Dolls Behaving Badly (21 page)

“Bye, now,” she said. My hands were trembling by the time I got out to the car, and it took me two tries to open the box.
The smell of sugar and fried dough filled my nose, and I breathed deeply. The first bite was so sweet, followed by the hit
of cream against my tongue, that my eyes watered and soon I was crying, sobbing, rocking back and forth as I stuffed another
donut into my mouth, and then another. I knew I wouldn’t get the show, that I would suffer the humiliation of being outshined
by an oversized penis. I was devouring the fourth donut and feeling a bit queasy when the Oprah Giant’s words popped into
my head: “You don’t have to believe in yourself, you just have to tell yourself that you do,” she had said (and in my sugar-drenched
daze I imagined her voice to be firm and slightly sardonic, like Alice, the housekeeper from
The Brady Bunch
).

“Our brains,” the Oprah Giant had explained in this week’s blog, “can’t tell the difference between a truth and a lie. It
believes everything we say, and every negative thought, from
I’m too fat
to
I’m not smart enough
, registers as absolute truth in our minds.” Our task, she said, was to override the years of negative self-talk by saying
two positive comments for every negative thought.

I put down the donut. “My work hangs in galleries around town,” I said, my voice shaky and timid, as if I had no right to
say such things. “My work is appreciated by many,” I said, louder this time. I turned on the car and began driving home. Once
I got started, I couldn’t seem to stop. “I am a talented artist,” I shouted out. “I am a successful mother. My sister and
I have a perfect relationship.”

The last one was harder, and my voice faltered a few times so that I almost skipped over it, but then I said it out loud,
very low at first and then stronger and stronger: “I deserve the love of a good man. I deserve to have a show. I deserve to
have money. I deserve—god damn it—I deserve to be happy.”

Sunday, Jan. 29

“MRS. RICHARDS, PSSST,
Mrs. Richards, are you, like, awake?”

I opened one eyeball to Stephanie’s face peering down at me from where I lay on the living room floor in Barry’s old sleeping
bag. I immediately shut it again.

“Mrs. Richards?” Her hand shook my shoulder. “You’ve gotta wake up. I’m totally in trouble.”

I didn’t move. I had stayed up late after my Saturday night shift drinking wine and eating burned microwave popcorn, scared
out of my mind to paint because how do you do something you love when it’s suddenly been deemed lacking?

“I did an impulsive thing.” Stephanie slid over until she was practically sitting on my head. “I don’t, like, regret it, only
the consequences, which are totally skewed out of proportion.”

I sighed. The room was cold, so I pulled the sleeping bag over my shoulders and sat up. “Is someone dead? Did you wreck the
car? What is so important that you had to wake me up at—what time is it?”

“Six thirty-three. And I totally have a reason because, Mrs. Richards, brace yourself. I won second place.”

“That’s nice.” I leaned my head on my knees and closed my eyes. My neck ached and my mouth felt cottony and too large, the
way it often does when I drink too much.

Stephanie snapped her fingers. “Hello, the creative writing contest? The one that’s in the paper every year?”

It took me longer than it should have to comprehend. “Wow, Steph, that’s great. That’s incredible.” I reached over and hugged
her thin chest to mine. The local newspaper hosted an annual creative writing contest each year after Christmas, and it was
all very hush-hush—no one knew if they had won until it was announced in the paper. It was like being a minor celebrity for
a week or two, and because of this the competition was fierce. Two years ago a housewife won the nonfiction award with an
essay “borrowed” from an obscure underground literary magazine. If the editor hadn’t been up moose hunting at the time, no
one would have figured it out. I worried that Stephanie might have cheated, though she didn’t seem the type. Still, who knows
what someone might do for a taste of success. Would I cheat if I were granted a show and guaranteed that no one would find
out? I hope I wouldn’t, I hope I’m more honorable than that, but probably I’m not. Stephanie snapped her fingers in front
of my face again.

“Mrs. Richards, have you, like, heard anything I’ve said?”

I shook my head groggily and Stephanie rolled her eyes, started over. “My mother totally pounds at the door like an hour ago?
I cannot believe you slept through it. So I open up and she’s like, ‘You’ve embarrassed me for the last time, missy,’ and
she throws the paper at me, can you believe it? The woman has been an embarrassment my
entire
life, and now
she’s
playing the victim.”

Stephanie’s lip twitched the way Jay-Jay’s does before he cries, so I made comforting little clicks with my tongue. “It was
about her.” Her voice was small and trembly. “About her drinking.”

