Dolls Behaving Badly (5 page)

“Sure you will,” I said in my most comforting voice, “I’m positive you will.”

It wasn’t until later that I realized it was myself I was really talking to.

When I got back home, I grabbed Killer’s leash and took her for a quick walk down by the inlet. It was just beginning to get
dark, the sky an orangeish tint, the wind cold and sharp. I love late fall, love how thick and large the air feels, love the
trees with their bare branches, love the way the frozen ground feels so much more solid beneath my feet. As soon as we reached
the beach, I snapped Killer off the leash and let her run over the sand. During low tide, the distant water is silver blue,
the mud flat gleaming and damp. Much of the coast around Anchorage is surrounded by a strange, thick clay that smells of salt
and old water and sucks at your feet and sometimes, though rarely, acts like quicksand.

There’s a story locals love to scare newcomers with about a man who got stuck in the mudflat out by Cook Inlet and, when rescuers
tried to rescue him by helicopter, was pulled in half. I don’t know if that story is true, but I do know that a handful of
people have died in the mudflats and that there have been times when it’s sucked me down to my knees and held me fast for
a few seconds before letting me up with a loud, gurgling burp.

I always tell Jay-Jay to stay off the mudflats; I tell him it’s like quicksand; I tell him if I ever catch him with even one
toe in the mud, he’ll be grounded until he leaves for college. But who knows what goes through his head, what small tidbits
of advice and remarks and petty angers will stay with him, what he’ll remember and what he’ll discard. Having a child is the
bravest thing I’ve ever done, braver than staring down a bear or encountering a horny moose during rutting season or trying
to keep my head during an earthquake. No matter how much I love Jay-Jay, there’s no guarantee that it’s enough, that I’ll
be able to keep him safe. There are so many risks! So many things that could go wrong! I could look away for a minute and
in that instant, he could be gone.

Of course, love is always like that. Or at least any kind of love worth having.

Tuesday, Oct. 25

“He’s here.” Sandee tapped me on the shoulder right as the lunch shift was heating up. Her face was flushed, her bangs frizzed
across her forehead. “The Swedish god. He requested your station.”

“God?” I had just seated a table of argumentative lawyers and couldn’t remember if the bald guy with the pink tie had ordered
Diet Coke or regular.

“The gorgeous guy with the big feet, you know, always wears high-topped sneakers? Shit, Carly, you have a pimple on your chin.”
She reached out and rubbed at my skin, as if to erase it. The “god” looked vaguely familiar but I couldn’t place him.

“Carla,” he said heartily as I approached his table. “I was hoping you’d be here.”

“Can I start you off with something to drink?”

“Water’s fine. Can’t drink on the job. Too much dirt to sift through.”

“Construction?” I asked hurriedly. From the corner of my eye the lawyer with the big teeth was frantically waving me down.

“Anthropology.” The god stuck out his hand. “I’m Francisco.”

“Fr-Francisco?” Sandee was right, he did look like a god. His hair was lighter than mine, but he was tall enough that when
he stood up to shake my hand I had to throw my head back to get a good look at his eyebrows, which weren’t all run together
like some men’s. “But aren’t you Swedish?”

“Norwegian,” he laughed, and his teeth were so white. “I get that all the time. It’s an old family name, from the 1800s. My
great-grandfather chased a woman down to Mexico…” He stopped for a moment and pulled a pair of smudged glasses out of his
pocket. “Sure you want to hear this?”

I nodded and ignored the lawyers, who were whistling and stomping their feet. I stared at the god’s hands, which were weathered
and capable.

“…and lived there the rest of his life, returning long enough to knock up my great-grandmother with my grandfather and burden
him with a ridiculous Mexican name and…What’s wrong? Did I say something wrong?”

“Ask me my name, okay?”

“It’s Carla, right?”

“My whole name.”

“What’s your whole name?”

“Carlita.”

“No shit.” He whistled. “Wow, listen, I’ll bet we’re the only non-Spanish people with Spanish names in all of Alaska.”

“Yeah.” I looked at him with interest now that we had something in common. “Yeah, we probably are.”

