Dolls Behaving Badly (3 page)

“Thirty-eight,” I said meekly. “I’m thirty-eight.”

She ignored this and pulled out a new form. “Let’s talk retirement. Any stocks? Money market accounts? CDs? IRAs?”

I opened my mouth, about to mention my closet filled with art supplies and half-finished paintings. I had invested thousands
of dollars in my art. Surely dreams, however far-fetched, however misconstrued, must be worth something. But I knew that this
sensible woman with her freshly ironed blouse wouldn’t see it this way, so I wisely shook my head no.

“Savings?”

“Five hundred and seven dollars,” I whispered.

“Health insurance?”

I shook my head again.

“Emergency funds?”

“N-n-no.”

“Mrs. Richards, may I be frank?”

I nodded.

“Your financial life is a mess,” she said. “At the rate you’re going, you’ll be bankrupt in two years.”

A whimper of shame escaped my mouth.

“The best you can hope for at this point is to maintain your current level of debt and make every effort—and I mean every—to
not dig yourself in any deeper.”

“Yes,” I whispered again.

“And cut up your credit cards, or at the very least put them in the freezer.” She leaned forward and glared straight in my
face. “You can’t afford to spend another—and I mean another—aimless dollar.”

She handed me an appointment card for next month, shook my rather limp hand, and escorted me to the door. I was so depressed
I stopped at JCPenney on the way home and bought a cookie jar that plays five different songs when you pop the lid. It was
rather pricey, but the tag said it was dishwasher safe, so I knew it was a good deal. Besides, it was round and fat and reminded
me of Gramma, who used to march down to the gas company every month and demand a handful of the free lollipops they handed
out to the kids.

“I gotta pay, you gotta pay,” she’d say, her three chins wiggling with the indignation of having to hand over her hard-earned
money to a company that heated her bathwater. If Gramma were still alive, she’d tell me to not worry, that a little debt never
hurt anyone. Then she’d make chocolate chip cookies, which she called little brown chippies, and we’d sit at the table and
eat them while they were still warm. Gramma used to say that as long as my belly was full, nothing bad could happen. It was
a fib, of course, but it brought me such comfort that I’ve passed it along to my own son. Some nights that’s all I can manage
for supper, a batch of chocolate chip cookies with tall glasses of milk, along with a side of cucumbers or tomatoes so we
don’t get scurvy. I make Jay-Jay promise to never breathe a word that his mother feeds him cookies for supper.

“Big deal,” he says. “Malcolm’s mom forgot him at the state fair last year. He had to sleep with the
cows
, so you don’t have to worry. Cookies are nothing.”

Friday, Sept. 30

It’s late at night, Jay-Jay asleep, the house quiet. Outside the wind blows, a cool autumn breeze filled with the smell of
damp leaves and silt from the inlet. I’m sitting at the kitchen table, my art supplies huddled around a Barbie doll arm, three
Bratz doll legs, a Ken torso, and two vintage heads with the hair scalped off. As soon as I finish drinking my tea and writing
this entry, I’ll start my second job. No one knows I do this, not Laurel or my best friend, Sandee, or the snotty credit counseling
woman. It’s best to keep quiet about it, at least for the time being.

I’ve already spread newspapers across the table and assembled my X-Acto knives. I love the way they feel in my hand: cool
and smooth and promising. Each time I pick one up I experience a tremendous urge to cut something, and once, after an especially
brutal fight with Barry, I sliced holes in all of his socks, clever little rips that wouldn’t become apparent until halfway
through the day, when his toes would suddenly pop through the seam and give off that itchy feeling that can drive you crazy.
X-Acto knives make you think of things like that. They make you slyer and smarter than you really are.

