Dolls Behaving Badly (8 page)

Tuesday, Nov. 22

THIS WEEK’S OPRAH GIANT LESSON
was unbearable. It was about forgiveness.

“You can’t heal until you forgive,” the Oprah Giant wrote, little butterfly icons floating up through her words for emphasis.
“Think of a dirty shirt in the laundry hamper. Wash it all you want, but it won’t be clean until you add a stain remover.”

We were told to spend the week writing out our stains. It wasn’t necessary to actually want to forgive anyone. Merely saying
the words would start us on our healing journey.

I thought of all the people I needed to forgive: Mother for being so overbearing, Father for being so distant, Laurel for
being so perfect, Barry for being so stingy, Gramma for putting too many dreams inside my head, Jay-Jay for being so vulnerable.
Myself for being so flawed. I suddenly felt like crying—I didn’t know where to begin, or what I’d do without the hard knot
of anger I’d been carrying around for years.

I worked on my doll orders instead. There’s something soothing about pounding and drilling, slicing and gluing, and molding
clay into small, perfectly shaped boobs. Maybe this is why primitive women pounded stones into beads and molded river mud
into pots. It wasn’t for the functional use or beauty of the object as much as for the therapeutic value of calming the spirit,
of reaching down and finding a beautiful place and communicating it to others.

Gramma understood this. It’s why she cooked, why she fussed over recipes and used only certain measuring spoons and never
skimped on margarine instead of butter. She never gave a hoot about whether people approved of her or not, but she needed
love. She needed to feel that she was part of the community, part of a family. She needed someone to love. Someone to cook
for. After Grandpa died, she had lovers, men she called her “gotta go guys,” who came over in the evening and left early the
next morning. She never hid these men from us, though she didn’t share much about them, either. They were just there, musky-smelling
older men who left reading glasses and toothbrushes behind in Gramma’s dim apartment.

“Was it just sex,” I wanted to ask her now, “or did you open up to them, did you figure you had nothing more to lose, that
heartbreak was just heartbreak and a few months of misery beat year after year of being alone?”

I’ll never know because Gramma died during the second year of my marriage, keeling over in the Kroger grocery store as she
reached for a flank steak. Someone at the funeral told us her last words were “Cream instead of milk for thicker—” For the
longest time I thought it was a message encoded for me, advice or directions on what to do with my life. I counted the letters,
tried different combinations, but it was no use. I realized Gramma simply said what had been on her mind. She was thinking
about cooking up a steak with mashed potatoes, so that was exactly what came out of her mouth. There was no magic, no hidden
message; probably she hadn’t been thinking of me at all.

Wednesday, Nov. 23

“Vanna looks kind of peaked, like she hasn’t had sex for years.” Sandee was sprawled over the couch watching
Wheel of Fortune
reruns, and she was in that stage of drunkenness right before tears, when the giddiness winds down and the suffering breaks
through. In a minute she would clutch my hand and cry about Randall.

I jumped up to show her my latest doll order. The doll’s vagina opened with a trapdoor, and inside was a tiny Webster’s dictionary.

“You’ve got to see this,” I began, but I wasn’t fast enough. Her arm shot out and her hand grabbed mine.

“Oh, Carla, life is just too sad, isn’t it?” Then she cried. I didn’t say anything—it’s one of the luxuries of friendship,
being able to cry without explanation. I rubbed my thumb over her knuckles and offered her a wad of paper towels. Finally
she wiped her eyes.

“I can’t do this any longer,” she whispered. “Hand me my purse, okay?”

I reached over and pulled it out from behind the couch. She shuffled around inside and threw a postcard at me. “He’s in New
Mexico now. Supposedly. The bastard.”

The postcard showed horses grazing over a grassy plain, mountains in the background. “Welcome to Ruidoso, New Mexico,” was
printed across the bottom.

“This has got to stop.” Her face was pale, her eyes beady and awful.

“Don’t read them,” I suggested. “Throw them away. Have someone else get your mail.”

“I would, but…” I allowed her her excuses—how could I not, when I had so many of my own? I hadn’t been putting much effort
into my painting lately. I told myself I was too tired or too stressed, too hungry or too emotionally detached. Really, I
was too afraid. It takes guts to paint, and lately I haven’t been feeling very brave. My porno dolls are safer. It’s all surface;
I don’t have to dig in and reveal parts of myself.

“…didn’t know if I should forgive him for…,” Sandee was saying.

“Forgive?” I interrupted, thinking of last week’s diary lesson. “Listen, did you ever try writing?”

“I don’t have his address.”

“Not to Randall. To yourself.”

Sandee stared at me quizzically.

“Like a diary,” I said. “Or hey, maybe a letter.” I leaned forward. “What would you write to Randall in a letter? What would
you say?”

Sandee sat silent for a moment.

“You wouldn’t have to send it. We could, I don’t know, have a ceremony. Burn it, or drive out to Beluga Point and throw it
in the inlet.”

“Can I do it in the bathroom?”

“I-I guess so.”

“All that enamel will make me feel safe.”

While Sandee shuffled off to the bathroom with a notebook and pen, I sketched a quick watercolor draft for my next
Woman Running with a Box
painting, dabbing with a tissue to give it a muted, faraway feel. The woman’s hands were clenched in a running pose, her
knees bent, her bare ankles surprisingly thin and delicate. How would they ever hold her up? Her high-heeled shoes had been
replaced with a pair of sturdy Nikes, and on the ground behind her was a towel with the Holiday Inn logo and a box of Sleepytime
Herbal Tea. I was shading out the bottom of her ear when Sandee returned.