He ordered a bean burrito with green salsa and then excused himself to take a call on his cell phone. I took care of the lawyers,
who had decided to order a round of margaritas (“But don’t tell the boss, okay, hon?” the fat one said, his hand creeping
up my thigh), and by the time I returned to Francisco’s table, he had been joined by two more men. He nodded but didn’t say
anything the rest of his meal. He didn’t even leave a noticeable tip, so I was surprised when the hostess handed me a folded
piece of paper.

“From that good-lookin’ blond guy,” she said, peering over my shoulder as I opened it.
Carlita, my pseudo Spanish pal, give me a call sometime. We’ll eat hot food and drink Mexican wine. Francisco 555-4289.

“Nice handwriting,” she said. “You gonna call him?”

“No.” I crumbled the note and stuck it in my apron pocket.

“Of course you’re going to call him,” Sandee said during our last cig dig of the day. I was covered with salsa and reeked
of tequila—the lawyers had gotten boisterous. “He’s smart, funny. For Christ’s sake, he’s a Swiss god.”

“Norwegian,” I corrected.

“Did you see his feet? They’re enormous. That means he has a big dick.”

“As if I care.”

“You do. Or at least you should.” Sandee fake-smoked in tense silence. Her own love life was a mess, but she felt it was her
duty as best friend to boss me toward something better. “You’re parked on a cul-de-sac when you’ve got a whole highway in
front of you,” she finally said.

“Francisco’s a highway?”

“You know what I mean.” She stabbed her unsmoked cigarette out on the side wall of the lounge. “He’s a possibility. How can
you turn away from that?”

I couldn’t explain the fear that clutched my stomach when I thought of doing it all again: the anxious first date, followed
by the worry that there wouldn’t be a second date, followed by the anticipation and worry of the first night of lovemaking,
and then the rushed two or three months after that, when all I would think about would be him.

Then the inevitable moment I looked over at him and noticed that his ears were crooked or that he used coasters (coasters!)
when he set a glass on the coffee table and something inside of me would come crashing down and I would realize with a start,
with a deep sense of betrayal, that he wasn’t quite perfect after all. Then, like dominos falling over, his faults and weaknesses,
his bad habits and insecurities, would slam down over my head. Worse still would be the realization that he would be looking
at me in the same way, seeing all of my own worst traits and failings.

And then would come the talks, the long, agonizing nights spent talking instead of making love, when we would pour out our
doubts and decide if we should call it quits or bravely navigate past this rough patch. If we made it through all of that,
we would settle down to a life of steady comfort, interlaced with occasional bouts of mad passion, along with a couple of
hefty fights where we would throw things and blame the other for all of our faults.

I didn’t have the energy to do it all again. I wanted to bypass the beginning and settle down in the middle. I wanted to know
the ending to all of a man’s stories and sit beside him eating sandwiches and know that he’ll always say, “Are you sure this
is mayonnaise and not Miracle Whip?” and be certain that we will always have sex on Saturdays and Tuesdays. It angered Sandee
when I talked this way because she felt similar. Maybe a lot of women do, once they reach their midthirties and have played
all the games and worn the sexy lingerie and had multiple orgasms and multiple partners and multiple heartbreaks. After a
while an orgasm is an orgasm is an orgasm, and if truth be known, it’s easier to invest in a good vibrator and let your fingers
do the walking. Love is too complicated. It takes too much effort. It’s something we all want, but we want it our way.

Thursday, Oct. 27

JAY-JAY WAS IN A QUIET MOOD
when I picked him up from school this afternoon, his face pale, a smudge of green marker trailing across his cheek.

“Science sucked,” he said. “Mr. Short wouldn’t let us look at a book of medical mysteries ’cause one of the women didn’t have
a shirt on. Duh! We’ve all seen cable. Like we don’t know about boobs.”

I cleared my throat, worried I would have to throw out my Let’s Talk about Sex spiel, but that was all he said. The minute
we walked in the door, Killer Bee charged us from the hallway and Jay-Jay yelled something about corn.

“I don’t think I have any.” I kicked off my shoes and sank down on the couch. “Are peas okay?”