Across the table I’ve lined up my paints and glue, sandpaper and drill, dental floss and various tricks of my trade along
with the red storage containers I keep at the back of the closet filled with my “work” dolls, most of them bought for a steal
on eBay because of cracks or missing eyes. Such flaws mean nothing to me. Like that
Six Million Dollar Man
show I used to watch growing up, I have the technology to make my dolls better and faster. Much, much faster. Because I make
them anatomically correct. I drill tiny little vaginas and labia lips between those poor sexless thighs, and then I cover
these private parts with seductive underpants, cheerleader outfits, or nursing uniforms with push-up bras stretched across
newly expanded boobs so big it would be impossible for these dolls to see their feet if they had the misfortune of coming
alive. I make dirty dolls. X-rated, but mildly so. I don’t do anything radical like butt plugs or fisting or foursomes, and
I always make sure Ken carries a condom.

I sell these on an adult website and they’re more popular than you might expect. My agent is Jimmie “10-inch” Dean (no relation
to the sausage), a former porn star who found Jesus during a stint in rehab and became so excited pondering the age-old question
of whether Joseph and Mary had ever
done it
that as soon as he got out he started Thinking Butts and Boobs, an artsy adult website that speaks frankly and honestly about
sex and desire and why we want what we want. It’s
the
adult site; it’s even been written up in such stuffy publications as
The New Yorker
and the
Wall Street Journal
.

I happened upon this site by accident one night as I was surfing the web looking for ways to make extra money. One minute
I was reading about My Points accounts and the next I found myself at Jimmie’s website, which I like to think was fate since
he was hosting his My Body and Why? art contest. First prize was $500, so I grabbed a Barbie, made her boobs bigger and her
butt rounder, and then I went all the way and drilled a tiny vagina, complete with real-life labia (which was harder than
you might expect, with so many folds and all). I only came in third, but Jimmie was so smitten that he called me the very
next day to see if he could market the idea. I was sure he was joking: did the world really need dolls with cunts and pubic
hair?

It turns out it did. The first five sold out in less than a day, and even though Jimmie has twelve other artists working on
his Really Real, Really Feel Me doll line, mine are the most popular. I make four to eight a month and average $50 apiece.
I could make more money if I branched out on my own, but I don’t want the hassles. Jimmie has an ongoing legal battle with
the Mattel toy company and besides, I like the anonymity. I don’t have to suffer the embarrassment of walking into Jay-Jay’s
school conference knowing his teacher knows I’m the creator of Purple Pussy Patty or Suck Me Harder Sammy.

My dolls actually sell more among women than men. This is a fact. It’s also a fact that women think of sex a lot more than
men give them credit for. It’s just that we think of sex as a whole outfit, while men only think of ripping off the clothes
and getting the deed done. Women dress up their fantasies, right down to the weave of the silk undies and the peek of lace
around a push-up bra. We imagine not only hairstyles but the shapes of barrettes and the shades of toenail polish. Once we’re
satisfied that our fantasy looks exactly as we want, only then do we bring in the men. And here’s the secret, the thing we
all know but rarely admit: in our fantasies, the men don’t matter that much. Oh, we need their parts and their presence, but
they are shadowy and often faceless because it’s mostly about us, our bodies, and the way we look and move. Sex for men is
all about the orgasm. For women, it’s all about getting to the orgasm. I understand this, which is why my dolls are so popular.
I take care with every detail, from the handbags to the toe rings to the fake designer camisoles, one strap slipping coquettishly
down a shoulder.

I love sitting at my kitchen table late at night and chopping my dolls to bits. I feel so inexplicably happy that I often
get up and dance around the kitchen. It’s not just about the money, which I so desperately need. It’s the knowledge that I’m
creating something, and so what if it’s slutty dolls? I’m choosing colors and shading textures, I’m figuring lines and confronting
angles. Lately I’ve begun dabbing small canvases on the side, sketching an identity for each doll. These paintings are embarrassingly
sloppy and amateurish; it seems I’ve gotten out of touch these years I’ve been away. Yet I can feel a difference in my brush
the nights I work on these, a thumping like a heartbeat, a tingle much like someone’s breath against my hand. Often I get
so carried away I fall asleep right at the table, my head pressed on small tubes of acrylic paint so that when I wake in the
morning, streaks blaze across my face like tribal markings. I don’t wash these off, I wear them as long as I can: to the post
office, the grocery store, the bank, the color marking me as someone with a purpose, someone trying to find meaning, decipher
nuances. Someone who matters.