“Here.” She handed me two notebook pages of writing. “I printed so you’d be able to read it better.”

“You sure?” I put down my brush and wiped my hands over my pants, black and purple paint smearing across my thighs. “Isn’t
it kind of personal?”

“Not any longer.” She sat at the kitchen table and stared at my painting. “This is wildly bizarre,” she said. “It’s every
woman, isn’t it? Every woman running, a metaphor of sorts.”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I think it has something to do with my grandmother.”

The minute I said that, I knew it was true. The woman looked nothing like my grandmother, yet I knew she was in the painting;
I could feel her there, breathing around the edges.

“Can I sleep on the couch?” Sandee asked. “I don’t feel like driving all the way home tonight.”

“Blanket’s in the closet.”

“Wait until I fall asleep to read the letter.” She lay down on the couch and pulled the blanket over her shoulders. “And listen,
can you read it in the bathtub?”

I shook my head yes.

“Promise?”

“Sure.”

“It’s just one of those letters that needs to be read in the bathtub.”

After she fell asleep I sat cross-legged in the dry bathtub and read the letter. I cried at the end. I couldn’t help it. It
made me feel so soft inside, not just for Sandee but for myself, too.

Thursday, Nov. 24

Laurel invited Jay-Jay and me over for Thanksgiving. Junior was out of town on a business meeting and she was “cooking light.”
I envisioned turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie. Instead, she served two kinds of potatoes and two kinds of beans. That, along
with a basket of Parker House rolls, was our Thanksgiving feast. Laurel sat at the head of the table. Her hair was dirty,
and she wore a shapeless yellow dress that made her look like an oversized lemon.

“Where’s the rest?” Jay-Jay strained his neck hopefully toward the kitchen.

“The rest?” Laurel asked absently.

“The turkey.” Jay-Jay was getting impatient. “You know, with the gravy and the fancy stuffing and the salad with the nuts.”

Laurel took a bite of mashed potatoes and stared at her reflection in the fork handle.

“I’ve never liked nuts, remember, Carla? Remember how I never liked nuts and Mother always made me eat them?”

I remembered no such thing, but I nodded and chewed a particularly obstinate strand of green beans. The other beans were lima,
and the potato scalloped, the top crust unbroken. None of us liked scalloped potatoes, not even Laurel, which said a lot for
her mood. Halfway through the mashed potatoes, she started bitching about the weather. Wasn’t the forecast a load of crap?
It was supposed to be sunny. I glanced toward the window. We were in the midst of a snowstorm, the roads clogged with stranded
SUVs, the sky the shade of a dirty aquarium.

“But don’t worry, Hank says the sun will be out tomorrow.” Laurel’s voice was hard. “He says that the skiing conditions are
great, a soft, powdery snow that makes for fast speeds.”

“I didn’t know you skied.” I glared across my plate of beans.

“I don’t. Hank was supposed to teach me.” She jabbed a slice of scalloped potato with her fork. “‘Supposed to’ are the operative
words.”

“Where’s Uncle Junior?” Jay-Jay interrupted. “Isn’t he supposed to be here?”

Laurel stopped in midsentence, the potato frozen in front of her mouth. “He had to go down to Seattle for work,” she said.
“But I’ll save a plate of leftovers.”

“Does
he
know about this Hank guy?” Jay-Jay’s voice was stern. “Does
he
care about all this weather talk?” Jay-Jay stared challengingly at Laurel. Even though Junior has the personality of a gerbil,
he and Jay-Jay have always been close. They play computer games and are designing a robot out in the garage.

“Why…,” she began, her face flushing. “Why, of course your uncle Junior knows Hank.”

“This meal sucks!” Jay-Jay bolted from the table. “It’s supposed to be Thanksgiving! Turkey and cranberry sauce,
not
Hank and beans.”

Jay-Jay ran upstairs and slammed the bathroom door. Laurel looked at me helplessly.

I shrugged. “He likes Junior. You can’t blame him. They do a lot of stuff together.”

She pushed back her plate, threw her head on the nicely ironed tablecloth, and sobbed.

“What am I going to do, Carly? My life is a mess.” She sniffed and wiped her nose on the edge of the tablecloth. “I think
Junior knows. He hasn’t said anything but he looks at me all squinty-eyed, like he’s trying to see inside my head.”

I murmured and patted her shoulder.

“He left last night without saying good-bye. He just walked out the front door. He’s supposed to be home Saturday, but what
if he doesn’t come back, Carly? He hasn’t even called. It’s like he’s purposely ignoring me.”

I didn’t mention that Laurel had been ignoring Junior for months. I kept up my pats and murmurs while upstairs, Jay-Jay flushed
the toilet over and over again. Finally, Laurel rubbed her eyes, sat up, and let out a groan.

“I’m going to be sick again.” She rushed for the downstairs bathroom. When she came out her hair was damp, her mouth naked
and vulnerable without lipstick. “The flu,” she said shakily, as she sank down on the couch. “Can you hand me the afghan?”
I covered her up and cleaned off the dining room table. By the time I finished putting away the leftovers, Laurel was asleep.
I moved the coffee table closer to the couch, added a glass of water and a handful of napkins, and called for Jay-Jay. He
clomped down the stairs with his hair slicked back and a wad of toilet paper wedged in his sock.