“The poem?” I asked. Stephanie nodded miserably. “Well, you have to admit, she does drink a lot.”

“That’s easy for
you
to say. She’s not
your
mother.”

“No, she’s not,” I agreed. I pulled my feet out of the sleeping bag and began putting on my socks; it was obvious I wasn’t
going to get any more sleep. “My mother drank, she still drinks,” I admitted. “She doesn’t get rip-roaring drunk, and no one
knows but my sister, brother, and father, but she drinks and was never there for me or any of us, not really. She may have
been impeccably groomed, but she was flat on her ass on the sofa by nine each night. So yeah, I know how you feel. You end
up practically raising yourself, and it sucks.

“But Steph, you have to push that aside for now. You wrote a poem and it won an award—do you know how many people would kill
to be in your shoes? If I could win a contest with my paintings, I’d go for it—I wouldn’t care what my friends or sister thought.
Okay, I’d care, but I’d do it anyway.”

Stephanie pulled her oversized T-shirt over her knees and looked at me expectantly.
Don’t look at me,
I wanted to scream.
I don’t have the energy to hold anyone up.

“I guess we should go now.” She stood up and extended her hand to pull me up. “You’ll totally understand when you check out
the yard.”

“Yard?” I followed her to the kitchen and slipped on my boots.

“You’ll see.” And maybe it was knowing the worst was over or having someone walk beside her, but she sounded cheerful again.
I called for Killer and opened the front door. It was dark and cloudy, a light breath of snow across the porch steps. Below,
scattered over the snow-covered lawn, were heaps of clothes and shoes, CDs and books, stuffed animals and candles stuck in
old wine bottles. A dresser with only two drawers leaned against a spruce tree. A mattress sagged over a rock, sheets and
pillows tossed around it.

“I think there’s another load on the way so you’d better, like, keep down. My mother’s got a mean aim when she’s drunk.”

I looked around. It was beyond sad—not only Stephanie’s meager possessions splayed across our yard, but the fact that her
own mother had kicked her out without even realizing she had already been living with us for over a month.

“I guess you’re officially living with us now,” I said. It was a stupid thing to say, a nothing thing, a comment meant to
fill the silence, but it was also funny in a horrible-not-funny-at-all sort of way, and Stephanie snorted and covered her
mouth.

“Officially,” she gasped. “I’m officially living with you now.” She sat on the porch and laughed until tears ran down her
face. “Mrs. Richards, oh, Mrs. Richards, that was such a totally dumb thing to say.”

After she pulled herself together, we hauled the stuff we wanted to save into the arctic entryway right inside the trailer,
a little room designed to stop the flow of cold into the house. Then we carted the dresser and mattress to the curb; in our
neighborhood, the quickest way to dispose of something was to leave it at the edge of your driveway.

“Mrs. Richards?” Stephanie said as we pulled off our boots. “Would you like to read my poem?”

“I’d be honored.” She handed me the features section of the paper, which had been formatted like a small magazine. On the
front was one of Stephanie’s school photos, along with photos of a few other winners: a little boy holding up a copy of
Huckleberry Finn
, a guy in a fishing hat, a woman wearing an artsy muumuu.

“Someone must have clued in my mother,” she said, sitting down at the table next to me. “She
never
reads the features, only the entertainment section to see who’s at the clubs.” She sat back and folded her hands in her lap,
a humble yet proud expression around her mouth. I skimmed through the articles until I came to the high school poetry category.
There was Stephanie’s picture again, enlarged this time, with comments from a judge who called her “gutsy and bold, a refreshing
new voice.”

“This is good.” I was stunned. I knew Stephanie wrote poetry, but I hadn’t realized she was the real thing. “Honey,” I said,
reaching across the table and grabbing her hands. “Sweetie,” I tried again. I wanted to tell her that her words were beautiful,
that she was brave and kind and her heart, which would get her in trouble time and time again, would also be the thing that
saved her. Instead I handed her the metal box where I kept Gramma’s old recipes and asked if she wanted to help me bake.

“Mrs. Richards!” she cried. “I am totally ready to maneuver myself around a kitchen.”

As we prepared
szarlotka
, one of Gramma’s favorite breakfast treats, Stephanie told me about how she waited until the last minute to apply to the
contest, how she revised her poem over and over, trying to get the rhythm right, how she agonized and worried and almost gave
herself an ulcer over the title.

I worked the dough and painted in my head as Stephanie talked. Jay-Jay woke up when the pastry was almost finished, and he
shoved a crumpled booklet toward me.

