’t, I might have picked up on her state of mind, realized she needed help,
an ear to listen, a shoulder to lean on. But I had been too involved with my own life, my own problems. Now I wanted to lay
my hand on her shoulder and say, “Bless me, sister, for I have sinned,” the way we used to say to the priest before confession,
before we bowed our heads and waited for penance, all those tedious Hail Marys and Our Fathers, which we cheated by praying
only half of. After church, Gramma took us to eat at the Swedish smorgasbord out by the highway. She didn’t particularly like
the Swedes, since she considered them sissies for not involving themselves more in the war, but she did appreciate their attitude
toward food. She was sure that all-you-can-eat buffets originated in Sweden. I don’t know how she came up with this, but she
believed it to the point that she taped a map of Sweden to her refrigerator. It made her happy, she said, to think of all
those people eating as much as they wanted, beverage included, for one small price.

“Hello, Carla? It’s me, Francisco. I’m still up in Barrow but I’ll…” He paused and cleared his throat. “I’ll be home by this
weekend. I guess you’re, uh, still mad about the restaurant.” He cleared his throat again. “I should have called. I just,
well, I just…this is all so damned hard, isn’t it? I just think that maybe we should, I don’t know, maybe just… Damn it, I’ll
call when I get back.” He cleared his throat but didn’t hang up. He stayed on the line breathing until the machine finally
clicked him off.

Wednesday, Dec. 14

It’s three a.m. and everyone is finally asleep. It’s been a long night, all of us frayed and stressed except Jay-Jay. Laurel
wanted Spam for supper, an unusual request since she rarely eats meat, though Spam probably couldn’t be classified as real
meat. She demanded I fry her up some as soon as I got home from work. I mixed it with potatoes, added onions and peppers,
Gramma’s old hash recipe, and as I fried up that stinky meat product, Jay-Jay quizzed us on Spam facts.

“Guess what state eats the most Spam? Oklahoma, Washington, Alaska, or Hawaii?”

“Alaska.” I was sure I was right. Where else could you find enough people willing to eat what was basically dog food?

“Nope. Hawaii. Okay, next question: if you took all the Spam ever eaten, how many times would it circle the globe?”

“Oh-oh-oh, I know,” Stephanie yelled from the living room; it seemed she was staying with us again. “It’s totally eight.”

“Nope, ten! Okay, last one. Think hard, you guys, you’re batting zero. Name one state where Spam is made. There are two, but
you only gotta answer one.”

“Texas?” I asked.

“No.”

“Virginia,” Stephanie said.

“Nope.”

“Wait,” Laurel yelled. “It’s Ohio, isn’t it? Cleveland?”

“Think harder, okay? It starts with an
N
.”

“North Carolina,” Stephanie called out happily.

“N. E. B.”

“Nebraska,” Laurel shouted. “What’s the other one?”

“Minnesota.”

“No way. You sure?”

“Yep.” Jay-Jay was already bored with this game.

After our crappy supper, Stephanie left to meet Hammie and I hunkered down at the kitchen table to catch up on my bills, which
for once were only overdue and not delinquent; I took this as a sign of progress. I was deliberating on whether to save the
Gap credit card bill for next month or send in a bad check when Laurel called out from the living room.

“Did you remember my blouse?”

“Can’t you wear one of mine?” I signed my name to the Gap check and tidily licked the envelope.

“I can’t believe you didn’t remember. My lucky blouse? The one I’ve kept all these years? I wore it when I took my SATs, and
the night Junior proposed.”

“So?” I was on a bill-paying roll. My endorphins were flowing, as if I had been jogging. I was almost high.

“You promised to get it for me, remember?”

I pounded stamps over the bills and spread them out in front of me: Visa, Paid! MasterCard, Paid! Electric, Paid! Gas, Paid!
Gap, kinda/sorta Paid! I wiped my sweating hands over the dish towel. “What am I supposed to say to Junior?”