Tuesday, Oct. 4

“IT’S NOT THAT I DIDN’T
want to sleep with him,” Sandee said the moment I walked in to work this morning. “I just didn’t want to listen to him make
a big deal out of it later.” She pulled a large tray out of the pantry cooler and began sorting salsa: green, hot, mild, and
chunky. “It’s so pathetic when men try to thank you for sex.”

Sandee is my best friend. She’s a small-town girl from the Florida bayou who hates the heat and doesn’t know how to swim.
She has platinum blonde hair and dimples and wears high-heel shoes even while waiting tables, her shapely calves flexing with
each step. We work side-by-side stations during the lunch rush, and over and over, she saves my life. Unlike me, she actually
likes to wait tables.

“The money’s not bad and I don’t have to wear career-girl bullshit outfits,” she says, tugging her apron over her hips. Sandee
is fifteen pounds overweight, but on her it’s perfect. She looks ripe, like fruit waiting to be picked. She also has a way
of making people feel right at home that nets her more tips than the rest of us.

“Honey, I’ll be right back,” she says, patting shoulders and soothing tempers so that even the older women, the hard, over-fifty
women with sagging chests and bad haircuts, feel a need to protect her. No matter what she does, drops her tray or mixes up
drink orders, the customers forgive her.

“Oh, darling, it’s just not my day,” she gasps, her hand held up to her mouth like a parody of old movies.

Sandee lives out in Eagle River, an upper-middle-class area about thirty minutes outside Anchorage, in a house with large
windows overlooking the mountains. She was married once. On their third anniversary, her husband, Randall, surprised her with
a Las Vegas vacation. He settled her in an expensive hotel, told her he was going out for breakfast, and never came back.
He left her with a hefty hotel tab, a $1,600 monthly mortgage, and four maxed-out credit cards. Every three months, she receives
a postcard from a peculiar location: Tupelo, Chattanooga, or Hell, Michigan, the backs holding strange and badly poetic messages
scrawled in Randall’s stilted handwriting. “In the morning, the sky is the color of pumpkin pie,” the last one said. Sandee
fumes for days after receiving one of these. It’s her theory that Randall is hiding out in Vegas and making a killing as a
blackjack dealer. The postcards, she believes, are mailed by tourists after they return home from vacation.

“That would be like Randall, making someone else do his dirty work for him,” she says.

She isn’t sure if she’s still married (“He could be dead for all I know,” she says in more optimistic moments), and when men
ask her out, which is often, she usually agrees. These dates rarely end well and the next morning she shares the unhappy details
with me. Today it was a guy she met at the car wash over on Minnesota Drive.

“I knew he was left-brained—come on, he’s an accountant—but even that can be sexy. Remember that guy from British Petroleum
who wore my underwear?” She tossed lettuce for the Caesar salad special. Croutons and cherry tomatoes flew. “Then he goes
on and on about this digital recorder he got to capture rutting moose. I should have left right then but no, I hang around
for the inevitable sex. Which was—surprise!—accompanied by the roaring and thumping of horny moose.” Sandee licked her fingers
and stuck them back in the salad. “Why do I bother?”

I shrugged and headed to the empty dining room to set up my tables. The air was hazy with the smell of spilled tequila and
old grease, and as I wiped chairs and tightened salt and pepper lids, I hummed along with the Mexican elevator music piped
over the speakers. Since I’m the only all-day server—the others work split shifts and return for dinner as I’m finishing up
the last of the afternoon tables—I get the prime corner station, five cozy booths plus two tables. Most days they’re covered
through two p.m., which is a good thing: more tables equal more money.

Today was busy, and after everyone was cut from the floor I got caught with a busload of retired dentists from Wisconsin,
all of them straggling in with that peculiar pallor of the overly stimulated tourist. They had been to Portage Glacier and
Denali, cruised Kenai Fjords, walked along the Alaskan Pipeline, and were just now returning from a day jaunt along Turnagain
Arm, where they had encountered two heaps of bear scat. A fat man shoved his camera’s viewfinder in my face.