“Ask me some spelling words while we’re waiting for breakfast but make sure you pronounce them right. I don’t want my brain
messed up so early.” Jay-Jay was favored to place high in the upcoming Alaska State Spelling Bee and had been memorizing spelling
words for weeks.

“
Anaglyph
,” I said. “
Chinchilla
.
Brachylogy
.
Acropodium.
”

Jay-Jay spelled them all without a hitch.

“How long have you been practicing?” I worried he was studying too hard. “You don’t have to win, you know? We love you no
matter how you spell.”

“I
know
that,” he said. “Ask three more but don’t go in order.

“
Cetology
.
Axunge
.
Blatherskite
.”

“Did you know,” Jay-Jay said after he finished zipping through his words, “that a blatherskite is an incompetent person who
talks too much?”

“You trying to tell me something, mister?” I leaned over and ruffled his head.

“Mom!” He jerked away. “Words are funny, aren’t they?”

I told him that they most certainly were and to please run down the hall and wake his aunt for a special breakfast treat.
When Laurel straggled in, we all sat down to a surprisingly pleasant meal. Stephanie read her poem and Laurel talked about
the cute crib she had seen at Burlington Coat Factory, and the apple cakes filled our mouths and melted against our tongues,
and each word we spoke tasted of burned sugar.

Friday, Feb. 3

I SAT IN THE KITCHEN
in a Francisco-induced haze. Last night we had cuddled in his car and kissed until my mouth ached and my lips puffed up,
until my head swooned and all I could see were colors swirling my eyelids: pinks and pale yellows, blues with their edges
muted soft.

Then the phone rang, and I lunged for the receiver, sure it was Francisco. An unpleasant nasal voice filled my ear instead.

“Clara Richards? This is Betty Blakeslee over at Artistic Designs. My apologies for calling so early but the eggshelled dick
collapsed last night and we had to call in a cleaning crew.”

“It’s, you know, um, Carla,” I sputtered. Betty Blakeslee had the power to reduce me to a blabbering idiot.

“The artist wanted to change the show to a Humpty Dumpty mosaic, but I put my foot down and told him to get his dick out of
my gallery.”

“Well, of course,” I blathered.

“We’re out a show for March and have no time to look for anyone else. Our fliers have to go out by next Thursday. Timothy
will contact you about the artist statement for your collection of…” She grappled to find the right word.

“Dirty doll paintings,” I said. “The dolls are included as a subtext emphasizing the plight of—”

“Just make the deadline and we’ll get along fine,” she sighed. “I’ll need ten to twelve quality pieces by the end of February.”

After she hung up, I stood in the middle of the kitchen, unable to move.

“Mom?” Jay-Jay had come in from his bedroom and now tugged at my sleeve. “Your face is bloodless.”

I sat down in a chair and smiled weakly. “I’m okay, honey.”

He ran out to the living room, where I could hear him rousing Stephanie from the couch. “Wake up. Mom is totally vamping out.”

Stephanie staggered into the kitchen, her hair matted, poetry stanzas smeared over her arms. “Yoo-hoo, Mrs. R, you in there?”
She waved her hands in front of my face. I smiled a dumb, loopy smile.

“I got it,” I said in a faraway voice. “The giant dick collapsed. I fucking got it.”

“Do you think we should call my dad?” Jay-Jay said, worried.

Stephanie leaned closer until I could smell her stale, morning breath. “She’ll be okay. I think it’s something about her art.”

“Betty Blakeslee,” I murmured. “On the phone. Got. The. Show.”

“Oh-my-god!” Stephanie squealed. “She got the show,” she cried to Jay-Jay. “Do you know what that means, Mrs. R? We are both
going to be totally famous.” She paused to spread cream cheese over a bagel. “Everything comes true if you work hard enough,”
she told Jay-Jay. “My dream of meeting Tobias Wolff? It will totally happen. Like, it might not happen the way I imagine,
but it will happen. Oh, wow, Mrs. R, this is so totally huge for you!”

I told Sandee about the show during our first cig dig. It was a brutal shift, and neither of us was in a good mood. She was
happy for me, but I could tell she was distracted.

“Have you heard anything from Toodles yet?” I asked.

Sandee slumped against the wall. “I haven’t called back. She’ll probably charge in here looking for me. She seems the pushy
type.”

“Determined, not pushy. There’s a difference.”

“I suppose.” She looked so miserable that I decided to cheer her up with my own insecurities.

“It’s hard to be happy about the show when I know I got it by default.” I tucked in my blouse and prepared to go back out
to the dining room floor. “If the collage guy’s penis hadn’t collapsed, it wouldn’t have happened.”