“No, an
ear
of corn. For Halloween.”

I had completely forgotten about Halloween. “You want to be corn? Isn’t that kind of, I don’t know, different?”

“Exactly,” Jay-Jay screamed. “No one will get it. They’ll think I’m a superhero when really I’m a farm product.”

After dinner we loaded ourselves into the car and headed over to the fabric store, where I asked the middle-aged saleswomen
in my most polite waitressing voice where I might find a pattern for a stalk of corn.

“This isn’t the supermarket, dear,” she said.

“An ear of corn,” I repeated. “For Halloween.”

“We don’t do fruits and vegetables.” She peered over her glasses. “It upsets people.”

I decided I would make my own pattern. After all, I was an artist—how hard could it be? I bought yards of bright green fabric
plus swatches of yellow for kernels and curtain cords for the tassels. As soon as we got home, I spread the material over
the not-so-clean carpet, dog hairs sticking across the sides.

“Better sew fast,” Jay-Jay said. “We’re supposed to come in costume tomorrow.”

“Halloween’s days away.” I pinned a long skinny piece with a short fat one.

“Mr. Short wants to spread out our sugar influx. He says candy at school and candy after school will make our brain cells
sag with despair.”

“Mr. Short sounds like a smart man,” I said.

“He flunked out of Harvard,” Jay-Jay said. “He said it’s better to flunk out of a top-notch school than graduate from an inferior
place.”

“Don’t,” I warned, pointing the scissors in his direction. For a moment, he had sounded exactly like Laurel.

“What? All’s I said was Mr. Short says it’s better—”

“Put your arms up,” I ordered, measuring the badly sewn pieces against his back; they fell short by at least three inches.
“Think you could hunch over for the whole day?”

Jay-Jay snorted with disgust and stomped off to take a bath. An hour later, after sewing a malformed corn kernel to my pant
leg, I called Sandee, who was home from work faking a cold.

“Hello?” she said in a nasal tone. Then she coughed twice.

“Cut it out, it’s me.”

“Carla?”

“Jay-Jay wants to be an ear of corn for Halloween and I can’t do it.” My voice was dangerously close to tears. “I forgot about
Halloween and he needs it by tomorrow, did you hear me? Tomorrow!”

“Calm down,” she said. “I’ll head over as soon as I finish the dishes.” Sandee never leaves the house without washing the
dishes. This isn’t because she’s exceptionally neat but because she grew up in a shack with no running water and four to a
bed and pork rinds every Saturday night while her father staggered around blitzed on the home-brewed moonshine that was their
only source of income. Her poverty-drenched past waits at the edge of her University of Michigan education and $350,000 house,
and Sandee is terrified that one day it will pounce. I doubt that this could ever happen. Sandee is a survivor, not because
she’s tough but because she isn’t afraid to be soft.

“I’m here,” she sang out an hour later, her arms stuffed with a jumbo box of Safeway croutons and a half-liter of Diet Coke.
“Caffeine speeds up the metabolism,” she said, kicking off her shoes and clearing a space off on the coffee table. Then she
sat down cross-legged on the floor and arranged the croutons into neat piles.

“Want some?” She motioned to Jay-Jay, who clutched a Harry Potter book to his pajamaed chest. When he refused, she popped
a crouton cheerfully into her mouth. “Seven of these have only twenty-four calories,” she said, pointing to the piles. “And
just an itty-bitty amount of fat.”

I reached for the croutons, which were garlicky sharp and delicious. I finished off one pile and began on another.

“Mom’s trying to sew,” Jay-Jay said, “but she’s making a mess. A real fiasco.”

“Teeth.” I pointed toward the bathroom. “And don’t forget to floss.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Jay-Jay stomped off down the hall.

