Dolls Behaving Badly (30 page)

The idea for
Dolls Behaving Badly
came to me in the bathroom. In the bathtub, to be exact. I was a single mother working double shifts at an Anchorage restaurant,
and each night after I put my son to bed I filled the bathtub with hot water, lay back, and read novels. Sometimes I stayed
there for hours.

One night—it was winter, I remember, and storming—I suddenly heard a voice, a woman’s voice, heavy with a Polish accent. “
Ach
, my feet hurt.” And did I imagine this or did a Polish grandmother close the toilet seat, sit down, take off her shoes, and
massage her gnarled and veined feet?

Well, I was tired at the time, and probably slightly dehydrated. I closed my eyes and when I opened them, she was gone.

But she came back. She followed me up mountains, as I swam laps at the YMCA pool, and while I drove my son to school. She
pushed her way into my life, and no amount of pushing could convince her to leave. Soon I looked forward to her visits, and
I began jotting down the things she said.

Before long other voices appeared: Carla’s sardonic tone, Sandee’s wisdom, Laurel’s slight whining. I wrote everything down;
I wrote on envelopes and the backs of grocery bags, and slowly it came to me, not the book so much as the idea for the book.
I saw it so acutely it was as if remembering images from a movie: a woman with scattered hair living in a trailer and raising
a child by herself. I saw the mess and disorder, the stacks of unpaid bills, the overflowing laundry basket, and behind it
all, strands of love and obligation so thick they threatened to strangle her.

It took me seven years to finish
Dolls Behaving Badly
. During that time I quit waitressing and began working as a journalist. I graduated from my MFA program. My son entered middle
and then high school. I fell in love and later, out of love. I got a dog and two cats, and then a couple fish. My life, like
Carla’s, was messy and hectic and filled with unexpected love and turmoil.

Sometimes even now I think: I wrote a book. I really and truly wrote a book!

Other times I think: What if I hadn’t taken a bath that night? What if I had showered instead?

But mostly, I find myself cocking my head as if listening for their voices: Gramma and Carla, Stephanie and Jay-Jay, Laurel
and Sandee. They’re gone now; I had to let them go. I hope that they’re happy, wherever they are now, and that they found
what they were looking for, these imaginary characters that became more real than the actual living, breathing people in my
life.

Maybe one day it will happen again. I’ll walk in the bathroom and Gramma will be sitting on the toilet seat. “
Ach
,” she’ll say, “my feet hurt.” And we’ll eat Polish pastries and talk, and maybe we’ll write another book together, who knows?

I’ve been waiting. I’ve been taking a lot of baths.

CINTHIA RITCHIE
is a former news editor at Alaska Newspapers. She spent eight years as features writer and columnist at the
Anchorage Daily News
and received her MFA from the University of Alaska Anchorage.
Dolls Behaving Badly
is Ritchie’s first novel. She lives in Anchorage with her partner and pets.