“So?” Sandee grabbed a tray and wiped off the crumbs. “Life isn’t fair. A lot of people get things by default.”

“The other artists will sneer. ‘Oh,’ they’ll say, ‘she only got the show because the other guy’s dick went limp.’”

“Stop.” Sandee’s hand covered my mouth. It smelled of tequila and salt. “You worked your ass off for this. Look at your hands.”
She grabbed my left hand and we both stared at the chapped skin, the swollen knuckles, the burns and scars from working on
my doll art. “You deserve this, Carla. We’ll go out tonight, we’ll celebrate. Because you’ve friggin’ earned it.”

Later that night Sandee came by the trailer to pick me up for our night out. On the drive downtown, she veered off onto Thirteenth
Avenue and headed down a curved side street. “I’m, ah, picking up Joe,” she said. “I had told him before we’d go out to eat
tonight, so you’ll have to meet him.” She sounded unhappy at the prospect.

“I thought he was mad about the Randall mess.”

“He is, but he’s working on it. That’s what he said, ‘I’m working on my anger,’ as if he had just finished reading a self-help
book. That was after I told him about Toodles. ‘Oh, a private eye,’ he giggled, and I almost smacked him. He thinks it’s an
old guy in a wrinkled suit, like Columbo. I didn’t mention it was a woman. I didn’t want to push the issue.”

Joe was waiting outside a nondescript blue house. “Hey,” he said to me as he climbed in the backseat, “you must be Carla.
I’ve heard so much about you.” He stuck his hand through the space between the two front seats and we shook as Sandee backed
out of his driveway. “Sandee says you two are like sisters. That’s cool—you can never have too many sisters. I have five myself.”

“Five? I can barely handle one,” I told him.

“Well, they’re all back in Ohio.” Joe was tall and solid, with a friendly, bearded face and dark brown eyes. He wore a black
flannel jacket, jeans, and huge leather boots. “Heard you’ve got a show next month. Congrats. Betty Blakeslee is one tough
lady. She hit a moose a couple of years ago, totaled her car, and stood out in the snow, forehead bleeding, shoulder hanging
all crooked, and know what she says? ‘I hope that moose had liability insurance.’” He and Sandee laughed as if this were the
funniest thing in the world.

By the time we left the restaurant after our dinner, I staggered from too many glasses of wine. The sidewalk swayed deliciously
as Sandee grabbed the keys from her purse and steered me toward the car. I slumped against the window while she drove to Joe’s
house and watched them walk to the doorstep, lingering for a kiss that made me suck in my breath, even in my sorry state.
When she got back into the car she cleared her throat.

“Carla,” she said as she pulled out onto Arctic Boulevard. “You aren’t going to like what I have to say but I need to say
it anyway.” She braked for a light and looked over at me. Her lip trembled lightly. “I love him, okay?” She stepped on the
gas and squealed across the intersection. “I hope you’re happy now.” She cut off a blue sedan and grazed the bumper of a brown
SUV. “I hope you’re fucking happy that I’m so miserably in love.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I am.”

And I was, too.

Sunday, Feb. 5

When good things happen, they don’t necessarily leave you happy. That is a myth, a mistake in thinking, according to the Oprah
Giant.

“Happiness can’t be measured by how you look or how much money you make,” she wrote in next week’s blog (I snuck a peek ahead,
hee-hee). “If you think that job promotion is going to make you happy, think again. You might be able to afford nicer outfits,
but you’ll be stuck in your same own self.”

Maybe that’s why I feel so ornery and unsatisfied, so anxious and irritable. I’ve finally been awarded an art show, something
I’ve dreamed of for years. Yet I still have a leaky toilet, a dog that won’t stop chewing my shoes, and a pregnant sister
hogging my bedroom. My life is the same; the art show simply adds more worry to the mix.

“You’re totally looking at it wrong,” Stephanie said as she made coffee this morning before church. With her odd clothes,
her eccentric stories, her badass background, she’s the only one of us who sees fit to visit god on a bimonthly basis. “You
don’t
have
to totally worry about the show. It will be, whether you fret or not. Why waste the energy?”

She sounded suspiciously like the Oprah Giant. “Have you been peeking at my laptop?” I asked her.

She gathered up her purse and slipped on a pair of clunky-heeled boots. “Okay if I borrow the car?” I pointed toward the cupboard.
She picked the keys up and then paused at the door. “I’ll light a candle for you, Mrs. Richards, but I think it’s going to
take way more than that.”