“It doesn’t look that bad.” Sandee wiped her hands over her jeans and rummaged through the shoddily sewn material. “Here’s
a stalk. A leaf. No, wait, a kernel. But look here, they’re all the same size. You want to stagger them so they look more
real and then…”

I settled back and happily crunched croutons. Sandee was a quilter and sewed fast and neat, her stitches marching like tiny
soldiers across the fabric. I wondered if she’d be up to sewing sexy underwear for my porno dolls. Right now I paid a grandmother
from Texas to do it, but shipping was a problem. Last month a box of black thongs and furry handcuffs had gotten lost in the
mail. I opened my mouth to ask, but guzzled a mouthful of soda instead. I didn’t want to ruin the mood. Having another adult
around made the house feel warm and safe. I wasn’t alone. There was someone to talk to and argue with. Not that I wanted an
argument. Still, I knew if I needed one, Sandee would give it her best shot. She handed me one of the sewn kernels and I began
stuffing it with quilt batting as I hummed the theme from
Happy Days
.

“Carla?” Sandee asked.

“Hmmmm?”

“Nothing,” she said. “It’s just, well…”

Sandee crouched over a billowy green leaf, her mouth scrunched tight.

“I need to tell you something.” Her voice was eerily low. “Something I’ve never told anyone.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Do you have to go to the bathroom first?”

I shook my head no.

“I used to pray for Randall to die,” she said. “I’d say, ‘Please, please get him out of my life.’”

“So?” I munched down on a handful of croutons. “I lit candles at church while Barry and I were married and he
still
didn’t die.”

“No one tells you.” Sandee’s voice rose. “They dress you in a frilly dress and push you toward the aisle and everyone fusses
over your shoes and worries about your hair but no one says, ‘Oh, by the way, in a couple of years you’ll be wishing he’s
dead.’

“Then I started to think that maybe I had it wrong, maybe
I
was the one who was supposed to die. I knew one of us had to go. We couldn’t keep on much longer. When Randall came home
with tickets for Vegas, I thought: maybe the plane will crash. It didn’t, though, and the heat slammed us the minute we got
off the plane. ‘Whoever thought of going to Vegas in the summer?’ I screamed.

“I wore a sleazy little dress and strappy sandals because Randall told me to dress like I had class, and I knew Vegas class
was the same as Florida small-town trash. I fit right in and won three hundred bucks at blackjack. Randall was furious. Blackjack
was his thing. He had taken an online course before we left; I guess he thought he’d make a killing. He ended up losing over
a thousand, and of course that was my fault, too.

“Finally I headed back up to the room without him. The elevator had glass walls, and after everyone got off, there was just
my reflection staring at me from every direction. I had on too much makeup, I looked cheap and eager, and it scared me. I
knew that beneath my healthy skin and good grammar, another woman waited, a back-home bayou woman who ate fried catfish and
didn’t have all her teeth and let her man beat her every Friday because she knew he would fuck her brains out come Saturday.
That’s when I suddenly understood that Randall liked this woman better than me, he needed to know that there was something
dirty and tainted inside of me so he could feel better about himself.

“When I got to the room I took all of his clothes and threw them in the filled-up bathtub. Then I went to bed. He woke me
early the next morning, screaming. I screamed back, and before you know it, it all came out. It was such a relief, Carla,
like throwing up when you’re really sick and how clean you feel afterward. I got it all out: that he was selfish and self-centered
and a coward and woman hater and lazy in bed.

“He yelled I was poor white trash who ate out of garbage cans and my family was so inbred my brother was practically retarded.

“I did the worst thing. I laughed. I couldn’t help it. In college I worried so much about people finding out where I came
from that finally hearing someone put it into words was a relief. Randall’s neck turned red and his fists balled up and for
one glorious moment I thought he would hit me. Instead he slumped down on the bed, took off all his clothes, and added them
to the heap in the bathtub. Then he sat across from me in just his socks. I waited a moment and did the same. I took off all
my clothes and sat across from him naked and silent. The light coming in the window was harsh and too bright. We looked awful,
both of our bellies flabby, our arms and legs sunburned, the rest of us white and splotchy. We looked like the ugliest of
things.

“Then we were making love like we used to, soft and slow. We made love all that day and night, and when I woke, he was gone
and there was a note on his pillow.

“‘Out to get breakfast, bee back soon.’ He spelled
be
with two
e
’s, I noticed that right away. Like
bzzzzzzz
. I thought he was being cute.