“You don’t have to say anything. Pick up the blouse and get out.”

I couldn’t do that, though. My loyalties lay with Laurel, but Junior has been in the family for over a decade. Last year he
bought Jay-Jay an acre of land on the moon for a birthday present, something Jay-Jay still talks about. I grabbed a handful
of pretzels, called for Killer, and headed out to the car. Gramma always said that chewing got her brain working and I was
hoping for the same as I drove south to the Hillside section of town, the roads becoming slipperier and less crowded the farther
I got from town. I parked in the driveway and shut off the engine. Without the intrusion of streetlights, the sky was clear,
the stars spreading out, the moon a round ball that reminded me of a pregnant woman’s belly. Junior answered on the first
knock. He looked terrible. His pants were wrinkled and there was a stain on his shirt.

“So,” he said as he closed the door behind me. The smell of take-out pizza filled the air. “How’s Laurel?”

I kicked off my boots.

“Look, I’m not stupid, I know she’s there. I see her car in the driveway. I drive by every night before bed, just to make
sure she’s still there.”

“Oh.” I didn’t know what to say. I hoped he wouldn’t start crying.

“You want some pizza? It has anchovies but you could pick them off.”

“No thanks, I can’t—”

“I know she was seeing another man. I’m not dumb. I almost stayed in Portland last month. Then I stopped at a light downtown
and a family walked by with two little girls. You could tell they didn’t have much money but they held hands and laughed;
they looked so happy. That’s when I understood what’s been missing between us: a child.”

“Wh-wh-what?”

Junior kept right on talking. “She’s probably told you I can’t have kids. I’m not proud of the fact. But we can adopt, and
if she wants to do the whole pregnancy experience I’m willing to go the artificial insemination route. We can pick an educated
donor, someone with strong genes.”

I could feel laughter in my throat, that hysterical, inappropriate laughter that descends during funerals or long church services.
I coughed instead, and Junior looked at me dully.

“She’s a difficult woman, I’ll admit, but I’ve never met anyone like her.” He slumped back against the couch cushions.

“Excuse me, I need to get something.” I rushed up the stairs. The bedroom was neat; it didn’t look as if Junior had been sleeping
there. Downstairs I could hear the TV, the volume turned up too loud. I opened the closet door, walked to the back, and pulled
down the last black blouse on the rack. I escaped a few minutes later, Junior following me to the door and urging me to stay
and watch
Law & Order
reruns with him. His voice was pleading, his ankles pale and bony above his slippers, which were on the wrong feet.

After everyone went to bed, Laurel clutching the blouse like a blankie, I struggled with a double-penis military doll order
but couldn’t decide if it should have four testicles or two. Would an extra penis automatically mean extra balls? And if so,
one more or two? I tried attaching extra balls but they looked cumbersome and crowded, swinging between poor Ken’s legs like
tiny balloons. I finally gave up and ate. I devoured two peanut butter sandwiches and half a bag of stale marshmallows, my
teeth stinging from the sugar. I didn’t stop there. I ate a can of cold cream of mushroom soup and the leftover spaghetti
from Sunday night that may or may not have been going bad. Hunched over the table shoveling food into my mouth, I suddenly
imagined the woman running through my paintings doing the same, both of us pigging out together. Even though this woman didn’t
exist, I suddenly missed her company. I imagined how it would feel for her to sit next to me, her presence soft and comforting,
her breath reeking of garlic like Gramma’s. Without thinking about it, I reached out, grabbed the phone, and dialed Francisco’s
cell. It rang six times before he finally answered.

“Hello?” His voice was sleepy and vague. “That you?”

I didn’t say anything. I clutched the phone to my ear and breathed. He breathed back, steady and slow.

“Francisco?” I whispered; it was the first time I had ever said his name to him. “My sister?” My voice cracked. He didn’t
say anything. He kept right on breathing. “My sister’s having an abortion tomorrow,” I whispered. And then I hung up. Softly.