I was still feeling down when Francisco picked me up for a run on the Campbell Creek Trail. “You look like shit,” he said.
“You sick?”

I wiped my hand across my chin, where I was getting a pimple. “You’d think I’d be happy about the show, but I’m not. I mean
I am, but I’m not. I wonder if I’m a chronic under-happier, like an underachiever.”

“It’s complicated.” Francisco lifted the lid of the cookie jar. “Got any snacks? I forgot my Sport Beans.”

I heard Laurel’s feet padding down the hallway, so I pushed Francisco toward the arctic entryway. “Out, now!” I hissed. Laurel
had woken me the night before to share her plans of eating her placenta after the birth, and I wasn’t eager to hear her repeat
the news. Francisco had Abraham and Mamie with him, so I brought Killer. They sat sizing each other up in the backseat. When
we got to the trailhead, Francisco turned off the car and tucked the key in a clever pocket at the waistband of his expensive
running tights. “Maybe you’re overthinking it,” he said. There was something in his voice that I didn’t like. “A show doesn’t
have to be a big deal.”

I watched as he pulled on a pair of lightweight gloves and wanted to kick him. “How far you want to go?” I asked. I wasn’t
much of a runner. I preferred Rollerblading, where the wheels did most of the hard work.

“A couple of miles.” He unzipped his jacket and pulled on a bright yellow Windbreaker. “You wearing that?” He nodded at my
fleece top. “You’ll be too warm. A tech shirt and Windbreaker would be sufficient. The rule is: if you’re not cold the first
mile, you’re overdressed.”

“Thank you, Mr. Running Man.” My voice was sarcastic, but as we headed down the hill at the beginning of the trail, I felt
better. The snow crunched beneath our shoes and the cold air felt good on my face. Francisco kept the pace light and I ran
slightly behind him, thinking of colors, not the whites and grays and tans of the winter woods we ran through but bold and
vibrant purples and yellows, strung-out-on-a-mood shades, Picasso’s crazy mind colors.

“To the left, to the left,” Francisco yelled, pulling me out of my daydreams and over to the deeper snow on the side of the
trail. Up ahead, a moose cow with a yearling calf lumbered toward us on their ridiculous legs, their awkward knobbed knees
looking too insubstantial to hold their weight. “Grab the dogs and stay back,” he warned, holding his arm out as if to shield
me. The cow lurched closer, stopped, blinked, and turned back to the alder tree she had been munching on. There were faint
white markings around her mouth, which looked bored and slightly laconic, like a teenager.

“Watch the calf,” Francisco hissed. It was almost near enough to touch, and Killer, Lincoln, and Mamie strained so hard against
my grip that my fingers ached. “Back,” Francisco said. “Slowly.” We inched our way backward on the trail, the cow lifting
her head and watching us suspiciously.

“Shit, wish I would have brought my camera. My mom’s got a thing about moose.” Squatting there in ankle-deep snow, I realized
that I knew very little about him. That’s the way it is in the beginning, you think you know the person but there is something
more to learn, and something else after that. It’s like walking down a hallway with doors on either side. Sooner or later
you have to decide to keep walking or open each door and find out what’s inside. Francisco helped me up, and we brushed snow
off our legs, turned around, and headed back where we had come from. “We’ll take the Coyote Trail loop and head out behind
the science center,” he said. I released the dogs and we started running again. “Once, a few miles up from here, I was charged
by a cow when I was on my bike,” Francisco said, and I grunted. Such stories were commonplace in Alaska. Moose were touchy
and temperamental, and most folks were more cautious around them than around bears. My favorite story was about a woman who
had been bitten in the ass as she walked down the street. I opened my mouth to share this with Francisco, but he turned and
told me that I shouldn’t be afraid of success, that I needed to accept my potential.

“Potential? You sound like Dr. Phil. ‘Go forth and accept thy potential,’” I mocked in a deep voice. “If it were that easy,
do you think I’d be struggling?”

Francisco shrugged. “Maybe you like to struggle. Maybe you’ve gotten so used to it that it’s a comfort.”

Well, that was easy for
him
to say. He owned a nice house, drove a decent car, made a decent salary—what the fuck did he know about eating generic spaghetti
sauce? A sly voice in my head said that if I hadn’t spent so much on art supplies over the years I could probably afford better
spaghetti sauce, but I ignored it and concentrated on resenting Francisco. “You wouldn’t last a day in my life,” I snapped.

“You’re not so special,” he said. “You aren’t even that poor.”