“See?” He pointed to a blurry speck on the ground. “Scat so fresh it was steaming. Five minutes earlier, we’d have been ripped
to shreds.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell them that they had photographed dog poop, not bear. They were having such a good time—what
right did I have to ruin it for them? They ordered premium margaritas and steak fajitas, left me a fat tip, and promised to
send autographed pictures of The Scat as soon as they got back home. By the time I tallied up my bank, the dinner shift was
in full swing and I was late picking up Jay-Jay. I found him slumped in front of the locked multipurpose room, a big-bosomed
lady with a clipboard glaring down at me. Did I know, she barked, that I would be charged an extra dollar for every minute
late? I shook my head and signed the form; I had barely broken even. The retired dentists had left $55 in tips, yet their
staying late had cost me $35 in extra child-care fees.

“I had to wait with Mrs. McCallister,” Jay-Jay complained as we walked across the darkening parking lot. The air was cold
and crisp—Halloween weather, I always call it, these midautumn evenings when the wind blows with damp promise and everything
feels suspended and mysterious.

“She talked about when she was a
girl
.” Jay-Jay shuddered and pulled his coat tighter. “It was awful.”

“I was a girl once,” I said.

He gave me a disgusted look and climbed in the backseat. Once home I couldn’t muster the energy to cook, so we had TV dinners.
Jay-Jay and I secretly love TV dinners; we love the brightly colored cardboard wrappers and the way the food is stacked so
neatly in clever little aluminum trays and then covered like holiday presents. We eat these compact meals in the living room
while watching movies. Tonight it was
Dr. Dolittle
, and we laughed along with Eddie Murphy, we slurped and chewed and wiped our mouths on the bottoms of our shirts. After we
finished, we put on our coats and sat on the porch and ate Fudgsicles until our tongues turned brown. I was stuffing the second
one into my mouth when Jay-Jay suddenly asked, “Mom, ever wish you had a penis?”

“Not particularly,” I said.

“Maybe then you wouldn’t be so grouchy.”

I lowered my Fudgsicle and stared at the slope of his forehead, so much like Barry’s that I had the sudden urge to smack him.
“How so?”

“Because,” he explained in a patient, adult voice, “you could pee standing up.”

“I’m on my feet all day at work. I like sitting down.”

“Whatever.” Jay-Jay shrugged. I could tell he didn’t believe a word I said. I wondered if he was right, if I would be happier
if I had a flap of skin swinging between my legs. I couldn’t imagine it, though; couldn’t imagine having to tuck it in and
constantly rearrange it and worry about whether it would get hard when it wasn’t supposed to or, worse yet, not get hard when
it was supposed to. No wonder men treated their cocks as if they were the greatest things in the world. It was like stroking
a talisman or praying to an unpredictable god: if I worship you and grant you privileges you’ll always be there for me when
I need you.

But they weren’t, that was the thing. Every man I’ve ever dated for an extended time sooner or later couldn’t get it up or
got it up but came moments later, or got it up but not quite up enough, lying there and stroking it with a fearful, desperate
look in his eyes. As I lay there beside them with my beautiful cunt that was always ready and only needed to be oiled from
time to time and could come five and six and seven times in a row and never “petered” out or stopped working.

“Vaginas are really cool things,” I wanted to tell Jay-Jay, because I wanted him to understand how it is to always be open,
how walking around with that hole between your legs can sometimes feel like a void—if not filled, you could find yourself
leaking away. How a man’s penis might be more prominent but a woman’s desire is just as strong, if not stronger, because she
carries it deep inside of her.

Of course I couldn’t say this to my son; it would be almost incestuous. Plus it wasn’t really Jay-Jay I was thinking about
but myself and the way I’ve lived my life, flitting from one desire to the next, never stopping to question if I was moving
in the right direction, or even any direction at all. If men follow the lead of their penises, then women follow the path
of their wombs. We follow our nurturing instincts. We call this passion or sex or love, but really it’s deeper and more binding.
It’s our true voice, pure and pink and strong. It’s the thing we seek yet fear and doubt because, think of it: how many of
us really want to know the truth about ourselves? Most of us, I believe, are happier with lies.