“But he never came back. I waited and waited, and finally I called the police. The older officer wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“‘Lady,’ he said. ‘Happens all da time. Da guy gets restless. Wanders off. It’s Vegas. All kinda pleasures out there.’

“After they left, I noticed Randall’s suitcase was gone. I didn’t cry, though. I stayed in that hotel until my credit card
maxed out, but he never even called.”

Sandee wiped the last ear of corn over her face. Her hands shook slightly.

“I still don’t know why he left, and that’s the worst part. Was it something I said? Was there someone else? Not knowing is
hell. You invent all sorts of reasons in your mind.

“But here’s the thing I never told anyone. The second night, when I realized he wasn’t coming back, I ordered steak and shrimp
for two from room service. I sat down on the bed and ate until I threw up. Then I ate more. I forced down every single bite,
even the garnish and cherry tomatoes. Then I thought, ‘Whew, that’s done. I’ll never have to eat
that
again.’

“I was relieved, get it? I didn’t love him anymore. So why the fuck am I so angry, Carla? Why do I want to kill him over and
over again?”

Sandee flounced the costume and held it up: a perfect stalk with two ears of corn tucked coyly around each side, and a hole
for Jay-Jay’s face that tightened with a drawstring. Her eyes were red and puffy; her hands left damp smears over the fabric.

“I make dirty dolls,” I offered.

She stared at me blankly.

“I know it’s not the same as your husband running off,” I said. “But you’re the first person I’ve told.” I rummaged around
the closet until I found Little Bo Peek-At-Me, complete with a sheepherding stick that doubled as a vibrator. Sandee turned
it over and peered inside the crotchless panties.

“Holy shit,” she said. “You did this yourself?”

“Yeah.” I felt strangely proud.

“Wow, well, this is really crazy, Carla.” She held it up, squinted and then turned it over again. “I can’t believe how real
it looks.” She ran her finger over the glued-on labia. “How did you get it to look so real?”

“
Playboy
and
Penthouse
spreads,” I said. “Plus that squishy stuff from kids’ footballs to make it soft.”

“Well, shit, honey.” Sandee reached over and grabbed my hand. Our fingers wrapped around each other and it was nice, holding
another woman’s hand, the palm soft, no calluses or scratches—I could feel the shiny tint of her fingernail polish against
my fingertip.

“We’re two misfits, aren’t we?” Sandee said. “I lost Randall, and you, Carla, well, you’ve kind of lost your mind. But in
a good way,” she said quickly. “I mean that as a compliment.”

“I know,” I said.

Monday, Oct. 31

I’m writing this entry by jack-o’-lantern, Jay-Jay’s pumpkin grinning moronically between crooked teeth. The candle gives
off the scent of spiced apples, while scattered around me packets of Smarties and Now and Laters and thick squares of purple
taffy call out my name. “Eat me,” like in
Alice in Wonderland.

Earlier tonight Jay-Jay left for a mad bout of trick-or-treating with a bunch of kids from school, a neatly dressed PTA mother
knocking at the door and peering curiously in at our dilapidated trailer that reeked of the casserole I had burned for supper.
Two hours later, he staggered back home clutching a bag of treats so heavy he could barely lift it up on the table. His face
was smeared with chocolate, his costume ripped down one side.

“We had a blast,” he shouted. “Bailey threw up right in front of the stop sign on Gerald’s street and Mrs. Jenkins made us
stop until she was finished, get it? Stop at the stop sign?”

I poured him a glass of milk, for protein, and got him settled at the table, where he slid his candy into complex patterns
and then recorded numbers in the small notebook he carries in his back pocket. When I asked what he was doing, he rolled his
eyes.

“I’m
categorizing
,” he said. “Color, shape, and favorbility.” He slid two packets of Life Savers away from a pile of Hershey Kisses. “Did you
know we all lose the same amount of weight when we die? The same amount! Even fat people. Even midgets.”

“That’s nice.” I wondered if perhaps his gifted class was a bit too progressive for my tastes. “Did you learn that in school?”