Thursday, Oct. 6

I lie. I can’t help it, they just slip out. Gramma never made a big deal out of my lies, at least not the small ones, which
she called fibskis. She believed fibskis were the only thing holding the world together.

“Think anyone wanna see themselves like they really is?” she’d snort. Then she’d roll dough out over the kitchen table and
cut noodles while she told the story of her name, which was supposed to be Rachel but ended up Bethany; the midwife refused
to write Rachel in the registry, since it was the name of the woman who stole her husband, so she wrote the name of her dead
sister instead. By the time anyone realized this, it was too late and Gramma became Bethany, a combination of two names and
similar to a small town in northern Alaska. Perhaps it was fate, for not only did I end up living in Alaska, but my name is
also a fibski. It’s not really Carla, it’s Carlita. I don’t admit this often because it’s obvious to anyone looking at me
that I don’t have an ounce of Spanish blood in my veins. Laurel could get away with it, since she is darker, but I have that
pasty skin of someone who should have been blonde but turned brunette. I wasn’t purposely given a Spanish name. Mother, drugged
out on painkillers and flying from champagne, goofed. I was supposed to be a boy and Mother had the name Charles all picked
out, after her great-uncle, who started his very own tire company and made a fortune, only to lose it on a mad gambling binge
when he was eighty-four, but that’s beside the point. He was the only rich one in a family of middle-class people trying to
toe the line and pull themselves up. I was supposed to be a lawyer or a doctor. “Or maybe even a movie producer,” Mother used
to sigh when telling the story. Then she’d take two aspirin and lie on the couch with a washcloth over her eyes. Talking about
our muddled family history gave her a fierce headache, and we all knew to keep it down at such times.

When the doctor handed me to Mother, all wrapped in a pink blanket with a frilly cap on my head, Mother tittered and tried
to hand me back.

“I seem to have the wrong baby,” she fretted, still groggy from the drugs. “I ordered a boy and this seems to be, why, it’s
a girl.” Her face was all scrunched up and puzzled, and at that exact moment Daddy took a picture, which is still plastered
in the photo album, Mother holding me away from her body and looking at me with distaste, while I stuck out my tongue and
crossed my eyes.

Later, when the drugs wore off and it finally hit Mother that she was stuck with another girl, she worried about what to name
me. “Charles is such a good, solid name,” she insisted. “It seems a shame to waste it. Maybe we should name her Charles anyway?
If we gave it a cute little spelling…”

Daddy refused. Even then he was secretly plotting to try again. So when the Mexican aide came in to change the sheets and
pointed at me and asked Mother, “What you name,” Mother explained her dilemma. I don’t know how much the woman understood,
but at one point she excitedly pushed back her massive braid and screamed out, “Carlita!”

“Carlita? That sounds so, well, ethnic,” Mother replied, but when Daddy looked it up in the baby book and found out that it
was the female equivalent to Charles, he couldn’t be swayed. So I ended up a Polish-looking child with a Spanish-sounding
name in a family with a mother who put on airs and a father who bought me baseball gloves and took me to football games and
couldn’t seem to remember that I was really a girl. You’d think that when Gene finally came along, three years later, he would
have given up, but he dragged Gene and me to every sporting event possible, and instead of making us athletic, all it did
was give us a lifelong aversion to any type of game that required a ball.

Saturday, Oct. 8

“Think you’ll ever get married again?” Laurel was splendidly attired in a navy blue Halston blazer and skirt so slim she was
forced to mince her way across the kitchen. “I’m not getting personal. I just showed a newlywed couple a condo over in Independence
Park.” She plopped down on a kitchen chair without bothering to brush off the dog hair.

“So?” I took a savage bite of the peanut butter toast left over from Jay-Jay’s breakfast. I had been up late the night before,
supposedly finishing a transvestite G.I. Joe doll order but actually working on my
Woman Running with a Box
painting. The box, now tied with red and yellow ribbon, was cradled against the woman’s chest as lovingly as if it were a
child. I had no idea what was inside but believed that if I kept painting it would soon be revealed to me.